It's just culture. I'm glad the National Archives are able to preserve it for future generations, as nobody really knows when all our unofficial archives, all the FTP servers that have been running in a basement since 1994, finally quit.
Yes, "Spotify Alternative" does seem to miss that Spotify / Apple Music+ / etc are legal and somewhat ethical ways to get access to a huge amount of music that would be expensive to purchase and a huge pain to torrent.
E.g. lately I have been listening to more classical, and the musicianship between different performances of the same piece varies widely. It is very nice to be able to quickly explore a few different albums before I find the one I like (also to study the differences). In the Olden Days I would hogged the headphones at the music store... or, more likely, not make my own decision and purchase based on reviews and name recognition.
On the other hand, I of course never actually purchase albums anymore. ("somewhat ethical")
If you listen on high-end equipment the audio quality is noticeably worse than many other solutions and depending on your music taste, Spotify often removes content or doesn't have it in the first place.
Spotify prices are quite reasonable, especially when you consider what has happened to video streaming services like Netflix. Plus Spotify has a large portion of all music ever, and mostly has close to 100% of new music that is being released.
Hosting my own, even though it appeals a lot to me on principle, just would be either too costly to maintain legally (buying new music) or too cumbersome illegally (torrenting any music I want to listen to).
I guess if someone is really into music, they will spend a lot of time on finding new music, and will be inclined to spend more money on the hobby too. But for casual listeners like me, it's far too convenient to simple select a song on Spotify and click "play radio" and get an unending playlist of new songs.
Afaik it's not terribly good to the artists. One of my favorite bands left the platform; I'm not there yet but if it happens en masse (or at least enough to effect me noticeably) then I'm out too.
Streaming services could price themselves out of the market in an attempt to generate the income needed to pay artists fairly. (Google/Apple could temporarily draw money from coffers and outcompete Spotify temporarily)
Or artists could sell the music directly at a fair price (no streaming service but vinyl or downloads). Or more people could go to concerts
Either way, consumers need to pay more before all good artists can make ends meet. The (comparatively) pocket change that many of them get from streaming won't be enough even if Spotify turns into a non-profit and improves payout from 70% of their income to 99.9% of their income
Most consumers seem to disagree, judging by the reactions to Spotify's recent price increase in the netherlands (even though the increase was lower than inflation or median income growth). With the money simply not being on the table unless you get lucky and get massively popular, there is no realistic alternative, but some options feel more fair than others. I could totally see myself doing music as a hobby and seeing what I can sell on Bandcamp rather than supporting Google and having them/Youtube stream my music to people
I got a smartwatch with a cell connection, some good earbuds and started going to the gym, then I learned that their watch app is complete garbage. It refuses to play the music I want, either playing something else or nothing at all. It will play it out loud on my phones speaker in the locker instead of through my earbuds. It refuses to download the playlists I want. It refuses to stream the music.
None of that is a problem with the Apple Music app, so it's 100% a Spotify problem.
Also, Music sometimes disappears from my playlists.
Nothing. It's pretty cheap, and saves all the hassle these people are going through to self host. I'd guess for most people here paying for music streaming service isn't really a problem. Buying all the music would likely be more costly, though seems a bunch just want to pirate music and make out that they are "saving money". Music discovery would be more problematic.
For $15 a month I get access to (as far as my tastes are concerned) all the music ever recorded, instantly accessible from anywhere in the world on any device I own.
I recall a commercial from the 90s that sort of poked fun at this exact idea, as being laughably farfetched and "sci-fi".
i was cool with it for a long time, id buy annual memberships every year(non renewing). price hikes came, that annual is a lot more daunting as a one time purchase (especially at that particular moment in time for me). i was spending a lot of time in the car attempting to use the app. it quite literally felt like a short trip was 1 song sandwiched between equal parts ads. so a trip to the grocery was kinda like 2 mins ads, song(dont you dare try to skip that song or youll get an ad, or be out of next songs as its shuffle only), maybe another song, then 2 more minutes of ads.
ive now been in a place where that membership isnt that daunting. but im good, im not gonna have my music library held prisoner from me unless i cough up a monthly fee. its quite literally unusable if you arent paying. it also seems like they intentionally make their browser based version kinda trash... to make using it to block ads a less viable option(its been a while, not sure how true this currently is).
the jellyfin option is actually what ive settled on as well, ive been a bit lazy about setting up more functionality than just for my LAN, but i will get around to it. for now i just kinda plop junk on my phone and play it through vlc, which is certainly a lazy solution but its still feels freeing.
