#and then expecting that calculators will just... magically appear whenever there's math to be done. for no extra cost. forever.

[racke7]

I'm once again seeing a programming-teacher talk about how useful generative-AI is for their work-flow.

And it's like... There are a lot of reasons to despise that stuff:

It's stealing things

You don't know from where it's stealing things

It'll lie to you to make itself look smart

Any info you give it it'll save for the future

And like. For a lot of people? That's plenty. That's more than enough to step away from generative-AI, and to condemn its usage.

But here's what kind of really bothers me about it?

Generative-AI is a capitalistic product

It's available for free

These massive companies are pouring millions of dollars into this thing, and it's... entirely free.

It's blatantly obvious that this is some kind of scam.

It could be a "rug-pull" where they'll suddenly start demanding that you pay them exorbitant prices for access to their models. Which would make sense, because "low prices to gain market-share, high prices after establishing a monopoly" is a tried-and-true method.

Except with all of these tech-companies all creating their own versions of the things? It's blatantly obvious that trying to gain a monopoly like this is doomed to failure.

That probably means that the "real" scam-idea needs to be something different.

And it's in thinking about this that I'm suddenly reminded of one specific piece of that initial list.

Any info you give it it'll save for the future

What... exactly does this mean? Where is it saving it? Is it running analytics on what your IP-address has asked it before? Does it know who you are? Can it guess what you're doing from your prompts?

And if the answer to these questions is "no", then how difficult would it be for a developer to change that overnight?

There's an old saying in the IT-industry that "if you're not paying for the product, you are the product".

How quickly do you think a programmer could get fired for aiding-and-abetting corporate espionage?

[howtohero]

Transdimensional Cities

There are a lot of weird places in the world. There are talking jungles and upside down plains where the rain falls upwards. There are psychedelic tundras and digital rain forests and that one island that’s completely cut off from civilization where all the seagulls constantly sing songs about cool guys not looking at explosions and throwing things on the ground and being way too excited about boats. But some of the weirdest places in our universe are the places that sometimes aren’t even in our universe!

Transdimensional cities are locales that phase in and out of any given dimension. One second they’ll be there and the next they’re shimmering out of existence (ok they still exist but now they’re in a pocket dimension that can’t be reached by anybody). If you’ve even seen one you know how trippy of an experience that can be. The word “mirage” actually comes from the name of one of these cities that fritzes in and out of the Sahara Desert every so often, confusing travelers. The supernatural properties of the vast majority of transdimensional cities are magic-based. Some monks decided they’d get more meditation done if they didn’t have to deal with the rest of the world except for for one week every fifteen years. Or some rogue mage folded an entire city into a pocket dimension in order to practice his evil magic in private, and on dozens of unwilling participants. Recently scientists have made a few forays into trying to replicate the abilities of these cities with varying results. At best they’ve been able to warp individual buildings like smoothie stores or Halloween themed restaurants (Boo Burger was sorely in need of this transdimensional upgrade, now instead of offending people all year long, they can just blip out of this dimension whenever it isn’t October) but entire cities have proven to be a bit more tricky. If you would like your city to be considered for an experiment in dimension shifting enter our sweepstakes here! 

As far as you need to be concerned with these cities, remember, cities that only enter this plane of existence very briefly every so often might be very appealing to a variety of types of people. Supervillains, for example, might appreciate the downtime from being on the run or having their evil schemes foiled by a kid with a magic backpack that can fit more rocket launchers in it than should be physically possible. (Here’s to you Ricky Rockets, keep doling out your hilariously disproportionate brand of child vigilante justice!) In days past, superheroes were forced to assume that every transdimensional was home to dozens of supervillains who were hiding out. Plus, due to the transient nature of transdimensional cities, they had to assume that the city could blink out of this reality at a moment’s notice. This resulted in superheroes storming transdimensional cities and beating up as many people as possible and throwing them in prison while there was still time. That caused everybody a lot of headaches (both literal and metaphorical). It turns out that it is erroneous to assume that most people in any given transdimensional city are supervillains. Lucky for you the citizens of the various cities have worked out a better system!

