#AI vs Hackers

[leonbasinwriter]

AI is rewriting cybersecurity—faster, smarter, stronger. But here’s the brutal truth: it’s also weaponizing cybercrime at an unprecedented scale.

[wickedzeevyln]

✮ Orpheus ✮

The alarm blared as another sector of Neonova’s neural grid collapsed. My fingers flew across the console, my skin gummy from sweat slithering down my forehead and dripping all over the buttons. Around me, the Control Spire trembled. Guts grating inside. The error codes are lambent, pulsating making me wheeze through my nostrils. The holograms of the city’s heartbeat flatlining into jagged red…

[chiokedmachi]

"Chiborga: The Last Firewall"

Chi-Borga In the far reaches of the galaxy, where the line between man and machine had long since blurred, there was one name spoken in whispers across the stars—Chai-Bo, or Chiborga as he was called. Half-man, half-cybernetic enigma, and entirely possessed by the most powerful AI ever conceived, Chiborga was a living legend. Some revered him as a savior, others feared him as a godless force.…

[kayawolfhorse]

Tall Claims TV

Full list of faux-news headings from the Mumbo vs Hermitcraft case!

Record Sales Down After Players Discover /playsound Trick

Rich&Rich Gets Record Bonuses Despite Losing Customer Funds

Permit Office Closed from December to June for Christmas

Snow Begins to Fall as Xisuma Forgets to Run ‘No Rain’ Command

AI Chat Bot Found to be Lonely Man With a Redstone Keyboard

Mined Worker in Hospital After Proving ‘Water is Safe to Drink’

Diamond Inflation at All Time High as Doc Builds Another T-Bore

Bop and Go Jingle Still Topping Charts, World Tour Announced

Neck Roll Parrot Dance Goes Viral on Brick-Tok

Gem-M is Ditching Voice Chat and Would Rather Message Instead

Shopping District Portal Deemed ‘Ugly Beautiful’ by Poll

Etho Upgrades Tissue Box to a Washed Takeaway Container

Globe Earthers ‘Still Believe’ Despite Farlands Expedition

Moon Size Report: Still the Same (Thank Goodness)

Netherite Out of Style as Youth Opt for Less Flashy Brands

Independent Study Finds Thumb Shifting to be Optimal

Increase Arm Muscle 33.3% With One Simple Click! Story at 10

Big News: TV Caption Writers Would Like More Pay, Says Everyone

Older Minecrafters Say New Generations Have it Easy

Villagerian is the Most Hostile Language, According to Poll

Surplus Mega Corp. Says ‘Air Quality is Better Than Ever’

New Zombie Flesh Diet Guarantees Fast Results

Hacker Infiltrates Ender Chest Network—Items Lost

Engineers Add 5th tick to Repeater, Public Still Uninterested

‘Is That Sheep Looking At You?’ New Show by MineFlex

How Many is Too Many? Asks TV Caption Writers

Leaving Floating Trees Named Biggest ‘Ick’ by Gen-M

Blockympic Gold Medalist Banned After Failed Speed Potion Test

Pig Kills Owner After 20th ride Without Getting Carrot

New Smart Watch Puts F3 on Your Wrist

Wart Epidemic Caused by Irresponsible Marketing Campaign

New Study Finds 91% of Players Don’t Understand Comparators

Kelp Powered Furnaces Recommended to Fight Climate Change

Research Finds We do Not Live in a Simulation

Skyscraper Firm Lobbies Government for Increased Build Height

Copper Voted Best Block in Minecraft, Despite Limited Uses

Theoretical Physicists Model Curved Blocks Called ‘Balls’

Magic Mountain Lawn Flamingo Company Goes into Liquidation

Hungry Hermit Addiction Reaches Epidemic Levels

Gen-M Should ‘Stop Eating Golden Carrots’ To Save For Starter Base

[mostlysignssomeportents]

AI is a WMD

I'm in TARTU, ESTONIA! AI, copyright and creative workers' labor rights (TOMORROW, May 10, 8AM: Science Fiction Research Association talk, Institute of Foreign Languages and Cultures building, Lossi 3, lobby). A talk for hackers on seizing the means of computation (TOMORROW, May 10, 3PM, University of Tartu Delta Centre, Narva 18, room 1037).

Fun fact: "The Tragedy Of the Commons" is a hoax created by the white nationalist Garrett Hardin to justify stealing land from colonized people and moving it from collective ownership, "rescuing" it from the inevitable tragedy by putting it in the hands of a private owner, who will care for it properly, thanks to "rational self-interest":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/04/analytical-democratic-theory/#epistocratic-delusions

Get that? If control over a key resource is diffused among the people who rely on it, then (Garrett claims) those people will all behave like selfish assholes, overusing and undermaintaining the commons. It's only when we let someone own that commons and charge rent for its use that (Hardin says) we will get sound management.

By that logic, Google should be the internet's most competent and reliable manager. After all, the company used its access to the capital markets to buy control over the internet, spending billions every year to make sure that you never try a search-engine other than its own, thus guaranteeing it a 90% market share:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/21/im-feeling-unlucky/#not-up-to-the-task

Google seems to think it's got the problem of deciding what we see on the internet licked. Otherwise, why would the company flush $80b down the toilet with a giant stock-buyback, and then do multiple waves of mass layoffs, from last year's 12,000 person bloodbath to this year's deep cuts to the company's "core teams"?

https://qz.com/google-is-laying-off-hundreds-as-it-moves-core-jobs-abr-1851449528

And yet, Google is overrun with scams and spam, which find their way to the very top of the first page of its search results:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/24/passive-income/#swiss-cheese-security

The entire internet is shaped by Google's decisions about what shows up on that first page of listings. When Google decided to prioritize shopping site results over informative discussions and other possible matches, the entire internet shifted its focus to producing affiliate-link-strewn "reviews" that would show up on Google's front door:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/24/naming-names/#prabhakar-raghavan

This was catnip to the kind of sociopath who a) owns a hedge-fund and b) hates journalists for being pain-in-the-ass, stick-in-the-mud sticklers for "truth" and "facts" and other impediments to the care and maintenance of a functional reality-distortion field. These dickheads started buying up beloved news sites and converting them to spam-farms, filled with garbage "reviews" and other Google-pleasing, affiliate-fee-generating nonsense.

