"We did it, Patrick! We made a technological breakthrough!"
A place for all those who loathe AI to discuss things, post articles, and ridicule the AI hype. Proud supporter of working people. And proud booer of SXSW 2024.
AI, in this case, refers to LLMs, GPT technology, and anything listed as "AI" meant to increase market valuations.
https://xcancel.com/AyakaMods/status/2057438125203296642#m
this needs to stop man
If you must use gdrive: at least encrypt your files.
Stop right there criminal scum!
Encryption means you’re hiding something, and that you’re probably a criminal!
I recently completely finished completely decoupling my life from Google. My GMail account isn't used for anything of importance anymore. People really should take a moment and think about what would be the consequences if Google suddenly mistakenly deleted their account like that. A lot of people's entire lives are connected to their GMail account.
I have self-hosted my own personal email server since the late 90s. It has been a tedious, often unpleasant chore. I hate email. But it's the one thing I've never compromised on, because to this day they try to tie your identity to your email and giving up control of that seems insane to me. Apps that use your phone number are doing the same thing, but you can't self-host that, so I won't use them. I'm sure Signal is very nice and people keep recommending it, but my phone is an untrusted device, and my phone number is an untrusted identity I don't control. I am not going to use it for anything important.
Guys are we really at the whim of just two unregulated private corporations?
They have all your data, grip you privates tight, enter AI, don't say a word, it's just a beast that will consume us all.
Forgive my bluntness.
...But I feel like "artist tech debt" is now a problem.
I first started complaining about it in the photography space. Basically, no one understands colorspace, HDR formats, HEIFs/JXL, how modern sensors/encoders actually work... everyone is "stuck" in a circa-2000s "crush RAW stills to JPEG, export video to mp4" workflow, like they're in a time loop. They're not even using the crazy dynamic range of modern sensors and displays, and have no clue.
But the more I look around, the more I see it elsewhere. A manga artist choosing Google Drive as their host is a great example.
A lot of older artists are stuck in their ways. A lot of younger artists cannot afford the subscriptions they perceive they need for those workflows you mentioned.
Remember, folks: encryption and redundancy (and redundancy).
This type of thing is why you never 'login with Google, Meta, Apple ' whatever.
If they decide they don't like you for whatever reason you end up locked out of every account, event the ones that are not explicitly Google.
Having AI make decisions should put corporate leaders in personal legal problems.
A human is always to blame.
On the one hand this really, REALLY sucks for the artist. I wouldn’t wish it on my personal enemies if I had them.
However stories like these are instrumental in teaching the broader public that AI is to be boycotted.
Telling Joe Schmoe that datacenters are a rising problem just doesn’t register. This they could relate too.
that AI is to be boycotted
I don't think the AI part is the relevant bit here.
I think the message should be that trusting your data to off-site storage where it is subject to third-party moderation should be boycotted. So boycott Google Drive, One Drive, icloud and keep your data on your own computers.
This is why my e-mail isn't gmail and I never store my shit in somebody else's cloud.
Way back when they were starting offering free e-mail and later cloud services it was an obvious risk, because putting one of your main points of contact and only copies of data which you can't get back in the hands of a massive company with whom you don't even have a proper contract and which, besides, has more lawyers than the year has days, is a needless risk.
Same reason why none of my code that's important is in GitHub.
This makes as much sense as having my shelves and cabinets judge what socks I put in them and trash it.
GTFO
I didn't realize AI was looking at my google drive. I'm just deleted my files, but that's like a huge chunk of my career they could have potentially stolen.
I do still want backups beyond my flashdrive, maybe an encrypted file?
No one should have anything on google specifically, or on a non-privately owned and properly secured server in general.
There was a guy, during covid lockdowns, whose child developed a severe rash in the diaper area.
because lockdowns, the doctor asked them to send photos of the rash so he can diagnose.
googles auto-moderator labeled it child pornography, immediately deleted their account (which was very much all eggs in one basket. his phone number, email, data, everything was tied to his google account, all of which went away with no ability to recover anything on any of it) and called the authorities.
Police came to his home, talked to him, talked to his doctor, said there was nothing untoward there and went about their business.
