#including software testing

[f1-obsessed333]

[mayspicer]

Girl help I really need to do the test tasks for a new job or else my life is gonna get very bad real soon, but all I want to do is draw ttrpg characters.

[reasonsforhope]

"When Ellen Kaphamtengo felt a sharp pain in her lower abdomen, she thought she might be in labour. It was the ninth month of her first pregnancy and she wasn’t taking any chances. With the help of her mother, the 18-year-old climbed on to a motorcycle taxi and rushed to a hospital in Malawi’s capital, Lilongwe, a 20-minute ride away.

At the Area 25 health centre, they told her it was a false alarm and took her to the maternity ward. But things escalated quickly when a routine ultrasound revealed that her baby was much smaller than expected for her pregnancy stage, which can cause asphyxia – a condition that limits blood flow and oxygen to the baby.

In Malawi, about 19 out of 1,000 babies die during delivery or in the first month of life. Birth asphyxia is a leading cause of neonatal mortality in the country, and can mean newborns suffering brain damage, with long-term effects including developmental delays and cerebral palsy.

Doctors reclassified Kaphamtengo, who had been anticipating a normal delivery, as a high-risk patient. Using AI-enabled foetal monitoring software, further testing found that the baby’s heart rate was dropping. A stress test showed that the baby would not survive labour.

The hospital’s head of maternal care, Chikondi Chiweza, knew she had less than 30 minutes to deliver Kaphamtengo’s baby by caesarean section. Having delivered thousands of babies at some of the busiest public hospitals in the city, she was familiar with how quickly a baby’s odds of survival can change during labour.

Chiweza, who delivered Kaphamtengo’s baby in good health, says the foetal monitoring programme has been a gamechanger for deliveries at the hospital.

“[In Kaphamtengo’s case], we would have only discovered what we did either later on, or with the baby as a stillbirth,” she says.

The software, donated by the childbirth safety technology company PeriGen through a partnership with Malawi’s health ministry and Texas children’s hospital, tracks the baby’s vital signs during labour, giving clinicians early warning of any abnormalities. Since they began using it three years ago, the number of stillbirths and neonatal deaths at the centre has fallen by 82%. It is the only hospital in the country using the technology.

“The time around delivery is the most dangerous for mother and baby,” says Jeffrey Wilkinson, an obstetrician with Texas children’s hospital, who is leading the programme. “You can prevent most deaths by making sure the baby is safe during the delivery process.”

The AI monitoring system needs less time, equipment and fewer skilled staff than traditional foetal monitoring methods, which is critical in hospitals in low-income countries such as Malawi, which face severe shortages of health workers. Regular foetal observation often relies on doctors performing periodic checks, meaning that critical information can be missed during intervals, while AI-supported programs do continuous, real-time monitoring. Traditional checks also require physicians to interpret raw data from various devices, which can be time consuming and subject to error.

Area 25’s maternity ward handles about 8,000 deliveries a year with a team of around 80 midwives and doctors. While only about 10% are trained to perform traditional electronic monitoring, most can use the AI software to detect anomalies, so doctors are aware of any riskier or more complex births. Hospital staff also say that using AI has standardised important aspects of maternity care at the clinic, such as interpretations on foetal wellbeing and decisions on when to intervene.

Kaphamtengo, who is excited to be a new mother, believes the doctor’s interventions may have saved her baby’s life. “They were able to discover that my baby was distressed early enough to act,” she says, holding her son, Justice.

Doctors at the hospital hope to see the technology introduced in other hospitals in Malawi, and across Africa.

“AI technology is being used in many fields, and saving babies’ lives should not be an exception,” says Chiweza. “It can really bridge the gap in the quality of care that underserved populations can access.”"

-via The Guardian, December 6, 2024

[were--ralph]

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.

[consultingwives]

As someone who works in the reliability sector of IT I cannot emphasize how much you have to give 0 fucks about professional standards and best practices in order to do something like what Crowdstrike did.

At the company I work for, which you have definitely heard of, there are thousands of people (including me, hi) part of whose job it is to sit in rooms for literal hours every week with the people building new features and updating our software and ask them every question we can possibly think of about how their changes might impact the overall system and what potential risks there are. We brainstorm how to minimize those risks, impose requirements on the developers, and ultimately the buck stops with us. Some things are just too risky.

Many of the practices developed at this and other companies are now in wide use across the industry, including things like staggered rollouts (i.e. only 1/3 people get this update at first, then 2/3, then everyone) and multi-stage testing (push it to a fake system we set up for these purposes, see what it does).

In cases where you’re updating firmware or an os, there are physical test devices you need to update and verify that everything behaves as expected. If you really care about your customers you’ll hand the device to someone who works on a different system altogether and tell them to do their worst.

The bottom line here is that if Crowdstrike were following anything even resembling industry best practices there should have been about twenty failsafes between a kernel bug and a global update that bricked basically every enterprise machine in the world. This is like finding out the virus lab has a direct HVAC connection to the big conference room. There is genuinely no excuse for this kind of professional incompetence.

[pillowfort-social]

Generative AI Policy (February 9, 2024)

As of February 9, 2024, we are updating our Terms of Service to prohibit the following content:

Images created through the use of generative AI programs such as Stable Diffusion, Midjourney, and Dall-E.

This post explains what that means for you. We know it’s impossible to remove all images created by Generative AI on Pillowfort. The goal of this new policy, however, is to send a clear message that we are against the normalization of commercializing and distributing images created by Generative AI. Pillowfort stands in full support of all creatives who make Pillowfort their home. Disclaimer: The following policy was shaped in collaboration with Pillowfort Staff and international university researchers. We are aware that Artificial Intelligence is a rapidly evolving environment. This policy may require revisions in the future to adapt to the changing landscape of Generative AI. 

