Is YouTube actually at this point? I know a couple channels I follow have started using AI more widely, at least in thumbnails, specifically because it gets more clicks.

and is stronger than ever

Arguing semantics here, but this is a bit of a stretch. Iran has suffered very significant damage. A more accurate assessment would be that it withstood the US’s onslaught without having their military or their government broken, and have exposed the US military as being too inept to properly wage war.

The takeaway is similar in the context of the war, but its the US that has fallen rather than Iran having risen, which has much more significant global implications.

Just because some companies sells USB butplugs it doesn’t mean USB standard is necessarily a pain in the ass overall.

No, but it does mean that the USB standard allows for being a pain in the ass, compatibility-wise, which kind-of defeats the point.

On the other hand, I have a USB-C charged laptop, but it only accepts one specific spec of 45w, and one specific spec for 60w. This means that 90% of usb-c chargers don’t work for it, including chargers that support 45w or 60w charging. This means that even if you buy a charger with the right wattage, its effectively random whether it will work or not.

Unfortunately, given the current economy, its not suprising. With how much prices have risen, the old pricing competed with and often beat out even used desktops.

For transparency, I’m a second hand source, close to multiple people who lived across the region.

Generally, the region is both extremely distrustful of government and outsiders, as well as being extremely prone to superstition and magic thinking. Obviously, there is the spectre of colonialism, but more recently than this, governments in the region are generally corrupt, violent and unstable on a scale westerners would find unbelievable. For example, (if I remeber right) Nigeria recently issued new bills but then much of the money “”“disappeared”“” before reaching banks and other organizations. The president claimed snakes ate the money. More relevant to this, with the inconsistent enforcement of laws, doctors are often unreliable or outright dangerous, such as giving sugar pills instead of medication. I have no idea of the authenticity of this (which is part of the problem), but from my own circle, there were stories of patients of the last ebola outbreak taken for quarentine, and then left unattended to or without food and water. Given all this, its not suprising that they wouldn’t trust outsiders taking people away.

At the same time, there is an abundance of superstition and magical thinking. I’m not sure how much of this is cultural versus reglious versus trauma and oppression versus lack of education, but belief in conspiracies, witchcraft, demons/spirits, and other such stuff is widespread to the point where it make the American south look tame. This is fed into further by the same sorts of social media rumors and misinformation that have become popular globally, but with far more gulibility and far less ability to disprove them (due to lack of education, and lack of local resources).

Taken together, you have basically the perfect cultural environment for this sort of anti-science movement.

And we all know how easy it is to buy an ARM board, install Linux and add all the ethernet ports one desires.

We do?

Notably, this photo is listed as being in Russia, and the source is Moscow regional governor Andrei Vorobyov. The source isn’t a particularly reliable one, but I’m also not seeing any definitive evidence that the image isn’t real. Theres no weird alignment/disjointing of the bricks, no identifiable logical errors, and no watermarks. There are a bunch of elements that look weird, like how the bricks end on the second floor wall, whatever it is in the middle window, how the smoke curls very evenly around the roof piece, and the uniformity of the concrete rubble, but given the low resolution, none of this is clear enough to be definitive.

I also notably tried to track down the original copy, but it was in a telegram channel, not anything easy to verify.

I’d put the distinction around the same place as the distiction is between copyright infringement and transformative work. At a certain point, the AI output becomes less of a “piece” of the work and more of an ingredient unrecognizably blended, with a similar amount of care to any other element. For example, if a Vending machine asset is generated by AI, its slop. Add flavour text to it, and its still slop. Replace all the contents with theme-approprate contents, and and clean up the topology, and it finally starts to become distinct enough to (potentially) not be slop. Basically, it needs to be distinct enough to have a unique, human author and/or no longer fill the original “”“role”“”.

Boost (for Piefed). I know its not free, but everything else is either missing too many features, or uses a UI style I don’t like.

Warhammer 40k has too many good options to list. The entire ork faction is great, although one of my personal favorites is Grizgutz, an ork who accidentally travelled back in time, and decided to kill himself to steal an extra copy of his favorite gun. The Necrons are also fun, for their unlimited capacity for arrogance and pettiness.

I never really clicked with other social media, but I still use Reddit a lot. The format is good (I’m here because its trying to build on that format) and it actually allows me to find content relevant to me, unlike most of the more algorithmic stuff.

jorymo@lemmy.world, for their art.

From my understanding, code is still covered by copyright. This means that copied code, even if run through an intermediary like an AI, is still copyright infringement. In the same way, even if an image generator recreates a character or movie frame, it isn’t made public domain (the default state of AI Output), its just that the AI ingringed on someone else’s copyright. If the code or image is then used, you can still be sued.

Even before getting into the copyrightability of code, at the very least, any LLM-produced parts are not copyrightable. They are public domain.

That said, if its a mix of LLM code and human code, things get pretty messy. From my understanding, if the human expanded on or modified AI code, its public domain. If they wrote a section fully independently, they absolutely own the copyright. If its an unclear mix, it would have to be proven on a case-by-case basis with the onus being on the AI user to provide solid evidence that the code copied isn’t AI generated.

Maybe its a bit of a cheat answer, but the only song the comes to mind is I Like Trains by LilDeuceDeuce and Tomska.

It feels like there has been some dropoff, particularly in higher-budget areas. Big studios seem to be taking fewer risks, and small creators have less money (and time by extention) to spend on art.

That said, it also feels like discoverability has gotten far worse. Social media has become increasingly insular, more personalized, more algorighmic, and ultimately harder to explore. Its not like the old days, where you could find a new thing, even from a random person’s forum signature.

Story based motivators mean almost nothing to me, esspecially when told through non-gameplay means. Having an “intro” cutscene is almost akin to a text crawl/card in a movie - technically it works, and it can be an efficient way to give extra context, but its also likely to disrupt pacing or disorient - basically makes me want to watch less, rather than more. In the same way, I can’t think of any games where story played a significant part in motivation to continue. If I want to keep playing, its because the game is good, not because it told me I should.

Edit: Maybe to help clairify, good plot can be a motivator, but the character’s motivation is not my motivation. Whats important is that the plot is good, not that the protagonist’s goal is just.

According to the software section, the total is 54k monthly active users.

About 48k on Lemmy and 6k elsewhere.

I’m probably a bit biased given how much I love Overlord, but Hollow Hunger is a banger that fits the tone of the show perfectly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tkkp3FhDVxQ