Was happy for a time, then I realized I only listen to the same playlists (generated playlists don't work for me as I need some time to appreciate new music). Now I use YouTube/SoundCloud to check out artists' releases, and then get the whole album if it's interesting.
I have a decently sized library with my favorite albums and that's been sufficient for some time now. Every once in a while, I track new releases and explore new genres, then add the few that picked my interest to my library.
Intentionally is great for enjoying art (and YouTube is more than enough for mood music)
Yes it is. If it's not available for you then blame the fucktard lawyers who made the call that it should not be available wherever you are for some dumbfuck reason. Spotify is not responsible for this, they just comply with the aforementioned fucktard lawyers.
Their point is at a higher level than a single artist's inclusion. What you're advocating is for artists to give up their rights (whether primarily or indirectly negotiated). "Just do what the lawyers say."
I didn't think Spotify had fanboy/fangirl followings, but based on your and others' comments, I stand corrected. What do I know!
I fully support artists to decide what they want to do with their music, but artists who sign contracts with labels and music companies do give up their rights, like it or not, that's how it works. And yes, Spotify enforces contracts and geographical licensing deals that dumbfuck lawyers invent because reasons. What would you want them to do, break IP laws?
There's absolutely no way in hell I'm going back to hoarding stupid ass CDs or MP3/FLAC files when I can legally have immediate access to tens of millions of titles. I have absolutely zero interest in the "owning" part but I understand some people would prefer it.
ive often thought about a happy middle ground product that would make me consider coming back to spotify... a version of the subscription model, somewhat similar to ebook stuff, where if you are subscribed you can choose X amount of songs that month to "own" forever.
so if you decide you cant pay their monthly fee, you still have full access to your library of songs that you chose to own over the years, and are not subjected to the feeling of being a prisoner to their subscription model if you decide you cant afford it for x amount of time.
this feeling of being a prisoner is the absolute main driver of why i prefer non spotify solutions. i love the actual product otherwise. if i had not experienced the non subscribed version of what my account feels like, i think i would still happily be paying for spotify today.
I use bandcamp intermittently and have often wished that they offered a "subscription" feature like this, whereby they take a certain amount of money from me a month to put into my "bandcamp wallet" or whatever, that I can then use to buy music. I mean to spend a certain amount on music in bandcamp per month but life gets in the way and it falls off the radar. A model like this would definitely keep me more engaged
I've never understood the conspiratorial use of that slogan because it's unironically correct. Ownership is economically a cost and a risk and you're generally better off if you can utilize something without owning it or distribute ownership.
I'm much better off using free software than having copies of proprietary software on my shelf and the train is much cheaper than the car insurance.
It's not conspiratorial. It's an accurate and widely broadcasted business model by several companies. Why do you feel something that is present and real should be denigrated as conspiratorial?
Is it considered part of it? From my understanding, the culture has changed significantly and post get auto deleted eventually, so it’s not a good archive either. The only thing old about it is it’s web design
Posting on 4chan just kept becoming increasingly user hostile, especially for casual users, you had to be really determined to post something: posts started requiring 24 hour email verification, and after that you had to wait ~10 minutes before being allowed to post, and finally you had to complete a nearly impossible captcha which could lock you out from posting for an undetermined amount of time just for failing. It became apparent that the owners were pushing the gold pass pretty damn hard, and it's advertised on literally every board page.
Not sure what this random unknown website has to do with 4chan. It's similar only insofar as both things let you post. Soj requires a sign-up so no anon posting at all, and the community structure is a pretty clear rip-off of Reddit with /p/[sub] instead of /r/[sub]
every board had it's own independent archiving service after a while, so board culture ended up stickier than the original design. there's some interesting stuff in there
And Free Software does not benefit from a morass of mutually-incompatible copyleft licenses that may as well have been proprietary since you can't use them together.
None of the permissive licenses have this problem.
The number of significant software projects which are licensed as GPLv2-only, and which are therefore incompatible with GPLv3, can probably be counted on one hand. Normal GPLv2 projects are licensed – as instructed by the text in the license itself – as “GPLv2 or later”. Which means that any normal GPLv2-licensed software can be relicensed to GPLv3, and can therefore be combined with any other GPLv3-licensed program without any issue whatsoever.
For GPL v2 only, let's start the list with Linux and Git...
The "or later" has been used in creative ways, like relicencing all the Wikipedia content, or the Affero to AGPL transition. Nothing shady, but unexpected.
