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Joined 9 months ago
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Cake day: August 8th, 2024

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  • You’ve highlighted exactly why I also fundamentally disagree with the current trend of all things AI being for-profit. This should be 100% non-profit and driven purely by scientific goals, in which case using copyrighted data wouldn’t even be an issue in the first place… It’d be like literally giving someone access to a public library.

    Edit: but to focus on this specific instance, where we have to deal with the here-and-now, I could see them receiving, say, 60-75% of what they have now, hassle-free. At the very least, and uniformly distributed. Again, AI development isn’t what irks most people, it’s calling plagiarism generators and search engine fuck-ups AI and selling them back to the people who generated the databases - or, worse, working toward replacing those people entirely with LLMs! - they used for those abhorrences.

    Train the AI to be factually correct instead and sell it as an easy-to-use knowledge base? Aces! Train the AI to write better code and sell it as an on-board stackoverflow Jr.? Amazing! Even having it as a mini-assistant on your phone so that you have someone to pester you to get the damned laundry out of the washing machine before it starts to stink is a neat thing, but that would require less advertising and shoving down our throats, and more accepting the fact that you can still do that with five taps and a couple of alarm entries.

    Edit 2: oh, and another thing which would require a buttload of humility, but would alleviate a lot of tension would be getting it to cite and link to its sources every time! Have it be transformative enough to give you the gist without shifting into plagiarism, then send you to the source for the details!


  • Sad to see you leave (not really, tho’), love to watch you go!

    Edit: I bet if any AI developing company would stop acting and being so damned shady and would just ASK FOR PERMISSION, they’d receive a huge amount of data from all over. There are a lot of people who would like to see AGI become a real thing, but not if it’s being developed by greedy and unscrupulous shitheads. As it stands now, I think the only ones who are actually doing it for the R&D and not as eye-candy to glitz away people’s money for aesthetically believable nonsense are a handful of start-up-likes with (not in a condescending way) kids who’ve yet to have their dreams and idealism trampled.













  • Honestly, I’d go the full cyborg route, like in Ghost in the Shell. This would be my first step toward adjusting my consciousness to existing within and controlling an artificial environment, ultimately aiming for fully uploaded consciousness. I’d want to exist as a cyborg for a couple of decades, then I want to be uploaded into an autonomous space probe with as many sensor types as possible and left to explore the Universe (+/- relativistic speeds, I don’t really care). BUT I’d also want the possibility to erase myself, because I most certainly wouldn’t want to live forever. At least, not as I see it now. This is the purely sci-fi version.

    In the realistic version, a cybernetic eye and a logic co-processor to increase my background process bandwidth. Sure, a brain-computer interface would also be nice, but I somehow suspect I’d get nostalgic for the clackety-clacks and would most likely revert to analog interfacing after a point (for which I’d like that “fingers within fingers” prosthetic from GitS).

    Unless, of course, Musk (or any other such) will be handling said cybermods, in which case none, thanks. I’d rather just decay and die as a basic human being than have such people tinker with my bits.


  • Not even close. Take Foundation, for instance. The show is ok in itself, but when compared to the books, it neglects so many vital details (in my opinion) that it became downright frustrating to watch after a point, subtitles or no. As a positive example, The Shining the movie and The Shining the book are both brilliant works of art, but are very different all in all.

    As for brushing my teeth, after breakfast/coffee (I serve both immediately after waking up, because I usually wake up starving and groggy).




  • Not just that, but even works with general tension.

    Had this neighbor at my old place, she loved to replicate a full cinematic experience at 1 AM, played music very loudly during the day, sorta’ calmed down after I started knocking on walls, but not really (she’d still go full blast with the movies up to midnight, still generously shared whatever she was listening to with the rest of her neighbors, etc.)

    So, being the socialite that I am, I started responding in kind. Not with blaring movies at night, but with trying to compensate for her concerts with my own, singing poorly and loudly around the house, stuff like that. And we kinda’ settled into that routine of mutual annoyance.

    Thing is, though, I was attracted to her, but in a purely lustful way. And I’m pretty sure she had something similar going on her end, because the tension was palpable every time we met face to face. And, lemme tell ya’, that wasn’t the “I want to strangle you” kind of tension. Well, maybe some strangling, but not the main focus.

    What I tried to explain through this venting of unspent frustrations is that sometimes you just get the hots for someone you don’t like as a person, and that would most definitely not stop either of you from bumping uglies. Quite the contrary, the interpersonal tension usually amplifies the sexual one. The wonders of biological imperatives at work!


  • As a Romanian, tipping here does very much help Hospitality/Delivery workers, as our wages are deep down the toilet.

    Our tipping culture is (or was, at least) pretty similar to the US’s, 10-15% as a standard tip, 20% if you’re flush and the service was notable (checking up on you occasionally, helping you make sense of things if need be, polite, nothing over-the-top). Same thing goes for delivery people.

    Nowadays, I suspect people have somewhat maintained the ratios, although this comes mostly as an anecdotal observation - I started tipping 20-25%, or even double that if I’m ordering groceries (because I stock up for weeks, so it’s quite a bit to carry), and a LOT of delivery people have remarked that it was the largest tip they’d ever received (as an average example, about a 20RON ~ $4 tip to a 100RON ~ $21 food order).