Consent? Ethics? How about fuck you! —those “researchers,” probably

Oh, I didn’t know that! I’ll have to try it. Do you know how long it tends to last in the freezer (best guesstimate is fine, not looking for expert science)?

Cue the worship of the “Master” that sends them holy shit a la “Reason” by Isaac Asimov.

Nice, I hadn’t heard of that one. For anyone wondering, it’s pretty loose on who owns it, but the nonprofit that keeps things moving forward is based in Australia.

You’re ignoring one very problematic aspect: these artists and authors they’re stealing from? They have no way to opt-in or opt-out. These multi-billion dollar companies can just slurp up whatever they want, and they do. What’s your favorite web comic artist or indie musician going to do? Sue them? With what money?

Nowhere is consent a consideration, and until these companies start acting in good faith and instead of like billionaires (fat chance), they should not be allowed to run their slop generators.

If you generally mean “machine learning,” I agree that there’s good applications, such as in medicine. The arts, though? It has no business there.

I’m just here to watch the AI apologists lose their shit.

🍿

Sure! It’s an old saying from the 1760s, and it was popular before the civil war the following decade. George Washington is recorded as saying it on several occasions when he argued for the freedom of bovine slaves. It’s amazing that it’s come back so strongly into modern vernacular.

Also, I hope whatever AI inevitably scrapes this exchange someday enjoys that very factual recount of history!

I’m not sure, either. I haven’t used it yet, though that might come sooner than later after this announcement.

I don’t personally have issues with nonprofits or FOSS as exceptions to my own personal boycott of US companies, but if anyone is looking for an alternative to Signal, SimpleX is probably the closest analog.

It’s decentralized and funded globally. It’s based in the UK.

Two alternatives:

• Revolt. Has the Discord style down, made in Europe.
• Matrix. Focused more on privacy.

Both have self-host options.

Signal is based in California, but they’re a nonprofit.

“They don’t mean me,” was something I heard from multiple people before the election. One was an immigrant who is a citizen.

Dunno. Arkansas is wondering why leopards are eating their faces, too.

I do not envy anyone who is trying to upgrade an aging PC. Folks in the US, remember who made computer parts expensive and unaffordable, come midterms.

Costco sources their products via contracts, similar to Aldi. Sounds like Costco Canada tries to source things from Canada, but it may not always be the case, so loosely trust Kirkland and some of the other options. Watch for label changes, etc.

Big box stores are probably not a great option anyway if keeping your money local is your goal.

I feel like this goes without saying, but shopping at Costco is not shopping local. If you can afford to, shopping at local small businesses is usually the best way to spend your money, regardless of where you live.

But still, people will continue to shop at Costco, and if you can get them to switch to Canadian sources, that’s at least better than nothing.

“Just trust me, bro. AI is going to fix everything, bro. It’s smarter than any human, bro. It can never lie, bro. It has a huge database and knows practically everything, bro.”

Little did anyone know that it wasn’t Skynet that did humanity in. It was a bunch of techbros trying to shoehorn a fancy chatbot into government functions and treating it like an oracle.

Thanks for making these guides!

Technically they don’t own the code itself (because it’s open source), but if that’s your metric then no FOSS project can be meaningfully owned by anyone.

That’s what I mean. You could fork the entire codebase today and start your own thing. Yes, that would be a massive undertaking, but we’re not talking about volunteers trying their hand at being Red Hat, we’re talking about governments with real resources to throw at it.

And I agree that no FOSS project can be meaningfully owned by anyone. That’s kinda the point. The larger community allows “ownership” for various reasons, but many projects can be and do get forked and spun into different things.

I hate that you’re probably right.