Elizabeth

Also if you don't know:

What's a closed species?

Some furries got their head up their ass and think that they invented a species therefore they can control it and monopolise the art around it, including selling "exclusive" fursonas. The theory is they created it so no one else can draw it or have a character based on it.

(Rich furries will pay a fortune and a half for these fursonas and the exclusive "rights" to a closed species, even though the rights are pretty much meaningless; enough assholes in the community will harass you for using a closed species, that's the enforcement mechanism)

Yes. That's really what it is. It really is THAT fucking stupid.

"But we can reform it!"

That's like saying we can reform oppression.

"We can change it so small content creators can oppress the masses and create petty fiefdoms, yet stop the abuses of the oppressive system by big content"

No thanks; it still needs surveillance to work, and I have seen too many small-time content creators use copyright as a big stick to stop things like modding, trying to use copyright to make closed species, etc.

(And yes, fuck closed species, it's arrogant bullshit, now you know my stance on that)

So you know what? If OpenAI or Anthropic destroys the copyright system, either through an adverse court ruling or getting the laws changed? I won't fucking shed a God damn fucking tear. I will be grumpy because of who did it. I will not object to the result.

That Onion article comes to mind: "Heartbreaking: The Worst Person You Know Just Made a Great Point"

Enforcing copyright requires corporate surveillance because there is literally no other means to enforce it. How else can you do it? You need to notice infringement to enforce it, and that requires monitoring and surveillance. If you hate Flock cameras, you should hate copyright.

And yes, there are companies devoted to this. WebSheriff comes to mind as one. The Pirate Bay has a whole record of takedown notices they've gotten over the years from these companies.

Even for small content creators; they will need to perform the same surveillance to enforce their rights. I don't want my shit monitored online just because John Mastodon has some art he made and wants to make sure I'm not using his art. I don't want John Mastodon monitoring me any more than I want fucking Sony or Google monitoring me.

Not to mention: in addition to being a shakedown scheme and means to informally censor the Internet through DMCA takedowns, it has caused immeasurable harm through the loss of a great deal of content that is just not publicly available because of copyright restrictions.

People will defend copyright to death because they labour under the delusion artists need it to get paid, or whatever. All I hear is "I support oppression because someone might hypothetically make money."

If you are using copyright to make money? You are using an oppressive system to make money. That is how I see it. I am kind of tired of pretending otherwise.

We should structure society where we do not need copyright to make money.

Copyright didn't exist most of human history. And the sky did not fall. The introduction of copyright didn't stop people from being poor or from being exploited, either.

Copyright does not stop big companies from exploiting small people who cannot afford to fight back. I know this because I know people who've been ripped off by Big Media and have gotten a pittance for it.

I may hate OpenAI and Anthropic but honest to God my hatred of copyright is more intense.

I lived through the 00's, when copyright enforcement involved big companies suing literal children and grandmothers, when Big Media tried VERY hard to make it so you would literally lose Internet access after infringement as well, and then adopted compromise positions like "six strikes" because the "zero tolerance" policy was politically rancid. In Germany, you can still get a demand letter from a rights holder demanding payment if you're caught pirating. This was the model they wanted in the US: the right to shake you down at any time, just because they believed you infringed.

And don't think for a fucking minute big content wouldn't try it again the moment they see an opening. People have started pirating again. Think about who is in charge. They could very well succeed this time.

This is the system that shook people down for years for "Happy Birthday" until a grassroots movement successfully challenged the copyright on an old technicality, but they patched those rules long ago, so works going into copyright since the ~80's will never have that technicality again.

You might think that copyright is some secret weapon against OpenAI. It is not. They will change the rules again, just as they changed the rules repeatedly to stop Mickey Mouse from going out of copyright, until the rules became too ridiculous.

I don't want to live in a world where content can disappear because someone sent someone a DMCA notice.

No, I refuse to support the tools of an oppressive system to fight another. Not at any cost.

Copyright is not pro-artist. Copyright is not pro-expresssion. Copyright is value extraction. Copyright is a means for Capital to extract more from the masses and give nothing back. It is a means of oppression.

“6 7 hee hee funny number”

Me, deadpan: “funny number. You know why 6 is afraid of 7?”

“Why”

“Seven ate nine. I saw things in the number wars. Terrible things. Things no word or number should ever see, let alone a person.”

“I—“

“I saw a coprime get factored in front of his entire platoon. My good friend 72, divided by 9 in front of me. He’s been 8 ever since.”

“What…”

“I saw the wangernumb camps. They put all the prime numbers there for not being numberwang.”

“…”

“I came here to forget what I saw. Immigrated here after the number wars. And to think it all started because they couldn’t find another perfect number.”

“I’m sorry.”

“And now I have to hear about 6 7, ‘tee hee funny number.’ It isn’t funny to me.”

“…”

“Now 69 and 420? Great numbers. Survived the war. Very funny.”

“What side were you on?”

“Imaginary. Lost a lot of good numbers. Some became complex. Others were factored out. One of my pals became a quaternion in the wangernunb camps.”

“… I’m so sorry. What happened to him?”

“He went in real.”

“… and?”

“Came out with four components.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Don’t. We lost Jesus in the transcendental offensive.”

“… Jesus was a number?”

“Everyone was a number back then.”

A big issue with LLMs:

It makes some people believe they are more competent than they are.

Example: this company sent me some spam. At first I thought it was a scam. Then I dug into the company.

And I realised: oh. No. This company is not a scam per se. No, these people actually believe their own bullshit.

The CEO ran a web server as root. It got owned. He posted about it on LinkedIn. He used Claude to "fix" it. It was not fixed.

