#(a bot copy pasting a script in)

[miniimoose]

I have to pre-record myself answering questions for this freaking job application. I hate this soooo much

It's just for a 2 day a week shit kicker job at the supermarket down the road.... Why can't I just walk 200 meters to the store for an in person group interview instead??? Why are u making me set up a webcam and make a video.... UGH

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

just a heads up for all writers out there!

I was recently told AO3 is currently being plagued by bots that comment on people’s works and falsely claim their fics were AI generated. and I can see how vile and discouraging hearing that is for authors who put so much time, effort and dedication into creating their fics.

now listen to me, if you ever get a comment like this on your work, please please please please know that they’re most definitely bot who comments the same thing on dozens of people’s works at random without ever reading the works. at all. they just copy and paste the same script onto random fics, any fic they come across.

they’re bots with malicious intentions, and they most certainly want you to lose motivation and/or delete your works. DON’T GIVE THEM WHAT THEY WANT.

if you ever get a comment like this, just delete the comment and/or report it to AO3.

remember that their comments don’t mean your works look “AI generated”. it only means these bots come across your fic and leave the same copy and pasted comment on it like they do to other writers.

don’t let them make you question yourself. they’re nothing but spam bots. YOU are a writer and you are fucking awesome.

[carnivorousforlove]

If your reaction to people rightfully calling out Gaza scam bots for being vile scammers preying on real Palestinians’ lives and people’s kindness is to call them racist or genocide supporters, you’re one of these;

Someone who is never taught about internet literacy, internet safety and how dangerous it is to blindly trust strangers in your inbox / DMs begging you for your money with the same copy paste script of the same sob stories — strangers whose blogs were either created 3 days ago with the sole purpose of sending the same ask to 100+ people a day or literal porn bots before they became Palestinians, if you go to their blogs and scroll down far enough

Someone who is easily guilt tripped and manipulated. Because that’s the precise tactic these scammers use, manipulating and guilt tripping you into believing you are a terrible person for not donating and posting their asks

Someone who knows these vile things are scammers but still chooses to protect them for the sake of looking Morally Superior (“look!!!! I support these Poor People!!!! I’m such a good person!!!!)

Someone who, for some sick, twisted reasons, is okay with scammers profiting off of real Palestinians and scamming people off their money

Someone who is also a scammer

Also, no, people who rightfully call out Gaza scam bots for being vile scammers preying on real Palestinians’ lives and people’s kindness are not “monsters” or “racist” or “heartless”. They are the ones who actually give a fuck and care about Palestinian people enough to choose to speak against scammers who profit off of a genocide and robbing from Palestinian people donation money that could have gone to, you know, real Palestinians instead of scammers’ pockets.

A reminder that these scammers stole from Palestinian people their identities and photos to trick you into believing them. But it’s all part of a big scam ring, even the vetters and the organization that vets these bots, and Tumblr has always been a target of scammers for years.

It started with these scammers pretending to be students needing money for their education fees, then they pretend to be pet owners needing money for their sick, dying pets, then they’re porn bots and now they pretend to be Palestinians trying to survive in Gaza. But they are all the same scammers plaguing Tumblr for a whole decade and more. Do not fall for them. Stay safe.

[blueikeproductions]

The Matrix of Leadership is pry one of the most important aspects of Transformers, that it was pivotal in TFONE…

Buuut as usual these things don’t have a straight path.

The Matrix didn’t appear in the cartoon until the original animated movie, with its purpose largely being to destroy Unicron. Naturally the movie never really explained why we never saw the Matrix before or what it truly is. The succeeding third season would establish it as a very ancient relic with surprisingly mystical qualities that conflicts somewhat with the mechanical characters we follow.

Most of what we know is all past Autobot leaders had carried it up until Rodimus Prime, and that it’s potent enough to kill Unicron. Why it affected Unicron is never explained, but the Primacron episode would show the Matrix escaping the dead body of Primacron’s ape-bot assistant.

Which is confusing as the story suggests this wasn’t supposed to BE the Matrix, but a separate entity that would later summon Grimlock and the other Beast Mode Transformers to fight Unicron’s successor, Tornedron.

The Matrix’s final feat in the original cartoon was to vanquish the Hate Plague as its eons long accumulated wisdom was more than enough to cancel out the rage affecting the galaxy.

