Cyber Yuki

following its acquisition from Sony

Has anything good EVER come from big company acquisitions AT ALL?

Geocities -> acquired by Yahoo -> crap -> death

Youtube -> acquired by Google -> ad crap

Blogger -> acquired by Google -> crap

Macromedia -> acquired by Adobe -> Monopoly crap

Washington Post -> acquired by Bezos -> political crap

MySQL -> Acquired by Oracle -> copyright crap

Github -> acquired by Microsoft -> crap

Reddit -> acquired by Conde Nast -> political crap

Twitter -> acquired by Musk -> utter crap

Every single time I see a cool startup get bought by a big player, all I can see is the service going to shit.

It’s one thing to be uncooperative with Linux development.

A very different thing is to introduce vulnerabilities into existing working code.

Okay, here’s the full explanation for you:

VTubers are simply people using 2D or 3D avatars that move using face tracking technology.

The issue at hand is that many VTubers have skimpy outfits but many of them are classy, i.e. not overly sexual. Furthermore, the content they produce is SFW even if at times they talk or joke about NSFW topics. Most of the time VTubers just engage in chat, gaming or reaction videos. And the official with Twitch’s new rules is that changing a VTuber model requires hiring a digital artist and a model animator aka “rigger”. These are super expensive, many of those models can cost thousands of dollars to make. So when Twitch days “cover your hips or be banned”, VTubers whose models have FROM THE BEGINNING shown hips, now have to pay artists and riggers a huge amount of cash simply to cover themselves up.

To make things worse, Twitch’s rules are arbitrary and unpredictable. Who knows if tomorrow they’ll have to cover their shoulders? Cover their cleavage? Skirts below the knee? You don’t know, and every single time Twitch updates their TOS, VTubers have to spend money just to stay in the business. The least Twitch could do is state a fixed, immutable set of rules so VTubers can design their own outfits without fear of being targeted by Twitch’s sharia police. But that doesn’t happen. Twitch rules keep changing over and over, but mysteriously they never affect women wearing super tiny bikinis and showing off their sexy bodies in their pools and hot tubs section.

That’s the issue. That Twitch’s TOS are not only unpredictable, but inconsistently enforced. One could say managers don’t like VTubers and engage in these practices to virtually kick them off their platform.

TL;DR: VTubers are NOT porn. And yet, Twitch is selectively enforcing these rules against VTubers while completely allowing exactly the same - or even much more sexualized - content for IRL streamers in their bath tubs and pools section.

Intentional? Better use Negligent. It’s hard to prove intent; knowledge of something going on is much easier to prove.

When techbros said “you can type a question and the AI will answer”, they seem to have forgotten that we expect the answers to be true and accurate.

And they seem to have forgotten that to do that, they actually need a database of facts.

Not necessarily. Corporate money has a hidden contract. Mainly, you will develop what we tell you to develop and you will stall what we tell you to stall.

Google money is ad money. It’s DRM money, it’s private silo money, not general development money.

If you believe corporations drive all good development in the world, look at how many projects have been bought and killed by Microsoft.

In fact, why would Firefox accept money from one of its competitors? That’s SUPER fucked up.

Just think about the anti features that Google mmay want Firefox to implement: Unlockable ads, third party cookies, user tracking, and so on.

Is tha the development we want?

I say, let’s open fundraisers and keep Firefox free of corporate influence.

It’s a threat to the Mozilla CORPORATION, not the Mozilla Foundation nor the browser.

Nothing to be really scared about. Move along.

My colleagues and I have developed an artificial intelligence system that helps buildings shift their energy use to times when the electric grid is cleaner.

Meanwhile, AI systems are getting trained while using the equivalent of several countries’ use of electricity.

What a bullshit article. The headline itself is so deceptive it makes my blood boil. Now everyone will think AI is a net positive for reducing power usage while it’s all the contrary.

Despite that, its depiction of an ignorant society unaware of the technology supporting it was incredibly prophetic. If we ignore the “dumb people reproducing” bit, we can see it as a warning about how an uneducated society is detrimental for everyone.

