Xodium Dot Net

The story that kicked this off is that Cara (at cara.app) got scraped by some pro-AI douchebro who threatened to release all the URLs and such for AI training (but has apparently backed down since).   This gets down to one of the core reasons, hell  THE  core reason why I hate generative AI so goddamn much. It's exploitative, it doesn't respect consent, and neither do the people who make and support the thing. It was rushed out even though I'm sure someone in the chain said "hey, uh, this could be used to do some really evil shit dude" but because Silicon Valley believes in Zuckerberg's shitty mantra of "move fast and break things", they didn't care. And they never will.   I am an artist. You've maybe seen my art in places. The blurred background for this very site is something I made. The header photo for BlueSCSI.com? Yeah, that's my hand, I made that. I've got skin in this game, which is why when this happens, it deeply,  deeply  p...

So, today, YouTube announced that they were raising the threshold for the YouTube Partner Program (y'know, the thing that allows you to monetize stuff and use monetization features) for people not already in the program (as of February 2017)  to 8000 hours of watch time (or 20 million views over 90 days if you're going for Shorts).   In a rare show of mercy, it was announced that if you're already in the program, you'll be grandfathered in under the old rules, which is 4000 watch hours (with 3000 unlocking SOME of the monetization functionality, like superchats I believe). But 1.I don't trust YouTube to remain merciful forever, and they'll either stop honoring this  or  find some weird criteria to begin forcing grandfathered people out, and 2. This doesn't help the person struggling to hit that 4000 hour milestone and maintain it, either.   It's pretty much YouTube saying "last chopper out of 'nam is in January 2027, and if you can't grab on...

Been seeing this one bounce around the rumor mill and reddit and personally, I'm kind of tired of it. Because I'd bet a Caniac Combo that there is no supposed 20th Anniversary iPhone, simply because there's absolutely zero precedent for it in today's Apple.   These rumors swirled back in 2017, too, and I think what John Gruber wrote about it then is still relevant today:  "Apple is not going to make a special edition of any product — let alone the iPhone, their most important product — just to mark an anniversary. Don’t tell me about the 20th Anniversary Macintosh  — that was a product from the old Apple that was heading toward bankruptcy, and a perfect example of why they shouldn’t do something special to mark something as arbitrary as an anniversary." That was almost ten years ago. And sure, one might argue that Apple did in fact introduce such an iPhone in the iPhone X, but I really, strongly believe that the X name was more of a nod to Mac OS X, or spec...

I think I've spoken at length in other places about how I am a very staunch AI hater and covered everything I hate about how the tech is presented to us today. But I want to take a second to talk about  how  I became this way, because I wasn't always like this! Oh no, I thought the whole "I fed the Bee Movie script into a bot and had them make a sequel" thing that perpetuated the early era of generative AI was...amusing, but easily ignored at worst.   In fact, if ChatGPT just kinda sat over there and existed, I probably wouldn't have hated it. Hated the people that used it to "well, acksually" people and be annoying? Of course, but that's no real fault of the technology. Technology is a tool, and takes on the will of the people using it and controlling it.   And therein lies the problem.    At some point, the entire tech industry saw ChatGPT and fell into a collective psychosis and decided that this,  this  is the next big thing, and that we must ...

(I've already written about this over on Tumblr but I wanted to talk about it here too, and maybe type it out when I'm not sickly and half asleep.)   This summer marks an important milestone for one of the longest-running pieces of equipment I have in my collection: I will have had my trusty Nikon D7200 for  ten whole years . Still on its original battery, too! And still going strong short of a dead pixel developing on the sensor. Which is honestly fine in this day and age of AI making things look too perfect.   After thinking on it, I think this is also the year I retire it.    Not completely, mind, I used air quotes in the title for a reason.   But as far as bringing the camera with me to events or places where there might even be the chance of running into other people? It's staying home and in its place I'll either bring my Mavica or RX100M2, or just use my phone. Is it because a DSLR is unwieldy? Nah. Do I hate being stuck with a 35mm prime? Also nah....

In case you missed it, Plex (the company that makes the media server software) is again raising their prices, by a drastic amount. Some time ago, they already raised their prices, from $80ish to $250, while simultaneously killing off remote streaming for free accounts. Which in and of itself is absurd because none of that streaming data is being passed through Plex servers, they're just handling discovery and authentication. ...but I digress. That was already a pretty big jump in price. Now? They're doing it again! Except this time, they're tripling the price a second time, going from $250 all the way to an absolutely asinine $750. Yes. You heard that right. The better part of a full grand. Anyone who can read between the lines here knows that, effectively, Plex Pass Lifetime dies on July 1st. It's a classic move. Technically, yes, they still offer it. But the pricing is so absurd that no one is going to buy in at that price. It also has the effect of goading people ...