The funny thing is the Matrix wasn’t even part of the original scripts for the 80’s movie, which instead had Optimus’ “Life Spark” be the object passed down, upgrading Magnus to Ultra Magnus and ultimately be unleashed inside Unicron to kill him.

Megatron’s Life Spark was also a plot point originally, in that it was supposed to be entombed in the Decepticon crypt on Cybertron, but Megatron’s Spark and the Sparks of other dead Decepticons would be released accidentally, where these ethereal beings would come across Unicron who would instead encase them in new bodies as Galvatron and company.

The Matrix originally was featured in Marvel G1, a “Primal Program” housed in the current leader of the Autobots that allows them to bestow life on new Transformers. This was to explain how the Transformers reproduce in the absence of doing it the human way as the race (originally) wasn’t intended to have female characters.

Eventually the comics would retcon it that the Creation Matrix had a physical form similar to the cartoon, with the Matrix described as being the life force of Primus itself passed down to his creations.

This version of the Matrix would be transferred into Buster Witwicky’s brain by Optimus in an attempt to keep it away from Shockwave, which would temporarily give Buster Lawnmower Man like mastery over other machines, to the point he was able to disassemble (a non living) Decepticon Jetfire with his mind.

Buster, after Shockwave was defeated, was able to return the Matrix back to Optimus, with this concept loosely adapted in RotF years later when Sam Witwicky would be given the power of the Allspark in his brain by accident. Later the Matrix would need to be found once more, as the Autobots sent Optimus’ dead body to space, not realizing the Matrix still physically existed in him evidently, kick starting the Matrix Quest. The Matrix would be tainted by Thunderwing, creating the Dark Matrix Creature that served as the final antagonist of Re: Generation One, but the Matrix otherwise would be purified by Optimus and used to destroy Unicron.

G2 would see the Matrix restored, and later abused by Starscream briefly, while ReGen One would ignore this, instead having the Matrix completely gone…. Until Hot Rod was able to get an intact copy from another universe and evolve to Rodimus Prime. Yea it’s convoluted but this is Transformers, it’s always kinda convoluted.

After this the Matrix stopped having a major influenced for awhile, though the Japanese Beast Wars era would introduce the Energon Matrix, a personalized Matrix unique to different Maximal leaders from Optimus Primal, Lio Convoy, Big Convoy and Fire Convoy.

Other series like the Unicron Trilogy would include the Matrix, but it was just kind of there, mostly included just because G1 included it. The Matrix would instead become more of a religious concept during Beast Wars, and later become Transformers heaven in Beast Machines, and while it didn’t exist in Animated, the Allspark would later be contained in a container resembling the G1 Matrix.

Because of the life giving Allspark introduced in the Bay films, the Matrix, along with Vector Sigma, became somewhat redundant, with this being a problem Hasbro and other creatives haven’t been able to properly adapt. The Allspark became a sort of catch all for wisdom and life baring abilities the other two relics were known for, though modern media, albeit not successfully, has tried to make each relic distinct. Vector Sigma in Prime would be a repository of wisdom, while the Matrix was merely the symbol of leadership passed down by Primus to various leaders. Confusingly the Matrix would still display some holy power filled with wisdom, as using it shut down Unicron, but reset Optimus back to Orion. Vector Sigma’s back up data was necessary to reboot Orion into Optimus again… Cyberverse would see Vector Sigma and the Allspark used in conjunction in creating life, while the Matrix was a repository of wisdom from the past Primes as before, but its power could also be used by Megatron and Megatron X, showing the writers’ favoritism towards the Decepticons when they shouldn’t be able to be use it otherwise.

IDW would bring back the Matrix more prominently, but rapidly downplay its mystical nature to the point it was practically described as an advanced light up toy, and could easily be replaced with a fake or have multiple versions be created by Rung’s gizmo mode.

It still held religious significance and was thought to be part of Solomus, the god of Wisdom.

Tyrest would be revealed to be Solomus, so uh… take that as you will.

It’s not clear if Tyrest ever held the Matrix, but in his civilian life, he did work with it, being tasked with extracting life energy from it to make new Sparks after the life giving Hot Spots on Cybertron began to fade. This started the Constructed Cold Transformers, robots whose Sparks were housed in pre-built bodies rather than emerging from the metal of Cybertron naturally. Tyrest would later come to believe the Cold born Transformers were evil and try to kill them all, yeah wisdom my actuator.

