Nurses wear inside of wrist to simplify taking heart rate, or at least they used to back when you actually had to count it yourself. Divers wear inside of wrist to avoid having to do an awkward posture change and instead just look down.
When I was young, we had kind of a surrogate grandmother who was a retired nurse anesthetist. She told us stories of the old days counting the pulse of patients, holding an eye dropper full of chloroform to add to the gauze mask over the patient's face when the pulse got too fast.
If she had too many cases close to the end of her shift, she'd have to drive home buzzed on chloroform fumes.
No need to take the bet, reality is already there. Miku is the endgame for idols. Forever young. Will never have a boyfriend. Always follows the script, or not when the team managing her decides they need a little drama. etc. etc. etc.
> This is why I introduced the concept at the beginning of royalties for AI work. Ultimately AI is not an alien brain generating texts or images from its own imagination. Neural networks and large language learning models input real people’s intellectual property and output that intellectual property when prompted by someone using the program. The novelness of the output is merely how the IP is reformatted to fit the parameters of the user’s prompts.
The crux of the argument is this paragraph. But swap out AI in that paragraph for "writers who have read the classical western canon" and suddenly you realize that no one has original ideas, and that the idea that somehow humans are uniquely capable of being the primary causes of their own thoughts and owe transitive credit (and royalties!) to the great authors of all time, or their estates, is madness.
The threat is the even further enclosure of the commons and the expropriation of culture by corporate interests who actively seek to destroy common culture by preventing the very people whose participation in a now privatized "culture" enables corporate profits, from ever earning a cent because they do not "own" the "IP" to the characters that they love and that are only common because they are a shared element of a common culture. It is absurd. If media corporations had to compensate whenever someone mentioned a trade marked character because it counted as advertising then let them keep their "culture" private. Until then, they are the beneficiaries of billions of dollars of stolen advertising and stolen culture.
> The crux of the argument is this paragraph. But swap out AI in that paragraph for "writers who have read the classical western canon" and suddenly you realize that no one has original ideas, and that the idea that somehow humans are uniquely capable of being the primary causes of their own thoughts and owe transitive credit (and royalties!) to the great authors of all time, or their estates, is madness.
I disagree. As a cinephile and bibliophile, I'm often astounded by the creativity of writers. I don't know where they get their inspiration. Sadly, I don't possess such creative inspiration myself, despite having read "the classical western canon". Much of the great work is actually autobiographical, taken from the writer's own life rather than derivative from previous work.
I would argue that autobiographical content is no less derivative than reading a book or watching a film, then retelling it. Any creativity is in the difference, and only the difference.
Learned to read from the Commodore 64 user manual, Spock and Wesley Crusher as a role models. Summer holidays in Mousehole, first trip abroad was to meet my Uncle in Canberra, amongst other parts of Australia and Asia, where I totally failed to see Uluru or get beaten up by a kangaroo (though in fairness I was like nine and would have been mild and gross irresponsibility respectively on the part of my parents if they had in fact happened). Raised Catholic by an atheist father and a mother who filled the house with Hindu idols, Orthodox icons, healing crystals, and runic horoscope equipment. Saw my father suffer an epileptic fit at the kitchen table — what's now called 'tonic-clonic' but at the time we called it 'grand mal'.
You know, the usual."
(Can you guess what, if anything, is embellished?)
Um... I think you're missing the point? Almost anyone could create autobiographical material that sucks. I'm sure LLMs could cobble together autobiographical material from sources that sucks too.
Truly creative writers are capable of producing material that's good, entertaining, interesting, moving. That's a rare talent, and it's not derivative.
Ok, but nothing in your comment helps me change my mind about what you original point was, as that still looks like you asking "where do they get their inspiration? Autobiographical experience!" and me saying "being inspired by reality isn't any less copying than being inspired by existing canon".
> Truly creative writers are capable of producing material that's good, entertaining, interesting, moving. That's a rare talent, and it's not derivative.
I think we must be using the word "derivative" differently.
To me, Strata by Terry Pratchett is clearly derivative of Ringworld by Larry Niven. I'd say it's not just good, entertaining, interesting, but also that it's superior to the original… and yet, still derivative.
From what I've seen from ChatGPT-3.5, it… writes fiction like someone born in 1950 who was always disgusted by sex and violence and who now has mild Alzheimer's and gets confused what they're supposed to be writing about — that it's as good as it is, is of course miraculous, but even in this state it can be put in front of an editor and turned into something fun far faster than getting a really good human to do it nearly right the first time.
