I think this is far more normalized in the US to bring god into everything. After all, it's one nation, under god. And in god they trust! It's on the money after all, thoughts and prayers. And lordy, the language is full of religious references, from oh my god gosh golly to dang darn dammit. There is also the performative "I was praying for" whatever, jeez, Jesus help me. I'm already irritated by all these religious vestiges in the language.

Piety is also this sort of monstrance required for political office in the US. Even when it's quite unbelievable, like in the case of 47 who would only own a bible if he could sell it. And if you're not a Catholic or some Protestant, you have you be Mormon or Islamic just enough to tick the religious box. But we might draw the line at Scientology because that's all just made up nonsense, isn't it.

I find it offensive when people just assume I believe in any god. The older I get the more I think Christopher Hitchens had a point when he said that ardent believers in monotheist religions are predisposed to vote for and follow authoritarian leaders. One god, one fuehrer.

No, it doesn't. Because I was not talking about physical sexual assault.

Nothing in law is simple. Legislators pass a law and after it passed that meat grinder it eventually gets brought up in courts where a second sausage is made by evaluating whose rights take precedence over others. And if we imagine the current US Supreme Court they will not ban deepfakes completely because it could limit the first amendment. And they would probably find in favor of the sad smelly asshole in his basement who made deepfake porn that was never meant to be public. So the creation of deepfakes will not be limited by law. The system can only react after the creation. By which point the damage is already done for the celebrity whose likeness was abused.

Right now it might be possible to get the companies to limit the models that can generate this stuff. But soon enough, maybe in a few years, it will be possible to train you own model on your terms that will run locally and if you're savvy enough to set that up you'll be savvy enough to sidestep any restrictions there as well.

Don't impersonate without enthusiastic consent will not survive the tour up the legal system.

All this so-called-AI generated policy meat still needs to go through the sausage grinder in both houses, filled with humans. So I think the scandal wouldn't be as great.

The danger depends more on who you are. If you are in a position where deepfakes could be made to undermine you in your life, there is a higher danger. If you work a desk job in an accounting firm, that risk is much lower.

Deleting all your pictures from the internet is a fig leaf. How many pictures exist in other people's photorolls that you are in? And even if you trusted all of them implicitly, how well do they do their security?

I think at this point in time, deepfakes are ultimately identifiable. By which I don't mean anybody can tell immediately that it is one. But on repeated viewing enough people would get suspicious and when somebody analyzes the 1s and 0s it can be made certain. Society needs to adapt a delayed response tactic. This will take time but eventually we will look at deepfakes with the same skeptical eye we developed for photoshopped images. We are in the period of adjustment lag so the jeopardy is higher today than it will be a couple of years from now.

The biggest danger is for ladies because sexualized deepfakes are not only appalling but the legal system is also lagging to catch up in many places. As soon as a believable deepfake of a famous man makes the rounds, the laws are going to be tightened ASAP though.

There is also a legal battle that needs to be fought. Can I hypothetically make a deepfake sex video of my favorite female celebrity just for my own enjoyment? I could paint her oil on canvas as long as I kept it at my house. I could write fan fic and might even get away with posting that online. Could I not make this movie just for me? And if I protected my computer in a reasonable way, can I be held accountable if some other asshole leaked it onto the internet? We'll have the answers in 10-15 years.

I don't think you can make all deepfakes illegal so we'll have you find a way to live with the threat.

I'm concerned about the resources it gobbles up but I'm not skynet scared.

The effectiveness and the benefits are overhyped by the people with a financial interest in it. We call it AI but it's only one for two there in that it is artificial. It's a technology in its infancy. And it hasn't found a use case that will guarantee an ROI. And the companies involved here are running out of runway.

Would the order be different in an imported fridge?

It's all based on navies here on Earth. They chose the language to make certain ships this-or-that class. There are no definitive rules so far as I'm aware. A certain class of submarines would be designated something class because they shared the same weapons or the same propulsion system. So when sci-fi writers picked up this ball they played fast and loose with already fast and loose rules.

You may need to clarify what you mean by canon in this context exactly. If this Walker class appeared in a live action TV show I would say it's canon. If it's in a novel or an animated show I'd say it's not or not necessarily. Trekkies can spend weeks debating this sort of thing.

Yes, you must have missed it. And so it begins.

Google is moving to make Android less open source. I'm not sure more devs following suit is going be good for them or their users. The G doesn't give an F.

What we need is an OS fork that gets maintained. If not that, some other workaround that fools the Google servers. Because you can bet money that nobody made from flesh and blood is going to look at this inside Google.

Maybe devs can band together and form Middle Finger Corp. and designate one willing person as their contact to serve as registered dev for a gazillion apps. Follow the letter of the law, not the misguided spirit of it, in a manner of speaking.

If you are sitting on a mobile OS and you were afraid to fail like Windows, maybe now is the time to give it a go?

Let's take a deep breath and consider what's happened. The Federal Court of Justice has sent the case back to the lower court. They have not ruled on anything. They have not said ad blocking is piracy. They have essentially said: lower court, you had 25 boxes to tick but you only ticked 24 in your ruling. Go back and do one that ticks all of them.

It's entirely possible that the lower court will change its ruling based on the intricacies of German copyright law, which is shit. But it's not very likely if you ask me. Regardless, whoever loses will appeal it again. This rodeo is far from over. And when it's eventually over the technology will have moved on, with any luck the law along with it, and the only beneficiaries will have been the lawyers.

So the headline should read more like "German court does not rule out that ad blocking could be a copyright infringement."

The argument that Axel Springer is just doing it for their love of democracy is also comical. Media pluralism is important, I agree with them that far, but they are stuck in an outdated mindset. They launched a silly tabloid Fox News wannabe TV channel and failed. They are trying to force eyeballs on their content like you are at a news agent. Meanwhile, news is happening on TikTok and so-called AI is going to reduce their page views to dust. By the time we get a final ruling they will have pivoted strategy 10 times to keep the c-suite in caviar while the established media business that made them successful is rotting away under their assess.

Yes, we are. Please stop masturbating. Thanks.

If you want to know where it is going in the short-term, have a look at Orban's Hungary. Rightwing populist voted in and then got to work at dismantling the state. Control judges appointments, curb the power of the judicial branch, silence critical media, pick a group to scapegoat, buddy of Putin. The list goes on. Democracy only works if people defend it and from my outside POV there aren't enough people doing that just yet. It's worse in Trump 2.0 because this time he came prepared.

There are already horror stories about people being caught up wrongly in the deportation efforts. That's using very mild language for very traumatic events here. It's come to a point where erstwhile allies of the US are advising their citizens not to travel to the US. Because they have lost faith in the rule of law there. Take a minute to let that sink in.

If you're a US citizen, resist. The free state is under threat. If you're an immigrant, be careful.