Ha, interesting question, really cool answers all around.

For me, it was many years ago when I went with a friend to visit a common friend that was studying in Vermont (we 3 are from Europe), and using the occasion we went to visit new York as well. One night we went to have a walk around Times Square and took the subway to get there. I was just standing there checking out the map to keep myself busy when this huge black guy wearing an even bigger fur coat that was sitting started talking to me and asking where I was going and if I needed help.

At first I awkwardly said that I didn’t need any help, I was just looking at the map to keep busy. He insisted asking where I was going, to which I answered to have a stroll around times square. He got quite cheerful and said he was going in the same direction and he knew a shortcut. At that point I got a bit suspicious but the guy said changing the train we would get there faster, I confirmed that indeed the other train was going in that direction and he told us to follow him. Despite my suspicion as long as there was plenty of people around I decided to trust him and go with him.

After the change of train he told me he knew another trick about that station, everyone was going to the normal stairs but he told us if we go a bit further we can avoid those stairs. He took us to an escalator that took us into an exit straight at Times square.

In the meantime we started talking with him, he told us he was going that night to have a guy’s night out with his friends and they were going to Atlantic City. He started telling us about his life, he was a music editor, and was married, and loved to help people visiting new York. By the time we got out into the street it felt like we were quite close friends and we stayed there a bit still talking, he was one of the nicest random people I have ever met, we took a photo together and he gave me his contact card in case I ever returned to NY (which I didn’t).

I’ve thought about him ever since and wondered how he was doing. It’s a great memory I have of such a simple random encounter.

Most likely I’m too specific about it, but I see quite some shows mentioned that I’d not really consider underrated or unrecognised. Firefly is one of my all time favourites but not really underrated or unrecognised. Or Fringe, possibly not even From (of which I’ll just say I very much hope they have an ending planned because I don’t want it to end lost like Lost).

Perfect examples of underrated or unrecognised shows are Galavant and Utopia, mentioned by others, they are brilliant.

In a similar direction I’d say Dead Set, a UK show that really surprised me ages ago but never see mentioned. https://imdb.com/title/tt1285482/

Maybe I should include also Dr Horrible’s Sing Along Blog, but that may be a lot less underrated and it’s a minishow only.

I think no one has mentioned “the man from earth”, it is a great movie that got a lot of success thanks to piracy, enough that it allowed it to even get a sequel (I haven’t watched it it seems to be far less recommended).

I recommend to just watch it without looking too much at the theme or plot. I’ll just say that it’s a movie with a lot of conversations and basically no action at all. You could compare it in that sense to the classic “12 angry men”, not in plot or theme, but style, mostly something that happens between a small cast of actors through dialogue.

Edit: and just a few minutes before me someone did actually share it…

It’s either Matrix or Fight Club, I guess it depends on the day

It was already tough being in a world where it’s hard to see the difference between the onion articles and actual news. Now we’re on a completely new level where news can be the result of playing CAH. It’s kinda funny until you stop to think how terrible it is.

They clicked the install button of an ad, that’s the whole point, what a weird specific detail to get hung up on anyway even if you were not wrong (which you are). It’s not just an annoying ad, it’s an ad hidden as actual results of a search with an identical install button. Google is to blame for that style to clearly try and cheat people and they deserve all the backlash and fines and more for it. But clicking a button that says install without checking what it belongs to is beyond ignoring any basic security, it’s simply stupid, and that’s on the user, not on google.

I can’t see anyone mentioning Titan A.E. man I love that movie, the mix of hand drawn animation and CGI was great for the time and I really enjoyed the world building.

The thing is that “excellent” is something they are not… Look I enjoyed the movies too, they can be quite fun. Some aspects are great, the action and stunt work is in my opinion flawless for the time. Some other things were great too and some others not so much. But in general, really they are not good movies if we try to be a bit neutral, and at the very least they can’t follow the complexity of the theme from the first movie while making it look so simple like that one did. It may just be the case of standing too close to the sun, the movies as part of the trilogy just can’t compare. So people have a feeling of rejection to them. And probably the one thing people find it tough to come to grips with is the fact that the first movie had great action, that helped the movie go forward, while the others just seem to have random action scenes that are just not part of the story. It’s just about how they are added into the story.

But don’t let that bother you, enjoy the movies, I still do, they are just not the masterpieces the first one was.

And no, its not about wanting the first one again, in essence, I wish the movies would have managed to expand the story in a refreshing way like the Animatrix did. But they just fall flat instead, simple mindless fun that kinda finish the storyline quite OK for me.

