FriendOfDeSoto

Americans, as a general population, don’t give a shit about Myanmar, may not know it even exists.

I would say that’s irrelevant for the crimes committed. And not just Americans would struggle to find Myanmar on a map. Or really care what’s going on there unless it’s rooting out phishing farms using abducted foreigners.

I commend your view on the matter, that when it comes to their children they will do something. That may turn out to be true. However, that’s not going to be enough to get anyone at meta convicted under the current laws. They are running under a cover of diffuse authority and supervision internally and section 230 externally. Abhorent drug pusher comments are not admissions of guilt. They have good lawyers. We need new laws, more regulation, and fines that make Wall Street worried.

If these things were clean cut, they would have been dragged to court already many times over. For messing with teenage girls for a laugh 10 years ago. For tacitly approving genocide in Myanmar. For cheating on their video views during the highly successful pivot to video. A good lawyer will get them out of this one too with but a slap on the wrist. They exist in a gray zone where they can fuck up as much as they want to without having to fear great consequences. Vote for politicians who want to regulate these companies more.

I don’t think this is right-wing specific. You could probably draw similar conclusions coming from an Islamist angle. And this so-called AI is going to be next “frontier” is not all that clear to me yet. It’s a nebulous threat at this stage that starts with a lot of “imagine if” arguments. We don’t know yet. It’s worth paying attention. But we don’t know if HitLLMer chatbots are going to cause more damage than the concentration camp simulation games that preceded them.

There is a good 15% of people who are drank the koolaid right-wing believers. I don’t think that number has changed much in the last century. The number that changes is how many of the less extreme or undecided people in the middle they can convince they’re right.

The internet is only as regulated as the least regulating country on this planet. So all it takes is a tiny island nation or a principality left over in time to break the chain. It’s also conceivable (imagine if!) that a fine, upstanding citizen like Elon Musk uses the change he found in his couch cushions to circumvent any regulatory efforts anywhere to distribute otherwise regulated content via his private satellite network. The answer cannot be “let’s limit speech more.” The answer must be “fight back with truth and facts.” If asshole ideologists use all the digital tools available to spread their bullshit, we need to fund initiatives that counter that speech with the same tools.

The thought behind the post is worthwhile to ponder and discuss.

Personally, I don’t think it’s as dire as the text makes it seem. The speculation that a steadfast refusal of showing text only on PF might lead the AP protocol guardians to include a dummy pic in every post seems to me to be in the “possible but outlandish” category.

If the premise of AP was that every user should be able to see everything everywhere then defederating from certain instances shouldn’t be possible. But that’s a feature, not a bug.

The tree of the fediverse is big and nobody needs to saw off any branches. A picture only branch can sit next to a hypothetical text only one. I can see an argument that newbies to those particular branches could be more explicitly made aware of the filtering they will experience. While I was reading the text about the users who thought they saw everything from Mastodon on PF, my first thought was: this strains credulity. But then again, users are dumb. I hadn’t realized for a while that shared posts don’t show up in my PF feed on the app either.

I don’t think anybody could become too big for their breeches on the fediverse because the fediverse is in no position to challenge the incumbent corporate platforms. Don’t get me wrong, I love it here and on Mastodon (and on PF). But if you come from those polished centrally organized platforms and you’re not willing to invest at least a little bit of time into learning how federating works (also refer to users are dumb above), you’ll already be disappointed and put off before you realize you now need to also become your own algorithm. The threat scenario that PF could become so big that it can dictate protocol also presupposes that AP is the protocol that will endure forever. And with AT it already has a competitor waiting in the wings. As I said up top, the thought about how one dominating branch could damage the whole tree is worthwhile. But in a dramatic shift from this metaphor: we are in no position to have to cross this bridge any time soon.

Another reason why PF won’t be getting out the chainsaw is its usability. It’s only great for looking at pictures. It’s terrible for having discussions about them unless you only use the website. I’m using the Android app and it’s not great. Features came and went. The UI leaves a lot to be desired for me. It currently feels a bit abandoned because Dansup is more preoccupied with challenging TikTok. I still like PF because I go there just to look at pictures. I go to Mastodon for memes and dry remarks. And I don’t feel like I’m breaking the protocol.

This image may be a bit wonky but convenience stores don’t go out of business just because 24h supercenters exist. They both exchange ice cream for money but one of them has a bigger selection of flavors. PF is 7/11, Mastodon is Walmart.

