Sure, training data selection impacts the output. If you feed an AI nothing but anime, the images it produces will look like anime. If all it knows is K-pop, then the music it puts out will sound like K-pop. Tweaking a computational process through selective input is not the same as a human being actively absorbing stimuli and forming their own, unique response.

AI doesn’t have an innate taste or feeling for what it likes. It won’t walk into a second hand CD store, browse the boxes, find something that’s intriguing and check it out. It won’t go for a walk and think “I want to take a photo of that tree there in the open field”. It won’t see or hear a piece of art and think “I’d like to be learn how to paint/write/play an instrument like that”. And it will never make art for the sake of making art, for the pure enjoyment that is the process of creating something, irrespective of who wants to see or hear the result. All it is designed to do is regurgitate an intersection of what it knows that best suits the parameters of a given request (aka prompt). Actively learning, experimenting, practicing techniques, trying to emulate specific techniques of someone else - making art for the sake of making art - is a key component to humans learning from others and being influenced by others.

So the process of human learning and influencing, and the selective feeding of data to an AI to ‘tune’ its output are entirely different things that cannot and should not be compared.

Generative AI is not ‘influenced’ by other people’s work the way humans are. A human musician might spend years covering songs they like and copying or emulating the style, until they find their own style, which may or may not be a blend of their influences, but crucially, they will usually add something. AI does not do that. The idea that AI functions the same as human artists, by absorbing influences and producing their own result, is not only fundamentally false, it is dangerously misleading. To portray it as ‘not unethical’ is even more misleading.

Re 1, 3 and 5, maybe it is upon the AI projects to stop providing shiny solutions looking for a problem they could solve, and properly engaging with potential customers and stakeholders to get a clear understanding of the problems that need solving.

This was precisely the context of a conversation I had at work yesterday. Some of our product managers attended a conference that was rife with AI stuff, and a customer rep actually took to the stage and said ‘I have no need for any of that because none of it helps me solve the problems I need to solve.’

I once slept in a hotel room where the TV had a blue LED standby light. I had to go and cover it up, it was way too bright.

Just go and rewatch Batman Begins. Maybe his role as the kid who spots Batman from his porch and gets given one of his gadgets can soften the reflex…

Last time I checked, on iOS it didn’t have either.

Edit: just checked, the iOS version still doesn’t have downloads and does not support casting to Chromecast.

Support for downloading and Chromecast? Sign me up.

You’re not exactly making yourself look intelligent there, both with your original post and this reply.

If what you **said **- there’s enough games with female leads; female leads are only fine as long as the game is good; female lead is bonus points for a good game; it’s no longer special - isn’t what you meant, then why didn’t you say what you meant?

Roughly 50% of human beings are female. It’s only fitting that around 50%0 of games have female leads. It doesn’t need to be special, a female lead doesn’t need to justify her existence. It should be commonplace.

It is surprisingly easy to not order things off of Amazon, too.

Then we also need to talk about Sodum, Potassum, Magnesum, Plutonum, Uranum, Cadmum, Chromum, Titanum and a bunch more. Why should Aluminum be the outlier?

Three of four Pro Pinball games are available on GOG. They’re probably on the more realistic side of pinball games, effectively simulating a single table down to aspects like scratching, aging and blemishes. That’s all optional though, you can just install and play. I don’t know how well they’ve aged since it’s been a few years since I last touched one of them. But I’ve always found them fun, with great visuals and sound, even though I’m pretty inept at pinball in general.

I always say: if I’m ever in a situation where I need a job and can only get one with a former employer - do I want them to say “hell yeah” or “hell no”?

I’ve worked with people who, if they had to ask me for a reference, I would decline to give one. By the same token, I would reject their application for a job in my company or team. And I have worked with the opposite - people who will always under any circumstances get help from me if they’re looking for a job. All the competence in the world doesn’t help if someone is miserable to be around.

Having contacts, people who are willing to give references and similar always helps. Sure, you can do job hunting hard mode, but why make things unnecessarily difficult?

You can disable and even delete an eSIM-profile. Then it’s just a dead chip. If your provider is halfway decent, you can recover a deleted eSIM-profile as well.

When I traveled last year, having eSIM-capability in my phone was extremely convenient. I picked two providers, one as the primary and one as a backup in case there were problems with the first one. No juggling with the SIM-tray and different nano SIMs.

I haven’t watched a Kevin Smith movie since the atrocious ‘Zack and Miri’ and the nightmare fuel that was ‘Red State’. I wasn’t even aware there had been a second Jay and Silent Bob.

My tastes have changed though, I don’t know if I could still stomach ‘Dogma’ today.

Thanks for the explanation. Vinyl seems like an odd choice of material for exterior cladding, where I live it’s normally timber, brick or sometimes steel sheeting (mainly for sheds and garages).

A railway siding is a piece of rail track that is commonly used for storing, loading or unloading trains away from the track where regular traffic runs.

Is ‘siding’ the stuff the walls are made out of? (Sorry, me being a railway enthusiast, ‘siding’ means something completely different).

What material is that?

It just looks like there’s barely any natural light in the areas where you’d want it. The house interior, aside from everything else that’s wrong with it, feels dark and cramped. A recipe for depression.