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legofemme · 3 months

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Hi! I just saw you talking about Palworld and AI, so I did some digging about it, and I think you'll be happy to know Palworld does NOT use generative AI, or they would legally have to disclose it on the steam page. The creator previously remarked on generative AI and made a small game using generative AI that seems to be mostly ironic, but they haven't used AI in their creature designs or anything, like a lot of people are saying.

Granted, the fact the creator looked into it at all is meh, but I also feel like someone looking at something that has become such a big hit (because regardless of feelings on it, generative AI is very popular right now) is a little more understandable than actually using it, tbh. Not meant as a discourse ask or anything, just thought you'd like to know that Palworld doesn't use AI in their game :]

OH NO DW I KNEW THAT . Ive been saying that they HAVENT used AI for the game itself, and that even if we dont/didnt know 100% if they used AI for the design process (something they dont have to disclose if its a part of early designing stages as far as steam is concerned) itd still be bad to insist that nintendo take action just for design similarities. Every pokemon fangame or even pokemon inspired game has clear ripoffs of pre existing pokemon or digimon- even unintentionally, theres only so many animal puns to turn into creatures you can use before things start to look the same- so saying that they should get sued is... Like. Bad for everyone else ever.

If people dont want to play it bc of AI, they can just do so under the pretense of the devs supporting generative AI models, which is the reason i personally dont want to support the game . I really dont understand why people have to throw in guesses (palworld using AI in the design process) or outright lies (their previous games being plagiarized) in the ring.

#vani verbals #as is . i dont want 2 play it myself but i also dont care if people do. bcuz i genuinely dont think that 1 dev supporting AI art models #and making a game about them is suddenly going to lead to every indie game ever using AI to make their games art and concepts #esp since again. i genuinely dont think that they use AI for palworld. you can call something derivative slop without making unbacked claims #my main concern is people trying to get nintendo to go after the main game itself when theyve already taken down pokemon fanmods #i dont Think its going to happen but why wish for it. wanting nintendo to have the power to take down Anything for similarities #based on assumptions on the design process is going to be almost as bad for artists as AI models are. like you. dont want that #(and yes i have seen the cinderace model ripping stuff. but i dont know enough about the 3d modelling process #to say anything abt it. im not a modeller. i Am a 2d artist)

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bribes · 5 months

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gnawing on ankle

#AI chucklefucks act like people are constantly pointing a gun to their heads #and demanding they create something or else they will die and their family will die #this is why artists always dislike the ‘omg you’re sooo talented’ shit #it’s not talent you asshole! i don’t look at someone who can cook and say ‘omg wow i wish i could do that’#?!#if i wanna do something i learn how to do it!?!?#grips floor and screams #DL #AI idiots are constantly underestimating the hard work art involves #they think artists and creators were just spawned into the world with 100+ base stat in creativity like some kind of fucking RPG #no! i had no friends and really liked sonic! that’s literally all it takes sometimes!#and thankfully some people like my style enough that they will pay me for something #and it took like 18 years to get here!! but they don’t want the act of creating #they just want the creation itself and the ability to monetize it #bullshit

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treasure-mimic · 8 months

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So, let me try and put everything together here, because I really do think it needs to be talked about.

Today, Unity announced that it intends to apply a fee to use its software. Then it got worse.

For those not in the know, Unity is the most popular free to use video game development tool, offering a basic version for individuals who want to learn how to create games or create independently alongside paid versions for corporations or people who want more features. It's decent enough at this job, has issues but for the price point I can't complain, and is the idea entry point into creating in this medium, it's a very important piece of software.

But speaking of tools, the CEO is a massive one. When he was the COO of EA, he advocated for using, what out and out sounds like emotional manipulation to coerce players into microtransactions.

"A consumer gets engaged in a property, they might spend 10, 20, 30, 50 hours on the game and then when they're deep into the game they're well invested in it. We're not gouging, but we're charging and at that point in time the commitment can be pretty high."

He also called game developers who don't discuss monetization early in the planning stages of development, quote, "fucking idiots".

So that sets the stage for what might be one of the most bald-faced greediest moves I've seen from a corporation in a minute. Most at least have the sense of self-preservation to hide it.

A few hours ago, Unity posted this announcement on the official blog.

Effective January 1, 2024, we will introduce a new Unity Runtime Fee that’s based on game installs. We will also add cloud-based asset storage, Unity DevOps tools, and AI at runtime at no extra cost to Unity subscription plans this November. We are introducing a Unity Runtime Fee that is based upon each time a qualifying game is downloaded by an end user. We chose this because each time a game is downloaded, the Unity Runtime is also installed. Also we believe that an initial install-based fee allows creators to keep the ongoing financial gains from player engagement, unlike a revenue share.

Now there are a few red flags to note in this pitch immediately.

Unity is planning on charging a fee on all games which use its engine.

This is a flat fee per number of installs.

They are using an always online runtime function to determine whether a game is downloaded.

There is just so many things wrong with this that it's hard to know where to start, not helped by this FAQ which doubled down on a lot of the major issues people had.

I guess let's start with what people noticed first. Because it's using a system baked into the software itself, Unity would not be differentiating between a "purchase" and a "download". If someone uninstalls and reinstalls a game, that's two downloads. If someone gets a new computer or a new console and downloads a game already purchased from their account, that's two download. If someone pirates the game, the studio will be asked to pay for that download.

Q: How are you going to collect installs? A: We leverage our own proprietary data model. We believe it gives an accurate determination of the number of times the runtime is distributed for a given project. Q: Is software made in unity going to be calling home to unity whenever it's ran, even for enterprice licenses? A: We use a composite model for counting runtime installs that collects data from numerous sources. The Unity Runtime Fee will use data in compliance with GDPR and CCPA. The data being requested is aggregated and is being used for billing purposes. Q: If a user reinstalls/redownloads a game / changes their hardware, will that count as multiple installs? A: Yes. The creator will need to pay for all future installs. The reason is that Unity doesn’t receive end-player information, just aggregate data. Q: What's going to stop us being charged for pirated copies of our games? A: We do already have fraud detection practices in our Ads technology which is solving a similar problem, so we will leverage that know-how as a starting point. We recognize that users will have concerns about this and we will make available a process for them to submit their concerns to our fraud compliance team.

This is potentially related to a new system that will require Unity Personal developers to go online at least once every three days.

Starting in November, Unity Personal users will get a new sign-in and online user experience. Users will need to be signed into the Hub with their Unity ID and connect to the internet to use Unity. If the internet connection is lost, users can continue using Unity for up to 3 days while offline. More details to come, when this change takes effect.

It's unclear whether this requirement will be attached to any and all Unity games, though it would explain how they're theoretically able to track "the number of installs", and why the methodology for tracking these installs is so shit, as we'll discuss later.

Unity claims that it will only leverage this fee to games which surpass a certain threshold of downloads and yearly revenue.

Only games that meet the following thresholds qualify for the Unity Runtime Fee: Unity Personal and Unity Plus: Those that have made $200,000 USD or more in the last 12 months AND have at least 200,000 lifetime game installs. Unity Pro and Unity Enterprise: Those that have made $1,000,000 USD or more in the last 12 months AND have at least 1,000,000 lifetime game installs.

They don't say how they're going to collect information on a game's revenue, likely this is just to say that they're only interested in squeezing larger products (games like Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail, Fate Grand Order, Among Us, and Fall Guys) and not every 2 dollar puzzle platformer that drops on Steam. But also, these larger products have the easiest time porting off of Unity and the most incentives to, meaning realistically those heaviest impacted are going to be the ones who just barely meet this threshold, most of them indie developers.

Aggro Crab Games, one of the first to properly break this story, points out that systems like the Xbox Game Pass, which is already pretty predatory towards smaller developers, will quickly inflate their "lifetime game installs" meaning even skimming the threshold of that 200k revenue, will be asked to pay a fee per install, not a percentage on said revenue.

[IMAGE DESCRIPTION: Hey Gamers!

Today, Unity (the engine we use to make our games) announced that they'll soon be taking a fee from developers for every copy of the game installed over a certain threshold - regardless of how that copy was obtained.