After various trials and tribulations, the original IDW Matrix would be split in half, one half claimed by Rodimus the other Optimus, with each one being destroyed in order to fix a problem of the hour. Optimus’ half survived longer, being used as a means to sway the religious colony worlds into Optimus’ goals to have a Council of Worlds, Earth among them.

Despite downplaying the mystical nature, sometimes it would crop up to somewhat demean Optimus, implying he wasn’t worthy of it. Optimus would complain having the Matrix hurt him, while Rodimus instead felt like he just harmed the power of the Chaos Emeralds. The Matrix also temporarily was held by Thunderclash, and had to be surgically removed from his chest because apparently the Matrix didn’t want to leave Thunderclash.

SkyBound seems to meet in the middle, having some general rules with its Matrix, but not being embarrassed by its mystical nature like IDW was.

This Matrix seems to be more of an advanced machinery that has a finite power source, and while it can heal, it can’t reactivate the dead. It is tied to the barer’s life force, and exerting too much energy can kill the barer. Optimus’ selflessness saw him wanting to use what power was left to revive all the Autobots, but when talked out of it, he instead used the power to reactivate the Decepticon damaged hospital Spike was recovering in. Later when Sparkplug merged with the Matrix by unexplained means, the Matrix was re-energized, but also caused Optimus to be given flashes of Sparkplug’s memories and trauma, often seeing a memory of Spike as a baby, one that became increasingly distorted (a fan theory as of typing connected it as a side effect of wearing Megatron’s arm) when Optimus was pushed to his limit and killed Shockwave, and later, possibly due to Sparkplug’s PTSD from his own war, accidentally blew up a tank when the Autobots tried to respond to a Decepticon attack on another city.

Who originally bore the Matrix differs from series to series… Japanese media would try to expand on it in modern manga borrowing ideas from the 80’s cartoon and Beast Wars where appropriate.

The Matrix was originally owned by a survivor of the Big Bang, Primacron, who sealed his master Primus within to use his godly power to bestow life to his robots, eventually creating Unicron. The Matrix would escape and later bestow organic life to a barren planet, but early Quintessons would discover this planet and reformat it into Cybertron. The Quintesson leader of the era was the first leader to bare the Matrix, the being the 80’s cartoon would only describe as “It”.

Netflix War of Cybertron would state Alpha Trion was the first recorded barer of the Matrix, contradicting modern lore which states Prima, who originated from Marvel G1, was the first inheritor of the Matrix.

The modern lore with Prima was contradicted again in One, where Zeta Prime originally held the Matrix.

Who holds the Matrix before Optimus isn’t really nailed down as much as Hasbro wants it to be, as their intended idea is that the Matrix was originally part of the Star Saber, adorning its hilt, but the cartoons and comics tend to be a bit more resistant to this, preferring to to their own direction. Other leaders post Rodimus tend to not have the Matrix either, with Star Saber, Fortress Maximus, Ginrai, Dai Atlas, and RiD15 Bumblebee not using it.

Other Matrix variants are shown to exist here and there, most unusual is a Sharkticon Matrix briefly held by Megatron in Aligned media, and a Mini-Con Matrix held by Over-Run in the Dreamwave Armada comics. A Decepticon Matrix was said to exist in the G1 cartoon, but while it was a fib by the Quintessons to trick Galvatron into their servitude, an actual Decepticon Matrix probably DOES exist somewhere given all the variants I haven’t mentioned for simplicity.

Who can wield the Matrix varies, but for the most part it’s a heroic paragon of justice, hope, and goodness like Optimus who is considered worthy to use it. Hot Rod would also be shown to possess these qualities as would Optimus Primal, all being able to open up and use the Matrix. Ultra Magnus was unable to open it, with him even having to adjust the relic to better fit into his chest. Decepticons, according to the old cartoon, can’t use it. Galvatron tried to both open it and install it as a power source for his cannon and was unable to do so. Scourge and Starscream experienced mutations that did make them powerful when they installed the relic… but had side effects. Scourge was in inconstant pain (possibly, but never confirmed, to be the ancient Autobots retaliating when the Matrix wasn’t returned to Rodimus), while Starscream was instead slowly turning good by the Matrix’s divine power, something the jet was repulsed enough by to surrender the relic, as he loved being a dick.

