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were--ralph · 2 years ago

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why exactly do you dislike generative art so much? i know its been misused by some folks, but like, why blame a tool because it gets used by shitty people? Why not just... blame the people who are shitty? I mean this in genuinely good faith, you seem like a pretty nice guy normally, but i guess it just makes me confused how... severe? your reactions are sometimes to it. There's a lot of nuance to conversation about it, and by folks a lot smarter than I (I suggest checking out the Are We Art Yet or "AWAY" group! They've got a lot on their page about the ethical use of Image generation software by individuals, and it really helped explain some things I was confused about). I know on my end, it made me think about why I personally was so reactive about Who was allowed to make art and How/Why. Again, all this in good faith, and I'm not asking you to like, Explain yourself or anything- If you just read this and decide to delete it instead of answering, all good! I just hope maybe you'll look into *why* some people advocate for generative software as strongly as they do, and listen to what they have to say about things -🦜

if Ai genuinely generated its own content I wouldn't have as much of a problem with it, however what Ai currently does is scrape other people's art, collect it, and then build something based off of others stolen works without crediting them. It's like. stealing other peoples art, mashing it together, then saying "this is mine i can not only profit of it but i can use it to cut costs in other industries.

this is more evident by people not "making" art but instead using prompts. Its like going to McDonalds and saying "Burger. Big, Juicy, etc, etc" then instead of a worker making the burger it uses an algorithm to build a burger based off of several restaurant's recepies.

example

the left is AI art, the right is one of the artists (Lindong) who it pulled the art style from. it's literally mass producing someone's artstyle by taking their art then using an algorithm to rebuild it in any context. this is even more apparent when you see ai art also tries to recreate artists watermarks and generally blends them together making it unintelligible.

Aside from that theres a lot of other ethical problems with it including generating pretty awful content, including but not limited to cp. It also uses a lot of processing power and apparently water? I haven't caught up on the newer developements i've been depressed about it tbh

Then aside from those, studios are leaning towards Ai generation to replace having to pay people. I've seen professional voice actors complain on twitter that they haven't gotten as much work since ai voice generation started, artists are being cut down and replaced by ai art then having the remaining artists fix any errors in the ai art.

Even beyond those things are the potential for misinformation. Here's an experiment: Which of these two are ai generated?

ready?

These two are both entirely ai generated. I have no idea if they're real people, but in a few months you could ai generate a Biden sex scandal, you could generate politics in whatever situation you want, you can generate popular streamers nude, whatever. and worse yet is ai generated video is already being developed and it doesn't look bad.

I posted on this already but as of right now it only needs one clear frame of a body and it can generate motion. yeah there are issues but it's been like two years since ai development started being taken seriously and we've gotten to this point already. within another two years it'll be close to perfected. There was even tests done with tiktokers and it works. it just fucking works.

There is genuinely not one upside to ai art. at all. it's theft, it's harming peoples lives, its harming the environment, its cutting jobs back and hurting the economy, it's invading peoples privacy, its making pedophilia accessible, and more. it's a plague and there's no vaccine for it. And all because people don't want to take a year to learn anatomy.

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maliciouscottonball · 3 months ago

Text

Like A Father

Platonic Yandere! König x GN!Reader

Wordcount: 3040

AN: Hey friends! I’ve been craving a cute(?) oneshot about König and it’s been running through my mind for ages. I’m supposed to be writing some final papers but I’m making the executive decision to ignore that. It’s self indulgent and I love it. I am but a mere gluttonous beast when it comes to writing.

TW: Yandere behaviors, drugging, kidnapping, delusional loser man behavior, somewhat realism, software engineering and tech stuff, reader in their 20’s, employment, the author’s severe daddy issues, very brief implication of the idea of SH

♡♡♡

You hadn’t wanted to work for a PMC but the pay was what the bills were demanding. You had your own office and could ignore your coworkers pretty easily. All you really did was keep the wifi on and the necessary websites running. It was a cushy gig and you had a surprising amount of free time. Your bosses praised your dedication to your job and you only rarely had to emerge from the comfort of your office for occasional meetings. The rest of your time was spent either playing cute little games on your phone, reading, or scrolling around through social media.

During your first meeting, you sat at the only empty seat near the head of the table. You were introduced, said your hellos, and just listened to the presentations and discussions going on. Any time someone asked your opinions on a subject, you politely deflected and said that you’d have to get better acquainted with the current systems and that the last person in your position left quite a bit to review. This was met with approving nods and appreciative words. You learned that the guy who did your job before you wasn’t great and that your coworkers were excited to be able to access the internet on a regular basis.

While the others droned on about the logistics of sending soldiers to wherever they were being sent, you took the opportunity to look around the room at your new bosses and coworkers. All of them were grizzled and at least middle aged. You could tell that they were all in the military for their respective countries before coming to work here and, quite frankly, you didn’t want to know the reasons why any of them left. You stood out like a sore thumb in comparison to their crisp uniforms and permanent scowls. Your face was youthful and you lacked the experience that they clearly had. You wore a button up and slacks that you specifically chose for comfort and the notebook you carried had small stickers decorating the cover. You seemed almost childish but it was clear from the notes you took that you were a fast learner.

You decided to take a closer look at the two men sitting next to you. On your right was the head of logistics. He was intimidating but not much more so than the rest of the group. He was frustrated that one of the company’s suppliers wouldn’t be available to drop off his preferred breakfast but quickly came up with a solution thanks to a suggestion from the head of housing.

On your left was a giant man that towered over everyone in the room. He was the head of one of the company president’s preferred teams. You could tell that his advice was highly valued by the rest of the men in the meeting. His face was scarred and his gaze was piercing and analytical when you looked up at him. You could feel him watching you as you quickly looked away and tried your best to listen to the rest of the meeting. You didn’t see the way that the corners of his mouth twitched up into almost a smile.

During your second meeting, you sat in the same spot. The man on your left scared you but what could you do? He had seniority and he only made eye contact. You gave him and the rest of the men in the meeting a polite nod and buried your face in your notes. You zoned out a bit while trying and failing to pay attention, wishing you had given an excuse about needing to recode something to meet quality standards or something else that the bosses would buy. You gave some small updates on what you had done, got your deserved positive feedback, and stayed silent for the rest of the meeting.

Your third meeting went similarly to the second and you made your way back to your office once it was done. You sat at your chair and opened your notebook to review your notes when a small sticker fell out from the page that your bookmark was on. You think hard for a moment about where it could’ve come from before reaching down to grab it. It was a small, pastel yellow giraffe in a cartoonish art style with a holographic glitter background. The first thing you felt was confusion. Where did it come from? Why was it in your notes? Then, you started getting curious. You did every reverse image search that you could think of but there was nothing. You used every applicable keyword imaginable but you still couldn’t find anything.

After a longer time than you’d care to admit, you found an artist with a style that matched the art on the sticker perfectly. It was strange. There was nothing on their website or social media that matched the art on the sticker. It had to have been a custom order that wasn’t posted about. Who would have done that? None of the men at the meeting seemed like the type to buy stickers, let alone hide them in someone else’s notebook.

The week came and went. You had put the sticker on your notebook and promptly forgot about it. It just joined the landscape of cute scenes and creatures on the front cover. During your fourth meeting, you failed to see the way that the scary man on your left’s eyes sparkled with pride at the new addition to your book. That week, you had to do your first in person repair. You went down to the basement and had to plug a cord back into the wifi router for the floor. It was surprisingly easy and almost looked like an intentional unplugging. You brushed it off, figuring that it was a simple mistake or accident.

