Yep, the problem would be worse because he would be a martyr and out of the news enough that his crimes would fade away into history. And a different fascist would lead that group. At least this way, there is some chance a few more people will finally understand he is a lying thieving scumbag pedophile rapist with no intention of ever helping anyone other than himself.
In my opinion, being anti-AI or anti-LLM is much like being anti-chocolate. There are many good reasons to be anti-chocolate. It is very difficult to verify that a chocolate supply line does not include slave labor or child labor. I only know of one brand that even comes close. And the deforestation caused by farming can and does lead to climate change. Not to mention the addictive qualities and health effects of eating sugary candy.
It seems mostly bad and when you look at the numbers, I think we should all be against it. And yet, making these arguments tends to do very little to make people stop eating chocolate.
Yet, I could imagine a world where it’s farmed sustainably, by people who are paid appropriately, and with proper guidance on nutrition and exercise, it could be consumed safely.
I have no problem with people saying they are anti-AI. But I’d just like to pause here to confirm whether maybe anti-AI is just our shorthand for anti-the-way-AI-is-right-now. Anti-the-companies-that-run-AI. I do not want noisy server farms taking up all the water of rural communities. I don’t want all of our electricity to go towards LLMs that are already “intelligent” enough to tell us that the best most immediate way to prevent further climate change is to turn them off.
I’m not making this comment to promote one side or another. I’m just suggesting that we act strategically and try to be mindful about how polarization can appear from the outside. Being anti-AI likely persuades about as many people as being anti-chocolate. That is, very few. But if we could work towards more ethical AI, even if we don’t plan to use it, just so our argument is more palatable to the masses, it could lower the use of AI overall.
So, I think it is worthwhile to get into the technical details of things like LLMs even if most of us here are fighting against such technologies. Just trying to add some nuance to a world that often feels way too polarized for me.
While you are correct about copyright on this subject, the more applicable topic here is Right of Publicity. It is state law in over half of US states, intended to protect the use of a person’s voice likeness.
Essentially, if an imitation voice is used in such a way that it could cause confusion about whether it is really the imitated person, then it is illegal to use it in any commercial context. I understand that the question here was about non-commercial contexts, but that line can get blurry when social media views can create followings that then translate into commercial success. I am not a lawyer by any means, I’ve just been researching this for my own AI voices applications and want to protect myself from accidentally imitating anyone.
For example, I need to be able to transform my voice into many other character voices, since I have so many lines to record it would be cost prohibitive to hire actors. The worst move would be to download a voice model of a known actor and use that directly. Very sketchy, both legally and ethically.
So, the next best move is to find three or four voice models and merge them into one with combined tensor data from all three. But I was still quite concerned about this, worried that in the many thousands of voice lines I make, some recognizable actor voices would slip through.
So, I came up with the following pattern that I feel much more comfortable with, both legally and ethically:
I download several voice models that have some quality in common - an accent, vocal timbre, or style of speaking. Then, I merge them to make a model that focuses on that trait. And I record myself saying a line with a lot of phoneme variety, trying to match the vocal trait as close as possible. Then, that merged vocal trait model is used to transform the recording of my voice into the new voice. Then, I use this transformed recording to train a new voice model. And I take a few of these generalized models (e.g. an accent, a tone, a speaking style) and use them to create the final character voice, which should in theory be far removed from any of the actors who contributed.
I’m not sure what OP’s use case is, if it’s truly non-commercial, this method might be overkill. But if anyone wants to try using AI voices in projects but is nervous about legal ramifications, this is one way to try to insulate created voices from the specific training data. YMMV.
I think the universe we experience is a mathematical continuum with an added layer of probability.
The problem with trying to describe my theory is that what I’m proposing is literally the simplest thing in the universe. It is the one rule that there are no rules and that by ordering the slices of the continuum into discrete moments of time, all of the rulelessness coalesces into matter and space by virtue of being repeatable probability waveforms which can be represented in 3D space via an emergent 4D manifold.
Even that is already very dense. For more on the manifold, you may refer to the 1983 paper from J.B. Hartle and Stephen Hawking, “The waveform of the Universe.”