Now the fourth part… That was brilliant, a brilliant crap, but brilliant nonetheless. If my guess is not wrong, it was a great middle finger to the movie execs that wanted to squeeze more money out of the movies.

What do you mean? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titanic_II_(film)

Google being evil and assholes doesn’t remove the fact that this person literally didn’t spend a second to check what they clicked.

Digital safety starts with everyone, despite if we need laws to regulate the asshole companies trying to mess with people’s lack of attention.

Ah the false implication that if we don’t pay then things won’t get done. That’s a fallacy. People will always make content, they only stop if they need to work to survive and have no time. If they are paid for creating, they will create even more. If they are paid to create what they are told they won’t be able to create what they would want to.

When content is controlled and a company has the right to decide what and when and how something is created that’s when content and services get worse over time. Disney is a huge money making machine based on monopolistically controlling content, stories, characters… Disney’s services and products will only get worse no matter who pays or doesn’t, despite the love and effort put by the workers, because decisions are made based on corporate greed and maximising revenue. No one but Disney can create a marvel movie, if I would, I’d get sued into oblivion.

The only mental gymnastics are yours.

There is a ton of arguments against supporting these shitty corps milking their customers. However, there is no argument for piracy.

How do you propose to stop supporting Disney? Without eventually hurting the employees of Disney?

Streaming or buying a blueray or paying for a movie ticket (which is prohibitively expensive and can only be done in some occasions when I know I will enjoy it and then they fill you up in ads), it won’t matter, it all supports Disney and their shitty behaviour. I love buying my favourite movies and shows but I don’t want to buy all the movies and shows I want to watch, that’s why streaming is so much better in many ways and set as the main example. Even movies I bought in BR I will end up downloading for the comfort of watching them, I want to watch them on whatever screen I want wherever I want, not when I have a blue ray reader.

And others have already told you, sometimes there’s no legal way to enjoy some content, if some company doesn’t want me to get something, why would I listen to them and not find my own way?

The fact that it all works for you doesn’t mean others don’t want it in a different way.

If your kids want to watch a disney movie they spend their time enjoying it. You need to compensate whoever is providing for that. If they enjoy their time in Disneyland they also need to pay the ticket, eventhough the rides will work without them paying for the ticket.

No, I don’t need to do anything, they don’t set the rules. If my kids enjoy watching a movie but Disney won’t allow them to watch it without first swallowing 30 minutes of ads selling them other stuff you bet your own ass I will find a way to allow them to watch the movie without whatever random shit a corporation comes up with. I want to compensate the workers but I don’t. I pay Disney and they choose how employees are paid. And I won’t do whatever they say just because they “own” the movie. Should I still compensate the employees of Disney and the corporation for I don’t know, watching Fantasia done over 80 years ago? Stop sucking the corporations ass. They are abusing everyone, including their own employees.

If you say we have reasons to stop supporting Disney then you are saying either no one can watch their content or we can watch it the only way it hurts them. There’s no middle ground.

I can understand that some people don’t want to deal with changing keyboards even if they don’t want to be tracked. But you are literally here asking about keyboards. If this is not the place to talk about this then what is? Anyone interested enough to wonder about what keyboard they use should consider their privacy as the main aspect for a keyboard, as it is an app that can see everything you write, including passwords.

but the reality is most foss apps are far inferior user experiences to corporate apps

This is absolutely wrong and too often repeated as a mantra, and not because they have actually good UX, but because the corporate apps have it worse even (but they set the standard so anything that isn’t like theirs is bad). From all keyboards I have tried (many, including corporate ones, closed source, etc) the closed source ones have usually the worse UX. They start better and then worsen over time. You said you like the personalisation options, but often there’s less options in any closed source corporate keyboard. It took them years for gboard to actually let users have the number row always on top. I could have that in other keyboards long before gboard. Swiftkey was wonderful, but over the years it got so bloated that it lagged when used. There’s unfortunately not a perfect keyboard, but through all the posts in this thread there were a lot of good recommendations that allow you to choose good customisability, respect of user privacy, and also fringe use cases not often supported. And in general, the worse options are the closed source ones.

The only real downside of Foss keyboards is that as they have more options they usually require a bit more set up time which puts many people off.

I’m currently using Heliboard, lots of customisability, Foss, good language support and a must for me, multi language support. So far I am making less typos than with many other keyboards. The downside is no swipe support right in the app, but you can get it to work too if interested using 3rd party libraries.

