#Software Development Questions

[skytech-mobile]

In this article, we discuss crucial questions that you should ask when selecting a mobile app development company.

[sweaterkittensahoy]

Never ask a man his salary, a woman her age, or a software team lead who on the team is going to do the dev.

[riddle-on-the-milk-carton]

FlipaClip premiumed it’s shit now it’s a fucking supcription service, I got the one time payment before the switch but my friends didn’t so it just grinds my fucking gears

Something is genuinely want to do if I had any knowledge on organization or app design is to put together a team of programmers/app-maker-people and make like an entirely free free animation/art program that has all the stuff but with tutorials and a simplified layout

Idk how realistic it could be but we could get money from kofi/patreon stuff maybe and like I’d want to optimize it as much as possible too and be accessible on as many different softwares like I’d want this shit to run on a CALCULATOR/j

Again it’s just a bit of a silly idea that may not be achievable at all I don’t know anything about programming but a guy can dream

Though any programmers/app designers here I’d really like to hear your thoughts/critiques please as long as they remain in good faith and respectful!

[monsterfactoryfanfic]

if I've learned anything from grad school it's to check your sources, and this has proven invaluable in the dozens of instances when I've had an MBA-type try to tell me something about finances or leadership. Case in point:

Firefox serves me clickbaity articles through Pocket, which is fine because I like Firefox. But sometimes an article makes me curious. I'm pretty anal about my finances, and I wondered if this article was, as I suspected, total horseshit, or could potentially benefit me and help me get my spending under control. So let's check the article in question.

It mostly seems like common sense. "...track expenses and income for at least a month before setting a budget...How much money do I have or earn? How much do I want to save?" Basic shit like that. But then I get to this section:

This sounds fucking made up to me. And thankfully, they've provided a source to their claim that "research has repeatedly shown" that writing things down changes behavior. First mistake. What research is this?

Forbes, naturally, my #1 source for absolute dogshit fart-sniffing financial schlock. Forbes is the type of website that guy from high school who constantly posts on linkedin trawls daily for little articles like this that make him feel better about refusing to pay for a decent package for his employees' healthcare (I'm from the United States, a barbaric, conflict-ridden country in the throes of civil unrest, so obsessed with violence that its warlords prioritize weapons over universal medical coverage. I digress). Forbes constantly posts shit like this, and I constantly spend my time at leadership seminars debunking poor consultants who get paid to read these claims credulously. Look at this highlighted text. Does it make sense to you that simply writing your financial goals down would result in a 10x increase in your income? Because if it does, let me make you an offer on this sick ass bridge.

Thankfully, Forbes also makes the mistake of citing their sources. Let's check to see where this hyperlink goes:

SidSavara. I've never heard of this site, but the About section tells me that Sid is "a technology leader who empowers teams to grow into their best selves. He is a life-long learner enjoys developing software, leading teams in delivering mission critical projects, playing guitar and watching football and basketball."

That doesn't mean anything. What are his LinkedIn credentials? With the caveat that anyone can lie on Linkedin, Mr. Savara appears to be a Software Engineer. Which is fine! I'm glad software engineers exist! But Sid's got nothing in his professional history which suggests he knows shit about finance. So I'm already pretty skeptical of his website, which is increasingly looking like a personal fart-huffing blog.

The article itself repeats the credulous claim made in the Forbes story earlier, but this time, provides no link for the 3% story. Mr. Savara is smarter than his colleages at Forbes, it's much wiser to just make shit up.

HOWEVER. I am not the first person to have followed this rabbit hole. Because at the very top of this article, there is a disclaimer.

Uh oh!

Sid's been called out before, and in the follow up to this article, he reveals the truth.

You can guess where this is going.

So to go back to the VERY beginning of this post, both Pocket/Good Housekeeping and Forbes failed to do even the most basic of research, taking the wild claim that writing down your budget may increase your income by 10x on good faith and the word of a(n admittedly honest about his shortcomings) software engineer.

Why did I spend 30 minutes to make a tumblr post about this? Mostly to show off how smart I am, but also to remind folks of just how flimsy any claim on the internet can be. Click those links, follow those sources, and when the sources stop linking, ask why.

[insurance-brokers-india]

What are the next steps after obtaining an insurance broker license, and how can you generate potential leads using Mzapp CRM software?

