Melody Fwygon

It's nice to know that, at least for places with reasonably civil societies, it's becoming more and more normal to key your pronoun and gendered speaking choices on modifiable cues like clothing, makeup, hair or appearance in general.

That said; lots of women sound pretty deep too. Maybe more are just openly nonbinary about their expression and have taken steps to deepen it; or it's just how it's always been and I'm too derpy to notice because I am recently learning that you don't focus on someone's vocal range as I've only been openly trans and in a civilized place for a few years total now.

At any rate it's nice to know that even in a service setting they realize how cheap, easy and good for their reputation it is to just simply respect someone's communicated preference by double-checking their appearance(s) first before locking in on a pronoun and possibly having to awkwardly correct...when possible.

At a drive through speaker it isn't; so you were probably expecting them to drone on as if they didn't bother to even take 2 seconds to see at the window what little, if any makeup you wore, or the color of your nail polish or quality of your self-grooming, regardless of it's deteriorated state, to affirm that you actually were living as female.

I pay nothing for running SearXNG locally on my machine.

I don't agree with the assessment of the OP or the original blog article. Grayjay is Open Source software.

It is, however, NOT FREE SOFTWARE and I do know that organizations like the FSF and OSI do not consider it to be free.

The free status of this software was never misrepresented by Louis Rossman. He blatantly explains that there is a cost to this software and that the license is how he plans to enforce his means of collecting this fee on the honor system.

He also outlines how he cannot; and will not...stop anyone from forking this software and basically removing the payment bits of the code and just redistributing it under a different name. I strongly recommend someone does that...and maybe license that work under a much more unrestrictive free license that FLOSS-Only users might find more palatable.

I get that nobody wants or needs to trust Louis to keep his word. He's gotta run a business at some point...and distributing this software this way on the honor system might not pan out quite the same way he hopes it will. I do hope that at the point where he and his compatriots choose to stop maintaining the application; that they do immediately retcon this restrictive license; and re-release it under a new, free, and unrestrictive Open Source Software license.

Gross.

If you live in the USA; Go raise a fuss and holler and make sure that your local House Representative knows that this shit is absolutely facist and unacceptable.

AI art is factually not art theft. It is creation of art in the same rough and inexact way that we humans do it; except computers and AIs do not run on meat-based hardware that has an extraordinary number of features and demands that are hardwired to ensure survival of the meat-based hardware. It doesn't have our limitations; so it can create similar works in various styles very quickly.

Copyright on the other hand is, an entirely different and, a very sticky subject. By default, "All Rights Are Reserved" is something that usually is protected by these laws. These laws however, are not grounded in modern times. They are grounded in the past; before the information age truly began it's upswing.

Fair use generally encompasses all usage of information that is one or more of the following:

• Educational; so long as it is taught as a part of a recognized class and within curriculum.
• Informational; so long as it is being distributed to inform the public about valid, reasonable public interests. This is far broader than some would like; but it is legal.
• Transformative; so long as the content is being modified in a substantial enough manner that it is an entirely new work that is not easily confused for the original. This too, is far broader than some would like; but it still is legal.
• Narrative or Commentary purposes; so long as you're not copying a significant amount of the whole content and passing it off as your own. Short clips with narration and lots of commentary interwoven between them is typically protected. Copyright is not intended to be used to silence free speech. This also tends to include satire; as long as it doesn't tread into defamation territory.
• Reasonable, 'Non-Profit Seeking or Motivated' Personal Use; People are generally allowed to share things amongst themselves and their friends and other acquaintances. Reasonable backup copies, loaning of copies, and even reproduction and presentation of things are generally considered fair use.

In most cases AI art is at least somewhat Transformative. It may be too complex for us to explain it simply; but the AI is basically a virtual brain that can, without error or certain human faults, ingest image information and make decisions based on input given to it in order to give a desired output.

Arguably; if I have license or right to view artwork; or this right is no longer reserved, but is granted to the public through the use of the World Wide Web...then the AI also has those rights. Yes. The AI has license to view, and learn from your artwork. It just so happens to be a little more efficient at learning and remembering than humans can be at times.

