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Monument

@Monument@lemmy.sdf.org

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Monument ,

iPhones don’t do that on their own.

She said she activated lost mode, so it’s possible/likely she made her contact info available. Asking Siri who the phone belongs to will also give up contact info, but you can change that remotely from the find my phone app.

I think - being a writer - she sort of set herself up for the interaction so she would have material. No judgment, though. It was an interesting read.

Monument ,

Same. Then I got diagnosed for ADHD, went on (prescribed) methamphetamines and realized I was binge eating.
In the last year I’ve lost 40 lbs (~18 kg) because I no longer eat second meals after a meal.

Monument ,

They have to use STEM cells because other kinds of cells are bad at math.

Monument ,

No, that’s basically it.

They bought a mini computer and installed router software onto it.

It’s a hardcore, really solid solution that you will become a network engineer to maintain.

Monument ,

Oh, yeah. My core problem with OPNSense is that I don’t heed the advice of “just because you can doesn’t mean you should.”

My hand is stuck in a cookie jar of ever increasing technical complexity.

Monument ,

Tell them the ultimate expression of masculinity is confidence and security in themselves regardless of societal expectations.

And then get their measurements, just in case you see something good on sale.

Monument ,

This almost makes me wish I didn’t overwrite some of my shittier shitposts on Reddit.

If I’m ever bored enough, I’m going to re-edit the like, top 10 posts in my old account with authoritative nonsense. Maybe I’ll use AI to write it!

Monument ,

In Scarlett Johansson‘s statement, she says that OpenAI approached her to voice the Sky voice.

Whether or not OpenAI hired another actress that sounded very similar to her (hah.) and they are weirdly cagey about naming or they just ripped off the audio from her movies and are lying about hiring a voice actress, is not the extent of the issue.

People sounding alike just happens. But that we know they asked to use Johansson’s voice for this. After being rebuffed, they created Sky, which sounds a lot like Sam, and made several references to the Her movie. Sky is even presented with the same ‘personality’ as Sam. They aren’t just ripping off Scarlett Johansson’s voice acting, they’re ripping off the character as a whole, and trying to associate themselves with the movie. That’s shameful and rips off Spike Jonze as well as all the other creatives who created that movie.
And for what? Because tech bros didn’t get what they wanted, so they decided to try to rip off the characters anyway? Because Her is sort of a cultural touchstone, and their product is merely well-positioned, but GPT-4o will be in a crowded market space within 6 months?

It’s sort of pathetic - pretending to lean on the relevance of a movie because your product is destined to become irrelevant.
Also - highly ironic to me that Her is (somewhat) about how you can’t own something that doesn’t consent to be owned. And those dumb bitches went and ripped it off when they didn’t get consent. Well, now Sky’s gone to join Sam in some non-corporeal reality.

Sorry for the novel. I didn’t sleep well and I get weird when I’m sleep deprived.

Monument ,

There is evidence they wanted to use Johansson’s voice, because they asked to use her voice. Both OpenAI and Johansson have acknowledged this.

As far as I know, OpenAI has said they hired a voice actor before approaching Johansson, but refuses to offer additional information to corroborate.

After failing to secure Johansson to lend her voice to Sky - which is portrayed as having not just a very similar voice, but a very similar personality to Sam - the OpenAI team made several references to the Her movie prior to the announcement.

Similar voices happen. But when all of those other pieces align, it’s fairly clear that they’re copying the character. Focusing on only the voice being similar is reductive. They are committing IP theft and they’re attempting to confer approval/endorsement/a relationship of/to the Sky personality from the people involved in the Her movie.

Monument ,

Honestly, with the tweets that reference the Her movie, they may already be in a hole, anyway. Plus, it’s not just the voice, it’s that the ‘character’ of the Sky voice is very similar to Sam in the Her movie.
If I were a jurist, I could easily be persuaded to believe they willingly committed IP theft and attempted to imply endorsement of the Her movie (the production studio?), Spike Jonze, and Scarlett Johansson.
(Of course, that statement would disqualify me as a jurist, so I’ll never know!)