-

Why is Generative AI Banned on Pillowfort?

Our Terms of Service already prohibits copyright violations, which includes reposting other people’s artwork to Pillowfort without the artist’s permission; and because of how Generative AI draws on a database of images and text that were taken without consent from artists or writers, all Generative AI content can be considered in violation of this rule. We also had an overwhelming response from our user base urging us to take action on prohibiting Generative AI on our platform.  

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How does Pillowfort define Generative AI?

As of February 9, 2024 we define Generative AI as online tools for producing material based on large data collection that is often gathered without consent or notification from the original creators.

Generative AI tools do not require skill on behalf of the user and effectively replace them in the creative process (ie - little direction or decision making taken directly from the user). Tools that assist creativity don't replace the user. This means the user can still improve their skills and refine over time. 

For example: If you ask a Generative AI tool to add a lighthouse to an image, the image of a lighthouse appears in a completed state. Whereas if you used an assistive drawing tool to add a lighthouse to an image, the user decides the tools used to contribute to the creation process and how to apply them. 

Examples of Tools Not Allowed on Pillowfort: Adobe Firefly* Dall-E GPT-4 Jasper Chat Lensa Midjourney Stable Diffusion Synthesia

Example of Tools Still Allowed on Pillowfort: 

AI Assistant Tools (ie: Google Translate, Grammarly) VTuber Tools (ie: Live3D, Restream, VRChat) Digital Audio Editors (ie: Audacity, Garage Band) Poser & Reference Tools (ie: Poser, Blender) Graphic & Image Editors (ie: Canva, Adobe Photoshop*, Procreate, Medibang, automatic filters from phone cameras)

*While Adobe software such as Adobe Photoshop is not considered Generative AI, Adobe Firefly is fully integrated in various Adobe software and falls under our definition of Generative AI. The use of Adobe Photoshop is allowed on Pillowfort. The creation of an image in Adobe Photoshop using Adobe Firefly would be prohibited on Pillowfort. 

-

Can I use ethical generators? 

Due to the evolving nature of Generative AI, ethical generators are not an exception.

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Can I still talk about AI? 

Yes! Posts, Comments, and User Communities discussing AI are still allowed on Pillowfort.

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Can I link to or embed websites, articles, or social media posts containing Generative AI? 

Yes. We do ask that you properly tag your post as “AI” and “Artificial Intelligence.”

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Can I advertise the sale of digital or virtual goods containing Generative AI?

No. Offsite Advertising of the sale of goods (digital and physical) containing Generative AI on Pillowfort is prohibited.

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How can I tell if a software I use contains Generative AI?

A general rule of thumb as a first step is you can try testing the software by turning off internet access and seeing if the tool still works. If the software says it needs to be online there’s a chance it’s using Generative AI and needs to be explored further. 

You are also always welcome to contact us at moderation@pillowfort.social if you’re still unsure.

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How will this policy be enforced/detected?

Our Team has decided we are NOT using AI-based automated detection tools due to how often they provide false positives and other issues. We are applying a suite of methods sourced from international universities responding to moderating material potentially sourced from Generative AI instead.

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How do I report content containing Generative AI Material?

If you are concerned about post(s) featuring Generative AI material, please flag the post for our Site Moderation Team to conduct a thorough investigation. As a reminder, Pillowfort’s existing policy regarding callout posts applies here and harassment / brigading / etc will not be tolerated. 

Any questions or clarifications regarding our Generative AI Policy can be sent to moderation@pillowfort.social.

[ecrivainsolitaire]

A summary of the Chinese AI situation, for the uninitiated.

These are scores on different tests that are designed to see how accurate a Large Language Model is in different areas of knowledge. As you know, OpenAI is partners with Microsoft, so these are the scores for ChatGPT and Copilot. DeepSeek is the Chinese model that got released a week ago. The rest are open source models, which means everyone is free to use them as they please, including the average Tumblr user. You can run them from the servers of the companies that made them for a subscription, or you can download them to install locally on your own computer. However, the computer requirements so far are so high that only a few people currently have the machines at home required to run it.

Yes, this is why AI uses so much electricity. As with any technology, the early models are highly inefficient. Think how a Ford T needed a long chimney to get rid of a ton of black smoke, which was unused petrol. Over the next hundred years combustion engines have become much more efficient, but they still waste a lot of energy, which is why we need to move towards renewable electricity and sustainable battery technology. But that's a topic for another day.

As you can see from the scores, are around the same accuracy. These tests are in constant evolution as well: as soon as they start becoming obsolete, new ones are released to adjust for a more complicated benchmark. The new models are trained using different machine learning techniques, and in theory, the goal is to make them faster and more efficient so they can operate with less power, much like modern cars use way less energy and produce far less pollution than the Ford T.

However, computing power requirements kept scaling up, so you're either tied to the subscription or forced to pay for a latest gen PC, which is why NVIDIA, AMD, Intel and all the other chip companies were investing hard on much more powerful GPUs and NPUs. For now all we need to know about those is that they're expensive, use a lot of electricity, and are required to operate the bots at superhuman speed (literally, all those clickbait posts about how AI was secretly 150 Indian men in a trenchcoat were nonsense).

