building inspector maybe

Forgive me, but that’s quite a different statement from your previous comment which said “I don’t care” and “we can’t really do anything”

Even putting aside the distinction between “possible” and “ethical” when it comes to data harvesting and use - just because something is technically possible does not mean it is therefore OK to do - this is moderators using systems created by entities explicitly aligned with US fascism to do “ideology analysis”.

If the point of the fediverse is to avoid centralised/corporate control and influence over our relationships, then this is completely antithetical to that goal.

Apparently one of the reasons for advertising off-site is because OF does not have an on-site discovery mechanism. So there really aren’t other options. Not the fault of the performers.

Alternatively, consider the following:

• look around for a $50-100 used PC/mini-pc/laptop that someone is getting rid of because it won’t run Win11
• install something easy like Mint on it and use that for day-to-day stuff like browsing and office-type stuff.
• unplug the music PC from the internet and keep DAW, games & win10 on it
• explore and learn the Linux stuff in a low-pressure way, at your own pace.

Is that supposed to be a “censored” version of a slur at the end of your comment?

I don’t want echo chambers, I want places that aren’t full of reactionary assholes.

You’re saying “stop caring about downvotes”, well then, why not get rid of them entirely?

One thing desperately needed is a method for mods/admins to check for brigading behaviour. This place (the threadiverse, not this community specifically) is crawling with more reactionary toxicity than almost anywhere I’ve ever seen, but it’s mostly cowardly ignorant people silently hammering the downvote button rather than saying out loud the thing that would get them insta-banned.

Also real blocks are needed - all we have right now is a glorified ‘mute’. If I block an asshole, not only is it because I don’t want to see their BS, but I also don’t want them to be able to see my posts & comments, at least not from that account.

to tell you the truth, I don’t know! I think I just saw someone asking about tiling window managers in some forum, and a reply suggested trying the xfce functions since they mostly just wanted to use two side-by-side windows occasionally. I do it a good chunk of the time now, but it’s not always the most convenient method on small screens & monitors

Even just the key combos (win+numpad) to do basic tiling in XFCE are a huge plus

This is a crisp answer, nice one.

sigh

You said it doesn’t matter if we can tell how something was made.

This conversation is over. Thanks

Ah to be fair i did misinterpret your previous statement.

But no, I am arguing that we are not able to ignore knowledge of the production process. Nothing mystical about that.

That’s not a rejection of what I said, so I assume you agree.

No, I’m saying we can no longer meaningfully separate the product and the process.

I am saying that we can no longer meaningfully separate the two things.

First you said “it doesn’t matter if we can tell or not”, which I responded to.

So I’m confused by your reply here.

This argument strikes me as a tautology. “If we don’t care if it’s different, then it doesn’t matter to us”.

But that ship has sailed. We do care.

We care because the use of AI says something about our view of ourselves as human beings. We care because these systems represent a new serfdom in so many ways. We care because AI is flooding our information environment with slop and enabling fascism.

And I don’t believe it’s possible for us to go back to a state of not-caring about whether or not something is AI-generated. Like it or not, ideas and symbols matter.

If you can tell it was produced in a certain way by the way it looks, then that means it cannot be materially equivalent to the non-AI stock image, no?

I mean, it can’t really do ‘every random idea’ though, right? Any output is limited to the way the system was trained to approximate certain stylistic and aesthetic features of imagery. For example, the banner image here follows a stereotypically AI-type texture, lighting, etc. This shows us that the system has at least as much control as the user.

In other words: it is incredibly easy to spot AI-generated imagery, so if the output is obviously AI, then can we really say that the AI generated a “stock image”, or did it generate something different in kind?