When you got back to your office, there was another sticker on your keyboard. This time, there was a little note underneath it. You pick up the sticker and peer down at the note. The handwriting was scratchy but it’s clear that whoever wrote it did their best to make it legible.

For your hard work.

You look back at the sticker after a second and observe the details in the drawing. It’s a small octopus with the same style and pastel colors as the giraffe. It has the same background and it’s clear that the same person that made the first sticker made this one too. For a moment, you just stared at the sticker and the note. It would’ve been sweet if you hadn’t locked your office door before leaving and had to unlock it when you got back.

As the months go by, you settle into a comfortable rhythm punctuated by the startling nature of little presents. The notes left with them continued to be encouraging and kind, even as the gifts began to turn into daily occurrences and changed from just stickers to other presents as well. The presents ranged from individually packaged tea bags and small candies to more stickers and the occasional roll of washi tape to tiny stress relieving candles and keychains. You put the notes that were left with them in one of the drawers of your desk and they were beginning to pile up. You find yourself glancing at the notes every once in a while, wondering who they came from.

You’ve been doing very well.

I’m glad that you decided to work here.

I’m proud of you.

It took a while to become comfortable in your role in the company. It took even longer to be able to look the intimidating man from the meetings in the eye. You still didn’t talk much, even at the company parties. You weren’t friends with any of your coworkers but you got along with everyone perfectly fine. You weren’t exactly threatening and you kept everything running smoothly so there wasn’t much conflict.

At least, that’s why you thought you weren’t close with anyone there.

No one talked about the ominous figure that followed you wherever you went in HQ. No one thought to mention the bone chilling looks given to those who said inappropriate things about you or the fact that not even a two week’s notice was given by soldiers who had been with the company for years when they took a joke too far. They disappeared and everyone knew better than to talk about it. They just avoided you at worst and made pleasant comments on your work at best.

To you, the job was getting better and better. You didn’t have to talk to a soul on most days and you only had to sit there and listen for the most part during meetings. You didn’t have a single clue about what was going on and that was the way that König liked it. He got to take care of you and watch over you like a guardian angel. Like a father.

He made sure that you were safe. He made sure that work didn’t stress you out. He made sure that no one said anything unkind to you. He made sure that you had at least something small to look forward to every day. He could afford it. He didn’t have a husband or a wife to come home to. He didn’t have any of the kids that he had dreamed about having since he was a little boy. He remembered staring at the babies he saw with their families and desperately wanting one while he was in school. He remembered watching the men on his teams raise their children and being practically green with envy. He had resigned himself to never being able to raise a child until he was looking through the job applications for the open IT position.

He paused when he read your name and started looking through your resume. It was good and you seemed suited to the job. Then, he read your cover letter. You seemed to be trying your best to be confident and your words were sweet and sincere. He decided to take a closer look at who you were. He looked through all of your social media, both personal or professional, and his heart melted.

You were perfect in every way. You were supposed to be his and he had finally found you. He was finally going to be a father.

Exactly half a year after heavily recommending you to the president of the company, you were grabbing a snack at one of the regularly scheduled office parties. König felt his heart warm when he saw you grab a second cookie from the batch that he had specifically made to suit your taste. You had become much more friendly with him and it had made him very happy. You would greet him in the hallways when you saw him and asked him how his day was when you were early to meetings.

He was used to children being afraid of him and even though he knew that you were a grown adult, the irrational part of his brain made him feel like you were the equivalent of a toddler. He figured that it was how sweet your little eyes were and how small you were compared to him. He knew that he was a scary guy and he was exceptionally proud of you for being brave and talking to him. He couldn’t help but get worried when he saw you heating things up in the microwave or fiddling with electronics. He was very concerned that you could burn or electrocute yourself and it took every ounce of self control that he had to not take over for you and have you sit and wait where he knew you would be safe. His absolute adoration of you and his fear of you getting hurt had helped him to decide that you would finally be coming home with him today. It was like the company had thrown him an adoption party after having such a long and hard road to finally having a child.

He had made sure that you would have the foods that you liked at the party and he made sure to watch over your every reaction to see if you were enjoying yourself. He wanted you to be as happy as possible at all times. He had personally given you a can of your favorite soda to help make you even happier. He smiled to himself when he saw that you finished it off fairly quickly. He knew that waking up in your new room would be a hard change and he had done his best to prepare for it. He had read all of the top books on adopting an older child and on how to make a home feel welcoming. He had spent an obscene amount of money on making sure that your room was painted in the perfect shades and that your bedding was perfectly comfortable. He had even taken up quilting to make sure that your bedspread was exactly what you would like. He had fuzzy blankets and plushies at the ready for when you inevitably had a meltdown or threw a tantrum from the stress of the change. He made sure that the bathroom was stocked with everything you’d need to take care of your hair and skin and that the theme matched your bedroom.

The most important thing that he had made sure to do was to babyproof everything. There was nothing sharp or particularly breakable and everything that wasn’t soft was bolted down. He knew that you would get bored without any games to play so he had gotten old consoles from when he was a child so you could play all day while he was working. He had bolted those down too and made sure that you couldn’t harm him or yourself with anything that he gave you. He had also made sure to give you a desk filled with art and writing supplies, as well as shelves and shelves of books for you to read. He was looking forward to reading you stories from his childhood and seeing what books, toys, and games you would favor when you were finally home with him. He figured that it would be an adequate amount of entertainment until his new kid got settled in.

You were walking to the parking lot from the main building after the party when you started to feel woozy. You stumble a bit before starting to fall, only to suddenly be caught by someone. You feel yourself getting lifted up and look up to see those terrifying eyes that had scared you so much during that very first meeting. There’s something different in those eyes this time. He looks like a kid on Christmas and the last thing that you feel before slipping into unconsciousness is horror.

König chuckles and happily carries you to his car. He hums a song that his grandmother used to sing to him as he opens the door behind his car’s driver’s seat and sets you onto the plush seating. He buckles you in and then tucks a blanket over your lap and a plushie under your arm. He had made sure that the child locks were on, even though he knew that you wouldn’t be waking up any time soon. It was good practice for his new role as your one and only parent. He knew that being a single father would be hard but oh so rewarding and fulfilling. He gets into the driver’s seat and adjusts his mirror to look back at you. He starts the car and turns on some classical music to help you sleep a bit more peacefully. He carefully begins the journey home with you and seems incredibly pleased with himself. It was well worth the trouble of drugging the soda with the proper dose of medication for your body weight and then resealing it without losing any of the carbonation.

As you slowly wake up from your drug induced slumber, you can’t help but cuddle into what you think is your bed at home. The plushness of the mattress is absolutely perfect and your body feels soothed by the comfortable cotton sheets and the weight of the warm quilt. There’s a soft plushie in your arms that you don’t recognize but you’re so out of it that you don’t care. You’re warm and comfortable and something is making your mind feel so, so relaxed. After a few minutes of cuddling, you slowly open your eyes and blink sleepily.

This isn’t your room. This isn’t your bed.

You don’t recognize any of this.

You don’t remember how you got here and it’s starting to scare you.