Guess who has a somewhat highly anticipated game coming to Xbox Game Pass in 2024? That's right, it's us and a lot of other developers.

That means Another Crab's Treasure will be free to install for the 25 million Game Pass subscribers. If a fraction of those users download our game, Unity could take a fee that puts an enormous dent in our income and threatens the sustainability of our business.

And that's before we even think about sales on other platforms, or pirated installs of our game, or even multiple installs by the same user!!!

This decision puts us and countless other studios in a position where we might not be able to justify using Unity for our future titles. If these changes aren't rolled back, we'll be heavily considering abandoning our wealth of Unity expertise we've accumulated over the years and starting from scratch in a new engine. Which is really something we'd rather not do.

On behalf of the dev community, we're calling on Unity to reverse the latest in a string of shortsighted decisions that seem to prioritize shareholders over their product's actual users.

I fucking hate it here.

-Aggro Crab - END DESCRIPTION]

That fee, by the way, is a flat fee. Not a percentage, not a royalty. This means that any games made in Unity expecting any kind of success are heavily incentivized to cost as much as possible.

[IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A table listing the various fees by number of Installs over the Install Threshold vs. version of Unity used, ranging from $0.01 to $0.20 per install. END DESCRIPTION]

Basic elementary school math tells us that if a game comes out for $1.99, they will be paying, at maximum, 10% of their revenue to Unity, whereas jacking the price up to $59.99 lowers that percentage to something closer to 0.3%. Obviously any company, especially any company in financial desperation, which a sudden anchor on all your revenue is going to create, is going to choose the latter.

Furthermore, and following the trend of "fuck anyone who doesn't ask for money", Unity helpfully defines what an install is on their main site.

While I'm looking at this page as it exists now, it currently says

The installation and initialization of a game or app on an end user’s device as well as distribution via streaming is considered an “install.” Games or apps with substantially similar content may be counted as one project, with installs then aggregated to calculate the Unity Runtime Fee.

However, I saw a screenshot saying something different, and utilizing the Wayback Machine we can see that this phrasing was changed at some point in the few hours since this announcement went up. Instead, it reads:

The installation and initialization of a game or app on an end user’s device as well as distribution via streaming or web browser is considered an “install.” Games or apps with substantially similar content may be counted as one project, with installs then aggregated to calculate the Unity Runtime Fee.

Screenshot for posterity:

That would mean web browser games made in Unity would count towards this install threshold. You could legitimately drive the count up simply by continuously refreshing the page. The FAQ, again, doubles down.

Q: Does this affect WebGL and streamed games? A: Games on all platforms are eligible for the fee but will only incur costs if both the install and revenue thresholds are crossed. Installs - which involves initialization of the runtime on a client device - are counted on all platforms the same way (WebGL and streaming included).

And, what I personally consider to be the most suspect claim in this entire debacle, they claim that "lifetime installs" includes installs prior to this change going into effect.

Will this fee apply to games using Unity Runtime that are already on the market on January 1, 2024? Yes, the fee applies to eligible games currently in market that continue to distribute the runtime. We look at a game's lifetime installs to determine eligibility for the runtime fee. Then we bill the runtime fee based on all new installs that occur after January 1, 2024.

Again, again, doubled down in the FAQ.

Q: Are these fees going to apply to games which have been out for years already? If you met the threshold 2 years ago, you'll start owing for any installs monthly from January, no? (in theory). It says they'll use previous installs to determine threshold eligibility & then you'll start owing them for the new ones. A: Yes, assuming the game is eligible and distributing the Unity Runtime then runtime fees will apply. We look at a game's lifetime installs to determine eligibility for the runtime fee. Then we bill the runtime fee based on all new installs that occur after January 1, 2024.

That would involve billing companies for using their software before telling them of the existence of a bill. Holding their actions to a contract that they performed before the contract existed!

Okay. I think that's everything. So far.

There is one thing that I want to mention before ending this post, unfortunately it's a little conspiratorial, but it's so hard to believe that anyone genuinely thought this was a good idea that it's stuck in my brain as a significant possibility.

A few days ago it was reported that Unity's CEO sold 2,000 shares of his own company.

On September 6, 2023, John Riccitiello, President and CEO of Unity Software Inc (NYSE:U), sold 2,000 shares of the company. This move is part of a larger trend for the insider, who over the past year has sold a total of 50,610 shares and purchased none.

I would not be surprised if this decision gets reversed tomorrow, that it was literally only made for the CEO to short his own goddamn company, because I would sooner believe that this whole thing is some idiotic attempt at committing fraud than a real monetization strategy, even knowing how unfathomably greedy these people can be.

So, with all that said, what do we do now?

Well, in all likelihood you won't need to do anything. As I said, some of the biggest names in the industry would be directly affected by this change, and you can bet your bottom dollar that they're not just going to take it lying down. After all, the only way to stop a greedy CEO is with a greedier CEO, right?

(I fucking hate it here.)

And that's not mentioning the indie devs who are already talking about abandoning the engine.

[Links display tweets from the lead developer of Among Us saying it'd be less costly to hire people to move the game off of Unity and Cult of the Lamb's official twitter saying the game won't be available after January 1st in response to the news.]

That being said, I'm still shaken by all this. The fact that Unity is openly willing to go back and punish its developers for ever having used the engine in the past makes me question my relationship to it.

The news has given rise to the visibility of free, open source alternative Godot, which, if you're interested, is likely a better option than Unity at this point. Mostly, though, I just hope we can get out of this whole, fucking, environment where creatives are treated as an endless mill of free profits that's going to be continuously ratcheted up and up to drive unsustainable infinite corporate growth that our entire economy is based on for some fuckin reason.

Anyways, that's that, I find having these big posts that break everything down to be helpful.

#Unity #Unity3D #Video Games #Game Development #Game Developers #fuckshit #I don't know what to tag news like this

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luveline · 10 months

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Miguel requests you say? 🤭 how about grumpy lovesick Miguel giving spider girl a hickey cause no one’s gonna notice right? only for someone to notice lol he’d be teased relentlessly.

thank you for your request!! —miguel gives spidergirl!reader a hickey. fem!reader, 1.5k

Miguel runs his entire life based on the assumption that there's not enough time. The multiverse is caving in on itself and he's probably the only one who can stop it —he doesn't have time to be kissing you in a dark hallway on the way to the control room.

He doesn't have time and he shouldn't be doing this here, but you looked at him like he hung the moon for making some stupid joke, and you're always lovely, sweeping around him without worry to ask how he's feeling today, to touch his arm and really mean it. Did you get any sleep?

He's not thinking as his hand closes down on your shoulder to pull you forward, not thinking as he chases you back into an alcove, not thinking as the seam of your lips parts under the pressure of his kissing, as you sigh into it, as your hands go limp where they're pressed to his neck.

Miguel used to be better with words. He kisses you until you can't breathe, taking and taking and taking, your touch and especially your open-mouthed kisses a balm. And as you catch your breath, your hand rubbing affectionately at the back of his neck, he tilts your chin up with a no-nonsense thumb and noses at the column of your throat. He's trying to be quick and forgetting to be nice, nipping little welts like a line of longing from your jawline to your collar, hand hooked in your suit and holding it down for a better angle.

He thinks, if he were to let the suit spring back into place, no one would see what he wants to do.

"Can I?" he asks, hand full of your face, your head weighed heavily to one side.

You're breathless. "I'd let you do anything you want to me," you say honestly.

He attempts to ruin your right there in the hall. The hand that isn't holding your face squeezes at your waist unabashedly, pulling you as close as he can get as he works his teeth against the delicate skin of your neck. Open-mouthed, Miguel plasters damp crescents up to your pulse, where he stays, where he bites. You shudder at the feeling. Your happy sigh eggs him on.

He's feeling pretty smug about the whole thing when he finally arrives ten minutes late to the command centre. The platform starts to rise under his feet, Lyla on his shoulder, Margo at the helm. You sit on the edge and swing your feet, hand drifting to your freshly bruised neck and prodding gently. He wonders if you've ever had a hickey before, and concludes you likely haven't; you've no room for subtlety.

