If writers use AI to do the writing for them, they’re not writers, they’re prompters that want credit for “writing” what the AI model they’re using is producing.

In the same way, someone who has a piano programmed to play a song can’t be proud of having played it themselves, because it wasn’t their work that made the piano play.

That’s not “black-and-white-only thinking”, it’s just a reasonable analogy for what a writer “writing” with AI actually is, which isn’t a writer.

If we don’t call film directors “actors” because their actions partially result in the film being made the way it is, and we don’t call people pressing the “play x song” button on an electric piano musicians just for having caused the piano to play with that button, why should we call someone who tells an AI model to write a book for them a writer? These are fundamentally different roles, so we call them what they are. If you’re not writing, you’re not a writer, you’re an AI user. Seems entirely reasonable to me.

Works the same on DuckDuckGo for those who don’t have a Kagi subscription!

Yup.

Pull some strings to keep stories out of traditional print media about it? The stuff on social media has already been clipped and reposted a billion times.

Buried the plaintiff’s legal team in paperwork? Here’s another video on your obviously scummy tactics that clearly indicate to most average people you’re not acting in good faith and probably have something to hide/defend that’s unjust, making even less people trust your company going forward.

Know you won’t get sued for that much because it’s just one claimaint? A ton of people who watched the videos now want to sign on to a class action.

The only solution if they’re truly in the wrong is to fix the problem, or pay up in court.

…

Or hope it blows over because people’s memories are notoriously short so that sometimes works too 💀

If you don’t understand your tools, you should be even more careful with it.

In this case, the “tools” are a settings menu in your phone. Should I and every other person (who are likely much less tech literate) have to deeply investigate the exact inner workings of every single setting just to use it?

Should I have to check when I turn dark mode on that there’s not an LLM under the hood rewriting code for apps that don’t support dark mode to make them dark anyways just because that’s a theoretical possibility for them to have done? After all, a simple button that just says “Fix x passwords” is no different from “Enable Dark Mode” in most people’s eyes. You tap it, it does what it says it does. That’s how people see it. If I hit the dark mode button on my phone, I don’t expect it to turn my apps yellow, and most people aren’t expecting that kind of possible variation from any setting on their phone.

Especially if one has learned that those tools are prone to malfunction.

As mentioned previously, not only does this feature not clearly display that it uses an AI model under the hood at all, but many people also assume that a tool implemented by a company like Apple directly into the operating system would probably be reliable if it handles sensitive data. Could that be considered foolish? Maybe. But I don’t believe people are stupid for assuming the multi trillion dollar company that didn’t even indicate the system used AI wouldn’t implement a system to change their passwords if it could easily fuck up and lock them out.

I don’t blame people for it, honestly. If this massive company is telling them that this tool will work as advertised, and clearly believes in it because it’s being widely rolled out across their devices, most people who simply don’t understand the intricacies will believe they’re not being lied to, or at least deceived as to how capable the feature really could be against adversarial attacks or unfavorable circumstances.

People aren’t necessarily stupid per se, they just aren’t constantly skeptical of every single possible claim, and familiar enough with the underlying subjects to understand it in the first place.

In this case, it’s genuinely just “hit the big blue ‘Fix x passwords’ button” and it’s done. Most users won’t even realize it uses an AI model under the hood, and will just assume it’s something to do with how the internet works. And honestly, can we really blame people for that when it’s designed in such a simplistic manner?

I love it. Does more than just a lawsuit on its own since it simultaneously does public awareness and advocacy work, plus it’s kinda just entertaining to see people have beef with corpos

They’re also on Nebula (paid though)

“Sex-testing” children in schools sounds like something you’d find in a niche pervert hentai drooled over by 4chan /pol/ board weirdos

You’re telling me the party that actively wants to destroy women’s rights while supporting a pedophile in office would… try to do things that pedophiles and rapists would like? Say it ain’t so! /s

Who would have guessed that if you outsource your information gathering abilities to a computer, people will just optimize their content so it gets picked up more by the computer regardless of its validity? Who could have seen this coming?!?!?!??!?