Before you can truly start to panic, the bedroom door opens and someone enters. Your vision is hazy and you can’t see very well until they get closer but you can tell that they’re carrying something. The person squats down next to you and your eyes start to focus. The person is a man and he reaches out toward you, resting what you now recognize as a tray on his knee. He gently checks the temperature of your forehead with his knuckles before gently stroking the top of your head.

Wait.

You recognize him.

You recognize those eyes.

He smiles down at you lovingly and seems thrilled to bits that you’re finally here with him. He carefully stands up while lifting the tray, towering over you like the imaginary monster from a child’s closet. He sits on the edge of the bed next to you and gently sets the tray down on the nightstand. It’s covered with all of your very favorite breakfast foods and your preferred drinks to go with them. He continues to smile down at you like you hung the sun, moon, and stars in the sky.

“Good morning, little one! You’ve been sleeping for a long time. Papa made you some breakfast. I think you’ll like it very much.” He coos.

You look down again at the plushie in your arms. It looks exactly like the first giraffe sticker that was given to you by a stranger at work.

#platonic #platonic yandere #konig cod #Platonic Yandere! König x GN!Reader #call of duty mwii #konig x you #konig x reader #konig call of duty #konig mw2 #cod konig #cod x you #Like A Father #like a father

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sweetheartsocks · 11 days ago

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BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH.

Aaron Hotchner x IT support!reader

genre : office romance, cute and flirty banter, raging about your job, s2 Hotch (no haley for obvious reasons), i pretend to know things about tech, too many references to Jersey Shore

summary : A history of your relationship with Hotch through computer bugs. Or alternatively, Aaron Hotchner v. Technology. Computer print "Hello world!".

notes : in celebration of me finally graduating yayyy!!!

word count : 3.2k

Did you know that we started referring to computer errors as 'bugs' after computer pioneer Rear Admiral Grace Hopper found a literal insect (a moth) causing the Harvard Mark II computer to malfunction in 1947 ?

By now you practically qualify as an entomologist. In the past 3 days, your help has been requested a total of 87 times. Problems ranging from "the Central Processing Unit is letting out smoke" to "I forgot my email password, again".

Agent Eckert from the FBI Academy has started calling you 'The Exterminator'. You almost told him that you're considering a career change to pest control and that your first order of business would be to deal with him. Almost. (Un)Fortunately, years of experience in customer service and dealing with people who should be in a retirement home but aren't, have programmed you to instead say "Good one" with the best 'I'm not about to put in my two weeks' smile you can muster.

But if he keeps calling to ask how to add images in Microsoft Word, you might as well say it. What is he going to do ? Ask to speak to your supervisor ? Please. Your supervisor doesn't know what's going on and doesn't care to.

As far as IT support requests go, the BAU is the least infuriating unit. Current score board :

Dr Reid : 4 requests total. Mostly printer related. The only guy under the age of 50 who still insists on working with paper files. He's nice though. He's the one who told you about the bug story.

Emily Prentiss : 2 requests. One time for software incompatibility issues. Another time because the network wouldn't allow her to google 'Is goth fashion making a comeback ?'

Derek Morgan : 1 request. He only called you because Penelope Garcia wasn't there.

Jennifer Jareau : 2 requests. System overload, both times, from the ungodly amount of files she gets sent.

Jason Gideon : 5 requests. For a senior citizen, he's actually doing pretty good. Although the last time he called you, at exactly 8:21 PM for a log-in issue, he said "I can't believe they have you working this late," sounding all surprised. This obviously irked you. Why do you think I'm still here ? For the fun of it ? It's because of you, Gideon. I have to stand here so you can grumble about computers instead of going back home. Plus he still doesn't remember your name.

Aaron Hotchner : 9 requests. All legitimate to be fair. Maybe his fingers are so thick that he has trouble correctly typing out things on his keyboard. But you suspect that he asks for your help even when he can troubleshoot the issue himself.

Bug 1 : Accidental file deletion — Vanishing File Beetle, Filevorax deleticus.

Your supervisor wouldn't let you take the day off. Apparently, you're supposed to find someone to cover for you. Isn't that supposed to be his job ? You know, actually supervise ?

So now, as a form of petty retaliation, you're doing the strict minimum amount of work necessary.

"Have you tried turning it on and off?" and "Maybe try clearing your cache?" when you feel like switching things up.

When Hotch calls you 30 minutes before the end of your work day, you don't find it in you to blow him off. He's nice to look at, smells nice and has a nice desk chair he lets you sit on. His problem is simple enough — he deleted a file by accident — so it shouldn't take that much time.

This makes it your 10th trip to his office. On your way there, you fill the most ridiculous mug you can find (it's hot pink, it says 'JERSEY SHORE' on the front and 'GTL' which stands for Gym Tan Laundry on the back. you’re the one who brought it into the office) with plain black coffee.

You knock twice before coming in. Hotch is sitting at his desk. His suit jacket hangs at the back of his chair. The sunlight coming through his office window makes his eyes look like honey. Brown and warm and sweet.

His tie is loosened, well loosened as he much as he can allow himself while still at work (which is not that much). But it's enough to let you study his neck. The skin is a bit red, it almost looks flushed. Probably from how tight his tie was sitting. And probably from how shamelessly you're staring at him.

He stands up and makes his way towards you. You hand him the hot pink coffee mug.

"For you."

He frowns slightly. He obviously looks very… confused by it. You can't tell if it's the color or the fact that it's Jersey Shore merch that's throwing him off.

"What's the special occasion ?" he wonders.

"It's officially your 10th request," you reply as you make your way to his desk. He follows you. "After this one, I'm going to have to start charging, Hotchner."

He chuckles lightly.

When you sit down, his suit jacket brushes against your back. It's like he's hugging you by proxy. He leans against the desk, next to you. You can smell his perfume. Almonds, fresh linen, citrus. He's wearing his summer scent. It's nice.

"So, what file did you "accidentally" delete ? Nothing scandalous I hope," you ask him.

He glances down at the mug in his hand. He's trying to figure out what 'GTL' means. You don't tell him. You'll let him discover the joys of Nicole 'Snooki' Polizzi by himself.

"It's a performance evaluation draft," he finally answers. He takes a sip of his coffee and then puts the mug down on his desk. It looks hilariously out of place next to his shiny Unit Chief plaque and the fancy pen stand. "And for the record, it was an accident."

A performance evaluation draft ? This couldn't wait until tomorrow ?

"Of course", you reply. You spin the chair towards him. Your elbow lightly hits his thigh. The material of his pants is really soft. "Just like when you accidentally used Comic Sans on that one report," you remind him jokingly.

He looks at you. He's doing the signature 'dead pan, scary and stern, do not mess with me' Hotch stare. You can tell that it's because he's embarrassed (and he should be. the report looked ridiculous) and is trying to gain back some semblance of dignity.

"That was a formatting error," he justifies. He sounds both amused and exasperated at the same time.

You turn back towards the desktop. You let your fingers lightly glide along the keyboard. To be fair, the system the FBI uses is a real nightmare. To describe it as 'ancient' would be generous.

"Sure. And you somehow didn't notice the error until you already sent the report?"

"Are you this unprofessional with all the agents you help ?" he counters.

You grin, letting your fingers pause their typing.

"No. Just you."

That earns you another chuckle. He looks pretty when he smiles. His eyes crinkle softly, his lips stretch slightly. You want to poke his dimple.

"Good," he says. "Some of them might try to get you fired."