These days transdimensional cities have pretty heterogeneous populations. It took a couple of years of bussing people between cities but now everything is pretty well organized. There are cities specific for every kind of person who might want to hop out of reality for a while. We’ve got monks who want seclusion. Supervillains who need to keep out of the public eye. Deadbeat dads, people with overdue library books, people who’ve unintentionally killed people, people who don’t want to be spoiled on shows they’ve only just started binge-watching, procrastinators. If you don’t want to be a part of society all the time you can bet that there’s a transdimensional city somewhere out there for you! So now all you need to do is figure out where the supervillain-filled ones are going to pop up next so you can be there to rain justice down on their bald, horned, helmeted, and on-fire heads!

Determining where and when a transdimensional city will next appear can be a tricky thing. Most cities will appear in the same place every time, and most of those are on a set cycle, so all that needs to be done there is a good old-fashioned, potentially decades long, stake-out. Grab a buddy, some donuts, and a big ol’ book of Mad Libs and settle in for a good long wait. But sometimes the cities don’t show up in the same place (more on that later) or it disappears and reappears at infrequent intervals. In which case you’d be wise to keep a few tracking devices on you and throwing one into every city that randomly pops up in your path. Short of that, I’m sure you can get some brains together (from the brain store) and devise some sort of mathematical algorithm to calculate the exact where and when for any given transdimensional city. Unfortunately you’ll have to do your own work for this one. We here at Howtohero steadfastly refuse to do any math. As a rule.

When transdimensional cities’ locations are randomized, or if they always appear in the same place but it’s been a while since the last time this city appeared and since then some foolish people built a lame stationary city in its spot, things go sideways real fast. That’s how you have situations where cities become superimposed on other cities or stuff starts getting spliced together. Gross. Luckily, using some regular off-the-rack-store-bought magicks these problems can be easily avoided! Sort of! And as we all know, sort of avoiding a problem is the best way to deal with a problem! See, using magic you can actually cause it so that when a city magically vops into a location that already contains something (a city, a town, a village, a cat) the thing that was there before actually switches places with the transdimensional city. Turning the transdimensional city into a regular one and vice versa. (I bet you guys didn’t expect to learn the secret origins of Surprise Cat! the cat that appears when you least expect it in this post but there you have it!) Sure, now there’s a regular city warping in and out of our dimension and that’s not really what those people signed up for but all transdimensional cities were normal cities at some point! (Except for Nexusville, which was built from a one-of-a-kind transdimensional brick over a period of three hundred years by different construction workers and engineers who happened to come across the partially completed city during that time.) 

If you’re a guy who is from a transdimensional city and is deciding to use your first trip to this dimension to fight our criminals, then first of all, welcome to the neighborhood. Second of all, where do you get off punk! These are our criminals! You come in here all high and mighty and judgemental from your crime-free teleporting city (remember all the transdimensional criminals live in their own, separate city) of ninjas and think you can fight our crime? Get over yourself! Also, be warned, lots of times people like you tend to lose track of the time. I guess time flows differently in between dimensions. But you might find that when you get tired of beating up our muggers in our alleys that your city might be gone. Now, it important that you don’t misunderstand what’s happened. Your city has simply transported itself beyond the vail of what we can perceive in this dimension (as cities are wont to do). It hasn’t been destroyed. It hasn’t been stolen. Just wait ten to fifteen years and it’ll be back. No harm no foul. What you need to do now, is not go on a roaring rampage of revenge where you punch everybody in sight. Also don’t blame us for your city going away. We didn’t do that. Have you read the rest of this post? We clearly have like zero to two ideas about what’s going on with these cities. Don’t punch anybody. If you really feel like you have to punch somebody you can punch some more of our criminals but your city and all your loved ones aren’t gone forever. Write that down.

Transdimensional cities are easily one of the weirdest parts of the Weird Factor. They’re cities that are sometimes there... but usually not. What a headache. And most of the time the people who live in the city don’t even know when things are gonna get all space-warpy. They’ll just be buying groceries and vwoompf now they’re underwater, or in a frozen wasteland, or in Cincinnati. What a life that must be. Still, it’s interesting to see how civilizations and cultures develop when they’re removed from society for years at a time (or minutes at a time, but in cities like those there’s not a ton of deviation from the world around them). From an anthropological perspective that is. So good for anthropologists I guess! 

