Weekend Edition 36

WE 36.1 – A Story that Never Should Have Needed to be Written
Pardon me as I pick up the pieces of my heart off of the floor. I am both disgusted and completely disheartened by this subject matter. I first stumbled across porn when I was about 12. I knew what it was, but found myself at that particular site after mistyping the address for a Tolkien fan forum that I was quite active in at the time. Yes, I have been that big of a nerd for that long. I was nerding out in Tolkien forums at 11 and 12 while you were playing video games and playing outside. I needed that much of an escape. That fateful stumble happened one night on a system my dad built for my grandma to get email on, it was connected to something like Copper.net or netzero dial-up. I think it was something like a Celeron in an NForce AIO motherboard. Anyway, enough about the machine itself, it actually sucked, but did what it needed to, barely. The point of this trip down memory lane was to open up the topic of kids finding their way to porn in their own time. It has been a problem as long as the internet has been a “thing”. This is not news that a) kids get sucked into porn earlier and earlier (doesn’t help when the books in the school and public libraries and that their demonized teachers are reading them in class are little more than porn) b) Big Tech needs to do more about this, so that not just anyone can “happen” upon porn while perusing a site or app like Twitter and that c) porn has a detrimental effect on anyone it touches (performers, viewers, producers, etc). If parents were able to actually parent their kids, then studies like this would never need to be undertaken. I’ve talked about this before, and my stance has not changed. This study showed that the behavior and language of kids as young as 8 has been negatively impacted through porn consumption. *SARCASM WARNING* Wait, wait, wait, I thought that all porn and all sexuality was inherently good for everybody... *SARCASM WARNING* I thought that kids should be treated just like adults when it comes to sex... Isn’t that what the fruitloops and would-be or have-been kiddie diddlers who have infected our education system have been shouting at us about for the last several years? Why, yes, yes that has been the message. That is purely demonic. They know that porn has destroyed their own lives... They are probably incapable of having regular, consenting relationships and intimacy with adults, partially, perhaps, because they were groomed and abused as kids themselves, and likely are addicted to porn themselves. Alright, enough of a tangent there... Let’s get back to the body of the article, now, as I try to recover from my episode of dry heaves and weeping over these kids.
What kinds of exposure were these kids getting on Snapchat and Twitter, you ask? Adult nudity and violent porn in profiles and posts. These things are allegedly not allowed for the under-18 set, but they of course find their way to accessing it, and/or it isn’t taken down as quickly as would be ideal by the platforms. One thing to keep in mind about this is that Twitter has made lots of money from the attention that e-thots, models, and adult performers have generated on the platform over the years. I’m not convinced that it will EVER be clean enough to warrant use by me or anyone in my family. Not only that, but diddlers post their exploits and hunt for more victims there as well. No thanks. Parents, step up. Parent your children. Protect them from this filth by keeping them off of these platforms and teaching them the right way to handle those sorts of things. The best way to deal with sex in discussion with your kids is to actually have a discussion about sex and porn with your kids. Do not allow the schools or the media to do it for you if you value their innocence. You set the tone. *begin rant* Dads, if that means that you need to figure out how to break free from porn yourselves, then do so. Easier said than done? Absolutely. Worth doing in order to really be a man and lead your family with honor rather than shame? Damn straight it is. Moms, if it is a problem for you as well, other than with your husbands, please learn to break free as well. Your kids need both of you to be whole and sane. Get rid of any of this garbage from your homes, devices, places of work, vehicles, etc (wherever you might hide it, whether physical or digital media). *end rant*

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-65534354
#porn #kids #cutitoff #burnitwithfire #protectyourkids #thetalk #techfreedom #weekendedition #TechFreedom

WE 36.2 – AI News
WE 36.2-1 - “Godfather” of AI Speaks Out
This is a fearporn piece. This gentleman, Geoffrey Hinton, was a pioneer in neural networks, which were a foundational technology for the large language models which undergird most of what we call AI these days. He echoes many of the concerns from the open letter from late March. I am not a fan of AI, but even at that, fear tactics over employment issues, AI controlling the world, AI possibly exterminating the human race, etc are pure histrionics. These histrionics are meant to lead to hysteria because hysteria = fear and the Bible says that when we fear something, we more or less manifest it in our lives. We focus on the fear, empowering it to become realized in our lives, unless we break the cycle and focus on building something positive instead. It would be one thing if the guy were coming forth with more than vague fears, but had some solutions other than, “Let’s stop working in this area.” Which he is thankfully not advocating. I don’t have a pony in this show, and don’t have time to dive into this allegedly sticky issue to come up with a workable solution, either.
#ai #fearporn #meh #TechFreedom #weekendedition
https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/02/tech/hinton-tapper-wozniak-ai-fears/index.html

