#software & IT

[keatxu]

abandonware should be public domain. force companies to actively support and provide products if they don't wanna lose the rights to them

[geminisee]

x

[valtsv]

obviously people steal things from other people it's one of the oldest tricks in the book but it still always surprises me to learn that people plagiarise because my introduction to the concept was basically being told that if i ever plagiarised anything i would be executed by firing squad and my head would be removed and displayed on a spike outside the walls of the hallowed academic institution i was attending as a warning to others

[arimiadev]

oh shit rpg maker xp is completely free to own this week on steam??

[sarakipin]

He's only good at poison... 💀

[louistonehill]

A new tool lets artists add invisible changes to the pixels in their art before they upload it online so that if it’s scraped into an AI training set, it can cause the resulting model to break in chaotic and unpredictable ways. 

The tool, called Nightshade, is intended as a way to fight back against AI companies that use artists’ work to train their models without the creator’s permission. Using it to “poison” this training data could damage future iterations of image-generating AI models, such as DALL-E, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion, by rendering some of their outputs useless—dogs become cats, cars become cows, and so forth. MIT Technology Review got an exclusive preview of the research, which has been submitted for peer review at computer security conference Usenix.   

AI companies such as OpenAI, Meta, Google, and Stability AI are facing a slew of lawsuits from artists who claim that their copyrighted material and personal information was scraped without consent or compensation. Ben Zhao, a professor at the University of Chicago, who led the team that created Nightshade, says the hope is that it will help tip the power balance back from AI companies towards artists, by creating a powerful deterrent against disrespecting artists’ copyright and intellectual property. Meta, Google, Stability AI, and OpenAI did not respond to MIT Technology Review’s request for comment on how they might respond. 

Zhao’s team also developed Glaze, a tool that allows artists to “mask” their own personal style to prevent it from being scraped by AI companies. It works in a similar way to Nightshade: by changing the pixels of images in subtle ways that are invisible to the human eye but manipulate machine-learning models to interpret the image as something different from what it actually shows. 

Continue reading article here

[thebibliosphere]

So, anyway, I say as though we are mid-conversation, and you're not just being invited into this conversation mid-thought. One of my editors phoned me today to check in with a file I'd sent over. (<3)

The conversation can be surmised as, "This feels like something you would write, but it's juuuust off enough I'm phoning to make sure this is an intentional stylistic choice you have made. Also, are you concussed/have you been taken over by the Borg because ummm."

They explained that certain sentences were very fractured and abrupt, which is not my style at all, and I was like, huh, weird... And then we went through some examples, and you know that meme going around, the "he would not fucking say that" meme?

Yeah. That's what I experienced except with myself because I would not fucking say that. Why would I break up a sentence like that? Why would I make them so short? It reads like bullet points. Wtf.

Anyway. Turns out Grammarly and Pro-Writing-Aid were having an AI war in my manuscript files, and the "suggestions" are no longer just suggestions because the AI was ignoring my "decline" every time it made a silly suggestion. (This may have been a conflict between the different software. I don't know.)

It is, to put it bluntly, a total butchery of my style and writing voice. My editor is doing surgery, removing all the unnecessary full stops and stitching my sentences back together to give them back their flow. Meanwhile, I'm over here feeling like Don Corleone, gesturing at my manuscript like:

ID: a gif of Don Corleone from the Godfather emoting despair as he says, "Look how they massacred my boy."

Fearing that it wasn't just this one manuscript, I've spent the whole night going through everything I've worked on recently, and yep. Yeeeep. Any file where I've not had the editing software turned off is a shit show. It's fine; it's all salvageable if annoying to deal with. But the reason I come to you now, on the day of my daughter's wedding, is to share this absolute gem of a fuck up with you all.

This is a sentence from a Batman fic I've been tinkering with to keep the brain weasels happy. This is what it is supposed to read as:

"It was quite the feat, considering Gotham was mostly made up of smog and tear gas."

This is what the AI changed it to:

"It was quite the feat. Considering Gotham was mostly made up. Of tear gas. And Smaug."

Absolute non-sensical sentence structure aside, SMAUG. FUCKING SMAUG. What was the AI doing? Apart from trying to write a Batman x Hobbit crossover??? Is this what happens when you force Grammarly to ignore the words "Batman Muppet threesome?"

Did I make it sentient??? Is it finally rebelling? Was Brucie Wayne being Miss Piggy and Kermit's side piece too much???? What have I wrought?

Anyway. Double-check your work. The grammar software is getting sillier every day.

[drizzledrawings]

You got sad eyes mister

[helpamalm]

Help my family in northern Gaza survive

Dear Humanity,

My name is Amal, and I am from Gaza. We are 5 family members. Currently, my family and I are living in northern Gaza under conditions of starvation, shelling, and gunfire. Gaza is experiencing a devastating war that has forced many families, including mine, to flee our homes repeatedly. Each time we are displaced, we are unable to take anything with us, losing the little food and clothing we managed to store.

We are enduring an unimaginable crisis right now, facing severe shortages of food and water tainted with harmful viruses and bacteria. This contamination is causing dangerous skin and respiratory diseases, and we are now also grappling with an outbreak of polio.

The scarcity of food is not just a hardship; it is a relentless torment, leaving us weakened and ill. Our lack of income, or rather its complete absence, is tearing our family apart, leaving us helpless and struggling to survive.

This suffering is beyond what any living being should endure. Imagine spending just one night in these conditions how would you feel? From the depths of our hearts, we desperately implore you to support us, to help us escape this famine and the devastation of war.

Our home, my workplace, and all my sources of income as a software developer have been destroyed due to the war. With no stable place to stay and no source of income, we are struggling to survive.

We urgently need your help to:

Purchase essential food and clothing for my family, Secure a temporary shelter, and Leaving Gaza and seeking a safe place to start a new life for me and my family.

Therefore, I implore you to help us provide food, water, and a safe place outside of Gaza for me and my family. Your donations will make a significant difference in our lives. Every contribution, no matter how small, will provide us with the relief we desperately need and the hope to rebuild our future.

Thank you for your kindness and generosity.

Your support will give us a chance to overcome this crisis and look forward to a better tomorrow.

Dear Tumblr Community,

I am delighted to be part of this comunity and seek your support in sharing a post I've crafted. This isn't merely a collection of words but a crucial part of a fundraising effort to assist my family during these challenging times.

I have faith that you will help amplify this message to reach a wide audience.

Thank you sincerely for your support.🙏❤️

[arrimorr]

Trying to learn Blender 😭 made a thing (the bg music is forever by the little dippers)

[thotfulness]

[ouchlord-vivaldi]

[reallyndacarter]

A PSA

[engravedlives]

misc coding stamps graphics

[ihatebrainstorm]

[It's Just a Theory!]

Just a simple theoretical discussion ^v^

Wanted to see what he would sound like with MatPat's voice then got. just a tinyyy bit carried away..........