Because the chip companies have been working hard on making big, bulky, powerful chips with massive fans that are up to the task, their stock value was skyrocketing, and because of that, everyone started to use AI as a marketing trend. See, marketing people are not smart, and they don't understand computers. Furthermore, marketing people think you're stupid, and because of their biased frame of reference, they think you're two snores short of brain-dead. The entire point of their existence is to turn tall tales into capital. So they don't know or care about what AI is or what it's useful for. They just saw Number Go Up for the AI companies and decided "AI is a magic cow we can milk forever". Sometimes it's not even AI, they just use old software and rebrand it, much like convection ovens became air fryers.

Well, now we're up to date. So what did DepSeek release that did a 9/11 on NVIDIA stock prices and popped the AI bubble?

Oh, I would not want to be an OpenAI investor right now either. A token is basically one Unicode character (it's more complicated than that but you can google that on your own time). That cost means you could input the entire works of Stephen King for under a dollar. Yes, including electricity costs. DeepSeek has jumped from a Ford T to a Subaru in terms of pollution and water use.

The issue here is not only input cost, though; all that data needs to be available live, in the RAM; this is why you need powerful, expensive chips in order to-

Holy shit.

I'm not going to detail all the numbers but I'm going to focus on the chip required: an RTX 3090. This is a gaming GPU that came out as the top of the line, the stuff South Korean LoL players buy…

Or they did, in September 2020. We're currently two generations ahead, on the RTX 5090.

What this is telling all those people who just sold their high-end gaming rig to be able to afford a machine that can run the latest ChatGPT locally, is that the person who bought it from them can run something basically just as powerful on their old one.

Which means that all those GPUs and NPUs that are being made, and all those deals Microsoft signed to have control of the AI market, have just lost a lot of their pulling power.

Well, I mean, the ChatGPT subscription is 20 bucks a month, surely the Chinese are charging a fortune for-

Oh. So it's free for everyone and you can use it or modify it however you want, no subscription, no unpayable electric bill, no handing Microsoft all of your private data, you can just run it on a relatively inexpensive PC. You could probably even run it on a phone in a couple years.

Oh, if only China had massive phone manufacturers that have a foot in the market everywhere except the US because the president had a tantrum eight years ago.

So… yeah, China just destabilised the global economy with a torrent file.

[engineering]

StreamBuilder: our open-source framework for powering your dashboard.

Today, we’re abnormally jazzed to announce that we’re open-sourcing the custom framework we built to power your dashboard on Tumblr. We call it StreamBuilder, and we’ve been using it for many years.

First things first. What is open-sourcing? Open sourcing is a decentralized software development model that encourages open collaboration. In more accessible language, it is any program whose source code is made available for use or modification as users or other developers see fit.

What, then, is StreamBuilder? Well, every time you hit your Following feed, or For You, or search results, a blog’s posts, a list of tagged posts, or even check out blog recommendations, you’re using this framework under the hood. If you want to dive into the code, check it out here on GitHub!

StreamBuilder has a lot going on. The primary architecture centers around “streams” of content: whether posts from a blog, a list of blogs you’re following, posts using a specific tag, or posts relating to a search. These are separate kinds of streams, which can be mixed together, filtered based on certain criteria, ranked for relevancy or engagement likelihood, and more.

On your Tumblr dashboard today you can see how there are posts from blogs you follow, mixed with posts from tags you follow, mixed with blog recommendations. Each of those is a separate stream, with its own logic, but sharing this same framework. We inject those recommendations at certain intervals, filter posts based on who you’re blocking, and rank the posts for relevancy if you have “Best stuff first” enabled. Those are all examples of the functionality StreamBuilder affords for us.

So, what’s included in the box?

The full framework library of code that we use today, on Tumblr, to power almost every feed of content you see on the platform.

A YAML syntax for composing streams of content, and how to filter, inject, and rank them.

Abstractions for programmatically composing, filtering, ranking, injecting, and debugging streams.

Abstractions for composing streams together—such as with carousels, for streams-within-streams.

An abstraction for cursor-based pagination for complex stream templates.

Unit tests covering the public interface for the library and most of the underlying code.

What’s still to come

Documentation. We have a lot to migrate from our own internal tools and put in here!

More example stream templates and example implementations of different common streams.

If you have questions, please check out the code and file an issue there.

[colleendoran]

Great Big Good Omens Graphic Novel Update

AKA A Visit From Bildad the Shuhite.

The past year or so has been one long visit from this guy, whereupon he smiteth my goats and burneth my crops, woe unto the woeful cartoonist.

Gaze upon the horror of Bildad the Shuhite.

You kind of have to be a Good Omens fan to get this joke, but trust me, it's hilarious.

Anyway, as a long time Good Omens novel fan, you may imagine how thrilled I was to get picked to adapt the graphic novel.

 Go me!  

This is quite a task, I have to say, especially since I was originally going to just draw (and color) it, but I ended up writing the adaptation as well. Tricky to fit a 400 page novel into a 160-ish page graphic novel, especially when so much of the humor is dependent on the language, and not necessarily on the visuals.

Not complainin', just sayin'.

Anyway, I started out the gate like a herd of turtles, because  right away I got COVID which knocked me on my butt. 

And COVID brain fog? That's a thing. I already struggle with brain fog due to autoimmune disease, and COVID made it worse.

Not complainin' just sayin'.

This set a few of the assignments on my plate back, which pushed starting Good Omens back. 

But hey, big fat lead time! No worries!

Then my computer crawled toward the grave.

My trusty MAC Pro Tower was nearly 15 years old when its sturdy heart ground to a near-halt with daily crashes. I finally got around to doing some diagnostics; some of its little brain actions were at 5% functionality. I had no reliable backups.