Congratulations on securing your insurance broker license! The journey doesn’t end here; it’s just the beginning of building a successful insurance brokerage. Here’s how you can proceed and leverage Mzapp CRM software to find potential leads:

Steps After Getting Your Insurance Broker License

Understand Your Market: Research your target audience (individuals, businesses, or specific sectors).

Develop a Business Plan: Set goals for client acquisition, revenue, and operational processes.

Build a Network: Partner with insurance providers and attend industry events to establish your presence.

Create an Online Presence: Build a professional website and maintain active profiles on social platforms.

Offer Value-Added Services: Educate customers on policies, claims management, and risk assessments.

Using Mzapp CRM Software to Generate Leads

Lead Capture: Utilize Mzapp’s integrated forms and web tracking tools to capture inquiries from your website or social media.

Automated Follow-Ups: Set up personalized email and SMS follow-ups to nurture leads effectively.

Lead Scoring: Prioritize leads based on their interaction history, ensuring you focus on high-potential prospects.

Data-Driven Campaigns: Use analytics to identify what works and launch targeted campaigns.

Seamless Policy Management: Impress leads by showcasing how smoothly you manage policies and claims through Mzapp.

Why Choose Mzapp CRM?

Mzapp CRM simplifies lead management, streamlines operations, and provides insights into customer behavior, making it easier to convert prospects into loyal clients.

Learn more about how Mzapp can transform your insurance business here.

[deception-united]

Writing Tips Master Post

Edit: Some posts may be deleted

Character writing/development:

Character Arcs

Making Character Profiles

Character Development

Comic Relief Arc

Internal Conflict

Character Voices

Creating Distinct Characters

Creating Likeable Characters

Writing Strong Female Characters

Writing POC Characters

Building Tension

Writing Grumpy x Sunshine Tropes

Writing Sexuality & Gender

Writing Manipulative Characters

Writing Mature Young Characters

Plot devices/development:

Intrigue in Storytelling

Enemies to Lovers

Alternatives to Killing Characters

Worldbuilding

Misdirection

Things to Consider Before Killing Characters

Foreshadowing

Narrative (+ how to write):

Emphasising the Stakes

Avoid Info-Dumping

Writing Without Dialogue

1st vs. 2nd vs. 3rd Perspective

Fight Scenes (+ More)

Transitions

Pacing

Writing Prologues

Dialogue Tips

Writing War

Writing Cheating

Writing Miscommunication

Writing Unrequited Love

Writing a Slow Burn Btwn Introverts

Writing Smut

Writing Admiration Without Attraction

Writing Dual POVs

Worldbuilding:

Worldbuilding: Questions to Consider

Creating Laws/Rules in Fantasy Worlds

Book writing:

Connected vs. Stand-Alone Series

A & B Stories

Writer resources:

Writing YouTube Channels, Podcasts, & Blogs

Online Writing Resources

Outlining/Writing/Editing Software

Translation Software for Writing

Writer help:

Losing Passion/Burnout

Overcoming Writer's Block

Fantasy terms:

How To Name Fantasy Races (Step-by-Step)

Naming Elemental Races

Naming Fire-Related Races

How To Name Fantasy Places

Ask games:

Character Ask Game #1

Character Ask Game #2

Character Ask Game #3

Miscellaneous:

Writing Tips

Writing Fantasy

Miscommunication Prompts

Variety in Sentence Structure (avoiding repetition)

[some-programming-pearls]

Explain about Collector.teeing feature in the Java Stream API in Java 12?

The Collector.teeing feature introduced in Java 12 is a powerful addition to the Collector interface in the Java Stream API. It allows you to combine the results of two downstream collectors into a single result using a provided BiFunction. Here’s a detailed explanation along with a sample code demonstrating its usage: Explanation: The Collector.teeing method takes three…

[ms-demeanor]

fucking client emailed in requesting a license last night at 10, called today before nine asking for the license and if I could hurry this along because it was urgent; being the person that I am I went to go find some more information and discovered that the customer wants to do an in-place upgrade on a nine-year-old free license to a recent server license which is.

A) not possible with the service pack they have installed B) probably not compatible with the two kinds of software they have talking to the database C) probably not compatible with their actual server, which blew up spectacularly in January.

(all of which is to say nothing about the wide variety of possible ways to purchase and install the license, but probably standard is what they want even if they're technically too big for it)

I talk to my team, most of whom do not have much experience with upgrades/migrations for this software and we all agree that more research into their environment is needed, including possibly calls with their other software vendors and also possibly maybe replacing their twelve year old server.