The smugness fades. You don't have a subtle bone in your body, actually, and he didn't ask you to hide it. He's not sure he wants to —you don't want to be his secret, and though it humanises him too much for his liking in the eyes of some of the other Spiders to have evident feelings for you, he doesn't want you to feel that way. You probably think the hickey is a 'freaky' badge of honour, the way you function. You'd sounded oh so happy to get it, and you'd kissed him when he pulled away like you were saying thank you.

You definitely have some misconceptions Miguel needs to set straight, and he will. Just not in front of Lyla. He's only now started setting boundaries with the AI, like, try not to watch what I'm doing all the time, and, please don't pop into existence to make snarky commentary at my lame attempts at romance. It sort of kills the mood.

The day moves forward smoothly. Miguel might actually get away with it. You ease back fully onto the platform with your back to all of them, a book in your lap, humming at odd times until you forget to hum. Lyla runs calculations. Margo runs the teleportation room. Nobody notices anything unusual, not the mess of his hair from your squeezing fingers nor the rumpled neck of your suit.

Legs crossed, you lay back and stretch your arms up toward him. He notices your movement from the corner of his eye and turns to give you a reassuring smile. He'd say he needs to find you a job, but there are enough spiders doing enough jobs. You have a training course tomorrow for strike force, but today, you're good to lounge about on the floor and send him lazy winks.

Peter B. Parker arrives, and of course he brings trouble.

"Hey, Spider," he calls, nodding at you, then Margo, and then Miguel. "Spider, Spider. Hi, Lyla."

"What do you want?" Miguel asks tiredly.

"Lyla asked me to come," he says.

"For what?" Miguel asks Lyla.

"Peter's useful. You need two team captains today in case the canon events on Earth-898 and 1264 converge at the same time and there are anomalies. I don't see why I have to tell you this."

Miguel groans and he and his AI descend into an argument. You wave at Peter from the platform as it begins to descend toward him, fingers spread and swaying like sea grass.

"Hi, Peter," you say, "where's Mayday? I'm owed a baby hold, you promised."

"I did, I did promise!" Peter says. He squints at you. "I think I made one of the Spider-Girls that looks like you hold her, actually. That would explain why she was so confused. Woah, what happened?"

Three heads turn at Peter's surprise. You stand up and hop the small distance from the platform to the floor as it stops moving, confused. "What?"

"You have a bruise the size of Hawaii!" Peter's eyebrows jump his forehead. "I thought you were looking after her?" he asks Miguel.

"He is," you say, less confused now.

"What bruise?" Lyla asks.

"It's not appropriate," Miguel says. "Margo's here."

"Margo," Lyla says pleadingly.

Margo sighs at the acute and abject unseriousness of her colleagues and logs out. As soon as she's gone, Lyla whizzes from Miguel's shoulder to yours, and while the hologram can't move aside your suit's high neck, she doesn't really need to. The dark colour of your hickey peeks out regardless.

"Jesus, Miguel," Lyla says, "what's wrong with you?"

Peter looks a funny mixture of embarrassed to have brought it up and pleased. "I mean, good for you guys."

Miguel's surprised when you —tries to make him dance in public, lackadaisical, carefree you— pull the neck of your suit up and bat your hand. Lyla zips away from your fingers.

"Please, stop," you say, laughing uncomfortably.

Miguel hadn't considered how you might feel if you were discovered. He winces and steps off of the platform to get his arm around your shoulder. "Peter," he says, feeling wildly over protective, "you can do my tasks, since you're here. Lyla will help. It's my lunch break."

"You don't have a lunch break."

"I barely said anything!" Peter protests.

Despite a batch of grumbling complaints, Peter climbs onto the platform, dragging a chair to Miguel's crop of orange screens.

You let Miguel guide you to the hall, an apology on the tip of his tongue. You're a few steps deep when you drop the sad-sack act and spin out of his arm, turning to face him. A devious smile curls the corners of your lips up. "That was good, right?"

"You're not upset?" he asks, eyebrows set into their usual frown.

"Nah. You wanted to get out of there, right? Your cheeks went pink."

"They did not."

"They did! Like when you kiss me, they went all pink, you can practically see how warm you were." You make a heart with your hands and press it to your chest. "Saved you, handsome."

He looks up at the ceiling. Of course you know him well enough to know he wasn't keen on being teased. Of course you're not embarrassed at being marked up and discovered. You love his attention, you love all the boyfriend‐like stuff he does, kisses and hugs and hickeys, the whole job lot. He doesn't need to worry.

"Thank you," he says. It's sweet of you to rescue him. You're a sweet woman.

"You're welcome. Maybe next time, if you're going to get shy, you could give me one where people won't see."

"Stop," he warns without heat.

You laugh and twine your hand with his, yanking him down the hall. To the cafeteria, he guesses. He wouldn't know. He's never been there. Miguel really doesn't have a lunch break.

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lisafication · 11 months

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For those who might happen across this, I'm an administrator for the forum 'Sufficient Velocity', a large old-school forum oriented around Creative Writing. I originally posted this on there (and any reference to 'here' will mean the forum), but I felt I might as well throw it up here, as well, even if I don't actually have any followers.

This week, I've been reading fanfiction on Archive of Our Own (AO3), a site run by the Organisation for Transformative Works (OTW), a non-profit. This isn't particularly exceptional, in and of itself — like many others on the site, I read a lot of fanfiction, both on Sufficient Velocity (SV) and elsewhere — however what was bizarre to me was encountering a new prefix on certain works, that of 'End OTW Racism'. While I'm sure a number of people were already familiar with this, I was not, so I looked into it.

What I found... wasn't great. And I don't think anyone involved realises that.

To summarise the details, the #EndOTWRacism campaign, of which you may find their manifesto here, is a campaign oriented towards seeing hateful or discriminatory works removed from AO3 — and believe me, there is a lot of it. To whit, they want the OTW to moderate them. A laudable goal, on the face of it — certainly, we do something similar on Sufficient Velocity with Rule 2 and, to be clear, nothing I say here is a critique of Rule 2 (or, indeed, Rule 6) on SV.

But it's not that simple, not when you're the size of Archive of Our Own. So, let's talk about the vagaries and little-known pitfalls of content moderation, particularly as it applies to digital fiction and at scale. Let's dig into some of the details — as far as credentials go, I have, unfortunately, been in moderation and/or administration on SV for about six years and this is something we have to grapple with regularly, so I would like to say I can speak with some degree of expertise on the subject.

So, what are the problems with moderating bad works from a site? Let's start with discovery— that is to say, how you find rule-breaching works in the first place. There are more-or-less two different ways to approach manual content moderation of open submissions on a digital platform: review-based and report-based (you could also call them curation-based and flag-based), with various combinations of the two. Automated content moderation isn't something I'm going to cover here — I feel I can safely assume I'm preaching to the choir when I say it's a bad idea, and if I'm not, I'll just note that the least absurd outcome we had when simulating AI moderation (mostly for the sake of an academic exercise) on SV was banning all the staff.

In a review-based system, you check someone's work and approve it to the site upon verifying that it doesn't breach your content rules. Generally pretty simple, we used to do something like it on request. Unfortunately, if you do that, it can void your safe harbour protections in the US per Myeress vs. Buzzfeed Inc. This case, if you weren't aware, is why we stopped offering content review on SV. Suffice to say, it's not really a realistic option for anyone large enough for the courts to notice, and extremely clunky and unpleasant for the users, to boot.

Report-based systems, on the other hand, are something we use today — users find works they think are in breach and alert the moderation team to their presence with a report. On SV, this works pretty well — a user or users flag a work as potentially troublesome, moderation investigate it and either action it or reject the report. Unfortunately, AO3 is not SV. I'll get into the details of that dreadful beast known as scaling later, but thankfully we do have a much better comparison point — fanfiction.net (FFN).