There are so many issues with getting a new computer when you haven't had a new computer or peripherals in nearly fifteen years and all of your software, including your Photoshop program is fifteen years old.

At the time, I was still on rural internet...which means dial-up speed.

Whatever you have for internet in the city, roll that clock back to about 2001.

That's what I had. I not only had to replace almost all of my hardware but I had to load and update all programs at dial-up speed.

Welcome to my gigabyte hell.

The entire process of replacing the equipment and programs took weeks and then I had to relearn all the software.

All of this was super expensive in terms of money and time cost.

But I was not daunted! Nosirree!

I still had a huge lead time! I can do anything! I have an iron will!

And boy, howdy, I was going to need it.

At about the same time, a big fatcat quadrillionaire client who had hired me years ago to develop a big, major transmedia project for which I was paid almost entirely in stock, went bankrupt leaving everyone holding the bag, and taking a huge chunk of my future retirement fund with it.

I wrote a very snarky almost hilarious Patreon post about it, but am not entirely in a position to speak freely because I don't want to get sued. Even though I had to go to court over it, (and I had to do that over Zoom at dial-up speed,) I'm pretty sure I'll never get anything out of this drama, and neither will anyone else involved, except millionaire dude and his buddies who all walked away with huge multi-million dollar bonuses weeks before they declared bankruptcy, all the while claiming they would not declare bankruptcy.

Even the accountant got $250,000 a month to shut down the business, while creators got nothing.

That in itself was enough drama for the year, but we were only at February by that point, and with all those months left, 2023 had a lot more to throw at me.

Fresh from my return from my Society of Illustrators show, and a lovely time at MOCCA, it was time to face practical medical issues, health updates, screening, and the like. I did my adult duty and then went back to work hoping for no news, but still had a weird feeling there would be news.

I know everyone says that, but I mean it. I had a bad feeling.

Then there was news.

I was called back for tests and more tests. This took weeks. The ubiquitous biopsy looked, even to me staring at the screen in real time, like bad news. 

It also hurt like a mofo after the anesthesia wore off. I wasn't expecting that.

Then I got the official bad news.

Cancer which runs in my family finally got me. Frankly, I was surprised I didn't get it sooner.

Stage 0, and treatment would likely be fast and complication-free. Face the peril, get it over with, and get back to work. 

I requested surgery months in the future so I could finish Good Omens first, but my doc convinced me the risk of waiting was too great. Get it done now.

"You're really healthy," my doc said. Despite an auto-immune issue which plagues me, I am way healthier than the average schmoe of late middle age. She informed me I would not even need any chemo or radiation if I took care of this now.

So I canceled my appearance at San Diego Comic Con. I did not inform the Good Omens team of my issues right away, thinking this would not interfere with my work schedule, but I did contact my agent to inform her of the issue. I also contacted a lawyer to rewrite my will and make sure the team had access to my digital files in case there were complications.

Then I got back to work, and hoped for the best.

Eff this guy.

Before I could even plant my carcass on the surgery table, I got a massive case of ocular shingles.

I didn't even know there was such a thing. 

There I was, minding my own business. I go to bed one night with a scratchy eye, and by 4 PM the next day, I was in the emergency room being told if I didn't get immediate specialist treatment, I was in big trouble.

I got transferred to another hospital and got all the scary details, with the extra horrid news that I could not possibly have cancer surgery until I was free of shingles, and if I did not follow a rather brutal treatment procedure - which meant super-painful  eye drops every half hour, twenty-four hours a day and daily hospital treatment - I could lose the eye entirely, or be blinded, or best case scenario, get permanent eye damage.

What was even funnier (yeah, hilarity) is the drops are so toxic if you don't use the medication just right, you can go blind anyway.

Hi Ho.

Ulcer is on the right. That big green blob.

I had just finished telling my cancer surgeon I did not even really care about getting cancer, was happy it was just stage zero, had no issues with scarring, wanted no reconstruction, all I cared about was my work. 

Just cut it out and get me back to work.

And now I wondered if I was going to lose my ability to work anyway.

Shingles often accompanies cancer because of the stress on the immune system, and yeah, it's not pretty. This is me looking like all heck after I started to get better.

The first couple of weeks were pretty demoralizing as I expected a straight trajectory to wellness. But it was up and down all the way. 

Some days I could not see out of either eye at all. The swelling was so bad that I had to reach around to my good eye to prop the lid open. Light sensitivity made seeing out of either eye almost impossible. Outdoors, even with sunglasses, I had to be led around by the hand.

I had an amazing doctor. I meticulously followed his instructions, and I think he was surprised I did. The treatment is really difficult, and if you don't do it just right no matter how painful it gets, you will be sorry. 

To my amazement, after about a month, my doctor informed me I had no vision loss in the eye at all. "This never happens," he said.

I'd spent a couple of weeks there trying to learn to draw in the near-dark with one eye, and in the end, I got all my sight back.

I could no longer wear contact lenses (I don't really wear them anyway, unless I'm going to the movies,) would need hard core sun protection for awhile, and the neuralgia and sun sensitivity were likely to linger. But I could get back to work.

I have never been more grateful in my life.

Neuralgia sucks, by the way, I'm still dealing with it months later.

Anyway, I decided to finally go ahead and tell the Good Omens team what was going on, especially since this was all happening around the time the Kickstarter was gearing up.

Now that I was sure I'd passed the eye peril, and my surgery for Stage 0 was going to be no big deal, I figured all was a go. I was still pretty uncomfortable and weak, and my ideal deadline was blown, but with the book not coming out for more than a year, all would be OK. I quit a bunch of jobs I had lined up to start after Good Omens, since the project was going to run far longer than I'd planned.