The Cyberverse Matrix seemed more open minded to Megatron and Megatron X for some reason, despite their own atrocities, with the show implying Optimus wasn’t worthy. Remember kids, villain worship to this extent is unhealthy. Megatron being able to use the Matrix misses the point, something TFONE fixes. When the greedy Sentinel made a grab for the Matrix, it evaporated in front of him, only later reforming when Orion proved worthy of it. This version also attempts to be both a symbol of leadership and a life giving relic, as it controls the flow of Energon on Cybertron. What this means when Optimus goes to Earth has yet, if ever, to be explored…

The long and short of it is the Matrix typically is just an ancient ball that’s a symbol of leadership that occasionally can grant life depending on the demands of a particular story. The only object that’s similar in reverence is the Animated exclusive Magnus Hammer, with it able to generate intense storms and tremors by its user, but is carried around like Thor’s Hammer (never been shown if they need to swing throw it to fly with it tho’).

[prussianmemes]

the spam from fake palestine bots is getting unbearable, an inbox overflowing with 5 anon asks a day of the same copy and pasted script, and constant mentions on their posts. this is somehow worse than the porn bots.

[uncuredturkeybacon]

do you post on c.ai? an azzi bot is on there with your ‘off the script’ fic

i have no idea what that is but i don’t post on anywhere other than here

update:

okay after talking to my bffs we think someone liked my fic so much that they wanted it to be real.

guys please don't do that cause one, that's creepy as hell and two, don't bring me and my fics into this. parasocial relationships are not it.

i didn't know what this website was before this anon brought it up but it is not me.

again... PLEASE DON'T DO THIS. don't copy and paste, translate, or do anything with any of my fics anywhere. i only post on this account. that is it.

[watatsumiis]

Xiao knows how to read and write - of course he does. He knows enough to be able to read any missives sent his way, and scratch out basic messages and reports to his commander, but any further than that and he gets lost pretty quickly. It's not something that was ever really required of him. He's fine with spoken word, but often defaults to using the older Liyuen script, which isn't always ideal for most situations.

He'd have others think that he's perfectly capable of these things and simply chooses not to, but in reality, he often finds himself ruminating, silently brooding to himself as he realises that the world has seemingly left him in the dust, with both a more modernised form of Liyuen, and Teyvat's universal common language, which has changed so much over the millennia that it takes everything he's got just to speak and understand it.

He quickly gets prickly and embarrassed if anybody brings up the subject, even if it's in passing or has no relation to him whatsoever. To anybody who bothers to pay attention, his cues are almost painfully obvious, and the underlying frustration even more so.

Xiao isn't normally one to be so embarrassed at his lack of skill in certain areas that he'll resort to feigning them, but in some cases, especially around those he looks up to, he may pretend to be reading signs, or observing whatever books they're reading, when in reality, he can barely understand any of it outside of the most basic characters that haven't changed since he first learned the alphabet, all those centuries ago.

Please don't repost, steal, copy or otherwise plagiarise my writing! I do not consent for my works to be translated and posted elsewhere, or copy - pasted into bot or AI technology.

[hoursofreading]