You let out a sigh. Half from fatigue and half from hopefulness.

"I wish. If that's the way to free me from email password purgatory. Who do you think is my best bet ? Eckert from the training academy looks like he can whip up a mean complaint."

Out of the corner of your eye, you see him shake his head. He's still leaning against the desk, his arms are crossed against his chest. His biceps look very enticing, even through the dress shirt. Crazy that he's whoring himself out like this just for a performance evaluation draft.

He exhales through his nose. Almost despite him. Like he's trying his best not to encourage you.

"Don't let Eckert get you fired," he says.

You finally recover the file. You can officially clock out in 9 minutes.

"That would be… inconvenient", he admits softly.

You know that's not exactly what he means to say. Still, this is Hotch. He's not going to outright say that he'd miss you. But you can tell.

"You're just saying that 'cause the other techs aren't as fun." You smile at him.

He smiles back.

"Maybe."

Bug 2 : Network connectivity issues — Wandering Signal Gnat, Connectivorus packetdropii.

You finally come back to your desk after your government compensated break (sure it was longer than the general consensus on what 'a short break' counts as. first of all, you don't care. second of all, there's nothing that says that you have to agree with the consensus. third of all, you really don't care).

You find Hotch waiting for you there. He looks ridiculous sitting in your chair. He's all bent and twisted, like a contortionist. The sitting arrangements for IT support techs and Unit Chiefs aren't exactly on the same level…

There's your hot pink Jersey Shore mug and a pastry (blueberry muffin, safe but ultimately boring choice) sitting in front of him.

"You brought bribes, and you're here in person… Should I be worried ? You didn't "accidentally" blow up a computer did you ?" you greet him.

He gets up from your chair and glares at it. Like it was actively insulting his spine. In comparison to his chair, it probably was.

"I wouldn't rule it out," he replies dryly. "There's a network issue in my office. The internet keeps dropping."

You sigh dramatically, and drop your jacket on your chair.

You take a sip of the coffee. It's a lot better than the office one. Does he bring his own?

"Lead the way captain."

When you get to his office, the router seems to be working just fine. You narrow your eyes at him.

"The signal flickers in and out," he anticipates.

It sounds more like an excuse than an explanation.

You sit down at his desk. Or more accurately, you reclaim it. Like it's yours to take. He doesn't seem to mind how comfortable you make yourself in his office.

You give the monitor a quick glance, open the terminal to run a few commands, check the network diagnostics.

Green.

Suspiciously green.

"Wow, would you take a look at that. Not only is everything working, your office has the fastest internet speed out of the entire building."

He's peering at the screen over your shoulder. His left arm is bracing against the desk. His chest is basically touching your back. It's like he's engulfing you. He feels warm, so warm. You're not even touching. You glance up at him. His face is so close to yours, you can count every frown line, every mole. You can see that his lips are slightly dry. He wets them just as you lift your eyes back up to his.

He leans back.

"Not bad right ?" he asks in an almost smug tone. Like the fact that his internet is fast is all his doing. Like you called him the fastest or maybe he interpreted it as 'the biggest'.

"What exactly are you bragging about ? The fact that your network isn't bugging ?" you fire back. You can't have him getting too cocky all of a sudden.

He shrugs. He looks entirely unbothered by the fact that you're calling him out.

"Reliable connection is a rare thing," he says.

You squint at him. "Was that supposed to be a tech joke ?"

"Would it work better as a dinner invitation ?"

That shuts you up for once.

You don't even have to think about it. Yes, yes, yes.

"Only if I get to pick the place," you say.

He gives you a smile. It looks boy-ish, almost shy. He nods gently.

"And you can't wear a suit," you continue. You like the suits, they look real nice, but you're hoping for someone more… slutty ?

"And you have to do four shots of SoCo lime with me. Meatball style. Without throwing up."

He blinks. He looks vaguely alarmed. "I'm sorry… what ?"

You grin. "You'll see."

Bug 3 : Software failure — Frozen Window Moth, Glitchonoma unresponsivea.

The Bureau's latest failed technological venture is the 'Virtual Case File'. This system is somehow even worse than the previous one. And that's saying something, seeing as its predecessor dates back to the literal 80s. Not only are the bugs worse, the intended features that were supposed to justify a $100 million investment of tax payer money don't even work.

You're already 5 agents deep in troubleshooting hell (and it's not even lunch yet) by the time you make it to Aaron's office.

You only knock once before coming in. He cut his hair shorter the other day. Well, more like you cut his hair, and you made it shorter than planned. It still looks nice, he just doesn't have the little bangs anymore.

He's wearing the gray suit today. With the red tie. Just for you. Because he knows you think he looks ravishing in it. And, because he knows it's your favorite suit to take off of him. Whore.

"Please say that this is one of your fake requests to see me and that you don't actually need help," you complain.

You're tired and irritated and running dangerously low on fucks to give.

For once you're the one frowning.

"Hi sweetheart," he says gently. He's smiling, soft and warm and stupidly sweet. He takes your hand in his (warm, always warm) and leads you to his (your) chair. He leans down, brushes some of your hair back and fixes the collar of your shirt with so much care it's making you want to kiss him.

So you do. Because you can.

Just once. One little peck. We're still at work.

Alright, no, another one.

And a third one. For luck.

You can feel him smile through the kiss. Or maybe you're the one smiling.

"Better?" he asks sweetly.

You poke his dimple with your finger.

You nod.

You pull away just the tiniest bit. Your hand's on the nape of his neck, playing with the short hairs there.

"So, what exactly can I do for you, Agent Hotchner ?" you ask with a suggestive eyebrow wiggle.

He gives you a little chuckle. Sometimes when he laughs it almost sounds like he's giggling. But again, we're still at work…

"I actually do need your help this time," he says almost sheepishly.

You groan. "Of course you do. You're like a damsel in distress."

Still, your thumb brushes his cheek and you give him one last peck.

"It's the new system isn't it?"

"It completely freezes when I try to upload attachments," he explains.

"Have you tried throwing your computer out the window ?" you offer. "That usually works."

"I figured I'd call you before escalating to that."

You turn towards the computer. You're already pulling up the terminal and checking the system logs. He's watching you work, almost lovestruck. You can feel his eyes tenderly following your every movement. It makes you feel warm.

"What would I do without you?" he asks. His finger lightly caresses your ear.

"I don't know. Probably Comic Sans again ?"

He lets out a half-annoyed half-fond groan.

You laugh. Pleased with your joke, with how annoyed you can make him and still have him be sweet to you. You're a lot less grumpy than you were when you came in.

"What do you want to have for lunch?"

Bug 4 : Cybersecurity phishing test — Inbox Lure Wasp, Phisherix simultan

You almost don't believe it when the report comes through. You double-check the logs. Then the email header. Then the simulated domain redirect path. Then the logs again.

Nope. There's no two ways about it. Aaron Hotchner, BAU Unit Chief, your Aaron, clicked on a phishing link.

You sit back in your chair (still no lumbar support), stunned.

You feel slightly disappointed at first. But then an idea forms in your head and you start grinning.

When you walk into his office, he's in the middle of reviewing a case file. He looks up, about to tell off whoever it is that dared to just barge into his office, but softens when he sees it's you. Except he then actually sees you, sees the smug smile and unholy glee that are clear as day on your face.