FFN has had two great purges over the years, with a... mixed amount of content moderation applied in between: one in 2002 when the NC-17 rating was removed, and one in 2012. Both, ostensibly, were targeted at adult content. In practice, many fics that wouldn't raise an eye on Spacebattles today or Sufficient Velocity prior to 2018 were also removed; a number of reports suggest that something as simple as having a swearword in your title or summary was enough to get you hit, even if you were a 'T' rated work. Most disturbingly of all, there are a number of — impossible to substantiate — accounts of groups such as the infamous Critics United 'mass reporting' works to trigger a strike to get them removed. I would suggest reading further on places like Fanlore if you are unfamiliar and want to know more.

Despite its flaws however, report-based moderation is more-or-less the only option, and this segues neatly into the next piece of the puzzle that is content moderation, that is to say, the rubric. How do you decide what is, and what isn't against the rules of your site?

Anyone who's complained to the staff about how vague the rules are on SV may have had this explained to them, but as that is likely not many of you, I'll summarise: the more precise and clear-cut your chosen rubric is, the more it will inevitably need to resemble a legal document — and the less readable it is to the layman. We'll return to SV for an example here: many newer users will not be aware of this, but SV used to have a much more 'line by line, clearly delineated' set of rules and... people kind of hated it! An infraction would reference 'Community Compact III.15.5' rather than Rule 3, because it was more or less written in the same manner as the Terms of Service (sans the legal terms of art). While it was a more legible rubric from a certain perspective, from the perspective of communicating expectations to the users it was inferior to our current set of rules — even less of them read it, and we don't have great uptake right now.

And it still wasn't really an improvement over our current set-up when it comes to 'moderation consistency'. Even without getting into the nuts and bolts of "how do you define a racist work in a way that does not, at any point, say words to the effect of 'I know it when I see it'" — which is itself very, very difficult don't get me wrong I'm not dismissing this — you are stuck with finding an appropriate footing between a spectrum of 'the US penal code' and 'don't be a dick' as your rubric. Going for the penal code side doesn't help nearly as much as you might expect with moderation consistency, either — no matter what, you will never have a 100% correct call rate. You have the impossible task of writing a rubric that is easy for users to comprehend, extremely clear for moderation and capable of cleanly defining what is and what isn't racist without relying on moderator judgement, something which you cannot trust when operating at scale.

Speaking of scale, it's time to move on to the third prong — and the last covered in this ramble, which is more of a brief overview than anything truly in-depth — which is resources. Moderation is not a magic wand, you can't conjure it out of nowhere: you need to spend an enormous amount of time, effort and money on building, training and equipping a moderation staff, even a volunteer one, and it is far, far from an instant process. Our most recent tranche of moderators spent several months in training and it will likely be some months more before they're fully comfortable in the role — and that's with a relatively robust bureaucracy and a number of highly experienced mentors supporting them, something that is not going to be available to a new moderation branch with little to no experience. Beyond that, there's the matter of sheer numbers.

Combining both moderation and arbitration — because for volunteer staff, pure moderation is in actuality less efficient in my eyes, for a variety of reasons beyond the scope of this post, but we'll treat it as if they're both just 'moderators' — SV presently has 34 dedicated moderation volunteers. SV hosts ~785 million words of creative writing.

AO3 hosts ~32 billion.

These are some very rough and simplified figures, but if you completely ignore all the usual problems of scaling manpower in a business (or pseudo-business), such as (but not limited to) geometrically increasing bureaucratic complexity and administrative burden, along with all the particular issues of volunteer moderation... AO3 would still need well over one thousand volunteer moderators to be able to match SV's moderator-to-creative-wordcount ratio.

Paid moderation, of course, you can get away with less — my estimate is that you could fully moderate SV with, at best, ~8 full-time moderators, still ignoring administrative burden above the level of team leader. This leaves AO3 only needing a much more modest ~350 moderators. At the US minimum wage of ~$15k p.a. — which is, in my eyes, deeply unethical to pay moderators as full-time moderation is an intensely gruelling role with extremely high rates of PTSD and other stress-related conditions — that is approximately ~$5.25m p.a. costs on moderator wages. Their average annual budget is a bit over $500k.

So, that's obviously not on the table, and we return to volunteer staffing. Which... let's examine that scenario and the questions it leaves us with, as our conclusion.

Let's say, through some miracle, AO3 succeeds in finding those hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of volunteer moderators. We'll even say none of them are malicious actors or sufficiently incompetent as to be indistinguishable, and that they manage to replicate something on the level of or superior to our moderation tooling near-instantly at no cost. We still have several questions to be answered:

How are you maintaining consistency? Have you managed to define racism to the point that moderator judgment no longer enters the equation? And to be clear, you cannot allow moderator judgment to be a significant decision maker at this scale, or you will end with absurd results.

How are you handling staff mental health? Some reading on the matter, to save me a lengthy and unrelated explanation of some of the steps involved in ensuring mental health for commercial-scale content moderators.

How are you handling your failures? No moderation in the world has ever succeeded in a 100% accuracy rate, what are you doing about that?

Using report-based discovery, how are you preventing 'report brigading', such as the theories surrounding Critics United mentioned above? It is a natural human response to take into account the amount and severity of feedback. While SV moderators are well trained on the matter, the rare times something is receiving enough reports to potentially be classified as a 'brigade' on that scale will nearly always be escalated to administration, something completely infeasible at (you're learning to hate this word, I'm sure) scale.

How are you communicating expectations to your user base? If you're relying on a flag-based system, your users' understanding of the rules is a critical facet of your moderation system — how have you managed to make them legible to a layman while still managing to somehow 'truly' define racism?

How are you managing over one thousand moderators? Like even beyond all the concerns with consistency, how are you keeping track of that many moving parts as a volunteer organisation without dozens or even hundreds of professional managers? I've ignored the scaling administrative burden up until now, but it has to be addressed in reality.

What are you doing to sweep through your archives? SV is more-or-less on-top of 'old' works as far as rule-breaking goes, with the occasional forgotten tidbit popping up every 18 months or so — and that's what we're extrapolating from. These thousand-plus moderators are mostly going to be addressing current or near-current content, are you going to spin up that many again to comb through the 32 billion words already posted?

I could go on for a fair bit here, but this has already stretched out to over two thousand words.

I think the people behind this movement have their hearts in the right place and the sentiment is laudable, but in practice it is simply 'won't someone think of the children' in a funny hat. It cannot be done.

Even if you could somehow meet the bare minimum thresholds, you are simply not going to manage a ruleset of sufficient clarity so as to prevent a much-worse repeat of the 2012 FF.net massacre, you are not going to be able to manage a moderation staff of that size and you are not going to be able to ensure a coherent understanding among all your users (we haven't managed that after nearly ten years and a much smaller and more engaged userbase). There's a serious number of other issues I haven't covered here as well, as this really is just an attempt at giving some insight into the sheer number of moving parts behind content moderation: the movement wants off-site content to be policed which isn't so much its own barrel of fish as it is its own barrel of Cthulhu; AO3 is far from English-only and would in actuality need moderators for almost every language it supports — and most damning of all, if Section 230 is wiped out by the Supreme Court it is not unlikely that engaging in content moderation at all could simply see AO3 shut down.

As sucky as it seems, the current status quo really is the best situation possible. Sorry about that.

#archive of our own #endotwracism #end otw racism #content moderation #sufficient velocity #i hate how much i know about this topic

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sweet-as-an-angel · 1 year

Text

König x Petite Reader Headcanons

Warnings: Non-Explicit Implications of Sexual Content, Petite Reader, Size Kink, Jealous König, Insecure König, Implied 141 x Reader, Petnames, No Pronouns used for Reader except ‘You’.

A/N: Forgot that I'd already written this once before, so here we are with more König x Petite Reader Headcanons ! Just see this as some extra content for our beloved König and his smol s/o <3

When it comes to you, this man is F E R A L

Genuinely cannot believe how perfect you are.

Constantly jokes about how he could fit you in the palm of his hand.

And once, to shut him up, you proved him right by sitting on his open hand when he wasn’t expecting it and gave him a smug look.

“There,” you said, folding your arms over your chest. “You can fit me in your palm.”

König tried not to think of how close he was to your special parts, how warm you felt on him.

He had to disappear to the bathroom for a few minutes afterwards, and when he returned, his face was flushed and he could barely look you in the eye.

