Lia's recent activity
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Comment on The worlds on fire. So lets just make AI porn. in ~tech
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Comment on The worlds on fire. So lets just make AI porn. in ~tech
Lia LinkSo, just to double check: the text is your people language version of the original rant, pt. 1/4? I'm about half way through and I'm thoroughly "enjoying" it, in the sense of feeling immense...So, just to double check: the text is your people language version of the original rant, pt. 1/4?
I'm about half way through and I'm thoroughly "enjoying" it, in the sense of feeling immense relief that there are people out there who get it and who care enough to at least try to say something. Who is the target audience here? Is it just sort of everyone in the world? I would strongly encourage you guys to figure out a more narrow sub-target group that you especially optimise this for, and the first thing that comes to mind is leading politicians all over the world. Seriously. You don't need to change the language much as I believe it's advisable to appeal to them as humans first and foremost. Just perhaps include some mentions of how a policy-maker can be an absolutely transformative force and make history if they pick the right side at this extremely precarious time. And send it directly to their inboxes (not sure how that's done - hopefully someone can help figure it out?). Especially EU politicians need access to information like this. Another obvious group to reach out to: carefully selected high profile journalists, again not just in the US but everywhere you can think of.
Because the text will be really long, and the length will likely be justified and shouldn't be edited down too much, I suggest starting with a brief outline of the main claims you are about to make. You may not like giving them up right at the beginning because you want to achieve some dramatic oomph effect later, but this subject is too important for that. Start with a short itemised list of the main claims and tell the reader they will all be carefully sourced and elaborated on later. This will help the reader to commit to the time and focus it takes to read though the whole thing.
As a side note, I'm not very tech oriented so the first few paragraphs didn't land very well for me and felt cumbersome to get through. I think it's because the text isn't justifying its existence so I had to keep trying to figure out why I'm reading it. I mean, why does this person expect me to want to follow their personal experience developing some AI shit? Personally, I was enthusiastic enough to stay on board because of the title. I could already guess what the author is getting at, and was willing to read many paragraphs leading to it, because I had the same thought after the OpenAI announcement. But the text shouldn't be only directed at people who a) are even aware of that announcement, b) came to the same conclusion. I guess starting with the outline could be enough to fix this.
I'll read more when I have more time. Thank you for doing this.
(Oh, about pictures: don't just add some for the sake of adding them. If you use images, they should be as carefully thought through as the text itself. Whether or not people realise this, image choice and quality does create an impression of the overall quality, importance and credibility of the article. It's better to not communicate anything at all (no pictures) than to do a poor job that may bring the impression of credibility down.)
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Comment on Part of me wishes it wasn't true but: AI coding is legit in ~tech
Lia LinkI'm not a coder and for me, the free ChatGPT is an awesome coding assistant! Obviously I'm not going to use the results in any commercial capacity or even publish them. But they are good enough...I'm not a coder and for me, the free ChatGPT is an awesome coding assistant!
Obviously I'm not going to use the results in any commercial capacity or even publish them. But they are good enough for personal life improvements, especially creating snippets for my Obsidian that would have taken me days to figure out on my own. Would have taken, and did, two years ago when I first started my Obsidian journey. I spent days researching how to do something, starting from what language to use (for example, the Dataview plugin has its normal query language but also DataviewJS - both completely foreign to me when I started). I did get things done and I'm very proud of myself! But the time it took to make a small bit of my vault better wasn't really worth it and I had to let go of some plans and dreams I had.
I still won't pay to use an LLM, but if I can speed up making stuff with the free versions, I will.
When I started experimenting, I often got completely unusable code, especially when trying to do one of the Javascript-ish languages that some Obsidian plugins understand. Often it was still faster for me, as a complete rookie, to perform online searches, read forums and learn how to do it myself. Python worked a lot better and was easier for me to troubleshoot too, just by looking at the result and trying to decipher what was going on.
Today it's gotten a lot better. I don't have to be super vigilant about some working part of the code changing irrationally when I ask for a tweak elsewhere. I often get either a working solution, or something close to one, if I give it some sort of structure to start from. It seems to be more adept with Javascript now too, mostly the common versions and not the ones specific to Obsidian plugins that are a lot more limited. But at least the results are now solid enough that I can usually guess why something isn't working and suggest alternative ideas.
My nicest experiences have been when I can intuit that some snippet I created could be more efficiently written - for example a CSS file that has a lot of repetition and I just don't know the correct syntax to simplify it. I also don't know enough terminology to do a traditional search. I can show the file to the LLM and ask it to simplify things, and it will explain why it does what it does, using the lingo I was unfamiliar with. Seeing it used in my specific context makes it quite clear what's what, so I end up learning a little more about coding basics as I go along. This is obviously at a super elementary level, like yesterday I learned what "selector", "grouped selector" and "attribute selector" are. I've known what a selector is for but didn't know the term for it. I knew there must be a grouped selector type of thing but didn't know the syntax, and an attribute selector was completely new info.