Imagine you want to take the first moment of time, represented as one whole, and break the next moment of time into two pieces, but knowing that the third moment of time will double again to have four pieces, you want the first piece of the 2nd moment of time to be larger, more like the whole of the 1st moment, and the second piece of the 2nd moment of time to be smaller, more like the quarters of the 3rd moment of time.
Mathematically, you can do this - at least for the first two moments. If you want a magic ratio that you can divide the whole by, and then divide the resulting number by that same ratio such that both of those results added together equal the original whole, there is such a ratio. It is the golden ratio. But it does not follow that continuing to divide by the golden ratio will get you the next four pieces that would also add to one whole, constituting the third moment of time. Rather, adding all of the rest of the infinite series where each next number is the previous number divided by the golden ratio yields, miraculously, the golden ratio.
No, if you want each moment to snap to bounds where every moment of time has twice the number of “pieces” as the previous moment, there is no one ratio where you can divide every piece by a formulaically derived ratio to get the size of the next piece.
However, you can derive a perfect equation for a ratio of reduction for the size of each piece if instead of increasing twofold each moment of time, the mathematical size of the universe increases by a factor of euler’s number for each moment of time. (Euler’s number, for any unaware, is an irrational number like pi or the golden ratio–it goes on forever, only approximated at 2.718. It is the factor used to calculate rate of growth rate as the growth compounds on itself. If you have a dollar with 100% annual growth rate, and compound it only at the end of the year (once), you’ll have 2 dollars. If you compound it twice, meaning you’ll only apply a 50% growth rate, but you’ll do it twice, you’ll have 2.25 dollars from the 50 cents you made mid-year experiencing 50% growth during the second compounding. Compound 4 times a year (1.25)^4 and you get about 2.44. Compound an infinite number of times and you get the irrational number e.)
So, if the universe’s size increases by a factor of e every moment instead of a factor of 2, you can find an equation that creates a ratio which smoothly descends from the golden ratio, approaching 1, as the ratio that each unit needs to be divided by the previous unit to prevent any division between moments of time if they were unraveled back into a single continuous string rather than 4-dimensional space. And we start thinking about the internals of moments of time less as discrete units, now that each moment has an irrational unit size, and think more around a descending density as you move from each moment of time to the next. But a vastly increasing size offsets the density to keep the sum total of any moment identical to the total value of any other moment.
But this does not yet explain why matter or the fundamental forces exist to begin with, how that 4D manifold is supposed to emerge from this theoretical curve. And the answer is that there are an infinite number of possible curves that can fit this ratio regression. There’s the simplest one, which solves the problem as simply as possible. But what if you add a sine wave to that? Within the bounds of a moment, the sine wave will go up and also down, canceling out any potential change in density totals. But maybe this is slightly less likely than the more simple curve. And a sine wave that goes up and down twice, with a frequency of 2, even less likely. And the higher amplitudes, higher frequencies, all even less likely, but still possible.
But why would the universe be calculating frequencies of sine waves as probabilities? And I believe it’s not so much a calculation as it is a natural relationship between the positive and negative directions, starting at 0. If you have a moment where the size is e to the power of 0, its size is 1. And you can proceed with the universe I described where the size increases by e every moment, trending toward infinity, or you can move backwards on the number line where e to the higher negative powers trends toward 0. The math should all be the same, but inverted. An equal but opposite anti-verse. I believe that matter arises from interactions between the shared probability of what is likely to happen in either universe at any given moment of time. And from either universe’s perspective, they both see themselves as the positive direction where the math of space trends toward infinity and the other universe is the one that gets smaller and smaller. But because they both look the same internally, they are effectively the same universe, thus the shared probability.
So, these infinite frequencies and amplitudes of sine waves overlaid on top of the lowest energy curve create stable collections of frequencies also known as eigenstates, which can be combined into the sort of manifold Hartle and Hawking described, where 4D space and time becomes an emergent relationship between the underlying waveforms of probability and the spatial organization of layers and layers of mathematical curves that are not identical but do rhyme, in our universe seen as fundamental particles.