WE 36.2-2 – Bing AI Available to All Who Sign in Through Edge.
Microsoft has started to actualize their plans to roll ChatGPT functionality through all of their ecosystem, Bing, Word, Excel, Outlook, and eventually Windows itself. This sounds like an absolute nightmare to me. Not only is Microsoft one of the worst about respecting your privacy, but now they are wholly embracing this generative AI thing, the chief danger of which, that I see, is the fact that it is a privacy black hole on its own. They record every response, every prompt, to “learn” from you so that it can seem more realistically human. Microsoft + AI should give you goosebumps in the privacy arena. That’s not to mention the fact that they exist to “learn from you”, so that it can more effectively sound like you. I do not think that the publicly available AI’s could ever replace any human being at anything. If anyone is foolish enough to try to let one replace them, then they deserve to be replaced. Good riddance. Use discernment when you use these TOOLS, people.
Aside from all that, why would you volunteer your info to Microsoft that much more by using Bing? Particularly signed in? Come on, people. Do your searching elsewhere.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/04/tech/microsoft-bing-updates/index.html
#bingAI #msft #weekendedition #FOSSNews #TechFreedom
WE 36.2-3 – Bard to Be Rolled Into Google Search Fulltime
Google Search is going to look a bit more like Brave Search, moving forward, based on the unveiling at Google’s annual I/O conference last week. That means that Bard will now offer AI summaries of all of your search queries before your results actually show up. How do you feel about that? Are any of you still using Google Search, at this point? If you are, why? It has been demonstrated ad nauseam that not only do they spy on your searching, keeping track of every query, but they actively rearrange the results to push a very globalist, WEF & UN-approved set of results. I’m sure that Microsoft’s Bing does the exact same thing, though, so yeah, neither of these are good options if you want unbiased, private search results. What might be better? Well, if privacy is all you are after, then take a look at Duck Duck Go and Brave Search (ironic to me that their initials are BS, lol), or if you want less biased, but still private searching, take a look at Mojeek, SwissCows, or MetaGer. If you want to try your hand at running your own search engine, spin up a VPS and install SearX and try it out. These are things that I would point out in one of my Freedom Consultations.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/10/tech/ai-search-google-io/index.html
#google #bard #search #TechFreedom #FOSSNews #weekendedition

WE 36.2-4 – ChatGPT Stuff...
Sam Altman is set to testify before Congress on Tuesday, alongside IBM’s Chief Privacy and Trust Officer, and a professor who is a self-described “AI hype critic”. This testimony is more theatrics, likely, as the Senate starts to try to wrap their aged heads around this technology in order to perhaps create some more government overreach in the form of “commonsense guardrails” to regulate this new thing, in keeping with what Depends’ handlers put out recently as a priority in DC. Good luck, Senators. Most of the members of that sub-committee probably wouldn’t know what AI was if it bit them on the face. How can they possibly regulate something they can’t comprehend? This is not ageism, this is just common sense. Most people my age (probably including myself) don’t have a firm grasp on what this AI thing really is, so how can people who barely know how to use a cell phone figure it out based on a bit of testimony?
https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/10/tech/openai-ceo-congress-testifying/index.html

Can you pass exams using ChatGPT? Possibly, but as I’ve said repeatedly, do not rely on it anymore than you would a Wikipedia article. Use it as a starting point, if at all. Never turn in anything directly from an AI generated piece. Always tweak it, always polish it, make it yours. You also never know if you will wind up with a hallucinated alleged source. Be careful and always use your God-given mind and discernment. However you choose to use it or not, always remember that it is just a tool. Never simply outsource your thinking to a machine.
https://www.bbc.com/news/education-65316283
#weekendedition #ChatGPT #OpenAI #samaltman #Congress #privacy #TechFreedom #FOSSNews

WE 36.3 – Twitter News
Musk says that he is about to roll out encrypted messaging and calling on Twitter. The acid test, he says, is that even if someone held a gun to his head, he wouldn’t be able to snoop on your DMs or calls. This would make it more competitive with Meta, WhatsApp, Mastodon, and BlueSky. This sounds like a solid move from Elon and co, first one, perhaps, in months. We’ll see if it starts to save the foundering platform. Who knows, right?

Well, it is time for a little Dune2K.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/10/tech/twitter-calls-messaging-elon-musk/index.html
#twitter #encryption #dms #calls #cool #weekendedition #TechFreedom #FOSSNews

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