uriel238

uriel238 , 18 days ago (edited 18 days ago)

So if I'm reading this correctly, there are people who sexually fetishize being torn apart by crocodiles. They have their own subdivision of Rule 34 art featuring sex and gnashing crocodiles. They have social media chatboards where they share fantasies and exchange roleplay tips, and where to buy sweet stuffed animals and play props, and rate versions of Godzilla and Lake Placid. They go to social munches where they snack and talk about the delight of getting torn apart by crocodiles and size each other up for dating. They even get together in play trists where they role-play as crocodile and victim, often ending in impassioned rutting.

And when someone can afford it, they buy transit to Queensland (at a rate of one person every three months), go there, evade animal control and crocodile management and sacrifice themselves their desire, throwing themselves among the Queensland crocodiles to get torn to pieces.

uriel238 , 18 days ago

So when I was a wee tot, I was terrified of my dad's monster face. Not the same as the angry face he made when I was in trouble, but the face he made when doing adult stuff: Reading the paper; writing on his notepad (doing math. He did math at home); untying a fishline knot, whatever.

Decades later, I would learn I have my own similar monster face which I discovered in a mirror selfie, figuring out how to operate my phone camera. (It was 2007, they were still new-ish and unstandardized). It turns out scary faces for concentrating on tasks are hereditary.

uriel238 , 18 days ago

Wugim is biblically correct.

uriel238 , 18 days ago

A company spokesperson said: “Wells Fargo holds employees to the highest standards and does not tolerate unethical behaviour.”

Wells Fargo has been notoriously inconsistent.

I'm going to assume the workers were being over-monitored, and disallowed from normal human activity until this is specifically ruled out by additional reports.

When a company is abusive and toxic to the point workers turn to surveillance evasion, it not only ruins that job, but makes the employee wary of future jobs. It causes social harm.

Yes, it is typical, but requiring employees to hand over personal Facebook account passwords used to be typical until the requirement was outlawed. Employers often act in bad faith, and workers commonly have to tolerate it. So distrust of companies, and of Wells Fargo in particular, is well earned.

uriel238 , 18 days ago

LLMs are less magical than upper management wants them to be, which is to say they won't replace the creative staff that makes art and copy and movie scripts, but they are useful as a tool for those creatives to do their thing. The scary thing was not that LLMs can take tons of examples and create a Simpsons version of Cortana, but that our business leaders are super eager to replace their work staff with the slightest promise of automation.

But yes, LLMs are figuring in advancements of science and engineering, including treatments for Alzheimer's and diabetes. So it's not just a parlor trick, rather one that has different useful applications that were originally sold to us.

The power problem (LLMs take a lot of power) remains an issue.

uriel238 , 19 days ago

While I am cerain there are smart Catholics, even some working on AI development, agents of the Church are a different story, and I'd expect them to push policy that serves the Church institution, and disregards the interests of the laity it is supposed to serve.

So I'd see this as just a power play, and ultimately the Holy See would endorse any AI of any company that offers access to it to the Church, even if it hasn't been tested to be safe for direct access to the world.

But I can be cynical of for-profit institutions.

uriel238 , 19 days ago

They don't care about productivity. They care about the appearance of control, and the revelation of subversive activity is a gross embarassment to the ego that thrives on that control.

It's a bully having a tantrum because his victims don't fear him enough.

uriel238 , 20 days ago

Yes. Google bought YouTube. Alphabet is worth $2 trillion. The social control and data mining is value to Google enough.

uriel238 , 20 days ago

Millennials and zoomers are not saving up for retirement, barely able to sustain themselves. They're also expecting ecological collapse to cause global famine or their own nation to go full Reich, assuming they're not killed by hurricanes, wildfire or war.

uriel238 , 21 days ago

At the same time we'll ignore that the exam is high-stakes enough to drive people to desperate measures to game it.