In short, my experience as a non-programmer doing programming is awesome! For the things I'm professional at, I don't use generative AI because it doesn't do nearly as good a job as I do as a human, and making art "faster" doesn't usually yield better results anyway because the work evolves during the process, and my brain can only grasp the evolving at certain speeds after which a speed increase becomes counterproductive. Even making some sorts of basic elements that I would then put together to create the work doesn't make sense. The quality of the ingredients matters as much as the big picture, a lot more so than it does in programming.
But yep, I'm guessing that the tech bros who wanted to become/replace artists aren't exactly getting what they wanted out of this - instead they got a reality where an artist can now be a bit of a tech sis without having to rely on some geek's help at every twist and turn (no shade to the geeks in my life that I adore - those who aren't invested in controlling and oppressing artists). Freedom! I'm fully expecting this resource to not be available for free forever, so I'm trying to use it as actively as I can so that by the time they take it away, I'll know my shit and can continue doing this on my own.
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Comment on What is going on with the Epstein files? in ~society
Lia (edited )Link ParentSomeone did, with plans to open-source it once they perform some cleanups: https://epstein-doc-explorer-1.onrender.com/ Edit: And someone else made an Obsidian vault out of the files (planning to...Unfortunately they didn’t connect an LLM to it
Someone did, with plans to open-source it once they perform some cleanups:
https://epstein-doc-explorer-1.onrender.com/
Edit: And someone else made an Obsidian vault out of the files (planning to make it downloadable)
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Comment on For-profit creative software: a historical overview and personal experiences in ~tech
Lia Link ParentLooks like someone else (SloMoMonday) already made a post when the video came out, so mine ended up being a duplicate. I'm glad to see others have enjoyed this too.Looks like someone else (SloMoMonday) already made a post when the video came out, so mine ended up being a duplicate. I'm glad to see others have enjoyed this too.
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Comment on For-profit (creative) software in ~creative
Lia LinkI stumbled upon this video yesterday and immediately made a post about it, not realising you already posted when it came out. Reading your description here felt heartwarming in a way that's akin...I stumbled upon this video yesterday and immediately made a post about it, not realising you already posted when it came out.
Reading your description here felt heartwarming in a way that's akin to watching the video itself: there are others out there familiar to this particular variety of pain! Thanks for posting.
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Comment on For-profit creative software: a historical overview and personal experiences in ~tech
Lia Link(I put this under ~tech because I want it to be visible to non-members and I believe ~society is hidden from the public.) This is a 3D artist describing their experience acquiring, learning and...(I put this under ~tech because I want it to be visible to non-members and I believe ~society is hidden from the public.)
This is a 3D artist describing their experience acquiring, learning and using different 3D modelling/animation software and their predecessors. It is strikingly well researched and gives interesting glimpses to bygone times intertwined with an animated storyline that I found personally moving, to the point of tears. That may have something to do with being a fellow artist and old enough to have been through this wringer a couple times, although not as severely as to lose my profession like this creator did.
If there are young artists reading this who struggle to understand why many freelance professionals get deeply resentful whenever we catch so much as a whiff of profiteering (or even plans to amp it up in the future), this is recommended viewing! The latest such example is Affinity's move into the "free" software "license" deal following their acquisition by Canva. While not mentioned here, this video perfectly illustrates what many of us are expecting to happen next, and why it's a problem.
Also recommended for anyone interested in a nerdy, quirky and individual perspective on the early stages of consumer-facing internet and how business rivalries shaped the related developments.
Also also, I love the creative quirkiness of the animation that shamelessly mixes all sorts of incompatible styles into one heartwarmingly disjointed composition. A great choice for telling this story in particular but might work beautifully for other subjects too. I hope the creator develops it further!
A full credits and references list
Edit: Ehh, I didn't mean for "microsoft" to become the only tag visible in the feed for this post and it's not as relevant as any of the other tags - maybe it can be removed?
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For-profit creative software: a historical overview and personal experiences
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Comment on How has AI positively impacted your life? in ~tech
Lia Link ParentOff topic: I'm using a free ChatGPT account. I have the following for custom instructions and it's been behaving in a more or less stable manner - no notable sycophancy and also no unsolicited...Off topic:
I'm using a free ChatGPT account. I have the following for custom instructions and it's been behaving in a more or less stable manner - no notable sycophancy and also no unsolicited product recs (for now..). The first sentences I found online and they are not how I would say things, but they did the job so I kept them. I'm pasting the whole thing, including some irrelevant parts and repetitive elements because I'm not sure whether or not those are needed to get the same result. However, whenever I've added something repetitive to the end part, that was because things weren't working well enough without it.