This does not stop you from banning AIs from viewing all of your future works. Communicating that fact with all who interact with your works is probably going to make you a pretty unpopular person. However; rightsholders do not hold or reserve the right to revoke rights that they have previously given. Once that genie is out of the bottle; it's out...unless you've got firm enough contract proof to show that someone agreed to otherwise handle the management of rights.

In some cases; that proof exists. Good luck in court. In most cases however; that proof does not exist in a manner that is solid enough to please the court. A lot of the time; we tend to exchange, transfer and reserve rights ephemerally...that is in a manner that is not strictly always 100% recognized by the law.

Gee; Perhaps we should change that; and encourage the reasonable adaptation and growth of Copyright to fairly address the challenges of the information age.

Unpaid internships really do need to be abolished.

Most anti-cheat software can't do much on the client side. Really all it can do is look around at it's environment where it's allowed to look and see what's going on.

Most Cheat Software will run on a higher privilege level than the game; whether that's as an "Administrative" user or as "root" or "SYSTEM" in a context where it's running as an important driver.

In any case, the only thing the Anti-Cheat can reliably do on the client side is watch. If it's cleverly designed enough, it will simply log snippets of events and ship them off for later analysis on a server side system. This will probably be a different server than the one you're playing on, and it won't be sending that data until after the match has ended properly.

Sometimes it might not even send data unless the AC server asks it to do so; which it might frequently do as a part of it's authorization granting routine. Even when it has the data there may not be immediate processing.

Others have also mentioned that visible action may be delayed for random time periods as well; in order to prevent players from catching on to what behaviors they need to avoid to get caught, or to prevent cheats from getting more sophisticated before deeper analysis could reveal a way to patch the flaw or check to ensure cheating isn't happening.

Since cheat software can often be privileged, it also has the luxury of lying to the server. So clever ways to ensure that a lying client will be caught will probably be implemented and responses checked to ensure they fit within some reasonable bounds of sanity.

As an on and off Recent Changes Patroller; I view my job simply:

• Prevent Spam
• Prevent Vandalism
• Prevent Misinformation
• Ensure that any reliable source is cited for edits, to keep editors honest and informational.

Per Wikipedia's "Be Bold" guideline; I generally rollback things that I find to be not contributing...and I allow other editors to do the same..."Be Bold" back to me by challenging my decisions. 99% of people who aren't pedaling obvious Spam, Vandalism or Misinformation I will simply let be.

Less than 1% of my actions are "Be Bold" style interpretations. I usually stick to what I can reasonably know is just junk or incorrectly contributed.

So it boggles my mind that any sysops with years of experience on EnWiki are being that pedantic about Notability, Sources and "Original Research". Genuinely; I don't consider pointing a fact out about a specific map to be such research...it's a fact, and that fact can be backed by even more maps, going back in time. Roads and Highways may not be extremely exciting; but they definitely are important and DO in fact meet GN guidelines. Primary Sources themselves are fine too; genuinely you should need a damn good reason to challenge a source; be it primary or secondary.

At least a citation about how a primary source might not be found to be reliable.

It looks like as editors flee the ridiculous bureaucracy, they only make it worse to prevent more work from being created...which is counterproductive and makes people consider things like this or long-term wikibreaks. >_>

Personally I think a little fiscal conservation would be wise at this point.

Costs can, and do eventually, rise. Hardware fails, and other things can happen as a surprise; and I'd rather that Beehaw not be insolvent when those things happen.

While I get the wish to do fun things to enhance the community; I think we need to be keeping an eye on things too. A few bad months where users are squeezed and unable to contribute could also severely impact Beehaw; particularly in and around monthly costs. At no point should Beehaw admins be paying out-of-pocket for things if Beehaw itself as an organization has the funds to properly pay things.

If we do genuinely have too much funding in excess; examining how we could expand Beehaw or make it better is another way you can responsibly re-invest the funds into making Beehaw better.

Additional servers/services might be neat; things like:

• A Mastodon server, if one doesn't already exist
• A Matrix homeserver, if one doesn't already exist
• A lightweight Pixelfed / image hosting/posting Service, if one doesn't already exist
• Various and miscellaneous game servers/services like Minecraft or other popular multiplayer game servers/sessions/instances.