In the past I’ve been using gboard which was OK for a while but started making more and more typos and wrong corrections over time, that plus trying to degoogle myself pushed me away.

Also anysoft keyboard, pretty nice, and was quite happy with it but again started getting tired of some typos I kept making.

I am keeping an eye on futo keyboard too, which at the moment doesn’t support multi language support, maybe in the future when implemented I’ll try it.

Man you got such a weird hard on for this stance where you keep repeating the same thing over and over without actually providing a valuable argument.

So just in case you are not a bot and actually want the argument explained, here you go:

I want to watch movie A produced by Disney. As you say I have a ton of arguments to not support Disney. So I don’t pay to watch the movie. Now there’s two options left, I never watch the movie or I pirate the movie and watch it. By not watching it the only one that suffers is me, Disney couldn’t give two shits if I watch it or not. By pirating the movie I get the two things I want, to watch the movie and to not support Disney.

By pirating the movie to watch it I am not impeding anyone’s ability to watch it by paying Disney. I’m not taking anyone’s movie, no one loses anything, except Disney who loses the money they want me to pay. All those who participated in making the movie are not losing their salaries, they were already paid for the work by Disney, I’m not stealing their salaries (unless they had a contract with Disney to get some % but I can’t pay them without paying Disney)

Now let’s say I’m a parent, my kids want to watch movie A of Disney, but I don’t want to support Disney, do I punish Disney or do I punish my kids by not watching the movie? Or do I pirate the movie for my kids and still don’t support Disney’s shitty corporate behaviour?

Let’s see if you still don’t see the argument for piracy ffs

But you are talking about a completely different thing. Here’s what it boils down to:

Obviously, we prefer to exhaust other options first

Does it look like that? Not really… Not when people are cheering for some asshole to be assassinated. This is not about the value of one life, this is not about the use of violence of armed forces to try and save others, this is not about the lives that trump would destroy. This is about people cheering for a murder, this is about a public figure inciting violence publicly… Did you notice the reaction of someone like Biden or Sanders (the two examples I know of, surely there are others)? immediately rejecting the actions of a violent man that decided to open fire against a big amount of people, it’s irrelevant who he was aiming for. The only solution for anyone talking in this thread is killing trump, instead of voting the other (albeit very imperfect) party. It’s still months before the election and everyone is acting like trump has won already and the only solution is killing him. Wtf.

I guess this thread and conversation has shown me why the US has such a gun problem. Why the police is absurdly violent against anyone they consider a threat. Why someone would resort to shooting a bunch of people if they’ve been bullied for years or whatever and feel threatened. Fucking sad…

All of this is not about me wanting trump alive and well, I don’t want the orange turd around, I’d hope preferably that he rots in prison though and that he has very “nice” cellmate with him, but if he’s gone from the surface of the earth all the better for the rest of us. That is not the same as inciting for violence, or approving the assassination attempt that has killed someone else.

And your proposal is that justice should prevail by a public mass shooting to kill the orange turd?

So your thinking is that because trump tried to end democracy, now you have the right to kill him?

The only way to defend yourself is with guns and killing those who attack you? I wonder what group of people keep proposing that…

People like you, already defeated months before the election, saying that voting doesn’t matter, have a lot to do with the end of democracy. Go vote, make it matter.

Shit’s real fucked, you have in the states a candidate for presidency instead of being in prison like he should. And the problem is that no one has killed him yet? No wonder that justice won’t work…

Either you are just trying to help the orange shit posting this kind of defeatist comment on purpose or you are just as bad as a republican that keeps saying those who oppose him should be killed.

Don’t use fallacies to defend violence. Killing trump is not the only way to avoid that from happening. Becoming a terrorist and promoting violence against a political group contrary to your political opinion is not OK no matter how dangerous that group is. You are using the same discussion techniques that fucking maga asshats use. Seriously you don’t see the issue on the way you are defending the idea that assassinating a political opponent is the only way to defeat that opponent?

You are defending the republican gun nutjob that went to shoot trump and accidentally killed someone else? You are saying his decision making was the kind of behaviour to glorify? The same kind of nut job that will happily join in the death squads you talk about? What the fuck, how does your brain work? How can you not see the hypocrisy of what you are saying…

Of course that’s assuming a sincere take and not just some piece of shit bot or account made to increase violence hatred and division.

