Paired with the recent change that Oscar award judges are no longer allowed to skip parts of the media they’re reviewing (because apparently that was a thing), the number of AI slop movies is going to be absolutely gruelling for them to wade through.

One possible outcome is that this means AI kills the Oscars… but it’s more likely to get that watch-all rule rolled back.

And either way, it would probably mean that we’ll never see another 2001: A Space Odyssey again because a bunch of that movie looks like AI slop.

… I just realised this means that AI-generated movies could well end up being trained - accidentally or on purpose - to determine what would generate the most Oscars by exploiting underlying psychology that exists only in the sort of people who are employed as Oscar judges, but which somehow manages to mostly exclude everyone else.

That said, many people disagree with the Oscar nominations and awards anyway, so whether that makes any real difference is probably moot.

They changed things so that a phone number is needed to DM people as well. I wouldn’t mind, but I would have thought a long-standing account with good public participation, no bans and maybe the odd sub or two would have been enough not to need that.

I’m assuming the phone number database will at some point be sold to a telemarketing agency, or else accidentally (or accidentally on purpose) leaked. Not a fan.

Yeaaah, you’re gonna need to re-evaluate that cis-het label, friend. I like and respect the guy too, but if some miracle turn of events ended with he and I in the same time and place and he asked me for that, I’d politely but firmly decline. And then maybe enquire if his wife knew about this.

I’d probably be more comfortable if she put him up to it, but it’d still be a no.

Henrietta Lacks hasn’t managed it yet. Look her up. It’s at least as bad as this if not more so.

“Yet” being the operative word here. There’s a disease in dogs that started in some very similar circumstances (although happening in nature rather than from a science accident). One slip-up from an immunocompromised tech with just the right genetic make-up and it begins.

“So… what is your name?”

“Sigh. Richard. Richard Kiel.”

“Isn’t that the name of the actor…”

“Yes. Yes it is. My parents were hilarious.”

“…”

“…”

“Wait. Were hilarious?”

“I ate them.”

“Ah.”

There was a post on a similar subject not too long ago, and it seems the landscape shifted about 10 years ago. A whole load of alt-lifestyle folks got into Linux and sysadmin, and maybe a few previously straight-laced sysadmins came out as alt too.

Vive les différences

True. I think of it more as a semantic shift. In the old days, processes would actually quit and some other process would resurrect it as necessary, but then someone had the idea of having some processes catch the HUP and do all that itself without actually bothering any other processes.

And the implementation might actually involve an exec of the process’ own executable, meaning that it actually does self-terminate, but it leaves a child in its place.

So I reread it and it says “P follows Q”, which I (mis)read/(mis?)interpreted as “P follows from Q”.

I don’t remember if “follows” was ever used for forward implication in this way when I actually did a logic course, but it was a few decades ago now. Maybe it was.

There’s also that the usual joke in this category is that in basic logic, false implies true, which seems to be the punchline of the joke in the comic, just with the arrow backwards.

In order of decreasing politeness: 1, 2, 15, 9 = HUP, INT, TERM, KILL = “Please stop”, “Quit it”, “I’m warning you” and “BANG”

Isn’t that implication arrow backwards?

“P follows from Q” is P ⇐ Q

Maybe that’s the joke, though.

EDIT: The text says “P follows Q”, which my brain apparently corrected to “P follows from Q”. These are not the same, and I’d argue that “P follows Q” is problematic as a phrase as a result. Grumble grumble.

Well, yes, but actually no. It’s an old analogue “portable” 14" CRT TV with push button channel controls. Haven’t had it switched on in probably a decade at this point, and even if I did, all TV is digital here now, so it wouldn’t be able to show anything without a lot of outside help.

There’s a VCR under it that used to serve some of that purpose, but that’s also analogue only, doesn’t play tapes any more and the remote control is busted, so yeah, no TV.

That said, I adopted the philosophy of the bedroom only being for the main bedroom activities a while ago. You know. Dressing, undressing, testing the mattress and sleeping. This may be your husband’s line of thinking.

I moved the computer out of there for that reason too. The TV and the trolley it’s on only remained because it’s in use as a clothes horse.

If you approach people and tell them you’re normal, they won’t believe you. Something similar applies to saying you’re human on the Internet.

Hello, yes, I am a human.

Suspicious, isn’t it?

The cynic in me wants to know: Once purchased, will it, and any media it might contain at any time, be under the sole control of the purchaser?

If not, it’s definitely not worth buying.

Just an observation, but those are protocols that require a login before files can be transferred, so at a guess, it reduces the risk of accidentally transferring unnecessary client side information, but it’s probably more likely to be for code maintenance reasons. Fewer supported protocols means less to manage going forward.

HTTP(S) is fine for downloads anyway, even if it wasn’t originally designed for that.

For most intents and purposes, they’re no more dangerous than a star of the same mass in the same place.

There’s also the theory that our universe could be the inside of a black hole in a higher-order universe.

Of course, trying to imagine the size of our universe, let alone an entire hierarchy of them where ours may just be itself an insignificant speck, might cause more doom sensation than less. Do with this information what you will.

OK, I’ll bite. Pedant time.

“BSD” isn’t an acronym. It’s an initialism.

Acronyms are pronounced as a words rather than reading the letters, and, well, you’d be beatboxing if you pronounced BSD as a word.

Those of a vintage beyond even my own will know that it stands for “Broken Biscuit Company”, which I believe originated on BBC radio with The Goon Show. Now that’s not an acronym, but it is another word that’s picked up an unfortunate extra meaning in recent years.

To steal an idea I had on something similar once, perhaps on an entirely different site, there’s also where the wings come from in the first place, literally and figuratively.

The equivalent structure to a bird’s wing in humans is the arm and hand. Does this new wing take the place of the forelimb as it does in birds or does the wisher necessarily become a six-limbed creature?

Only enemies of Israel conflate anti-Israeli sentiment with anti-Jewish sentiment. (If you have a “but what about…” to that, read it again.)

From the naive perspective it’s looping infinitely and it ought to be infinitely old because there’s no “first loop”. Depending on the laws of physics, proton decay could make the pizza slice literally impossible.

Given that it clearly exists and has no rot let alone deep-time decay, I posit that it spontaneously appears/renews in panel three, away from the boundary break, as some kind of near-infinitely improbable entropy break.

He thinks he’s discovered panel time travel, but it’s far weirder than he thinks.