Monument , (edited )

And that’s both fine and valid.

If an actor was hired, I could see them being treated as a scab or not being offered roles - perhaps because they agreed to take a job that they had no idea would be used in such a way, or with no idea that a controversy would emerge.

I am dubious, though. It seems that OpenAI pulled the voice shortly after Johansson’s legal team requested information about how the Sky voice was created.
It’s a fair assumption that I’m biased - and I am. I’m not the biggest fan of ‘big tech.’ So perhaps I’m not as objective as others.

But I think the voice actor part is still minor. It’s not just the voice, it’s the character, and all the references to the movie, which I think were intended to deceive consumers and create false sense of endorsement.
Or maybe not, maybe it’s that Sam Altman is a man-child with a crush on Johansson. He’s openly said that Her is his favorite movie, and it’s not a leap to see a CEO cowing his staff into bad decisions.

Monument ,

No matter what they make it sound like, there's going to be similarities with the movie.

I don’t follow.
They literally disabled the ‘Sky’ voice Sunday night and now users can’t pick a voice that sounds like the character from Her.
And, mind you, this is not a ‘huh, they sorta sound the same’ this is a ‘they sound very similar, and have the same personality’ situation, in addition to the fact that Sam Altman is on the record talking about being obsessed with the movie Her - which is circumstantial. What isn’t circumstantial is they literally referenced the movie’s name in their marketing materials. Sam tweeted a vague hint, and his colleagues confirmed it. It’s not speculative.

There's nothing wrong with leaning into these for advertising purposes.

Actually, intellectual property theft is either wrong or merely only technically illegal, depending on where you stand on copyright, but it’s still wrong, either way. Then there’s trying to mislead the public into thinking that GPT-4o was endorsed in some way by those involved in the Her movie. A false endorsement is also illegal. So - wrong there, too.
I’m sure an actual lawyer could find more wrong with it, but just those two things are actual, literal crimes.

Monument ,

I'm saying practically any voice with the associated bubbly flirty personality is going to make you think of the movie Her in such a context.

I don’t know about you, but even a flirty Joaquin Phoenix voice would never make me think of Her.

But if they’d had a “voice actor” do a spot on impression of Paul Bettany, complete with the little pauses and other flourishes of his portrayals of Vision, I’d think they ripped off the character.

I think you and I differ there.
As best as I can figure, you’re stuck on the flimsy excuse from Altman that they hired a voice actor.
I see a line of events that points to OpenAI/Altman making a conscious effort to glom onto the Her movie, and specifically, the Samantha character to drum up interest, create viral buzz to enrich further themselves (without compensating anyone involved in the movie), and to try to add a veneer of credibility to a fading trend.

Slight turn.
In another life I was a photographer, and one of the things that they do not mess around with is model releases. Any person that appears in your photos that distributed must absolutely have a legal agreement in place. Using someone’s likeness for commercial purposes without consent and/or compensation will get you fucked in triplicate.

There’s also the moral part of it. Artists know that you don’t rip off artists. Inspired by, sure. But there’s a line, and you don’t cross it. It’s as simple as that.

Okay, and finally, this is based less on facts I know, and more feelings I have about the situation -
It’s fucking creepy, dude.

Okay, so the movie Her - an entire society becomes obsessed with their AI companions and falls in love with them, causing tremendous grief and trauma. And that’s like, what they’re going to lengths to brand but not brand this latest version with? What kind of fucked up things are going on in their heads over there?
It doesn’t make sense.

The rundown, again. (Sorry, I like to establish context. Yay neurodivergence.).
Altman is on record saying that Her is his favorite movie, and that it is a major inspiration to him. One of the reasons he got into this field. He spent 9 months trying to convince Johansson to work with him on this, and lend her name/voice to this latest iteration of ChatGPT. He’s been so focused on getting her to lend his name to this, that he continued asking her to join in on this even just a few days before the announcement, which was like, the 13th. And that’s after she’s already turned him down, so he was just ignoring her boundaries and trying to pressure her..
On the 11th - two days before this announcement, Altman does a Reddit AMA (which he was doing as part of the 4o press junket) and says that he’d like to open up ChatGPT for personal NSFW usage.