(Some people don't realise it's absolutely bad enough to need an editor, just search for reviews containing the string "As a large language model" for examples).
As an example of getting it right (IMO), the following link was mostly generated by AI, minimal editing by me for formatting, repeated prompting and plenty of cherry picking to make sure it kept to the fictional reality and didn't start veering into "this hypothetical creature" or "look what nonsense ye olde people used to believe in":
> I'm sure LLMs could cobble together autobiographical material from sources that sucks too.
That would be a biography not an autobiography. And AI writing in general will remain so until some AI gets a long term memory and also embodied… although it might be the long term memories are autobiographical "writing" created as we sleep from our waking memories.
> Ok, but nothing in your comment helps me change my mind about what you original point was, as that still looks like you asking "where do they get their inspiration? Autobiographical experience!" and me saying "being inspired by reality isn't any less copying than being inspired by existing canon".
The question is about royalties for writing. You seem to argue that writers don't deserve royalties because all writing is derivative, "a series of footnotes to Plato" as A. N. Whitehead put it. My argument is that good writing, indeed great writing, is not merely derivative, otherwise it wouldn't be interesting. Great writing is a rare talent, I might say divinely inspired if I believed in the divine, so I'll say genetically inspired instead. I think that writers need to be supported, protected, encouraged financially so that they can continue to exist and write great material for our benefit and enjoyment. The alternative is bleak: if writers are not supported via royalties, then the only financially viable "art" will inevitably be mass-produced, mass-marketed pablum. That's a depressing prospect.
Of course super-famous writers make a ton in royalties, but it's actually the other writers for whom royalties are crucial. In a lot of cases, royalties make the difference between survival and destitution.
> To me, Strata by Terry Pratchett is clearly derivative of Ringworld by Larry Niven. I'd say it's not just good, entertaining, interesting, but also that it's superior to the original… and yet, still derivative.
I haven't read Stata, but I thought Ringworld was overrated, so I'm inclined to believe that another work could be superior.
> That would be a biography not an autobiography.
I meant "faked" autobiographical writing. Writing in the autobiographical style. I'm sure you can ask OpenAI or whatever to write an autobiography. Hell, some actual "nonfiction" autobiographies are quite fake (and frequently ghostwritten).
> You seem to argue that writers don't deserve royalties because all writing is derivative
You're interpreting my words rather creatively there.
And by creatively, I mean "wrong".
I'm being more inclusive, not exclusive, for where the work is done.
To take a different tack: it makes sense for many authors to go to a publisher and have a back-and-forth with an editor and end up with only 10% of the gross sales, and this implies that 90% of the value isn't really coming from the author (in most cases and almost all the famous authors are exceptional).
> The alternative is bleak: if writers are not supported via royalties, then the only financially viable "art" will inevitably be mass-produced, mass-marketed pablum.
I think we already live in such a world: as you agree, most authors cannot sustain themselves from just the writing, only rare exceptions like JK Rowling and Stephen King. As the rest only barely make do, I assert that this demonstrates they are forced to do exactly what you decry.
(There's a lot of free stories distributed on reddit etc., some even have patreon set up. I don't think that makes a difference either way).
> it makes sense for many authors to go to a publisher and have a back-and-forth with an editor and end up with only 10% of the gross sales, and this implies that 90% of the value isn't really coming from the author
I'm not arguing for any kind of philosophical "labor theory of value". My point is very practical: writers need royalties. Yes it sucks for the writers that they only get 10-20% of the sales, but it's infinitely better than 0%!
> as you agree, most authors cannot sustain themselves from just the writing, only rare exceptions like JK Rowling and Stephen King.
I don't agree with that and didn't say it. In fact it's empirically false. I said that in the hypothetical scenario with no royalties, most authors wouldn't be able to sustain themselves. In the real world, there are a lot of professional writers other than Rowling and King who make a decent, good, or even great living.
The reason that the film writers and actors are going on strike is that streaming and AI are an existential threat to them. But it can't be an existential threat if they don't exist in the first place. Professional writers and actors do exist aside from the super rich and famous ones (who are striking more in solidarity than from personal fear). Of course show business is very difficult to get into; nonetheless, it's a lucrative industry supporting countless professionals. And most of them need their royalties, because they don't get the giant unfront checks that the big stars do.
To expound on your point, corporations will be able to use AI - giant conglomerates such as Disney, that own enough media to train AI models on only works they own copyright on (and own enough senators to make sure those copyrights last), will happily use AI.