"Why are you acting weird towards me?" (this somewhat softens the blow of having your boyfriend fall for a phishing link. he's in so deep that he's quoting Snooki. the other day, he called one of the police officers he was working with 'a grenade'. it's not exactly right but it’s still disgustingly sweet that he tries. for you.)

You put down the report on his desk. "You failed."

He frowns. He picks it up. There's a very faint teeth mark on the top knuckle of his index finger (don't ask).

Slowly, his expression shifts from confused fondness to quiet horror. You perch yourself on his desk.

"Aaron, honey. It said "autovrify" in the URL. And you still entered your password. Twice."

He exhales, clearly mortified. You're doing your best not to start laughing.

He resorts to doing 'the Hotchner glare' again. You know the one. It hasn’t worked before and it's not about to now.

"I have to send you to retraining," you start, as sweetly as you can. "Mandatory. Two hours."

He groans and leans back in his chair. Throws his head back. Closes his eyes. This position looks vaguely familiar…

"Please tell me this doesn't go in my permanent file."

You pause. You can't hold back the smile that's making its way onto your face. Of course he would be worried about that. "I'm not at liberty to say."

He glares. You blow him a kiss.

"Also," you continue, all innocence, "since I have your password. By the way 'RingoSavoyTruffle1965', seriously ?"

You shoot him a look. He shrugs his shoulders.

"I did a quick sweep. Purely for cybersecurity purposes of course."

His eyes narrow instantly. His thumb starts rubbing his finger. He's nervous. He doesn't look that different outwardly but you know him.

"And what did you find ?" he asks, trying to seem unbothered.

"Oh, you know" you say casually. "The usual. Tax reports, newspaper subscriptions, grocery lists. And—"

You run your finger lightly along his chest. Your nail scratches against the fabric of his tie.

"—a very interesting folder labeled 'personal reference material'."

He sits up. And grabs your hand to stop its descent.

"You opened that ?"

You laugh and you squeeze the hand that he's holding. You use it to drag his chair closer to where you're sitting on his desk.

With your free hand, you brush back some of the strands at the front of his head that got messed up. It's getting long again. Not that you're complaining.

"How could I not?" You laugh. "You labeled things like it was evidence. With subfolders and—"

He kisses you to shut you up.

#aaron hotchner x reader #aaron hotchner x you #aaron hotchner fanfiction #aaron hotchner #aaron hotchner fic #aaron hotchner one shot #aaron hotchner fluff #hotch x reader #hotch x you #aaron hotch x reader #aaron hotch fanfiction #aaron hotch x you #criminal minds fanfiction #criminal minds x reader

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nostalgebraist · 4 months ago

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Anthropic's stated "AI timelines" seem wildly aggressive to me.

As far as I can tell, they are now saying that by 2028 – and possibly even by 2027, or late 2026 – something they call "powerful AI" will exist.

And by "powerful AI," they mean... this (source, emphasis mine):

In terms of pure intelligence, it is smarter than a Nobel Prize winner across most relevant fields – biology, programming, math, engineering, writing, etc. This means it can prove unsolved mathematical theorems, write extremely good novels, write difficult codebases from scratch, etc. In addition to just being a “smart thing you talk to”, it has all the “interfaces” available to a human working virtually, including text, audio, video, mouse and keyboard control, and internet access. It can engage in any actions, communications, or remote operations enabled by this interface, including taking actions on the internet, taking or giving directions to humans, ordering materials, directing experiments, watching videos, making videos, and so on. It does all of these tasks with, again, a skill exceeding that of the most capable humans in the world. It does not just passively answer questions; instead, it can be given tasks that take hours, days, or weeks to complete, and then goes off and does those tasks autonomously, in the way a smart employee would, asking for clarification as necessary. It does not have a physical embodiment (other than living on a computer screen), but it can control existing physical tools, robots, or laboratory equipment through a computer; in theory it could even design robots or equipment for itself to use. The resources used to train the model can be repurposed to run millions of instances of it (this matches projected cluster sizes by ~2027), and the model can absorb information and generate actions at roughly 10x-100x human speed. It may however be limited by the response time of the physical world or of software it interacts with. Each of these million copies can act independently on unrelated tasks, or if needed can all work together in the same way humans would collaborate, perhaps with different subpopulations fine-tuned to be especially good at particular tasks.

In the post I'm quoting, Amodei is coy about the timeline for this stuff, saying only that

I think it could come as early as 2026, though there are also ways it could take much longer. But for the purposes of this essay, I’d like to put these issues aside [...]

However, other official communications from Anthropic have been more specific. Most notable is their recent OSTP submission, which states (emphasis in original):

Based on current research trajectories, we anticipate that powerful AI systems could emerge as soon as late 2026 or 2027 [...] Powerful AI technology will be built during this Administration. [i.e. the current Trump administration -nost]

See also here, where Jack Clark says (my emphasis):

People underrate how significant and fast-moving AI progress is. We have this notion that in late 2026, or early 2027, powerful AI systems will be built that will have intellectual capabilities that match or exceed Nobel Prize winners. They’ll have the ability to navigate all of the interfaces… [Clark goes on, mentioning some of the other tenets of "powerful AI" as in other Anthropic communications -nost]

----

To be clear, extremely short timelines like these are not unique to Anthropic.

Miles Brundage (ex-OpenAI) says something similar, albeit less specific, in this post. And Daniel Kokotajlo (also ex-OpenAI) has held views like this for a long time now.

Even Sam Altman himself has said similar things (though in much, much vaguer terms, both on the content of the deliverable and the timeline).

Still, Anthropic's statements are unique in being

official positions of the company

extremely specific and ambitious about the details

extremely aggressive about the timing, even by the standards of "short timelines" AI prognosticators in the same social cluster

Re: ambition, note that the definition of "powerful AI" seems almost the opposite of what you'd come up with if you were trying to make a confident forecast of something.

Often people will talk about "AI capable of transforming the world economy" or something more like that, leaving room for the AI in question to do that in one of several ways, or to do so while still failing at some important things.

But instead, Anthropic's definition is a big conjunctive list of "it'll be able to do this and that and this other thing and...", and each individual capability is defined in the most aggressive possible way, too! Not just "good enough at science to be extremely useful for scientists," but "smarter than a Nobel Prize winner," across "most relevant fields" (whatever that means). And not just good at science but also able to "write extremely good novels" (note that we have a long way to go on that front, and I get the feeling that people at AI labs don't appreciate the extent of the gap [cf]). Not only can it use a computer interface, it can use every computer interface; not only can it use them competently, but it can do so better than the best humans in the world. And all of that is in the first two paragraphs – there's four more paragraphs I haven't even touched in this little summary!

Re: timing, they have even shorter timelines than Kokotajlo these days, which is remarkable since he's historically been considered "the guy with the really short timelines." (See here where Kokotajlo states a median prediction of 2028 for "AGI," by which he means something less impressive than "powerful AI"; he expects something close to the "powerful AI" vision ["ASI"] ~1 year or so after "AGI" arrives.)

----

I, uh, really do not think this is going to happen in "late 2026 or 2027."

Or even by the end of this presidential administration, for that matter.

I can imagine it happening within my lifetime – which is wild and scary and marvelous. But in 1.5 years?!

The confusing thing is, I am very familiar with the kinds of arguments that "short timelines" people make, and I still find the Anthropic's timelines hard to fathom.