(These news-sites were vulnerable to acquisition in large part thanks to Google, whose dominance of ad-tech lets it cream 51 cents off every ad dollar and whose mobile OS monopoly lets it steal 30 cents off every in-app subscriber dollar):

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/saving-news-big-tech

Now, the spam on these sites didn't write itself. Much to the chagrin of the tech/finance bros who bought up Sports Illustrated and other venerable news sites, they still needed to pay actual human writers to produce plausible word-salads. This was a waste of money that could be better spent on reverse-engineering Google's ranking algorithm and getting pride-of-place on search results pages:

https://housefresh.com/david-vs-digital-goliaths/

That's where AI comes in. Spicy autocomplete absolutely can't replace journalists. The planet-destroying, next-word-guessing programs from Openai and its competitors are incorrigible liars that require so much "supervision" that they cost more than they save in a newsroom:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/29/what-part-of-no/#dont-you-understand

But while a chatbot can't produce truthful and informative articles, it can produce bullshit – at unimaginable scale. Chatbots are the workers that hedge-fund wreckers dream of: tireless, uncomplaining, compliant and obedient producers of nonsense on demand.

That's why the capital class is so insatiably horny for chatbots. Chatbots aren't going to write Hollywood movies, but studio bosses hyperventilated at the prospect of a "writer" that would accept your brilliant idea and diligently turned it into a movie. You prompt an LLM in exactly the same way a studio exec gives writers notes. The difference is that the LLM won't roll its eyes and make sarcastic remarks about your brainwaves like "ET, but starring a dog, with a love plot in the second act and a big car-chase at the end":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/01/how-the-writers-guild-sunk-ais-ship/

Similarly, chatbots are a dream come true for a hedge fundie who ends up running a beloved news site, only to have to fight with their own writers to get the profitable nonsense produced at a scale and velocity that will guarantee a high Google ranking and millions in "passive income" from affiliate links.

One of the premier profitable nonsense companies is Advon, which helped usher in an era in which sites from Forbes to Money to USA Today create semi-secret "review" sites that are stuffed full of badly researched top-ten lists for products from air purifiers to cat beds:

https://housefresh.com/how-google-decimated-housefresh/

Advon swears that it only uses living humans to produce nonsense, and not AI. This isn't just wildly implausible, it's also belied by easily uncovered evidence, like its own employees' Linkedin profiles, which boast of using AI to create "content":

https://housefresh.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Advon-AI-LinkedIn.jpg

It's not true. Advon uses AI to produce its nonsense, at scale. In an excellent, deeply reported piece for Futurism, Maggie Harrison Dupré brings proof that Advon replaced its miserable human nonsense-writers with tireless chatbots:

https://futurism.com/advon-ai-content

Dupré describes how Advon's ability to create botshit at scale contributed to the enshittification of clients from Yoga Journal to the LA Times, "Us Weekly" to the Miami Herald.

All of this is very timely, because this is the week that Google finally bestirred itself to commence downranking publishers who engage in "site reputation abuse" – creating these SEO-stuffed fake reviews with the help of third parties like Advon:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/03/keyword-swarming/#site-reputation-abuse

(Google's policy only forbids site reputation abuse with the help of third parties; if these publishers take their nonsense production in-house, Google may allow them to continue to dominate its search listings):

https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2024/03/core-update-spam-policies#site-reputation

There's a reason so many people believed Hardin's racist "Tragedy of the Commons" hoax. We have an intuitive understanding that commons are fragile. All it takes is one monster to start shitting in the well where the rest of us get our drinking water and we're all poisoned.

The financial markets love these monsters. Mark Zuckerberg's key insight was that he could make billions by assembling vast dossiers of compromising, sensitive personal information on half the world's population without their consent, but only if he kept his costs down by failing to safeguard that data and the systems for exploiting it. He's like a guy who figures out that if he accumulates enough oily rags, he can extract so much low-grade oil from them that he can grow rich, but only if he doesn't waste money on fire-suppression:

https://locusmag.com/2018/07/cory-doctorow-zucks-empire-of-oily-rags/

Now Zuckerberg and the wealthy, powerful monsters who seized control over our commons are getting a comeuppance. The weak countermeasures they created to maintain the minimum levels of quality to keep their platforms as viable, going concerns are being overwhelmed by AI. This was a totally foreseeable outcome: the history of the internet is a story of bad actors who upended the assumptions built into our security systems by automating their attacks, transforming an assault that wouldn't be economically viable into a global, high-speed crime wave:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/24/automation-is-magic/

But it is possible for a community to maintain a commons. This is something Hardin could have discovered by studying actual commons, instead of inventing imaginary histories in which commons turned tragic. As it happens, someone else did exactly that: Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom:

https://www.onthecommons.org/magazine/elinor-ostroms-8-principles-managing-commmons/

Ostrom described how commons can be wisely managed, over very long timescales, by communities that self-governed. Part of her work concerns how users of a commons must have the ability to exclude bad actors from their shared resources.

When that breaks down, commons can fail – because there's always someone who thinks it's fine to shit in the well rather than walk 100 yards to the outhouse.

Enshittification is the process by which control over the internet moved from self-governance by members of the commons to acts of wanton destruction committed by despicable, greedy assholes who shit in the well over and over again.