But you, peasant, can only train it on century+ old works. Because "to promote the progress of science and useful arts", nothing post-WWII may become public domain, or artists will starve and culture wither.
If nobody has original ideas then where did the "classical western canon" come from? And what about all those people in the Far East, who never read Homer? Where did the Romance of the Three Kingdoms come from?
I don't understand how we got to this point, where a machine trained to reproduce the results of human creativity is taken as evidence that there exists no such thing as human creativity. What are we training LLMs with, if not the results of human creativity?
I think maybe that's all the result of growing up in an era were there is so much repetitive, trope-filled entertainment that people assume nobody could ever create an original work of art that wasn't just a stitching together of other peoples' ideas. But that doesn't make sense for the same reason I give above: those ideas must have been original at some point.
I was playing Stellaris recently, and a few months later started a rewatch of Babylon 5. The inspiration is striking. B5, despite all its shortcomings, represents a vision of the timeless nature of politics that is in a way distinct from e.g. TNG. Furthermore the characters have a level of depth and complexity that force one to look in the mirror and ask hard questions about what it means to be a good person in the context of titanic forces the we could easily dismiss as being beyond our control.
There is an old Human Giant sketch about a sci-fi show, the producer of which has got a lot of flack for noticing successful shows on other networks and copying them. For example, he pitched a Heroes knock-off called Superpower People. I assume that is a sarcastic nod towards the accusation that DS9 was the powerful Star Trek franchise’s deliberate attempt to steal B5’s thunder.
(Sad that Human Giant isn’t on YouTube like so many other classic sketch comedies of yore. Apparently there are rights issues.)
> I assume that is a sarcastic nod towards the accusation that DS9 was the powerful Star Trek franchise’s deliberate attempt to steal B5’s thunder.
The accusation isn’t that DS9 was an attempt to steal B5’s thunder, its that JMS pitched what later became B5 to Paramount as a Star Trek series, they rejected it, and then turned around and built DS9 around the material they were pitched; that they literally stole it, not tried to steal its thunder.
And for this, Paramount will never be the Trek fan's friend. CBS/Paramount have done nothing but been hostile towards new Trek ideas and suing fan-films out of existence. Not cool, not cool at all. They are under the impression that it has to be TNG cast or not-at-all. Maybe that's in Jonathan Frake's contract? I dunno but it's gone the way of Mattel and not the Roddenberry way.
> CBS/Paramount have done nothing but been hostile towards new Trek ideas
Very much not true, much to the consternation of the less flexible wing of the fandom.
> and suing fan-films out of existence.
Despite plenty of legal grounds to shut them down, they were quite tolerant of fan efforts up until Axanar, and even after that the fan guidelines were still generous compared to most media properties.
> They are under the impression that it has to be TNG cast or not-at-all.
What are you talking about? Except for a couple of cross over main cast characters in DS9, and of course Picard, Trek has been basically TNG-cast free but for guest spots through Voyager, Enterprise, three Kelvin-timeline films, Lower Decks, Discovery, Strange New Worlds, and (I think) Prodigy.
>Except for a couple of cross over main cast characters in DS9, and of course Picard, Trek has been basically TNG-cast free but for guest spots through Voyager, Enterprise, three Kelvin-timeline films, Lower Decks, Discovery, Strange New Worlds, and (I think) Prodigy.
Do you hear yourself?
I’m waiting for the day it all goes Mickey Mouse. Then, we’ll get some real Star Trek. What do I mean by that? Take away the special effects for a moment and look at the characters. Picard: There was never a better suited actor to be captain. Kirk: The machismo was sexual assault but somehow his band of rando’s made it out. Captain Sisko: Man who tamed the wormhole, and the politics that went with it. Janeway: Need I say more? She showed that woman are up for the job.
I’m not saying the cast of the current Gen shows isn’t good, it’s that their characters have been Marvelized. Everything’s a big end-of-world event or taps into your familiarity with a previous character to tend credit to the new. I’m a fan until the end but c’mon… Star Trek Discovery is Avengers. Strange New Worlds is trying to bring back the Abrams spark but lacks depth. Cheesy one liners and fast scene switching so that it makes you feel you’re on a ride at the fair.
I’d love for it to slow down, do the character development. How about a different ship during a familiar timeline or some way to explain the now 4 (P/K/AP/AK) timelines?
I really don't know what your real argument is, since you seem to have abandoned the “They are under the impression that it has to be TNG cast or not-at-all” for a bunch of different and directly contradictory arguments, from which the only coherent thing is you don't like new Trek and everything, and that's fine, like what you like and dislike what you dislike, but I don’t think there is anything that supports productive discussion here.