He’s never been the same after that. Any trace of a size kink he had before has been amplified to such an extent that he’s taken to hiding your clothes so you’ll have to wear his.

And he just can’t keep his hands off you whenever you do.

“My my, Engel,” he says, one hand sliding around your waist and pulling you closer to him, the other drawing the hem of his shirt further and further up your thighs.

“What could you be hiding under here ?”

Calls you his Mini Maus.

“Because you’re just so tiny and precious !” he gushes.

And since you’re so small compared to him, he treats you as if you’re fragile, like an endangered species of flower.

Concerning intimacy at the beginning of your relationship, König was concerned that he was too big for you.

But, when you put his mind at ease (and challenge him) – “I bet I can take you, Köni~” – you’re in for it.

König’s fighting spirit won’t let you off easy.

When he’s feeling more dominant, he bunches your wrists into one of his hands while he sits on top of you, his other hand slipping beneath your (his) shirt and slithering round the band of your underwear.

“Pretty little thing,” he says, a dangerous smile at his lips. “All weak and defenseless.” He leans down, his eyes dark and wild. “Just for me.”

If you try to struggle (consensually), he’ll smack you through your underwear. And not gently, either.

“Don’t test me, Mini,” he says, his grip about your wrists tightening. “You don’t know what I’m like when I’m angry.”

He loooooves fitting his hands around your waist.

Especially when he finds that his hands wrap around your middle and his fingers touch.

Size kink: upgraded.

He gets lowkey jealous if you ask someone else to reach something for you.

Will sulk about it.

“I just don’t see why you had to ask Ghost to get it for you,” he’ll say, frowning as he lies in bed.

You sigh, putting your book down.

“König, you weren’t even here !” you say. “And I was starving !”

König knows he’s being unreasonable, but he can’t help but feel like he can be easily replaced.

Especially when he knows the rest of the 141 would gladly drop everything to be with you.

He’s not stupid, he’s seen the way they look at you.

A few minutes alone together and a kind word – “You’re so perfect, Köni~ My big, big boy,” – will set him straight.

Loves showing you off to his friends. His acquaintances aren’t safe, either.

He’ll stand you before him and show you off to his associates like: ”Look, this is my partner ! Aren’t they beautiful ?!”

So help him god if anyone tries to show you up or disagree.

You’ll never see them again.

And neither will anyone else.

König loves you more than life itself, and regardless of his insecurities or your unwavering ability to have anyone you could ever want, he’s glad you chose him <3

Reblog for more content like this! It helps creators like myself tremendously and it is greatly appreciated :-)

Masterlist Masterlist [Continued] Masterpost Modern Warfare AI Masterlist

AO3 Wattpad

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wordstome · 3 months

Text

how c.ai works and why it's unethical

Okay, since the AI discourse is happening again, I want to make this very clear, because a few weeks ago I had to explain to a (well meaning) person in the community how AI works. I'm going to be addressing people who are maybe younger or aren't familiar with the latest type of "AI", not people who purposely devalue the work of creatives and/or are shills.

The name "Artificial Intelligence" is a bit misleading when it comes to things like AI chatbots. When you think of AI, you think of a robot, and you might think that by making a chatbot you're simply programming a robot to talk about something you want them to talk about, and it's similar to an rp partner. But with current technology, that's not how AI works. For a breakdown on how AI is programmed, CGP grey made a great video about this several years ago (he updated the title and thumbnail recently)

youtube

I HIGHLY HIGHLY recommend you watch this because CGP Grey is good at explaining, but the tl;dr for this post is this: bots are made with a metric shit-ton of data. In C.AI's case, the data is writing. Stolen writing, usually scraped fanfiction.

How do we know chatbots are stealing from fanfiction writers? It knows what omegaverse is [SOURCE] (it's a Wired article, put it in incognito mode if it won't let you read it), and when a Reddit user asked a chatbot to write a story about "Steve", it automatically wrote about characters named "Bucky" and "Tony" [SOURCE].

I also said this in the tags of a previous reblog, but when you're talking to C.AI bots, it's also taking your writing and using it in its algorithm: which seems fine until you realize 1. They're using your work uncredited 2. It's not staying private, they're using your work to make their service better, a service they're trying to make money off of.

"But Bucca," you might say. "Human writers work like that too. We read books and other fanfictions and that's how we come up with material for roleplay or fanfiction."

Well, what's the difference between plagiarism and original writing? The answer is that plagiarism is taking what someone else has made and simply editing it or mixing it up to look original. You didn't do any thinking yourself. C.AI doesn't "think" because it's not a brain, it takes all the fanfiction it was taught on, mixes it up with whatever topic you've given it, and generates a response like in old-timey mysteries where somebody cuts a bunch of letters out of magazines and pastes them together to write a letter.

(And might I remind you, people can't monetize their fanfiction the way C.AI is trying to monetize itself. Authors are very lax about fanfiction nowadays: we've come a long way since the Anne Rice days of terror. But this issue is cropping back up again with BookTok complaining that they can't pay someone else for bound copies of fanfiction. Don't do that either.)

Bottom line, here are the problems with using things like C.AI:

It is using material it doesn't have permission to use and doesn't credit anybody. Not only is it ethically wrong, but AI is already beginning to contend with copyright issues.

C.AI sucks at its job anyway. It's not good at basic story structure like building tension, and can't even remember things you've told it. I've also seen many instances of bots saying triggering or disgusting things that deeply upset the user. You don't get that with properly trigger tagged fanworks.

Your work and your time put into the app can be taken away from you at any moment and used to make money for someone else. I can't tell you how many times I've seen people who use AI panic about accidentally deleting a bot that they spent hours conversing with. Your time and effort is so much more stable and well-preserved if you wrote a fanfiction or roleplayed with someone and saved the chatlogs. The company that owns and runs C.AI can not only use whatever you've written as they see fit, they can take your shit away on a whim, either on purpose or by accident due to the nature of the Internet.

DON'T USE C.AI, OR AT THE VERY BARE MINIMUM DO NOT DO THE AI'S WORK FOR IT BY STEALING OTHER PEOPLES' WORK TO PUT INTO IT. Writing fanfiction is a communal labor of love. We share it with each other for free for the love of the original work and ideas we share. Not only can AI not replicate this, but it shouldn't.

(also, this goes without saying, but this entire post also applies to ai art)

#anti ai #cod fanfiction #c.ai #character ai #c.ai bot #c.ai chats #fanfiction #fanfiction writing #writing #writing fanfiction #on writing #fuck ai #ai is theft #call of duty #cod #long post #I'm not putting any of this under a readmore #Youtube

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cloudypariah · 4 months

Text

How to perpetrate and sabotage your own kidnapping: A guide for dummies.

- The creation of the board (and its subsequent discovery)

Summary: Step One: host a brainstorming session with your teammates on how best to kidnap your future abductee. Step Two: have said abductee show up half an hour into the session and begin correcting your entire plan. Step Three: realise at the beginning of their impromptu presentation the target has absolutely no idea that they’re the target. Step Four: fail anyway.

Pairing: Dark!Poly!Task Force 141 x fem!Reader

Word count: 1.8k

Content tags: Dark content - Discussions around kidnapping, tense situations. If this is not your cup of tea, please go and find something different might better suited your palate. This is an 18+ fic meaning minors do not interact with this work. No one has permission from me to repost, copy or translate my work. No one has my permission to put my work into any AI source.

Notes: This is my first foray into the COD fandom and will be the first part in a dark comedy series. Please let me know what you think. Not proofread very well, sorry for any mistakes! Thanks for the motivation @live-love-be-unique !

Link to Task Force 141 masterlist / Link to COD masterlist

Captain John Price likes to think he knows his men well enough to trust them when his back is turned. Now that itself doesn’t necessarily mean knowing each and every one of their dirty secrets - he definitely wouldn’t come out smelling like fresh daisies if any number of his were revealed - but it does mean that he has the awareness to recognise that they all share one particular secret.

He sees it in the way Lieutenant Riley’s body language shifts when you give him his medical forms to look over, your consideration at offering him the option to disclose only certain personal information making the reserved soldier relax just enough to offer you a low thanks, accompanied with a stare that stretches on for a few moments longer than considered socially polite.

