I’m really glad you made this comment, because otherwise I was going to have to be the one to make this comment, and I wouldn’t have explained things nearly as well as you did.

That’s an absolutely giant cat and surely must be of significant scientific interest

Movie dialogue tries to be verisimilitudinous, rather than realistic.

I’m mostly making this comment because “verisimilitudinous” is an excellent word that I love getting the opportunity to use.

The datasets they are trained on do in fact include CSAM. These datasets are so huge that it easily slips through the cracks. It’s usually removed whenever it’s found, but I don’t know how this actually affects the AI models that have already been trained on that data — to my knowledge, it’s not possible to selectively “untrain” models, and they would need to be retrained from scratch. Plus I occasionally see it crop up in the news about how new CSAM keeps being found in the training data.

It’s one of the many, many problems with generative AI

Thanks for sharing this. This bolstered my spirit.

I liked the bit where it discusses how, regardless of the effectiveness of whistles in deterring ICE, they have proven to be helpful in regular people feeling less alone.

Next time someone asks me what PDF stands for, this is what I will tell them

(I’m reflecting on how many times I’ve been asked what PDF stands for, because my comment would suggest it is a thing that happens often.

Doofensmirtz_meme.jpeg: “if I had a nickel for every time someone asked me what PDF stood for, I’d have two nickels. — which isn’t much, but it’s weird that it happened twice”

I think I’m just most people’s token techy friend. Or more specifically, I’m the techy friend who also knows loads of random shit and really enjoys answering random questions)

That’s sort of like saying “I’m overheating because my apartment is 32ᵒC, let’s turn on the heating and see how we feel once it’s 45ᵒC”

Pole dancing actually requires an incredible level of athleticism, and as such, is a pretty fun way to get in shape. Some people who install a stripper pole in their home will no doubt be the kind of people you describe, but that’s not the only kind of person who might install a pole at home.

I know a couple of people who do pole dancing as a sport and have a pole installed in their home. They’re both people who seem like archetypical examples of people who have their shit together. For these people, installing a pole in their home is analogous to a weightlifter purchasing a squat rack so they can lift at home — basically just a way to practice without having to travel.

I’m not trying to suggest that your caution is unwarranted — if I were the person in the OP, I would feel pretty anxious about knocking on their door about the problem, because it’d feel like a bit of a coin-flip: are they going to be the kind of person who has a full fledged liquor bar in their kitchen, or someone who engages pole-sport as a productive way to stay fit? Because one of those people would likely be much less easy to work through issues with.

I guess my goal in writing this is to convince you that there are at least some people who install a pole in their home who are nothing like the archetype you’re envisioning. I’m not suggesting that they are the majority — I have no idea what the relative prevalence of these different archetypes are. However, they do exist.

Did anything improve after that?

I have a friend who uses snuff tobacco, and occasionally she’ll add some cocaine to it — she calls it “spicy snuff”

The idea of copyright is to protect the financial rights of creatives, thus incentivising people to make more stuff, right?

Well even before AI, it wasn’t doing its job very well on that front. The only ones with the power and money to be able to leverage copyright to protect their rights are those who are already so powerful that they don’t need those protections — big music labels and the like. Individual creatives were already being fucked over by the system long before AI.

If you haven’t read the article, I’d encourage you to give it a try. Or perhaps this one, which goes into depth on the intrinsic tensions within copyright law.

As someone who grew up down the road from Barnsley, I often semi-affectionately describe it as a bit of a shithole. The poor socioeconomic conditions mean that growing up there makes you feel hopeless about your future. You internalise the idea that you either have to escape to somewhere with better prospects, or resign yourself to being left behind, like you’re the unpleasant gritty bits at the bottom of a drink.

I’d wager that this is why they’ve chosen Barnsley for this. It’s like the metropolitan equivalent of a wealthy bastard predating upon a desperate woman who can’t afford her bills. I’d wager that some of the local officials involved in this decision believe that AI is bad, but that some investment in the area is better than nothing. Unfortunately, I’m fairly sure that’s wrong. Rolling out AI into the areas they’re planning to will just increase workload for the already overstressed humans in those fields, which may be worsened if some of those lose their jobs due to the overpromised savings from the AI.

Taking nudes is really difficult. I’ve never taken nudes per se, but recently I was trying to take some photos that included my body, whilst wearing some sexy clothing. That shit takes some skill.

One tip that I discovered is that using your phone’s regular camera rather than your front facing camera makes a big difference. To get this right, you ideally need to use a mirror so that you can see what’s on your screen as you’re getting the angles right. I found that positioning my phone higher and pointing it slightly downwards was best. Finding a way to securely position my phone to make this work was a bitch.

If you’re using your backward facing camera, then you’ll probably need to set your phone to take the image on a timer. Alternatively some smart watches can be used to trigger the photograph without you having to get up from your sexy pose to press the button on your phone (which risks knocking your phone out of position). Alternatively, once you’ve found the right angle and pose, you can try taking a video of you posing and then extracting frames from that video later.

The experience left me with a greater level of respect for people who take good nudes.

Barnsley is near to where I hail from. This is depressing to hear.

When people ask me about where I’m from, I semi-affectionately describe it as a “shit hole up North”. The socioeconomic deprivation just oozes out of the cracks in every paving slab. I suspect this is part of why they’re the ones doing this scheme — taking advantage of desperation

I was quite involved in local politics during the extreme austerity cuts of the 2010s Tory government, and I genuinely believe that there is some level of collective trauma caused by them. Places like Barnsley were hit the worst because they were already not doing great socioeconomically. As much as I may condemn any local officials who were a part of this godforsaken partnership with big tech, I also have a tremendous amount of sympathy for them.