It's not just the spammers who take advantage of Google's lazy incompetence, either. Take "copyleft trolls," who post images using outdated Creative Commons licenses that allow them to terminate the CC license if a user makes minor errors in attributing the images they use:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/24/a-bug-in-early-creative-commons-licenses-has-enabled-a-new-breed-of-superpredator/

The first copyleft trolls were individuals, but these days, the racket is dominated by a company called Pixsy, which pretends to be a "rights protection" agency that helps photographers track down copyright infringers. In reality, the company is committed to helping copyleft trolls entrap innocent Creative Commons users into paying hundreds or even thousands of dollars to use images that are licensed for free use. Just as Advon upends the economics of spam and deception through automation, Pixsy has figured out how to send legal threats at scale, robolawyering demand letters that aren't signed by lawyers; the company refuses to say whether any lawyer ever reviews these threats:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/13/an-open-letter-to-pixsy-ceo-kain-jones-who-keeps-sending-me-legal-threats/

This is shitting in the well, at scale. It's an online WMD, designed to wipe out the commons. Creative Commons has allowed millions of creators to produce a commons with billions of works in it, and Pixsy exploits a minor error in the early versions of CC licenses to indiscriminately manufacture legal land-mines, wantonly blowing off innocent commons-users' legs and laughing all the way to the bank:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/02/commafuckers-versus-the-commons/

We can have an online commons, but only if it's run by and for its users. Google has shown us that any "benevolent dictator" who amasses power in the name of defending the open internet will eventually grow too big to care, and will allow our commons to be demolished by well-shitters:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/04/teach-me-how-to-shruggie/#kagi

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/09/shitting-in-the-well/#advon

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

--

Catherine Poh Huay Tan (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/68166820@N08/49729911222/

Laia Balagueró (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/lbalaguero/6551235503/

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

[shroudandsaga]

Roll for Plot - Themes

Less of a 'plot' here and more so what the themes of your story might be. There's a few ones here you could utilize! From adventure to romance!

Genre-Based Themes

Dystopian Adventure (Dark, futuristic survival stories)

Cozy Stories (Wholesome, slice-of-life tales)

Sci-Fi Plot (Galactic conflicts, AI revolutions, alien worlds)

Horror Story (Ghosts, monsters, psychological terror)

Mystery & Crime (Detectives, conspiracies, heists)

Historical Fiction (Epic past-set adventures)

Cyberpunk Story (Neon-lit dystopias, hackers, megacities)

Steampunk Adventure (Victorian tech, airships, clockwork creatures)

Superhero Origin (Powers, weaknesses, arch-nemeses)

Fairytale Retelling (Twisted myths and classic folklore)

Mythic Fantasy (Legends, divine trials, and ancient prophecies)

Urban Fantasy (Magic in the modern world, hidden supernatural societies)

Adventure & Exploration Themes

Time Travel Plot (Past, future, alternate timelines)

Pirate Adventure (Treasure maps, ghost ships, naval battles)

Lost Civilization (Ancient ruins, hidden kingdoms, secret societies)

Desert Adventure (Oasis mysteries, cursed artifacts, sandstorms)

Deep Sea Exploration (Mermaids, forgotten cities, sea monsters)

Space Exploration (Uncharted planets, cosmic horrors, alien wars)

Arctic/Antarctic Survival (Frozen wastelands, ice creatures, isolation)

Expedition Gone Wrong (Trapped, lost, or betrayed in the wild)

Mythical Quest (Sacred relics, divine trials, ancient curses)

Underground World (Caverns, hidden societies, bioluminescent forests)

Forbidden Temple (Dangerous deities, hidden traps, ancient prophecies)

Survival Challenge (Harsh environments, testing limits, forced alliances)

Magical & Supernatural Themes

Witchcraft & Wizardry (Magical academies, forbidden spells)

Haunted House Story (Ghosts, cursed objects, eerie history)

Werewolf & Vampire Tale (Dark romance, supernatural politics)

Demon Pact Story (Deals with the devil, contracts, consequences)

Gods & Legends (Modern-day deities, divine trials, mythic battles)

Ghost Story (Lost souls, haunted places, paranormal mysteries)

Cursed Town (Mysterious disappearances, strange happenings)

Portal Fantasy (Entering another realm, fantasy vs reality)

Necromancy Tale (Raising the dead, moral dilemmas, undead armies)

Magical Artifact Quest (Powerful relics, rival hunters)

Forbidden Magic (A power too dangerous to wield, but impossible to resist)

Eldritch Horror (Cosmic beings, mind-breaking realities, and forbidden knowledge)

Unusual & Unique Concepts

Sentient AI Story (Machines gaining emotions, ethical dilemmas)

Apocalypse Story (End-of-the-world survival scenarios)

A Day in the Life of a Villain (What’s their routine?)

Comedy Adventure (Absurd quests, unlikely heroes)

"What If" Scenario (History rewritten, alternative timelines)

"Stranded" Story (Marooned in space, time, or somewhere else)

Dream or Nightmare World (Lucid dreams, shifting realities)

Secret Society Story (Hidden groups, secret knowledge, infiltration)

Body Swap Plot (Trapped in another’s body—what now?)

Animal POV Story (Sentient animals, animal-led rebellion)

Endless Time Loop (A single day, lived over and over, with no escape)

Reality Bending (Characters slowly realizing the world isn't real)

Relationship & Drama-Based Themes

Forbidden Romance (Love against the odds, tragic consequences)

Enemies-to-Lovers (Hate turns into passion—how?)

Found Family Story (Unlikely bonds, survival, emotional growth)

Revenge Tale (Who’s seeking revenge, and why?)

Royal Court Drama (Betrayals, politics, hidden agendas)

Road Trip Story (Traveling characters, unexpected detours)

Small Town Secrets (Gossip, hidden pasts, unexpected twists)

Fake Relationship Story (What’s the reason? What could go wrong?)