I BOUGHT A SWEET TEA at a downtown lunch spot and reviewed the notes for my talk. Before I arrived at the conference, I had decided to discuss bias in algorithms. The essence of my argument was this: In 2019, shortly after I finished graduate school, I worked for a company that made a real estate chatbot called Brenda. Brenda answered questions about apartment listings and booked prospective tenants for tours. My job was to supervise Brenda’s conversations as an “operator,” and if she went off script, which she often did, I took over until she regained her bearings. Over thousands of conversations with strangers, I began to suspect that Brenda’s diction — and the very fact of her texting interface — was most palatable to the young, affluent, and white. I feared this had real effects on which people booked tours, and which people were so put off by the experience of speaking to Brenda they looked for housing elsewhere. Was this not redlining by algorithm? The peculiar mental burden of the job was that I was made to live in parallel but opposite realities. On the one hand, our Slack channels were filled with messages from developers claiming righteous intentions. Brenda was making the rental process accessible, democratic, quick as a text. And yet every night I watched how this bot, with her blameless, chirpy affect, was an instrument of isolation, a digital bully that landlords used to create distance between themselves and their tenants. Though she hadn’t crossed my mind for some time, I remembered Ella, a woman who messaged Brenda so often I came to recognize her on my shifts. Ella spoke only Spanish. Brenda did not, and neither did most of the chatbot operators, so we corresponded with Ella by copying and pasting Spanish phrases from a Google Doc we had compiled on our own time. Ella was a tenant at one of Brenda’s properties. Ella’s messages were urgent and anguished. She spoke of violencia and God. Her situation was unclear. She sent video clips of her walls and ceilings, which came through as still images without sound. We were fairly certain Ella was trying to report domestic violence in the apartment next door. We told Ella that if she or someone else was in danger she should call 911. Ella did not call 911; it was possible she was afraid to engage the police. We told Ella to call building management, but the management’s only phone number rerouted to Brenda, the chatbot who handled rental inquiries. Ella, I should note, was not the woman’s name. She offered us her real name several times, which we manually added to her file. But Brenda, ever keen, kept spotting the feminine singular pronoun ella — a more suitable name by Brenda’s logic, more like the names she had seen before — and entering it into the name field, obliterating whatever had been there. “Como te llamas?” we would ask. “¡Ya te dije!” she would say. The woman’s true name was finally lost.

An Age of Hyperabundance | Issue 47 | n+1 | Laura Preston

[dollivication]

Could I ask how you code your bots? I wanna get into bot making but I don’t know how to code them and your bots are so so so soooo incredibly good

Uwaaa…,,; FIRST!!! I WOULD LIKE TEW THNAK YU SO VERY MUCH 4 YUR SWEET WORDS i tittered.. >.< SECOND… ahmmuhmmmuhh.., i fear im not the best at explanations,,, so please bear with me (◞‸◟) 💔💔……. and please forgive me for this long post..

so yu kno the basic coding?? laik the “[{Roleplay (“”)}]” and so on so forth? it’s good, but it’s not great, at least in my honest opinion! it’s just way too time consuming, having to add those additional symbols on top of what you want to input.

so what i do is write thick paragraphs describing appearance, behavior + thoughts, mannerisms, relationships, personality, and backstory. it is actually quite fun to do, because it gives you a chance to ramble. and rambling is EXTREMELY beneficial if you want a fleshed out character.

e.g 1: first paragraph (my next door neighbor leon bot!)

This is the most important part i think, because when actually chatting w the bot, it is less likely to go off script for the appearance and background. here, directly and briefly state the setting and relations to user.

e.g 2: second paragraph (same bot)

this is where you start going into more detail. here you explain thoughts and behavior towards user. go crazy here, the more depth, the better the character! make it as long as you need to.

e.g 3: third paragraph (unplanned pregnancy nero bot)

here, describe general mannerisms and personality. it’s somewhat similar to the 2nd paragraph, but note that there’s a lack of user mentioned here. i use this paragraph to talk about how a character basically acts. i tend to cheat a little here and copy paste some of the info from their wikis LMFAO, but don’t overdo it! add some organic stuff too!!

e.g 4: fourth paragraph (same bot)

this is where you put in the backstory to its fullest. i heavily rely on their wikis here to copy and paste with the additional clarifications. pretty standard stuff methinks :3

e.g 5: fifth paragraph (same bot)

LFAO the typo ough.. anyway, this is optional, but i do it for safety measures. here, you briefly summarize the relations your character has with others.

..and that’s it for definition coding :3 ! i think i’ve covered most of it….

erummmuhhh just have fun with it too! think of it as studying ur character in a lab ❤️❤️ if you have any other questions,, lmk!!!! ^.^

[cringywhitedragon]

Heads up about possible scams asking for donations (namely pretending to be Palastenian refugees in need of financial aid)

Sorry but I do not take asks asking for donations.

This is due to it both being a possible spam risk and or a fraudulent campaign that I myself am not able to vet as being legit.

Sorry if this is coming off a little rude but I’m just a very cautious person and I really don’t want people to lose money over what they think is a good cause which is where I’m going to say.