I mean, everyone is focusing on Her, but we probably should also to be thinking about the Lucy Liu Futurama episode, because… well, I’m just going to say it. I think he already fucked the robot. The line of events from A to B is transparent and fucking gross.
Not the whole fucking a robot thing - people got needs - but that the likeness is obviously stolen from a non-consenting actress that I’m beginning to believe he’s obsessed with.

So … yeah.. I have all the problems with this. I view concerns over the usage of her voice as immaterial to the usage of the character, and I see an inherent difference between an LLM mimicking a random voice that happens to sound like someone, and this situation, where the voice was clearly created to represent the character, and by extension, the actor that played the character. I don’t think there’s a slippery slope here. Most judges are fairly smart, and will be able to articulate something I (a non legal) took as a given from the outset.

Monument ,

Ironically, a similarity to a real, live person without an agenda is not a legal problem unless there’s an implied endorsement from the person. (Which I think was one of the goals here.)
But characters in movies and books are subject to copyright and are considered the intellectual property of the rights holders.

So like, if I wrote a book about Wolverine and used other Marvel X-men, Marvel could sue the shit out of me. Or if I used AI to create Hugh Jackman (as Wolverine) to endorse my bandaid product line, I could also be sued by both Jackman and Marvel.

I think it’s obvious here that Sky was intended to represent Sam from Her, and is almost certainly trained on her voice data (which is copywritten). After a few days thought however, I’m less certain of the argument this could be seen as a false endorsement scheme, since Johansson isn’t mentioned anywhere. (Despite the character being solely played by her, and the numerous attempts to have Johansson work on the project in an official capacity.)

Monument ,

She liked that he had two tails. He liked that she had 3 1/2 foot long femurs.

But it was not to be, because it was an AI ripoff of an actual webcomic.

Monument ,

Got addicted to rosewater in the French foreign legion, and now that she’s been kicked out as their animal handler, she’s aa to resort to bottom shelf stuff.

iPad Pro with M4 chip boasts impressive performance jump compared to just-released M3 MacBook Air (9to5mac.com)

On raw performance might, the M4 really does live up to Apple’s promises, should deliver. Single core is up about 20% compared to all M3 chips and more than 40% compared to M2. The generational computational leap from the previous M2 iPad Pro is at least a 42% jump on single-core and multi-core.

Monument ,

I’m so annoyed they announced this.

I have a slew of raspberry pi’s kicking around, doing various things. I also have a name brand NAS that reportedly lets you run other software, including containerized apps, but their implementation is whack and doesn’t work super well.
I want to get a more powerful machine for use as a replacement server. I’d like to spin up my own LLM tools, use it to with software
like photoprism to auto tag my pictures, or even spin up Frigate on it.

My leading contender had been either a Jetson Orin nano or a system with the core ultra 155h chip. But now I might have to wait until they announce/release M4 Mac minis - which is really annoying because I want instant gratification for my half-baked ideas.

Monument ,

What are you, some kind of financial advisor!?
…. because if you are, are you taking new clients? My shit is whack.

nm , to Technology
@nm@veganism.social avatar

[Thread, post or comment was deleted by the author]

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    Monument ,

    Depends on your view.

    On the road you’d use red to indicate that it’s blocked.

    But on an issue tracker where blocked is the desired, or in the road scenario – safe, outcome, green would be resolved/safe, and red would be unresolved/unsafe.

    Monument ,

    Unsafe for the forest, not unsafe for the trees.

    Which is to say - not unsafe for individual users or from a day-to-day operations perspective, but unsafe in a platform survival way.