Call the client at 2pm and let him know that this project is going to be more rigorous than just ordering a license, let them know that this isn't being dropped or ignored, but we need more information and will be in contact when more of the team knows what's going on.

5:14 PM, my coworker messages me "hey, do we have a tenant for this client?"

I message my coworker: "fucking lol, this is about their license, isn't it?"

It is about their license. They have sent in an emergency after hours ticket describing the issue as urgent: they have purchased the license on their own from a consumer vendor unaware of the fact that they need admin access to a tenant to download the software.

I create a tenant for the client and document the information, then provide the tenant ID.

And then since it's urgent, it's an emergency, I begin gathering data and composing an email.

The license won't populate to the tenant for hours at least and probably not for a full day.

They didn't actually tell us what license they've got, but if they plan to use it with one flavor of software they've got they probably need a secondary license they were totally unaware of.

I have found no evidence whatsoever that this license is compatible with their other software.

I hop into an after hours meeting with one of our tier three consultants to get the exact version number of the software and confirm that there is not a straightforward upgrade path between the license they have and the license they want.

I send an email advising that if their developer wants to make an upgrade they MUST back up the database because we have emergency backups, not database backups, let them know in writing "per our conversation this afternoon, this is why we don't think this will work" and thank them cheerfully, letting them know to reach out if they have questions about licensing.

hit send at half past eight.

Combined after hours work on this "emergency" "critical" "urgent" ticket is now probably about half the hardware cost of a better server.

I get that emergencies happen, but buddy if I tell you "hey, I know you are in a rush with this but we have to take our time to do this correctly" and you ignore me and make me stay late to handle your "critical" ticket, you and I both are not going to have a good time.

[i4technolab]

Choosing the right firm for your Excel Add-in development is critical since it makes all the difference in the success of your project. Hundreds of entrepreneurs enter the market with the aim of success, making it difficult for clients to evaluate which firm is the best for their bespoke software development.

[authoraudreyguzman]

Daily Prompg #23

What was the last thing you searched for online? Why were you looking for it? The last thing that I searched for online was a YouTube tutorial. I am very interested in art and learning how to do it all for a lack of a better word. I mainly work on Procreate and it’s been very fun but recently, I decided to take a shot at learning Blender. Blender is a free open source software that allows anyone…

[nipunatechnologies]

The Best Software Institutes in Guntur and Vijayawada

Nipuna Technologies is the best software school in Guntur and Vijayawada, and we're going to show you why.

Are you prepared to begin a cutting-edge software education journey? If you're searching for a top-notch institute in Guntur and Vijayawada, then Nipuna Technologies is the perfect choice. We are distinguished as the top software institute in the region due to our dedication to achieving excellence, curriculum that is tailored to the needs of the industry, and a faculty with extensive experience.

Improve your skills by enrolling in our comprehensive courses.

Nipuna Technologies acknowledges the dynamic nature of the technology industry and its constant evolution. We offer a wide variety of courses that are suitable for both beginners and professionals. Our goal is to make sure that everyone can find the course that is the perfect fit for them. Our courses cover a wide range of topics, including web development, app design, and data analytics. Whether you have an interest in any of these areas, we have something for you. The instructors in our program are experienced professionals in their fields. They provide valuable real-world knowledge to the classroom, helping to connect theoretical concepts with practical applications.

Why Choose Nipuna Technologies?

Hands-On Learning: Our philosophy is centered around the idea of learning through practical experience. Our education approach focuses on practical skills that employers highly value, ensuring that you are equipped with the abilities they seek.

Industry-Relevant Curriculum: The syllabus we have developed is created in collaboration with industry leaders, ensuring that you gain the most up-to-date and relevant knowledge.

State-of-the-Art Infrastructure: The learning experience is enhanced when one learns in a conducive environment. The labs and facilities we have are specifically designed to encourage and support creativity and innovation.

Placement Assistance: We consider your success to be synonymous with our own success. At Nipuna Technologies, we offer dedicated placement support to assist you in confidently launching your career.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. Who can apply for these courses?

Our courses are designed to accommodate students from various backgrounds. Whether you're a recent graduate, a working professional, or someone looking to switch careers, Nipuna Technologies welcomes you.

2. What sets Nipuna Technologies apart from other institutes?

Nipuna Technologies stands out due to its industry-aligned curriculum, experienced faculty, practical approach to learning, and top-notch placement assistance.