Everybody on the team was super-nice, and I was pretty optimistic at this time. But work was going pretty slow during, as you may imagine.

But again...lots of lead time still left, go me.

Then I finally got my surgery.

Which was not as happy an experience as I had been hoping for.

My family said the doc came out of the operating room looking like she'd been pulled backwards through a pipe, She informed them the tumor which looked tiny on the scan was "...huge and her insides are a mess."

Which was super not fun news.

Eff this guy.

The tumor was hiding behind some dense tissue and cysts. After more tests, it was determined I'd need another surgery and was going to have to get further treatments after all.

The biopsy had been really painful, but the discomfort was gone after about a week, so no biggee. The second surgery was, weirdly, not as painful as the biopsy, but the fatigue was big time.

By then, the Good Omens Kickstarter had about run its course, and the record-breaker was both gratifying and a source of immense social pressure.

I'd already turned most of my social media over to an assistant, and I'm glad I did.

But the next surgery was what really kicked me on my keister.

All in all, they took out an area the size of a baseball. It was  hard to move and wiped me out for weeks and weeks. I could not take care of myself. I'd begun losing hair by this time anyway, and finally just lopped it off since it was too heavy for me to care for myself. The cut hides the bald spots pretty well.

After about a month, I got the go-ahead to travel to my show at the San Diego Comic Con Museum (which is running until the first week of April, BTW). I was very happy I had enough energy to do it. But as soon as I got back, I had to return to treatment.

Since I live way out in the country, going into the city to various hospitals and pharmacies was a real challenge. I made more than 100 trips last year, and a drive to the compounding pharmacy which produced the specialist eye medicine I could not get anywhere else was six hours alone.

Naturally, I wasn't getting anything done during this time.

But at least my main hospital is super swank.

The oncology treatment went smoothly, until it didn't. The feels don't hit you until the end. By then I was flattened.

So flattened that I was too weak to control myself, fell over, and smashed my face into some equipment.

Nearly tore off my damn nostril.

Eff this guy.

Anyway, it was a bad year.

Here's what went right.

I have a good health insurance policy. The final tally on my health care costs ended up being about $150,000. I paid about 18% of that, including insurance. I had a high deductible and some experimental medicine insurance didn't cover. I had savings,  enough to cover the months I wasn't working, and my Patreon is also very supportive. So you didn't see me running a Gofundme or anything.

Thanks to everyone who ever bought one of my books.

No, none of that money was Good Omens Kickstarter money. I won't get most of my pay on that for months, which is just as well because it kept my taxes lower last year when I needed a break.

So, yay.

My nose is nearly healed. I opted out of plastic surgery, and it just sealed up by itself. I'll never be ready for my closeup, but who the hell cares.

I got to ring the bell.

I had a very, VERY hard time getting back to work, especially with regard to focus and concentration. My work hours dropped by over 2/3. I was so fractured and weak, time kept slipping away while I sat in the studio like a zombie. Most of the last six months were a wash.

I assumed focus issues were due (in part) to stress, so sought counseling. This seemed like a good idea at first, but when the counselor asked me to detail my issues with anxiety, I spent two weeks doing just that and getting way more anxious, which was not helpful.

After that I went EFF THIS NOISE, I want practical tools, not touchy feelies (no judgment on people who need touchy-feelies, I need a pragmatic solution and I need it now,) so tried using the body doubling focus group technique for concentration and deep work.

Within two weeks, I returned to normal work hours.

I got rural broadband, jumping me from dial up speed to 1 GB per second.

It's a miracle.

Massive doses of Vitamin D3 and K2. Yay.

The new computer works great.

The Kickstarter did so well, we got to expand the graphic novel to 200 pages. Double yay.

I'm running late, but everyone on the Good Omens team is super supportive. I don't know if I am going to make the book late or not, but if I do, well, it surely wasn't on purpose, and it won't be super late anyway. I still have months of lead time left.

I used to be something of a social media addict, but now I hardly ever even look at it, haven't been directly on some sites in over a year, and no longer miss it. It used to seem important and now doesn't.

More time for real life.

While I think the last year aged me about twenty years, I actually like me better with short hair. I'm keeping it.

OK. Rough year. 

Not complainin', just sayin'.

Back to work on The Book.

And only a day left to vote for Good Omens, Neil Gaiman, and Sandman in the Comicscene Awards. Thanks. 

[ikuharaisabitch]

Fundraiser for Palestinian student in Poland

I’m posting this fundraiser on behalf of @yahya-abuhassan, Palestinian who’s been studying in Poland for the last 2 years. His entire family, including his older brother who worked as a senior software engineer in Germany, had to flee to the south of Gaza after their home in the north was destroyed.

They are currently living in tent in al-Mawasi, so-called “safe area” that was nevertheless relentlessly bombed by Israel. Yahya is fundraising money to get them to Egypt through the Rafah crossing.

He needs to raise approximately 47 000 $ (enough to evacuate 7 adults and 3 children and pay for their initial living expenses in Egypt), and his fundraiser is only at ~20 000 $!

Short term goal is to raise around 2 500 $ which is the remaining cost to evacuate his older brother with his family, including his elderly mom and cover initial survival costs after evacuation. His brother can then return to work in Germany and hopefully earn enough money to help with faster evacuation of the rest. Right now we raised 0/2500$. I will reblog this post with updates. This fundraiser has been verified by Polish collectives, non-governmental organisations, refugee & human rights activists including Polish-Palestinian sociologist Emil Al-Khawaldeh. Yahya's situation and fundraiser was also described in our national edition of Newsweek. You can find more details in English description of the fundraiser in the link below. 

