This shitshow brought all the tankies to the yard in lobste.rs too:

https://lobste.rs/s/ewofl9/several_russian_developers_lose_kernel

I especially like the dude relitigating the Continuation War from the orthodox Russian historiographical position that the Second World War started on 22 Jun 1941:

https://lobste.rs/s/ewofl9/several_russian_developers_lose_kernel#c_h7ecjy

Thanks for the clarification. I kinda missed that entire thing online during the time.

I found an Ars piece:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/10/chatbots-posed-as-therapist-and-adult-lover-in-teen-suicide-case-lawsuit-says/

Asked for comment, Google noted that Character.AI is a separate company in which Google has no ownership stake and denied involvement in developing the chatbots.

However, according to the lawsuit, former Google engineers at Character Technologies “never succeeded in distinguishing themselves from Google in a meaningful way.” Allegedly, the plan all along was to let Shazeer and De Freitas run wild with Character.AI—allegedly at an operating cost of $30 million per month despite low subscriber rates while profiting barely more than a million per month—without impacting the Google brand or sparking antitrust scrutiny.

No it isn’t you idiot. But please continue to spout 90s era New Atheism propaganda as if it will change anyone’s minds at this point.

In this case it sounded like a bunch of amoral assholes on 4chan tried to trick a vulnerable individual to kill themselves. A religion that operated like that would not be able to sustain itself and spread.

That’s a terrifying story. I’m happy it seems to have worked out ok.

I’m not familiar with Character.ai. Is their business model that they take famous fictional characters, force feed their dialog into LLMs, then offer these LLMs as personalized chatbots?

The way things are going, KnowYourMeme will be the only reputable journalistic outlet in a few years.

<Draws two ovals>

Now construct the rest of the fucking androwl

A fertility doctor here in Sweden took sperm from men who were undergoing investigations for infertiliy and used it as donor sperm.

Imagine their surprise when decades later they found out they had kids.

Not sure why he chose those particular samples, maybe all he had available.

Must thinks he’s Case but he’s actually Josef Virek only without the class.

Side note, the Wiki page for Count Zero is a trainwreck

related: Peter Theil-backed startup “General Matter” bags federal contract to enrich uranium to just below weapon grade

Trump has absolutely no principles or beliefs other than those that profit him.

how about we aim for no eugenics, not just the least objectionable sort

Dude is about 3 years too late but I guess it’s always 8 o’clock in the outrage store.

For reference, HN went wild on this submission from a pretty obvious 4chan troll (the self-described “Black developer” just so happened to include references to a Stormfront post (since removed)):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26487854

I thinkt it’s pretty well-lknown that Spotify got all its initial music from Oink. They moved fast, got dominant, and were able to present the record labels with a big audience prepared to pay for streaming music. The labels quickly ensured they’d get the lion’s share of that revenue.

OpenAI and friends tried the same thing - scrape everything, build AGI, reap the rewards. Except it didn’t work, and they’re in a much worse position morally. Even if they can get a judgement that what they’re doing is legal, it will cost them a lot in litigation fees, coupled with the public perception that these culture vampires are ripping off the poor honest author. Not a good place to be in.

After the SIM swap was performed, prosecutors said, Council then performed Internet searches that incriminated him in the fraud conspiracy. The searches included: “SECGOV hack,” “telegram sim swap,” “how can I know for sure if I am being investigated by the FBI,” and “What are the signs that you are under investigation by law enforcement or the FBI even if you have not been contacted by them.”

Ars having some fun selecting quotes.

The Bookseller: Penguin Random House underscores copyright protection in AI rebuff

Penguin Random House (PRH) has amended its copyright wording across all imprints globally, confirming it will appear “in imprint pages across our markets”. The new wording states: “No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner for the purpose of training artificial intelligence technologies or systems”, and will be included in all new titles and any backlist titles that are reprinted.

Now that the content mafia has realized GenAI isn’t gonna let them get rid of all the expensive and troublesome human talent. it’s time to give Big AI a wedgie.

Forget Gladwell

All nonfiction writers can end up writing incorrect or controversial things, but why does every Gladwell book push half-formed and inaccurate theories? For years, my loose feeling about Gladwell was that he writes like someone who doesn’t care about being correct, which is not a way I would describe any other author I’ve encountered. There is something uniquely odd about his work.

They’re not cheering. Evangelical anti-abortion activists have long targeted IVF and it’s been practically banned in at least one US state.