CeePlusPlusCanFightMe
Self-acceptance is bunk. Engineer that shit away.
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User ID: 641
CeePlusPlusCanFightMe
Self-acceptance is bunk. Engineer that shit away.
1yr ago
I think an underappreciated aspect of this whole situation is that according to https://seekingalpha.com/symbol/U/income-statement , Unity Technologies is losing a billion dollars a year and is already 3 billion in debt, with their total market cap being 15 billion. This is a company that's circling the drain; this seems transparently like a hail-mary play that probably fails but maybe brings Unity to profitability.
Legally, I have no idea how big a grey area retroactive ToS changes are; the fact that Unity's doing it implies that they're not obviously illegal but I'm also aware that, in kind of a brute legal realism sense, different domains of law have judges that feel very differently about contracts where the fine print states "also we are allowed to fuck you in arbitrary ways defined by us, no limits, neener neener"
Like: apparently (based on what I've read in Matt Levine articles) corporate debt courts are really really specifically about the letter of the contract; someone puts in the fine print "also we can fuck you at any time" and the judge looks at it and is like "well, it's in the contract, guess you shouldn't have signed that one" which is in large part because corporate debt contracts are assumed to have been extremely well-vetted by lawyers on both sides. Everyone is assumed to be extremely saavy. My suspicion (not a lawyer) is that this is less true of consumer-facing EULAs (like Unity's); if I have a bunch of reddit posts saying "Unity will never fuck our users who sign this contract" and I have a EULA saying "Unity will never fuck our users. Also Unity, in its sole discretion, reserves the right to amend this contract" and then I do the obvious thing-- amend the contract retroactively to allow user-fucking, and then proceed to fuck our users-- I'm not sure how it would fare in court but it's not obvious the judge would love me for that?
Of course, there's also the legal-realism idea of "Unity probably just settles out-of-court with anyone big enough to challenge them, and hoovers up money from indies that can't afford ruinous court fees". Which is of course deeply unethical and also vibes like they're eating their seed corn (since who wants to go into business with a company that has, historically, not been willing to honor contracts.)
My expectation is that this ends with Unity sticking to its guns and declaring bankruptcy in a couple years.
CeePlusPlusCanFightMe
Self-acceptance is bunk. Engineer that shit away.
1yr ago
Realistically I think what happens is Unity goes up to Nintendo and says "please pay me 100 million dollars for all these installs I see using my proprietary methods" and Nintendo is like "i will counteroffer with this Twix bar" and Unity looks at the Twix bar, compares it to the prospect of a lengthy and expensive trial vs the Nintendo legal team, and accepts the counteroffer. Repeat with Microsoft et al.
CeePlusPlusCanFightMe
Self-acceptance is bunk. Engineer that shit away.
1yr ago
Guys! There is a simple explanation for this that explains everything:
This is an outage. Twitter's load balancers or whatever are fucked and they can serve a small percentage of typical traffic. This is damage control, i guess to avoid acknowleging an outage?
It feels likely this is in some way related to twitter not paying their google cloud builds as has been reported by various sources.
CeePlusPlusCanFightMe
Self-acceptance is bunk. Engineer that shit away.
1yr ago
Would you require monogamy from the woman? And if so: why?
CeePlusPlusCanFightMe
Self-acceptance is bunk. Engineer that shit away.
1yr ago
morally, i feel i should be able to lose weight myself
No! Bad! The decision to take a drug is a practical one with no moral implications. Similar statements include "morally, i feel i should be able to drive a bit longer without stopping at a rest area" or "morally, i feel i should be able to walk to the grocery store rather than drive."
Hell yeah, dude. Remake yourself as someone hotter! Nobody can stop you! FUCK THE NATURAL ORDER.
CeePlusPlusCanFightMe
Self-acceptance is bunk. Engineer that shit away.
1yr ago
Yeah, the legs thing is probably the most invasive of the items on the list, and the one i know least about.
Have you considered that physical appearance is one of the most malleable things about a person, particularly for a person with a high income? I have no specific knowledge of what about you is unattractive, but you have the following options open to you:
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plastic surgery if it's an unattractive face or jawline or your ears stick out or whatever
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weight loss drugs if you're overweight
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testosterone replacement therapy + personal training if you have a severe lack of muscle mass. (Girls mostly really like muscle mass.)
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that leg-lengthening procedure if your problem is height
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wigs or medical hair replacement (dunno the clinical term) if you are balding.
This is an entirely serious comment. Western society has a stigma against trying to change your appearance in these ways, but if your appearance is an impediment to you living your best life, you should change it if you have the money, which it sounds like you will.