[anime-matchmaker-blog]

#29 with Bokuto and Akaashi?

#29 - “Prepare to be amazed.”

I’m really sorry if you were expecting a bokuaka sort of thing because I ended up involving all of the team. .-. I hope you enjoy it either way!

"Kill me." Konoha rested his head on a stack ofbooks. "I can't remember all of this."

"Well, if you paid more attention in class, then youwouldn't have to study so much," Washio commented mildly. His papers werespread in front of him, his notes written by a clean hand. They almost lookedlike they were typed out.

Sarukui hid a yawn behind his book. "I wish we couldpractice. Playing volleyball would make me focus better."

"I could use some coffee," Komi added sleepily.

Midterms were never a student's favorite time during thesemester. Whenever they roll around, their coaches would give them a break tostudy and the boys would sit together in the library to complain and attempt toreview the material. There was always more complaining done than actualstudying.

Akaashi sat with them despite being a year younger. Helistened to their complaints with one ear, his eyes focused on his notes. Noone could deny his intelligence yet none of the third-years had resorted toasking him for help just yet.

"What are we reviewing today?" Komi asked.

"Math." Washio opened his textbook. "Since Boisn't here, we'll just have to work out the problems ourselves." Theirrowdy captain was holed up in the counselor's office to lecture him about beinga disruption in class. He knew what would happen when he decided to break offinto song in the middle of class. It had been Kuroo's idea in the first place.

"Can't we review something else until he comesback?" Komi asked almost pleadingly. "Your explanations never makesense."

"I don't understand it any more than you do,"Washio said dryly. "So what do you want me to do about that?"

Sarukui raised his hand to calm them down. "We have aschedule to follow," he reminded them. "Bo's coming later so let'sjust work without him."

"Why would Bokuto-san be helpful?" Akaashi asked."I thought math was his worst subject."

The third-years exchanged looks. "He might look dumb,but math is his best subject," Konoha answered. "No one knowswhy."

"Didn't he fail his math midterm last semester?"

"He failed at the national level, yeah. That guy'sprowess in math depends on his mood most of the time."

Akaashi couldn't wrap his mind around the image of Bokutosolving math problems with ease. "I don't believe you."

"It's surprising at first but after you see him inaction, you'll believe it."

"Hey, hey, hey!" Bokuto's standard greeting washushed as he approached them. He slipped into the vacant chair beside Komi withbright eyes. "Where are you guys at?"

"Hey, Bokuto. You didn't get into much trouble, didyou?" Konoha asked.

Their captain shrugged. "Nah, just got lectured. So,you guys have any questions or anything?"

"Actually, Akaashi here doesn't believe you're good atmath," Komi said, eyes gleaming. "You want to prove him wrong?"

Akaashi looked at him with a serious expression. Bokutoscratched the back of his head self-consciously. "Do I have to?"

"Yes," Akaashi answered. "I don't questionyour academic ability, but I do wonder if you're telling the truth ornot."

"Well, I wouldn't lie about being good at math orwhatever, but I can prove it." Bokuto grinned. "Prepare to beamazed."

Washio slid a paper filled with equations toward him as hefished for a pencil and eraser. He cracked his knuckles in an exaggeratedfashion, gripped his pencil, and started writing.

They watched him, marveling at how his pencil flew acrossthe page. He wrote his work line by line, pausing briefly to make mentalcalculations. Akaashi gaped at him, the numbers and solutions appearing on thepaper like magic. When he finished, no one bothered looking over it – this waselementary for him.

He handed the paper back, spun his pencil in one hand. “So?You believe it?”

Akaashi slid the sheet toward him before Washio could grabit. Even in his messy scrawl, the work was easy to follow and all the answerswere circled. It was clean. Unbelievably clean. “Bokuto-san, do you use mathwhile on the court too?” he asked.

“Too much work! I just spike whatever feels good. So? Youguys have any questions?” Bokuto turned to the other third-years.

Before any of them could say anything, Akaashi placed atextbook in front of him. “Yes,” he answered, “I do.”