Also there already is a bsky user with the username leoxiv, who makes from what I can tell final fantasy poses, some nsfw. Lol.

Being a bit more specific, its Final Fantasy XIV, which you've probably heard about from people using its free trial as meme material. Its also a better example of the metaverse than any actual metaverse out there, but that's a given for literally any MMO that has popped up for the last twenty fucking years.

Also:

Here's my first shot at it:

"Imagine if the stereotypical high-school nerd became a supervillain."

Update on the Vibe Coder Catastrophe^tm^: he's killed his current app and seems intent to vibe code again:

Personally, I expect this case won't be the last "vibe coded" app/website/fuck-knows-what to get hacked to death - security is virtually nonexistent, and the business/techbros who'd be attracted to it are unlikely to learn from their mistakes.

Somehow, Ross Ulbricht returned

ZITRON DROPPED (his last post for the year)

New post from Brian Merchant: No thanks to generative AI, which is about AI-run publisher Spines and their attempt to enshittify the literature world. Pulling a paragraph near the end here:

For another, the needle can move here; if the noise is loud enough, AI publishing can get slapped with a stigma that can at least help slow the erosion of the industry. Public shame can be a powerful tool, when warranted! So yeah: This is why I’m thankful that we’re building this community, and that there are people out there willing to go to the mat to oppose things like the AI-enabled automation of book production. (I fully resent that ‘AI enabled automation of book production’ is a phrase I had to write in 2024.)

Giving my thoughts, I feel Merchant and co. have a headstart when it comes to moving the needle here, for two main reasons:

• AI has been thoroughly stripped of whatever "wow factor" - showing off that your gen-AI system can make books isn't gonna impress Joe Public the way it would've back in '22 or '23.

• The one-two punch of the slop-nami and the plagiarism lawsuits have indelibly associated "AI" as a concept with "zero effort garbage made of stolen shit" - as a consequence, using or supporting it will immediately disgust a good portion of the crowd right out of the gate

New piece from Ars Technica: Meta smart glasses can be used to dox anyone in seconds, study finds:

Two Harvard students recently revealed that it's possible to combine Meta smart glasses with face image search technology to "reveal anyone's personal details," including their name, address, and phone number, "just from looking at them."

In a Google document, AnhPhu Nguyen and Caine Ardayfio explained how they linked a pair of Meta Ray Bans 2 to an invasive face search engine called PimEyes to help identify strangers by cross-searching their information on various people-search databases. They then used a large language model (LLM) to rapidly combine all that data, making it possible to dox someone in a glance or surface information to scam someone in seconds—or other nefarious uses, such as "some dude could just find some girl’s home address on the train and just follow them home,” Nguyen told 404 Media.

This is all possible thanks to recent progress with LLMs, the students said.

Putting my off-the-cuff thoughts on this:

1. Right off the bat, I'm pretty confident AR/smart glasses will end up dead on arrival - I'm no expert in marketing/PR, but I'm pretty sure "our product helped someone dox innocent people" is the kind of Dasani-level disaster which pretty much guarantees your product will crash and burn.

2. I suspect we're gonna see video of someone getting punched for wearing smart glasses - this story's given the public a first impression of smart glasses that boils down to "this person's a creep", and its a lot easier to physically assault someone wearing smart glasses than some random LLM

3. This is a gut feeling I've had since Baldur talked about AI's public image nearly three months ago, but this gives me further reason to expect the public are gonna be outright hostile to the tech industry once the AI bubble pops.

GO TO AUDIBLE.COM/REPENTHARLEQUIN TO ENTER A COMA AND ESCAPE THIS MADNESS

If we're lucky, it'll cut off promptfondlers' supply of silicon and help bring this entire bubble crashing down.

It'll probably also cause major shockwaves for the tech industry at large, but by this point I hold nothing but unfiltered hate for everyone and everything in Silicon Valley, so fuck them.

I vaguely remember mentioning this AI doomer before, but I ended up seeing him openly stating his support for SB 1047 whilst quote-tweeting a guy talking about OpenAI's current shitshow:

I've had this take multiple times before, but now I feel pretty convinced the "AI doom/AI safety" criti-hype is going to end up being a major double-edged sword for the AI industry.

The industry's publicly and repeatedly hyped up this idea that they're developing something so advanced/so intelligent that it could potentially cause humanity to get turned into paperclips if something went wrong. Whilst they've succeeded in getting a lot of people to buy this idea, they're now facing the problem that people don't trust them to use their supposedly world-ending tech responsibly.

It'd be the sole silver lining of this entire two-year bubble.

An MSDS may not tell you what respirator to use;

Slander! MSDS will tell you to use the right one (“appropriate respirator”), it’s your job to figure out what it is

Po-tay-toh, po-tah-toh, still better than an LLM directly endangering you with bad advice