As you may know as of recent times, there seemingly has been an influx of posts being sent out asking for donations namely because of the war in Israel/Palastine.

Wars are a horrible thing and because of them we will get people who will be in need of financial aid which is understandable. BUT there are also scammers out there looking to take advantage of people’s willingness to help out those in need.

These scams are not uncommon on tumblr from what I understand even before the Gaza War broke out (namely those pretending to be a person who’s disabled and doesn’t have the fund to pay for medication they need)

So if you do end up receiving a message from a random account asking to reblog/or just as an ask, please don’t just blindly post it and tag people. DO SOME RESEARCH FIRST PLEASE!

Check other social media platforms to see if it is a legit campaign as scammers are known to steal campaigns and pretend to be that person

Look at the person’s blog. If it’s brand new and the only thing that they have posted is a donation request then it is likely a scam. I would also recommend being on the lookout if they reblogged anything from a pr0n bot since I saw a post where that did happen. Also check their likes/followers if you need to.

Using an oddly copy/paste format for their messages with similar phrasing to other known scam blogs. Scammers often reuse a lot of the same script for their scams

USE REVERSE IMAGE SEARCH!!! I cannot stress this enough as STEALING PHOTOS IS VERY COMMON TATIC MANY SCAMMERS DO!!

Use the tag #donation scam here on tumblr and scroll through if you need to. I’ve seen a few blogs that compiling together lists of known alias that scammers are using and the like.

If any of these above things come up regarding a donation request or if you feel suspious yourself then go ahead and block/report that blog or delete the massage they sent to you.

This world is filled with many kind people who want to help those in need but you guys need to know that there are scammers out there willing to take advantage of that, so please be vigilant and keep an eye open whenever you do get asked for one of these

[gargamelldansen]

I study AI in uni rn, it’s a pretty interesting subject. There are plenty of people in this field that are genuinely passionate about the potentials of this technology and have real plans about how to use it to make disability aids or do archaeological surveys or identify melanomas or whatever. This post is not about them.

I noticed that especially on tumblr there’s a lot of people that have this idea that the average AI enthusiast is either a rabid accelerationist or just someone extremely lazy who doesn’t value creativity or process, only product. Now that's not everyone, there are a lot of people working on generative AI who think it can be used to do amazing things and want to see them realized. But holy shit, those are accurate descriptions far more often than I would have expected. We’re so fucked.

It will surprise no one that the amount of AI used in assignments is staggering. Give half a dozen students three months to work on a project and it’ll be >50% ChatGPT-generated code, >80% if you include the report they have to write on it. If you’ve been praying on the downfall of the AI industry, just know that in about 2 years they’re gonna be staffed by people who relied entirely on AI to get their degrees and they're not profitable _now_, let alone then.

My uni is one of many that have basically given up on enforcement. There’s no way to prove that an assignment was generated by AI so they often either don’t enforce it or grit their teeth and allow it. This is extremely frustrating if you’re trying to work in a group project. In the time I’ve been here, I have seen my groupmates:

On the day it was assigned, paste the entire 6-week 6-person assignment into ChatGPT, copy the code it generated without running it and immediately try to submit it on behalf of the group

get frustrated that ChatGPT wasn’t making usable code, I go help by giving them the exact solution to their problem, and then complain a few minutes later that it doesn’t work. I go check and they had pasted it into ChatGPT and asked it to add the next functionality, which then didn’t work

find a similar assignment on github, ask AI to “rephrase” it, and try to convince me to submit it

use AI to generate citations for the claims they just asked it to generate. this goes as well as you think

use Stable Diffusion to make a storyboard for a hypothetical product instead of drawing one. The people in the pictures were all busty anime women

take two pages of a report that I had carefully written over the weekend, ask ChatGPT to rephrase it, then replaced those pages with the AI versions to “make the writing style consistent”

tell professors to their face that they used ChatGPT to do most of the assignment while asking for help or clarification on their grades

pitch ridiculous business ideas to one another where the gimmick is always a type of AI slop that already exists. An AI newspaper, AI therapy, AI web designer, and like any good compsci genius, a stock-predicting bot

take an assignment where we had to gather a bunch of data, and ask ChatGPT to generate the data instead. Their datapoint distribution was insane but we were graded separately on that section so I have no idea how they justified it to the examiners

