What I need AI to do for me is analyze my resume and actually recommend jobs I'm qualified for and want to apply to instead of shit that requires a Master's degree and two years experience in this or that professional field. I do not need AI to write my marketing copy for me, I am literally a professional writer, I want to write my own writing thank you
I'm testing out MailChimp and it automatically used AI to write my first marketing email for me without my even prompting it to. Reader, it was the most generic and emotionless sludge I have ever seen. Think people on a sci-fi writer's email list will be enticed to buy my books by that kind of bland flavourless pabulum? I had to delete the whole fucking thing and start from scratch. You just put an extra step in what was already a difficult process, you idiots
@virtualbri I mean, the explicit text of at least the earlier trek series clearly shows bubble-shaped shields. Don't know how Disco etc. portrays it because I haven't watched it yet
We specifically get the slab bacon so we can cut it as thick as the bacon in that one scene in Howl's Moving Castle because none of the "thick-cut" bacon they sell in stores is thick enough
I need your help #bookstodon. One of the classes I'm taking at the graduate level this semester is Religion & Science Fiction. I read more fantasy, and would like to do my research paper on something that's not obvious (like ST/BS5/Matrix/etc.) & I'd love to use more modern sf rather than the golden age classics.
Anyone have any interesting ideas for my research paper on regarding the intersection of religion and science fiction?
@Likewise@bookstodon nothing yet, but on track to finish 36 Streets by T R Napper soon. Cyberpunk set in a futuristic Chinese-occupied Hanoi. Pretty good explorations of identity, both cultural and personal.
I genuinely can't imagine why I would want to use an AI to write my first drafts. It wouldn't be my writing! It wouldn't be my words on the page. It wouldn't be my voice, my characters, my plot. How does an AI communicate theme? How does an AI craft a coherent and consistent world and a story with a throughline and character development and stakes? How does an AI choose appropriate metaphors and imagery and tropes? How does an AI write something that means something?
Like, I certainly understand the terror of the blank page, and I get that if you're looking at your writing purely in terms of throughput of saleable product, AI might be appealing, but my impression, and stop me if I'm way off base here, is that most people who get into writing do it because they, like, enjoy writing and want to do writing. We sure as hell ain't doing it for the money
Just played Smash Up with my partner and a couple of friends, and her Penguin Grannies absolutely ran away with the game. Use grannies to scry minions to the top, then use penguins to play them off the top. I was trying my hardest to combo off with Wraithrustler Kaiju and just couldn't get set up. #Boardgames
@AshleyMarineP it's a great game, basically you take two different factions and shuffle them together into one deck, like "Dinosaur Ninjas" or "Superhero Princesses", then compete with other players to break bases. It's pretty casual on the surface but there are dozens of different factions between the various expansions, each with a unique mechanical identity, and thousands of possible combinations. I would strongly suggest checking the base set out if you're at all into card games.
There is an increase of account takeovers due to insiders at telco firms simply giving control to people paying them/compromised support staff accounts. Do a check on systems where this single factor would permit an account compromise. And change the configuration. These are opportunistic trawling attacks. This is becoming more common as attackers replicate the success.
The attacker uses other channels (like people search websites) to enumerate and guess the phone number attached to an online account and then checks against the telco they have control over.
The insider only briefly temporarily forwards the victim number to a 3rd party then switches it back to normal once they’re in. This is how they stay quiet since most victims will not have leverage or telemetry to understand how they got hacked.
It was their cell phone provider.
Make it so account recovery systems require multiple factors and remove telephony-based recovery for VIP accounts entirely.
Go check your systems now. Go try to access all your stuff like you forgot your password.
I am very serious. This is based on private knowledge but is compelled by the compromise of the SEC. This is common now.
@SwiftOnSecurity ah, so letting phone companies bully and manipulate us into making phone numbers sometimes the only available form of 2FA may have backfired? Astounding
Looking to start new series for the coming year (second poll). Can you help me out #Bookstodon? Because you can only have for poll topics on Mastodon, this is the second poll asking for recommendations. I'll take the top two from both polls and do a final four poll. Go to the comments for a link to the first poll.
@thehomespundays@seanbala@bookstodon psychohistory is what happens when you assume the social sciences function the same way as the physical ones do (cf. the worst excesses of classical economics)
The problem with companies like Hyperloop One is that they don't accurately value publicly-funded research. They're trying to create sci-fi technologies that just aren't there yet and finding out in real time that without a base of free research to build on, the R&D is expensive, unprofitable, and unsustainable for the period of time it would take to develop an actual working hyperloop and start bringing in cashflow
The "burn through an endless spooge of VC while we fumble around for a profitable business model" plan doesn't work so well when you're having to buy actual materials and build actual hyperloops instead of just monkeying around with code. The only real alternative is the OceanGate "move fast and break shit" approach, and all I'll say about that is that it's probably for the best that we got an object lesson in its failings before large numbers of people started traveling on hyperloops