I mean, we have flat earthers, for fuck’s sake.

By any chance, were the clamps filled with styrofoam or something? 😁 (Tofu-dreg joke)

At this point, I’d like to ask: If a foreign company threatens democracy in a country, is it legal for the executive to ban business with that company?

No? Then that doesn’t make sense. It’s a FOREIGN company, the government should have the right to do whatever it needs to protect its citizens in that regard.

says CEO

Since when do CEOs do things because they’re actually useful and not because they want to cut costs at the expense of the workers and even the public?

Oh no, I know where this story leads…

Today:

I’m excited to announce that Beeper has been acquired by Automattic.

Tomorrow:

We’re excited to announce that Automattic has been acquired by (Insert megacorp here).

Later:

Beeper personnel laid off; project discontinued

Just you wait.

What constitutes fair use?

17 U.S.C. § 107

Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 17 U.S.C. § 106 and 17 U.S.C. § 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.

GenAI training, at least regarding art, is neither criticism, comment, news reporting scholarship, nor research.

AI training is not done by scientists but engineers of a corporative entity with a long term profit goal.

So, by elimination, we can conclude that none of the purposes covered by the fair use doctrine apply to Generative AI training.

Q.E.D.

I understand devs being busy. What I can’t stand is their fan club who keep shitting on every user asking questions or not having the time to do a deep search on every single solution and the problems that come with it.

Maybe this is news for you, but FOSS communities are incredibly toxic. Every single suggestion or legitimate complaint is taken as a personal attack.

Then they wonder why people don’t pay enough attention to Linux and Open Source Software in general.

Perhaps they should realize there’s too many assholes in the community who keep driving people away. Normal folks have a limit. They just leave and hope their Windows doesn’t crash away, which is less frustrating than having to personally deal not only with tech issues but the shitty attitude of peple who are knowledgeable enough.

Worse, when you want to point out a flaw, you need to build an exhaustive list of reddit posts, archive org pages and so on and face trial because unless you give every single piece of evidence then your complaint is invalid. And I’m sorry but normal people just don’t have time for this shit.

Remember that joke? Ask for help and you get no response; Say linux sucks because you can’t do X and you get dozens of apologetic posts explaining step by step how to do stuff.

Turns out there’s some truth behind that joke.

Ah yes, end users have no right to point out a software’s flaws unless they’re better than the developers who made it.

Don’t tell me you forgot what a “non technical end user” is?

Users can’t even add a feature request because they’re met with a storm of insults and snobbery.

Well, I have some news for you: You can’t hope for the year of the Linux desktop and keep treating end users like shit.

Wayland is still too immature. I couldn’t get it to work on my Kubuntu distro.

And then there’s this list of problems with Wayland.

https://gist.github.com/probonopd/9feb7c20257af5dd915e3a9f2d1f2277

BEGIN RANT

“Move fast and break things” may be fine for software gurus who love to experiment and have no problem hitting their head against the wall every few days while believing in the promise of a free-to-fix future, but this isn’t true for poor or busy people who are NOT middle class folks living in their own house in a suburb with a garage full of computer parts. There are single parents, caregivers with disabled and/or elderly, folks who need a reliable computer for their studies, and in general people who simply need something that JUST WORKS.

I’m a caregiver, and unfortunate I’m poor enough that I don’t have money to buy a commercial OS. Heck, I wish Windows just worked instead of making old versions obsolete. I was perfectly fine with Windows 7 ten years ago until Microsoft started doing planned obsolescence bullshit with their forced updates. I had to switch to Linux because Windows became very unreliable and I needed a stable platform that wouldn’t ruin my work.

(So if you’re one of the persons who reply to “Help my Linux is having problems” with “well you should know Linux is like that, you should have thought it twice before switching”, then you’re part of the problem because that’s a very, very shitty answer to give to a non technical end user with limited time and resources)

The year of the Linux desktop will never arrive if developers keep pushing incomplete and buggy software to the end users instead of actually fixing bugs and delivering their stuff ONLY when they’re ready.

Wayland is NOT ready for the end user.

END RANT.