As I have gotten more and more exhausted with modern social media, I have contemplated building my own simple website (think neocities), but have been hesitant to put much of myself out as I do not want to feed the AI slop machines.
Nepenthes is encouraging since I could see it being able to protect text in a way “glazing” (ie Nightshade) cannot.
Hopefully AI companies cannot sidestep this as easily as ROBOTS.txt…
I’ve seen some interesting takes on this elsewhere as well. If Twitter is making the legal argument that all the accounts belong to them explicitly, would that make them responsible for all the content they host as well?
They basically get away with all the hate speech and copyright infringement because they are considered a “safe harbor,” not the owners of the content themselves; but if they’re the owner of the content, the safe harbor status might not apply…
While the fact that Twitter is run by a flagrant right-wing fascist who would do anything to help other major right-wing fascists is nothing new, I did think this was an interesting look at the state of social media.
The idea that you can never own your own account (and likely, by extension, anything you post on said account) really drives home the point that the Internet as it is now is basically wholly owned by a handful of corporations.
I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to reach the point of everyone making their own silly little sites again. It seems like social media is now required to drive views, so the artists who need views for sales will always need to be on social media.
Luckily, decentralized social media is on the rise. Lemmy, while still comparatively small, has a fairly active user base; and while Mastodon has not (and likely will not) ever be mainstream, even Bluesky is technically decentralized as well (I think).
Having said all that, I would very much like to see people making their own sites just for things they enjoy. It’s surprisingly not that hard to do as long as you don’t need it very polished.
That is really the term. Of course, every time a new wave of users join, they always say they’ll never call them “skeets,” but they usually change their mind in time.
In my personal opinion, I actually really appreciate them being called “skeets.” It kind of serves as a reminder that they are not to be taken seriously. I also appreciate that calling them “skeets” will help deter large corporations from joining for some time. (What company wants to be associated with a social media site where the posts are a tongue-in-cheek reference to ejaculate?)
I think (/hope) trolls are going to have a pretty hard time gaining traction on Bluesky. As you’ve mentioned, the block lists are quite effective; but also the lack of algorithm helps too. No matter how many likes/reskeets an offensive skeet gets, I will never see it unless someone I follow specifically reskeets it themselves.
With this in mind, most people seeing the trolls’ posts will likely only be the trolls themselves. Of course they can hop into the comments of a popular skeet; but once they are blocked by the original poster, their skeet becomes removed for everybody.
From what I can tell, the enhanced moderation tools combined with the followed-only feed should make being a troll on Bluesky much harder…
It seems like Twitter may have passed the thermocline and now seems to be hemorrhaging left leaning users.
What I found interesting about this article was how the right leaning users are likely to follow them because they need the left leaning users for engagement. I suppose on some level it’s common sense. Truth Social and Gab never took off for a reason; but it’s still interesting to think about.
I encourage every American reading this article to call their district representative and let them know that you do not approve of this bill. It’s hateful and cruel; and I fear that if it passes, it will pave the way for similar, wider reaching, legislation.
I called my Representative earlier today and their intern was able to tell me the bill number: H.Res.1579. Knowing the number should hopefully make it easier to voice your disgust in this abhorrent bill.
While on the phone (or email) with your Representative, I encourage everyone to voice their displeasure with H.R.9495 as well. H.R.9495 will allow the executive branch to unilaterally declare non-profits as terrorist organizations and strip them of their non-profit status. This would functionally give the executive branch authority to end any non-profit that is engaging in activities they don’t approve of, which would likely result in the destruction of any non-profit engaging in harm reduction.
I don’t know the actual budget, but I think it probably cost much more than 1kUSD, though probably still less than real human work would cost.
It’s important to note that no shit could last more than a second or two because after that the generated video starts to much more noticably have errors. So at minimum you still need editors (plus the music needed to be composited, etc). Also, as the article notes, all the logos needed to be added in post as well because GenAI cannot reliably do text or logos. With that in mind, I’d guess there was probably a significant amount of “cleaning up” that had to be done in post as well.
With all that said and done, I’m sure the commercial was not exactly dirt cheap, but it WAS probably still cheaper than having dignity and paying humans.
What’s actually kind of wild, though, is a lot of these shots just look like bland stock imagery. And since they couldn’t have any cohesion between shots because of GenAI’s own limitations, the majority of these shots could have been replaced with stock footage and they probably would have only needed to CGI a few different shots…
This raises a more philosophical argument as to what signifies the fall of a body like the Federation.
The Federation is a union of other bodies who through the spirit of cooperation decide to work together. If the majority of the bodies that make it up decide to pull out, does that constitute the fall of the Federation?
