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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 4th, 2023

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  • As someone who was working really hard trying to get my company to be able use some classical ML (with very limited amounts of data), with some knowledge on how AI works, and just generally want to do some cool math stuff at work, being asked incessantly to shove AI into any problem that our execs think are “good sells” and be pressured to think about how we can “use AI” was a terrible feel. They now think my work is insufficient and has been tightening the noose on my team.


  • I agree with that, and I don’t think what I said alleges that all Jews are Zionists. Mahatir is labelled an antisemite and openly critical of Israel. He claims to have Jewish friends however. Now I don’t agree with this old fart on a lot of things, and I definitely condemn the fact that he’s using the word “Jews” when criticizing Israel and Zionism. But when you have wealthy Jewish organizations actively lobbying for Zionism in one if not the most powerful nation on Earth to continue facilitating the horrors that we see playing out in the Middle East with no intention or desire of stopping, even when their own people are dying in the process, I find it hard to disagree that these Zionsists aren’t in control of the world to some extent.





  • It’s not possible for everyone to just tell if it’s supposed to be sarcasm. ADHD makes it hard. A bad day makes it hard. A tiring day makes it hard.

    The downside of the misunderstanding isn’t just downvotes. It’s possibly a proliferation of misinformation and an impression that there are people who DO think that way.

    Being not serious while saying something grim is not a globally understood culture either. It’s more common and acceptable in the Western world as a joke.

    So… call it accessibility, but it’s just more approachable for everyone to just put an “/s”.



  • Lots of moments in Honkai Impact 3.

    There’s literally a YT channel that collects tears from streamers playing the game.

    https://youtube.com/@Ollyt_

    There’s a lot of context needed to understand why anyone would cry playing through HI3 though. I’ll give a high level summary here, but I highly encourage people to play it, even if it’s a gacha game. You can really ignore the gacha and just play the game for the main story. Do be warned that the story isn’t something suitable for kids — it can be quite a bit too heavy for them.

    The theme of self-sacrifice is covered quite extensively, with the main character being the centrepiece of the theme. There’s also deep self-loathe, with an eventual self-acceptance, also from the MC. Mix that all in with some sense of duty.

    There’s also a tragedy, but from the tragedy, a narrow path to hope was born. The people in the tragedy mostly hoped only for a simple life, or to live their lives atoning for their sins, but circumstances forced them to become warriors against a great, unstoppable force of destruction. As if to make things harder to swallow, their digital clones that survived into the future have to experience yet another tragedy that would eventually destroy all of them, and the player will see this through. Yet, in the second tragedy, these clones further sowed the seeds of hope for the future.

    Chinese company or not, HoYo has pumped out a lot of very human stories that I think deserves attention and praise. Genshin Impact has also started to go down a similar path.


  • I’m probably replying to a troll, but I will do so anyways for the sake of those who need to read this.

    If we aren’t in any way bothered to see such narrow-minded reactions to a wrong being righted, then humankind is definitely headed for a few horrible decades ahead, filled with unnecessary strife and conflict out of pure indifference to each other’s backgrounds and current understanding of the world. And I’d even imagine it’d be worse than what we’re already seeing this decade. I suggest you go back and rethink what really matters as humans, instead of focusing on just some narrow definition of what a win is.


  • Wow, wtf is wrong with this comment section? People don’t realize how laws made in the past just stay around until someone steps up to change it? Or y’all don’t have the capacity to look at the world through a different mindset, even if you disagree with the mindset? As much as we all hope that people around the world are accepting, it doesn’t just happen, and you can’t just hope people who don’t understand your PoV will just realize something’s wrong waking up one day.

    Either those, or y’all have either grown too cynical or are trying to be cynical just for the sake of it.

    Can’t y’all just celebrate the fact that this is happening in Japan, an infamous nation that usually tries fervently to preserve their tradition and status quo?


  • When you have a large population with a strongman government, having little appetite for upheavals is likely impossible. Interacting with the Chinese, I’ve learned that their government is always actively monitoring online spaces to silence dissidents amongst their own people, such that their people are used to codify their languages, and switch whenever a code gets added to the list of words that would trigger the attention of authorities. Some years ago, it was something related to meditation (it was used as a code for their gatherings), and so the Buddhists had to change the word they use to avoid unnecessary trouble with the authorities. These don’t get mentioned very often in Western news sources.





  • Not sure why artists are brought up here but I guess that’s one of the highly affected groups.

    Just to talk about that particular consequence, however, I don’t agree with your take. There are AI trained on works of specific artists, and the end result is that the AI is really good at producing work that’s similar to that artist’s work, effectively creating an alternative to that artist, even if it’s of slightly lesser quality and a lack of depth of the original. While this would likely not affect the artist in the short term, in the long term, new prospects who don’t yet know the artist well enough would likely be unable to tell the difference in quality, and may even go straight to the AI model since that’s distributed cheaply or even free. It may also negatively reflect on the original artist to people who don’t know the artist, as the works from the AI would likely be more abundant, and people not in the know may think that the original artist was in fact just producing their works through AI. It is highly discouraging for artists who have worked hard to hone their craft, only to have people think that their works have little difference or even a mimicry (don’t underestimate misinformation).

    There has been many instances where such training was done without the knowledge of the artist. Imagine just waking up one day, and finding that there’s someone or something that can very closely reproduce your works, one’s you’ve taken many years of practice to produce, of which its quality is almost unique to yourself. There’s a blatant lack of respect for the hard work that people put into their craft, one that seemingly belittles their blood and tears, and could even be a mockery of their existence. Some artists don’t have other jobs; their art and craft is their job, and some may have even sacrificed learning the skills needed for other jobs to pursue their passion.

    Saying that AI is not intended to replace artists, but to improve accessibility, is like saying ATMs weren’t meant to replace bank tellers. True, there’s much less skill required for bank tellers, and getting cash out of banks is an important process that should be swift with almost no errors, so replacing bank tellers with ATMs is a general good, except for the bank tellers, which then banks can retrain them for other jobs. Since then, the job has virtually gone extinct, and almost nobody would want to become a bank teller, and if anyone would like to, they would need to perform better than ATMs. Artists require great skills and creativity, many of which are not easily trained or obtained. Seeing an automated system produce works that are acceptable by most people would either greatly discourage new artists or perhaps even entirely remove the idea of becoming an artist for most people. It raises the barrier to becoming an artist: not only do you need to stand out, you also need to be good enough such that people can’t just train an AI model on your work to produce results that are highly indistinguishable from yours. How many more years do people need to train to be that good? For those with a job but wish to become an artist, abandoning their job to focus on their craft will likely become a much more difficult choice to make. Also, I don’t doubt this would further rise the prices of commissions due to how much work artists would have to put in, and this would only get worse at a rate that’s much faster than a scenario without AI.

    So a line should be drawn somewhere. AI trained on public works or artist-approved works are definitely okay. All other options will likely need further discussion and scrutiny. We’re talking about the possibility of ruining an already perilous career path, whose works are coveted.