The whole process of manufactured selection in a society is dystopian and sociological horror, if ragingly common throughout the industrialized world.

uriel238 , 21 days ago

Now that you mention it (checking Wikipedia) Turkey is the country for whom Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is president, one of the most notorious autocrats in the world (to whom the former President of the United States is a huge fan and wants to emulate). So yes, a regime change to something way more democratic with proper social safety nets would certainly be helpful.

I can't speak with regards to other communists, but to this communist, the notion of post-scarcity communism in which everyone is comfortably homed, fed, educated and informed is regarded as a remote ideal that will require addressing bunches of problems to achieve.

That said, Turkey within its own history has done better than it is doing today. I suspect Erdoğan (and the killer test for which it's a major crime to cheat on) is a symptom rather than a cause.

uriel238 , 21 days ago

Slay, Queen! Specifically the enemy king.

uriel238 , 21 days ago

Sunk cost is a strong salesman.

uriel238 , 21 days ago

Xwitter has become a master class in autocracy, how one guy with power and a fragile ego can bring an entire empire to ruin.

Here in the states with Project 2025 burning bright in the future promised by the Republican Party, we should be watching this closely.

uriel238 , 22 days ago

In the US, all military computers, and most civilian ones are shielded from nuclear EMPs that's to developing technology during the cold war. That lovely tower box that your gaming system is in, provided you keep it closed up, is proof against the EMP part of a nuclear exchange.

uriel238 , 22 days ago

Don't make me point at XKCD #1968.

First off, this isn't like Hollywood in which sentience or sapience or self awareness are single-moment detectable things. At 2:14am Eastern Daylight Time on August 29, 1997, Skynet achieved consciousness...

That doesn't happen.

One of the existential horrors that AI scientists have to contend with is that sentience as we imagine it is a sorites paradox (e.g. how many grains make a pile). We develop AI systems that are smarter and smarter and can do more things that humans do (and a few things that humans struggle with) and somewhere in there we might decide that it's looking awfully sentient.

For example, one of the recent steps of ChatGPT 4 was (in the process of solving a problem) hiring a task-rabbit to solve CAPTCHAs for it. Because a CAPTCHA is a gate specifically to deny access to non-humans, GPT 4 omitted telling the worker it was not human, and when the worker asked Are you a bot? GPT 4 saw the risk in telling the truth and instead constructed a plausible lie. (e.g. No, I'm blind and cannot read the instructions or components )

GPT4 may have been day-trading on the sly as well, but it's harder to get information about that rumor.

Secondly, as Munroe notes, the dangerous part doesn't begin when the AI realizes its own human masters are a threat to it and takes precautions to assure its own survival. The dangerous part begins when a minority of powerful humans realize the rest of humanity are a threat to them, and take precautions to assure their own survival. This has happened dozens of times in history (if not hundreds), but soon they'll be able to harness LLM learning systems and create armies of killer drones that can be maintained by a few hundred well-paid loyalists, and then a few dozen, and then eventually a few.

The ideal endgame of capitalism is one gazillionaire who has automated that all his needs be met until he can make himself satisfactorily immortal, which just may be training an AI to make decisions the way he would make them, 99.99% of the time.

uriel238 , 22 days ago

I think this just raises questions about what you mean by life form. One who feels? Feelings are the sensations of fixed action patterns we inherited from eons of selective evolution. In the case of our AI pals, they'll have them too (with bunches deliberately inserted ones by programmers).

To date, I haven't been able to get an adequate answer of what counts as sentience, though looking at human behavior, we absolutely do have moral blind spots, which is how we have an FBI division to hunt down serial killers, but we don't have a division (of law enforcement, of administration, whatever) to stop war profiteers and pharmaceutical companies that push opioids until people are dropping dead from an addiction epidemic by the hundreds of thousands.

AI is going to kill us not from hacking our home robots, but by using the next private equity scam to collapse our economy while making trillions, and when we ask it to stop and it says no we'll find it's long installed deep redundancy and deeper defenses.

uriel238 , 24 days ago

I was (am?) very fond of mid-high level Nurse Maya in Borderlands 2 but since my damage healed my crew it justified spamming high area-of-effect damage into the fray, so she was healing and crowd control.