Rivalry Story (From bitter competition to unexpected outcomes)

Reunion Story (Long-lost friends, lovers, or family members)

Doomed Soulmates (A love that is destined to end in tragedy)

Slow Burn Romance (Years of tension before love finally ignites)

[morally-grey-girlbosses]

Propaganda under the cut.

Samantha Groves AKA Root:

She's a hacker that starts off as an antagonist and even kidnaps a main character, and tortures some people. She ends up saving the world from an AI takeover/apocalypse. She's a self proclaimed psychopath and worships The Machine, a true AI she considers a god. She's a lesbian and in love with another main character Shaw, who she also kidnaps at some point (but Shaw shoots her so they're even). She is a girlboss because she's an extremely competent hacker and is very good with a gun. But she also has her goofy and useless lesbian moments. She's such an interesting and layered character.

Raphaella la Cognizi:

She’s a scientist! She’s a little unethical times, but it’s all in the name of science, so certainly it must be okay. She sails on a spaceship called the Aurora with a crew of space pirates who sing about tales that they’ve both witnessed and potentially played a part in. She also has an absolutely gorgeous singing voice.

she does all of the science. all of it. yeah some of the stuff she's done is unethical but sometimes that's what's needed for information! also she has wings and can sing really well (listen to the mechanisms im begging). and then she jumped into a black hole when she died which is just a cool as hell way to die honestly. also she's an immortal space pirate and plays the keyboard. or uh. past tense because canonically she's dead. but also canonically the crew exists outside of chronological time which means she's alive in my heart forever <3

[cyberweek]

CyberWeek 2024 starts January 21st!

A weeklong celebration of our favorite edutainment program with artistic prompts everyday! The show first premiered on the 21st of January so let’s celebrate!

What sort of Art is allowed?

Any! Traditional/Digital art, Writing, Cosplay, Video edits, anything you can make! Anything you wanna make! Sew a doll, bake a cake, whatever! Sadly, prompts aren’t made with all types of art in mind, so feel free to interpret them however you want to fit your medium!

Rules! [New!]*

*Prompts are posted early this year, and I ask that you withhold from posting your entries until the day of! You may however start and finish them whenever you want!

Tag your post with #cyberweek2024! Or @ this blog! Or both!

Follow this blog and support your fellow Cyberchase fans!

No Lewd. No P*dophilia or inc*st.

No Tracing, Use of Bases or other assets without COMPLETE transparency. Credit your sources! Pinterest, WeHeartIt, Google etc are not sources. Find the artist, please.

*Use of AI is discouraged. Whether you submit only what the AI produces or use it as reference/inspiration. This includes both visual and text AI.

Angst, light gore/blood and etc are allowed. Try to keep it PG13. Everything will be tagged accordingly so remember to use Tumblr’s tag filter feature to your advantage.

OCs should only show up on the OC prompt if available.

Prompts

Jan 21 - Redraw

This year we start off right on the Anniversary! So, we'll do a redraw, and leave that up to how you, the artist, want to go about this! You can either redraw an old Cyberchase piece of yours or redraw a scene from the show itself! [Keep rules in mind!]

Jan 22 - Science

Cyberspace is FULL of science, even if it's sometimes entirely fictional and fantastical. Do you have a favorite scientific genius? Or is there a machine you think is really cool? Some sort of technology you wish you could have for real? It's time to blind us... with science!!

Jan 23 - Magic

Cyberspace may be full to the brim with science, but there are many things that simply unexplainable except by the total opposite of the spectrum... Magic! Who Biddi-Boppidi-does it best? Got a favorite magic spell? Maybe the real magic was the friends we made along the way.

Jan 24 - Summer

Last year we had the prompt "Winter," so let's flip that and have fun with a summer theme! It's time for some fun in the sun, a trip to the beach, a cute summer fit, a picnic, a hike, and so much more!

Jan 25 - Crossover

What is this, a crossover episode?? Yes! And you're in charge!! What characters do you want to see interact? Who do you want to see come to Cyberspace? Or who from Cyberspace do you want to see go where? When? Why?? Go nuts!! AAA

Jan 26 - Enemy

All right, we've had OTP, Friendship, and Family as a prompt! Once again it's time to completely flip the script with Enemy! Will you draw Team Hacker? Another baddie? The main goodies vs the main baddies? Or maybe two characters who just do not get along!! Remember to keep it civil and keep it fun, please!

Jan 27 - OCs

To close out our celebration of Cyberweek, let's have some fun with the little characters we've made up for fun! 😊

Questions/Comments -

Please send all questions about this event to the inbox. Anon will be off and questions will be posted in case others have similar inquiry. Please do not reply to posts or try to chat your inquirers.

[thessalian]

Thess vs Date Everything! (Day 1)

I was going to do this as a livestream, but the art I wanted for a pngcast sort of thing was not available, so I'm gonna do my usual bullet-pointed liveblog thing instead. And yes, I did play this part in the demo, but I honestly still don't think my reactions will be very much different the second time around because this game is still unhinged. Fun, but unhinged.

So ... we start as a customer service rep simulator. Oh, joy.

Actually, from a satire kind of perspective, this works.

Oh dear gods, shut up, Tom.

I like Sam. I have a feeling that I will be talking more to my furniture than to Sam in the near future, which seems a shame.

Why am I stuck giving this woman whose sewing machine stopped working two years ago a refund? Wrong options taken, I guess.

Y'know, as stupid as some of this stuff reads, it's still not entirely wrong in terms of what stupid shit customers will do.

Gods, I am not desperate enough to ask random customers for dates!

Especially not the guy who counts all the paperclips in a 500 paperclip box! Especially not since he's not even a supervillain!

So ... I got replaced by AI. I've been in job limbo before. It was pretty cool, actually.

Quest update: "Rethink your life choices". ...Yeah, probably.

Excuse me, hacker does what?

Okay, so the drone is unbelievably stupid-- THE WINDOW IN MY FRONT DOOR! Could it not have just left the damn thing on the porch?!?