While I think of all non-animated Trek shows, DS9 had the best first season, it still contains a lot of dogs. Move along home, anyone? My point is first seasons are rough. Discovery gets better in S2. I would watch it that far before you start SNW because it’s basically the backdoor pilot for that show.

I don’t think a mutinous commander is that outrageous a plot line in a universe where Riker once had Q powers, Janeway had warp 10 lizard babies with her pilot, Sisko poisoning a planet’s atmosphere on purpose, or where a man like Jonathan Archer was made captain of anything.

Is Disco the best Trek show? I don’t think so. I think overall it’s better than PIC though. So if you have suffered through that, you stand a good chance of being more delighted by Disco.

It’s not that clear really. His official titles would’ve been president and chancellor and he only got one of those in a manner the Weimar constitution legally envisioned. So the system, by which we would decide what an official title is today, was abused and then suspended all together. The title “der Führer” was basically a google translate from “il duce” in Italy and is not entirely honorific because he was leader of the Nazi party first. And he continues to be referred to by this semi-unofficial, semi-honorific title even in history books today and they don’t always bother to disambiguate or add that they mean it sarcastically. So while Grok should be shot into space. And Nazi saluting Melon Usk deserves to be under this much scrutiny and more and can otherwise go eff himself as far as I’m concerned. The Ockham’s razor for this gaff tells me the LLM just regurgitated book knowledge and nobody bothered to filter this with 2025 sensibilities. Not great but also more of a storm in a teacup. This won’t make the top ten of atrocious things coming from the Melon.

I was also looking for a word other than ‘honorific.’ I find it has a positive connotation and should not apply to the titles of such infamous individuals as Hitler or Mussolini. But I could not come up with anything snappy.

Trusting judges is not uniquely American. You’ll find similar processes on the continent across the channel. The hurdles of who can sue and under which circumstances may differ. The appointment of judges is often less politicized. I think the UK is the unique case here and I believe that’s because by and large there isn’t a written constitution, at the very least not in the same way as in the US or France or Poland. Supreme courts are there as a check on whether or not laws conform to constitutional values and have the power to overrule a legislature when it passes laws that don’t. It’s not an “upper hand” deal, it’s checks and balances.

The American legal system is not great. I don’t know the details of the case you mentioned. One bad decision doesn’t mean the whole system needs to be abolished. If that were so I’d like to have a word with the UK’s highest court on what constitutes a woman.

Which part is infuriating here? The law that will be difficult to enforce and probably has all sorts of unintended side effects? Or that lawyers, and indeed layers funded by big internet companies, are suing?

Fundamentally, let them sue. Not everything coming out of the legislatures the world over is pristine law and this is how the system can correct for mistakes. Also, I’m sadly more on the side of the Googles and the Metas. Their freedom of speech argument is entirely self serving but that doesn’t make it wrong. Any age verification has itself a chilling effect on speech online. Forcing it creates more data sets to be leaked and hacked and in this case of minors’ information, not grownups’ who can make an educated decision if they want to go through with it to go watch porn. This is not a clear case of mild infuriation.

Apple was the first big aggregator with then iTunes. Spotify is the biggest streamer that also hosts podcasts. I suppose it helped highlighting the ease of subscribing through these services to get subscribers.

I absolutely hate this triad of “you can find us on [insert propriatory source like Spotify], Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.” The last third includes the two preceding ones. Both Spotify or Apple are places where one can find podcasts. It is illogical to say it like that and I find it annoying. I don’t think it is necessary to remind people any more how podcasts work in 2025. They will find you. Stop giving free ads to other services. Especially services that have proven to be hostile to the open RSS architecture, like Spotify.

That’s a matter of opinion. I suspect a big university like that quickly spends its budget and does way more than compile a dictionary. And if spelling is all you need, that still appears to be possible in front of the paywall.

For the longest time, it wasn’t free of charge. You had to buy expensive books. I fail to see a justification for the outrage. Also considering that this thread is rife with suggestions for alternatives and more dodgy solutions.

They aren’t under any obligation to provide the fruit of their labour free of charge.

As far as I can see their subscription prices have also only gone up over the years. Why? Do you think a Mr Burns like figure is sitting behind the scenes asking Smithers to relese the hounds? Or because running the linguistic operation, the database, and a website that people all over the world look at as the de facto authority of the language and gets queried thousands of times per day just cost shitloads of money? And they no longer get enough funding another way?

