That was fast! It only just landed a few days ago

Quality over quantity.

1. Meta is so well known for having good moderating. (/s)

2. Meta is so well known for promoting posts that are active hate-speech. (For example, CW in Link: suggested “Threads” posts on Instagram have shown transphobic posts to me Which kind of goes back to point 1, terrible moderation. Btw, my partner is involved with Queer Activism on facebook and so it’s not like I am being targeted for hateful ads. This is just what they decided to promote, probably because it got a lot of comments and shares. Oh, why do we want Threads users who are actively sharing this rhetoric? Seems antithetical to the entire concept that the fediverse was founded on.

3. What happens to the rest of the fediverse when it’s overrun by millions of Threads users, hundreds of thousands of them promoting this sort of content? All defederated instances will now have to pick and choose - something we already do, but I would say we only need to look at Lemmy.World to see why this is a bad thing, as imagine Threads communities become the regularly used ones, so now any instances that defederate don’t have access to the most active community. In turn, this either kills the defederated communities by keeping these communities small, or actively encourages those new to the fediverse to just join Threads since it has “the most active” communities.

4. Now that there are millions of threads users, what happens to smaller instances that are now being overrun by traffic that their server couldn’t handle, or malicious users on Threads - with Lemmy’s moderation tools this can be a cumbersome and difficult process since, from my understanding, this becomes a case-by-case situation for the Instance Moderator, all while the Threads Moderating Team will likely do nothing and ignore the inflammatory users. From my understanding, you can have 1 Threads account per Instagram Profile, and users can have 5 Instagram Profiles. Obviously, this is also a Lemmy issue, but with Instance Admins having control over their users, Threads as an Instance Admin historically hasn’t seemed to be great.

5. The Fediverse is some ~1.5m users. Threads is already 100m. As mentioned about server load, there’s also just the entire idea of it being so big that it naturally becomes a vital resource. E1) Extend. As it becomes widely used, Meta starts taking an interest in the future of ActivityPub. E2) Embrace. And finally, now that it is established and smaller instances are either defederated or have some form of, effectively a shadowban, all that is realistically left is Threads content. E3) Extinguish.

Is the fediverse being more accessible a good thing? Absolutely, not many are arguing that. The idea is that Threads gets so big that ActivityPub either can’t exist without Threads, or Threads leeches the userbase from the rest of the Fediverse. Someone you like is on Threads but not the rest of the Fedi? Well, why have a Lemmy.ML account when you can just have your Threads account?

Before you know it, we’re back to only having one website again for all of our social media needs.

No Sony Xperia 1IV sadly

This is pretty much the only way that I use AI. It can brainstorm 50 ideas faster than I can and format them in a way that I can actually get started on projects rather than planning out each step.

AI is pretty strong at what I have been calling “permanent facts”. Using any song as an example, it will always have the same key, tempo, scales, etc. As such, when asking for details about a song, listing out the key, scales, tempo, and asking it to show unconventional scales that will play over it. Another example of a permanent fact would be the death date of someone, as that isn’t really going to be changing.

On the other hand, temporary facts are where hallucination and other inaccuracies come in. There’s no way for LLM’s to get new information, so it doesn’t know about career changes, current ages or net worth. You can utilize permanent facts to get accurate information about temporary facts, but that’s not nearly as useful. I think one of the major issues people have with LLM’s (model creation aside) is that our society really values temporary facts, and so when it gets it wrong people like to point at that as a fault. Which it certainly is, but to me it’s kind of like pointing at Photoshop and laughing that it can’t even be used to write a book - like, OK but that’s not really it’s purpose?

I think another example of LLM’s definitely being useful was all of those privacy nightmare Excel/Sheets plugins. Privacy aside, that’s basically the ideal use-case for LLM’s as you are pointing out Permanent Facts (the data in cells A-Z) and having it sort them in some fashion. I’ve seen a lot of LLM hallucinations for sure, but I’ve also seen a lot of consistency when actually using it as intended. I’ve yet to have it be “wrong” when I was testing my music information template or when sorting out data in excel.

Much outside of that though, no. It’s only useful as getting mass amounts of theory in a short session, not so much for being reliable in that information. That might sound like a bad tool, but as mentioned it has plenty of use-cases, people are just using it as a tool very, very poorly. (It can also be used maliciously more easily than most other tools, which definitely prohibits its status as a “good” tool.)