Sincerely I am baffled at the take most comments have on this… Does this mean that because trump is a fucking fascist piece of shit that calls for violence against anyone he doesn’t like we have the right to call for violence against him? Just because trump is a disgusting waste of biological matter that rapes kids do we have the right to rape his kids? What the fuck is with all these comments calling coward to jack black for pointing out how out of place is such a thing to say… It’s a joke that I could do, in a group of close friends, that I know how they will take it. I’m pretty sure jack black would have found it funny in private. But in the middle of a show? Do we really need to remind people that calling for violence is not OK? Yeah we could take his comment as a joke… But what if some people in the audience are unhinged enough to take it seriously? The comment was definitely out of place. Freedom of speech has limits, and his comment is very much crossing the limit.

Look, I’m not going to lie, if I hear trump drops dead randomly tomorrow I wouldn’t feel particularly sad (or at all) but I wouldn’t ask for him to be assassinated or call for terrorism against republicans no matter how wrong I think they are and how dangerous they can be. What the fuck… there’s so many people here hoping for a fucking asshole to be assassinated it’s kinda scary even. That’s not the solution against trump or republicans…

Well damn, thank you so much for the answer. That has gone well and beyond what I’d have called a great answer.

First of all I just wanted to acknowledge the time you put into it, I just read it and in order to make a meaningful answer for discussion I probably need to read your comment a couple more times, and consider my own perspective on those topics, and also study a few drops of information you gave where sincerely you lost me :D (being a neutral monist, and about Searle and such, I need to study a bit that area). So, I want to give an adequate response to you as well and I’ll need some time for that, but before anything, thanks for the conversation, I didn’t want to wait to say that later on.

Also, worth mentioning that you did hit the nail in the head when you summed up all my rambling into a coherent one question/topic. I keep debating myself about how I can support creators while also appreciating the usefulness of a tool such as LLMs that can help me create things myself that I couldn’t before. There has to be a balance somewhere there… (Fellow programmer brain here trying to solve things like if you are debugging software, no doubt the wrong perspective for such a complex context).

UBI is definitely a goal to be achieved that could help in many ways, just like a huge reform of copyright would also be necessary to remove all the predators that are already abusing creators by taking their legal rights on the content created.

The point you make of anthropomorphizing LLMs is absolutely a key point, in fact I avoid all I can mentioning AI because I believe it muddles the waters so much more than it should (but it’s a great way of selling the software). For me it goes the other way actually and I wonder how different we are from an LLM (oversimplifying much…) in the methods we apply to create something and where’s the line of being creative vs depending on previous things experienced and basing our creation in previous things.

Anyway, that starts getting a bit too philosophical, which can be fun but less practical. Respecting your other comment, I do indeed follow Doctorow, it’s fascinating how much he writes, and how clear he can expose ideas. It’s tough to catch up with him at times with so much content. I also got his books in the last humble bundle, so happy to buy books without DRM… I’ll try to think a bit more these days on these topics and see what I can come up with. I don’t want to continue rambling like a madman without setting some order to my own thoughts first. Anyway, thanks for the interesting conversation.

I would love to hear your opinion on something I keep thinking about. There’s the whole idea that these LLMs are training on “available” data all over the internet, and then anyone can use the LLM and create something that could resemble the work of someone else. Then there’s the people calling it theft (in my opinion wrong from any possible angle of consideration) and those calling it fair use (I kinda lean more on this side). But then we have the side of compensation for authors and such, which would be great if some form for it would be found. Any one person can learn about the style of an author and imitate it without really copying the same piece of art. That person cannot be sued for stealing “style”, and it feels like the LLM is basically in the same area of creating content. And authors have never been compensated for someone imitating them.

So… What would make the case of LLMs different? What are good points against it that don’t end up falling into the “stealing content” discussion? How to guarantee authors are compensated for their works? How can we guarantee that a company doesn’t order a book (or a reading with your voice in the case of voice actors, or pictures and drawings, …) and then reproduces the same content without you not having to pay you? How can we differentiate between a synthetic voice trained with thousand of voices but not the voice of person A but creates a voice similar to that of A against the case of a company “stealing” the voice of A directly? I feel there’s a lot of nuances here and don’t know what or how to cover all of it easily and most discussion I read are just “steal vs fair use” only.

Can this only end properly with a full reform of copyright? It’s not like authors are nowadays very well protected either. Publishers basically take their creation to be used and abused without the author having any say in it (like in the case of spot if unpublished a artists relationship and payment agreements).