#Ways to Protect Data

[emacrow]

Jolly stringbean.

Babs was sitting at her desk in the library, glaring holes into the obviously hiding in disguised Tim.

Her friendly smile could hide the twitching lip as she checked out books for the few people in line. Ignoring the constant buzzing coming from the BatChat.

Bruce and the Robins had let this lie down after 3 weeks, which was a clear point that she knew they feared her, but it seemed Tim didn't get the memo.

Reminder note to replace his yearly concentrated espresso coffee supplies with decaf, and uploads his embarrassing toddler videos in him in a ducky outfit singing the duck song on the media.

Thankfully, Danny kept her wedding ring translucent, considering she was pretty sure Isabelle would try to chew on it again after she left it on her nightstand last time.

A different chime buzz on her phone as she flick her gaze at it, the message comes from Jolly StringBean💚 with a gif pfp of a tall elderitch sleeping, very inhumane impossible position on the kid's wardrobe after Isabella got sick that one time, only for his long ears to ping upwards startle with his glowing green eyes flashing the screen, white hair expanding to reveal camouflage fake hundreds of glowing green eyes like a peacock, tripping and falling off where he was standing as she had accidentally startled him awake in that moment.

She glances back at tim, who at the time was being distracted by a book before looking into the chat real quick.

Jolly StringBean💚: Dante and Isabella figured out the juice was on the top shelf of the fridge and tried to get it out, only to fail again.

Danny sent a few pics of 3 year old Dante and Isabella trying to sneak into the fridge. Isabella determined face while Dante looked around, obviously searching for danny, scratching his split white and black curly hair a bit.

The second one is Isabella standing on Dante crouching as she tries to pull the tropical punch out of the fridge after they open it.

The third Pic was Isabella falling backward due to the weight of the juice container being very heavy, her face completely surprised and gobsmacked.

Fourth pic was Dante sobbing on the floor, his tiny hands rubbing his eyes with tropical punch spilled all over the floor and Isabella sucking onto her hand, both of them soaked in fruit juice with the broken fruit punch container between them on the floor, in front of the fridge.

Along with the last Pic of Isabella taking a bath, Dante's puffy red eyes as he nibble on a blob ghost marshmallow already in a fluffy bunny towel, Isabella smacking the tiny green glowing ship on duplicated danny's obviously screaming as she didn't want to leave the bubble bath.

Babs's eyes soften in amusement before immediately blanking her phone to off upon seeing Tim at the front of her desk.

"Are you checking out these books, Tim?" Babs said with a polite smile planted on her face as she scanned the books.

"Who was that guy's voice on your com? Are you dating again? What if he is a-

"Tim, I have your ducky video on speed dial to be sent to the media. Do you really want to test me in public?" Babs comeback with a bright smiling that sent shiver down Tim's spine.

"...."

"My thoughts exactly, now your book is due next Saturday, don't be late again." Babs said, putting in the due date in the book's folder. Tim's eyes narrowed as she knew this wasn't over by far.

Babs watched and waited until Tim left the building completely before wheeling over to where he was spying on her, checking every shelf and book using her extender stick to find 5 mini batspy bots cameras planted.

This noisy litt-.. Babs took a deep breath as Frostbite told her not to get too angry in her state as she disabled the batspy bots.

She can't wait to get home and be a potato on the couch watching Danny cook. It is spaghetti and fudge brownie night.

Part 1 here <-

[info-data]

The way Data treats Spot is such a big proof of how much he feels... human feelings. And how he understands boundaries etc. Cats just *know* and Spot is treated so so well

Data treats his cat better than some humans treat theirs seriously

[stranded-ziggy]

Aziraphale || Good Omens

[t-u-i-t-c]

Kaito Kumon in Kamen Rider × Kamen Rider Drive & Gaim: Movie War Full Throttle (2014)

"Kazuraba... You never change. I see you're still fighting the same battle. Well I haven't changed either..."

+ bonus

[raymondshieldsofficial]

was talking with my parents about AI today and they had some genuinely really interesting perspectives on it

my mum is an oncology pharmacist and said that AI could be really useful for analysing test results and identifying potentially cancerous tumours in patients’ scans. essentially, it could highlight areas that the oncologist looking over the results may want to focus on. but they’d never leave it up to AI to diagnose the patient (ignoring that this would likely lead to biopsies and further tests, etc)

my dad is a software engineer. he’s 61 and wrote his dissertation on a typewriter because word processors either weren’t invented or not common enough that a university student could have one. he’s worked with computers pretty much since they were invented (in the modern sense). he put some code he was working on into the AI at his work just to see how good it was. it pulled up one line of code, that was abnormal for a specific reason that helped it to do what it needed to do. he told it the reason and apparently the AI was like “oh yeah.” and ran another analysis and the code was fine. which he knew because coding chips for household appliances is relatively simple compared to working on the Opportunity rover. but he still checked it over because he’s an old tech guy and will die before he has a “smart” appliance. real.