3. Can I get a job after completing these courses?

Yes, Nipuna Technologies has a strong track record of placing students in reputable companies. Our extensive network and career guidance will significantly increase your job prospects.

Conclusion: Your Pathway to Success in the World of Software

In a digitally driven world, choosing the right institute for your software education is pivotal. Nipuna Technologies emerges as the beacon of excellence in Guntur and Vijayawada. Our commitment to nurturing talent, fostering innovation, and propelling careers makes us the unrivaled choice. Join us today and set forth on a journey of limitless possibilities!

Ready to take the plunge? Contact us to learn more about our courses and kick-start your journey toward a successful software career.

[phantomrose96]

The conversation around AI is going to get away from us quickly because people lack the language to distinguish types of AI--and it's not their fault. Companies love to slap "AI" on anything they believe can pass for something "intelligent" a computer program is doing. And this muddies the waters when people want to talk about AI when the exact same word covers a wide umbrella and they themselves don't know how to qualify the distinctions within.

I'm a software engineer and not a data scientist, so I'm not exactly at the level of domain expert. But I work with data scientists, and I have at least rudimentary college-level knowledge of machine learning and linear algebra from my CS degree. So I want to give some quick guidance.

What is AI? And what is not AI?

So what's the difference between just a computer program, and an "AI" program? Computers can do a lot of smart things, and companies love the idea of calling anything that seems smart enough "AI", but industry-wise the question of "how smart" a program is has nothing to do with whether it is AI.

A regular, non-AI computer program is procedural, and rigidly defined. I could "program" traffic light behavior that essentially goes { if(light === green) { go(); } else { stop();} }. I've told it in simple and rigid terms what condition to check, and how to behave based on that check. (A better program would have a lot more to check for, like signs and road conditions and pedestrians in the street, and those things will still need to be spelled out.)

An AI traffic light behavior is generated by machine-learning, which simplistically is a huge cranking machine of linear algebra which you feed training data into and it "learns" from. By "learning" I mean it's developing a complex and opaque model of parameters to fit the training data (but not over-fit). In this case the training data probably includes thousands of videos of car behavior at traffic intersections. Through parameter tweaking and model adjustment, data scientists will turn this crank over and over adjusting it to create something which, in very opaque terms, has developed a model that will guess the right behavioral output for any future scenario.

A well-trained model would be fed a green light and know to go, and a red light and know to stop, and 'green but there's a kid in the road' and know to stop. A very very well-trained model can probably do this better than my program above, because it has the capacity to be more adaptive than my rigidly-defined thing if the rigidly-defined program is missing some considerations. But if the AI model makes a wrong choice, it is significantly harder to trace down why exactly it did that.

Because again, the reason it's making this decision may be very opaque. It's like engineering a very specific plinko machine which gets tweaked to be very good at taking a road input and giving the right output. But like if that plinko machine contained millions of pegs and none of them necessarily correlated to anything to do with the road. There's possibly no "if green, go, else stop" to look for. (Maybe there is, for traffic light specifically as that is intentionally very simplistic. But a model trained to recognize written numbers for example likely contains no parameters at all that you could map to ideas a human has like "look for a rigid line in the number". The parameters may be all, to humans, meaningless.)

So, that's basics. Here are some categories of things which get called AI:

"AI" which is just genuinely not AI

There's plenty of software that follows a normal, procedural program defined rigidly, with no linear algebra model training, that companies would love to brand as "AI" because it sounds cool.

Something like motion detection/tracking might be sold as artificially intelligent. But under the covers that can be done as simply as "if some range of pixels changes color by a certain amount, flag as motion"

2. AI which IS genuinely AI, but is not the kind of AI everyone is talking about right now

"AI", by which I mean machine learning using linear algebra, is very good at being fed a lot of training data, and then coming up with an ability to go and categorize real information.

The AI technology that looks at cells and determines whether they're cancer or not, that is using this technology. OCR (Optical Character Recognition) is the technology that can take an image of hand-written text and transcribe it. Again, it's using linear algebra, so yes it's AI.

Many other such examples exist, and have been around for quite a good number of years. They share the genre of technology, which is machine learning models, but these are not the Large Language Model Generative AI that is all over the media. Criticizing these would be like criticizing airplanes when you're actually mad at military drones. It's the same "makes fly in the air" technology but their impact is very different.

