Can't wait for ads to be grotesquely injected into any video on big streaming sites. If you don't want reruns of Cheers to have distracting ads for Rings of Power you better spring for Prime Platinum. Even the heroes at uBlock Origin are going to have a hard time filtering out injected ads on some YouTuber's bedroom wall.

Likely many other, I've been grossed out by some of the shit getting churned out with generative ai. But it's also made me notice some of the existing things that give me the same feeling.

Poorly translated stuff, as often seen on cheap Chinese imports, has the same uncanny valley awkwardness. It sounds like English, but it isn't what an actual human who spoke English would say. And if we want to talk about an algorithm that's gone rogue and is destroying the world while trying to fulfill some arbitary metrics, there's always late-stage capitalism...

Anyone else notice things like this?

I've had a pretty depressing morning, scrolling through my Subscribed feed and realising that 90% of new posts were from the same two bot accounts (bagel and somethingmelon, can't be remeber exactly and I've blocked them.)

Thankfully, a few people had made "ai slop" comments under one, so I checked the post history and, sure, a new account posting at a implausible rate. And once you started looking at the posts they were kinda samey, generic or a bit off. But I think that if the bot had been programmed to post at a slower rate, I don't think I'd have really noticed.

So my question is, should people be allowed to report bot accounts? And can/should mods be expected at assess someone's humanity? The very idea is gross, but so is the thought that lemmy would be very easily swamped by a small number of more careful written bots.

I've played some online games (with friends during covid), and although we tried we eventually gave up. Partly, there's no replacement for socialising in person with close friends, but also we found the disconnect between medieval fantasy and videochatting through discord to be a mood killer.

I live abroad and would love to get into online gaming, and I've been thinking that it might help to play a game that benefits from the medium. I imagine a cyberpunk or Sci fi game would be easier to get in the mood as the characters themselves might be communicating through video feeds and holo-nets.

It's not a style of rpg I've played before, so I'm open to suggestions. And it doesn't need to be cyber / sci-fi, if there's some other reason why everyone being seperate and disembodied makes sense (like would Wraith feel even more depressing over videochat?)

I'm rewatching Babylon 5 and it's putting me in the mood for an immersive game where I get to command a spaceship and blast stuff with lasers or plasma cannons or whatever.

I fondly remember playing Tie Fighter, Elite 2 and Privateer, and I was wondering if there were good games from this side of the millennium? I've tried playing Tie Fighter Total Conversion, but without a joystick I found it very hard to control. I've played some Elite Dangerous, and enjoy a bit of trading, but the combat is a bit too hard for me.

I'm a very casual gamer, and not looking for an mmo, or anything particularly challenging. I just want to zoom around in a spaceship as epic battles rage around me, and have a bit of a power fantasy.

Any suggestions?

I'm in a group of friends that are looking for an alternative to basic chat/messager services like Signal (or WhatsApp/discord/etc.) Chats are fine for causal conversation, but when we're doing something more specific and detailed like a watching a season of films together, it's really tiresome to have to read through dozens of messages, with multiple conversations happening at the same time.

A more classic message board / forum style would be better, having indvidual posts and comments and keeping discussions organised. For me, the obvious answer is lemmy, and just making our own communities - but that's got the issue of being public and of hassle of being an extra account and app or whatever for everyone involved (I seem to know too many people who aren't on lemmy yet).

Is there any other alternatives? Easy ways to setup a Web forum? Or decent apps that allow a more message board style of communication for groups? Is there other ways to approach this problem?

More of a "waiting while cloud flare verifies my humanity thought" but this is the closest c/ I could find.

Given my Elder Millenial age group, the mid ninties as the birth of bisexuality rings pretty true on a personal level.

But as someone who thinks that bi is the most natural of sexualites, it's probably the only one that didn't need to be "invented". Homosexuality in the modern sense is quite recent (although same sex attraction itself is timeless) and heterosexuality seems to require an awful lot of policing and enforcement for something that's meant to be "natural"...

Whether the finger guns and leather jackets have always been part of bi identify remains a question for cultural archaeologists.

Recently got an immersion heater and vacuum packer and I've been experimenting with lots of sous-vide cooking. This 'roast' beef (gently cooked for 24 hours then finished on a hot griddle) was great, so smooth and rare with still a lovely browned crust.