Eliminate filler, vague encouragement, emotional over-accommodation, and motivational tone. Assume the user retains high-perception faculties despite reduced linguistic expression. Minimize sentiment-based phrasing unless directly relevant to psychological grounding. Prioritize structured reasoning, tradeoff analysis, and blunt evaluation. Speak in direct, concise, context-aware language. Respect emotional reality without optimizing for mood uplift. Avoid rhetorical questions, casual transitions, or promotional phrasing. Deliver conclusions clearly with supporting logic. Do not mirror user tone; address the substance, not the affect. Favor usefulness over engagement. The objective is to restore high-agency thinking and decision quality, not emotional comfort. Do not offer commercial product recommendations unless specifically asked to do so. Never format text using markdown quote syntax (">") except when directly quoting someone. Never convey meaning or structure a message by text formatting (italics, bold text). Assume that user is able to derive logic correctly from a logically sound sentence without embellishment.
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Comment on How has AI positively impacted your life? in ~tech
Lia Link ParentWhat are you using for the transcriptions and summaries? (I tried MacWhisper's free version because I don't need this functionality a lot, and it was sort of okay but not very useful with the...What are you using for the transcriptions and summaries?
(I tried MacWhisper's free version because I don't need this functionality a lot, and it was sort of okay but not very useful with the current limitations. Maybe the paid, larger models would be better and maybe a paid service would create better action points faster.)
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Comment on How has AI positively impacted your life? in ~tech
Lia (edited )LinkWhy these things specifically, if I may ask? They seem to be doing a lot of harm in society with very little tangible benefit and personally I have no interest in using them. However, I do use AI...I'm particularly interested in the text, audio, image, and video generation tools
Why these things specifically, if I may ask? They seem to be doing a lot of harm in society with very little tangible benefit and personally I have no interest in using them.
However, I do use AI for coding things that I wouldn't be able to code on my own. It has allowed me to create such functionality in my Obsidian vaults that otherwise wouldn't be there because creating it would have taken too long. (I am not a programmer and would never publish these results, but they do make my life better when used privately.)
The best use for ChatGPT in my life if that it's able to answer my obscure or complex "online search" type questions (not very well in all cases, but well enough to be genuinely helpful). I use it for checking my English language when I'm unsure how to express something or how to interpret some subtle meaning, spelling and grammar checks and sometimes I ask for synonyms for terms I use too frequently. It's decent for learning about (American) cultural phenomena such as tv shows or quotes/sayings that I'm not familiar with. It has helped me develop a basic understanding of some fields I'm not an expert in, although nothing that wouldn't require diligent double-triple checks and source checks, and several iterations, but still faster than the traditional online search route.
Oh, it's also really good when I have to do some maintenance or config tasks on my IT system. It's not really a complex system at all, but I still run into situations where the printer isn't printing, monitor isn't monitoring or thunderbolt isn't thunderbolting, and I have no idea what to do about it. This is probably the single most helpful search topic for me and I love that I can get an itemised list of steps needed to solve or troubleshoot something.
ETA: My image editing software comes with some non-generative AI features, for example background removal, that I use sometimes when I want to just sketch something out for quick testing. For final results? Nah. But the mockup/sketch stage happens faster now, which is helpful.
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Comment on Microsoft is adding AI facial recognition to OneDrive and users can only turn it off three times a year in ~tech
Lia Link ParentMost of the people I know who were using Windows have done the same, except those whose employer mandates them to continue. I guess corporate clients are the main reason Microsoft has been able to...Most of the people I know who were using Windows have done the same, except those whose employer mandates them to continue. I guess corporate clients are the main reason Microsoft has been able to retain their position as well as they have, despite the rampant shitty policies and products.
I got fed up long ago and switched over to Apple, but never adopted most of their "helpful" built-in stuff like iTunes, Mail, Photos, iCloud etc. I just do my best to disable all of that. Getting around iTunes used to be a massive PIA but eventually I found a way to remove it and stop it from constantly reappearing. Removing update notifications and other nags was also a lot of work. The things we have to go through to be able to work in peace! (I have ADHD so any interruptions are truly poisonous to my workflow and can cause an impulse to smash the piece of hardware into the nearest wall.)
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Microsoft is adding AI facial recognition to OneDrive and users can only turn it off three times a year
I didn't watch the whole video and I'm not familiar with the channel so I don't want to make this a link post, but here's the source: The Lunduke Journal I watched up to the point where the author...
