A thing from start of this month, that I never posted here:

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Mondays sometimes really do be like:

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Omg! I’m always playing on those pixel placing canvases, where it’s usually an endless war of factions or just things being attacked for no reason, but now someone did the most wholesome thing imaginable and drew another inugami facing mine and drew them shaking paws.

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The recommendations page be like:

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Oh god, If I don’t repent for my sins and end up in hell - I’m pretty sure part of my punishment will be having to watch the Discord soydevs, attempt to program an Android file picker in RN, for all of eternity - as it will never be accomplished. All while I scream at them in pure agony, far greater than the one caused by my skin melting in lava.

You have to have a photo (cannot be an image, even if the extension is the same) in a specific directory, taken by the phones camera, for this file picker to function. How is code this bad even possible, unless it’s on purpose.

New profile picture. 🎉

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Can’t wait until this site joins the trend and becomes “y.com” - the everything protocol.

🥁 The dumb shit of the day award goes to:

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*yes this also breaks alternative front-end and people without an account, can’t even use the “real site”, at all.

Deleted Bluesky, to once again, post here exclusively. When do I get the 50 million exclusivity contract, to keep me here, or at least a new version of the app?

Opera browser: my final disavowal

While the Internet is being flooded by a record amount of Opera ads, affiliate program members and new hardcore defenders, while I - as someone, who has been using it without a break, for more than 10 years, have had enough and I’ve finally decided to uninstall it.

Part of the reason for this decision, was the new Opera One UI update, that I not only found incredibly ugly and uninspired, but also worsening the already abysmal performance of the browser, as well as adding to the already gigantic pile of bugs within.

All of this, came after a few very frustrating weeks, where the browser constantly crashed, under the weight of its own AI bloat. Every time any text was selected, it was trying to load some ridiculous AI integrations on top, but always crashing and loosing all the opened tabs.
After the UI update, the whole browser somehow felt even more wonky and laggy.

Even for those, who might be fans of the new UI and all the added “features”, that now include a built in generic anime girl game and stupid cartoon noises, upon clicking almost anything, in the “gaming version” of this browser, the growing concerns about this browsers spyware-like connections, to all kinds of mysterious servers, should at least be considered and looked into further. Not to mention the extra problems, that come with them being a Chinese-ran company, storing this data in China.
Quick summary: https://youtu.be/NV8akIgfDqQ

Int the interest of brevity, I won’t go further into the pointless social media arguments they engage in, their past promoting predatory loans, them inserting affiliate links (to the sites you visit through tiles), running a very questionable free VPN service, hidden extensions, that cannot be removed and god knows what else.

Either way Opera, you were an alright browser - many, many years ago. Sadly all I can say now, is “rest in piss, you won’t ever be missed!”.

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So the news is telling me, Bluesky is the hottest new decentralized thing, with parole waiting month to join, or buying invite codes of ebay, for thousands of dollars.

Yet there’s not one other instance out there, for people to join this decentralized paradise. Idk, just sounds a little sussy to me.

I know there was stems.social, but when people tried joining it, they cried “abuse” and shut it down - so no, it doesn’t count.

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Quite a few people do. It’s not even that hard, as you can fill them retroactively - there’s even tutorials, like this one: https://dev.to/codesandtags/how-to-generate-pixel-art-in-your-github-activity-2e6k

Quite predictably, the introduction of Chat GPT, has led to even more browser bloat. 🎉

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Also since I’m already bringing up opera - I have genuinely no idea, what their dev team is smoking, as all their additions this year, have been this desperate:

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From some cashback scam and TikTok integration…

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…all the way to some “lonely men bait” and adding NFTs - a full year, after everyone stopped caring.

Can we get a folder, for all the new android Yarn App builds, or something like that, so most users don’t have to be stuck, on this ancient version please?

I still have great memories, of playing Club Penguin as a child, or even playing it on a few private servers, at times, as a nostalgia-filled adult, after Disney destroyed and took down the original. Sadly most of those servers were either too obscure, broken, or not obscure enough, to avoid Disneys lawyers.

