His office later noted that DOJ already has the raw footage.
and later in the article:
Johnson’s spokesman suggested that the speaker was trying to keep the raw footage away from online sleuths who have helped identify hundreds of Capitol rioters and aided in the FBI’s investigation.
If the autogenerated art becomes too close to copyrighted art, then you’ll have humans suing AI generators.
George Harrison’s My Sweet Lord is very similar to He’s So Fine by the Chiffons. And that was an easy case. But some cases in requires deeper analysis, such as Lana Del Ray’s Get Free.
In January 2018, singer Lana Del Rey claimed that Radiohead were suing her because of alleged similarities between their 1992 debut single Creep, and her song Get Free, from her 2017 album Lust for Life. The band’s publishers Warner/Chappell subsequently denied taking legal action, but did confirm requesting credit for “all writers” of Creep.
The Guardian spoke to a professional composer to analyse the songs, who noted that the chords used are rare in pop music, and the melodies bear an uncanny resemblance, although in conclusion “imagined the similarities are unintentional”.
If AI is sampling, then how do you defend it being unintentional? While all Radiohead sought was credit on the writing (in this case), would humans (whose livelihood is being threatened) be so generous with an AI composition? And if the music industry is threatened by AI, they will lawyer up.
The fact that AI can produce this is impressive as to where we have come with AI. But can this actually threaten human artists?
In the United States, a federal judge ruled in 2023 that AI artwork cannot meet federal copyright standards because “Copyright law is ‘limited to the original intellectual conceptions of the author’.” With no author, there is no copyright.
“The answer will depend on the circumstances, particularly how the AI tool operates and how it was used to create the final work,” the office said.
Under current US law, that song is probably now in the public domain. If the law changes, that could mean that in the future, music charts potentially could be filled with AI songs. As it stands, this is most-likely a public domain music machine cranking out music that anyone can use royalty-free. It depends on the interpretation of the courts.
It has officer-led classroom lessons that reach 2,500,000 K-12 students per year.
“Enriching students across the US and 29+ countries around the world”
If your argument is “The educators just need to make sure the kids learn that this is not a joke”, DARE has been educating students about the dangers of illegal drugs for 40 years.
Overdoses claimed more than 112,000 American lives from May 2022 to May 2023, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a 37 percent increase compared with the 12-month period ending in May 2020.
Star Wars Is Completely Abandoning George Lucas’ Most Controversial Prequel Idea
By Alix Batte
Published 2 days ago
George Lucas introduced the idea of midi-chlorians to the Force, but Ahsoka makes it clear Star Wars is moving on from this prequel concel
The first two paragraph intro
Star Wars is completely abandoning midi-chlorians, a key aspect George Lucas added to the prequel trilogy. When George Lucas returned to the Star Wars franchise with the prequels, the result was surprisingly divisive. Few elements proved as controversial as the introduction of midi-chlorians, which many believed stripped the Force of its mysticism. Lucas dreamed up midi-chlorians back in 1977, meaning they’d always been part of his idea, so he was likely surprised at the reception he received for the idea.
To be fair to Lucas, midi-chlorians were hardly a major part of Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace. Midi-chlorians were introduced when Qui-Gon Jinn had a sample of Anakin Skywalker’s blood analyzed after noticing his innate connection with the Force. The brief mention of midi-chlorians only really served as an in-universe way of stressing how powerful Anakin really was, by comparing him to Master Yoda (and the comparison implicitly underlined how important Yoda was in the prequel era). Lucas backed down from any further discussion of midi-chlorians in later movies, and now the Star Wars franchise is doing the same thing.
skipping background on midichlorians
Ahsoka Reveals Anyone Can Access The Force… With The Right Training
The concept of midi-chlorians changed the way the Force was perceived in Star Wars, fostering the idea that some people would be born with Force abilities and that some would not. After Ahsoka saw Sabine’s Jedi training begin despite her lack of Force sensitivity, that idea needed to be re-examined. Even if midi-chlorians impact a being’s access to the Force, they don’t necessarily dictate whether or not that being is able to use it at all - or even perform powerful feats with it.
As Rey organizes the new Jedi Order, it will be the perfect chance to further redefine that concept, taking in individuals that might seem weak in the Force until they receive the proper training. Finn was originally marketed as if he would become a Jedi, and several scenes implied Finn had a degree of Force-sensitivity. Now, especially with all of Finn’s experience alongside the Force, Rey has the perfect opening to train him as a Jedi just like Sabine.
last two paragraph summary.