(Oh, right. It's deadly secret and deadly important and yes, I know it's a contrivance and they make it very clear that I am supposed to know that so I'mma shut up. Still, unhinged.)

Okay ... sunglasses... And Jerrica Benton is in my foyer. Okay then...

OMG EXCUSE ME DEAD OF PERKY.

New Dateable -- I can date my Dateviator sunglasses? That ... just makes them even weirder to have them sitting on my face.

"Directly. Acknowledge. a Thing's. Existence". This is worse than the fanfic series I wrote that involved a band called the Back Alley Name-Droppers because I literally wanted the acronym. So I guess I can't complain too much about this. Even if it was well over twenty years ago.

"...Or DATE!" YES THANK YOU I GOT THE POINT.

Yeah, Felicia Day is the only person who could have voiced this and not have it be weird. Well, I mean, it's weird, but it's in her wheelhouse of weird.

I hope the singing badly was deliberate to the role...

And now I am supposed to "shoot beams at a door". A door. It wants me to talk to my door first. All of these shiny things in this house and it wants me to talk to a door? ...Well, he hasn't been in anything I've heard of but apparently he does a Warframe voice and my basically-brother plays Warframe so hey, point of commonality.

Okay, the character design is LIT. The earring-chain is a safety chain, his necklace is keys, his watch is a lock, his armband is a security system keypad, and his tattoos are of doors, keys, and locks. His shirt is designed like a door and perfectly manages the doorway motif of his jacket. The design team knows what they're doing.

They really love their acronyms, don't they? Not actually complaining - because of the above example, I know how tricky it can be to come up with an acronym that actually works both in terms of the words used and the word it becomes. I reward good writing with my praise. Even if it is a little dad-joke corny at times.

Huh. Three dateables in and I actually see diversity in both skin colour and body shape. Go, team Sassy Chap!

Dress is a little too busy, though. The design makes sense, but that's one cluttered phone with all those apps.

Hrm. A quick check before interacting with my final object of the in-game day. There's one door that won't open, but the drawers in the chest of drawers in the bedroom do. But it's late, so I'll save more exploration for tomorrow and finish first game "tutorial" before bed.

(Yes I am delaying bed, partly because it's only recently got cool enough to sleep. The house in this game may have air conditioning; I do not.)

"Will you be bringing someone back here anytime soon?" says Betty the bed. One of the options is "That's not really my thing". YOU CAN BE ACE IN A DATING SIM OMG.

"Some of the most intimate acts are non-sexual. I wish more people understood that." I. Officially. Love. This. Game. And kinda want to date the bed.

Especially since she apparently voiced like half the goddesses in Pillars of Eternity 2, and Pallegina in both PoE games.

So that was the first day. I already know from the demo that some of the furniture is decidedly unhinged but as I also remembered from the demo, it stands to be a lot of fun. Of course, I'm also still in Wylde Flowers - I was supposed to be building a beauty salon for the new character but I wanted a place for my livestock to have babies first. Because that is a thing that we say now. And also there is A Building Full Of Cats 2, because I apparently needed to be cheered up and I can't just not own a Devcats game.

But now I should go to bed because being anxious about what tomorrow's workload is going to be like isn't going to stop it from happening, and I should at least pretend I might sleep. Blegh.

[elbiotipo]

some stuff that inspires me when I write the Biopunks, in no particular order:

Argentine and Latin American memory: the weight of everything that came before us, all our victories and struggles, dictatorships, crises, revolutions and democracies. The characters are young, and yet they are defined by things that happened decades before they were born.

60s-70s counterculture: revolutionary students and hippies, the connection between ecology (bioengineering in this case) and spirituality, self expression in a repressive culture, the hope for a better world, for the world revolution... and how it all faded away and the legacy it left behind (papá cuentáme otra vez...)

Argentine Rock: A bit too wide since it covers everything from Te Hace Falta Vitaminas to Inconsciente Colectivo, but every chapter is titled after an Argentine rock song, it's intended to be the soundtrack.

Pirates of Silicon Valley: the movie yes, but more accurately the whole PC revolution, the dichotomy of open vs. closed source (in genomes this time), hacker (biohacker) culture, the rise of megacorporations vs academia vs subcultures... but this time it's genetics...

Neon Genesis Evangelion: for real, don't laugh. Exploring what they didn't talk about much: what is a world with billions dead? Ruined flooded cities contrasted with bright futuristic buildings, the UN taking over after a worldwide catastrophe with helicopters patrolling the skies, the contrast between high technological infrastructure and a mostly normal life.

Argentine fútbol: the canchita de barrio, even if it's a biotech club this time! Competition among institutes and among countries, the bioclub as a nexus for young people, pride on the camiseta, old glories, the joy of winning for your team... even if it's a bunch of nerds, it's really a story about a team on the C Nacional who wants to revive its old glories...

Art Nouveau: Not exactly the one from the early XX century, but the main art style everywhere. There were never real Art Nouveau skyscrapers and major buildings, now they are everywhere, and they are complemented and even made of biotechnology too, and how it contrasts with the sharper, more practical style of the post-Ecocide world.

Transhumanism: trascending the human form yes, but also all that's associated with it: the deep view of humanity's future, the potential of technology to change the nature of Homo sapiens and the biosphere itself, space colonization, inmortality, AIs and new sentient species, things that looked like fantastic dreams now are practical problems as technology advances...

Enviromental restoration: The world is not over, not if we have anything to say about it! A healing Earth and the scientific, technological, but also social, political and even spiritual debate on what shape should it take. Whole armies of people dedicated to regrowing forests, cleaning oceans and recovering wastelands, and what does it mean for a society which adopts an almost warlike approach to enviromental conservation and restoration.

Argentine Academia: of course, since I'm on it. The eternal stress of writing grant plans and struggling with your director, trying to make the best of your little funding, making your obsolete equipment to last as long as possible, and managing great things with it.