It’s also so amazingly obvious with Sergeant MacTavish. John’s surprised everyone else misses the way Soap’s smile takes a little longer to fade after departing for yet another mission, your swift congratulations on completing yet another physiotherapy appointment - “ Keep it up the good work big guy” - leaving the Scotsman floating on cloud nine damn near until the plane lands.

And how could he forget Sergeant Garrick? The man’s quick to change his tune and focus up, but the captain has observed Kyle absentmindedly rubbing his shoulder, thumb gingerly stroking the spot where your palm was only moments before, your figure long gone as you retreat down the corridor to where you came from.

No, Jonathan Price doesn’t miss a thing about his men. And it only takes two weeks and a long chat in the corner booth of the bar one quiet night - sans you or Laswell - before somehow his place becomes the meeting point for an unusual, though not unwelcome, topic - you.

More specifically, how to keep you.

The wooden shit box of a sports bar was where the first two facts were confirmed amongst them: 1. Every single one of the 141 men wanted you for themselves, but they weren’t above sharing. 2. You weren’t worth killing each other over, not when there was a much easier solution staring them in the face.

John’s house became the go-to place to discuss fact number three - They needed a plan.

It was Gaz who initially suggested the whiteboard after numerous interjections from Ghost and John; from everything to how to keep this from Laswell, to deciding which of your usual hangouts would provide them with the best opportunity to commence your “relocation”, to how to delicately but firmly explain said "relocation" to you once it was complete. Kyle loves his brothers in arms and never regrets a moment where his life is on the line if it means saving any one of them, but his patience began to wear thin when Soap got bored and started using goddamn paper planes instead of words to get his point across. At that Price finally relented and bought the damn thing.

Now, John was expecting you to pop by his place on Wednesday night to drop some papers off. A perfect opportunity, were it not for the fact that the gentlemen were still disagreeing on where to relocate you. However, it’ll allow you to grow more comfortable with him while he has some alone time with you, your presence like a balm on a wound - soothing and necessary (at least to him).

He had been looking forward to seeing you… tomorrow. So when you turn up not just on the doorstep but in the middle of the bloody hallway in his own bloody home halfway through the 141 “guys night”, his secondary action of shitting bricks quickly overrides his primary instinct to eliminate the threat.

He’s on his way back from the bathroom when he sees you standing, familiar folders firm in your grasp - fucking hell, is that his spare key too? - and a sour expression on your pretty face.

Your eyes narrow further when you spot him, striding over with fury rolling off you in small waves. “Captain Price, I know you did not leave these dossiers on my desk just before the end of my work day with a note stating they all need to be completed by the end of the work day.”

John’s senses are briefly overwhelmed by you being so close to him, the sight of you angry having a different effect on him than what you had originally intended. He’s never seen it before, and his hand twitches when you’re less than a foot away - fluctuating adrenaline or the desire to reach out and hold you, he’s not sure which is more prevalent.

He always forgets to not be so obvious around you, but it isn’t as though you usually notice. (He’s not sure if the thought should make him feel sad or grateful.)

The sounds of his men arguing in the background, merely the next room over, are enough to bring reality crashing down hard.

His voice is deliberately loud and stalwart when replies. “You can’t be here.”

“Tough shit. Your lads night can wait.” You lean past him to the origin of what your gut was telling you was the sounds of the remaining 141 members quarreling. It’s easy to slip past Captain Price once your mind is set, the push of files against his chest preventing him from reacting for a few seconds - all the time you need to move down the hallway to where everyone else is bound to be.

John is quick to rush behind you, the arguing noises having swiftly changed to near cartoon-like crashes just moments before you enter the room.

Ghost has migrated to the corner of the sitting area, standing as stiff as a fucking nutcracker, a mountain of crumpled notes and paper planes spilling out from between his arms. (His mask is still on thank god because it’ll hide exactly how caught out he feels, and if there’s one thing Simon Riley cannot stand it’s feeling like a kid with his hand caught in the cookie jar). His eyes instinctually watch your every move, waiting for your reaction.

Both of your gazes drift to the other side of the room, with neither of you failing to notice how the couch cushions are strewn widely across the space, (with one being stuck on top of a bookshelf for some odd reason) to find not one, but two soldiers gecko’d to the standing whiteboard.

Their demolitions expert is currently splayed out on the left side of the board and desperately grabbing the top of its metal frame, his stomach pressed into the cold porcelain and a left leg hitched up in a poor attempt to conceal the incriminating writing.

Price’s protégé is in a similar state. Dear Gaz has his back against the right side, with his arms outstretched to - much like Johnny - cover as much of their group planning as possible, a coloured marker clasped in each fist.

Two deers in headlights.

The sight of his task force is enough to bring back flashbacks of his original conversation with Kate about bringing these men together because Jesus H. Christ, what the fuck was he thinking?

There are a few moments when nobody moves or dares to breathe…

… except for you, of course.

You waste no time walking over to the two youngest members of the 141 as you attempt to shove them off the board. “Move,” you demand, palms pushing firmly against their sides. “I want to know what’s so important to everyone.” When they refuse, you do your best to stare at them, pleading with a pleasantly soft, “Please.”

Yeah, they both do what you say with ease when they hear that, giving you enough space to take in the somewhat smudged scribbles.

You miss the signal John gives Simon, the Ghost moving closer to your position as John quietly locks the door, and when your attention is drawn back to the board after the other two move you also miss all of the knowing looks shared behind your back. This was very far from ideal, but how can they recover from this?

They hope you understand that whatever comes next, they didn’t plan for it to start this way.

Kyle and John call your name but you ignore them, still processing the information written in front of you.

Johnny flexes his hands, preparing for the worst as you step back and say, “This is… bullshit.”

Every single member stops. That was not the reaction they were expecting.

Turning to face the group, you scoff. “I’m not even kidding. Firstly, you’re using guys' night to work, which is horrible for your mental and emotional health. And you should all know better.”

Four sets of brows furrow in united confusion. You don’t let that deter you from continuing, your arms gesturing haphazardly at the whiteboard. “Secondly, this is hands-down one of the worst brainstorms I have ever seen. This is not cohesive in the fucking slightest. Garrick, mark me.”

Kyle chokes on his spit, his brain short-circuiting before he sees your fingers wiggling at one of the markers he’s holding. The sergeant promptly gives it to you.

Your free hand takes turns pointing at everyone else in the room, a verbal command of, “sit down” directed at each man also. Dumbly and cautiously they all do. Ghost places himself at the end of the couch nearest the entrance, John strategically chooses a spot between yourself and the kitchen, and Soap and Gaz sit closest to you, where the two of them can hear you muttering under your breath as you draw what appears to be a massive cloud shape in the middle of the board.

Once completed, you fill your shape in with the word ‘TARGET’ and slam your free hand against the board. No one flinches, but if one were to look closely there would be some eyes widening in response. Johnny swears he sees one of your eyelids twitch.

“So,” you call out, “what do we know about the target?”

There are not only wide eyes looking at you, there are full glances exchanged between your audience.

“Seeing as you had the nerve to not invite me in your little meeting while keeping me on overtime” - Kyle and John squirm at that, and your finger makes a little circle - “we are going to be working on this project together. With all due respect, I’m not asking.”

Surely not…

And it’s when Captain John Price reviews the writing left over from the others that he realises Kyle and Johnny did one thing right during their clusterfuck of a coverup.

They managed to erase your name.

… you have absolutely no idea you are the target.

A piece of writing far in the coroner catches your attention, and your shoulders slump. “The target likes knitting and ‘The Karate Kid’. In another life we would have been the best of friends.” A dramatic sigh leaves you, “Oh well, at least I’ll be able to give you some insight into the mindset of this individual. Any questions?”

Four hands shoot up.

Rubbing your hands together with glee, a maniac smile grows on your face. “Excellent.”

#dark!141 #poly 141 #darkfic #task force 141 x reader #dark task force 141 x reader #simon ghost riley x reader #john price x reader #johnny mactavish x reader #sergeant kyle gaz garrick x reader #cod x female reader #female reader #cloudypariah writes

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too-fond-to-be-fearful · 4 months

Text

Been thinking recently about the goings-on with Duolingo & AI, and I do want to throw my two cents in, actually.