The idea of midi-clorians has gone virtually abandoned in Star Wars media since their introduction in Star Wars: Episode I - Phantom Menace. Beyond a relevant mention or two in the recently published High Republic Character Encyclopedia, midi-chlorians can easily be lost in the sea of details in the Star Wars saga. Now, if they’re remembered at all, they’ve become more like simple statistics, similar to a Jedi’s heart rate or capacity for strength or speed. Sabine’s Jedi training opens the doors to the idea that while a high midi-chlorian count might make it easier for one to become an effective Force-user, it’s no longer an absolute necessity.
Midi-chlorians will continue to measure a Jedi’s potential as a Force-user, but it’s clear now that Star Wars intends to change the direction in terms of their raw ability. This perfectly aligns with the original message that heroes can come from anywhere, as Luke was just a simple farm boy before he was ever revealed to be the son of Darth Vader. With Ahsoka setting the stage for previously non-Force-sensitive individuals to become Jedi with the right kind of training, the possibilities are endless.
I know Urbanski is a “whole work” in himself, and I only listen to see what he’s pissed about to see if he’s actually got a correct gripe.
However, Jeffro says, “I know role-players WANT to see “rule zero” within the AD&D rules. But the fact is… it is just not there.” except that it is there; I just posted it.
I would not have called it “rule 0” back in the 70s or 80s, but the guys I knew were straying from official rules because of the hot mess that was 0D&D.
Hot Mess
When I say hot mess, I mean disorganization. If you played with the 3 LBBs, and you wanted to know a monster’s alignment, you had to use Vol I Men and Magic to get their alignment. For this example, let’s pretend you want an encounter for elves:
Then and go to Volume II: Monsters & Treasures to get Number Appearing, Armor Class, Move in Inches, Hit Dice, % in lair, and type or amount of treasure.
Please note that at the bottom of the table with armor class and hit dice, it informs you
"Attack/Defense capabilities versus normal men are simply a matter of allowing one roll as a man-type for every hit die, with any bonuses being given to only one of the attacks, i.e. a Troll would attack six times, once with a +3 added to the die roll. (Combat is detailed in Vol. III.)"
Volume III: The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures
Now you go to the third book, which tells you, "Melee can be conducted with the combat table given in Volume I or by the CHAINMAIL system,"
Volume I: Men and Magic
So you go back to Vol I which tells you, "All attacks which score hits do 1-6 points damage unless otherwise noted."
Volume II: Monsters & Treasures
So to determine what’s noted, hop back to Vol II and read in the monster description!
And almost at the end, you see that they do 2-7 (1d6+1) damage with a magic weapon, so otherwise, 1d6.
Volume I: Men and Magic
And that damage was against Hit Dice, which in Volume I tells you
Dice for Accumulative Hits (Hit Dice): This indicates the number of dice which are rolled in order to determine how many hit points a character can take. Plusses are merely the number of pips to add to the total of all dice rolled not to each die.
Note about pips:
On dice, pips are small dots on each face of a common six-sided die. These pips are typically arranged in patterns denoting the numbers one through six. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pip_(counting)
This was a polyhedral dice based game, as four sided dice are mentioned in the elf listing, as one example (“For every 50 Elves encountered there will be one of above-normal capabilities. Roll a four-sided die for level of fighting and a six-sided die for level of magical ability,”)
Of course, there were also 4 supplements, so if you wanted to use a Type VI demon, you had to go to Supplement III Eldritch Wizardry.
If you bought J. Eric Holmes’ Basic D&D (1977), you saw the introduction of the organized stat block:
And there was more text afterward. The elf listing is a little more than a whole page.
Rewrite Sorely Needed
AD&D may have been to swindle Arneson out of royalties, but a rewrite was sorely needed.