Do these have side effects? Yeah, probably. Life is full of tradeoffs. Still, given current medical tech the OP reads a bit like a (more expensive) version of "i am worried that no woman will ever love me because all of my clothes are ugly. Should i resign myself to dying alone, or just really go hard on settling?" My dude! Just buy some new clothes!
Self-acceptance is bunk. Engineer that shit away.
CeePlusPlusCanFightMe
Self-acceptance is bunk. Engineer that shit away.
1yr ago
it begins
Though for srs, replika by all accounts runs off a very small and mediocre language model compared to SOTA. What happens when a company with access to a gpt4-tier LLM tries their hand at similar is left as an exercise to the reader. Even the biggest llama variants might suffice to blow past the "i'm talking to a bot" feeling.
(Though i confess to mostly using an opportunity i saw to deliver the "sci-fi scenarios" line. Good every time.)
https://www.eenewseurope.com/en/openai-backs-norwegian-bipedal-robot-startup-in-23m-round/
Quite aside from the god-inna-box scenario, OpenAI wants to give its AIs robot bodies.
sci-fi scenario
My dude, we are currently in a world where a ton of people have chatbot girlfriends, and AI companies have to work hard to avoid bots accidentally passing informal turing tests. You best start believing in sci-fi scenarios, To_Mandalay: you're in one.
It asks them to inject themselves and to go on said trips, and they say "okay!"
CeePlusPlusCanFightMe
Self-acceptance is bunk. Engineer that shit away.
1yr ago
Lab leaks happen already by accident. Why would you believe it's so hard to engineer a lab leak directly given (1)superintelligence and (2) the piles of money superintelligence can easily earn via hacking/crypto/stock trading/intellectual labor?
CeePlusPlusCanFightMe
Self-acceptance is bunk. Engineer that shit away.
1yr ago
For prisons: there is basically a hierarchy of strength where if men and transwomen share a prison, the transwomen will get raped a whole bunch; transwomen with cis women will result in the cis women getting raped a whole bunch by the trans women; and trans men with men will result in the trans men getting raped a whole bunch.
Which means as far as i can tell the whole discourse around this is just about shuffling around who is doing the raping and who is getting raped.
The core problem here is obviously that prisons either cannot or will not stop prisoners from raping each other. If it weren't for that fact none of trans prison discourse would even matter.
CeePlusPlusCanFightMe
Self-acceptance is bunk. Engineer that shit away.
1yr ago
Fair counterexamples!
CeePlusPlusCanFightMe
Self-acceptance is bunk. Engineer that shit away.
1yr ago
umm... there have been tons of shows featuring obese people
any tv shows you're thinking of specifically?
CeePlusPlusCanFightMe
Self-acceptance is bunk. Engineer that shit away.
1yr ago
Mostly the examples that come to mind, for me, come in two categories:
(1) Schlubby Guy Hot Wife dom-coms, which haven't been in vogue for years
(2) Reality TV, where writers aren't creating the characters (and so aren't accountable for the way in which the "characters" behave or look.)
it's possible I just don't watch TV or movies where there are obese characters! But I also haven't heard any specific media called out in this thread as counterexamples for obesity specifically, so.
Reality TV definitely gets a pass from these dynamics since there are no writers who can get flak for representation decisions; as a result, you not only see trans people on reality tv, you also see obese and extremely dim people.
EDIT: Additionally, "he's actually trans and we just didn't mention it" is entirely legitimate if you're talking about a real-life person but considered cheap and shallow to do offscreen for a fictional character. See also when JK Rowling claimed that Dumbledore is actually gay.
Huh! Guess i underestimated the willingness of authors to go with the solely informed-characteristic "hi i am trans btw" method of representation.
On reflection, yeah, the "spiritually trans" thing is pretty weird for the transmutation-heavy Baldur's Gate universe, which should probably be used to a more transhumanist school of thought: "i decided i wanted to be a dragon so i bought this scroll of permanent polymorph for my life savings. If anyone makes fun i eat them. Wanna see my sweet hoard? Look, don't touch."
In summary: "I identify as an attack helicopter" lands different if the identified can in fact fly and launch hellfire missiles at their detractors.
CeePlusPlusCanFightMe
Self-acceptance is bunk. Engineer that shit away.
1yr ago
Yeah, i'm thinking primarily of types of representation where the protected characteristics are, themselves, the problematic attributes causing the characteristic to be totally absent. Mentally handicapped folks, the obese, and visibly trans women (in non-very special episodes) are the main examples i can think of for this.