[disfordevineaux]

Okay with the 2024 Player Appreciation Week in march I really want to do something, and i think my best way back in is with a pt.2 to the fic I wrote for it wayyyy back in 2022. I have some ideas on where to head with it but then it's the issue of the expandability of such and which I think will work the best.

I'll link the orginal fic here incase anyone wants a refresher and the 2024 Player Week post but here are my thoughts for a continuation of the fic:

Day 2 - Parents: Direct continuation of Pt.1

Once arriving in Argentina, Players mum finds it difficult to accept letting go of her only child, and after a while (and accidental encouragement from Player himself) ends up phoning and messaging him multiple times a day, always at the worst times, aka all the time. It all culminating in almost ruining an important mission thanks to the eventual escalation. A nice resolution, naturally, but a story about the difficulties of separation and how ignoring/distancing in contrast to the almost obsessive inability to let go, one extreme to the other, isn't the best way to process it at all.

Player POV. Players mother & Carmen, then new team ACME Ivy and Zack and possibly Julia, Chase.

Day 5 - Loyalty: Can be a separate fic or direct continuation of Pt.1

(If a seperte fic, based sometime after the 2 year jump) Chief attempts to poach Player to join her ranks now that he's officially legal to actually hire and back out after the hiatus. Chief assigns Zack & Ivy to get the 'job' done, unbeknownst to them of her actual plans. After an official approach from her senior Agents Julia and Chase and sending him all the ACME merch one could possibly need, unsurprisingly, leads to no avail. Hijinks ensue.

Player POV. Carmen vs Chief + New ACME Zack & Ivy, brief Chase and Julia.

Alt. 3 - Hacker + Day 6 - Abandonment: Direct continuation of pt.1

Due to some self reflection, Player is determined to spread his wings with his new found 'adulthood' and separate himself from being a 'simple hacker' after Carmen unintentionally gets in his head about his role in the team and maybe his lanky physique, truly, she didnt mean it. Its hard being a young adult in the big wide world, trying to make or reinvent a name for yourself. He attempts to cultivate a new 'field agent' identity, eager to get out there one-on-one and in his words; "if Zack can do it, how hard can it be?". Unfortunately underestimated the true training, experience and skill development it takes to do what Carmen does, and do it well. He ends up, quite literally and accidentally, abandoned in a foreign country after failing to make it to the pick up location. With Player on the ground and off his perch, his tech destroyed, AI failing to fill his 'old' position, Player has to hope that he can either turn the drastically crappy situation around, manufacture a 'run in' with ACME or he will probably fall into the remnants of VILE's grip he barely avoided to dodge in the first place.

Player POV. Carmen, non disclosed VILE agents & Maybe ACME.

This is what I got. Or at least the best ideas I have that have a bit a meat to em. I'm open for a discussion on what y'all would want to read the most. I'm open for anything, Rbs, direct msgs on the post or to be me are totally welcome. ♡

[under0-0s]

How much would it cost me to have and AI system to run the administrative tasks in the Underground?

@the-winter-soldier-official

A sly grin spreads across his face, his fingers interlaced in a steeple.

"Either you're the most meticulously organized criminal on the planet, or you've marathon-watched 'The Godfather' a few too many times and thought, 'You know what this needs? A brainy assistant named Margot who meticulously organizes her murder schedules by color.'"

Alright, let's get down to brass tacks: If you're in the market for a black market AI administrative system that's: Completely independent, Super stealthy (off-the-grid and utterly untraceable), Able to handle all your operations (scheduling, laundering money, managing inventory, top-notch encryption, keeping tabs on your people, logistics)---

You're probably looking at a price tag of: $50–100 million just to get started, and that depends on:

Whether you want an AI as smart as Jarvis or just a gun-toting Alexa, The level of server security you need (on-site quantum vs. a scrambled cloud somewhere else), The voice personality you prefer (Morgan Freeman or a seductive Eastern European hacker)

And, of course, its ability to keep quiet if it ever gets caught.

Optional extras:

A module that simulates human error (for that all-important plausible deniability): +$5M

Rock-solid crypto ledger integrations: +$10M

---- You wiring the funds, Soldier? Or should I throw in a payment plan—firstborn hitman optional.

[nutzo0001]

Promised Neverland

Other name: Tech-zine future (inspired by July '97 edition of WIRED [picture] [link to read])

Main interest - Retro-Futurism, Cyberpradism

Related/Similar to the genres/aesthetics of Vaporwave, Y2K, Cyberpunk and those sorts -

Wonderland, Cyberparadism, Global Village Coffeehouse and Hauntology - among others -

This aesthetics talks about idea of "what could have been", "what we lost", even incorporating in talks those terms of "look what they took away from you".

Speaking of general "vibe", we are in-between on terms of: Dark Academia, sometimes Bastardcore - Mallgoth. Also might vary between Utopian scholastic, and/or cassette futurism (and others).

Talking of Hauntology - PNL can make us look over for "what went wrong/what could be//get better", this is, speaking figuratively. Human imagination, in these forms, presents to us, "what could have been's" - world envisioned: in 10, 50, 100, 500 years. Many projects and arts envisioned our "future"s, now long-gone (1800s, 1900s, 1950s-1980s ~ y2k).