3. The AI we ARE talking about. "Chat-gpt" type of Generative AI which uses LLMs ("Large Language Models")

If there was one word I wish people would know in all this, it's LLM (Large Language Model). This describes the KIND of machine learning model that Chat-GPT/midjourney/stablediffusion are fueled by. They're so extremely powerfully trained on human language that they can take an input of conversational language and create a predictive output that is human coherent. (I am less certain what additional technology fuels art-creation, specifically, but considering the AI art generation has risen hand-in-hand with the advent of powerful LLM, I'm at least confident in saying it is still corely LLM).

This technology isn't exactly brand new (predictive text has been using it, but more like the mostly innocent and much less successful older sibling of some celebrity, who no one really thinks about.) But the scale and power of LLM-based AI technology is what is new with Chat-GPT.

This is the generative AI, and even better, the large language model generative AI.

(Data scientists, feel free to add on or correct anything.)

[webzguruservices]

Discover Keyword Gold 4 Questions to ask for Successful SEO

Are you tired of pouring endless hours into your SEO strategy with little to no results? It’s time to dig deeper and discover the keyword gold that will take your website to the top of search engine rankings.

By asking four simple questions, you can uncover invaluable insights into what your target audience is searching for and how to optimize your content accordingly. Get ready to strike it rich with these essential tips for successful SEO.

Introduction to SEO and Keyword Research

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and it is the process of optimizing a website in order to make it more visible in search engine results pages (SERPs). SEO can help your website improve its rankings in search engines, drive more traffic to your site, and increase visibility for your brand.

Keyword research is the process of finding relevant and popular terms or phrases related to your business that people are searching for on search engines. Keywords are usually used as part of an SEO strategy to make sure content is optimized for search engines. The right keywords are important because they can help drive more relevant traffic to your website and improve conversions.

When choosing keywords, you should consider what kind of phrases people might use when searching for content related to your business. You may also want to look at what kind of terms your competitors are using. Additionally, you should focus on long-tail keywords—phrases with three or more words—because these tend to have lower competition levels.

To track SEO progress and results, you can use tools such as Google Search Console or Ahrefs Site Audit Tool. These tools provide insights into how well your website is performing in organic search results so that you can measure progress and make necessary changes.

With the right keyword research strategy, SEO practices, and tools, you can improve your website’s visibility and rankings in search engine results pages.

What are 4 Questions to Ask for Successful SEO?

What are your business goals?

Who is your target audience?

What keywords do you want to rank for?

What is your competition doing for SEO?

– Who is your target audience?

Who is your target audience?

This is one of the most important questions to ask when you’re performing keyword research. Why? Because if you don’t know who your target audience is, you won’t be able to target them effectively with your keywords.

Who is your target audience? Are they male or female? What age group do they belong to? What are their interests? What are their needs and wants?

Answering these questions will help you determine the best keywords to target for your SEO efforts. By targeting the right keywords, you’ll be able to attract more of your target audience to your website or blog, which can lead to more sales or conversions.

– What type of content are you creating?

The first step in optimizing your website for SEO is to determine the type of content you need to create. There are three main types of content that are relevant to SEO:

Web pages

Blog posts

Images, videos, and infographics

Each type of content serves a different purpose and can be optimized for different keywords.

Web pages are the most important type of content for SEO because they are the foundation of your website. Your web pages should be keyword-rich and informative, providing value to your visitors.

Blog posts are another important type of content for SEO. They help you keep your website fresh with new, keyword-rich content, and they give you an opportunity to build relationships with your readers by offering valuable information.

Images, videos, and infographics are also important for SEO. They can help break up text on your web pages and make your site more visually appealing. And, if they are optimized properly, they can rank highly in search results for relevant keywords.

– Where do they search?

searchers generally start with a search engine when they are looking for information on the internet. However, there are other places where people look for information as well. Below are some common places where people search for information and how you can take advantage of each one to improve your SEO.

1. Search Engines – Obviously, you want your website to rank high in search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing. You can do this by optimizing your website content with keywords that people are searching for. You can also pay for advertising on these platforms to get your website in front of more eyeballs.

Social Media – Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are also great places to get your website noticed. Make sure you have share buttons on your website so that visitors can easily share your content on their own social media pages. You can also run paid ads on social media platforms to reach even more people.

Directories – There are many online directories that list websites in specific categories. make sure your website is listed in relevant directories so that people can find it when they’re looking for something specific.