Of course such things could also require additional staff on hand, so I understand that you might want to entice someone to help manage these extra things first.

I genuinely recommend against re-federation for Beehaw.

My unique take and experience from lemmy.one is simply the number of users who simply seek to stir the pot.

My blocklist is full of people from lemm.ee and sh.itjust.works and lemmy.world as well as lemmy.ca . When I compare the number of blocks to the number I've blocked from beehaw or even my own instance; a paltry one or two; I'm only ever seeing trolls or idealogues coming from those instances to argue with my posts no matter how well reasoned they may be. For context; if I tell someone they are absolutely wrong and they persist; they automatically meet my block list. I won't suffer people who aren't going to discuss things civilly or rationally.

Hopefully any sane Judge reading that indictment will find reasons to throw it out.

Gabe Newell knows that any potential buyer will run Valve into the ground. Thus he already promised too long ago that he would never sell or let Valve go public.

Considering how many game studios that Microsoft just killed off in the last 3 years alone; they're never going to be worthy of buying Valve.

Not only is the science underlying all these findings completely non-existent, they only "guesstimate" what the water usage of what every thing that uses water is; then blindly divide that by the transaction volume per time period.

Not only is that method highly flawed; it's incorrect. Computers do more than mine crypto; and 1 transaction typically costs not even 1 tenth of a percent of most miners' overall computer resources. This is due to the fact that many miners are utilizing either a GPU or FPGA style device to power optimize and optimize the mathematics necessary to secure a transaction.

It isn’t AI itself, it’s AI as a vector for corporate recklessness.

This. 1000% this. Many of Issac Asimov novels warned about this sort of thing too; as did any number of novels inspired by Asimov.

It's not that we didn't provide the AI with rules. It's not that the AI isn't trying not to harm people. It's that humans, being the clever little things we are, are far more adept at deceiving and tricking AI into saying things and using that to justify actions to gain benefit.

...Understandably this is how that is being done. By selling AI that isn't as intelligent as it is being trumpeted as. As long as these corporate shysters can organize a team to crap out a "Minimally Viable Product" they're hailed as miracle workers and get paid fucking millions.

Ideally all of this should violate the many, many laws of many, many civilized nations...but they've done some black magic with that too; by attacking and weakening laws and institutions that can hold them liable for this and even completely ripping out or neutering laws that could cause them to be held accountable by misusing their influence.

I've always felt the FSF has had no idea what they were doing. Therefore I do not always agree with or support 100% of what they do.

I do feel that sometimes code should be able to carry reasonable restrictions. Just not sweeping restrictions.

An example of a reasonable restriction would be a clause that prohibits commercialized use of free software without first obtaining permission from the project in question. Another reasonable restriction would be a clause that prohibits governmental use or use by military entities.

An unreasonable restriction would be naming only specific companies that are not allowed to use the 'free' software. It would also be further considered unreasonable for rights to use 'free' software if it expires, goes away, or is revoked if you commit a specific crime, or fall under suspicion of committing said crime.

I genuinely won't even use Brave indexes on my SearXNG instance; I have the engines disabled. My search quality has not suffered; as most of my results end up being DDG or Yahoo anyways; and Brave was only ever duplicating results from other engines anyways.

I hope they are transparent about the reasons for this outage after they have resolved the issue(s)

I would say they're not open to the public if they're behind a security checkpoint. They exist for the comfort and use of people who live on base and for those who are immediate family of service members and other visitors who have reason to be on-base.

The nice thing is that I can customize it however I like too; change weights, choose which engines to pull from always, or even from search to search; so I'm not getting cruft.

SearXNG always rearranges the crap most engines serve to the bottom without fail.

NOPE!

You cannot pay me to use Windows 11.

If this is true; this is probably going to be a very shocking revelation to some people.

I don't know how much treason this man needs to commit to get convicted; but I hope he does get punished for something.

I can do everything Kagi does for free...using SearXNG.

Thank you for banning AI trash.

LLMs do have purpose; but that purpose is not in journalism and news

This is pretty clearly a company practiced at "riding the waves" of what's popular to sell absolute bullshit.