I was mildly excited, when I heard about a 3D sequel, made by some of the people, behind the original game (before Disney bought it), but this is suspicious at best.

Even if you made the funny penguin game from my childhood, I will not give you my social security number, nor my credit card info, to play the new one and I hope not many others will either.

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*The sequel is called “Party Parrot World” and requires a “verified Hideaway account”, if you want to play it, or try some other two game things, that they are currently working on.

I said, I don’t want to hear any more Trump news, but seeing he’s still seething in all caps and some invalid characters, on his isolated bootleg site, made me chuckle.

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The only way, this could get more pathetic, is if he starts spamming 5 emojis, after every word. 😂

To my surprise, some AI companies, might have to face the consequences of their art theft afterall. While the legal and corporate world, still couldn’t give less of a shit about the small artists, stability ai made the critical mistake, of using the ever so precious bland and generic stock images. Those are owned by companies, who for obvious reasons, hate AI, have extremely deep pockets and access to the right kind of lawyers.

They also have one other key advantage, that could win them the case. By slapping their watermark on millions of images, in the exact same place, the AI will start putting distorted versions of it, onto some images. Therefore, they can argue damage to their reputation, with evidence, to back it up.

https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/66788385/getty-images-us-inc-v-stability-ai-inc/

I have some exciting news to share! Celebrate the 3000 days of Canine anniversary, with this limited time offer. The ore-orders will launch soon, so get your wallets ready everyone!

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While waiting, you can also check the post-modern redesign of the Flist site, currently being tested on: https://flist.glitch.me

Another month, another pixelart! This time it’s actually not a canine, but a strange scenery, made using the PICO 8 color palette.

The only thing shared between this and the last art, is both being “slightly YIIK inspired”.

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My hot take, adding to the banks vs crypto debate, happening here:

While banks in most countries, can be trusted, what I find more alarming, is there being only two companies (MaserCard a Visa), who handle international money transfers - both having ToS, that allow them to blacklist you, without even giving you the reason, why that decision was made. They are also both ran out of the same country.

I’m not saying crypto is the solution, competition is! Anything even close to a monopoly, in any field, should make people worried. There should also be no second chances, for the companies, institutions, or governments, cough mishandling peoples money.

PayPal withheld funds for unreasonably long and charged illegal and unjustifiable random fines, that earned them a class action lawsuit. No-one should do business, with a company this scummy and I immediately demanded, that they delete my account, when I found out this was happening.

Lastly, say what you will, about the protests of Canadian truckers. I don’t fully endorse, what they did (both sides made mistakes, in this conflict), but if my government withheld money, from anyone, over protests, I’d definitely not feel safe, knowing people like that, can touch all my money.

Just days after @prologic@twtxt.net integrates ActivityPub into Yarn, Facebook comes out with plans to do the same (at least according to Twitter jurnos): https://www.platformer.news/p/meta-is-building-a-decentralized

There’s no escape Prologic, Facebook will find you in the end…
Don’t be sad, I know you will
But don’t give up until
Facebook will find you in the end

*Help, I can’t stop with the stupid lyrics gimmick, while posting here. 😅

@prologic@twtxt.net The people who wanted to rely on Visa, Mastercard or any other giant company with already too much control over peoples finances and ability to do business, completely missed the whole point of crypto, to begin with.

Or at least the point, that sadly became secondary, to “extracting money from gullible idiots, to overall benefit the already wealthy”.

Good news, for those who miss the cursed canine sticker collection - here’s a bonus one. As always, there’s a reference there, to be guessed. :)

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I’m not an art investor myself, know a fair bit about it, but had no idea missing JPEGs, is where the money at.

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Hmm… my background, now I’m obligated to make that joke - hope it’s not too far. Oh no, here comes the Big Bang Theory music.

♫ Our whole universe was just some shitty meme groups on Facebook, Then nearly ten whole years ago, expansion started, when Z** ***n slept with 5 game jurnos… Wait.
Discord, “chat for games” started,
A tone of stupid drama happened,
Then a server called Wolf Den was formed,
Went from a chipmunk, to wolf, to canine,
Drama and constant infighting, let to changes in many things,
But it all started with Gamergate! ♫

*Censored the name, not to spread stupid rumors, nor did I have anything to do with the mentioned movement, other than it changing a lot of things on the internet - most of them for worse, just by it happening simultaneously.

