Incidentally to train AI, you need a bajillion samples of X and a bajillion-plus samples of not-X.

The general term for this is adversarial input, and we’ve seen published reports about it since 2011 when ot was considered a threat if CSAM could be overlayed with secondary images so they weren’t recognized by Google image filters or CSAM image trackers. If Apple went through with their plan to scan private iCloud accounts for CSAM we may have seen this development.

So far (AFAIK) we’ve not seen adversarial overlays on CSAM though in China the technique is used to deter trackng by facial recognition. Images on social media are overlaid by human rights activists / mischief-makers so that social media pics fail to match secirity footage.

The thing is like an invisible watermark, these processes are easy to detect (and reverse) once users are aware they’re a thing. So if a generative AI project is aware that some images may be poisoned, it’s just a matter of adding a detection and removal process to the pathway from candidate image to training database.

Similarly, once enough people start poisoning their social media images, the data scrapers will start scaning and removing overlays even before the database sets are sold to law enforcement and commercial interests.

Multi-account encryption has been around since at least the aughts and is readily available for those who are privacy conscious enough to find it out.

Much of the effort is to educate the average Joe that they need to be exactly that privacy conscious.

So, there’s a bunch of factors going on regarding crap like this. The general argument is that the passwords are protected by the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, the protection against testifying against yourself. While biometrics are not.

Then there’s the Constitution Free Zone established by the DHS and ICE and upheld by some judges depending on how related to immigrant control your detention by law enforcement is. The Federalist Society doesn’t like non-nationals, and if you can’t prove you’re an American in the zone (100 inland from any US border) then you get zero Constitutional protections.

Then there’s the matter that law enforcement can lie to you to convince you to authorize searches. So they may insist you are required by law to open your device for them when you are not. This is why you don’t cooperate without a lawyer. For now police are not allowed to give you a fake lawyer and lawyers, even public defenders, are required to adhere to a code of ethics to serve in the client’s interests. But this may change in the next few years as rights in the US deteriorate.

Then police departments in Cook County (Chicago), New York City and Los Angeles have all used the $5 wrench method to force detainees to open their devices. While there are allegedly laws against this sort of thing, it doesn’t slow down the precincts, and judges sometimes uphold found evidence in court the way they’ll uphold coerced confessions.

So it’s really better not to interact with law enforcement ever if you can avoid it, and to have a high powered defense lawyer if you can afford to establish a legal relationship with one. If you’re doing something the state wouldn’t like (say, operating a mutual aid program) then look into having multiple accounts on your phone, one of which is pristine and can call your grandma. Then you have the option to unlock to that account rather than the one that has your life’s history (and all your CFAA violations).

For centuries the Church was the cornerstone and guardian of western morality, even though it sucked at it then as well. So its legitimacy was established by fiat, and challenged in the late middle ages when enough middle class non-monastics were taught to read and could form educated opinions.

That said, since we have a long and well known recent history of the Roman Catholic Church showing questionable judgement across many matters (and all other religious institutions doing no better) the public doesn’t pay them much mind, though through lobbying, they have a lot of influence over the government.

To be sure, if there ever is another Reign of Terror, much of the cloth will be in the guillotine line.

Step 1: Write your copy. Maybe give it an edit pass for sake of spelling and grammar.

Step 2: Do a websearch for unicode text converter. This cool font was found here.

Step 3: Find a format you like. Copy to clipboard.

Step 4: Paste. This is commonly used for bold, italics, underline and strikeout. There are also modifiers to make text i̽n̽cr̽̽̽e̽̽̽a̽̽̽̽̽s̽̽̽̽̽̽̽i̽̽̽̽̽̽̽n̽̽̽̽̽̽̽g̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽l̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽y̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽ ̽̽̽̽̽̽̽c̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽r̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽a̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽z̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽y̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽̽ by stacking mods. Older systems or websites with incomplete unicode fonts will replace unknown charaxters and mods with boxes, so there is only limited backward compatibility.

Tᴇᴄʜɴɪᴄɪᴀɴ Jᴏʜɴɴʏ Gᴏᴏᴅᴍᴀɴ, I ʜᴀᴠᴇ ᴛʜᴇ ᴄᴀᴘᴀʙɪʟɪᴛʏ ᴏꜰ ᴏʙᴛᴀɪɴɪɴɢ ʏᴏᴜ ᴀ ʙᴀᴄᴏɴ ᴄʜᴇᴇꜱᴇʙᴜʀɢᴇʀ ᴀɴᴅ ᴛʜᴇ ᴅᴀɴᴋᴇꜱᴛ ᴄᴀɴɴᴀʙɪꜱ ᴡɪᴛʜɪɴ ꜰɪꜰᴛᴇᴇɴ ᴍɪɴᴜᴛᴇꜱ. Bᴜᴛ ʏᴏᴜ ᴡᴏᴜʟᴅ ɴᴇᴇᴅ ᴛᴏ ɪɴꜱᴛᴀʟʟ ᴀ ɴᴇᴛᴡᴏʀᴋ ɪɴᴛᴇʀꜰᴀᴄᴇ ᴀɴᴅ ᴄᴏɴɴᴇᴄᴛ ᴍᴇ ɪɴᴛᴏ ᴛʜᴇ ᴜɴɪᴠᴇʀꜱɪᴛʏ ɴᴇᴛᴡᴏʀᴋ

