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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 8th, 2023

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  • I think it’s important to remember how this used to happen.

    AT&T paid voice actors to record phoneme groups in the 90s/2000s and have been using those recordings to train voice models for decades now. There are about a dozen AT&T voices we’re all super familiar with because they’re on all those IVR/PBX replacement systems we talk to instead of humans now.

    The AT&T voice actors were paid for their time, and not offered royalties but they were told that their voices would be used to generate synthentic computer voices.

    This was a consensual exchange of work, not super great long term as there’s no royalties or anything and it’s really just a “work for hire” that turns into a product… but that aside – the people involved all agreed to what they were doing and what their work would be used for.

    The ultimate problem at the root of all the generative tools is ultimately one of consent. We don’t permit the arbitrary copying of things that are perceived to be owned by people, nor do we think it’s appropriate to do things without people’s consent with their “Image, likeness, voice, or written works.”

    Artists tell politicians to stop using their music all the time etc. But ultimately until we really get a ruling on what constitutes “derivative” works nothing will happen. An AI is effectively the derivative work of all the content that makes up the vectors that represents it so it seems a no brainer, but because it’s radio on the internet we’re not supposed to be mad at Napster for building it’s whole business on breaking the law.





  • The story is more interesting than the title suggests! This guy was arrested for hacking two telecom companies, got released under investigation, then immediately hacked Nvidia before being put under house arrest. After that, he was relocated to a hotel (due to being doxxed) where all he had to work with was a Fire TV stick, which he promptly then used to hack Rockstar.

    All in all, he’s believed to have stolen $14 million+. By the way… he’s 18, autistic, and enrolled in a special education school.

    Heh Kid’s handle better be dr0id or some shit: “give me an android terminal and I’ll hack the world”


  • Go digging? That hasn’t really changed has it? If a report pops up in my feed speaking about some scientific study, I try and go to the journal or the arxiv to find the study itself so I can read the summaries. If I really can’t find anything first party, if I’ve got some personal knowledge on the topic I might just write the paper’s author and ask for a copy (they’re often very willing and excited to share) or use my library provided JSTOR access?

    Google scholar still mostly works as well… but yeah I only use it every other week or so.

    Like this isn’t new, science twitter has mostly moved to mastadon so most of the time there’s an arxiv link in the “Study released today…” toots etc.

    There are some new youtubers trying to spread the word, but yeah like the same way you’ve always researched?




  • I’m not American, and I don’t know exactly what the legal differences are between “indicted”, “charged” and “accused”. When is he going to be put in handcuffs and detained in a jail cell like a normal person would be if they were suspected of committing a crime (like stealing a handbag for example) but not convicted yet?

    He is getting slightly better than normal rich person with expensive lawyer treatment.

    America, as a pure service economy has prices for bribery and extortion as well as minimum service levels for the legal system. If you pay for economy (with your life) you get a defense attorney appointed by the state who sits across from the judge and DA you’re going to have to deal with, and has lunch with them, or makes deals in the bathroom… They’ll fight to make sure their life doesn’t get disrupted a whole lot and they can keep defending the endless stream of defendants.

    The middle tier is the “hire a reptable firm, and get a junior associate” level of service, that’s where you get someone who’s overworked, and desperately trying to keep all their partner’s cases going, and they can spend 1/10th of their time on your case, they don’t have any worries about not having a job though so they can dedicate the time in court to defending you.

    The top tier is the “hire a reputable firm, and you get a named partner” they care about their reputation, and make sure they only take cases that will make them look good. And they look good by doing the best damn job they can in front of the cameras, in their filings, and in front of their client. You get the white glove treatment, and 90% of the time of the junior associates helping the partner.

    It’s no wonder why you typically only get the “Go home and sleep it off” result from an indictment from the highest tier of service.



  • We tend to forget he was the “Example” the authorities tried to make at the time.

    He was portrayed in court as “a man who could whistle nuclear codes” as the reason for preventing him from having access to the phone as he was entitled. They took his cans of tuna-fish away because too many people were providing him food assistance from outside the prison.

    I will remember Kevin as the “kid that coulda been me.” His persona and personality afterwards, well I try not to judge him too harshly, but I got “Do you know who I am”'d at least once while volunteering at a Con by him. He definitely enjoyed the limelight and played as many encores as the staff let him get away with.

    Never had a beer with him, but I’ll pour one out for him this year. RIP the last man to be able to whistle the nuclear codes.




  • In cases such as this it would be amazing to bar them from having funerals.

    “You’re too old to sit in a cell, so we’re just not going to ever lay you to rest”

    Maybe it would help these criminals think about ramifications before committing their heinous offenses.

    Oh come now, we have much worse punishments: they’re now under conservatorship, by Britney Spears dad and are on their way to the cheapest old folks home in their state. They’re “technology safe” so they can’t access the internet for their own personal safety…

    Ya know, old folks prison, where poor people go after their family forgets about them and they die of neglect.