Loved commandos. They’re making a new commandos. There is a demo out. Probably launched next year.

God parents are supposed to care for the children, if the parents die. I think you shouldn’t overthink it. If you’re willing to fill that role, then raise the kids however you think is best. Accept the role gracefully as it is an honor and your sister is showing she loves and trusts you. Leave it at that.

As atheists, we have to acknowledge that most of the world isn’t yet on our level of thinking, but also that we don’t really have similar “concepts” for religious traditions that serve certain societal needs. God parents do serve a societal function. As an atheist, I can acknowledge that, accept that role, and play the part for those I love.

Pretty sure they caught him in a lie or two

Absolutely no way they can justify being in Syria to begin with.

Thank god, give me my HMAC hash please.

Nothing more terrifying than losing your phone number these days because of all the accounts tied to it via 2FA.

I think you’re using the word fact in two senses here.

I am making an argument that ChatGPT and other AI models were created by copyrighted works and my “proof” is the “fact” that it can reproduce those works verbatim or state facts about them that can be derived from nowhere else but in the original copyrighted work or a derivative copyrighted work that used the original under fair use.

Now, the question is — is it fair use under copyright law, for AI models to be built with copyrighted materials?

If it is considered fair use, I’m guessing it would have a chilling effect on human creativity given that no creator can guarantee themselves a living if their style of works can be reproduced so cheaply without them once AI has been trained using their works as inputs. So, it would then become necessary to revisit copyright law to redefine fair use such that we don’t discourage creators. AI can only really “remix” what it has seen before. If nothing new is being created because AI has killed all incentive to make new things, it will stagnate and degrade.

Also, what games are really maxing out the ram? My impression is that most modern GPUs are overkill in this pretty stagnant video game market.

I think you’re missing the point. We are talking about whether it is fair use under the law for an AI model to even ingest copyrighted works and for those works to be used as a basis to generate the model’s output without the permission of the copyright holder of those works. This is an unsettled legal question that is being litigated right now.

Also, in some cases, the models do produce verbatim quotes of original works. So, it’s not even like we’re just arguing about whether the AI model stated some “facts.” We are also saying, hey can an AI model verbatim reproduce an actual copyrighted work? It’s settled law that humans cannot do that except in limited circumstances.

Yeah higher wages would be great, but it doesn’t happen because the media loves to rake the government over the coals for such things. But, you know whose salaries don’t get scrutinized? Lobbyists.

You want to pay people enough to be able to resist these influences. Doing the actual work of governing should pay better than lobbying.

We should even pay congresspeople more. They make $174,000/year. But, when you adjust for inflation, that’s a lot less than they used to make.

Well, more of a long term solution is needed than a temporary cease fire.

Yeah — pretty much this. Most people answering phones are interns. They’re given instructions to listen and be non-confrontational. They also won’t tell you what the congressperson’s view on the matter is. Ultimately, they have no power and just try to summarize what you said and put it in a computer program with your address so the office can mail you a letter from the Congressperson about the issue. These letters are generic to the topic you called about and generally try to say nothing controversial.

On rare occasions for really contentious issues, I saw them split the topic buckets into pro and con and send letters for each depending on whether you were for or against the thing you called about.

Mostly, I didn’t get the impression that Congress people pay much attention to phone calls. If the issue is contentious enough to divide the caller pool into pro/con, they might check a tally of the totals in each pool. But, for 99% of topics, they just send you a generic letter.

Also, a lot of these letters are full of bs. Congress people will often propose nice sounding bill names or cosponsor others that they can cite in these letters as evidence that they care. However, 99% of these bills go no where and often the congresspeople don’t even want them to. You’re upset about airplane noise over your city? “Well, I agree, that’s why I cosponsored the airplane noise reduction act.” Meanwhile, if that bill ever picked up steam the airline lobby would crush it and your congressperson would help them.

So, I don’t call my congressperson because I don’t really get the sense that it makes a difference. One thing I did see make a difference though was lobbyists. You see, they live right in Washington DC and rather than call, they schedule meetings with the actual paid staff or congressperson, not interns. They go right in their office and sit down and have a long chat. And, the staff have a big incentive to listen to them.

Most congressional staff are paid peanuts. They try to live off $25-45k/year in an expensive city and have 2 or 3 roommates. Some of them are often overqualified, holding law degrees and masters in their interest areas. So, once they get some experience and burn out of this life of poverty, guess who is happy to scoop them up? Yep, they go running right into the arms of those lobbyists and gladly take that $200k salary to go about fighting insulin price caps or defeating environmental regulations. It doesn’t even matter if they came into Washington, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed ready to take on these big corporate interests. By the time they’re 3-4 years in, realize they’re sick of eating ramen noodles, and the easiest way out is to call up some of those lobbyists and ask for a job, they do it. Oh you have a masters in agricultural policy with a specialization in organic farming? McDonald’s federal affairs office will hire you. I’ve seen it happen.

Watch the US abandon them too, after basically using them to squash ISIS. A concern though, is Turkey won’t want to hold territory, so it’ll end up creating the same power vacuum that spawned ISIS after it drives the Kurds out. A better solution would be for the US to just broker a deal between all parties.

Curious where this story leads, but it seems like they’re alluding to the idea that China set him up for it. Same way Russia got Trump in a hotel room with hookers doing golden showers.

$240k/year isn’t enough to buy a house in much of the state.

Sure - sounds more like a case of “I need a ride, not ammunition!”

I like to think we’re the best of the best, at least on some instances.

I’m guessing the worst of the worst will hang back at Xitter because they’d otherwise be banned elsewhere, and it will be a cesspool not unlike 8chan.

I gotta be honest, the push notification summaries are more annoying than they are useful. Like. I’m going to read a text blurb of 100 or so characters. It’s an extra step to see the summary and then the actual message itself.

I just meant, for single player, the first CoD gave you a bunch of AI squad mates. It’s not something they’ve necessarily carried in to the other games, but it really just added to the realism of the battles because you felt like you were one guy in a larger conflict. Medal of Honor was always a bit more solo focused, with a few exceptions, like you were one soldier taking on the whole German army.

Both were great though and I played the hell out of them.

Medal of Honor was great, but you mostly fought alone. The innovation of the first call of duty was that you fought with a squad and it really added to the realism.