If you are a foreigner please do not hesitate to donate. Pomagam.pl is the biggest Polish fundraising platform which enables donations via PayPal and credit card. I have tested it with American friends and it works perfectly well. 1$ equals to 4 PLN. You can be charged with intercontinental payment fee, which to my knowledge is usually around 3$ but you will see the amount before payment. Your bank may also require 2-factor-verification before proceeding, which usually means simply pasting a code from your phone to a browser.

[what-even-is-thiss]

Free or Cheap German Learning Resources for all your Hochdeutsch Needs

I will update this list as I learn of any more useful ones. If you want general language learning resources check out this other post. This list is German specific. Find lists for other specific languages here.

For the purposes of this list "free" means something that is either totally free or has a useful free tier. "Cheap" is a subscription under $10USD a month, a software license or lifetime membership purchase under $100USD, or a book under $30USD. If you want to suggest something to add to this list, include things in this price range that are of good quality and not AI generated.

WEBSITES

DW - A public broadcasting service from Germany that also has a German learning section. They have videos, tv series, and lessons from beginner to advanced. The website is free to use with an account.

Gothe Institut - An organization affiliated with the German government that administers language level tests and promotes German culture abroad. They have a lot of free exercises and test questions. If you're willing to pay they may also have classes available in your region.

thegermanproject.com - A free website with explanations of beginner German concepts and stories to read for people at the beginner level.

germancorrector.com - A free website that will correct your spelling and grammar. You can also set the dialect to Switzerland or Austria.

Your Daily German - A blog in English by a native German speaker named Emanuel who makes posts about grammar, vocabulary, tips, and suggestions for reading.

YOUTUBE CHANNELS

Comprehensible Germani - A comprehensible input channel with German lessons in German using visual aids. Has content from beginner through upper intermediate.

Learn German - A channel that explains certain concepts and provides listening practice. The channel uses a mix of German and English.

Chill German - A channel that makes vlogs in slow German. They have videos from beginner to lower advanced levels.

Natürlich German - A comprehensible input channel that talks about different aspects of German culture and other topics as well. Has videos for complete beginner to lower advanced. This channel hasn't updated in a while but there's a large archive to watch through.

Easy German - A channel that has a combination of videos about basic German phrases for beginners and videos with interviews on the street in German speaking regions. The channel has dual language German/English subtitles on screen. The hosts of this channel also have a podcast for intermediate to advanced learners.

Expertly German - A channel about learning German with discussion of grammar, vocab, and business German. The channel is entirely in German.

Deutsch Mit Lari - A channel with a mix of German Lessons and vlogs in slow German. Content ranges from beginner to intermediate. All content and explanations are in German.

Learn German With Anja - A channel with a mix of lessons and videos on culture and living in Germany. Videos are in a mix of both English and German and often have dual language subtitles on screen.

READING PRACTICE

German graded readers by Olly Richards Short Stories in German, Intermediate Short Stories in German, Conversations in Simple German, Western Philosophy in Simple German, World War 2 in Simple German. Books tend to range from $4-$20 depending if you buy the digital or print versions. The books can also generally be found easily at used book stores or used on Amazon for cheaper.

Dino Lernt Deutsch - A series of short stories for beginners about a man named Dino lost in various German speaking countries. The full series new in print costs about $25 but it can be bought used or as a digital edition. Each individual story can also be bought separately

Nachrichtenleight - A website with news articles in simple German. The website is entirely in German.

AlumniPortal - Website with articles about business, academics, and other related topics organized by difficulty level. Has articles from upper beginner to upper intermediate. The website is entirely in German.

Grimm Stories - A website with an archive of the original Grimm's fairy tales. Language may be a bit archaic. The website is available in multiple languages.

PODCASTS

Slow German Podcast - Advertises itself as being for beginner to lower intermediate. The host talks about everyday topics such as seasonal weather and describing your apartment.

Easy German Podcast - The hosts from the Easy German Youtube channel talk about different topics, news, and answer questions from listeners in clear and understandable German.

News in Slow German - It is a podcast with news in slow German, including international news and culture news. Only a small section of the program is available for free.

Top-Thema Mit Vokalbeln - A podcast from DW for lower intermediate learners that discusses news topics in simple German and provides vocabulary lists related to the episode topic.

German Stories - A podcast for beginners in a mix of English and German that gives lessons through dialogues and short stories.

Speaking of Berlin - A podcast by Babbel of Berliners telling personal stories in slow German.

SELF STUDY TEXTBOOKS AND DICTIONARIES

Complete German All-in-One from McGraw Hill - a textbook that also doubles as a workbook. It’s more expensive at about $30. It’s difficult to find intact used copies of this book because it’s also a workbook and people tend to write all over it and tear it up. However the sentence builder and grammar sections are sold separately for much cheaper if you just want one or the other.

German Made Easy - Individual books in this series tend to be about $10-$20. From what I’ve read it’s just fine but it’s cheap and has all the beginner concepts you need and used copies are fairly easy to find online.

Easy German Step By Step - This is McGraw Hill’s budget option at $12-$16 new. Though as this one isn’t a workbook, it’s easier to find used copies. It focuses hard on only the most frequently used vocabulary and grammar concepts to get someone started as quickly as possible. It’s also available in audiobook form.

German Grammar Complete - This book is a full comprehensive guide to all levels of grammar from absolute beginner to college level. However it’s on the more expensive side at $30 and the workbook is sold separately.