Commenting so I can come back to this later with the site, I can’t recall the name at the moment

Alrighty, it looks like the list has grown and I can’t remember what site I had used previously, so here are a couple options. It looks like they all roughly have the same format of: create account, fill out games from database, possibly account and app linking options.

In no particular order:

How long to beat: create an account, has a games library for your profile

Keep track of my games: create an account, “pay what you want”-ware (free), can import gaming accounts (Steam PSN etc) to fill out list.

Backloggd: Create an account, can fill out games to your library and has space for reviews and other user profiles

Grouvee: Create an accout - homepage is pretty minimal

Gametracker: Seems more “game team” oriented but it has a spot for filling out a games library

GameTrack: Has an IOS app as well, can link gaming accounts for achievements, can make lists to sort games

Playtracker: Create an account, looks like there is a software download for the computer

Stash: Has both Android and IOS apps,

Of all of these, the feature sets look basically the same, the main differences seem to be UI layouts and more niche options of sorting/filling out. All of them look to need an account (expected). Since I can’t recall which, if any of these, I had used in the past I will just say that the websites for Playtracker, Backloggd, and How Long To Beat looked the “best”.

Hopefully this helped and didn’t just give you more choice anxiety, lol.

I forgot to say, when a show fails to highlight something properly, it puts it at risk of being seen as perpetuative instead. This is why shows like The Boys and IASIP get latched onto by the conservative demographic, as by failing to highlight an issue, the audience can very easily ignore them and use these characters as self inserts. This means that even a show with all intents to highlight issues can still perpetuate negative things simply because they failed to do a good job at highlighting the problem.

Let me just say, I have found that my barometer is, “does it perpetuate the issue or does it highlight it.” I find that IASIP does a gold job highlighting issues, and if people choose to ignore that that says a lot more about them than the show. In regards to the Jerry and Dreyfus commentary about comedy today, IASIP is a perfect example of a show reframing how they talk about _____. I think we can look to Dennis for this example, as a creepy, high libido man who wears a whole different face and manipulates women into sex, in early seasons (after it’s established), his character in 2007 says things like, “you want to see real girls going wild*” and in 2023 he has a whole monologue about learning how to sleep with leftist vs. rightwinger women. His dynamic has stayed the same, how the show uses comedy around the situation has evolved. To put it frankly, Jerry Seinfeld doesn’t like his stuff to be grown up, hence his issues with the evolution of comedy.

In the case of Drawn Together, when the pig straight up said “I just don’t like black people!” And wiggles his eyes and smiles, to me it comes off less as highlighting an issue and more just being crass and edgy because it can. You’re right that at no point does it try to present any of these characters as good in the first episode, but I would argue that it doesn’t really try and make any point with any of them either. It seems to exist just to take existing characters and put them in a reality TV style situation. The link character is a gay twink just to be funny, not to highlight anything.

Not everything needs to have a point, but it certainly helps when your content is dealing with terrible characters who are actively perpetuating a very poor way of acting. For example, if The Gang rarely has actual consequences in IASIP, but the way the characters are written makes it clear that they are aiming to highlight certain social issues and use these characters as a way to frame perspectives of each side of the issue. Them being awful is a way to deliver the commentary.

Again this is just from the first episode and so I’m not going to speak for the entirety of the show, that would just be wrong. But from the research I did after the fact and comparing it as a pilot episode from the early 2000’s to others, if we simply look at “The Gang Gets Racist” (episode 1 of IASIP, 2005) and Episode 1 of Drawn Together (2004} the former makes clear statements about culture and character, that people will give up thing that make them uncomfortable for money, and that people who say they will support a cause might stop when they don’t get recognition (and money). Just an example as this is just 1 of a hundred possible reads, because the show does a good job at framing the awfulness of the characters and the situation. This dynamic is one that they’ll come to revisit, as you have 2 sets of characters on one side, 2 on the other, and then they meet in the middle (or blow right past each other per the Gun Fever episode)

Now, the pilot of Drawn Together on the other hand is a direct to video, which from my understanding the show was picked up by Comedy Central after the fact. The focus of the episode seems to be a lot more shock factor, which for a show that wasn’t initially intended to be aired, I can’t really fault it. But, watch Betty Boop and Cinderella become lesbian, watch a smoking Pikachu say Toyota and Hyundai, there’s a lot of stuff happening but not a lot of stuff that I personally could easily point to and say, “now that’s good social commentary!”. And it’s okay for the show to not be created with the intent of highlighting these issues, it just means that rewatching it is watching something that has aged very poorly. The actual content of the episode is just playing with the idea of what reality TV is like, making fun of behind the scenes style footage while playing up the drama.

