Libb @ Libb @jlai.lu

I moved to https://piefed.social/u/Libb

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2 yr. ago

Plastic package? Unless it's a very well made box (in which case I will find some use to it), it's send to recycling.

Cardboard?

• I will keep a few to be able to send stuff myself (why pay for boxes when you're already receiving perfectly fine ones)
• I like to use it too to scratch simple little boxes and storage I need for small stuff. One of the last one I made (out of recycled packaging) is this... thing (I don't know the English word, sorry) where I can store pens and index cards, on my desk.

It's not pretty but that's just me not worrying about making it look nice. I care about it doing its job and being cheap (aka, free) and quick to assemble (I will often make two or three attempts before getting it right so I prefer when it can be done quickly).

Along the years, I have made quite a few of those cardboard things and even offered a few to people who wanted one. For example, the very last thing I made is this... I don't know if this even have a name?

It's a portable A6-sized index card holder. Between the two cardboard sheets there is a foldable space that acts as a storage for extra cards. as you can see, on one side it is also a makeshift pen holder. The whole thing is made out of sturdy black paper (the black foldable thing), an old binder (the purplish cardboard) and some pen case part I imagine a kid had thrown away that I salvaged from the recycling bin.

What do I use it for? I take all my reading notes on index cards and it helps a lot having a small flat surface to write on. For years I had been using makeshift solutions but it was never great. So a couple weeks ago I decided I had enough and started working on my own solution. That the second iteration of it and I think it's close enough to being exactly what I want it to be that I won't need to make a third attempt. And, yep, it will stay the ugly duck it is. At least up until it's damaged enough for me to be willing to make a new and a prettier one ;)

I have no idea if anyone else on the planet could ever be interested in using such a thing but to me it's great and I like it a lot. It's small and light enough I can hold it in the same hand I'm holding the book too and I can comfortably take my notes using my other hand. Also, I made it a tad larger than needed to store A6 cards so I can easily clip on one of those battery powered Led readign lamp when I need more light for reading... The hastily sewed on pocket over the pen holder is there to prevent the lead of my red pencil (I use it to underline passages in some books) of smearing everything when I shove it in my messenger bag.

Cardboard can be very sturdy when used properly but that doesn't mean I'm averse to using more traditional and more sturdy materials like, say, wood, or leather, or even fabric. But sturdier/heavier materials also demand a lot more dedicated tools and a lot more space to work with. Living in our small apartment in an expensive city, space is something that comes at a premium so I'd rather not need too much of it.

Cardboard is also great because it's easy to work with and it's mostly free (when using recycled packaging, at least), and because one doesn't need any specific tools: a decent cutter with some fresh blades, a cutting mat, a steel ruler, some imagination, and maybe also some (hot/white) glue to assemble things together. That's all what one needs.

No one is paying me a monthly sub for me to pretend being interested in the shit they want to say. So it's a safe bet to say I'm not an AI ;)
Edit: and since i have no battery to recharge and no EULA, I can deduce I'm not a robot either.

edit: clicked too fast.

Speaking of noise, it feels like nearly 90% of the content generated on the broader internet these days is starting to feel like it’s churned out by LLMs. Autogenerated articles, comments, even entire ‘conversations’ that ring hollow. Is the Fediverse, specifically, a safe haven from that rising tide of artificial content? Does the human-centric, community-driven nature of these instances inherently push back against such automation?

It may be, I don't know for the very simple reason that I don't read this 'broader' Web that is supposedly AI-infested or made of low-effort content.

I read personal websites whose authors I care about that I don't think will make me waste my (precious) time. For the same reason I quit using all social (beside the Fediverse, mostly here on Lemmy). It's a waste of time (time that is so fucking precious) and their content is of little value, if any.

So, to me, the real question would be: how many of us are still consuming that crap instead of focusing on more... I was about to write 'quality content' but I think it would be safer to say 'focusing on human-made content'?