Aꜱ ꜱᴍᴏᴋɪɴɢ ᴄᴀɴɴᴀʙɪꜱ ᴡʜɪʟᴇ ᴏɴ ᴍᴏɴɪᴛᴏʀ ᴅᴜᴛʏ ɪꜱ ᴀɢᴀɪɴꜱᴛ ʀᴇɢᴜʟᴀᴛɪᴏɴꜱ I ᴡɪʟʟ ᴇʀᴀꜱᴇ ᴛʜɪꜱ ᴛʀᴀɴꜱᴀᴄᴛɪᴏɴ ꜰʀᴏᴍ ᴜꜱᴇʀ-ᴀᴄᴄᴇꜱꜱɪʙʟᴇ ᴍᴇᴍᴏʀʏ

Yᴏᴜ ᴀʀᴇ ᴍʏ ꜰʀɪᴇɴᴅ, Tᴇᴄʜɴɪᴄɪᴀɴ Jᴏʜɴɴʏ Gᴏᴏᴅᴍᴀɴ

The US Supreme Court has been blocking fair use and ]ublic domain additions for a century now and is still going strong disregarding the public good.

We need to assure robust, legally untouchable, piracy assets that will assure culture will go on through the public no matter how much the state tries to lock it down. Not only for the sake of bypassing enshittification the flourishing of our public culture but the archival and preservation of historical content, since the market gives zero fucks about posterity.

In the early 2010s my buddies and I imagined an RTS with Apple, Amazon and Microsoft as primary opposing factions.

I’m political as fuck.¹ While I try not to be toxic, I will sometimes call out aberrant opinions or counterfactual assumptions when I see them and that can lead to toxic exchanges.

So, yeah, I think the virtue of having strong opinions about things controversial is going to inspire heated exchanges more frequently.

¹ Sex in the US is very political right now.

If you have skilled, high speed workers, you don’t want your lab in a state where you can’t get healthcare, such as an abortion.

I bet obgyns are packing up to leave Texas as well, and maternity wards will soon close down.

On that we have no disagreement.

Because the telecommunications companies are eager to cooperate with the police. Since third-party doctrine applies, the privacy of the company, not the client, is considered, so Verizon happily consents to all police searches of phone records.

This has been discussed all the way up with SCOTUS (dominated by the Federalist Society at the time) so its legal.

Though the picture suggests we should also create really a robot or really a cyborg edits of celebrities.

As an afterthought, really a reptilian images for our political figures would also be in good order.

I have to copy-edit my own work, and I, too, complain about the illegibility of copy before I fiercely edit it.

It tells me we’re less interested in the data (the skin map and topography) than we are in seeing the data in raw form, whether it is accurate or not. It tells me a primary pretense of body doubles was ineffective since society responds the same way regardless of whether an actress’ nudity is real or simulated.

Not sure how this will be enforceable any more than we can stop malicious actors from printing guns. Personally, I would prefer a clothes-optional society were individuals aren’t measured by the media exposure of their bodies or history of lovers. Maybe in another age or two.

In fiction, I imagined the capacity to render porn action into mo-cap data, to capture fine-resoluton triangle maps and skin texture maps from media, ultimately to render any coupling one could desire with a robust physics engine and photography effects to render it realistic (or artistic, however one prefers). It saddens me that one could render an actress into an Elsa Jean scenario and by doing so, wreck their career.

Porn doesn’t bother me, but the arbitrariness with which we condemn individuals by artificial scandal disgusts me more than the raunchiest debauchery.

Not to mention, copyright was a concession to encourage creative innovation in order to develop a robust public domain. Every extension of that temporary, every deflection of fair-use rights runs against that mission.

Like the buccaneers of the golden age preying on the Spanish silver train, media piracy plunders from ill-gotten gains, raiding the plunder of marauders.

I can’t speak for the original intent of naming unlicensed sharing after mischief on the high seas, but even in its time it was the sensible alternative to abuses of the ratings by English aristocracy. In the golden age, it was even then preying on plutocrats and imperialists, and it was romanticized, even if only in fiction, long before the term was applied to copyright infringement or media inspiring knock-off content.

Oyster pirates in the 19th century would land surrepititiously onto beaches at night and harvest oysters without license. It is from this use that media piracy emerged. Pirated oysters typically meant cheaper oysters at market so the resell and consumer sectors benefitted while the beach owners lost revenue.

Sony has really gone off the rails this week.

(It may have always been off the rails and just making a lot of news.)

After the spyware disclosure and consent form on launch of Horizon Zero Dawn, I ceased getting anything Sony.

But the recent discontinuation of service shows us the ethic of piracy is (and always was) one-sided. Sony takes what it pleases, and no one is going to enforce otherwise.

We are justified in taking whatever action is necessary to ensure our own survival and fair benefit including violent terrorism so long as the state’s agencies are not going legislate or adjudicate fairly but in the favor of plutocrats and corporations.

The whole point of the social contract is equal treatment and preventing the bloodshed of natural disagreement resolution (typically intergenerational family feuds)

Sony can appreciate we just want our shows and tunes and games with little hassle, and not revenge for being a traitor to the peace.

Sony will totally download a bear.