They appear to raise millions, develop what looks like a minimally viable product for it's development phase, then pull the rug out and exit with the bag of cash, quickly pivoting away from discovered scams and name changing to avoid too much consumer ire or regulator scrutiny.

It wouldn't surprise me if the CEO or anyone else at the top levels of this company has an entire resume full of these sorts of 'scam and run' operations, the kinds that melt into the background and vanish the moment any real strong consumer or regulatory/legal scrutiny hits it.

Basically this is investment fraud 101; you find something you can trick people into investing into, then spend as little as possible to get a 'minimally viable product' that appears plausible enough to give you time to exit stage left with all the fat cash you can take. Because this sort of operation does produce something; oftentimes they get away cleanly; because they did do something and oftentimes they obscure or obfuscate and hide the evidence of any planned malfeasance; usually the only places with any record of it is in the mind of the CEO or other executive(s), if they're in on the scam too.

Sometimes the CEO gets 'caught' intentionally and then fired...or they just run the company into the ground. That latter case can let them off the hook with a tidy golden parachute as well; depending on the circumstances and what they 'negotiated' when they were 'hired'.

There will come a time when becoming Amish will become really attractive again.

I like that he is being decisive about it. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the feature was only being delayed because of internal project politics or quirky policies that normally make sense, but don't in this specific scenario.

Finally.

How can you call it sensationalist when you know that the consequences of Trump being elected that are listed in the article are highly likely to be true?

I don't consider it sensationalist. I consider it to be a strong warning. If you read the article through to the end; you'll note the tone changes and explains why this has happened. Is it potentially sounding the alarm too soon? Personally, I do not think so. It might be the intention of the author to scare someone of enough power into action extraordinary enough to Stop Trump.

Or maybe it will scare an everyday reader into leaving the country to escape the growing fascism, or into actually turning up at the polls and voting for anything but the Orange Tyrant.

Emphasis added - I will try to avoid highlighting who is responsible for the failures but they are listed in the article. I am not sympathizing with Trump Supporters; I am pointing at how this article outlines how we got here today.

What is certain, however, is that the odds of the United States falling into dictatorship have grown considerably because so many of the obstacles to it have been cleared and only a few are left. If eight years ago it seemed literally inconceivable that a man like Trump could be elected, that obstacle was cleared in 2016. If it then seemed unimaginable that an American president would try to remain in office after losing an election, that obstacle was cleared in 2020. And if no one could believe that Trump, having tried and failed to invalidate the election and stop the counting of electoral college votes, would nevertheless reemerge as the unchallenged leader of the Republican Party and its nominee again in 2024, well, we are about to see that obstacle cleared as well. In just a few years, we have gone from being relatively secure in our democracy to being a few short steps, and a matter of months, away from the possibility of dictatorship.

TL;DR: The odds are higher because the listed barriers have been cleared.

Yes, I know that most people don’t think an asteroid is heading toward us and that’s part of the problem. But just as big a problem has been those who do see the risk but for a variety of reasons have not thought it necessary to make any sacrifices to prevent it. At each point along the way, our political leaders, and we as voters, have let opportunities to stop Trump pass on the assumption that he would eventually meet some obstacle he could not overcome. Republicans could have stopped Trump from winning the nomination in 2016, but they didn’t. The voters could have elected Hillary Clinton, but they didn’t. Republican senators could have voted to convict Trump in either of his impeachment trials, which might have made his run for president much more difficult, but they didn’t.

TL;DR: There were many people in power who could have stopped him, but did not, as they felt certain that "Surely the next obstacle will stop him. The next obstacle did not stop him