I think they definitely were able to highlight some issues, such as how some characters used sex to deal with avoidance and how people do certain actions to cope, but I wouldn’t say that my takeaway was that Betty Boop was being used to highlight these things. The show and the characters were treating her as the joke, in my opinion thus perpetuating this problem. For me it just didn’t do a good enough job at making the distinction, so each component fell apart. The reality TV set is a great medium, the… extremeness of each character sets a very strong stage and expectation, but the end result turned out to be saying and doing edgy things to make the audience gasp. Which, after 20 years, doesn’t give a lot of room for any sort of social commentary with staying power.

I’m sure that season 2 and 3 do a better job at attempting to have some social commentary, however I do have my doubts that there was ever a point that Ling Ling the racist Pikachu could really make. In regards to liking it back then, comedy changing, racism existing… I think all I need to really say is that a show succeeds by making it clear to the audience what the joke is. In IASIP, every single character is the butt of the joke because they are an idiot that thinks they are smart, so we laugh at them.

In what I saw from Drawn Together, every single character is the joke, because they are an extreme stereotype or caricature. We’re supposed to be laughing at Betty Boop cutting after being fat shamed and for being emo. We’re supposed to laugh at Ling Ling saying the names of asian cars as his language. We’re supposed to laugh at the pig explicitly saying he is racist. At no point did the episode even attempt to give these characters consequences or make a setup for why they are the way they are. They simply exist to be a stereotype to laugh through, and I say this because the show gave no reasoning to believe otherwise. As in, what is the point of Ling Ling? To be an Asian stereotype. Because at no point does the show try to make him be anything else.

Finally, I should say that comedy is an ever-evolving medium and that rarely does comedy age well, almost inherently due to the nature of it being so strongly linked to a specific cultural era. That is nearly the sole reason that comedy doesn’t age well. However, there’s a huge nuance in this, because there can be more than 1 reason why comedy doesn’t age well. If we look to analyze comedy in American cinema, we would have to look at blackslpoitation films which dominated the 1920’s. We would almost universally say that none of these are funny today for a litany of reasons. But even when you go to actually study the writing, that sucked too! The jokes were bad and not funny. Because these were written for white people to point and laugh at the funny black people. The humor back then was racism. So not only was the writing shit, but the reasons for it as well.

So, to say that “racism exists” - yeah, obviously which is why comedy should work extra hard to utilize that and make it humorous. It’s Always Sunny does this nearly perfectly in its very first aired episode, having a gay black actor in Philly dating Dee and Mac saying things like “so you people actually are related!” You can make fun of anything, that doesn’t mean it will be funny. Sometimes, people aren’t laughing because it’s funny but because they’re uncomfortable. Sometimes, people are laughing because it’s how they feel.

That last bit is important, because if you’re going “oh man it’s so true it’s so true!” And you’re reacting to Spanky Ham talking about Foxxy Love… well, let’s just say it’s probably the same type of person unhappy about The Boys S3 and S4, or IASIP past season 12. They don’t like it because they finally realized it’s making fun of them.

Tl;Dr does comedy perpetuate an issue or highlight it?

This show was really fucked up lmao my partner and I stayed at an Airbnb and while looking for something to watch and she saw this was like “honey this is kinda raunchy but we HAVE to watch it since you haven’t seen it” and then 10 minutes in we had to turn it off because of how awful it was haha. Fat shaming goth cutter Betty boop, gay link, racist Pikachu, hypersexual pedo superman, generally just racist to every possible point like the pig character and stereotypes.

My partner just said, “the racist characters existing themselves I could handle, it was the racism they were perpetuating that made me tap out” lmao. [Edit: I said it already but I feel the need to re-iterate, this was all in the first 10 minutes!! end edit.]

But to your point, this sort of show done right would be hilarious with the public domain characters lol

No. I have a few fediverse accounts, Beehaw, Kbin, Leminal, SlrPnk, and 2 mastodon ones that I made cause I didn’t know what would stick.