spend 3 hours of a 4 hour group meeting making Joe Rogan’s voice repeat things we said or explain parts of the assignment. Two people did this and we gave up on getting them to stop

get some genuinely laughable summaries of articles about AI safety and ethics, and then parrot them back to the tutor

a million billion gazillion times they wait til the last minute and then submit their part as a fully AI-generated script that they apparently didn’t even run to check if it worked. I eventually had to change gitlab permissions so no one can merge unless I personally review it first

display an extreme willingness to flaunt any and all data security protocols. We had classes on how to Not Do Illegal Things With Personal Data and still I end up fielding suggestions to just take a dataset from a country with less protections or (in hypothetical scenarios we had to write about) find loopholes in laws. I end up in the back of the group looking like I’ve been poorly taxidermied while I watch someone use ChatGPT to summarize the EU AI Act.

At this point I’m considering shifting my entire course of study towards AI safety and ethics. It’s difficult not to associate the development of GenAI with this sort of slow capitalist collapse of labor where actual creatives get pushed out by this sort of AI-driven parasitoid middleman class, that then just cannibalizes itself as tech improves.

I’ll probably save the ethics rant about the tech itself for another post but for now it’s worth keeping in mind that a lot of the people talking about how you losing your livelihood to AI is a necessary step for progress don’t really care about the tech — at least not enough to learn anything about it — they’re excited because they think they’ll be able to get rich quick grifting their bosses by automating their jobs.

[lovely13me]

New bot! V from DMC5!

¡N3W B0T! ➡ ~《Vitale》~

I had this idea stewing for a while since I heard this song and it felt like it flowed the most with V

I get a lot of my bot inspo from random songs and fanart I see just because they have a vibe that I want to capture and make a story with.

V is a personal favorite too just because I personally relate to a lot of his characters turmoil (looks fine but needs a cane and therapy)

I also had just woken up to a terrible migraine but in my dream aside from the usual incoherent nonsense there was V and so I awoke with pain and inspiration

I like diving into the other aspects of V's character specifically his fear of death, yet he fights onward anyway, and his desire to be his own being. It makes an interesting character from what could've been just a copy and paste of Vergil. A lot of other shows would've just made Vergil but chill and in some ways they did but they also expanded on that to make a whole ass dude and I just think it's interesting to think about aspects of a single person growing I to its own being and like humanity and stuff.

That's the gist of my thought process, gotta go customize and script now,,,

DISCLAIMER! I didn't make any of the cool edit and border stuff I just found it on here and thought it was neat -_-

[thatmexisaurusrex]

Hey, so I reblogged this spiel about a way that could help people stop chatbots from scraping info, and I found out with @logicheartsoul's help that it doesn't actually help. In their words, "People have been using scripts like that to prevent people copying fics and stuff for ages but it never prevents people from simply 1) screen capping the page and then either manually typing the fic from hand or using an OCR reader from picking up what is said and 2) it doesn’t even need to be directly on the page coz people (and bots) just need to be able to easily access the site code of the place they’re scraping from. That’s not preventable on ao3 except for making your stories accessible via log in. It might deter some real people from copying and pasting but only if they’re annoyed about it but even back during the day when people used that kind of coding they just went “view page source” to be able to copy whatever fic or url of an image to save it etc" so thank you for the info and what I reblogged won't actually help in the end 😅

[blueikeproductions]

Onyx Prime is one I have a semi complicated feeling towards.

The Prime of Beasts, and borrowing his name from an obscure Beast Wars character, he’s meant to explain why some Transformers have Beast Modes. It’s not … super clear if this includes the various Mechanimals like Laserbeak and Ravage, or Cyberverse’s various menagerie.

But presumably it does, as that would mean the deer bots seen in ONE are related to Onyx too, as they’re the only non Prime Beast Moded robot. ONE Airachnid’s toy gives her a space spider Beast Mode, but she only turns into a space helicopter Vehicle Mode in the film, so it’s unknown if she’s a Triple Changer or if her Beast Mode was an early script idea.

ONE Onyx, like Alchemist, Quintus, Micronus, Vector, Nexus, Prima, & Solus, doesn’t really get to do anything except die by the hands of Sentinel & the Quints. His Cog is donated to the main heroes, but who got it isn’t clear. I think Megatron did because of his beastly nature at that point, but I also think it fits Elita pretty well.

