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Cake day: July 7th, 2023

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  • Yeah, this can be an unpopular opinion on Lemmy, because there’s a giant Linux circlejerk. But the unfortunate reality is that changing to Linux does have some major stumbling blocks. The “switching is so easy, just do it” crowd totally glosses over it, but that’s kind of rhetoric doesn’t help long term adoption. Because if some new user has only heard “switching is so easy” and immediately runs into issues, they’ll be more likely to go “well if it’s super easy and I can’t figure it out, I guess it’s just not for me” and abandon things.

    There’s also a very vocal (and toxic) part of the Linux community that basically just screams “RTFM” at every newbie question. New users shouldn’t be expected to dig into a 350 page technical document just to learn the basics of their new OS.



  • The fact that you don’t need to actually supply any real CSAM to the training material is the reasoning being offered for supporting AI CSAM. It’s gross, but it’s also hard to argue with.

    Yeah, this is basically the crux of the issue. When you get into the weeds and start looking at more than just surface-level “but it needs CSAM to make CSAM” misconception, arguments against it basically boil down to “but it’s icky.” Which… Yeah. It is. But should something being icky automatically make it illegal, even if there are no victims?

    I hate to make the comparison (for a variety of reasons) but until fairly recently homosexuality was psychologically classed as a form of destructive/dangerous kink. Largely because straight people had the same “but it’s icky” response whenever it got brought up. And we have tried to move away from that as time has passed, because we have recognized that being gay is not just a kink, it’s not just a choice, and it’s not inherently dangerous or harmful.

    To contrast that, pedophilia has remained stigmatized. Because even if it passed the first two “it’s not just a kink/choice” tests, it still failed the “it’s not harmful” test. Consuming CSAM was inherently harmful, and always had a victim. There was no ethical way to view CSAM. But now with AI, it can actually begin passing that third test as well.

    I don’t know how I feel about it, myself. The idea of “ethically-sourced” CSAM doesn’t exactly sit right with me, but if it’s possible to make it in a truly victimless manner, then I find it hard to argue outright banning something just because I don’t like it.

    This is really the biggest hurdle. To be clear, I’m not arguing that being an active pedo should be decriminalized. But it is worth examining whether we’re basing criminality purely off of the instinctual “but it’s icky” response that the public has when it gets discussed. And is that response enough of a justification for making/keeping it illegal? And if your answer to that was “yes”, what if it could help pedos avoid consuming real CSAM, and therefore reduce the number of future victims? If it could legitimately help reduce the number of victims but you still want to criminalize it, then you are not actually focused on reducing harm; You’re focused on feeling righteous instead. The biggest issue right now is that harm reduction is very hard to study, because it is such a taboo topic. Even finding subjects to self-report is difficult or impossible. So we’ll have no idea what kinds of impacts on CSAM consumption (positive or negative) AI will realistically have until after it is widely available.




  • If you already have a Plex instance running, Prologue is an app that turns it into an audiobook host as well. Plex doesn’t natively support audiobook metadata like chapters, but Prologue simply uses Plex’s remote access to reach the files.

    All you do is throw the .m4b audiobook files into a music library on Plex, sign into your Plex account on Prologue, and Prologue handles all of the metadata for the audiobooks instead of using Plex’s built-in music player.

    I mention this because I had massive issues trying to get ABS to work on my setup. It simply refused to read or write any data from my NAS. After a day or two of throwing myself at it to no avail, I found Prologue and haven’t looked back. I already had Plex running for some friends and family, so setting up the music library was as easy as dropping the audiobooks into a folder.





  • Yeah, people complain about roombas not giving a super deep clean… But they’re really not intended to do so. They’re meant to be a daily maintenance clean. They may not be great for when you dump an entire can of coffee grounds in your carpet… But they’re wonderful when you have a big dog with lots of fur that needs to be vacuumed every single day.



  • I’d argue that those are Sony movies, not Marvel.

    Back when Marvel was financially struggling, they started selling off rights to various characters. Sony bought Spider-Man (and a handful of other characters), and that’s where the Tobey Maguire movies came from. It’s also why the X-men will likely never be a part of the MCU, because Sony owns the movie rights to (most of) the mutants.

    The Spiderverse movies are basically Sony riding the wake of the Tom Holland hype. To be clear, they’re phenomenal movies. But they’re only tangentially related to Marvel.