trackflak

It doesn't matter whether I write a module in Fortran, fold laundry or sell a kidney on the black market. It's all morally equivalent!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Communist_Party

When Jesus said this:

"What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent?" (Luke 11)

He was actually foretelling the future. He saw Gemini.

Ah, I remember when such things were mere jokes. If AI 'trained' this way ever has a serious real world application, I don't think there will be much laughing.

Tell me you take this seriously: https://twitter.com/napoleon21st/status/1760116228746805272

It has no problem with other cultures and ethnicities, yet somehow white or Japanese just throws everything off?

I suppose 'bias' is the new word for "basic historic accuracy". I can get curious about other peoples without forcibly promoting them at the expense of my own Western and British people and culture. This 'anti bias' keyword injection is a laughably bad, in your face solution to a non-issue.

I lament the day 'anti-bias' AI this terrible is used to make real world decisions. At least we now know we can't trust such a model because it has already been so evidently crippled by its makers.

From one of the Twitter threads linked above:

they insert random keyword in the prompts randomly to counter bias, that got revealed with something else I think. Had T shirts written with "diverse" on it as artifact

This was exposed as being the case with OpenAI's DALL-E as well - someone had typed a prompt of "Homer Simpson wearing a namebadge" and it generated an image of Homer with brown skin wearing a namebadge that said 'ethnically ambiguous'.

This is ludicrous - if they are fiddling with your prompt in this way, it will only stoke more frustration and resentment - achieving the opposite of why this has been implemented. Surely if we want diversity we will ask for it, but sometimes you don't, and that should be at the user's discretion.\

Another thread for context: https://twitter.com/napoleon21st/status/1760116228746805272

All hail our beneficent global bureaucracy! Filled with smart people who care deeply about our freedom and individual wishes. Now if I could just contact one of its accountable elected representatives to voice some concerns...

Finally someone else will do the window twitching snitching for me.

"Inclusive" but meaningless.

The Georgian calendar (at least in the numbering of years) is a Christian construct, and it therefore makes sense to name year 0 after the year of Christ's birth. Whether or not one acknowledges his lordship or whatever, you are still operating in the Western tradition which is impossible to understand without Christianity.

It's just petty power tripping. Some people have that need to feel superior by swapping the dating system to something meaningless and arbitrary. What makes this era "Common"? Presumably the birth of Christ, since that's still when you are setting the origin of years. So the rename is utterly pointless. It's still A.D and should be referred to as such.

I'd have more respect if these revisionists went full Jacobin and plonked Year 1 down as some new date, and named the calendar after something new.

You underestimate how much frustration is boiling at the amount of ad breaks on YouTube videos.

It only takes one political opportunist to channel it...

If I open a forum and see it is Discourse, I immediately close it. What was wrong with distinct boards and clear categories?

And you can leave your endless scrolling on facesbook where it belongs.

That 'everyone online is a predator' act has been going on for a while hasn't it?

Its current snake head is the UK's online safety bill.

Bizarrely I find a certain notorious imageboard to be much more sociable than anything that calls itself 'social media'. Even though everyone is anonymous, I come away feeling like it was more like a conversation with randomers in a pub, only with more success than I'd have in the namesake situation.

I think the lack of any 'news feed' or forced revealing of your identity makes it a much more social experience. We're behind a screen talking nonsense and sometimes saying horrible things to each other, but it is fun.

nonsensical and dishonest.

Or what some of us refer to as 'humour'. It's worth getting into, a lot of people say good things.

My desired method of muting them might require a bit more clean up. It may also involve a trip to the ER ward for burn treatments. But I would at least look back and say I enjoyed myself.

'Please sir, control and regulate the contents of our speech' - smacks of astroturfing to me

I'm not too bothered about their loss, given that gas pumps now have advertising screens installed. Let the ad revenue make up for it.

This is what I was getting at - it is impossible for us underlings to imagine what it is like to have the grasp of power over millions of individuals and innumerable resources. We might experience something of it if someone comes to us for help, clueless, and sense we can say or do certain things that would profit us at the expense of the needy person.

Even if the political class don't rationally understand everything they do, they are very good at dressing their apelike dominance-pleasure in saleable words instead of naked aggression, because modern politicians are essentially just trained PR mouthpieces. What they are doing feels right, and that's enough reason to continue because they are addicted to power, one of the most addictive things we can experience. It's perverse and we're all trapped in it.

I think the point was - if the BBC (closely tied with the political establishment) cared so much about children's safety they would have acted against Saville before they were compelled.

This is the problem, why turn up and vote Labour if they aren't that much better? Why waste an hour of your day that makes no practical difference to the sorry direction of our country? I despair of all politics.

It seems like the government playbook reads as follows:

- Make the practicalities of everyday life extremely miserable

- Make the population worn down and apathetic because things are so bad, a better life unattainable for all but a few

- Then, no one will notice while we pass bills that heavily restrict your liberty and vastly entrench our power

- Profit

It's a sinister genius, and smacks of contempt for the governed.

It's annoying being one of the seemingly few people who sees through these techniques. I seldom voice support for a position because it does 'one thing' and WE NEED TO DO THE ONE THING NOW!!! Instead, as best as I can, I try to see the net effect on everything this proposition touches.

Even forget spending hours stewing over facts and data, there is just an instinct inside me that picks up that it is a ruse, a fallacy, a cynical ploy.

While that sounds like tooting my own horn, and I admit I've been taken in by some tricks before, it just isn't easy to stand by and watch. And even if you argue and make the case for online freedom, someone else just needs to come along and go, 'AH!, but what about the children!' and the masses are swayed.

The 'C' in BC reflects what event makes the era 'common', 'common era' is meaningless on its own. Whether or not you're religious, the birth of Christ is a convenient starting point for the western ('Gregorian' - who is Gregory?) calendar.

What makes this era common?

Takbir! Advertising is haram.

Seventh century BC if we want to be more accurate.

Laughs in LTSC

Brilliant also for your sock puppeting... I mean legit separation of interests

In OpenTTD, each player controls a rival transport firm and you compete against each other on the same map. AFAIK you can also arrange a buyout of your rival, similar to Railroads.

In OpenRTC, each player gets full control over managing the same park from a shared pool of funds. Mayhem may ensure if you set your game to public and don't configure permissions carefully.

In my mind, such an OpenSC2K's multiplayer would work like the latter. Each player managing the same city. Though if they removed game engine restrictions, it would be nifty if each player could manage his own city on one big shared map, similar to OpenRTC.

We already have OpenTTD and OpenRCT. Maybe someone somewhere is creating an C++ remake of our favourite isometric city simulator, with multiplayer support!