It is monopolistic. If I start a brand new company and try to pull that, nobody will respect my pricing scheme. The only way you can enforce such a pricing scheme (if you don’t have regulatory power) is to be large enough that ignoring you loses more revenue than it gains, whether or not people want you to be in that position of power.

If Steam charges 30%, then just like Amazon, they don’t have to restrict your ability to sell elsewhere for it to be bad for both the studio and the consumer.

If my game is $100, and $30 goes to Valve, and I want to make $100 in profit, I have to raise my game’s price to around $143. Even if another storefront offered 0% fees, I would have to sell there for $143 if I wanted to not be delisted from Steam.

Everyone pays a higher price, even if they don’t use Steam. Either that, or developers make less overall by keeping prices the same and losing Valve’s cut, which means less money for developers, servers, etc.

This is monopolistic because if someone tries to price their game lower elsewhere, making the same profit while paying less fees, and giving their players a cheaper price, instead of that just being regular 'ol competition, Valve gets to remove their main buyer base entirely unless they keep giving Valve a cut of most of their sales.

Other storefronts might not be great, but you don’t even get the ability to make a good storefront if your competition can just say “I already have most of the users, if you try to compete with me on price, I’ll remove all of your games from my platform and take away most of the market.”

New one seems fine to me, haven’t had any issues with it, haven’t been privy to any malicious behavior or past actions that the developers might have done, so personally I find it pretty trustworthy.

it was never as simple as “pick file, send file”.

Not really what Syncthing’s for. Localsend is definitely much better suited for that. (though there is the option on the unofficial Syncthing Android app to use the Android share feature to “save to Syncthing”, then pick which folder you want Syncthing to save it to before syncing it to whatever devices that folder is synced with, though again, not really made for that as a core feature, Localsend is better for that)

Syncthing is more for if you just want a folder on one device to be replicated to another device. For example, my Camera folder on my phone syncs to my PC so I always have a second copy of all my photos by default.

That if something is marketed with health-based language or claims, it must be true. (or that things that are healthy offset other unhealthy activities/behaviors/consumption, i.e. “I might have eaten a ton of ice cream today, but I had a lot of protein so that’ll make up for it”)

Way too many people buy into “healthy” products, especially the very expensive ones, without doing so much as a single search regarding if it’s even necessary for them, or if that particular product is even healthy in the way it appears.

People think anything with protein is inherently healthy, and the more the better, even if their body can’t use all the protein they consume, so they’ll eat multiple protein bars, have meat with every meal, and drink a protein shake every day.

Someone on social media says eating all raw meat and drinking raw milk is healthy, and they don’t even look up how much more likely you are to get a disease from consuming them. (not to mention the impact on their wallet)

A drink will be advertised as a “wellness shot” and is just some fruit juice with ginger, but people will pay 8 bucks for it every day assuming it’ll revolutionize their health, then drink a bunch of beer later that night and wonder why they feel awful later.

Hell, people will even take multivitamins or supplement powders that have 100’s of %'s of their recommended daily intake, and just assume that if they get 500% of their recommended vitamin B, they’ll magically become “healthy” by doing so, instead of “only” getting 100%.

I wouldn’t call it capitalist propaganda to state the fact that, for example, the top 10% of wealth holders are responsible for TWO THIRDS of global warming caused by carbon emissions, with just the top 1% being responsible for 23%.

If anything, that could be called anti-capitalist propaganda, because it actively targets the wealthiest parasitic class in our society and demonstrates that their excessive consumption, funded by the wealth they extract from people’s labor, is responsible for most of our emissions.

Individuals can do things to lessen the impacts their consumption creates on the planet, but it doesn’t change the fact that the biggest current source of emissions is the wealthy.

I could buy eco-friendly soap, compostable toothbrush heads, thrift all my clothes, only buy more expensive but advertised-as-repairable devices, carefully cut around small grease stains on cardboard boxes to ensure it’s recyclable, and refuse to ever buy a drink at the store and only use a water bottle instead.

Those are all examples of actions that almost certainly would help the climate and environment more than if I wasn’t doing them… but if I’m coming back home from a long day at work for a company that sends all its profits to a billionaire who just took a private jet flight to and from lunch on some tropical island somewhere, and I just want to not feel like shit that night, is the most effective strategy really to shame me if I take a warm shower and eat some ice cream out of a non-compostable tub, or is it to concentrate everyone’s shame and collective actions onto that billionaire?