Blogs – Blogs are another great way to get your website noticed by potential customers. Write informative blog posts that include keywords related to what you do and be sure to link back to your website in every post. If you guest post on other blogs, make sure you include a link back to your site in your author bio .

Video Sites – People love watching videos, and YouTube is the most popular video site out there. Create videos that explain what you do and include a link back to your website in the description. You can also post videos on other video platforms like Vimeo or Dailymotion for extra exposure.

– What words do they use to search?

This is an important question to ask when trying to determine which keywords to target for your SEO campaign. There are a couple different ways to go about finding out what words people use to search. The first is through keyword research tools like Google AdWords Keyword Planner and Moz Keyword Explorer.

Both of these tools allow you to input a seed keyword and then see related keywords that people are searching for. This can give you some good ideas of what keywords to target.

Another way to find out what words people use to search is through Google Trends. This tool lets you see how popular certain keywords are over time. This can be helpful in determining which keywords are worth targeting and which ones might be on the decline.

How To Use Your Answers To Find Keyword Gold

If you want to find keyword gold, you need to ask the right questions. The answers to these questions will help you identify the most valuable keywords for your business. Here are some of the questions you should ask:

What are your customers searching for?

What are your competitors ranking for?

What keywords have high search volume but low competition?

What long-tail keywords can you target?

What local keywords can you target?

What industry-specific keywords can you target?

What product-specific keywords can you target?

Analyzing Your Results & Optimizing Content For Search Engines

After you have completed your keyword research and have a list of potential keywords, it’s time to analyze your results and optimize your content for search engines. Here are some questions to ask yourself when analyzing your results:

What is the search volume for each keyword?

What is the competition level for each keyword?

What is the average CPC for each keyword?

Which keywords are most relevant to my business?

Which keywords have the highest conversion rate?

Which keywords are most likely to result in a sale?

What is the customer intent behind each keyword?

How can I optimize my website and content for each keyword?

 Conclusion

Finding the right keywords can be a challenge, but it is an important part of successful SEO. Asking yourself four key questions can help you identify the best keywords for your content and maximize your chances of ranking higher in search engine results.

By focusing on relevant topics and understanding what works for your audience, you will have the tools to create effective SEO campaigns that target ideal customers and drive more traffic to your website. With these tips, you’ll be well on your way to discovering keyword gold!

[some-programming-pearls]

What are the challenges faced when monitoring and logging in microservice architecture?

Inadequate monitoring and logging make it challenging to identify and troubleshoot issues within microservices. Solution: Implement centralized logging and monitoring solutions for comprehensive visibility. Utilize distributed tracing to track requests across multiple microservices. Terminology: Centralized Logging And Monitoring: such as the ELK Stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana),…

[its-always-nightshift]

This is the official design of Sun for my Theater AU!! I love him so much and I honestly need to draw him more. He’s so character.

Click for more information about the AU:

What is the Theater AU?

A fic currently in the works which takes canon Sun & Moon and plays with the concept of them being theater bots before being transferred (unwillingly) to the daycare! Half of the story revolves around when they were theater bots, and the other half is about the daycare. The drawing above is Sun when he was a theater bot! Sun in the daycare looks very close to canon in design with a few different details. And by theater, I mean they had some very cool acts. Moon has my favorite performance in the story so far.

Is there a y/n for the Theater AU?

No, you follow along the story of a nonbinary oc named Roy who dabbles in software engineering. You can, however, imagine that Roy is the pizzaplex’s nickname for y/n and pretend as such! Either way is fine by me, but the fic will be tagged as oc insert.

Have you written any chapters/made any art for the Theater AU yet?

Very few, but that’s only because I have to wait until summer to flesh it out properly. I do, however, have many bullet points for the storyline written down already as well as a couple of snippets and have a very good idea of how I want the fic to play out.

What kind of personality does Roy have?

Roy is a very down-to-earth, analytical, logic-oriented type of person. Roy has a lot of patience and I think Sun sometimes needs that kind of patience because of his jitteriness and overall bouncy personality. They’ve known the boys for a while and always took an interest in the way they work. They might even be the reason Roy went into software development and specialized in AI.

Can I use your art/writing for AI?

Absolutely not. That is not what AI should be used for. Thank you for your cooperation.

How technical will the fic be?

I want to mix my own experience as a computer scientist into the story a little while also making the explanations easy enough for anyone to enjoy and maybe find their own technical passion out of it. I will still mention some fun comp sci technical jargon for the purpose of enunciating Roy’s professionalism. On the robotics side, my own experience lacks, but I will try my best to get as accurate as I can by studying the canon boys.