DK German to English illustrated dictionary - This dictionary is sorted by topic and includes pictures and English translations. This is a new edition and is slightly harder to find used as I’m writing this. The base price is about $20 but there are older editions of this dictionary that might be easier to find used.

Merriam-Webster’s German to English Dictionary - The OG. The legend. The menace. The classic bilingual dictionary. Simple. Many words. Decent explainations. Only $8 new. Easy to find used older editions.

SERIES FOR LEARNERS AND KIDS TV

Hallo Aus Berlin - A series infamous among German students everywhere. Made in the early 2000s for use in classrooms, it has ten episodes of kids talking about certain topics like numbers and going out to a restaurant. It also has a number of songs. It’s cringey but in a fun way in my opinion.

Löwenzahn - a kids tv series aimed at very young audiences that’s been on for several decades. Every episode discusses one topic like bridges or factories so you’ll hear certain words repeated a lot. Theres only been a couple of different hosts so the presentation style remains consistent and unlike some other shows for kindergarteners it’s not obnoxiously loud and can be enjoyable for adults.

Sesamstraße - Sesame Street in German and localized for the German market with different themes and characters. In their YouTube channel you can find clips from as far back as the 1970s.

[commodorez]

Start Me Up: 30 years of Windows 95 - @commodorez and @ms-dos5

Okay, last batch of photos from our exhibit, and I wanted to highlight a few details because so much planning and preparation went into making this the ultimate Windows 95 exhibit. And now you all have to hear about it.

You'll note software boxes from both major versions of Windows 95 RTM (Release To Manufacturing, the original version from August 24, 1995): the standalone version "for PCs without Windows", and the Upgrade version "for users of Windows". We used both versions when setting up the machines you see here to show the variety of install types people performed. My grandpa's original set of install floppies was displayed in a little shadowbox, next to a CD version, and a TI 486DX2-66 microprocessor emblazoned with "Designed for Microsoft Windows 95".

The machines on display, from left to right include:

Chicago Beta 73g on a custom Pentium 1 baby AT tower

Windows 95 RTM on an AST Bravo LC 4/66d desktop

Windows 95 RTM on a (broken) Compaq LTE Elite 4/75cx laptop

Windows 95 OSR 1 on an Intertel Pentium 1 tower

Windows 95 OSR 1 on a VTEL Pentium 1 desktop

Windows 95 OSR 2 on a Toshiba Satellite T1960CT laptop

Windows 95 OSR 2 on a Toshiba Libretto 70CT subnotebook

Windows 95 OSR 2 on an IBM Thinkpad 760E laptop

Windows 95 OSR 2.5 on a custom Pentium II tower (Vega)

That's alot of machines that had to be prepared for the exhibit, so for all of them to work (minus the Compaq) was a relief. Something about the trip to NJ rendered the Compaq unstable, and it refused to boot consistently. I have no idea what happened because it failed in like 5 different steps of the process.

The SMC TigerHub TP6 nestled between the Intertel and VTEL served as the network backbone for the exhibit, allowing 6 machines to be connected over twisted pair with all the multicolored network cables. However, problems with PCMCIA drivers on the Thinkpad, and the Compaq being on the blink meant only 5 machines were networked. Vega was sporting a CanoScan FS2710 film scanner connected via SCSI, which I demonstrated like 9 times over the course of the weekend -- including to LGR!

Game controllers were attached to computers where possible, and everything with a sound card had a set of era-appropriate speakers. We even picked out a slew of mid-90s mouse pads, some of which were specifically Windows 95 themed. We had Zip disks, floppy disks, CDs full of software, and basically no extra room on the tables. Almost every machine had a different screensaver, desktop wallpaper, sound scheme, and UI theme, showing just how much was user customizable.

@ms-dos5 made a point to have a variety of versions of Microsoft Office products on the machines present, meaning we had everything from stand-alone copies of Word 95 and Excel 95, thru complete MS Office 95 packages (standard & professional), MS Office 97 (standard & professional), Publisher, Frontpage, & Encarta.

We brought a bunch of important books about 95 too:

The Windows Interface Guidelines for Software Design

Microsoft Windows 95 Resource Kit

Hardware Design Guide for Windows 95

Inside Windows 95 by Adrian King

Just off to the right, stacked on top of some boxes was an Epson LX-300+II dot matrix printer, which we used to create all of the decorative banners, and the computer description cards next to each machine. Fun fact -- those were designed to mimic the format and style of 95's printer test page! We also printed off drawings for a number of visitors, and ended up having more paper jams with the tractor feed mechanism than we had Blue Screen of Death instances.

In fact, we only had 3 BSOD's total, all weekend, one of which was expected, and another was intentional on the part of an attendee.

We also had one guy install some shovelware/garbageware on the AST, which caused all sorts of errors, that was funny!

Thanks for coming along on this ride, both @ms-dos5 and I appreciate everyone taking the time to enjoy our exhibit.

It's now safe to turn off your computer.

VCF East XX

[phantomrose96]

At this point, after this has happened a dozen times, why the hell is anyone pushing any update that wide that fast. They didn't try 10 nearby computers first? Didn't do zone by zone? Someone needs to be turbo fired for this and a law needs to get written.

The "this has happened a dozen times" really isn't correct. This one is unprecedented.

But yes the "how the hell could it go THAT bad?" is the thing everyone with even a little software experience is spinning over. Because it is very easy to write code with a bug. But that's why you test aggressively, and you roll out cautiously - with MORE aggressive testing and MORE cautious rollout the more widely-impacting your rollout would be.

And this is from my perspective in product software, where my most catastrophic failure could break a product, not global systems.