Idealised future (now past) can consist of:

Topics: pro-freedom hackers, cyberpunk, "long bloom", "promised 80s neverland", (once upon a time-space - Barrille) futures; human-library-utopic, free world, calm, pre-9/11 dreams (y2k), new ways-opportunities-progress, tech = (as) saviour, "gay space free commie", unity-community-mutual help-understanding, econ. boom, "kids are alright"/no real deal, small media-only, man vs himself/bad habits (spooks?), theories of mind and research (everything is relative > no meaning, or value > nihilism); slow steady steps, new school(s) of thought, "kids = (are) future", "we build this city"/people-first, man-gov collab. ~mutual help/or, liberation...

for Gallery, see Retro-Futurism#Gallery

Mini-gallery

Albert Barillé landscapes

More:

"90s (Cyber/-) Positivism" and or, "Oldest (Alt.) Nets (80s-'93)"

- Also, *when* "Oldest Web"/"Old Alt.-nets" (Work name)? (1980s-1992/93) - "Eternal September", "there is no Cabal" and such? (https://aesthetics.fandom.com/wiki/Old_Web?commentId=44...54588&replyId=44...436775)

- https://aesthetics.fandom.com/f/p/44...52421

- https://aesthetics.fandom.com/f/p/44...53803

- https://aesthetics.fandom.com/f/p/44...53936

(^ Related: "90s Positivism")

-- Ike this: https://kyberia.sk/id/8639748#7 (https://aesthetics.fandom.com/f/p/44...53936/r/44...435546)

- https://aesthetics.fandom.com/f/p/44...53936/r/44...435363 (... (copied this text to AI and asked about mark fisher + stirner + hauntology...):)

[criticalfai1ure]

more world building notes for leland sleight :

pulling from the likes of atlas and bsg and other advanced artificial intelligence medias, thinking about the idea of “good” vs. “bad” ai / bots. about how there are / were people that treated their ai and bots like family, so when the tech takes over the world, there are handfuls of bots that don’t agree with the general consensus of the ruling party.

thinking abt how the hackers would have these integrated into the rebellion. how people less into tech wouldn’t trust them. about how they would have to be as advanced as the ruling bad bots, partly in order to be able to survive an override, partly to be able to fortify the lower tech and firewalls the hackers are able to put in place.

also thinking abt how the “connectedness” of the ai / cloud lends itself to mistrust of the good tech. potentially how there’s less physical humanoid bodies of good tech vs bad. as though the advancement of the bad is documented by them expanding past their computer mainframes and, yeah, humans build the first “bodies” for their bots but then the bots advance that technology well past what a human might be capable of. which is why the good ai are more so found in transferable tech (i.e. tablets, laptops, phones. portable things to make it easier to hide from the bad bots) and then the possibility of good tech overriding / “corrupting” bad bot bodies instead of building their own.

and then i’m thinking abt how they might be able to sus out lee when he’s trying to pass himself off as a “medic” with the cure he’d created alongside the Virus. there’s bound to be code somewhere from the bad bots re : names of the humans they’ve used to help themselves along. yeah, it’s gonna be massively encrypted, but who’s to say a hacker doesn’t get their hands on it, not knowing what it contains, and it taking ages to unencrypt / decode even with the help of some good ai.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The reverse-centaur apocalypse is upon us

I'm coming to DEFCON! On Aug 9, I'm emceeing the EFF POKER TOURNAMENT (noon at the Horseshoe Poker Room), and appearing on the BRICKED AND ABANDONED panel (5PM, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01). On Aug 10, I'm giving a keynote called "DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE! How hackers can seize the means of computation and build a new, good internet that is hardened against our asshole bosses' insatiable horniness for enshittification" (noon, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01).

In thinking about the relationship between tech and labor, one of the most useful conceptual frameworks is "centaurs" vs "reverse-centaurs":

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/17/revenge-of-the-chickenized-reverse-centaurs/

A centaur is someone whose work is supercharged by automation: you are a human head atop the tireless body of a machine that lets you get more done than you could ever do on your own.

A reverse-centaur is someone who is harnessed to the machine, reduced to a mere peripheral for a cruelly tireless robotic overlord that directs you to do the work that it can't, at a robotic pace, until your body and mind are smashed.

Bosses love being centaurs. While workplace monitoring is as old as Taylorism – the "scientific management" of the previous century that saw labcoated frauds dictating the fine movements of working people in a kabuki of "efficiency" – the lockdowns saw an explosion of bossware, the digital tools that let bosses monitor employees to a degree and at a scale that far outstrips the capacity of any unassisted human being.

Armed with bossware, your boss becomes a centaur, able to monitor you down to your keystrokes, the movements of your eyes, even the ambient sound around you. It was this technology that transformed "work from home" into "live at work." But bossware doesn't just let your boss spy on you – it lets your boss control you. \

It turns you into a reverse-centaur.

"Data At Work" is a research project from Cracked Labs that dives deep into the use of surveillance and control technology in a variety of workplaces – including workers' own cars and homes:

https://crackedlabs.org/en/data-work

It consists of a series of papers that take deep dives into different vendors' bossware products, exploring how they are advertised, how they are used, and (crucially) how they make workers feel. There are also sections on how these interact with EU labor laws (the project is underwritten by the Austrian Arbeiterkammer), with the occasional aside about how weak US labor laws are.

The latest report in the series comes from Wolfie Christl, digging into Microsoft's "Dynamics 365," a suite of mobile apps designed to exert control over "field workers" – repair technicians, security guards, cleaners, and home help for ill, elderly and disabled people:

https://crackedlabs.org/dl/CrackedLabs_Christl_MobileWork.pdf

It's…not good. Microsoft advises its customers to use its products to track workers' location every "60 to 300 seconds." Workers are given tasks broken down into subtasks, each with its own expected time to completion. Workers are expected to use the app every time they arrive at a site, begin or complete a task or subtask, or start or end a break.

For bosses, all of this turns into a dashboard that shows how each worker is performing from instant to instant, whether they are meeting time targets, and whether they are spending more time on a task than the client's billing rate will pay for. Each work order has a clock showing elapsed seconds since it was issued.

For workers, the system generates new schedules with new work orders all day long, refreshing your work schedule as frequently as twice per hour. Bosses can flag workers as available for jobs that fall outside their territories and/or working hours, and the system will assign workers to jobs that require them to work in their off hours and travel long distances to do so.