The Nostr protocol really is a cryptobros wet dream. On Amethyst (the Android client), every account automatically gets a pointless blue checkmark - before it even has a name. You get the promise of free speech, in the marketing, but in reality, that predictably translates to bots, spamming vague porn ads and other suspicious links, new users begging for followers for a follow in return and most prominent of all, the people utilizing the great feature, to beg for cryptocoin change, without doing anything else and not getting any.

The Nostr protocol really is a cryptobros wet dream. On Amethyst (the Android client), every account automatically gets a pointless blue checkmark - before it even has a name. You get the promise of free speech, I’m the marketing, but in reality, that predictably translates to bots, spamming vague porn ads and other suspicious links, new users begging for followers for a follow in return and most prominent of all, the people utilizing the great feature, to beg for cryptocoin change, without doing anything else and not getting any.

@abucci@anthony.buc.ci @movq@www.uninformativ.de I for ones was just silently confused, I’m not in the IRC, so whatever it was - therefore I didn’t see it. I also think it’s important to add, that no group, event or action, should be considered “protected from humor”.

It’s a feeling, hard to describe, but the Internet went for mostly toxic, with only a few sanitized places, to now almost fully sanitized. It ruined the fun.

The Fediverse fractured, mostly because some percentage of users, had to find a way to silence those offensive to them, for the entirety of their instance. I really don’t want this place, taking the same path.

@prologic@twtxt.net 24HourOps - obviously 😏

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https://youtu.be/vxgdHgMPP3k

@off_grid_living@twtxt.net By more extreme measures, I meant the things, that Tor browser does. For all that is holy, or unholy, please don’t ever return to Internet Explorer - it has destroyed the sanity of enough web developers as is, we can’t risk it’s user numbers ever increasing - never!

@abucci@anthony.buc.ci Even back when I still somewhat cared about the site, the API was lacking (and that’s putting it extremely nicely). In addition to lacking the support for many, if not all, new features, the alternative clients, relying on this not so great API, also had a very strict, hard limit of accounts, allowed to use them. That’s why these clients usually didn’t last long, or had a million different versions and charged their users to make those few user slots last.

Some might have had a better contract (don’t know if that was just a rumor, or not), but now with Elon taking over, none of it matters - they’ll all go away now. Sure, it might force people to use the ugly default app and see the ads, that it is full of, but I hope the users aren’t this brain-dead and that it’ll have a negative effect on the company, in the long-run.

Surely, there must have been a better solution, than shutting it all down. If the API was updated and ads included, in the alternative clients, or it had some other from of monetization, Elon could have removed the hard user limits instead and be seen as the good guy, like he was often in the past.

@prologic@twtxt.net “outsourcing” and “restructuring” are the hot new corpo buzzwords these days. The shirt economy and endless inflation we find ourselves in, probably isn’t helping it either.

@off_grid_living@twtxt.net There is a difference, between scraped data, used for AI training and the advertising companies, who track your behavior online, across sites, to better target you, with more relevant advertisements. These tools also give companies that use this technology, statistics about how people use their sites, so they can deduce, what needs to be changed, to increase their profits - but no AI is involved in any of that yet.

There might not be much one can do, to prevent what they publish online, from being scraped, to make some AI, but you can fight against targeted advertising and corporate analytic, by hardening your browser.
I think it’s best to combine things like: Using adblockers, scriptblockers/filters, incognito modes, settings that delete everything, when the browser is closed, not allowing unnecessary cookies, logging out of services, right after you’re done using them (unless you are sure, they don’t track you).

There are more extreme measures too, but those are a bit of an overkill, for normal web browsing, in my opinion.

@prologic@twtxt.net Google scanned all kind of books, to improve their search results - letting people find books and studies, based on any of the text in them, while not having the content of the books freely available, for obvious legal reasons.

Despite only doing that, it still resulted in a big lawsuit, that dragged on forever, then settled, only to be brought back to court again. Eventually Google won, more or less because their service did more good, than harm, for both book sales and people looking for books to do book things with.

