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That tracing woodgrains peice on David Gerard is out
  • the otherwise nameless woke menace that’s coming for their precious bodily fluids.

    aaaaargh I wish I could draw.

  • The CIA is using generative AI as a search engine
  • they probably do. I worked for a content-as-a-service company that had a contract to deliver our product, airgapped, to a three-letter agency on a regular schedule, and we were a tiny company. Microsoft's biggest customer is probably the U.S. government; I'd be shocked if they don't provide an in-house airgapped set of full Azure services for the entire intelligence agency system.

  • Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending Sunday 14 July 2024
  • From the just released GOP 2024 party platform (PDF), this is a single bullet point in CHAPTER THREE: BUILD THE GREATEST ECONOMY IN HISTORY:

    Republicans will pave the way for future Economic Greatness by leading the World in Emerging Industries.

    Crypto

    Republicans will end Democrats’ unlawful and unAmerican Crypto crackdown and oppose the creation of a Central Bank Digital Currency. We will defend the right to mine Bitcoin, and ensure every American has the right to self-custody of their Digital Assets, and transact free from Government Surveillance and Control.

    Artificial Intelligence (AI)

    We will repeal Joe Biden’s dangerous Executive Order that hinders AI Innovation, and imposes Radical Leftwing ideas on the development of this technology. In its place, Republicans support AI Development rooted in Free Speech and Human Flourishing.

    Expanding Freedom, Prosperity and Safety in Space

    Under Republican Leadership, the United States will create a robust Manufacturing Industry in Near Earth Orbit, send American Astronauts back to the Moon, and onward to Mars, and enhance partnerships with the rapidly expanding Commercial Space sector to revolutionize our ability to access, live in, and develop assets in Space.

    When your party platform is just a long-form weird tweet that you wrote after bong rips with Elon Musk.

  • rationalists discuss: does testosterone make you stupid?
  • every single bathroom bill requires that the most masc, bearded trans guys legally have to use the women's toilets because they were AFAB. It has never not boggled my mind.

    (Except that what it actually means, obviously, is that those trans guys are prohibited from peeing and perforce existing in public, because anywhere with bathroom bills is somewhere where a trans guy is sure as hell putting his life at risk by using the women's toilets. Goddammit.)

    (Edited to add: I know this is obvious to everyone. But it's still enraging.)

  • Actual comedians try to use LLM in a writing room. Result: “cruise ship comedy material from the 1950s, but a bit less racist”
  • That’s a lot of fucking work and obviously if you’re starting out you can’t exactly afford to pay for assistant writers to do the menial labour that comes with it.

    Give this promptfucker the props they deserve: usually they don’t just come out and say it.

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    Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending Sunday 7 July 2024
  • I’m sure they would find some way¹ to ruin it, but it would be fun if we could convince them to pass a law in some vice-signaling US state that bans private equity’s purchase of every vet and general contractor and empty house.

    ¹ Anti-semitism, probably.

  • Featured
    Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending Sunday 7 July 2024
  • Omg, if we could convince the world’s worst people that “private equity” is DEI and “private equity buying companies and neighborhoods” is wokism and agenda 21 and should be banned, that would be the best.

  • Actual comedians try to use LLM in a writing room. Result: “cruise ship comedy material from the 1950s, but a bit less racist”
  • The adverse impacts section was just the comedians saying “we’ve already lost friends, everyone hates us” but the conclusion was “here’s how comedians should use our tool.”

  • Why do people who hate IP laws/copyright think we should be allowing AI companies to copy the whole internet when pirates still get arrested for piracy?
  • It is not, in fact, bad that copyright applies to a wider group than publishers, unless you are using "publisher" extremely broadly to apply to "creators".

    If "someone gets attacked for posting an image on social media", that rarely means "lawyers came after me because I posted a screenshot of a page from Sandman". It often means that the poster took someone else's art, snipped off the artist's signature, and posted without attribution, and the artist is rightfully angry. Copyright is what enables that artist to continue to eat and make more art. The same goes for music, or software, or movies.

    Sure, the system is horribly abused by uneven power structures, as every system in the world is. For music especially, we all know that the takedowns are usually issued by people who have nothing to do with the creation of the protected work, because of the way licensing and rights grants work in that industry. Automated takedown systems (which have to exist because of the scale of online content) also have no reasonable appeal mechanism, and the people making the decisions don't (and can't) make reasonable assessments about fair use and transformative works.

    I'm not saying that everyone who participates in piracy is a bad, wicked thief--I absolutely participate in it myself. But copyright is not the villain here; that's just trying to make us feel justified about our actions. Someone made a creative work I enjoyed, and I don't have a moral right to the product of their effort for free.

  • Featured
    Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending Sunday 7 July 2024
  • If you concede that there exist humans that are bullshit in the same way that ChatGPT is

    If you concede that cats are made of marmalade and always win Texas Hold 'Em games, then I don't think the argument against squaring the circle holds up.

  • Featured
    Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending Sunday 7 July 2024
  • hahaha no failfandomanon is extremely at Dreamwidth, but I think the wankiest people mostly moved to other places in recent years.

  • Featured
    Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending Sunday 7 July 2024
  • as a former member of multiple livejournal fanfic circlejerks, I am so sad that LW didn't join the rest of LJ in (1) getting off or (2) being mean on fandom_wank, and instead decided to create the torment nexus.

  • Featured
    Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending Sunday 7 July 2024
  • If you always bet on "everything confusing that weirdos say is a euphemism or proxy for Jews or Black people", you will beat the house. Canadians, lizards, trans people, common punctuation marks, apparently also the seelie court I guess.

  • Real people's real problems? Nah, it's AI Welfare Debate Week here at the EA Forums
  • oh lord I cannot imagine how they would torment nexus the tao te ching.

    ...wait yes I can. they'd decide that LLMs are the tao. "What's perfectly whole seems flawed, but you can use it forever." "To know without knowing is best." "If those in power could hold to the Way, the ten thousand things would look after themselves."

  • We regret to inform you that Ray Kurzweil is back on his bullshit
  • yeah, I knew about kurzweil reading machines for years before I connected them with ray kurzweil, and I don't know how much of his tech ended up in speech rec during the scansoft / dragon systems / nuance / lernout and hauspie katamari years, but that tech has enabled me to be an independent working adult for more than 20 years. So I owe him a debt of gratitude, but also, he needs to not be on his bullshit.

  • A Rant about Front-end Development
  • Remember when our industry cared about loading times?

  • A Rant about Front-end Development
  • This is so cathartic to read.

    I have worked with multiple static sites delivered with React, because somebody built an enterprise design system which is so tightly tied into React that it can't be applied any other way.

  • gnomicutterance deborah @awful.systems

    You’re thinking of my brother, Zathras.

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    Comments 46