I doubt Trump’s followers will think of this as a breach of their 2A rights. They will likely think that it’s black people and bad actors who will have their guns taken for the safety of the boys in blue.

I say “look it up”. Applies to lots of forms of search, be it google, DDG, YouTube, Wikipedia, a dictionary, a manual, pretty much anything.

Lol same. I think it’s probably because commenting is more like normal conversation; you’re responding to other people in ways that are specifically meaningful to the circumstances. Writing is sorta like talking to the void in my mind. I find I spend much more time thinking and checking and re-reading to make sure I’m appealing to my imagined audience, rather than just contributing a sentence or two to a conversation where the audience is a bit more concrete.

Spot on!

Worse still is the pronunciation of “bologna”. How. Just how. None of you seppos have the right to tell me about how I pronounce “herbs” or “pecans”. Then again, our pronunciation of “lieutenant” is messed up.

Copyright gives the copyright holder exclusive rights to modify the work, to use the work for commercial purposes, and attribution rights. The use of a work as training data constitutes using a work for commercial purposes since the companies building these models are distributing licencing them for profit. I think it would be a marginal argument to say that the output of these models constitutes copyright infringement on the basis of modification, but worth arguing nonetheless. Copyright does only protect a work up to a certain, indefinable amount of modification, but some of the outputs would certainly constitute infringement in any other situation. And these AI companies would probably find it nigh impossible to disclose specifically who the data came from.

Nobody has been able to make a convincing argument in favour of generative AI. Sure, it’s a tool for creating art. It abstracts the art making process away so that the barrier to entry is low enough that anyone can use it regardless of skill. A lot of people have used these arguments to argue for these tools, and some artists argue that because it takes no skill it is bad. I think that’s beside the point. These models have been trained on data that is, in my opinion, both unethical and unlawful. They have not been able to conclusively demonstrate that the data was acquired and used in line with copyright law. That leads to the second, more powerful argument: they are using the labour of artists without any form of compensation, recognition, permission, or credit.

If, somehow, the tools could come up with their own styles and ideas then it should be perfectly fine to use them. But until that happens (it won’t, nobody will see unintended changes in AI as anything other than mistakes because it has no demonstrable intent) use of a generative AI should be seen as plagiarism or copyright infringement.

This time it isn’t (I think)

I highly recommend Science Vs, 99% Invisible, and Cautionary Tales. Pretty good if you’re into nerdy stuff. I also recommend Endless Thread if you’re interested in stories about the internet. What audiobooks have you enjoyed recently?

It’s funny you reversed your game controls since, as a lefty, I have adapted to default controls pretty easily. Never even crossed my mind to change them. Definitely lateral thinking on your part.

That’s gotta be the most pretentious way of saying “aircraft tail”

Australian white ibises. They’re kinda like the Australian equivalent to a raccoon in the US; they eat rubbish and their roosts stink because they tend to congregate in a single tree and then shit everywhere. But they are quite unique looking birds: long beaks, black heads and white plumage. So the tourists find them quite interesting and the locals call them bin chickens.

Fuck Pearson. Absolute leeches on society.