This case was also recently brought up by many, when some artists filed a class-action lawsuit against Stable Diffusion and Midjourney, for their AI, trained, using copyrighted images.

This is just a “brief” and maybe not entirely accurate summary, mostly based on this stream, by Uncivil Law, who is a real lawyer and surely more qualified to talk about this, than I am: https://www.youtube.com/live/CwTWwvLRdeo

@akoizumi@social.kyoko-project.wer.ee So you’re now in favor of it?

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org I guess unusual garbage in places, where one wouldn’t expect it, is a problem everywhere. Still find it hard to understand, as even if you don’t care about nature and animals living there, in any way, it still takes a lot of effort, to bring the furniture, car parts and heaps of other junk there.

I also doubt the average perso doing this, is carrying washing machines into forests by hand and when you’re already driving around with it, it’s probably simpler, to just dispose of it legally. In many cases it might also be closer, or get you a bit of money, for the scrap metal.

@off_grid_living@twtxt.net No problem. The dataset the site searches, is only comprised of images, with very detailed text descriptions attached to them, as that’s something all images used for AI training need. Therefore I think this site works more based on those descriptions, than it does recognizing the text on the images themselves. 🤔

@off_grid_living@twtxt.net There is not much one can do, other than avoid putting any of it on places, that get scraped frequently or engage in data harvesting, for some other purposes.

You can also check the site https://haveibeentrained.com . There you can see, if any of your images are already in the scraped datasets, used to train AI. If they are, you can request them, to be removed.

@jlj@twt.nfld.uk Just wait until you make it into one of those cursed forest-ish areas, that’s where the old furniture, electronics and car parts begin.

Or maybe that only happens here. 🤔

@prologic@twtxt.net I don’t think banning it, is the right solution, as it can be quite helpful, when used the right way. I just think the works produced, should never be able to get copyrighted or monetized in similar ways. The double standard between music and images should also be addressed and either every artist gets fair compensation, or none of them do.

Sites should also decide, if they want to be an image board, or a portfolio site for artists and approach the situation accordingly, rather than trying to play both sides and failing.

Lastly, the situation should be used, to bring awareness to user agreements and the things companies put in there. Many of them already include, giving the company the right to use your work (be it code or art) to train some proprietary AI (GitHub, everything Adobe, DeviantArt…).
This is where it comes full circle, back to the subscription based apps. They change their agreements all the time and always add these things, that let them monetize your data, so they get you to be the product, like the “free” ones, but they get to charge you for it too.

@prologic@twtxt.net I understand people falling for “free” software, especially if it’s something you’re almost never using, but subscription services still confuse me.

How can someone be unwilling, to pay for a thing once, but happy to lower their monthly income for the foreseeable future, for it?

@prologic@twtxt.net Yeah, I don’t think there even is an equivalent for other artists, you’d have to get your own team of lawyers with powerful connections. Good luck doing that with (in comparison) next to no income.

What I also find funny, is how music streaming services are a normal thing, most people use theses days. You couldn’t sell people a subscription, to look at all the images. In some cases, you’re even expected to pay, for the privilege of people seeing your art. cough cough Facebook pages cough cough

This interesting video about AI art, just came out: https://youtu.be/nIRbN52PA0o

I already knew, most of what it was talking about, but found it interesting, that no company, developing music generating AI, was ever brave enough to use copyrighted music, for training. They all seen to have no problem, doing it with images.

It’s not surprising, I’ve already expected it to be the case. It just amazes me, how they find a way to incorporate the “music is worth money, images are not” bias into everything.

It’s more so a battle of lawyers, than artists at this point - or perhaps it always has been. With the corporations, using the garbage flat art and “nothing music*” for their interests and letting stupid and underpaid artists, eat the (usually deserved) backlash for it.

*nothing music/corporate music is a whole other chapter itself, if anyone wants to find out more about that, this is a good start: https://youtu.be/AIxY_Y9TGWI

@prologic@twtxt.net Are you doing all your work, on this tiny keyboard? 🥴