Gygax Even Owned Some Of The Mess He Made
A lot of Gygax’s apparent heavy-handedness came from the mess he made in D&D and he owned it (at least some of it). He even talks about it in the section on Magic Items
Just as it is important to use forethought and consideration in placing valuable metals and other substances with monsters or otherwise hiding them in dungeon or wilderness, the placement of magic items is a serious matter. Thoughtless placement of powerful magic items has been the ruination of many a campaign. Not only does this cheapen what should be rare and precious, it gives player characters undeserved advancement and empowers them to become virtual rulers of all they survey. * This is in part the fault of this writer, who deeply regrets not taking the time and space in D&D to stress repeatedly the importance of moderation. * Powerful magic items were shown, after all, on the tables, and a chance for random discovery of these items was given, so the uninitiated DM cannot be severely faulted for merely following what was set before him or her in the rules. Had the whole been prefaced with an admonition to use care and logic in placement or random discovery of magic items, had the intent, meaning, and spirit of the game been more fully explained, much of the give-away aspect of such campaigns would have willingly been squelched by the DMs. The sad fact is, however, that this was not done, so many campaigns are little more than a joke, something that better DMs jape at and ridicule — rightly so on the surface — because of the foolishness of player characters with astronomically high levels of experience and no real playing skill. These god-like characters boast and strut about with retinues of ultra-powerful servants and scores of mighty magic items, artifacts, relics adorning them as if they were Christmas trees decked out with tinsel and ornaments. Not only are such “Monty Haul” games a crashing bore for most participants, they are a headache for their DMs as well, for the rules of the game do not provide anything for such play — no reasonable opponents, no rewards, nothing! The creative DM can, of course, develop a game which extrapolates from the original to allow such play, but this is a monumental task to accomplish with even passable results, and those attempts I have seen have been uniformly dismal.
Another nadir of Dungeon Mastering is the “killer-dungeon” concept. These campaigns are a travesty of the role-playing adventure game, for there is no development and identification with carefully nurtured player personae. In such campaigns, the sadistic referee takes unholy delight in slaughtering endless hordes of hapless player characters with unavoidable death traps and horrific monsters set to ambush participants as soon as they set foot outside the door of their safe house. Only a few of these “killer dungeons” survive to become infamous, however, as their participants usually tire of the idiocy after a few attempts at enjoyable gaming. Some lucky ones manage to find another, more reasonable, campaign; but others, not realizing the perversion of their DM’s campaign, give up adventure gaming and go back to whatever pursuits they followed in their leisure time before they tried D&D.
Killer-dungeons (like the Tomb of Horrors which was by Gygax) were not supposed to be the norm. So why would Gygax write one? This was also an emerging game. In the DMG, Mike Carr’s Foreward is dated 16 May 1979, just 5 years after D&D was a thing. You can look back now and see all the mistakes (like gender-based strength score limitations), but the reality is that at this time, tournament play was a way to show people how to play a game that was still in its infancy.
Freeform = House Rules
But when you say,
So play OD&D or really anything other than AD&D if you like freeform gaming. That’s all there is to it.
I had a player who loved drow elves, so I let him play one, because of the info in the D-series modules (and Fiend Folio). Why? Here’s the heavy-handed Gygax on monsters as player characters:
“The rest is up to you, for when all is said and done, it is your world, and your players must live in it with their characters”
So, by allowing a PC to have a drow character, by your claim, I wasn’t playing AD&D, and yet there, on page 21 of the DMG, I was allowed to.
More Wiggle Room
AD&D was lethal. I let players start at level 3. What you call free form, we called House Rules. And we house ruled as we saw fit.
While Gygax did warn people of straying too far from his proscribed rules, but he also listed four methods for generating ability scores – in the DMG – so the DM could pick the method they thought best.
On the topic of strength bonus to missile weapon damage:
“To do so, he or she must obtain the special weapon or weapons, and this is within the realm of your adjudication as DM as to where and how it will be obtained, and how much cost will be involved.”
Again, letting the DM adjucate.
Jeffro states
The conventional wisdom on AD&D is that it formalized the rules specifically for tournament play only and that peoples’ home campaigns functioned under “rule zero” no differently than the OD&D rules did.
This is of course a complete hallucination
Do you want me to keep posting all the wiggle room allowances from the DMG?
I do think Urbanski is too far right, but I can’t get on board the Jeffro train, because he’s painting Gygax as some heavy-handed tyrant where you played it his way or it wasn’t AD&D. He’s pulling a few quotes out of context.
Yes, there’s probably days with higher traffic (likely weekends), but this gives us an idea of visits.
56,666,666/2,840 = 19,953.0514085
So every single post here would be nearly 20K posts to Reddit, because Reddit has about 20K times more visits in a day using that one month as a baseline. It’s probably not perfectly accurate, but it’s a number to work with.
I visited www.reddit.com/r/pop_os/ and saw 15 posts from today. I’ll use that as an unofficial average.
19953.0514085 / 15 = 1,330.20342723 (number of days)
1330.20342723 / 365 = 3.64439295132 (number of years)
If you get 1 post every 3 and half years, you’re keeping up with Reddit.
Off-topic:
I just saw the mascot redesign and wow. Just wow. Not in a good wow way.