Edit: I wanted to add something positive, even if it is a bit bittersweet in light of this announcement.

The European Access City Award is an initiative that recognises European cities that are doing good work for improving accessibility for disabled people of all sorts — both those who live there, and those who visit. It recognises different facets of accessibility, including modifications to the built environment, public transport accessibility and important information being provided in a variety of ways.

There have been 3 UK cities that have been mentioned as part of this award. Chester actually won it in 2017, and is the only UK city to do so. However, when I was checking for any other UK cities, I was surprised to see that Barnsley, of all places, was one of the two cities that got a special mention (the other being Belfast, which is less surprising to me).

Below is an excerpt from the 2011 publication where Barnsley gets this special mention. It’s nothing too exciting, but what is most notable to me is that the progress towards increasing accessibility is framed against the backdrop of Barnsley being, in my words, a bit of a shithole. Places like this are in particular need of person-centred governance, which is why the OP is so disheartening to read. (Sorry for wall of text. I considered putting it in a screenshot, but it felt hypocritical, given that this is about accessibility)

Knowing as much about AI as I do, it’s hard to see this “tech-town” nonsense as anything but harmful for accessibility. This perfectly encapsulates the wistful sadness I feel towards the place where I hail from.

"Barnsley is a metropolitan borough (population 226 000) in the Yorkshire and Humber region of England which particularly impressed the judges for its initiatives in the area of services to people with disabilities.

The borough is unique in the UK context in that it has a much higher incidence of disability than the national average. One quarter of the population of Barnsley is disabled, with 13 % of the working age population claiming incapacity benefit or severe disablement allowance, compared to an average 7 % in England.

The Council believes that access to goods, services and facilities is important to all people with disabilities if they are to enjoy independence, choice and equality. The borough has therefore been implementing a three year plan (ending March 2012) to provide a range of services to people with disabilities that are located in places that are easy to get to.

Involving people with disabilities The ‘Remaking Barnsley’ initiative, a comprehensive programme for the transformation of the urban centre adopted in 2009, involves local people with disabilities at all stages in the design and development of new buildings and public spaces to ensure the highest possible standards of accessibility.

The process has already delivered the new transport Interchange – formerly Barnsley Exchange Station – a fully enclosed passenger environment that has greatly improved access for disabled people. The next phase of Remaking Barnsley covers the rebuilding of large parts of the town centre and public spaces. This provides even greater opportunities to achieve Barnsley’s long-term ambition to become ‘the most accessible market town in Britain’ "

I remember seeing a post of yours elsewhere where you mentioned about difficulty mustering the energy and mental strength to go out beyond your home (possibly linked to your parents being quite overprotective? I may be remembering wrong). Regardless of the specifics, I think that factors like that can worsen relations between family members. My brother and I don’t get on well when we’re living in the same house, for instance. That’s made worse by my mom being a difficult person to live with.

But I think you’re right also, that there is a significant component of the grass being greener on the other side. I know plenty of people who are only children, who wish they had siblings, and people with siblings who wish they were an only child.

In that case, the finished product would be of pretty mediocre quality, in my case. That’s because most of my projects are things that I actively want to learn, and I tend to be overambitious when setting aims. Despite this though, even when I completely botch it up, I struggle to think of a time where I have regret my endeavour. I like the learning

No. The main reason I do projects is for the learning. Any useful items I produce as part of the process are just happy side effects.

Impressive dedication. Do you have an important task to do that you’re currently procrastinating? Whenever I show similar levels of commitment to answering trivial questions, that’s what is usually driving me.

TBF, as someone who frequently wears high socks and stockings as part of my regular attire, I don’t think they’re particularly normal. In order to even be able to see that a person is wearing thigh highs as opposed to tights, it’s necessary to wear a fairly short skirt or shorts, which may not be appropriate in many contexts — and if they’re worn with an outfit where you can’t see that you’re wearing thigh highs, then wearing tights appears to be the more practical options.

Plus I have known a lot of people who wanted to be the kind of person who wore thigh-highs, but became impatient with them frequently rolling down. Wearing a suspender belt is a good solution for this, but it’s surprisingly hard to find ones with clips that are robust enough to be useful and not excessively fiddly — most people I have known who have experience with suspender belts know them only as an inconvenient but sexy piece of lingerie, rather than a pragmatic undergarment (which can also be sexy, but they actually exist to serve a function rather than their entire purpose being the sexiness)

So yeah, I would say that people who wear high socks aren’t normal. But I certainly don’t see that as a bad thing — in fact, seeing someone wearing thigh high socks immediately makes them more attractive to me (as a friend or otherwise)

I own a lot of stockings as part of my regular daily attire (they’re so awesome! They’re like tights, except you don’t have to do the weird tights-dance every time you go for a pee, and if one of them gets a hole, you can just throw away the one stocking instead of the entire pair of tights!). However, if I’m doing programming, I’m probably at home, and in lounge wear.

I always found the “programming socks” quite funny, so one day, I decided I wanted to be even more in on the joke, so I deliberately wore some of my fancy thigh highs when sitting down to write some code. I ended up having a tremendously productive session, and it made the socks feel like magic. It was likely just that I was just having a serendipitous day where my brain decided it wanted to get shit done, but still, the prospect that they had actually helped was pretty humorous to entertain.

Because of this, I wore them again the next time I wanted to have an extended, focussed session of coding. And then the time after that. And again and again until eventually, I had created a self-fulfilling prophecy of programming socks increasing my productivity — I came to associate them with the headspace of productive focus, and so now whenever I wear them while sitting at my desk, my brain goes “oh damn, we programming now — best lock in”.

I am extremely happy to have stumbled into this outcome, because it is both useful and hilarious