Her 2024 Australian tour was delayed then cancelled after the Australian government refused to give her a visa as she had the “capacity to incite discord”, a decision the high court backed in October.

lmao

There is no definitive evidence linking the new F.D.A. guidance to the lunch, the donation or specific lobbying.

And yet…

At the lunch, the tobacco industry representatives expressed dissatisfaction with the way the Food and Drug Administration was regulating the industry

Mr. Trump interrupted the conversation to call Dr. Marty Makary, the F.D.A. commissioner.

When Mr. Makary did not answer, the president dialed Dr. Makary’s boss, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and another top health official, Dr. Mehmet Oz

Less than one week later, the F.D.A. issued new guidance that could pave the way for major tobacco companies to begin selling flavored vapes and to snare a chunk of the $6 billion e-cigarette market away from illegal Chinese competitors.

To borrow your analogy, gametes range from 0 - 1 and 100 - 101. That’s a binary.

There is also the absence of gametes entirely. Hence, you can’t just rely on gametes to determine sex unless you also think humans can be sex-less.

You’re also presupposing, again, that gametes must be the sole way we determine sex, therefore if they are a binary, sex is a binary. You can have something that is a binary that is also irrelevant or not the sole determiner of what something is as part of another category.

What makes the reset of their body “typically male”?

This is broadly considered by most people for most purposes to be the phenotypic characteristics we most often associate with people considered male. We determined that a group of people commonly had a similar set of phenotypic characteristics, and applied the term “male” to it. This is subjectively determined by society. We could have additionally defined sex based on skin colors, the size or shape of reproductive organs, eye color, etc. We just decided we wanted a category to broadly define people’s phenotypic characteristics, so we looked at the two most distinct, broad groups, and didn’t bother splitting up further. The category does not have a sole, objective determiner, as I’ve demonstrated to you multiple times now. You can have one gamete, both gametes, neither gametes, or only have or stop having a particular gamete at a different point in your life. They do not make for a bulletproof framework underlying sex determination.

It is like asking me to define what a “chair” is. I could say something with a flat surface, back, and 4 legs, but that could accommodate a bench or a bed, for example. it has objectively measurable characteristics, most chairs will be readily identified as a chair and not a bench or a bed by most people, but you will also find some pieces of furniture that are just close enough for people to have differing opinions on. There is no objective measurement. This is annoying to our human brains that love to have a more concrete understanding of things, which is why the outdated idea of the sex binary persists in spite of all evidence of those who don’t land neatly on either side.

Later, as science has progressed, we have found that many people do not solely have this similar set of phenotypic or genotypic characteristics, or have the same phenotypic characteristics with different genotypic ones. Thus, we have expanded our understanding of what sex is to clarify that we know it is not a binary, since we can see that individuals exist without fitting neatly into these groups. This is why the term intersex exists. Science changes when we learn more about the natural world, you are just refusing to acknowledge the advancements we have made in our understanding of human sex over time.

Welcome to the scientific consensus.

I could say the same to you, but you seem intent on rejecting what we’ve learned because it’s not as neat and simple as you want it to be. Sex is messy, sex is a spectrum, nearly all scientists agree on this fact.

I can tell this isn’t a productive conversation, and you seem to be dead set on staying exactly where you are, comfortably holding the same beliefs irrespective of all evidence, so I’m going to mute this thread for myself now. Feel free to respond, but you won’t get another response from me, it’d be a waste of my time.

Should have figured you’d cite a known anti-trans organization that distorts scientific reality to make a point. (oh boy, I sure do wonder why they have an article titled “8-Step Action Plan to Eliminate Gender Ideology”, surely because they actually understand broadly accepted and heavily researched science and not because they just want to make a political point while sounding scientific!)

They think sex can only be determined by gametes. This ignores the fundamental reality that many humans do not produce either of them while retaining wholly ambiguous or non-ambiguous reproductive organs, that some humans can produce both (albeit rarely), or that some humans lose or gain the ability to produce one throughout their lives. (not producing ova until puberty? Tough luck, guess you’re not a female! Body hasn’t fully developed internal reproductive organs until later in life? Guess you’re sex-less until then! Does your body never produce sperm or ova because of a genetic issue? Guess it’s impossible to assign you a sex!)