my point is, that they both used AI for things that actively helped their jobs. it could help increase the productivity of oncologists, in my mum’s case, and if you know anything about cancer you know that time is of the essence. in my dad’s case, it potentially could have highlighted a potential error that needed to be fixed before the code was sent off for second testing or whatever the fuck- I don’t know, I used to work in oncology myself but never in tech. but it could’ve saved him embarrassment and also several weeks of crashing out over broken code, which has happened in the past. he’s on first name terms with the guy who runs the test branch in Vietnam now. but my point is, no one took AI’s answer for granted. they used it and analysed it. there is not ever going to be a world where an oncologist will look at an AI result and feed back to a patient without fully analysing it, using AI as an assist if that.

my current job is in corporate and they’re desperately pushing for us to use it more - for emails, customer communications, etc, because it’s “quicker”.

another thing about my parents is that they’re both artists. my mum is a traditional artist and my dad is a photographer. they’ve both won awards. I’m an aspiring writer. one thing we all agreed on is that AI needs to stay the fuck out of creative industries. when I push to publish, I am going to have a clause in my contract that AI cannot be used in any capacity relating to my work.

I am currently the reason our area manager has to ban discussing the morals of AI every time he mentions the implementation in meetings.

AI could be brilliant for the medical field. it could stop stupid errors going through in the tech field. but it needs human oversight.

[geeky-nightphilosopher]

Okay, I have no idea how many of you Leverage fans have seen and/or like Hawaii 5-0- but I think it would be funny to see Danny Williams and Steve McGarrett work with Leverage.

Especially with Parker.

Imagine two (semi) by the book cops- working with con-artists. Working with a women people think is legit crazy. And then having her be protected by Eliot who could stare down Steve.

[aropride]

was talking to my friend abt how i want to possibly print out old posts from my vent account in 2021-22 so i can have a physical Book of my thoughts i was having at the time (i journaled regularly from like ~2010 to ~2019) (i'd collect posts from like 2018-2021 but i Cant bc i had to nuke my old blog (guy who's still upset about it voice)), and i mentioned how i didnt have much from my main blog/tumblr in general bc of how paranoid i was so i just kept posting, and my friend suggested adding in some of my silly lighthearted posts from main to show how i was presenting vs how i was actually feeling. which RULES.

[sarroora]

For archiving reasons ~ I'm just sharing a couple pics from my Eevee & Pikachu blocknote designs for EgyCon and artist alleys.

--

The blocknote is a double-design of 40 sheets. Created in Affinity Designer which I HIGHLY RECOMMEND as an Adobe Illustrator alternative.

Before cutting:

Tester sample to make sure the blocknote is sturdy and usable. Cutting still needs to be a bit cleaner:

Prototype packaging:

This blocknote took a ridiculously long time to create, though - so I gotta streamline my process somehow.

[wrenfea]

The burden of keeping training data free of copyrighted data-poisoned works should be on the company using it, not on the people just trying to protect their works.

[striffyisme]

okay i promise this is not an ad, and this is probably old news by now, but just in case there's other people like me who didn't know, there's this great tool called Relay made by our favourite web browser Firefox

basically it uses a masked email when you sign up for websites so companies don't have access to your real email, but you still get the notifications you want to receive. it stops businesses from buying your contact info too, as they only have the spoof email address provided by Relay

and best of all, you can use it totally free! you can have up to five email masks, use the Relay browser extension, and it removes email trackers too

or if you want you can pay $0.99 a month/$11.88 a year to get unlimited masks, a unique Relay email domain, and the ability to reply to emails anonymously

i believe they're also rolling out phone number protection, but i'm not sure when that's happening or if it's out already

anyway, please make use of this amazing tool to keep your data safe and private, and stop companies profiting off of you just a little bit more.

[leidensygdom]

So, Discord has added a feature that lets other people "enhance" or "edit" your images with different AI apps. It looks like this:

Currently, you can't opt out from this at all. But here's few things you can do as a protest.

FOR SERVERS YOU ARE AN ADMIN IN

Go to Roles -> @/everyone roles -> Scroll all the way down to External Apps, and disable it. This won't delete the option, but it will make people receive a private message instead when they use it, protecting your users:

You should also make it a bannable offense to edit other user's images with AI. Here's how I worded it in my server, feel free to copypaste:

Do not modify other people's images with AI under ANY circumstances, such as with the Discord "enhancement" features, amidst others. This is a bannable offense.