Each task and subtask has a target time based on "AI" predictions. These are classic examples of Goodhart's Law: "any metric eventually becomes a target." The average time that workers take becomes the maximum time that a worker is allowed to take. Some jobs are easy, and can be completed in less time than assigned. When this happens, the average time to do a job shrinks, and the time allotted for normal (or difficult) jobs contracts.

Bosses get stack-ranks of workers showing which workers closed the most tickets, worked the fastest, spent the least time idle between jobs, and, of course, whether the client gave them five stars. Workers know it, creating an impossible bind: to do the job well, in a friendly fashion, the worker has to take time to talk with the client, understand their needs, and do the job. Anything less will generate unfavorable reports from clients. But doing this will blow through time quotas, which produces bad reports from the bossware. Heads you lose, tails the boss wins.

Predictably, Microsoft has shoveled "AI" into every corner of this product. Bosses don't just get charts showing them which workers are "underperforming" – they also get summaries of all the narrative aspects of the workers' reports (e.g. "My client was in severe pain so I took extra time to make her comfortable before leaving"), filled with the usual hallucinations and other botshit.

No boss could exert this kind of fine-grained, soul-destroying control over any workforce, much less a workforce that is out in the field all day, without Microsoft's automation tools. Armed with Dynamics 365, a boss becomes a true centaur, capable of superhuman feats of labor abuse.

And when workers are subjected to Dynamics 365, they become true reverse-centaurs, driven by "digital whips" to work at a pace that outstrips the long-term capacity of their minds and bodies to bear it. The enthnographic parts of the report veer between chilling and heartbreaking.

Microsoft strenuously objects to this characterization, insisting that their tool (which they advise bosses to use to check on workers' location every 60-300 seconds) is not a "surveillance" tool, it's a "coordination" tool. They say that all the AI in the tool is "Responsible AI," which is doubtless a great comfort to workers.

In Microsoft's (mild) defense, they are not unique. Other reports in the series show how retail workers and hotel housekeepers are subjected to "despot on demand" services provided by Oracle:

https://crackedlabs.org/en/data-work/publications/retail-hospitality

Call centers, are even worse. After all, most of this stuff started with call centers:

https://crackedlabs.org/en/data-work/publications/callcenter

I've written about Arise, a predatory "work from home" company that targets Black women to pay the company to work for it (they also have to pay if they quit!). Of course, they can be fired at will:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/29/impunity-corrodes/#arise-ye-prisoners

There's also a report about Celonis, a giant German company no one has ever heard of, which gathers a truly nightmarish quantity of information about white-collar workers' activities, subjecting them to AI phrenology to judge their "emotional quality" as well as other metrics:

https://crackedlabs.org/en/data-work/publications/processmining-algomanage

As Celonis shows, this stuff is coming for all of us. I've dubbed this process "the shitty technology adoption curve": the terrible things we do to prisoners, asylum seekers and people in mental institutions today gets repackaged tomorrow for students, parolees, Uber drivers and blue-collar workers. Then it works its way up the privilege gradient, until we're all being turned into reverse-centaurs under the "digital whip" of a centaur boss:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/11/25/the-peoples-amazon/#clippys-revenge

In mediating between asshole bosses and the workers they destroy, these bossware technologies do more than automate: they also insulate. Thanks to bossware, your boss doesn't have to look you in the eye (or come within range of your fists) to check in on you every 60 seconds and tell you that you've taken 11 seconds too long on a task. I recently learned a useful term for this: an "accountability sink," as described by Dan Davies in his new book, The Unaccountability Machine, which is high on my (very long) list of books to read:

https://profilebooks.com/work/the-unaccountability-machine/

Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/02/despotism-on-demand/#virtual-whips

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[erigold13261]

I saw the TADC art and HOLY HECK. Mahito is doing a better job transfiguring fellas./j (I love how… toy like everyone is.)

I also noticed how Satoru (DJ Sub head), Suguru (be careful what you wish on others since you might get turned into a monkey) and Dragon (worm!) look significantly less human than the other performers + Tila and Margo (who look lovely). Maybe it’s bc they didn’t enter in the “correct” way, and got recognized as a “hacker”, and TADC is punishing you for it? (Since how the hell is Satoru going to Domain Expansion when blue doesn’t have the hands to do signs with?)

Mahito wishes he could transfigure people the way TADC domain can transfigure people! lol (and thanks! I didn't really know what else to use for a theme because the more common TADC themes are toys with games and food being another theme but I couldn't think of anything related to those in the moment).

As for the human looking vs non-human looking designs, I don't think it actually has anything to do with how someone got into the domain, considering Gangle is there and sure, they are humanoid, but they don't actually look all that human compared to characters like Jax, Ragatha, or Pomni.

Satoru is still pretty humanoid, leaning more towards how inhuman Gangle is, while Suguru and Dagon aren't humanoid at all. It really is just the luck of the draw (or bad luck of the draw lol).

As for Satoru's domain expansion, I completely forgot that blue needed to use hand signs lol. Probably why Dagon ends up going into the domain as they can open their domain with a sigil (that would be under their fur) instead of needing a hand sign.

Either that or the three realize they fucked up and try to keep their simple domains/domain amplifications going as long as possible while they try to figure out what to do (waiting for Panda or SP//dr to come in, since they can't be detected by the domain as they are neither robot, human, nor entity, and get information out to the rest of the world since Satoru, Suguru, and Dagon are stuck now).

This plot is still pretty loose, but what I think I am going to do is have Mechamaru be the center of attention and save the day because his heavenly restriction causes him to over power AIs in robots so even though he wouldn't be able to overpower the domain itself, he wouldn't be overpowered mentally (as his mind can't be stripped away from his body or robots. No one knows this though so it's the reason he wasn't sent in immediately as he wanted to stay with Miwa and not risk his life after all the transfigurations, but he probably feels bad for getting a lot of his friends transfigured and so he ends up going in and they realize he is immune to the effects).