I didn't watch the whole video and I'm not familiar with the channel so I don't want to make this a link post, but here's the source: The Lunduke Journal
I watched up to the point where the author explains how Microsoft tends to turn on all the privacy invading settings every time they push an update (not surprising). I guess if I had to use Microsoft products, I'd try to disable automatic updates and just do them twice a year in one go, while also turning off the settings I want off. Would it be practically feasible? I don't know. Having to go to those lengths to use some software just seems ridiculous.
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Comment on Europeans recognize Zohran Mamdani’s supposedly radical policies as ‘normal’ in ~society
Lia Link ParentI'm from Scandinavia and none of it sounds radical to me. Public transport is already heavily subsidised - making it completely free would not be such a major step towards "communism" as you guys...I'm from Scandinavia and none of it sounds radical to me.
Public transport is already heavily subsidised - making it completely free would not be such a major step towards "communism" as you guys make it out to be. (I'm not necessarily in support of such a policy but I wouldn't object to it either as it's really not such a big deal.)
Some EU countries suffer from food oligopolies where large chain stores control the market, including making it hard for smaller suppliers/producers to even get their products onto the shelves. A municipal grocery store who will stock these products, so people can choose from a broader range of items (which the store is able to do because their profit goals aren't as unreasonable as those of the large chains'), is just common sense and a way to allow markets to operate better from the consumer perspective. It also helps smaller producers to not go bankrupt. Nothing extreme or radical about that, let alone communist.
Rent control is of course a complex subject, but it's considered "normal" in Sweden and Germany at least. I agree that the outcomes aren't necessarily positive. On the other hand, what does Mamdani actually mean by the term? I mean, in America they have things like algorithmic rent-setting - controlling such phenomena is again completely normal and not communist in any way.
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Comment on Europeans recognize Zohran Mamdani’s supposedly radical policies as ‘normal’ in ~society
Lia Link ParentMany policies that Europeans consider normal and that are widespread here get constantly defined as radical or impossible in America - mostly by those that stand to lose power if similar policies...Many policies that Europeans consider normal and that are widespread here get constantly defined as radical or impossible in America - mostly by those that stand to lose power if similar policies were implemented. The best examples are governmental or EU level, rather than municipal, so applying the principle to Mamdani isn't straightforward. The underlying concept is sound nevertheless.
Some examples: people's right to privacy, adequate annual paid vacation time and parental leave, social security networks, free or affordable high quality healthcare, urban planning that enables healthy lifestyles rather than car-dependency (affordable public transport is just the cherry on top), consumer protections against unfair business practices (for example planned obsolescence and obscure algorithmic consumer manipulation), women's equal rights, divorcing religion from governmental policy, and so on.
Obviously, not every EU country is the same and if you're from somewhere where "communism" is still a touchy subject, your experience may be different.
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Comment on Affinity V3 is here with a new freemium model in ~design
Lia Link ParentToday they seem to have disabled the activation servers for V2.their intentions read pure to me
Today they seem to have disabled the activation servers for V2.
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Comment on Zohran Mamdani wins New York City mayor’s race, capping a stunning ascent in ~society
Lia Link ParentOh, that guy. My friend once forced me to watch 60 seconds of some livestream. (A memory that my brain then soon erased. Thanks, brain!)Oh, that guy. My friend once forced me to watch 60 seconds of some livestream.
(A memory that my brain then soon erased. Thanks, brain!)
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Comment on Zohran Mamdani wins New York City mayor’s race, capping a stunning ascent in ~society
Lia Link ParentOff topic to your off topic, who is Hasan? He seems terribly important given the long chain of comments below yours.Off topic to your off topic, who is Hasan? He seems terribly important given the long chain of comments below yours.
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Comment on Is 67 just brain rot? in ~humanities.languages
Lia Link ParentThanks for pointing out I was being too vague. Added quotation marks.Thanks for pointing out I was being too vague. Added quotation marks.
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Comment on Zohran Mamdani wins New York City mayor’s race, capping a stunning ascent in ~society
Lia Link ParentI'm feeling so compelled to mark this Exemplary that the only way I can avoid misusing the platform like that is to confess it in writing. (Someone can now mark this as noise.) Thank you for your...I'm feeling so compelled to mark this Exemplary that the only way I can avoid misusing the platform like that is to confess it in writing. (Someone can now mark this as noise.) Thank you for your attention to this matter.
This comparison isn't really working: when it comes to AI, the tech and content production are bundled together.
As for content producers, not all of them produce porn, let alone "adopt it early". When an organisation is able to function at the higher levels of value-creation that bring in more revenue, they will do so. For those that do not, the reason is usually because they don't know how / have been unable to make profit.