There are ways in which computers can help us with languages, certainly. They absolutely should not be the be-all and end-all, and particularly for any sort of professional work I am wholly in favour of actually employing qualified translators & interpreters, because there's a lot of important nuances to language and translation (e.g. context, ambiguity, implied meaning, authorial intent, target audience, etc.) that a computer generally does not handle well. But translation software has made casual communication across language barriers accessible to the average person, and that's something that is incredibly valuable to have, I think.

Duolingo, however, is not translation software. Duolingo's purpose is to teach languages. And I do not think you can be effectively taught a language by something that does not understand it itself; or rather, that does not go about comprehending and producing language in the way that a person would.

Whilst a language model might be able to use probability & statistics to put together an output that is grammatically correct and contextually appropriate, it lacks an understanding of why, beyond "statistically speaking, this element is likely to come next". There is no communicative intent behind the output it produces; its only goal is mimicking the input it has been trained on. And whilst that can produce some very natural-seeming output, it does not capture the reality of language use in the real world.

Because language is not just a set of probabilities - there are an infinite array of other factors at play. And we do not set out only to mimic what we have seen or heard; we intend to communicate with the wider world, using the tools we have available, and that might require deviating from the realm of the expected.

Often, the most probable output is not actually what you're likely to encounter in practice. Ungrammatical or contextually inappropriate utterances can be used for dramatic or humorous effect, for example; or nonstandard linguistic styles may be used to indicate one's relationship to the community those styles are associated with. Social and cultural context might be needed to understand a reference, or a linguistic feature might seem extraneous or confusing when removed from its original environment.

To put it briefly, even without knowing exactly how the human brain processes and produces language (which we certainly don't), it's readily apparent that boiling it down to a statistical model is entirely misrepresentative of the reality of language.

And thus a statistical model is unlikely to be able to comprehend and assist with many of the difficulties of learning a language.

A statistical model might identify that a learner misuses some vocabulary more often than others; what it may not notice is that the vocabulary in question are similar in form, or in their meaning in translation. It might register that you consistently struggle with a particular grammar form; but not identify that the root cause of the struggle is that a comparable grammatical structure in your native language is either radically different or nonexistent. It might note that you have trouble recalling a common saying, but not that you lack the cultural background needed to understand why it has that meaning. And so it can identify points of weakness; but it is incapable of addressing them effectively, because it does not understand how people think.

This is all without considering the consequences of only having a singular source of very formal, very rigid input to learn from, unable to account for linguistic variation due to social factors. Without considering the errors still apparent in the output of most language models, and the biases they are prone to reproducing. Without considering the source of their data, and the ethical considerations regarding where and how such a substantial sample was collected.

I understand that Duolingo wants to introduce more interactivity and adaptability to their courses (and, I suspect, to improve their bottom line). But I genuinely think that going about it in this way is more likely to hinder than to help, and wrongfully prioritises the convenience of AI over the quality and expertise that their existing translators and course designers bring.

#alright getting off my soapbox now #apologies if this is not particularly coherent - i was very much working through my thoughts as I was writing #but yeah tl;dr i am not huge on LLMs especially for language education and am deeply disappointed by the way things are trending #anyways if anyone knows any learning tools that are similarly structured i'd appreciate the recommendation #being able to easily do a little bit of study on a regular basis helped me a lot and i've yet to find anything similar #duolingo #language #language learning

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modmad · 18 days

Note

Hey Mod, I don't know what's going on that hurt you, I feel like I missed something that's happened, but I can tell from what I did see that it didn't just hurt you, but scared you and made you feel a Lot of doubt. I've also seen a lot of messages pouring in with support, and I want to share mine.

I have hypermobile type EDS, fibromyalgia, and a whole bucket's worth of faulty wiring in my brain. And I've always had stories to tell but I never felt I was good enough to share them. If it's because I can't focus enough to get through nanowrimo, or because I can't manage the focus and time towards drawing as a hobby, or the fact that an excessive amount of either for me leads to my hands wanting to shut down. But you? You *inspire* me. Your stories, all the ones I've seen, read, experienced in some way or another, they're so good. And you're open and honest with your fans about your own health, and of course, we support you and always would rather you rest and feel as best you can, instead of pushing out something and working yourself too hard. But all of this is to say that. I think I would have given up on my own stories if I hadn't found you and yours.

I hope whatever is going on sorts itself out, I hope you're able to keep telling your stories. At your own pace, in your own way. I think you deserve to be happy. If there's anything we (your fans, especially those of us too awkward to come off anon, whoops,) can do, to help in some way? Even if it's silly videos or cute cat pictures or whatever it is that could just help you smile. We're here. We love you.

woof. I woke up to so many messages I can't even read them all in one go I'm getting too emotional- I do feel I owe an explanation so I'll explain what happened under the cut but all you guys need to know is I'm okay, I got through it, I love you, and you're so important to me and I'm so grateful for all the messages that have asked me to stay.

tw for suicidal thoughts and all that

yeah so I have the bad morning of all mornings: was introduced to the fact there's this one character (Mr Puzzles) on a very popular youtube that. resembles RGB. incredibly strongly. like. I don't want to link to it just look if you want to. Anyway at the time I thought it had just dropped (seems to have been around for 6 months actually), and having commented on it I immediately got an inbox full of hate mail.

My website, meanwhile, had locked both me and my web designer out of it, and- already in a bad state of mind- I went into full on panic/paranoid spiral of 'they have hacked it, and they are going to delete any proof that I was here before them.' This of course wasn't true, and we have since recalimed control of the site (don't know what happened there but hey. it's fine???? haha. ha.)

On top of this my father has terminal cancer of the pancreas, which is horrible for everyone already but it means that- at some point this year- I am going to be the only person with an active income in my house. I am disabled, do not make a lot of money, and the cost of living is skyrocketing. Combine that with months of Despair at the world right now, with the multiple wars, genocide, corruption and AI and the loss of control any of us have over our IP or lives and I just decided it was time to end it all.

I somehow remembered this was a bad idea to act on immediately (hard during a period of entirely irrational thought) and instead went for a very long walk, crossed the bridge I could have jumped off and during that I came out of the worst of it. I then came back home to so much love online I felt deeply ashamed for ever contemplating it, and I cried a lot. My nose is still puffy and now my feet hurt! lmao

Anyway. Yeah. There's your context. I am not going to stop hoping, making, or living. I am prone to moments of weakness and this was one of the worst of them and I am still here, thanks in a large part to all of you. I might need you in the future to defend me against this, or people who take our ideas, but I hope you know that I will do the same for you. We need each other, and to be there for you I need to be here at all.

also fuck Mr Puzzles

#context for mod's little (massive) mental breakdown yesterday #you don't need to read it but I felt folks are due an explanation #tw suicide #ask to tag #mental health is wow!!!! a thing

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unsolved-duvall · 1 year

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𝐍𝐨𝐛𝐨𝐝𝐲 𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐲𝐨𝐮 - 𝐞.𝐦. (𝟏𝟖+)

eddie munson x fem!reader

warnings 18+ smut, soft eddie, soft reader, kissing, references to being in sub-space, fingering- fem receiving, no use of y/n, overuse of nicknames (baby, sweetheart, pretty girl, etc.). this is only a small blurb but i hope that’s okay <3

Always thinking about soft sex with Eddie.

Soft Eddie who just wants to make you feel good, who wants you to stop thinking for a while and just be there with him. He would make sure you were falling apart for him before he’s even touched you, leaving soft kisses across your neck and letting his hands wander. He trails your body with his ring-clad fingers like it’s a map only he gets to know.

He knows you. He knows your body. He knows the sounds you make and what each of them mean. He knows when he’s got his lips over your sweet spot on your neck and his hands wrapped around your back pulling you flush against him, that you’re about to let out the prettiest little whimpers he’s ever heard. He knows that when he gently bites down on your neck, the way you like, your hand is about to fly up to tangle itself in his hair, and you’ll hold back a moan.