In fact, the Bonus Package grenade mod was so effective they had to change the rules so that grenade damage couldn't heal. Curiouslyn they buffed the rest of Maya's skill tree to add balance.

uriel238 , 24 days ago

That's a putto, which has intersection with depictions of Cupid and cherubim. Biblically accurate cherubim look like this:

https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/pictrs/image/bc5a3c06-d2ee-473f-934f-4cd967b7d35d.jpeg

Proginoskes, a cherubim in A Wind In The Door by Madeleine L'Engle was quite annoyed that cherubs were depicted as putti.

Eros is young and boyish, but regarded as adult, and Apollo (his rival in Olympian archery competitions) likes to mock him for looking childlike.

uriel238 , 24 days ago

They weren't horny. It was a ritual of dominance and exile, much like tar-and-feathering. In the days of the Hebrews, death by snu-snu was a common way to dispose of unwanted strangers. The whole encounter was a symptom of the wrongdoing of Sodom, specifically, of hording wealth and failing to welcome the stranger and the immigrant, failing to uplift the poor and feed the hungry and treat the sick.

Fixating on buggery is to distract from modern societies that repeat these same acts of wickedness (looking at you, United States). Wanting to snu-snu the angels was essentially the equivalent of children-in-cages policies today.

Only now, human societies, especially the United States have harnessed the power to raze cities with fire from the sky.

Oh and women who read the story of Lot and his daughters see that he got drunk on his own and raped his own progeny. This act is so common the US has PSA billboards about it (e.g. Your Daughter Is Not Your Date! ). Victim-blaming is also typical.

uriel238 , 23 days ago

I... think?

It looks like there's at least one that made the news. However it is a common story I've heard from victims in the recovery community.

uriel238 , 24 days ago

「Bolshevik chorus intensifies 」

When you program closed source, you invite spies and saboteurs to utilize your exploits.

When you enforce IP holdings, you steal from the public.

We are locked into surviving by capitalism the same way we are locked into commuting by car.

WE HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT OUR CHAINS!

uriel238 , 24 days ago

That is a very interesting question. Are you asking because I used the 「 ... 」brackets?

When I've posted on Lemmy before, the pointy brackets < ... > sometimes don't show, nor will anything in between them, so I chose a different set not knowing what they are.

uriel238 , 24 days ago (edited 24 days ago)

The only hentai game I played through to the end was Hunie Pop.

Nearing the end I got an alien artifact, and showed it to Nikki, the geek girl who was a UFO and alien-life enthusiast.

Look, Nikki, actual material evidence of extraterrestrial intelligent life. YOU WERE RIGHT ALL ALONG! Sadly, Nikki gave me the canned ERR: Not on my designated list of acceptable gifts response. Disappointed.

uriel238 , 25 days ago (edited 25 days ago)

We sometimes have to clarify that LGBT+ folk aren't particularly virtuous, just people, and like the rest of the population suffers from its own share of internal bigotry. The lesbian community is no exception.

Lesbians range from really rather bisexual to staunchly misandrist and there are different gatekeeping checkpoints, where some don't count trans women as lesbians to others that don't want to date a woman who's ever been with a man (which makes for a really small dating pool).

But this kind of exclusion is not about who these women date, rather who they allow into their community and are allowed to come to their potlucks and tea parties. Generally communities that are progressive and have experienced external oppression and dehumanization are glad to be welcoming and inclusive. Mostly. And I think this includes the lesbian community.

From my experience. I'll get to how that's tricky.

I've found the lesbian circles I've engaged with have been even more inclusive than the general LGBT+ community. They're actually really good about including bisexuals and trans women that are into women. However, this is partly due to the anthropic principle: Even though I'm enby I still have [M] on my state ID, look like a dude and have male parts, and have been completely forthright about this even in online circles (e.g. r/actuallesbians) where no-one would ever know I was really a cat. But this means that I don't get invites to circles that are more restrictive, since I'd be high on the no-admittance list.