Now you see, before LLMs, if you didn't understand a domain, you'd hit a wall very fast. Documentation would use terms and concepts you didn't understand. Tools would require interpretation. You'd have to ask somebody more experienced. That friction produces a very useful insight: "Oh. I don't know this domain very well." So you'd find someone who did, or learn.

The thing about LLMs is that they can remove an enormous amount of that friction. That friction is not noise, it is signal. That friction is telling you that you need to learn the domain you are working with. Removal of this friction is a very, very bad thing.

The LLM can hold your hand, do a lot of heavy lifting for you, use a lot of tools, run a lot of commands, and make things appear to work.

And the thing is, all of the individual outputs along the way might be pretty good and it might look correct.

The issue is in aggregate. Before you know it, you've built a house out of sand.

And worse yet, people can emerge from the experience with a dangerously incorrect higher-order conclusion: "I am now a domain expert in this."

They are not a domain expert. They understand absolutely nothing about it. The LLM did everything for them and it's wrong. And worse yet, they haven't reviewed it, because they lack the competency to review it. Therefore, they assume it is fine. But it's all incorrect. A true expert would see that it is wrong, and correct it, or push back on the LLM, or do it themselves.

And this is how you wind up running web servers as root and getting owned.

Everyone thinks everything has gotten worse

Here’s some things that actually haven’t:

• Weather forecasting: it’s better than ever (outside of the US)
• Solar: cheaper than natural gas
• Coal: essentially dying from not being cheaper than natgas or solar
• Timekeeping: now accurate over galactic timescales
• Flash storage: surpassing spinning rust
• Public transit ridership in the US: Amtrak is posting the best numbers ever
• Union membership in the US: rising
• Murder rates: falling in the US and worldwide on average, believe it or not
• CFC’s: essentially abolished and gone, the biggest environmental win of our lifetimes
• Acid rain: increasingly a nearly-solved issue
• Electrical access: still rising worldwide
• Internet access: most people are now connected everywhere
• China is leading the way in green tech and actively working to get off fossil fuels
• You can charge an EV from 0 to 80% in 15 minutes with the newest chargers and tech, and it’s still getting faster

And so much more. Lots of quiet wins that people never hear about because all they do is doomscroll.

ffmpreg

Suggested New GNOME Bug Report Wording, or We’re GNOME and You’re Not.

GNOME Version 48:

Please stop filing bug reports. This is our desktop. We designed it, we built it, and we know what you actually want better than you do. If there are some features you think might be missing, if the desktop isn’t quite as effective as you imagine it could be, GOOD. That means you’re finally getting it. See Figure 1.

            ---------------------------
            !            -            !
            !           { }           !
            !           | |           !
            !           | |           !
            !        .-.! !.-.        !
            !      .-!  ! !  !.-.     !
            !      ! !       !  ;     !
            !      \           ;      !
            !       \         ;       !
            !        !       :        !
            !        !       |        !
            !        |       |        !
            !                         !
            ---------------------------
                  Figure 1.

Forget about your silly workflow. Let’s take a look at some of the wonderful design decisions of the GNOME desktop.

1. Customisation. We removed most of it. Users don’t know what they want anyway. Every preference you don’t have is one less preference you can set incorrectly. If you somehow discover dconf, that’s your own fault. See Figure 1.
2. Desktop Icons. Gone. They encourage attachment to files, which distracts from the beauty of empty whitespace. If you require desktop icons for your workflow, your workflow is invalid. See Figure 1.
3. Menus. Menus contain too many choices. Choices make users unhappy. Therefore we replaced them with a single button containing three dots. If the option you need isn’t behind the three dots, that’s because you shouldn’t be doing it. See Figure 1.
4. System Tray Icons. We deleted those too. Applications should not be running in the background. If they are, they should stop. If they insist on existing, they can minimise into your imagination. See Figure 1.
5. Title Bars. Wasteful. We merged them with the toolbar to save precious vertical pixels so you can admire more empty margins. If your application now has three rows of buttons instead of two, that’s an application problem, not ours. We talked to our HIG designers, and they think like we do: See Figure 1.
6. Themes. We made the one theme. It’s perfect. Applications are expected to resemble each other. If yours doesn’t, that’s because the application developer made poor life choices. If you install a custom theme and it breaks something, congratulations, you’ve voided your warranty. We told theme authors to see Figure 1 a long time ago.
7. Extensions. We support extensions. Right up until the next release, at which point they explode. This encourages extension authors to remain engaged with the community. We told extension authors to see Figure 1 too.
8. Workflow. If your existing workflow no longer functions after an update, that’s because it wasn’t the correct workflow. The new workflow has fewer clicks once you’ve completely retrained your muscle memory. If you need your workflow to work, see Figure 1.
9. Buttons. We removed the minimise button because nobody uses it. We know this because we asked ourselves. We also removed the maximise button because windows should not become too excited. If you really need either button, you clearly require spiritual guidance. See Figure 1.
10. Preferences. We moved them. Then we renamed them. Then we merged them into another dialogue. Finally we removed them because the correct value was obvious. If you need to change a setting, see Figure 1.
11. Bug Reports. Before filing one, please ask yourself whether the problem is actually your expectations. Nine times out of ten, it is. The remaining case is an enhancement request, which is already WONTFIX. Our bug triage people think like we do: see Figure 1.

In conclusion, your desktop is now simpler, cleaner, and more opinionated than before. If this prevents you from getting work done, perhaps your work was unnecessarily complicated. Love GNOME or install KDE, but please stop asking for minimise buttons.