He knows your about to whine and pull him up to kiss you, desperate to feel his soft lips against yours; which is exactly what you do. And of course, he obliges happily, because why wouldn’t he? You like to feel like he’s the one in control, it’s just what you like. But the truth is, and what Eddie knows to be true, is that really you’re in complete control here. He’s following your every move, your every sound, you’re the one in control of him, even if you don’t know it.

It might be ten minutes or an hour later, but eventually Eddie’s hand will wonder down between your thighs, resting just above where you want him to touch you. He’d let his hand rest there until your hips involuntarily buck up against him, searching for any sort of relief from that ache that only Eddie can pull from you.

“You need me to touch you sweetheart? yeah?” you’re nodding and your eyes look so heavy that he’s ready to give you everything you’ve ever wanted. You just look so pretty for him.

You’re trying to talk, trying to tell him that yeah, you do need him to touch you. But you’re breathing so heavily and you’re feeling so fucking good already that you can’t get the words out.

But Eddie knows.

“It’s okay baby, you just lie there and look pretty for me, huh? That what you want? Just want me to keep helping you make those pretty little sounds?”

Eddie knows you. So he knows when you get into this headspace he wants to make sure you’re still completely there, still with him. It’s why he grabs hold of one of your hands and intertwines your fingers with his, it’s why he squeezes your hand every now and then. You know the rule, you squeeze his hand back, you open your eyes and look at him, and he keeps going. If you don’t, he stops. No questions asked, no matter how much you beg him to keep going.

But tonight? Tonight you can’t keep your eyes off of him, and he’s making sure you feel every little touch. His fingers rub light pressured circles over your clit, and his lips go back to kissing yours, his tongue meeting yours and sending sparks flying between the two of you.

You’re struggling kiss him back, and Eddie’s swallowing every moan and breathy whimper you can’t hold back against his kiss-swollen lips. He knows your close, that you’re about to come, but he also knows you need him to talk you through it. You’d never admired it out loud, but he knows now you always come the hardest when you can hear his voice.

So that’s exactly why he moves to have his lips pressed against your ear, taking your ear lobe between his lips and kissing before he talks you through it as you crumble under him.

“Are you gonna come for me, angel? You gonna let me see how pretty you are when you come all over my fingers, huh?” Your chest is drooling up and down in an almost manic pace, you’re fighting for every drop of air that Eddie so effortlessly steals from you just by being around you.

“God I don’t know how I got so lucky sweetheart. A girl as sweet as you who goes dumb the second I get my hands on you, huh? Isn’t that right? You’re the smartest person I know but the second my fingers are inside you, there’s nothing going on in your pretty little head, is there?”

He hears you whimper against him and he smiles, you’re holding back, letting him keep talking to you, because you want to hear everything he has to say.

He loves you for that.

“Come on sweet girl, I can feel you clenching around my fingers, shit you drive me fucking insane, you know that?”

And then you do something he truly wasn’t expecting. Your free hand, the ones he’s not holding, moves between your bodies until your letting yourself feel him over his jeans, even through the thick denim you can feel how hard he is, and it only makes your whole body cry out for him more.

“Oh- fuck- sweetheart, I need you to come, okay? You gonna come for me? Yeah? I know, I know-”

And suddenly everything hits you all at once and you’re pulling Eddie against you so you can bury your head in his neck, completely consumed by him.

He talks you through your high.

“Fuck that’s my girl.”

“God you sound sweeter every time.”

“I got you pretty girl, just let yourself feel good.”

“That’s it- you did so well for me, I love you, baby”

And you’re shaking and your whole body is on fire and it’s too much but it’s also not enough. It’s everything you could ever need but you still need more. It’s Eddie.

It’s all Eddie and he’s everything you could ever have asked for.

thank you for reading! i’m sorry it’s not very long or very good and if there are any spelling or grammar errors i can only apologise. i’m going to try so hard to write a full length fic soon. i’ve just been struggling to write at the moment 🤍

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xitsensunmoon · 1 year

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The order of things

Part 1 | Part 2

People tend to forget that Sun and Moon are literal items. They have no free will, no choice, no freedom, nothing at all. Everything that can be in their possession, can also be torn away by the company and they won't be able to do anything about it. And the worst thing about it all is that they need to believe they're nothings here because if they don't it will crush them. Their opinions? Nothing. Feelings? Never existed in the first place. Memories? It belongs to Faz co and to them only.

What will happen if you treat them as equals? Denial. They cannot let themselves believe you. Because if you're right... the reality is a very cruel thing.

This particular comic is part of a storyline where the dca physically cannot have romantic feelings.

Yet.

As much as I love the sweet fiction I also love the cruel realism. Programming is a very simple thing - if you don't put something in the code, it won't appear by itself. The daycare attendant is not programmed to be able to love.

But self-operating AI can learn. Especially when someone wants it to.

The virus makes them feel a lot. Probably too much. It's a new program, new commands, new triggers, new opportunities to push the boundaries.

It doesn't make them feel love of course. But they think that it does. It feels like love to them.

Not like they know how it's supposed to feel anyway.

And while Moon tries to embrace it, to feel, to understand...

...Sun hides. But not from his feelings, he hides from the fact that the virus affects him as well.

It can't be true. Why would he be dangerous like Moon? No, if he ignores it, it will go away. Moon is the one who's broken. Sun is totally fine, everything will be fine. He will make sure of it.

For Moon's part, he's fed up with hiding. It's always him who's in the shadow. But with the virus?

Freedom for Moon. Control for Sun.

AI will learn.

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the-hydroxian-artblog · 6 months

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Is Beth just always active and like projected or can she turn off the projector and just be a voice inside Kaita's head? Could she go a step further and just not even exist in the physical world and be gooberin around in Kaita's OS or something? Could she villain arc and just possess her?

I have a problem btw

unfortunately you asked a simple question so now you get the needlessly complicated answer

Kaita's artificial brain is designed in such a fashion that'd be hard for Beth to just hack like a normal computer. Her frontal lobe works on artificial neurons that create thoughts, behaviors, and impulses that are then regulated by another component that works like the brain stem and cerebellum. Effectively, every part of her could technically work as a prosthetic version of its organic counterpart, including the brain, so you'd need to know how to "hack" human impulses in order to even begin to say, overwrite who she is.

However, the wolf also has a more mundane smartphone chip installed on her that her brain can directly use at the speed of thought that allows her to interface with other devices, and is easy to replace or upgrade without messing with the brain itself. Think like a simple computer with linux or a stripped down Android OS that your brain is hooked up to that it can mess with in any way it wants, to make calls or save memes or something, while the phone can't do anything to the brain besides sending signals to the optic and audio feeds.

Beth likewise is an AI designed to only exist physically as a chip on her own phone. This phone is installed on Kaita in a similar fashion to the wolf's own on-board smartphone, through which Kaita can talk privately to Beth and see the AI do stupid shit on her HUD. Like, a more bitchy Cortana. Beth doesn't like wasting power or always being seen, so she usually only peeks out when she feels like it in the first place. She very often is just a voice or, if she's feeling nonverbal, a series of dialogue boxes Kaita sees as notifications from her phone's OS.

In terms of possession, there's technically a workaround; her hardlight body can produce electrical signals, and if she was really desperate and persistent could sort of jam her projected form onto Kaita's brain stem that way, but it'd be very very taxing to pull off unless Kaita for some reason allows Beth to do it, usually only as an agreed upon emergency measure if the wolf is incapacitated/deeply unconscious.

The picture above basically only happens because Kaita trusts Beth not to do something stupid. She's probably a bit mentally tired from something, and is letting Beth take control so she can "rest" a little. It only takes a little bit of mental effort on Kaita's part to eject Beth, but Beth lacks a physical body and sometimes Kaita feels a bit bad for the AI, so she lets her have some fun if it also means getting someone else to do a few menial tasks for her for once.

EDIT: forgot to mention; had koboldfactory's drawing of Beth in mind for drawing this one. Beth's design can often be asymmetrical and experimental but I really liked the mix of the sleeved and sleeveless look she came up with

#Kaita #Beth #Character Design #sure #robot #worldbuilding #anthro #furry #kemono

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