CeePlusPlusCanFightMe
Self-acceptance is bunk. Engineer that shit away.
1yr ago
Got any examples? None spring to mind for me. Though you are right, "trans as informed attribute" would be a (ham handed) way around this.
There is a phenomenon i notice in media but never hear named. Call it, "Representation As Inherently Problematic."
Examples: There are no mentally handicapped people or trans people on shows that are not specifically about these topics. The reasons for this for mental disabilities are fairly obvious: mental handicaps are considered intrinsically undignified. If you show a mentally handicapped person doing or saying something dumb on a show, this counts as mocking a protected group. Thus: total absence.
Similarly: If you have a trans person on a show you need to make it clear to the audience they are trans, which either requires it to be a plot point (making it a sort of Very Special Episode) or making the trans person not pass (which is undignified and thus opens the writers up to criticism.) Thus: total absence.
Similarly, morbid obesity is undignified, and the morbidly obese are close to being a protected class (being as it is a physical disability). Thus, having them on a show is undignified and opens up the writers to criticism. Thus: total absence.
Another example: land o' lakes mascot, a native American woman, gets criticism for being stereotypical, which is synonymous to being visually identifiable as a native american. So she was removed from the labeling.
Another: Dr. Seuss gets criticism for visually identifiable depiction of a Chinese villager; book gets pulled as a result.
A similar-feeling phenomenon is This Character Has Some Characteristics Of A Protected Group, Which Is Kinda Like Being A Standin For That Group, Making That Character's Poor Qualities A Direct Commentary On That Group. Examples: criticisms around Greedo and Jar Jar Binks being racist caricatures; criticisms of goblin representation in Harry Potter as being anti-semitic caricatures.
CeePlusPlusCanFightMe
Self-acceptance is bunk. Engineer that shit away.
1yr ago
Good times.
CeePlusPlusCanFightMe
Self-acceptance is bunk. Engineer that shit away.
1yr ago
The whole vaccine rollout had the theme of "all that is not compulsory is forbidden." That is: adults were banned from taking vaccines until the FDA had satisfactorily hemmed and hawed over the trials; afterward, vaccines became compulsory for quite a lot of everyday activities. This was similar (though more dramatic) story as masks-- masks were heavily discouraged by the CDC right up to the point where the CDC began mandating them.
In general the FDA and CDC are really really bad at expressing any epistemic attitude that isn't "utter certainty", even in the frequent occasions that the info available doesn't justify certainty.
For that reason I think it's basically coherent to say that the FDA was too restrictive and too pushy about the vaccines.
EDIT: This was also true of boosters! Boosters were forbidden roughly until the FDA began mandating them in order to be "fully vaccinated".
CeePlusPlusCanFightMe
Self-acceptance is bunk. Engineer that shit away.
1yr ago
/r/art, having a normal one:
https://twitter.com/reddit_lies/status/1610669909842825222
If you'd prefer not to click, it's a screenshot of a mod communication in /r/art where a mod, believing that a particular user had uploaded AI art, has banned the user, and the user is appealing on the grounds that he did not use AI and in fact has a large DeviantArt portfolio in basically that style. The mod in question responded:
I don’t believe you. Even if you did “paint” it yourself, it’s so obviously an AI-prompted design that it doesn’t matter. If you really are a “serious” artist, then you need to find a different style, because A) no one is going to believe when you say it’s not AI, and B) the AI can do better in seconds what might take you hours. Sorry, it’s the way of the world.
This led to a predictable backlash resulting in /r/art temporarily going private, which appears to have lifted as of today.
I suppose I don't have too much useful commentary except to note that identifying what art is or is not ai-generated is probably an unsolvable challenge in the general case, and that forum bans for posting it are definitely going to get a lot of false-positives. You could probably do a 90% solution where you require that all art be accompanied by Photoshop .psd files; no current art generation system makes these (though I wouldn't put money on future systems not generating .psd files from text prompts). Though of course such a rule stops users from uploading anything that wasn't done in Photoshop.
I anticipate this problem will very rapidly worsen since Emad (the Stable Diffusion guy) posted https://twitter.com/EMostaque/status/1610811234676346880?cxt=HHwWgMC8sZKS4NosAAAA , which supposedly is a very-soon-to-be-released system that resolves most of the worst problems exhibited by image generation systems (such as malformed hands, an inability to grasp prepositions, and warped text.)
It's more Unity's an adtech business with some game engine sales on the side; last I heard they had maybe 2/3 of their revenue coming from advertising. App Tracking Transparency savagely brutalized that business model, sadly, and I think Unity's frantically flailing around in search of a different one.
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