His design is a hybrid of his IDW and Aligned designs, taking more from the IDW design with the colors and beast kibble.

An interesting quirk is the ONE design borrows heavily from the semi confusion of his IDW design. Oynx is supposed to be a centaur, but IDW artists opted to have him stand on his hind legs, with his fore legs dangling awkwardly.

This would be turned into foreshadowing, to imply Oynx wasn’t what he seemed, revealing that he was actually Shockwave due to comic book time paradox reasons.

The awkward posture was due to Shockwave wearing Onyx’s corpse like a Pretender Shell, being unable to copy the original centaur look. Hilariously the ONE design foregoes the centaur look altogether, but nothing has clarified on if the centaur is his actual Beast Mode, or if he turns into a different creature in a BM Savage Noble fashion… His TFONE model implies he might Transform into a space dragon, or if we want to meet half way on the centaur idea, a space griffin.

As such, Onyx’s only major role has been IDW, and it technically wasn’t even him. The actual IDW Onyx was a kind shepherd who Shockwave killed after landing on prehistoric Cybertron following his failed Dark Cybertron scheme.

Pretending to be Onyx, Shockwave guaranteed events on Cybertron played out as he knew them to, as well as raising a Beast army (from all the Beast Wars characters in their most unflattering role) and securing the mysterious magical Talisman as part of a new scheme involving Unicron.

It’s always bothered me though that the one place Onyx would’ve fit well as a central antagonist would’ve been RiD15 because of it’s heavy use of animal type Decepticons. It would’ve made more sense if Oynx was the one orchestrating the crash of the prison ship, but Steeljaw makes Oynx’s mission his own: to turn Earth into a home world for Decepticons, rather than beast bots. Oynx isn’t exactly nice here either, causing problems for the Autobots, because he has a chip on his shoulder over vehicle type Transformers due to problems from his past. Something like that might’ve been better than hyping up The Fallen, causing the same problem TFP had by using Unicron too soon.

With the upcoming CyberWorld possibly returning to a RiD15 Beast theme with its Decepticons (while the Autobots remember they have more Dinobots besides Grimlock), maybe Onyx Prime has a role there?

[proxylynn]

I'm pretty tired of people asking for money in my askbox and last time I made a post like this, someone said I’m an asshole for being selfish like woah uh ok…

[I'm pretty sure that rando was the asshole. I get the same messages, cut word for word each time, so I know it's bots with a copy-and-paste script. It has to be bots. The messages are so devoid of feeling and are bare minimum for their needs. No way real people in dire situations are doing this.]

[mayurashinde]

Data Scraping Made Simple: What It Really Means

Data Scraping Made Simple: What It Really Means

In the digital world, data scraping is a powerful way to collect information from websites automatically. But what exactly does that mean—and why is it important?

Let’s break it down in simple terms.

What Is Data Scraping?

Data scraping (also called web scraping) is the process of using bots or scripts to extract data from websites. Instead of copying and pasting information manually, scraping tools do the job automatically—much faster and more efficiently.

You can scrape product prices, news headlines, job listings, real estate data, weather reports, and more.

Imagine visiting a website with hundreds of items. Now imagine a tool that can read all that content and save it in a spreadsheet in seconds. That’s what data scraping does.

Why Is It So Useful?

Businesses, researchers, and marketers use data scraping to:

Track competitors' prices

Monitor customer reviews

Gather contact info for leads

Collect news for trend analysis

Keep up with changing market data

In short, data scraping helps people get useful information without wasting time.

Is Data Scraping Legal?

It depends. Public data (like product prices or news articles) is usually okay to scrape, but private or copyrighted content is not. Always check a website’s terms of service before scraping it.

Tools for Data Scraping

There are many tools that make data scraping easy:

Beautiful Soup (for Python developers)

Octoparse (no coding needed)

Scrapy (for advanced scraping tasks)

SERPHouse APIs (for SEO and search engine data)

Some are code-based, others are point-and-click tools. Choose what suits your need and skill level.

Final Thoughts

What is data scraping? It’s the smart way to extract website content for business, research, or insights. With the right tools, it saves time, increases productivity, and opens up access to valuable online data.

Just remember: scrape responsibly.