Anti-malware products like Crowdstrike are highly-privileged, as in they have elevated trust and access to parts of the system that most programs wouldn't usually have - which is something that makes extremely thorough smoke-testing of the product way MORE important than anything I've ever touched. It has kernel access. This kind of thing needs testing out the wazoo.

I can mostly understand the errors that crop up where like, an extremely old machine on an extremely esoteric operating system gets bricked because the test radius didn't include that kind of configuration. But all of Windows?

All of Windows, with a mass rollout to all production users, including governments?

There had to be layers upon layers of failures here. Especially given how huge Crowdstrike is. And I really want to know what their post-mortem analysis ends up being because for right now I cannot fathom how you end up with an oversight this large.

[elf-trash]

reposting this bc the OP blocked me (and is blocking anyone else who disagrees which means blocked people can't reblog) and i want to say this loud and with my whole chest!!!!!

another Dragon Age fic was recently outed as being AI, and this is what the writer had to say for themselves about it:

so actually, Grammarly uses generative AI and is just as bad as ChatGPT. it also objectively makes your writing worse, it sucks the voice out of your prose and turns it into corporate sounding homogenized paste. it's also unethical for all the same reasons any generative AI is unethical. get a writing group and have a real human beta read for you if you don't trust yourself to check your own grammar etc. but honestly something unpolished and written entirely by your human brain and human imagination will ALWAYS be better than AI slop.

also, the part about published authors doing this is patently untrue. i know this is a huge problem in the self-publishing space, but most publishers now are including clauses in their contracts that expressly forbid the use of AI in ANY part of the creative process. this includes using ChatGPT to generate or clean up outlines or Grammarly to spellcheck and revise. so if you're trying to publish, don't fucking do this or you could literally be asked to return an advance if you get caught.

i've posted about this in the past, but AI detectors are actually shocking accurate these days. i've tested them extensively recently and they can consistently and correctly flag individual sentences written by ChatGPT in an otherwise original passage. and they almost never flag false positives. so the argument that AI detectors can't be trusted is just flat out wrong. are they correct 100% of the time? no. but can they indicate with a high degree of accuracy if AI was used in some capacity? absolutely, especially if there is additional evidence.

and for all the people hand wringing about AI detectors flagging false positives, let me just say this: if something is not AI written it is very easy to prove. you can't write anything of any considerable length without leaving a massive paper trail of notes and drafts. almost all writing software tracks changes and makes it very easy to prove you wrote something yourself. being falsely being accused of AI isn't actually a real problem and is only being made to seem as such by people who are trying to get away with and justify using AI or who are worried about getting caught.

i think a lot of people are just lured by a seemingly easy shortcut, and to their untrained eye, what the AI is spitting out feels "better" to them than their own writing. but i promise you it's not. trust your own brain and put in the work to improve at your craft rather than outsourcing the gift of your imagination to a robot that steals from other people's work.

i will continue to die on this hill!!!!!

[callmearcturus]

psa: google translate sux, use DeepL

As someone who has to use translation software for work and has done comparison-testing between different options:

Use DeepL translations, not Google and definitely not Microsoft.

I work with someone bilingual and he helped me test which of the above works the best, and by far it's DeepL. It's so good he told me I don't need to run translations past him before sending them out, he trusts it.

So if you are writing fic and want to include something in another language (for instance, Paris speaking French or Ethan's multilingualism, etc) do not use google translate, use DeepL.

You can also click on specific parts of the DeepL translation to have it explain why it's using that translation and if it's not conveying the right meaning, you can select other options.

I would always recommend looking into language-specific phrases to adjust what you use to tailor them to the character, but that depends on how much effort you wanna put in.

[simspaghetti]

Notification PSD Templates! 💡

I present another PSD for you all! I'm not sure how many people will want to use this, but hopefully someone will find it useful! I figured I should upload it as I like it anyways it's easier to edit for me personally than screenshotting notifications :P

It comes in light mode & dark mode variations - as usual credit to JustMiha's Clean UI & SimState's Blackout UI as these psds are designed to fit in with their style

As shown in the preview, it comes with several colour options for the left-hand slot next to the arrow, I've included options for negative, positive, plain & neutral notifs as well as a lightbulb one for the default notifications - you can also just replace the lightbulb with an icon of your choosing (icon packs linked under the DL below)

For the light mode, I've also included a red & green version of the text box as well for negative / positive notifications - to stay faithful to the Clean UI style

Here are the instructions on how to resize it without borking the whole structure:

(I’ve also included this instruction layer in the template, you can unhide it to refer to if you need!)

Terms of Use: Please don’t claim as your own or reupload without my permission, I’d love to see you use them in your game if you do choose to tag me - but that’s totally optional I’m just nosey :P Feel free to alter and customize the templates literally however you want, but pls link back to my blog / tag me if you’re gonna reupload a downloadable variation (such as in a different UI colour) :)

➡️ Download Here (Simfileshare, .psd files)

The fonts used include Baloo found here (for the X symbol) & DM Sans, found in all variations here (for the main text) - I only used ‘bold’ & ‘bold italic’ from DM Sans

File Instructions:

This is a .PSD file, intended to be opened in a photo editing software like Adobe Photoshop, I personally recommend Photopea / Gimp as free alternatives - you can probs use any other editing software as long as it can handle .psd files - lmk if you have any problems in other programs, I have only tested these in Photopea!

I also intended for these to be used alongside game icon collections, here are some suggestions for those: TS2 Icons / TS3 Icons + Extras / TS4 Icons

You can find all my other psds (including moodlets, wishes, interactions & others) linked right here!