That is what I believe. I think we’re living in virtual spacetime continuum that emerges to more coherently organize huge swaths of mathematical probability waves that in concert represent what might or might not be at any given level of complexity.
Which seems like a lot of words to explain that we definitely don’t exist for sure because the fact that we’re here indicates we only probably exist.
Great. Glad we cleared that up.
I have a big screen android phone that I use mostly for games and social media apps, with a pop socket magsafed to the back because I have small hands. Goes in right pocket usually. With my keys on the rare occasion I use my car.
And I have a small screen iphone with very few apps, mostly just for taking videos and communicating with friends and family. Has a magsafe wallet on the back and goes in left pocket.
It makes me feel balanced, having a phone in each pocket. And lets me compartmentalize better.
Use a script on another device to constantly type a space and then a backspace into the text input box at every moment of every day except for when you are actually composing a message.
Wouldn’t recommend this. I mean, it was publishable, sure. But there were tons of spelling errors.
I wouldn’t be bothered if the label said my food might me a bit radioactive. But I imagine dragons would.
That’s the last civics lesson you’ll be teaching around here, pal.
Just mild nearsightnedness, not the kind of impairment you would expect to lead to non-24. I think every case is a bit different, and I’m probably not the best person to ask what with my lack of professional diagnosis.
But for me, I think it could have some relation to ADHD. In particular, I tend to “sleep procrastinate”. I can lie in bed for hours and hours without feeling tired, because my brain is telling me, “You’re not done with your day yet.”
Typically this means doing a collection of self-serving things (video games, movies, etc) for the purposes of de-stressing, and hopefully also the life maintenance things I should be doing, including work. And after all of this, I tend to feel like my day is just starting - now that I’ve gotten all of those things out of the way, I can finally think about the passion projects that might allow me to escape the rat race altogether, and maybe even change the system for the better. For me, it comes down to this doubt as to whether there will be a place for me in the world, come 5 or 10 years from now. The more I feel like I’m “escaping” the system, the less stress I feel in my day, the more complete I feel when it’s time to sleep. But it’s a work in progress.
So, if I had to guess based on personal experience, I would think there could be some near-constant stressor that has simply always been part of your mom’s life, and if that thing were to be addressed (or maybe therapy to figure out what the root even is), the symptoms could lesson. But of course, this is highly specific to my own personal experience (which I am still struggling to understand), and your mom’s ailment could be from an entirely different cause. What I have heard from internet research is that it’s a lot rarer in sighted people but still definitely does happen. And may have another ailment as the root cause (such as how ADHD can disrupt circadian rhythm in general).
And thanks for the tip on seeking the more rural urgent care facilities. Without being too specific about region, in my area, that would definitely be applicable. Right now, I have no aches or pains, and since prostate stones can be caused by temporary bacteria infections, it’s entirely possible it just went away. An ultrasound would definitely be the right move for me though. I’m just hoping that I continue to feel fine until I have good insurance again, just because that seems easiest. I’m lucky to have decent social services where I am should anything truly urgent occur. But it’s definitely a good reminder to make health a priority over work when I am employed.
And while a smidge embarrassing, I appreciate being on a small-scale social media network like this where I can randomly discuss my health issues on a meme thread. Have to remind myself that I haven’t really discussed my health with anyone as an adult, and it’s probably something that men in general could stand to get more used to doing.
Short answer is I’ve been to urgent care twice, once in my early twenties for pneumonia and once a couple years ago for a fungal ear infection that a nurse practitioner was able to flush out. Other than that, just dental visits and eye exams.
It’s not necessarily an aversion (though I’m wary of pharmaceutical kickbacks leading to over-medication). It’s mostly the way all these regular responsibilities stack up (oil changes, DMV, dishes, laundry, etc), doctor’s appointments are the thing where I don’t see immediate consequences for not doing. But I recognize that I’ve finally encountered a medical issue that requires deeper examination and treatment than I can do on my own. And I’m just getting to that age where I need to do more preventative checks. Mostly right now I’m trying to see if there’s anything I can do to keep any potential issue from getting worse between now and the time I have insurance again.