Google said it didnt matter what the police said, it was child pornpgraphy.
the doctor sent a letter to google saying it was a legitimate medical necessity.
google said it didnt care, its child pornography.
That their expert photo-lookers said there was no rash in the area that they could tell, so there for the doctor was wrong, the police were wrong, and that man was a pedophile and he would never get anything back in any circumstance.
and for proof of that, they pointed to a video in his google data from 6 months prior that had the mother laying in bed, naked, with the baby on her chest.
Because, according to google, the only reason to be naked in the same room as a child, or to take a medically dictated photograph of a childs rash, is if you are a dirty dirty child molesting pedophile sexually exploiting your child.
Which I imagine makes almost all of our parents and grand parents pedophiles, by googles standards, because I guarantee the overwhelming majority of us have a parent that has a picture of us naked, probably in the bath, that is compltely fucking harmless to any sane, normal human being, unlike the actual pedophiles that google has looking at this shit who gets their rocks off to it and assumes everyone else is just as fucked up as twisted as they are.
It's only a matter of time until something really big fails online isn't it?
Google did shit like this long before AI. Never use google for anything critical (or at all). while the odds are low because they want your data there’s always the chance they just delete everything you had. And their support is nonexistent so once they do you’re fucked, even if you make a big stink on social media like this
This is why I store everything offline
Offline? Never heard of that app.
Yup, here's the link for it :
I mean...It's always a horrible idea to rely on any major corporation for cloud storage. Especially the likes of Google which is currently in it's evil incarnate era. I don't pay for anything Google related, just some neat open source options because fuck a goddamn evil corporation. Also, I tend to use local external storage as well, because even the open source option might go bellend first into the darkness.
Imagine paying for more storage and keeping anything on the drive that is actually important. I just use mine to share pirated ISOs for games from popular systems to emulate.
The only ways Google listens to your appeal (that I can think of) are: 1) a lawyer, or 2) having at least 100k subscribers on Youtube. Even then it's not guaranteed. It's a complete BS system and no one should do anything important with Google products. Especially not storing important files. Hopefully the artist or their assistant have the stuffed still saved elsewhere, but they need to learn from this.
Google is in hot water after banning the Google account of Andrew Spinks, the lead developer of the hit indie game Terraria. The YouTube account of Spinks’ game dev company, Re-Logic, was hit with some kind of terms-of-service violation, resulting in Google banning Spinks’ entire Google account, greatly disrupting his company’s ability to do business. After three fruitless weeks of trying to get the situation fixed, Spinks announced that his company will no longer do business with Google and that the upcoming Stadia version of Terraria is canceled. source
Google is absolute garbage. (Also, Google Stadia has shut down, lol)
Google never had proper customer support anyway. Plenty of posts on /r/sysadmin by business customers stating the same.
It is more important than ever to get these fucking services out of your life. Do not rely on a third party for your critical data and infrastructure. Use it if it’s convenient, but ALWAYS have a copy under your own control.
I can’t bring myself to blame the victims of shit like this, we’re up against massive corporate and government pressure to give over our lives to them. It takes genuine effort to protect your shit these days, but it’s more critical than ever and well worth the difficulty; even if you never need it.
Sucks big time for the user, but why are we still using Google, Microsoft etc when other solutions exist? Always back-up to a different service and encrypt first. Don't put all your eggs in one basket, ever.
Ah yes. The ever-popular 'blame the victim' option. Brilliant. Why is this artist not aware of every single thing that the terminally online techie knows about? Probably the same reason that the terminally online techie likely can't read the Japanese post, can't draw a straight line without a ruler, and doesn't know anything about <insert some non-techie subject here, pretty much any non-techie subject).
If your technology stack needs all users to know all this esoteric shit, your entire technology stack is a failure. (And I don't care about the why question. I don't care why it's a failure. It doesn't matter. In the end it's a failure.)
MEGA's cloud storage is pretty good in my experience.
Pretty generous limits and cheap prices if you want higher limits. Native Linux client that works well and integrates into KDE well. And, most importantly, end-to-end encryption, which means MEGA has no access to your files. They have no idea what you're uploading.