Above, I mentioned that Anthropic has shorter timelines than Daniel Kokotajlo, who "merely" expects the same sort of thing in 2029 or so. This probably seems like hairsplitting – from the perspective of your average person not in these circles, both of these predictions look basically identical, "absurdly good godlike sci-fi AI coming absurdly soon." What difference does an extra year or two make, right?

But it's salient to me, because I've been reading Kokotajlo for years now, and I feel like I basically get understand his case. And people, including me, tend to push back on him in the "no, that's too soon" direction. I've read many many blog posts and discussions over the years about this sort of thing, I feel like I should have a handle on what the short-timelines case is.

But even if you accept all the arguments evinced over the years by Daniel "Short Timelines" Kokotajlo, even if you grant all the premises he assumes and some people don't – that still doesn't get you all the way to the Anthropic timeline!

To give a very brief, very inadequate summary, the standard "short timelines argument" right now is like:

Over the next few years we will see a "growth spurt" in the amount of computing power ("compute") used for the largest LLM training runs. This factor of production has been largely stagnant since GPT-4 in 2023, for various reasons, but new clusters are getting built and the metaphorical car will get moving again soon. (See here)

By convention, each "GPT number" uses ~100x as much training compute as the last one. GPT-3 used ~100x as much as GPT-2, and GPT-4 used ~100x as much as GPT-3 (i.e. ~10,000x as much as GPT-2).

We are just now starting to see "~10x GPT-4 compute" models (like Grok 3 and GPT-4.5). In the next few years we will get to "~100x GPT-4 compute" models, and by 2030 will will reach ~10,000x GPT-4 compute.

If you think intuitively about "how much GPT-4 improved upon GPT-3 (100x less) or GPT-2 (10,000x less)," you can maybe convince yourself that these near-future models will be super-smart in ways that are difficult to precisely state/imagine from our vantage point. (GPT-4 was way smarter than GPT-2; it's hard to know what "projecting that forward" would mean, concretely, but it sure does sound like something pretty special)

Meanwhile, all kinds of (arguably) complementary research is going on, like allowing models to "think" for longer amounts of time, giving them GUI interfaces, etc.

All that being said, there's still a big intuitive gap between "ChatGPT, but it's much smarter under the hood" and anything like "powerful AI." But...

...the LLMs are getting good enough that they can write pretty good code, and they're getting better over time. And depending on how you interpret the evidence, you may be able to convince yourself that they're also swiftly getting better at other tasks involved in AI development, like "research engineering." So maybe you don't need to get all the way yourself, you just need to build an AI that's a good enough AI developer that it improves your AIs faster than you can, and then those AIs are even better developers, etc. etc. (People in this social cluster are really keen on the importance of exponential growth, which is generally a good trait to have but IMO it shades into "we need to kick off exponential growth and it'll somehow do the rest because it's all-powerful" in this case.)

And like, I have various disagreements with this picture.

For one thing, the "10x" models we're getting now don't seem especially impressive – there has been a lot of debate over this of course, but reportedly these models were disappointing to their own developers, who expected scaling to work wonders (using the kind of intuitive reasoning mentioned above) and got less than they hoped for.

And (in light of that) I think it's double-counting to talk about the wonders of scaling and then talk about reasoning, computer GUI use, etc. as complementary accelerating factors – those things are just table stakes at this point, the models are already maxing out the tasks you had defined previously, you've gotta give them something new to do or else they'll just sit there wasting GPUs when a smaller model would have sufficed.

And I think we're already at a point where nuances of UX and "character writing" and so forth are more of a limiting factor than intelligence. It's not a lack of "intelligence" that gives us superficially dazzling but vapid "eyeball kick" prose, or voice assistants that are deeply uncomfortable to actually talk to, or (I claim) "AI agents" that get stuck in loops and confuse themselves, or any of that.

We are still stuck in the "Helpful, Harmless, Honest Assistant" chatbot paradigm – no one has seriously broke with it since that Anthropic introduced it in a paper in 2021 – and now that paradigm is showing its limits. ("Reasoning" was strapped onto this paradigm in a simple and fairly awkward way, the new "reasoning" models are still chatbots like this, no one is actually doing anything else.) And instead of "okay, let's invent something better," the plan seems to be "let's just scale up these assistant chatbots and try to get them to self-improve, and they'll figure it out." I won't try to explain why in this post (IYI I kind of tried to here) but I really doubt these helpful/harmless guys can bootstrap their way into winning all the Nobel Prizes.

----

All that stuff I just said – that's where I differ from the usual "short timelines" people, from Kokotajlo and co.

But OK, let's say that for the sake of argument, I'm wrong and they're right. It still seems like a pretty tough squeeze to get to "powerful AI" on time, doesn't it?

In the OSTP submission, Anthropic presents their latest release as evidence of their authority to speak on the topic:

In February 2025, we released Claude 3.7 Sonnet, which is by many performance benchmarks the most powerful and capable commercially-available AI system in the world.

I've used Claude 3.7 Sonnet quite a bit. It is indeed really good, by the standards of these sorts of things!

But it is, of course, very very far from "powerful AI." So like, what is the fine-grained timeline even supposed to look like? When do the many, many milestones get crossed? If they're going to have "powerful AI" in early 2027, where exactly are they in mid-2026? At end-of-year 2025?

If I assume that absolutely everything goes splendidly well with no unexpected obstacles – and remember, we are talking about automating all human intellectual labor and all tasks done by humans on computers, but sure, whatever – then maybe we get the really impressive next-gen models later this year or early next year... and maybe they're suddenly good at all the stuff that has been tough for LLMs thus far (the "10x" models already released show little sign of this but sure, whatever)... and then we finally get into the self-improvement loop in earnest, and then... what?

They figure out to squeeze even more performance out of the GPUs? They think of really smart experiments to run on the cluster? Where are they going to get all the missing information about how to do every single job on earth, the tacit knowledge, the stuff that's not in any web scrape anywhere but locked up in human minds and inaccessible private data stores? Is an experiment designed by a helpful-chatbot AI going to finally crack the problem of giving chatbots the taste to "write extremely good novels," when that taste is precisely what "helpful-chatbot AIs" lack?

I guess the boring answer is that this is all just hype – tech CEO acts like tech CEO, news at 11. (But I don't feel like that can be the full story here, somehow.)

And the scary answer is that there's some secret Anthropic private info that makes this all more plausible. (But I doubt that too – cf. Brundage's claim that there are no more secrets like that now, the short-timelines cards are all on the table.)

It just does not make sense to me. And (as you can probably tell) I find it very frustrating that these guys are out there talking about how human thought will basically be obsolete in a few years, and pontificating about how to find new sources of meaning in life and stuff, without actually laying out an argument that their vision – which would be the common concern of all of us, if it were indeed on the horizon – is actually likely to occur on the timescale they propose.

It would be less frustrating if I were being asked to simply take it on faith, or explicitly on the basis of corporate secret knowledge. But no, the claim is not that, it's something more like "now, now, I know this must sound far-fetched to the layman, but if you really understand 'scaling laws' and 'exponential growth,' and you appreciate the way that pretraining will be scaled up soon, then it's simply obvious that –"

No! Fuck that! I've read the papers you're talking about, I know all the arguments you're handwaving-in-the-direction-of! It still doesn't add up!

#ai tag #no matter how things go i'm sure this will be fun to revisit in 2 years...

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clovermoters · 1 year ago

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lando vs obs

💻 ln4 x streamer!reader

💻 lando has trouble with his recording software but have no fear! his streamer gf is here!