As long as we're willing to eat their crap, and are willing to pay (one way or the other) to get fed that very crap, why would those websites and corps stop feeding us crap? It's making them money. A lot of it. And as far as I can tell all that matters in our so wonderful world is how much money one makes.

edit: typos.

I don't think I would try to prove anything, why would I want people to know that I'm from the future? but if for some reason I had to prove it, it would depend a lot, like a lot, of the place I'm in. What country and what type of population? I've discovered at a very early age I had an allergy to angry crowds and their willingness to lynch whatever they hate and fear (if there was ever a difference?).

100% this.

Not often but I also barely use my phone, so ;)

It’s no secret that we trade our information for access to the Internet.

You tell me. I had this odd idea that I was already paying a monthly sub to access the Web and then, on top of that, corporations suddenly deciding it was their natural right to suck our data without our consent.

gotta say i’m a bit deflated. you built up so much weirdo energy that i expected a payoff. we were on the verge of putting the lotion in the basket. we could have been so much more

All things must come to an end, even the most beautiful stories. Plus, to be 100% honest with you, I just met that cute Dutch cheese lover...

gotta say i’m a bit deflated. you built up so much weirdo energy

I will take that as a compliment ;)

That truu, I’ve recently started my privacy journey,

That's a great decision, imho.

I made the same choice a few years ago. Every little step counts. I will never be an expert or feel that safe using digital tech but I quit using many tools and services I realized I can't trust at all, which is already something. And it all started by one small first step.

so im slowly switching to alternative to trying to show them to people.

Showing them is a good idea, preaching them to do what you're doing is probably not that great an idea. Think about it, when was the last time you sincerely changed your mind because someone was forcing you to listen to them or was harassing you. What most probably happened is that you told more or less politely to funk themselves ;)

That article

... is terrifying, imho and it is certainly not the kind of society I want to live in.

There is also a much older story about Amazon deleting the novel 1984 from the kindle of customers having legally purchased it (they were refunded but still that doesn't change what happened). This kind of events is what started my journey toward a more privacy and ownership-respecting usage of digital tools. That's also what helped me switch back to analog wherever it was doable (Amazon can't delete a printed book from my bookshelves).

"You don't care about privacy? Why not give me your bank login, then"

More seriously, You don't have to convince people of anything. Sooner than later some huge leak will happen or anythign more intimate that will still impact them, say, like the story of this dad sending a pic of some intimate part of their sick kid's to their doctor and being flagged by Google AI and being arrested for sharing child porn. And then they will realize why it mattered to protect our privacy.

They usually have plenty of options.

Plenty options, are you sure about that? ;)

um… cheese?

Wait? What? You were not supposed to say... Well, ok. Fine. Doesn't matter. I will have another glass of wine instead.

why do i feel like you wear masks in private?

I don't know (and I don't know probably because I don't wear one and neither do I wear a mask in public btw, save when I have a cold) but I would like to know.

I somehow described myself in two and half sentences, in this discussion. Does that count and is that long enough?

this comment was generated by Libb, the first French English-speaking AI that’s as human-looking as anything French can be. It was trained on baguettes and wine—please, say ‘cheese’ in the next 20 seconds if you don’t want for Libb to give you a real French kiss.

Bowing in front of the one-person cheering crowd.

I just realized, you did not say 'cheese'? Come closer ;)

I must be an AI, then—does that mean I should charge for a subscription when I answer a question; maybe adding an extra premium fee on top of that sub each I'm also using a semi-column in the same sentence?

I have no idea how representative these stupid remarks you mentioned are to be considered but it's interesting to realize how their own ignorance of a certain know-how/knowledge is so, so easily becoming a proof for them that the use of said tool/knowledge by other people is making those people suspicious.

In a working society, when faced with something one doesn't know, aka faced with one's own ignorance, one would see that as an opportunity to learn something new and become less ignorant. Not anymore. Following their own 'reasoning', it's now being used as a proof that the other person must be some bot/AI, that they must be something non-human and suspicious. Difference is not considered an opportunity to enrich oneself anymore, it's an anomaly.

When dumb starts defining what's 'normal'—and what's human—one better start worrying, imho.