Does Roy get to smooch the boys?

I’m still debating this, honestly! Maybe in some sequel story or side-comics, but the main fic is meant to focus on the characterization of Sun & Moon, so we’ll see. The boys can’t move their faces similarly to canon, but they would happily accept a smooch on the cheek.

Who do you like more, Sun or Moon?

Oh boy, I love them both! Moon is very scary and I’d never go back to that level in security breach if I can avoid it, but he makes for such a funky character full of potential storytelling. Sun is definitely my favorite of the two though. When I tell friends about a fic I’ve recently read from any of the fantastic DCA stories, I always ramble about how Sun’s character was written whether it was sunhinged, emotionally haunting, or absolutely sweet! When I played Help Wanted 2 I was overjoyed by his character. He deserves to be a little sassy sometimes, as a treat. It is no different in the Theater AU; he has his sassy and sweet moments.

Moon’s design I am still working on, so keep an eye out for him!! Also let me know if you take an interest in my boys by asking questions about them! It helps me find their personalities better and inspires me to do more. Thanks for reading!

[bi-writes]

whats wrong with ai?? genuinely curious <3

okay let's break it down. i'm an engineer, so i'm going to come at you from a perspective that may be different than someone else's.

i don't hate ai in every aspect. in theory, there are a lot of instances where, in fact, ai can help us do things a lot better without. here's a few examples:

ai detecting cancer

ai sorting recycling

some practical housekeeping that gemini (google ai) can do

all of the above examples are ways in which ai works with humans to do things in parallel with us. it's not overstepping--it's sorting, using pixels at a micro-level to detect abnormalities that we as humans can not, fixing a list. these are all really small, helpful ways that ai can work with us.

everything else about ai works against us. in general, ai is a huge consumer of natural resources. every prompt that you put into character.ai, chatgpt? this wastes water + energy. it's not free. a machine somewhere in the world has to swallow your prompt, call on a model to feed data into it and process more data, and then has to generate an answer for you all in a relatively short amount of time.

that is crazy expensive. someone is paying for that, and if it isn't you with your own money, it's the strain on the power grid, the water that cools the computers, the A/C that cools the data centers. and you aren't the only person using ai. chatgpt alone gets millions of users every single day, with probably thousands of prompts per second, so multiply your personal consumption by millions, and you can start to see how the picture is becoming overwhelming.

that is energy consumption alone. we haven't even talked about how problematic ai is ethically. there is currently no regulation in the united states about how ai should be developed, deployed, or used.

what does this mean for you?

it means that anything you post online is subject to data mining by an ai model (because why would they need to ask if there's no laws to stop them? wtf does it matter what it means to you to some idiot software engineer in the back room of an office making 3x your salary?). oh, that little fic you posted to wattpad that got a lot of attention? well now it's being used to teach ai how to write. oh, that sketch you made using adobe that you want to sell? adobe didn't tell you that anything you save to the cloud is now subject to being used for their ai models, so now your art is being replicated to generate ai images in photoshop, without crediting you (they have since said they don't do this...but privacy policies were never made to be human-readable, and i can't imagine they are the only company to sneakily try this). oh, your apartment just installed a new system that will use facial recognition to let their residents inside? oh, they didn't train their model with anyone but white people, so now all the black people living in that apartment building can't get into their homes. oh, you want to apply for a new job? the ai model that scans resumes learned from historical data that more men work that role than women (so the model basically thinks men are better than women), so now your resume is getting thrown out because you're a woman.

ai learns from data. and data is flawed. data is human. and as humans, we are racist, homophobic, misogynistic, transphobic, divided. so the ai models we train will learn from this. ai learns from people's creative works--their personal and artistic property. and now it's scrambling them all up to spit out generated images and written works that no one would ever want to read (because it's no longer a labor of love), and they're using that to make money. they're profiting off of people, and there's no one to stop them. they're also using generated images as marketing tools, to trick idiots on facebook, to make it so hard to be media literate that we have to question every single thing we see because now we don't know what's real and what's not.

the problem with ai is that it's doing more harm than good. and we as a society aren't doing our due diligence to understand the unintended consequences of it all. we aren't angry enough. we're too scared of stifling innovation that we're letting it regulate itself (aka letting companies decide), which has never been a good idea. we see it do one cool thing, and somehow that makes up for all the rest of the bullshit?