💻warnings : none! just fluff

💻authors note: my ass did NOT edit this very welland i wrote is so quick but here you are!!

you were sat on the couch in landos house watching some cheesy rom-com. your boyfriend was currently filming for a new quadrant video in his office and while you wait for him to finish you decided to get comfy. the video was Max and Lando against two members of the sidemen, Josh and Harry in the new F1 2024 game.

your face was stuffed with popcorn as the movie drowns out the screams coming from down the hall.

“babeee!! can you come help me quickly?” you hear lando shout. you paused the movie sitting up to fix your his hoodie as you make your way to see what he needs. “what’s up?” you ask pushing the door open.

“we just did a whole race and it didn’t record anything...” he replies. his eyes are moving across the screen infront of him with furrowed brows as he try’s to figure out this problem on his own. after a pause he sighs annoyed “can you please come take a look? i don’t understand OBS like you do..”.

You shuffle over to stand behind him and reach down to take the mouse from him. after a brief moment of checking his settings and wandering around landos OBS screen. “oh i see the problem! you haven’t set the game capture to F1 so it’s currently just recording your face.” you explain.

you hear max groan in the headset “so yeah you definitely didn’t record that race, did you?” lando pauses as he watched you navigate OBS to fix the issue and set the right game capture. it always amazed him how you understood all these softwares. “no…” he replies slowly.

hearing Maxs distress you give an idea to pass onto the editors “it’s alright, it should be working now and you can just use footage from the races spectator mode instead of his onboard for that race.” you offer. lando smiles “that’s a great idea, thank you baby!” he kisses your cheek.

you smile back and him giving a quick goodbye to the boys before making your way to the door “it helps having a streamer as a girlfriend doesn’t it!” you hear lando brag into his headset. shaking your head with a laugh you resume back to the couch and cuddle up to press play on the movie as the screaming continues to echo from landos office.

#lando norris fic #lando fluff #lando norris fanfic #lando norris imagine #lando x reader #ln4 #formula 1

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simmers-against-curseforge · 1 year ago

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About Sims 4 Mod Manager

It came to my attention a few days ago that a popular program used for sorting custom content, Sims 4 Mod Manager, is based on Overwolf software. The issue with this is that ad placements on Overwolf programs give a 20-30% cut to Overwolf directly. As stated on their website. I know it is an Overwolf program because you can find Overwolf files within it:

Personally, I do not mind un-obstructive ads on free programs as long as they are vetted by the developer, but I do not want to give Overwolf any money. So I will be kindly contacting the developer via the contacts on his website and ask he divest and use a different avenue with the ads. Maybe moving to github instead. He is also recently released a curseforge integrated app.

If you are to request the divestment, please please do so with respect as to invite people INTO the conversation and not put them in a defensive position. No one likes to listen when they are being threatened or harassed. 🤷‍♀️

I know many will be disappointed with this news as it is a great, one of a kind program, so I wanted to offer some alternative methods besides manually sorting custom content:

Sims 4 Mod Assistant: A small app used to find duplicates and mod conflicts. Also supports filtering and moving files to other folders. Available on Mod the Sims and Github.

S4Pavir: It's not that pretty, but it can be used to view, remove, and sort cc. Available on Github.

You can also use sims tray importer to sort through cc. Dress your sims in all the cc you want to remove or place build/buy items on a lot. Save the sim/lot to your library and use Sims 4 tray importer to view the list of cc used, and open its file location to delete. Available on Luniversims (.fr)

Sims 4 Studio can also be used to view, edit, and delete cc. Available here.

Let me know of any other methods you know or notify me if there are any issues with these two programs.

Hopefully there is a positive outcome with reaching out to the creator. Please be respectful and you can use my pinned post as a reference for why curseforge is a problem. 🙏

Edit:

Update on Sims 4 Mod Manager

After going through the older versions of Sims 4 mod manager I have found out that Version 1.0.9 Beta (Windows 10, 11 for me) does not have Curseforge ads. I think this is suitable option to use the mod manager without giving direct ad revenue to Overwolf/Curseforge.

When you go to the Sims 4 Mod Manager site, click other versions and scroll until you find this version. It does not have all the current features, but it works. You can uninstall your current version by searching the app in your start menu (Windows), right click and select 'uninstall', and click 'uninstall' again once you find it in the list that comes up.

(I do not have Mac, so I do not know if the later version 1.1.3 Beta, will also not have ads. If you download it please let me know.) I will update my original S4MM post with this info and also put it in a reblog so hopefully everyone can see this.)

It doesn't have the sort to subfolders option, but my way around that is to sort cc into a "moving folder" and then open your regular file explorer and cut and paste those items to your sub-folder manually. Easy peasy!

#simmers against curseforge #divest from curseforge #ts4 #the sims 4 #sims 4 #simblr #sims 4 mod manager

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moatemfarid · 10 months ago

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🚨Don't stop helping🫶🍉

Hi, I am Motasem from Gaza. For the past 11 months, my family and I have been enduring unimaginable suffering — facing genocide, starvation, homelessness, and severe health issues. We’ve been left without any source of income, and we’ve lost our home, food, water, and access to basic medicine. We are a hardworking family; I used to work as a software developer, and my brothers were engineers. But now, everything has been stripped away from us.

This my donation link:

We are desperately in need of support to survive these conditions and rebuild our lives. Any help, no matter how small, will go a long way in providing us with food, water, and medical supplies. Please consider sharing our story and contributing if you can. Your kindness can help us survive this tragedy and bring hope back to our lives.

#save gaza #gaza #free gaza #gaza strip #gaza genocide #free palestine

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derinthescarletpescatarian · 2 months ago

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For anyone wondering about my computer, here's the current dealio:

graphics card issue resolved by installing Steam from the Steam site; apparently the one in the app store is an alternate version that's notoriously buggy. Thanks lapsuslapsiis and purple-hel for tipping me off about this.

the game that was experiencing said issue runs now, but it for some reason so laggy as to literally be unplayable (which, since the issue was a graphics memory space thing, makes me really really hope that the issue is actually resolved and this isn't same issue different symptom). I have some fresh new ram coming in the mail so if it's a general memory issue then that might solve it.

I thought that switching hard drives had solved the freezing issue; turns out it hasn't. Freezing seems to be less frequent, which might mean something (since the OS switch I've got a lot more free space on the hard drive, so if it's a memory issue then there might be more wiggle room there) or it might just be random. Again, I've got ram coming in the mail, so that'll either solve the issue or it won't.

Since switching to Linux, I've experienced a fair bit of general lag; programs are much slower to respond, and are especially a lot slower to open, than they were on Windows. Computer people might recognise this as "the exact opposite of what most people experience when trading Windows for Linux". Linux has always been as fast or faster on my other computers but it's slow here. I might be totally off-base here but this also leads me to suspect a memory hardware issue -- lagging and freezing are probably the same problem, and less demand on the computer systems might just mean trading lagging for some of the freezing.

I floated earlier that the freezing might actually be the computer suddenly failing to recognise all input devices, which are all USB devices (I've had issues with it recognising my internet dongle, also USB, before). Since it's either a hardware issue or a bios issue (sudden onset makes me think hardware), I was worried that this might mean something fucked on the motherboard. We can put this theory to rest -- it's now frozen multiple times during youtube videos and when it does, the videos freeze and loop about 1 second of sound. It's definitely freezing, not just failing all inputs.