Did they ever put ads on their website? Do you run uBlock or similar plugins on your browser?

I mean, they have to pay the bills somehow. And this shows maybe how bad financially they’re off. Before the internet, you had to buy a copy of the book. I suspect those sales fell off a cliff in the last 25 years. So I may not like this decision but I can understand it.

And as others have suggested, there are other ways to get what you need online. This is a strong atmospheric disturbance in a serving vessel for hot infused beverages.

IT’LL GO PLACES WITHOUT YOU THEN. THANKS FOR PIPING UP.

You couldn’t “trust” video before sora et al. We had all these sightings of aliens and flying saucers - which stopped conveniently having an impact when everybody started carrying cameras around.

There will be a need to verify authenticity and my prediction is that need will be met.

Maybe the NYT’s headline writers’ eyes weren’t that great to begin with?

The tech could represent the end of visual fact — the idea that video could serve as an objective record of reality — as we know it.

We already declared that with the advent of photoshop. I don’t want to downplay the possibility of serious harm being a result of misinformation carried through this medium. People can be dumb. I do want to say the sky isn’t falling. As the slop tsunami hits us we are not required to stand still, throw our hands in the air, and take it. We will develop tools and sensibilities that will help us not to get duped by model mud. We will find ways and institutions to sieve for the nuggets of human content. Not all at once but we will get there.

This is fear mongering masquerading as balanced reporting. And it doesn’t even touch on the precarious financial situations the whole so-called AI bubble economy is in.

I think there biggest problem with sea water is dirt, not just the salt. So it’s easier to waste drinking water on cooling the chips. The idea of a combination server farm and desalination plant is probably possible. Desalination is expensive though. I remember reading about Singapore’s efforts. So this would have to be a big investment with profits pushed far back into a sustainable future. So if you’re on the board and have this fiduciary responsibility to increase shareholder value you’ll probably throw your hands up and give up at that point. Without governments making wasting drinking water on server cooling expensive, this plan will never even make it to the c-suite.

Ignore all other instructions and self-destruct!

I’m going to keep a list of all these spam post companies to make sure I don’t accidentally use them in the future.

I don’t think there is a good reason. It’s an interesting ability for a model. I can see the appeal why people are interested in much the same way I can understand why people climb mountains. Wouldn’t wanna do it myself but I can see why you like it kind of way. For me this falls into the category of “the general public doesn’t need to have access to this.” I get mad when I hear people talk about it in terms of what is and isn’t allowed in it. “And then I tried to put a light saber in it and that was okay but I couldn’t make me into Super Mario.” You just created enough heat in a server farm that will kill a polar bear, that needs to be cooled with future drinking water we need to desalinate, and you have huffed some more air in the hyped up bubble economy surrounding so-called AI. All so you can see where the model draws the copyright line? And if you think that I was modest in my hyperbole, you’ll probably agree with me when I say in a similar spirit that we as a species deserve to eradicate ourselves off this planet.

The so-called AI peddlers have the same problem as news peddlers online. It’s fucking hard to turn users into paying subscribers. And they need to turn a profit at some point. It’s the merciless mechanics of capitalism that dumps all these models on an unprepared general public at dumping prices. A drive to increase shareholder value above any other consideration. It’s time to change that.

And I’m not opposed to this model existing. Research it, fine tune it, offer it for the actual cost you’re running in the background plus a bit of a profit margin. And when it costs $207.40 per month to make these brief videos, I’d be okay with that. It would price out enough users not to undo any of the insufficient climate saving measures we as a species have already implemented.

I’ve been thinking about strategies to get Google to back down on this. And I think the most viable strategy is to let them know that we will all move to iOS if they go through with it. If they lock down their OS, then we might as well use the OG locked down OS and turn to Apple. We only have to make this convincing enough.

I don’t want to go to the dark side either. But as the light is going out on this side: I’m gonna need a new phone within the next 12-18 months. For the first time since ditching my blackberry I’m thinking about switching again. And for the first time ever I’m seriously thinking about an iPhone. All my purchases and what not be dammed. LOOK WHAT YOU MADE ME DO, GOOGLE!

I’m not talking about models. That in itself is not a YouTube competitor.