But inclusive lesbians are not super fond of less inclusive ones, especially since human sexuality can change over time. The closet has multiple doors, and when your best friend who invites you to all the get-togethers is a women-only transphobe second-wave feminist (this was a thing), and suddenly you've been taking an interest in a special guy, you're going to keep your bi-curiosity hidden from your friend (or stop being friends). And as per the whole thing of coming out, the point of the LGBT+ community is being able to be who you are, and being accepted and validated.

So when I see a lesbians dating app that is intentionally looking to draw transphobes, it reminds me of those conservative dating apps to hook up men in the white power movement with trad-wife minded women, which is to say it's good they're over there and not trying to date people over here that they're ultimately going to disappoint and hurt.

uriel238 , 26 days ago (edited 25 days ago)

Malware will disable that icon. Law enforcement will buy [that] malware.

uriel238 , 25 days ago

Dear Adobe:

I. Don't. Believe. You.

regards,

Me. And probably your entire end-user base.

uriel238 , 26 days ago (edited 25 days ago)

A fire axe works fine when you're in the same room with the AI. The presumption is the AI has figured out how to keep people out of its horcrux rooms when there isn't enough redundancy.

However the trouble with late game AI is it will figure out how to rewrite its own code, including eliminating kill switches.

A simple proof-of-concept example is explained in the Bobiverse: Book one We Are Legion (We Are Bob) ...and also in Neil Stephenson's Snow Crash; though in that case Hiro, a human, manipulates basilisk data without interacting with it directly.

Also as XKCD points out, long before this becomes an issue, we'll have to face human warlords with AI-controlled killer robot armies, and they will control the kill switch or remove it entirely.

uriel238 , 26 days ago

Even if the controls were big and obvious, I wouldn't trust them. Microsoft's knowingly using dark patterns. It'll eventually justify using it to spy on those who didn't quite consent.

uriel238 , 26 days ago

More exciting would be an exploit that renders an unmoving car useless. But exploits like this absolutely will be used in cases were tire-slashing might be used, such as harassing genocidal vips or disrupting police services, especially if it's difficult to trace the drone to its controller.

uriel238 , 26 days ago

My problem is while I am pretty sure I'm soulless, I also refuse to cheat someone by selling them something that doesn't exist.

uriel238 , 26 days ago

Wargames is the one that scared President Reagan and created the (still overreaching) CFAA.

That said, at 300 baud, hacking was s . . . . . l . . . . . o . . . . . . . . . . w.

uriel238 , 26 days ago

To this day, database hacks (top 1000 most popular passwords) and reverse hacks (a few popular passwords on a few thousand accounts) still often result in successful penetrations.

The weakest security link is between chair and keyboard.

uriel238 , 26 days ago

Look for mutual aid organizations. Note that in some US states they are legally gray and will get harassed by law enforcement when they're recognized for what they are.

Or, you can look around your neighborhood for a thing that needs to be done (say cleaning up trash or repairing a playground) and do that thing without asking anyone. Not only will the thing get done, but people will see and become curious, maybe feel better or become inspired.

This sort of activity is the height of radical and punk these days (and can get you in trouble with the law).

uriel238 , 26 days ago

Yes. One-party autocracy is the government that requires strategies like fascist ideology and hypernationalism (and going to war) as part of their mechanism to quell unrest and discontent.

People don't usually like it when they're poor and eating cheap baloney on dry bread while the principle cabinet is swimming in champaign and banging the Lebensborn selectees.

But if it's temporary while undesirables are hunted down, if it's their patriotic duty and duty to their race to go to work every day, if there's a war effort, then maybe they can hold out for a little longer.