So in conclusion, I've got 8GB of ram in this thing and I suspect some of it might be broken, and there's 64GB of shiny new ram coming in the mail to replace it, and the switch will either fix all of my problems or it won't. If I keep randomly guessing then something I try will have to work eventually. If it doesn't work then it might be a video card software issue re: Nvidia on Linux, and also a hardware motherboard issue causing the freezes that had me switch in the first place, but I'm hoping it's the ram thing which is so much cheaper and easier to fix.

Also this beast has had memory issues for literal years at this point so this might just be the tipping point re: ram.

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animalphotorefs · 3 months ago

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Hey! Sorry if you’ve been asked this before, but I didn’t see it anywhere.

I volunteer at an aquarium and often arrive before my shift, in which case I wander around and like to take photos. However, there’s been a problem of my phone focusing on imperfections in the glass rather than the animals, making the photos very blurry. I’m thinking about buying a small camera to fix the issue, is there a specific feature I need to look for or should just about any kind work? Your zoo and aquarium photography always turns out so clean so I was hoping you’d have advice. If not no worries!

What I’ve learned so far is that taking photos of fish in tanks is really dang hard, honestly. I’ve got a good idea of how to get the basics I want for the site now but they’re not like… what I would consider good photos.

You’ve got a couple problems with trying to shoot into tanks that have to be solved around: the acrylic/plexi is thick, and can warp or scratch or discolor; the water itself also creates light refraction and adds distortion to images; not all tanks are well lit, and many are lit with LEDs that have a flicker cycle; tanks are often very shallow, which requires a macro capability, or they’re super deep but anything farther back gets distorted by the water volume; fish are fast little buggers that require a really high shutter speed.

I think your phone is probably focusing too close to you - its software is telling it the salient point of the image is the surface of the tank, instead of the things in it. That’s more common now I think as phone cameras get better and better and the design improvements are focused on close up detail like a flower or a dog nose or a portrait from three feet away.

The current setup I’ve been using is a mirrorless camera with the autofocus software set to detect eyes, prioritize animals, and hold tracking without switching subjects. For fish I rented a macro lens with a big aperture so I could get close-up shots with lots of ability to take in light (35mm RF 1.8 if anyone is curious). That compensated for the fact that I had to use a shutter speed of like, 4000th-5000th of a second to catch moving fish without motion blur - for context I normally shoot birds in flight at around a 2000th of a second. Some tanks were well enough lit that worked with normal settings, but a lot required purposefully overexposing the shots massively and cranking the ISO up to absolutely ridiculous levels.

Point being like… yeah, you can get a nice camera with a good macro lens if it’s important to you to get fish photos. But tbh I don’t know if that’s the best way to do it, and it’s a pretty major investment. I don’t think a point and shoot (anything without interchangable lenses) would have the capacity for the settings I found I needed. I don’t want to discourage you, but I do want to be honest about what you might be looking at!

That said, if you want to play around with the idea, you can always rent cameras and lenses! That’s how I’ve figured out what my daily kit looks like and what I want to buy for different use cases. I will always recommend finding a local store, but if you don’t have one and are in the US, I’ve always had good experiences with the company Lensrentals.

Let me know if you end up trying some new gear, and any other professional photographers please chime in with additional advice!

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yukipri · 1 year ago

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Some thoughts on Cara

So some of you may have heard about Cara, the new platform that a lot of artists are trying out. It's been around for a while, but there's been a recent huge surge of new users, myself among them. Thought I'd type up a lil thing on my initial thoughts.

First, what is Cara?

From their About Cara page:

Cara is a social media and portfolio platform for artists. With the widespread use of generative AI, we decided to build a place that filters out generative AI images so that people who want to find authentic creatives and artwork can do so easily. Many platforms currently accept AI art when it’s not ethical, while others have promised “no AI forever” policies without consideration for the scenario where adoption of such technologies may happen at the workplace in the coming years. The future of creative industries requires nuanced understanding and support to help artists and companies connect and work together. We want to bridge the gap and build a platform that we would enjoy using as creatives ourselves. Our stance on AI: ・We do not agree with generative AI tools in their current unethical form, and we won’t host AI-generated portfolios unless the rampant ethical and data privacy issues around datasets are resolved via regulation. ・In the event that legislation is passed to clearly protect artists, we believe that AI-generated content should always be clearly labeled, because the public should always be able to search for human-made art and media easily.

Should note that Cara is independently funded, and is made by a core group of artists and engineers and is even collaborating with the Glaze project. It's very much a platform by artists, for artists!

Should also mention that in being a platform for artists, it's more a gallery first, with social media functionalities on the side. The info below will hopefully explain how that works.

Next, my actual initial thoughts using it, and things that set it apart from other platforms I've used:

1) When you post, you can choose to check the portfolio option, or to NOT check it. This is fantastic because it means I can have just my art organized in my gallery, but I can still post random stuff like photos of my cats and it won't clutter things. You can also just ramble/text post and it won't affect the gallery view!

2) You can adjust your crop preview for your images. Such a simple thing, yet so darn nice.

3) When you check that "Add to portfolio," you get a bunch of additional optional fields: Title, Field/Medium, Project Type, Category Tags, and Software Used. It's nice that you can put all this info into organized fields that don't take up text space.

4) Speaking of text, 5000 character limit is niiiiice. If you want to talk, you can.

5) Two separate feeds, a "For You" algorithmic one, and "Following." The "Following" actually appears to be full chronological timeline of just folks you follow (like Tumblr). Amazing.

6) Now usually, "For You" being set to home/default kinda pisses me off because generally I like curating my own experience, but not here, for this handy reason: if you tap the gear symbol, you can ADJUST your algorithm feed!

So you can choose what you see still!!! AMAZING. And, again, you still have your Following timeline too.

7) To repeat the stuff at the top of this post, its creation and intent as a place by artists, for artists. Hopefully you can also see from the points above that it's been designed with artists in mind.

8) No GenAI images!!!! There's a pop up that says it's not allowed, and apparently there's some sort of detector thing too. Not sure how reliable the latter is, but so far, it's just been a breath of fresh air, being able to scroll and see human art art and art!

To be clear, Cara's not perfect and is currently pretty laggy, and you can get errors while posting (so far, I've had more success on desktop than the mobile app), but that's understandable, given the small team. They'll need time to scale. For me though, it's a fair tradeoff for a platform that actually cares about artists.

Currently it also doesn't allow NSFW, not sure if that'll change given app store rules.

As mentioned above, they're independently funded, which means the team is currently paying for Cara itself. They have a kofi set up for folks who want to chip in, but it's optional. Here's the link to the tweet from one of the founders:

And a reminder that no matter that the platform itself isn't selling our data to GenAI, it can still be scraped by third parties. Protect your work with Glaze and Nightshade!

Anyway, I'm still figuring stuff out and have only been on Cara a few days, but I feel hopeful, and I think they're off to a good start.

I hope this post has been informative!

Lastly, here's my own Cara if you want to come say hi! Not sure at all if I'll be active on there, but if you're an artist like me who is keeping an eye out for hopefully nice communities, check it out!

#YukiPri rambles #cara #cara app #social media #artists on tumblr #review #longpost #long post #mostly i'd already typed this up on twitter so i figured why not share it here too #also since tumblr too is selling our data to GenAI

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