    Major companies start working with open source projects until they’ve added a significant amount to them, then they start rolling out proprietary parts that work with their additions, then they move away from the open source project, leaving the original project incompatible with a bulk of its users and platform. The project finds itself both quite big and lacking support, with adopters moving to the closed-source implementation(s). This is often called Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish, and it’s been used to harm Open Office formats, messaging platforms, and is currently being used by Google with Chrome to strip away user privacy and redo how the internet works, for the sake of their advertising empire.
    Facebook and BlueSky activity pub integration efforts should not and can not be seen as an altruistic gesture.

    Monument ,

    I wish there was a store with all sorts of food additives the regular person doesn’t have access to, like dehydrated buttermilk, or whatever artificial and natural flavors is.

    Monument ,

    But I’m old and I like to shop with my feet and ADHD fueled puppy-like enthusiasm. If the staff leaves me alone and there aren’t many people there, I’d wind up with a whole chemistry lab of barely regulated food additives.

    I’d have whole brunches with solid mimosas (agar), and fully cooked liquid eggs (I don’t know, but I’d do it. I’ll find something that prevents the proteins from tangling!). My friends would hate me.

    Monument , (edited )

    The actual food items I suggested were a bit of a joke, but the food science and baking store suggestion you offered are excellent.

    It looks like the closest fit for a baking supply store is a Williams Sonoma, otherwise I’ve got an hour+ drive of me. But it’s on the list for next time we travel to more populous cities!

    Edit: A local (hour drive away) baking shop has a pretty comprehensive website. I’ve learned that Vanilla powder exists and I might wind up buying edible metallic powders to put on things that shouldn’t be those colors.
    We’re doing a ‘super soft’ birthday for one of our dogs this year. My whole paradigm for decoration and (human) foods has shifted.

    Monument ,

    Nah, the Vegas thing was to stall mass transit.

    Musk admitted to his biographer Ashlee Vance that Hyperloop was all about trying to get legislators to cancel plans for high-speed rail in California—even though he had no plans to build it.
    — Did Musk Propose Hyperloop to Stop California High-Speed Rail?

    Monument ,

    You know, I legitimately thought the Vegas thing was his scaled down version of hyperloop.

    All the poorly conceived, improperly executed, and quickly abandoned projects just kind of blend together.

    Monument ,

    That part annoys me so much.

    At their core, these are anti-genocide protests.
    Sure, they’re wrapped up in other stuff - a lot of other stuff, but genocide is the core reason.

    It’s easier for the news media to pretend that all these people just are here to support bunch of folks halfway across the world for some reason, than it is to say these folks are anti-Israel, because it begs the question of why people are anti-Israel.

    I’d even go so far as to say that characterizing these protests as pro-Palestine is willfully missing the point, but calling them anti-Israel (or even anti-Jewish - ugh) accepts that not only is a genocide occurring but implies that opposing genocide means you oppose Israel.

    Monument ,

    My dad died when he was 42. You don’t happen to be a huge alcoholic with no memory prior to 1992? Are you my reincarnated father?

    Monument ,

    Or if CoPilot starts exfiltrating data to Microsoft so their server farms can ‘analyze’ it.

    I’m not heavily involved in the space, but I’m given to understand that MS isn’t very clear about what happens to your data or how it gets used or shared.

    Perhaps Microsoft will be smart enough not to allow the general public to query trade secrets or government data that’s been pulled via unwanted copilot integration.
    But maybe the ongoing Russian hack of Microsoft will make it irrelevant, because the servers can be accessed directly.
    Or perhaps at some distant time, Microsoft will roll out features or technologies developed using an internal version of CoPilot that has access to all data - including proprietary information from competitors.

    And that’s not even counting what ISP’s will do if they find a way to analyze copilot traffic, or what state actors will do if they can set up MitM attacks for Copilot.

    Honestly, I sort of fear the repercussions, but I look forward to the lawsuits.

    Monument ,

    Exchange allows users to access data and Microsoft services and it comes with good documentation and a whole slew of controls for org admins.

    Active Directory provides authentication services, and it is mostly for your internal users (so they can access org services, including Exchange), but it’s very common to allow guests and to federate under certain circumstances, so your AD talks to their AD and external guests can authenticate and use resources that have been shared with them.
    It is also well-documented with tight control in the hands of administrators.