Do you trust RMS to avoid doing shady things in the later GPL licence? I do, but he is not longer in the FSF.
Do you trust the current members of the FSF to avoid doing shady things in the later GPL licence? I don't know them.
Do you trust the future members of the FSF to avoid doing shady things in the later GPL licence???
Section 14 of the GPL says "The Free Software Foundation may publish revised and/or new versions of the GNU General Public License from time to time. Such new versions will be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to address new problems or concerns." Given that the preamble to the GPL explicitly says "the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change all versions of a program--to make sure it remains free software for all its users", I don't think that a judge would find that a hypothetical GPLv4 that was basically MIT or something is "similar in spirit" to the present version.
If you're worried about the other direction (i.e. a hypothetical GPLv4 that had some bizarre restriction like "all users must donate to the FSF"), the "or any later version" means that as long as you don't decide to update the license you use yourself, people can continue to use it under the GPLv2 or v3 indefinitely.
> The financial incentives to create addictive digital content would instantly disappear, and so would the mechanisms that allow both commercial and political actors to create personalized, reality-distorting bubbles.
...
> But humanity had been free of current forms of advertising for 99.9% of its existence. Word-of-mouth and community networks worked just fine. First-party websites and online communities would now improve on that.
Humanity had hatred and insular bubbles a millennia ago just fine without advertisements. There was genocides and wars before the current form of ads ever emerged. It's a shame that so many people think that changing a financial policy is all that is needed to change an ingrained human behavior.
In the last 40 years how many millions of man years have been put into manipulating people/breaking down their internal barriers by the ad agencies? By social media companies? By media companies? In the hundreds of thousands of man years at least (but more likely in the millions to tens of millions). There have been around 80 billion human years of output in that time and sales are a huge part of civilization so easily in the 10s of millions of human years of energy put into how to better manipulate/break down/re-train people.
If I go play chess against a rando at a park and lose, your above argument makes sense.
If I go play chess against someone who spent 150,000 man years studying how to beat me, to say 'well, it was all up to your mental strength, same as it's always been forever, and you just weren't strong enough' is BS.
Edit: The amount of focused research, science, practice, experience in manipulation humans is unprecedented. Never before have millions to tens of millions of human years been dedicated to things in such a continuous, scientifically approached way. Yet we act as if the world is basically the same as 1980 except we have smart phones/the internet.
I wonder how Hideo Miyazaki feels about this, the fact that machines are able to recreate his style seems to go against the whimsy he creates in his art. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a possible lawsuit considering how strongly that style is tied to him, and that the model surely used his films as data.
If it was me I would feel horrible that what I gave to the public and dedicated my life to was contorted in this manner.
> After seeing a brief demo of a grotesque zombie-esque creature
Reacting to an animation where a gross critter "learned to walk using AI" instead of being animated by a person 8+ years ago, and ended up using its head as a leg
It has nothing to do with the current image generation topic beyond the "AI" label being stuck on both of them
Which is not to say I expect he's thrilled about ChatGPT cloning the art style on a mass scale, but that quote that everyone keeps reposting doesn't have anything to do with it
If you continue the quote, he says: "I would never wish to incorporate this technology into my work at all. I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself."
He was pretty clearly talking about AI, at least to me.
Not at all - he was talking about a CG demo he'd just seen of a wriggling 3D model, which didn't bear any technical or visual resemblance to generative AI.
I mean, the quote might very well reflect his actual views about generative AI, but that's definitely not what he was talking about.
The purpose of that demo was to create a machine that can draw like humans can, as the creators explained. His objection was that whatever produced this had no concept of pain, and that’s what makes it grotesque. He called out that he had no objection to creating horror if that’s what the authors wanted to do.
That complaint is just as applicable to current Gen AI models. He wasn’t simply reacting with his gut to a gross looking video but to the concept of a thing with no concept of pain creating and animating artwork of living things. He understood the technology was about Gen AI, as “deep learning” is written on the whiteboard. He deserves some credit.
> The purpose of that demo was to create a machine that can draw like humans can, as the creators explained
Watch the video - the purpose of the demo, as the creators explained it, was to train a creature to move quickly. Since the AI model didn't simulate pain it used its head like a foot, and since the result was creepy they thought it could be used for a zombie game. That's what they presented to Miyazaki, and that's what he commented on. Then Suzuki asked where they eventually wanted to end up, and a different presenter said the thing about machines that can draw.