Throughout these years, an understandable if fatal psychology has been at work. At each stage, stopping Trump would have required extraordinary action by certain people, whether politicians or voters or donors, actions that did not align with their immediate interests or even merely their preferences. It would have been extraordinary for all the Republicans running against Trump in 2016 to decide to give up their hopes for the presidency and unite around one of them. Instead, they behaved normally, spending their time and money attacking each other, assuming that Trump was not their most serious challenge, or that someone else would bring him down, and thereby opened a clear path for Trump’s nomination. And they have, with just a few exceptions, done the same this election cycle. It would have been extraordinary had Mitch McConnell and many other Republican senators voted to convict a president of their own party. Instead, they assumed that after Jan. 6, 2021, Trump was finished and it was therefore safe not to convict him and thus avoid becoming pariahs among the vast throng of Trump supporters. In each instance, people believed they could go on pursuing their personal interests and ambitions as usual in the confidence that somewhere down the line, someone or something else, or simply fate, would stop him. Why should they be the ones to sacrifice their careers? Given the choice between a high-risk gamble and hoping for the best, people generally hope for the best. Given the choice between doing the dirty work yourself and letting others do it, people generally prefer the latter.

TL;DR: The Psychology is briefly explained; and it highlights how extraordinary that taking action would have been for the person(s) in question.

A paralyzing psychology of appeasement has also been at work. At each stage, the price of stopping Trump has risen higher and higher. In 2016, the price was forgoing a shot at the White House. Once Trump was elected, the price of opposition, or even the absence of obsequious loyalty, became the end of one’s political career, as Jeff Flake, Bob Corker, Paul D. Ryan and many others discovered. By 2020, the price had risen again. As Mitt Romney recounts in McKay Coppins’s recent biography, Republican members of Congress contemplating voting for Trump’s impeachment and conviction feared for their physical safety and that of their families. There is no reason that fear should be any less today. But wait until Trump returns to power and the price of opposing him becomes persecution, the loss of property and possibly the loss of freedom. Will those who balked at resisting Trump when the risk was merely political oblivion suddenly discover their courage when the cost might be the ruin of oneself and one’s family?

TL;DR: More Psychology is explained briefly and it highlights that the price to stop Trump has been rising exponentially with each step.

I see a lot of the Kagi shills crawling out of the woodwork here. I've been using SearXNG locally to query many free engines at no cost to me.

13 billion Euro British Franc Moneys?

That's pocket change to Google.

Note: the above message is satirical. Do not reply.

Yeah to be honest, you really are being dismissive and kinda rude. Occult practices do tend to fall under "sincerely held beliefs", so please don't make light of them so passively...particularly when it clearly is working for a person.

If your brother or sister needed a medication you did not, would you hate them? Would you think them a fool?

The Psychonaut Field Manual pg 27. [in the box in the bottom]

I love science and study it too, but like...I also acknowledge and love the occult arts and study them as well. Having that attitude has saved my bacon more than you might think.

in the best interpretation this “Magick” is just some Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and mindfulness in disguise.

If that's what you think it is, why then do you sneer upon it because some charlatans exist? If it's effective for this person, that should be a data point that should excite and fascinate you...anecdotal or not.

Worst case it’s just another cult thing trying to push dogmas onto you.

Should we ridicule science because there's no shortage of charlatans who exist who try to take advantage of it? I hope not...that's how we ended up with anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers.

Hmm. Is there something against linking external wikis on every article you create?

It's silly that one damn senator can hold up promotions. I genuinely hope the Senate addresses this issue.

The bug is definitely known; and a fix is probably being worked on.

But I will say that it does in fact turn on the setting.

***Nope. You have to use Android to get a decent ad-blocker.***

In all seriousness; iOS REQUIRES you to use DNS level or VPN level ad-blocking typically. I think the only notable exception is that some browser apps might allow extensions. iOS still requires you use Safari browser engine though AFAIK.

It's ridiculous that we blatantly ignore the solution staring us directly in the face.

Decriminalizing, destigmatizing and demystifying sex and sex work would solve so many damn issues.

The obstacle to this clear and easy solution? Outdated Religion, biases, beliefs, and traditions That are in no way based on fact, and do not actually reflect what all people are choosing to believe in traditionally, emotionally or spiritually

Do we need the capability to have orgies and fuck our mates in Public? No. Should we be able to talk about sex and intimacy and other things in public to a willing audience? Hell. Fucking. Yes.

To be honest. any company that purchases such a place should be required by law to either: rent it out within 3 months of purchase or sell it to another interested individual and not a company or other legal holding entity.

It's chilling to see this happening.

These are the kinds of cops that should be summarily fired on the spot and not ever given a badge again. Such sickening behavior.