My real argument is that the current trek lineup is vastly different than what trek has traditionally been. Story driven with nods to science that push our understanding of the universe. Examples with counter examples:
- TNG "The Measure of a Man" : explores the rights of androids and non-human lifeforms that are sentient and given a choice. Whether that choice should be honored or not. Where the line of rights of man are drawn.
- Discovery "An Obol for Charon" : A giant all-knowing sphere shows up with "sphere data" that the enterprise must protect like it's a database of user data with PII.
- DS9 "In the Pale Moonlight" : Sisko and the Federation are taking heavy losses in the Dominion War, this episode is about how far a leader will go to accomplish victory, who, or what, they are willing to sacrifice.
- Discovery "Unification III" : Tear jerk for the late Leonard Nimoy.
I'm saying that it's lost its way. While the universe is still amazing and detailed and all, the story/plots are just meh. I mean, we had a whole story arch of Tardigrades. Not exactly riveting science but ok, I'll bite, what about tardigrades? That they are on the moon? No? Time traveling tardigrades, yeah I'm out.
Oof. I tried to make it through the first season and don’t think I’d put “new ideas” near the top of my list of descriptors. But I get that many people are enjoying it.
It’s mostly remakes of earlier trek episodes and rip-offs of existing non-Trek stories (as in the The Ones who Walk Away from Omelas episode). In a familiar setting and pulling in (with varying levels of success) characters we already know. It’s had a couple original ones (or, more likely, rip-offs of stories I’m not familiar with) like the amnesia-society-planet (which isn’t quite just a Lotus Eaters type story) but that’s not the norm. The framework for it is the same as TOS and TNG, so that's not new either.
Not one I’d have selected for “new ideas”. Though I am mostly enjoying it. At least it’s not the narrative train-wreck that Picard S1 was.
to bring it all in on itself -- this is a premise in a later Farscape episode if I remember right. Some distant alien race is looking for television show ideas and one of them keeps pitching Earth shows until finally they decide upon creating a new Farscape.
They used Stargate cast members as cameos as fan-service towards people who mentioned the likeness of actors between the two series.
I'll drop my Quake II anecdote here. Quake II was the first FPS I ever beat (at least I think I beat it). I did it over a week in the summer when visiting a friend out of state (never would have been allowed otherwise).
When I started, I had only ever played the original DOOM, so I used those controls, and lo and behold they worked, and I thought nothing of it. At some point as I was playing along, my view suddenly became locked to the ceiling and I was thoroughly confused and stuck. Turns out I had bumped the mouse, and managed to figure out that mouse look was a thing after extended fiddling with the system to try to determine the cause and get back to killing badguys. Needless to say, the game got quite a bit easier after that.
There wasn't internet, neither I nor my friend knew what mouse-look was, we had never seen anyone play a true 3d fps. It is hard to imagine how obscure and alien the interfaces for games are because of how pervasive the knowledge has become.
In case you were unaware, this is actually the source code of the rerelease of Quake II. The source code for the original Quake II has been released for many years[0], along with many of the id Software classics[1].
In case you were unaware, the source code of the original is included along with the re-release in this repository, as stated in the first sentence of the readme.
You reminded me of the first time I saw a lan full of people playing an fps.
I was at a ComicCon in Rome, Italy, circa 1999, anyway Half Life just hit gold production and released multiplayer demos there were at least 20 people all playing on lan multiplayer half life, with mouses too! Crazy.
I went to many many lan parties since then up to 2005, then online match making killed quakenet and socializing.
I have had a long standing suspicion that the proposed attentional mechanism is the same reason why nagging someone almost never actually helps get something done, because it shifts their attention away from the actual activity and toward a negative social interaction.
Far better to restructure the environment so that the person can get the work done. In the case of traffic deaths we have really good data that says that you should change the structure of streets and roads so that people instinctively drive safely.
1] never nag some one to do something, while also expecting them to abandon doing something that was previously nagged about.
2] when some one shifts focus to do something, and is nagged to do exactly that thing, the chance of it being done, with quality, or at all, will approach zero.
The article framed it as a client-calculated price double-checked by server, but I think a better interpretation is that it was a server-calculated price with a preview price computed by client.
How is this any different from javascript validating input forms? The backend clearly verified the input, meaning the client would not end up paying the wrong amount due to change of conditions or discongruency between the server and client. Exceedingly smart and simple, and the objections towards it demonstrates the modern cargo culting of "let the server handle everything it always knows best".