It also ignores the fact that we tend to classify sex based on phenotypic characteristics. If someone has a penis, generally masculine face and fat distribution, but XX chromosomes and is still able to sometimes produce ova while not producing sperm, even if they’re missing the rest of the necessary reproductive functions, for all intensive purposes, you would call that person male. If every other part of their body is typically male, there is no reason to continually insist that person is actually a female because somewhere inside their body they can produce ova that don’t do anything.

If sex is determined by gametes, there are exceptions to the rule that can’t be classified solely as one or the other.

If sex is determined by chromosomes, then any exception from XX or XY disproves the rule.

If sex is determined by phenotypic characteristics, then we see a spectrum in how they present.

This also simply ignores the fundamental reality that even if you can oversimplify a complex condition into one of two more common options, it doesn’t mean that is correct or accurate to do so.

To use the analogy I used before, you could say that all numbers for simplicity, should be rounded to either 1 or 0, even if it’s 0.9, 0.2, or 0.2398547293875. That could be useful shorthand, and it could generally describe semi-closely how those numbers would operate within a broadly binary system, but at the end of the day those numbers are not 0 or 1.

Claiming that “0.9 = 1” would be stupid.

Claiming “0.9 is basically 1 so why bother ever giving it a different label” would be stupid.

Claiming “0.9 is close enough to 1 to not make a huge difference in outward perception and day-to-day use, so we can rely on it for shorthand while understanding 0.9 is not 1” would be very reasonable.

You cannot look at a spectrum, say “they’re still within the other 2, therefore there’s only 2”, and call it a day.

It’s true these conditions can present similarly to one of the two typical male or female sets of characteristics, or that they can derive from what are often the typical chromosomes of either group. It’s not true that they are male or female and there is only a binary and nothing else.

Variation within a binary makes it, by definition, not a binary system.

Binary is 1 and 0. If you can have 1.5, or 1.234098723, you don’t have a binary system, you have a spectrum.

For example, take this beautifully complicated diagram from Scientific American:

Typical biological males and females are on either end of the spectrum, yet other options exist in between. Hence, not a binary, but a spectrum.

What do you call someone with XY chromosomes but female reproductive structures? How about someone with XX or XY chromosomes but ambiguous genitals, or someone with XXXYY chromosomes? What about someone with mosaicism that causes some cells in their body to have just the X chromosome, and some to have XY, with varying changes in what % each makes up of their body throughout their life?

All of those are real conditions, and that’s just a fraction of them.

The reason this essentialism is stupid is because it assumes a spectrum can in fact be boiled down to a binary, and also that the spectrum must specifically begin, end, and be defined by what is “typical”, and assuming anyone’s sex must solely be determined by its proximity to one of the two options, rather than simply… being allowed to be its own thing that isn’t binary, because the reality, obviously, isn’t.

I personally have used Proton and Tuta, and both have been pretty good to me, it just depends on what you want and how much you want to spend.

Proton is a lot more worth it if you also want additional features that would otherwise cost more to buy on their own, like cloud storage, or a VPN. (they also have a calendar, password manager, docs & sheets editing, video conferencing, and more) It also comes with unlimited email aliases if you pay for it, whereas Tuta has limits on how many aliases you can create unless you use your own domain, which then makes them much more easily fingerprintable.

Tuta is definitely cheaper though, has a much simpler and more janky UI, and has both mail and a calendar, but no cloud storage to my knowledge. They run on more green energy than Proton does, but I find they have less quality of life features than Proton. If all you need is just a cheap way to send and receive emails, with end-to-end encryption, Tuta’s definitely way cheaper than Proton and probably worth it in that case.

For Thunderbird, Tuta has add-ons to allow it to work with Thunderbird, and Proton requires a background application running to decrypt and pass along emails to Thunderbird.

Any encrypted email will require some form of add-on or bridge between them and Thunderbird since they require a way to utilize their particular form of end-to-end encryption, otherwise all your emails would appear as gibberish in Thunderbird.