COMPLAIN TO DISCORD

There's few ways to go around this. First, you can go to https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/requests/new , select Help and Support -> Feedback/New Feature Request, and write your message, as seen in the screenshot below.

For the message, here's some points you can bring up:

Concerns about harassment (such as people using this feature to bully others)

Concerns about privacy (concerns on how External Apps may break privacy or handle the data in the images, and how it may break some legislations, such as GDPR)

Concerns about how this may impact minors (these features could be used with pictures of irl minors shared in servers, for deeply nefarious purposes)

BE VERY CLEAR about "I will refuse to buy Nitro and will cancel my subscription if this feature remains as it is", since they only care about fucking money

Word them as you'd like, add onto them as you need. They sometimes filter messages that are copypasted templates, so finding ways to word them on your own is helpful.

ADDING: You WILL NEED to reply to the mail you receive afterwards for the message to get sent to an actual human! Otherwise it won't reach anyone

UNSUSCRIBE FROM NITRO

This is what they care about the most. Unsuscribe from Nitro. Tell them why you unsuscribed on the way out. DO NOT GIVE THEM MONEY. They're a company. They take actions for profit. If these actions do not get them profit, they will need to backtrack. Mass-unsuscribing from WOTC's DnD beyond forced them to back down with the OGL, this works.

LEAVE A ONE-STAR REVIEW ON THE APP

This impacts their visibility on the App store. Write why are you leaving the one-star review too.

_

Regardless of your stance on AI, I think we can agree that having no way for users to opt out of these pictures is deeply concerning, specially when Discord is often used to share selfies. It's also a good time to remember internet privacy and safety- Maybe don't post your photos in big open public servers, if you don't want to risk people doing edits or modifications of them with AI (or any other way). Once it's posted, it's out of your control.

Anyways, please reblog for visibility- This is a deeply concerning topic!

[iwillbealwaysadreamer]

I just remembered that when the guys in our book club found out that us girls had a separate girls' group chat, they got jealous and made a separate guys group chat but all any of them ever said in it was "lads lads lads lads" and I just. idk I just find it so funny that they made such a big fuss over being excluded from the girls' chat (listen, all we're discussing is clothes, crafts, and periods bc apparently we're very stereotypical cis women, i don't think you guys really wanted to be included in that anyway) and then have absolutely nothing to say to one another lol

[cheemscakecat]

It also helps that Vader is so unique looking. He’s masked, so they didn’t have to register a human face before recognizing it.

There’s no common droid models that could be mistaken for him. Maybe a body double that Vader or the Emperor made, but that would only come out when they want to fool somebody.

I’m sure Palpatine wanted his right hand to be infamous and easily recognized for the intimidation factor.

But yeah, shoutout to Han for staying in front of his friends and trying to defend them. And also Leia for not letting go of his hand.

I appreciate The Empire Strikes Back for being the only time I can think of when a character just shot their enemy as soon as they saw them without pausing or having a dramatic moment beforehand.

[blue-eli]

Ink October day 27: Seldom

Not often; infrequently or rarely.

[akmundovirtual]

(vía Is Meta Playing With Your Data?.Discover What They Haven’t Told You About Their New Privacy Policies.)

[reasonsforhope]

If you're feeling anxious or depressed about the climate and want to do something to help right now, from your bed, for free...

Start helping with citizen science projects

What's a citizen science project? Basically, it's crowdsourced science. In this case, crowdsourced climate science, that you can help with!

You don't need qualifications or any training besides the slideshow at the start of a project. There are a lot of things that humans can do way better than machines can, even with only minimal training, that are vital to science - especially digitizing records and building searchable databases

Like labeling trees in aerial photos so that scientists have better datasets to use for restoration.

Or counting cells in fossilized plants to track the impacts of climate change.

Or digitizing old atmospheric data to help scientists track the warming effects of El Niño.

Or counting penguins to help scientists better protect them.

Those are all on one of the most prominent citizen science platforms, called Zooniverse, but there are a ton of others, too.

Oh, and btw, you don't have to worry about messing up, because several people see each image. Studies show that if you pool the opinions of however many regular people (different by field), it matches the accuracy rate of a trained scientist in the field.

--

I spent a lot of time doing this when I was really badly injured and housebound, and it was so good for me to be able to HELP and DO SOMETHING, even when I was in too much pain to leave my bed. So if you are chronically ill/disabled/for whatever reason can't participate or volunteer for things in person, I highly highly recommend.

Next time you wish you could do something - anything - to help

Remember that actually, you can. And help with some science.