If one body leaves, of course it has not fallen; and if they all leave, it no longer exists at all. How many planets still need to be in a union for the Federation to successfully exist?
The fact that Vulcan/Ni’Var and Earth both pulled out and are two of the Charter members is certainly notable (though it doesn’t prove the fall of the Federation).
If it felt like the Federation had been weakened but was slowly rebuilding, I would agree with your idea that the blow to the Federation was meant to show its resilience; but the fact the Federation was not picking up steam at all (and felt much more in decline), to me indicates that the writers intended for us to interpret this as the Federation in its death throws until the Discovery showed up.
Perhaps this speaks to my own mindset as opposed to how the writers intended it, but it’s certainly how it came across to me.
As an aside, it could be interesting to explore what a Federation not primarily influenced by human/Vulcan influence could look like, as well as explore the idea of what constitutes the Federation (for example, could you have a Federation with no planetary members made entirely of individuals who have left their planet in the name of galactic brotherhood?). I am not sure the Federation is still in a place where such concepts could be explored, but it could certainly be interesting…
I’m definitely excited to see Lower Decks hopefully going out on a high note, but I’m definitely sad to see it ending.
As someone who only recently got into Star Trek specifically because of Lower Decks, I am curious what show Paramount is hoping will act as a gateway show, so to speak, for new viewers.
That lines up pretty similarly with what I found also. The angle should be a constant since there is only one angle where the relationship would be true. I just left it in terms of π because I try to avoid rounding.
Having said that, L would be a ratio of r; which I think lines up with what you found as well.
Someone may want to double-check my math on this one, but the length of the sides will be dependant on the radius of the smaller circle
I don’t know if people still use live wallpapers, but I like the way mine turned out.
Honestly, I’m not sure how I feel about this leak (assuming it’s remotely accurate).
I suppose you could make a horror/thriller-esque story about Plas if you leaned into the body horror aspect of it; but he seems like a much better fit for a comedy instead.
The two most recent runs in 20 years (Gail Simone and Kyle Baker) definitely have Plas established as a pretty unserious guy. There’s definitely a tinge of tragedy in his origin of being betrayed by his fellow goons, but he definitely bounces back.
Even runs where he isn’t the primary focus (the Injustice tie-ins or the Terrifics) have him as a pretty comedic character.
Having said all that, I am not terribly familiar with Aronofsky’s work; so I could definitely be missing something that makes him a good fit…
That stuck out to me as well. Disney probably made 50k USD in the time it took me to write this comment. This feels more like sending a message than trying to avoid a costly payout.
I’m sure they want to discourage lawsuits, but I’m worried they did this just to try to set a precedent on EULAs being the end-all-be-all.
I just hope they get enough bad publicity from this move to cost them more than the payout would have.
The fact that Disney is asserting that whether a EULA has been read is irrelevant and that a EULA signed five years prior for an unrelated use is still enforceable feels more than insidious.
I hope Disney’s claim gets thrown out because I worry about the precedent this could set for EULAs going forward.
I’ve been holding onto my phone well past its prime since I can’t help but see every new phone on the market as a downgrade because of this.
I know people say that you don’t NEED an SD card if you buy the most expensive version and rely heavily on cloud services but it’s definitely an intentionally worse customer experience.
I’m actually really sad Sony pulled out of the US, since I was planning on getting an Xperia this year. Now it feels like I’m limited to Samsung or Google if I want a flagship SoC…
At this point, I’ve lost count of the number of times Elon should have been let go. I recall him recently saying that dosing himself with cat tranquilizers was cool and a good business decision actually.
That’s not even getting into turning Twitter into a Nazi bar (and throwing out its extremely valuable branding) or pushing for the cybertruck that cuts its passengers, looks like a dumpster, and corrodes if you look at it funny.
The fact any board of directors considers this man employable at all is mind boggling to me.
Honestly, that’s my main hope as well; that all the charging team talent will disperse across the market and help other chargers spread as well. The article mentioned Tesla having 60% of the fast charger market, so hopefully we will see other companies fill the gap.
My concern is that if no companies pick up the ball Tesla just dropped (or more accurately angrily chucked over the fence), that this could set the EV charging network back significantly; which would definitely be a problem for mass adoption of EVs.
I don’t have a full picture idea yet, but I would probably upload art/ projects/ WIPs. I also was considering adding writings, but I’m not sure if there would be enough there to have a section for writings.
I definitely don’t have as much to share as others, but I would like to see the Internet become a less centralized space.
An author I follow on Bluesky has been talking about neocities a lot and it seems pretty silly and fun. You probably need to be signed in to view this, but you can see her talk about the process here.