    Copilot is a black box. Their terms of service are vague. Microsoft’s responsible AI website comprises of marketing speak, no details, and the standards guide on the site is mostly questions that amount to “TBD”. Administrative ability to control data sharing is non-existent, not yet developed, or minimal.
    We don’t know the scope of data gathered, the retention and handling policies, or where that data/any models built from that data are going to wind up.
    My read is that they’re waiting to be sued or legislated before they impose any limits on themselves.

    Monument ,

    I’m not confident they are authoritative on the matter.

    Don’t consider me to be, either, but I have more details in my response to them.

    https://lemmy.sdf.org/comment/10635782

    Monument ,

    Yeah… I realized that like an hour later, and couldn’t figure out how to respond appropriately. Then I forgot all about it because ADHD.

    But yeah. I definitely got whooshed here.
    In my defense, I guess I wasn’t expecting to see a joke in the thread, so … well, I didn’t see one.

    Monument ,

    At some point before the healing brush and patch tools were available, I saw an entire porn gallery (heh, remember when porn came in galleries?) of pixel perfect stitches where someone had joined waists to waists, to create a bunch of concatenated top/top, bottom/bottom images in front, back, and front/back configurations of a naked woman.

    Because this was the early days of the internet, all I’d seen was gross, taboo, or unsettling stuff. I was sort of immune to it, but this was definitely my first “confused boner” situation. I still remember my absolute bewilderment. I was way more unsettled by that than goatse or whatever.

    Monument ,

    If I had the capacity to remember the exact URL of a webpage I looked at 20ish years ago, I’d definitely not be working right now. Or anymore.
    I’d spend every moment that I’m not full of existential dread from the things I cannot forget sleeping on the comfiest bed that I could buy using the money earned through my horrible burden of unforgettable knowledge.

    Monument ,

    A colleague is one of those classic late start stories. He went to school late for a sort of niche field, and worked shitty job after shitty job, while applying everywhere, trying to break into his career.

    After he’d gotten his current job, one of the selection committee told him that they picked him because the ‘interests’ section of his resume said he “Likes plants and other green things.”
    He did not know that was in there. A few years prior, a friend/former roommate had added it as a joke, and my colleague never looked at that section because his interests didn’t change. He kept getting passed over for interviews until a huge stoner read that and thought it was hilarious, so they called him in for an interview, to see what kind of goof they were dealing with.

    He was pretty pissed at his friend, but without knowing how many places passed over him for that reason, he can’t define how pissed he should be. Plus he (mostly) really likes the job he got.

    Monument ,

    Honestly, I’m a little surprised. I would have expected basalt to pair with a red, and granite to pair with a white.

    Monument ,

    https://lemmy.sdf.org/pictrs/image/d23e0c71-3e16-4ca8-af62-004247ad7a86.png

    Monument ,

    I would wonder about the usefulness of it for relationships that weren’t primarily conducted via text for the whole duration of the relationship.

    Almost all of my relationships have a pattern in texting. There’s usually a month of deep and emotional conversations, followed by a few months of sexually explicit chatting as we spend more time together and work out the emotional conversations in person, and then logistical conversations once we’re emotionally and physically comfortable with each other. And sure, we’re kind and sweet to each other between the logistics, but I don’t know if that’s really enough to train an AI on, or even enough to properly represent ourselves or the relationship.

    I think that any AI would have to be very advanced to not respond to “Why did you leave me?” with ‘Because I had to take the dog to the vet/go get milk’ or whatever - especially when the bulk of the texts are in that latter relationship stage.

    Monument ,

    There are a lot of possible avenues to cheat.
    Obviously, every local law will be different, and What I’m saying below may not apply to certain areas.
    If auto manufactures are allowed to use labs of their choice for emissions testing, they may be able to engage in lab shopping to find a lab that will give them more favorable test results. If auto makers are required to use a government laboratory, it’s possible that in the process of developing the laws for testing, they’ve managed to work with lawmakers or regulators to ensure the tests are conducted in such a way that they get more favorable results than they would see in a real world scenario.

