Cyber Yuki

following its acquisition from Sony

Has anything good EVER come from big company acquisitions AT ALL?

Geocities -> acquired by Yahoo -> crap -> death

Youtube -> acquired by Google -> ad crap

Blogger -> acquired by Google -> crap

Macromedia -> acquired by Adobe -> Monopoly crap

Washington Post -> acquired by Bezos -> political crap

MySQL -> Acquired by Oracle -> copyright crap

Github -> acquired by Microsoft -> crap

Reddit -> acquired by Conde Nast -> political crap

Twitter -> acquired by Musk -> utter crap

Every single time I see a cool startup get bought by a big player, all I can see is the service going to shit.

It’s one thing to be uncooperative with Linux development.

A very different thing is to introduce vulnerabilities into existing working code.

Okay, here’s the full explanation for you:

VTubers are simply people using 2D or 3D avatars that move using face tracking technology.

The issue at hand is that many VTubers have skimpy outfits but many of them are classy, i.e. not overly sexual. Furthermore, the content they produce is SFW even if at times they talk or joke about NSFW topics. Most of the time VTubers just engage in chat, gaming or reaction videos. And the official with Twitch’s new rules is that changing a VTuber model requires hiring a digital artist and a model animator aka “rigger”. These are super expensive, many of those models can cost thousands of dollars to make. So when Twitch days “cover your hips or be banned”, VTubers whose models have FROM THE BEGINNING shown hips, now have to pay artists and riggers a huge amount of cash simply to cover themselves up.

To make things worse, Twitch’s rules are arbitrary and unpredictable. Who knows if tomorrow they’ll have to cover their shoulders? Cover their cleavage? Skirts below the knee? You don’t know, and every single time Twitch updates their TOS, VTubers have to spend money just to stay in the business. The least Twitch could do is state a fixed, immutable set of rules so VTubers can design their own outfits without fear of being targeted by Twitch’s sharia police. But that doesn’t happen. Twitch rules keep changing over and over, but mysteriously they never affect women wearing super tiny bikinis and showing off their sexy bodies in their pools and hot tubs section.

That’s the issue. That Twitch’s TOS are not only unpredictable, but inconsistently enforced. One could say managers don’t like VTubers and engage in these practices to virtually kick them off their platform.

TL;DR: VTubers are NOT porn. And yet, Twitch is selectively enforcing these rules against VTubers while completely allowing exactly the same - or even much more sexualized - content for IRL streamers in their bath tubs and pools section.

Intentional? Better use Negligent. It’s hard to prove intent; knowledge of something going on is much easier to prove.

Thanks!

More interesting is the origins of that phrase to designate prostitution.

Fortunately, I found an article in worldhistories.net, that shows the first documented time of this phrase. The person who coined the phrase was none other than Ruyard Kipling (“The Jungle Book”):

Lalun is a member of the most ancient profession in the world. Lilith was her very-great-grandmamma, and that was before the days of Eve as every one knows. In the West, people say rude things about Lalun’s profession, and write lectures about it, and distribute the lectures to young persons in order that Morality may be preserved. In the East where the profession is hereditary, descending from mother to daughter, nobody writes lectures or takes any notice, and that is a distinct proof of the inability of the East to manage its own affairs.

- On the City Wall, in In Black and White (Allahabad: A. H. Wheeler & Co., 1889), page 78

If you want to know about actual prostitution, we should go far back to ancient Mesopotamian texts.

According to “The Epic of Gilgamesh” (the most ancient epic in the world), the gods created a savage man, Enkidu, who lived in harmony with the animals in the woods. Gilgamesh wants to tame Enkidu, and is told to bring a “harimtu” (a “sacred prostitute”) to him.

and he [Enkidu] possessed her ripeness. She was not bashful as she welcomed his ardor. She laid aside her cloth and he rested upon her. She treated him, the savage, to a woman’s task, as his love was drawn unto her.”

Later, as he regrets joining civilization, Enkidu curses the harimtu:

“I will curse you with a great curse… you shall not build a house for your debauch you shall not enter the tavern of girls…. May waste places be your couch, May the shadow of the town-wall be your stand May thorn and bramble skin your feet May drunkard and toper (ed note: someone who drinks alcohol to excess) alike slap your cheek.”

Researcher Gerda Lerner, in her article “The Origin of Prostitution in Ancient Mesoportamia” (Signs, 1986, pp. 245-6), says:

The nature of this curse tells us that the harimtu who mated with Enkidu lived an easier and better life than the harlot who has her stand at the town wall and is abused by her drunken customers.

This would confirm the distinction we made earlier between the women engaged in various forms of sacral sexual service and commercial prostitutes. Such a distinction was more likely to have existed in the earlier period than later.”

So yes, there were prostitutes in ancient Mesopotamia, the cradle of civilization.

EDIT: typo

By any chance, were the clamps filled with styrofoam or something? 😁 (Tofu-dreg joke)

At this point, I’d like to ask: If a foreign company threatens democracy in a country, is it legal for the executive to ban business with that company?

No? Then that doesn’t make sense. It’s a FOREIGN company, the government should have the right to do whatever it needs to protect its citizens in that regard.

says CEO

Since when do CEOs do things because they’re actually useful and not because they want to cut costs at the expense of the workers and even the public?

Oh no, I know where this story leads…

Today:

I’m excited to announce that Beeper has been acquired by Automattic.

Tomorrow:

We’re excited to announce that Automattic has been acquired by (Insert megacorp here).

Later:

Beeper personnel laid off; project discontinued

Just you wait.

The fact that we’re reading and commenting about it on Lemmy is satisfying, despite the sadness of the situation. It’s like watching the city burn after you moved away and saying “wow, I guess I really took the right choice by leaving.”

“Let’s treat our workers like slaves or else the entire economy will suffer” is a far worse take IMHO.

1. Establish a wage floor.

2. Establish a price cap.

If the corporation can’t make a profit from this, then perhaps their business model was not viable in the first place.

By decreasing billionaire executive bonuses, of course. You realize apps like Uver give shitty pay to the drivers and keep most of the profits for the execs, don’t you?

Repeat after me: They are MIDDLEMEN.

Did the ordinance specify that the app companies would have to absorb the costs and NOT pass them to the users? No? Ah, well, that explains it then.

As a decentralized platform, Bluesky’s code is completely open source,

As long as a company is in control, being decentralized doesn’t mean shit.

It can be mass produced in very little time.

Show me an application of Generative AI for teaching right now. As in, already existing.

What constitutes fair use?

17 U.S.C. § 107

Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 17 U.S.C. § 106 and 17 U.S.C. § 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.

GenAI training, at least regarding art, is neither criticism, comment, news reporting scholarship, nor research.

AI training is not done by scientists but engineers of a corporative entity with a long term profit goal.

So, by elimination, we can conclude that none of the purposes covered by the fair use doctrine apply to Generative AI training.

Q.E.D.