> That complaint is just as applicable to current Gen AI models
If you like, but that's not what Miyazaki applied it to.
> Watch the video until the end where they say this explicitly
1. The person who says that wasn't describing the purpose of the demo
2. He says it after Miyazaki's comments, ergo Miyazaki was not commenting on it
> - "Here, Mr. Miyazaki -- we have made a fast-moving zombie!"
Please don't sarcastically put words in the mouth of the person you're replying to - it's rude and it's never useful. All my previous comment did was summarize what was said, in the order it was said. I didn't suggest it was anything more or less than the words in the transcript.
It is really depressing to see how people universally don't even understand what he's talking about, and stick to non-explanations.
Art is humane. It tells humans how to be humans. A thought about an ill person in pain is worthy of being told as a story. Not only that animation automation thing is of no use to someone trying to express those thoughts, its authors — just like many, many others — have no idea what humans do with their lives, and which tools artists may need to show it. They've made a toy, and were told that it's just useless wanking, together with the whole genres of pointless amusement that introduced such images into pop culture.
“An insult to life itself” is not just a phrase. There is life, and there are people who deliberately ignore it, and enjoy the sights painted on cardboards.
"After seeing a brief demo of a grotesque zombie-esque creature, Miyazaki pauses and says that it reminds him of a friend of his with a disability so severe he can’t even high five. “Thinking of him, I can’t watch this stuff and find [it] interesting. Whoever creates this stuff has no idea what pain is whatsoever. I am utterly disgusted. If you really want to make creepy stuff, you can go ahead and do it. I would never wish to incorporate this technology into my work at all. I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself.”
He's disgusted by the creature, not the computer based technique. While he's on record as disapproving of CGI, Earwig and the Witch, directed by his son, used CGI so his disapproval isn't absolute.
"Whoever creates this stuff has no idea what pain is whatsoever."
I think it's clear that he is specifically responding to the the overall soullessness of the technique - to animate without a human understanding of what is being animated. But as others have pointed out this is well before modern AI image gen and I have been corrected in that aspect.
Presenters: "This is a presentation of an artificial intelligence model which learned certain movements [...] It's moving by using its head. It doesn't feel any pain, and has no concept of protecting its head. It uses its head like a leg. This movement is so creepy, and could be applied to zombie video games. An artificial intelligence could present us grotesque movements which we humans can't imagine."
The screen shows some Silent Hill looking vaguely humanoid, crawling blob. As the presenters say, it's pretty creepy looking.
Miyazaki: "I am utterly disgusted [...] I would never wish to incorporate this technology into my work at all"
IMHO saying Miyazaki outright hates AI is putting words into his mouth. All the clip shows is that a dude that doesn't make zombie horror films doesn't need a zombie horror generator thank you very much.
So yeah, he clearly rejects the product pitch. But judging from Kiki's Delivery Service and My Neighbor Totoro I don't see why you'd pitch him that product.
"Well, we would like to build a machine that can draw pictures like humans do"
"Would you?"
"Yes"
Awkward silence
From this I don't think it's difficult to extrapolate his feelings about modern AI image gen. But you are correct in that this is not a direct assessment. Appreciate the correction, thanks.
>I wonder how Hideo Miyazaki feels about this, the fact that machines are able to recreate his style seems to go against the whimsy he creates in his art.
Supposedly, you have a working internet connection. In no time, you can check the name of Hayao Miyazaki. You can see how he draws his manga, in a style which would be really hard to animate. You can see how he designs his characters. Well, maybe the colour palette can be attributed to “his style” in some works. Still, you can learn that Ghibli had famous background artists and art directors like Nizo Yamamoto and Kazuo Oga. You can compare characters drawn by Yoshifumi Kondou and Katsuya Kondou with Miyazaki's, and guess who was responsible for what in different works. You can learn how in the era when everyone waited for computers to make economical marvel of “three dee” real, Isao Takahata used computers to transfer pen and brush strokes to animation in “The Yamadas” and “Princess Mononoke”.
But you don't want any of that. You want to have a familiar pop cultural label (“Miyazaki”) that produces a familiar reaction (“Oooh!”). Purely decorative, symbolic objects. Stories, ideas, hard work? Eh, don't bother me with that nonsense.
There is nothing new or “cutting edge” in ignorance. And AI companies know perfectly well that they work for exactly that audience. Despite all the talk, they don't create the next genius artist, they want to be a next “enhancement filter” in TVs, something that no one uses, but everyone has to add to impress the public. That's just parasitism on lack of ability to discern.