Beehaw is by far my favorite. It looks like most of my issues are already covered here. Lemmy.world specifically is so awful, for every 1-3 normal, chill people looking for a reddit alternative there’s 5-10 powermods and powerusers who make it just unbearable. It’s the same for quite a few others too, that at this point I can’t even keep track.

In order of values based on curation, Beehaw, Kbin, Slpnk/Leminal. Beehaw needs no curation as it is curated, Kbin despite the issues lately has generally been great, a few users who act poorly but that’s just a widespread thing online. It’s really just been the spam accounts lately. Then… Instances that are federated with .world/etc like slrpnk and leminal, by default it’s just so awful to read. Browsing not logged in on places? Oh man. The perspectives, rhetoric, and visible mod abuse is just so bad right now thanks to the U.S. political year, in some ways worse than Reddit pre-extreme corpo takeover.

Because of all of this, I really appreciate how easy Beehaw is. You can talk philosophy and have differences of opinion and it’s not something that lingers. Beehaw, like a small community, has people you recognize and see around and I appreciate everyone I see here, and rarely have I disagreed. And I’m not coming from an echo-chamber perspective, but the way we carry ourselves. The snark here is minimal, humorous, and when it happens, seems warranted. When it isn’t, genuine apology occurs. That’s something that doesn’t happen often. People put effort into comments, there’s occasional one-liners which I’m guilty of myself when I’m just browsing or tired or it’s just something that doesn’t have much to go deep into.

So the way I see it, if someone wants something not closed off, it’s not that hard to make an account and have it bookmarked. Beehaw is different, but I have the same usernames on my other ones (Wolf Shadowheart). I keep coming back to Beehaw.

Monkey’s Paw wish granted: The PS6 is a dedicated gaming PC that can only play Sony games.

I more meant in the case of someone whose life was cut short and didn’t have the time to put something like this together. I agree that ideally this is information you’d get to pass down, but life doesn’t always work out like that.

Also like you said about the AI powered app, it’s only a matter of time before Adobe Historical Life comes out and we’re paying $90 a month for gramma’s recipes (stories are an additional subscription).

Typical lack of direction

This makes me wonder, what is the difference in the environmental cost of uploading/downloading this data vs. shipping a USB.

I would guess that shipping emissions would be higher than digital ones, but I don’t have any basis for that theory. (I’m just curious, not trying to say or imply anything here)

The damage is done since people will critique Mozilla for anything that isn’t snuffing Google.

I’m glad they reversed the decision.

Yeah contrary to all the negativity about this in this thread, I think there’s a lot of worthwhile reasons for this that aren’t centered on fawning over the loss of a love one. Think of how many family recipes could be preserved. Think of the stories that you can be retold in 10 years. Think of the little things that you’d easily forget as time passes. These are all ways of keeping someone with us without making their death the main focus.

Yes, death and moving on are a part of life, we also always say to keep people alive in our hearts. I think there are plenty of ways to keep people around us alive without having them present, I don’t think an AI version of someone is inherently keeping your spirit from continuing on, nor is it inherently keeping your loved one from living in the moment.

Also I can’t help but think of the Star Trek computer but with this. When I was young I had a close gaming friend who we lost too soon, he was very much an announcer personality. He would have been perfect for being my voice assistant, and would have thought it to be hilarious.

Anyway, I definitely see plenty of downsides, don’t get me wrong. The potential for someone to wallow with this is high. I also think there’s quite a few upsides as mentioned – they aren’t ephemeral, but I think it’s somewhat fair to pick and choose good memories to pass down to remember. Quite a few old philosophical advents coming to fruition with tech these days.

This is true for stone and fossils, would this also be the case for crystal? I’m under the impression that their chain is pretty much set in stone (pun not intended), to the point where longevity would mostly be risked by cracking damage. Similar to how we see the striations of lightning strikes.

Could also definitely be survivorship though!

I really do wonder why it’s taking so long for stone-striation storage to be a thing. We have proof that data will surpass 150m years through fossils, so why the heck did we think that flash storage was a good idea!

I really dislike this trend of suggesting people to buy Google phones specifically to de-Google them. Like, shouldn’t we be avoiding giving them sales?

I get it, the phones are decent. I just think it’s kind of counter-intuitive.

It’s a phone service and business communications. I have to use it for work

You people are paying for Windows licenses?