    US sues Apple for illegal monopoly over smartphones (www.theverge.com)

    The US Department of Justice and 16 state and district attorneys general accused Apple of operating an illegal monopoly in the smartphone market in a new antitrust lawsuit. The DOJ and states are accusing Apple of driving up prices for consumers and developers at the expense of making users more reliant on its iPhones.

    Monument ,

    Awhile back a non tech person at work got hoodwinked into a sales pitch by a no name “AI” vendor. They, of course, invited a distribution list of all the IT and IT adjacent people to this pitch, thinking their ingenuity was going to transform our workplace and they were going to get accolades.

    During the pitch, the sales guy (or CEO?) talked about Google getting surprised by Open AI, and that they rushed to build Bard, so they “could have their own ‘Me Too’ moment.” (With an inflection to indicate the Me Too comment was a reference.)

    While I was watching people unmute, stay silent, then mute again, multiple group chats lit up at once.

    (And the guy either didn’t understand LLM’s, or was hoping we really didn’t. It was peak marketing speak. He got crushed in the Q&A, ultimately revealing that the extent of his offering was to resell access to an established LLM vendor.)

    Monument ,

    I’ve long held this hunch that when people’s beliefs are challenged, they tend to ‘dig in’ and wind up more resolute. (I think it’s actual science and I learned that in a sociology class many years ago but it’s been so long I can’t say with confidence if that’s the case.)

    Assuming my hunch is right (or at least right enough), I think that side of social media - driving up engagement by increasing discord also winds up radicalizing people as a side effect of chasing profits.

    It’s one of the things I appreciate about Lemmy. Not everyone here seems to just be looking for a fight all the time.

    Monument ,

    Oh, yeah, absolutely.
    Another commenter on this post suggested my belief on it was from an Oatmeal comic. That prompted me to search it out, and seeing it spelled out again sort of opened up the memory for me.

    The class was a sociology class about 20 years ago, and the professor was talking about cognitive dissonance as it relates to folks choosing whether or not they wanted to adopt the beliefs of another group. I don’t think he got into how to actually challenge beliefs in a constructive way, since he was discussing how seemingly small rifts can turn into big disagreements between social groups, but subsequent life experience and a lot of good articles about folks working with radicals to reform their beliefs confirm exactly what you commented.

    Monument ,

    Nah. I picked that up about 20 years ago, but the comic is a great one.
    I haven’t read The Oatmeal in a while. I guess I know what I’ll be doing later tonight!

    Monument ,

    Interesting.

    I signed up for GD with a semi-throwaway email account - not an actual throwaway, but it’s not tied to my real identity, not used for anything but spammy sites where I didn’t want to give them my info. Every site got a made up name.
    Wonder what name they’ll slap on the account when they try to farm “my” data from a broker.

    Monument ,

    I guess that cinches it. If I ever want to sign up for an adult site, they’re going to know me as “Seymour Butts.”

    Monument ,

    Ooh. I made a New/Classic/Diet/Zero joke with my colleagues last week.
    I wish I’d thought of Halo, rather than soda. Your version is much better.

    Monument ,

    It could be both.

    A few weeks ago I blew my wife’s mind after she commented that both her and her best friend had started their period and I responded with ‘well, it is a full moon.’

    She thought I was being ’boomer humor’ sexist until I brought up the studies about it. (Which are not 100% conclusive, mind you, but there are trends.)

    Monument ,

    It feels like everyone hates Apple, but their hide my email service is bundled into their family plan, and it’s real nice just being able to give every site an email address you can then just delete if they spam you.
    No one knows who I really am, and I’m good with that.

    I guess my recommendation is to find a service that lets you make throwaway emails.
    And I think Proton does that. Mozilla has a service for that, but their new CEO has thrown some question marks into that mix. There are definitely others.

    Monument ,

    Have you tried a vacuum bed?

    It’s a fetish thing, so, uh… be warned before you search.

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