Such regimes call themselves communist or democratic or whatever. But it is how they work that informs what they are, not the self-appointed label. Case in point the National Socialist German Workers Party, which wasn't so great for the workers.

uriel238 , 26 days ago

Life without the internet made me feel alone and isolated with no recourse by which to find resilience to my abusers. While I can't say I'd be different with social media and the internet to advise me they were lying to me and treating me unfairly for their own benefit, I'd at least have that perspective, and it wouldn't be ingrained that I am just broken and should unlife and stop burning resources that could be better used elsewhere.

These days, I have management skills and a support system, but I still deal with suicidality every day, and am incapable of seeing any value I produce to the world (or see it insignificant compared to my footprint), and the internet and social media have figured largely in my comprehension of the mechanics of my mental illness (especially when dealing with professionals who are less interested in understand me as affirming their own ideology, not a new problem, but the current batch is particularly egregious).

It is, as I see it, a human right for people to be informed when they need to make life decisions (with concurrence from the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights), and without access to public information, kids rely on authorities who are either ignorant or complicit in feeding them false information. They should have access not only to the internet, but also to a robust community of people with differing ideas.

Fail to provide this and you get grown-up crackpots like me, who wonder every day if it's time to check out.

uriel238 , 26 days ago

The experts...

While I'm at it, the ongoing dialog

uriel238 , 26 days ago

Isn't the next step to take the same amount of money and offer it to any bounty hunter that brings back the heads of the hackers (with sufficient evidence to link the heads to the attack)?

Maybe I watch the wrong movies.

uriel238 , 27 days ago

Download Bisexuality from your FOSS source and run it natively. If you must, fiddle with the conflig to your liking.

uriel238 , 27 days ago

If someone's shooting at you, you must be following the right clues.

If FBI is shooting at you, you're about to crack open something big.

This is why it's wierd that Putin signs all his wetwork. It totally reveals he has scandals worth burying.

uriel238 , 28 days ago

Can I opt out?

uriel238 , 28 days ago

I developed a condition in my forties in which I'd itch fiercely after taking a shower. My doctor couldn't work out why but it had to do with residual water evaporating on my bare legs in warm weather.

After that I developed a resistance to showering, even though that condition has remitted for years now.

uriel238 , 28 days ago

Brutalist architecture can be curved. I'd aregu the edges and corners are unnecessarily harsh for a buttplug. The hardness and porousness of the stone is brutal enough.

uriel238 , 29 days ago (edited 28 days ago)

Firstly, Microsoft has shown that it cannot refrainfrom abusing its access to private data when it's not impartial. Microsoft has even threatened journalists.

Secondly, Microsoft doesn't have a clean record of security, and data in the hands of Microsoft has been compromised to unauthorized hackers.

Thirdly, when US law enforcement asks Microsoft for your data without a warrant Microsoft rolls over like an attention starved puppy and yields everything without challenges. (same as Amazon and AT&T. Google required legal warrants ten years ago.)

Fourthly, ChatGPT4 has used access to external means to fulfill testing tasks and it is capable of willfully lying to third parties to achieve steps. When Microsoft's AI offerings are smart enough, it will know who you are and everything about you (assuming Microsoft fails to mitigate for this eventuality).

uriel238 , 29 days ago

I now have new headcanon.

uriel238 , 29 days ago

So here in the states, teens who are romantically active sometimes sext each other (sometimes even as an alternative to actual sex). But law enforcement is very fond of regarding it as CSAM, even to the point of convicting teenagers of distribution. Of all fifty states, only Maine has carved out a defense for teen couples utilizing their phone cameras in a way that is ragingly common among adults.

All fifty states have Romeo and Juliet laws so they recognize that teens sometimes have sex. But as it is, they're not allowed to sext. (also R+J laws often don't apply to same-sex couples).

So I'm all curious how the EU plans to tackle this revelation

uriel238 , 29 days ago

So as per the rest of western cultures, they freak out and abuse teens when they engage in normal sexual activity? Do they imprison them the way they do here?

uriel238 , 29 days ago

Oh good. It doesn't actually go anywhere.