While I don't doubt it's true, this could be challenging to prove, because Studio Ponoc (ex-Ghibli) has produced work that uh, hews rather closely to Miyazaki's style. Were the models trained on Ghibli, Ponoc, both, something else, etc?
I mean, I have no doubts. But proving it seems tough!
Ponoc is made of former Ghibli employees who founded a new home when Ghibli's future was uncertain. I am sure they are on friendly terms, if not family, with Ghibli: they worked together for years. People like them can have a gentleman's agreement.
What is OpenAI in all this, if not a greedy, sloppy, soulless outsider stealing their Art and effort for financial gain without ever asking for permission?
I don't disagree with anything you said, but it doesn't seem to follow from what I wrote.
I pointed out a reason why litigation could be difficult. I'm quite sure nothing I wrote could have been seen as defending OpenAI. Just that I felt litigation would be tricky.
Truly, every artist hopes their distinctive style will be taken by a multi-billion-dollar corporation and used by the White House to make a jeering depiction of crying deportees. It's the ultimate compliment.
The USSR had some absolutely incredible art used on their propaganda posters. But if you use that for anything outside of ironic Russian themes (e.g. a goofy game set in that era, some silly snack that claims to be Russian-inspired), people will think you're an unironic communist and you instantly turn away loads of people.
When a dominant political force uses AI "art" for everything they do and the style becomes apparent, anything that looks similar to that instantly disgusts loads of people. You can argue "well that's their fault for being disgusted", but pattern recognition and being conditioned to associate certain images with "bad" goes far deeper than the conscious and it's a base instinct in animals.
If you think Ghibli is now tainted by association with Trump based on this image, I don't know what to tell you. That sounds preposterous in the extreme.
More like "AI art in the style of ____" will be tainted by association. I can almost hear the complaints to the editor to every boutique indie blog post and company listicle with AI filler at the top. For me at least it cheapens the feeling of the blog post itself - "if the author couldn't be arsed to get any real art/pay for a stock image, what about the rest of the content?"
People know the "NFT style", and when people see any sort of image like that, they instantly think "annoying crypto scammer."
There's now the "AI image" style, which people are becoming more aware of. And people associate that with scammers, very confused old people, weird porn, and the right.
Most of the ghiblified stuff is from AI/cryptobros and right wing movements (with heavy overlap on those groups). People possess pattern recognition and will become aware of the pattern each time they see these images.
If it was me, I would feel great that my work has been extended to give joy at such a large scale. (Not that it’s invalid if he has a different opinion.)
I feel like we are so privileged in the US that there’s little to no personal consequences for being so wrong about a topic. Eventually there’s needs to be a correction, whether it’s because we regain our senses or we stray so far that the majority of people start to be majorly affected. I’m fearing it’s the latter.
There’s a tendency to backwards rationalize anything that is established in the US, that comes from a place of identity.
The current shape of the US is already the best and people consider it a part of who they are, so suggesting a course correction may be seen as both wrong think and a personal attack and wanting radical change would be outright treason.
There’s an array of standard stencils for defense against change: this is the only thing that can work here, this is the only thing that guarantees freedom, this is actually not that bad, I actually prefer it like this, anything else would be expensive/impossible/unamerican.
It’s not even unique to the US, but who cares about other places.
That's because drinking non-fluoridated water is very cheap (a minimal disadvantage). Vs. opposing fluoridated water can be very valuable (give the current culture wars).
Notice that nobody is arguing about keeping water-born pathogens out of the drinking water.
I feel like there’s this assumption from Rust enthusiasts that Rust will supersede all other languages and tools. While it’s cool that these things are being done, it’s not enough to show that it will become a major game programming language. Especially due to how mature and sophisticated other tools are in comparison to the Rust tools.
Cool project! I would recommend checking out the LVGL library [0], it’s an embedded graphics library to create UIs. It’s pretty simply to use and feels a bit like html. It’s a little bit harder to set up hardware communication, but once it’s set up, it streamlines making the UI and responding to input immensely.
> The 22 cases include Chicago resident Julio Noriega, 54, a U.S. citizen who, according to court documents, was arrested, handcuffed and spent most of the night at an ICE processing center in suburban Broadview. He was never questioned about his citizenship and was only released after agents looked at his ID.
It’s only going to get worse and more normalized. This isn’t a mistake either, there’s a reason why this administration is trying to end birthright citizenship [0]