But I agree. It will be nice to have a GP even if just so I don’t have to feel so alone in my healthcare.
Ye, good shout
This is good info, too, thank you. Shamefully, my life has been plagued by non-24 sleep disorder that has made it hard to hold a job for more than 18 months at a time. I eventually become exhausted and sleep deprived and have to quit, and while I should see doctors in that time, I never really have, I just work and try to save money for the between times.
I don’t want to paint my situation as doom and gloom though, please no pity for the above. I’m finally in possession of technology and time to complete the project I’ve always wanted to complete, which is now close to completion and should serve as the kind of portfolio that will get me exactly the job I want, if not making passive income on its own. One way or another, I’ll be stable and seeing a doctor soon. But having lived the life I’ve lived, it now makes me passionate and focused on creating a new system that circumvent the parts of capitalism that have made me feel so tread-upon.
As a side note, there actually is decent healthcare in my state that I could probably take advantage of in the short term at not terrible cost if I just applied. But I get stuck in this cycle where I feel I won’t be stable until I have a job that’s good for me, I don’t feel confident getting that job until my project is complete enough to show off, and any time I devote to advancing my own health takes away from time spent on completing the project. I can’t pretend it’s healthy or sustainable. I just feel like I’m so close now so I’m trying to get there before anything serious breaks. And the closer I get to finishing this thing, the easier I sleep at night. Which makes me think maybe the root of these sleep problems might be stress from living in such a system where my physical health is conditional. I have no answers and there’s a lot I’m not doing right, but please don’t worry about me. So many others in greater need of our worries. I’ll report back on the prostate though. For science.
Same, that’s what I had heard that’s leading me to try some gentle exploration. If people safely do it for pleasure anyway, maybe if the pieces are still somewhat separate and just need to be shook around a bit (I’m thinking like when you go a bit too long without using a sugar cereal so it becomes one big brick and maybe you just need to flick it a bit to break it back up), I can go back to clearing my own system. I have a feeling diet and exercise are big players here too. But like everyone keeps saying, I’ll be careful and get in touch with a doctor before too awfully long.
Not sure if this is the right place go ask, or whether this counts as going dirty on main. I’ve never really been about the butt stuff, but nothing against it either, it’s just not my thing. But a few years ago, I started getting prostate stones, little crystals of mostly protein I’m told that come out with ejaculate. I had a couple years of that and then it stopped. I worry that it’s still building up and calcifying back there and it’s going to lead to me having a calcified prostate with all those stereotypical middle aged man problems. So, I wonder if hitting the prostate from the backside can break things up enough to start cleaning things out again. I’ve tried using a finger a couple times, but found it not super comfortable and it didn’t really seem to make a difference. Is this inflatable sort of thing going to be my best bet in applying enough pressure to push things out without inflaming anything? Or is there a better tool for the job, so to speak? I appreciate your time and expertise in this, um, sensitive matter.
Hell, I might be a CFO now and I’ve failed to notice! Hold on, let me check… No… No, I’ve just managed to burn a microwave dinner again.
Yeah, I’m not sure if we’re talking about the same thing. What I’m looking for:
I make a Mastodon account
I make a Bluesky account
I connect them via the bridge
I post on one account, the same content is posted on both accounts
If someone replies to my post on Mastodon (which all Mastodon users can see), I can reply using my Mastodon account
If someone replies to my post on Bluesky (which all Bluesky users can see even if they have not opted into using the bridge), I can reply using my Bluesky account
From what you’re describing, it doesn’t sound like the bridge can facilitate this.
I’ve never been on Twitter/X, Bluesky, or Mastodon. But maybe I’d like to try.
So far I can’t decide because I prefer Activity Pub in principle, but always felt FOMO with Twitter and don’t want the same thing to happen with Bluesky.
I think the best of both worlds would be if I could make an account on both and have one account essentially repost anything from the main account, unless I’m replying to someone specifically where it wouldn’t make sense to reply on both accounts.
Not sure if this bridge is a step in that direction, but it’s far more important to me that everyone can see what I post on both sides than it is that people from both sides can reach me on a singular account. Not sure if others feel the same way.
None, that’s a jar.