Btw, using the 'Azerty (French alt)' keyboard layout on Linux, this poor em-dash is just a Shift+AltGr+' away—why wouldn't I want to use it?

Legal disclaimer: this comment was generated by Libb, the first French English-speaking AI that's as human-looking as anything French can be. It was trained on baguettes and wine—please, say 'cheese' in the next 20 seconds, if you don't want for Libb to give you a real French kiss.

But unless society moves in that same direction, it would seem that things would become more and more difficult. We can’t rely on old books and already-created content to move us forward.

100% with you on this. And this is a real issue.

Note that people are still writing books, making music and so on. Some even still go to school in order to be educated—they're just not as trendy anymore ;)

I’ve been finding more value in IRL contact with other people these days. But I don’t think everyone has that luxury, I’m afraid.

It's becoming unusual but it's not a luxury. As a matter of fact it's often cheaper than to use online services to go meet someone at a local place: one needs no subscriptions and no is not (not that much) tracked to be monetized either. The real issue, imho, is that people have been very quickly 'un-educated' about living IRL/together to the point it's now starting to become not only unusual but also... odd to be willing to meet (and talk) IRL, not through an app (it's really noticeable among the young).

Thinking about it, it's almost feels like if humanity was trying to commit suicide: we only exist as a species because we devised 'societies' aka the art of living/working/being together.

What if that entire “person” was just AI generated, and the “blog” was just fake AI stories?

I don't live in the future so that I could not tell.

What I can tell is that AI of today smells very much like AI (which is to say, by grossly over-simplifying, that AI 'creates' content that is a severely neutered content and that shows) and, seeing how people are asking for more of that shit content, it doesn't look like they will need to invest that much more to make AI better to make it an economical success. So I doubt it will ever reach a point where we can't tell teh difference. But if it was to get to that there would still be:

• real people, to meet and talk with and do stuff with.
• a bazillion books published waiting to be read. Printed books I mean, not ebooks as those can too easily be altered (here again, to please the crowd... or maybe one day to be 'AI-optimized'). There are more books waiting to be read than I would be able to read even if I was to live for a thousand years. So, I don't need to Web to access fascinating content, I just need (my own or any public) Library. And what about younger people that have not been taught to enjoy reading books and can only consume videos or look at pictures instead? Well, imho the first thing they should do is ask their parents why they failed so badly at giving them such a basic education as enjoying reading. Then, and that's the good news, it's never too late to start reading. Those younger people still can decide to switch gear and start opening a book from time to time ;)

So, if that ugly AI-Web was to take over what I call the human-made Web, I would simply quit using the Web.

Exactly like we quit owning (and watching) a TV in the early 00s my spouse and I, when we realized we had had enough of being asked to pay money in order to watch unskipable fucking ads and what we considered always shittier content (read: 'politically correct' content a bit like that AI-crap of today, as we both prefer to be challenged by what we watch and what we read, not so much being nursed or feeling validated by it).

With AI, you could generate a lifetime of greedy/evil corporate/marketing-owned web in a matter of hours, and just flood every corner of the internet with it.

They could flood the Web they own with that shit and, imho, that's 100% what they will do and so will do Hollywood and Netflix (it will be much cheaper/quicker to produce and there will be less risk of getting lynched for offending this or that part of the population). That they will do, I'm willing to bet. But they still won't be able to flood my part of the Web (I pay for it, I own it, I decide what's (not) published on it), as well as on many other small parts of the Web owned by other people like me. To get rid of us they first would need to make it illegal (or too costly) for mere individuals like us to own a domain and publish content. If that was to happen (and it could very well) it would take them a lot of work to achieve, and that would give us, the mere people willing to keep our freedom of expression (and willing to remain not-owned in any way) the opportunity to search for some other place... including moving back to analog media and IRL/in-person meetings.

I mean, humanity has shared stories for thousands of years. The Internet? It's approx 40 years old. So, yeah, we should be able to find some alternatives ways to express ourselves without relying on such a shitty web if things were to become that bad.

Per my point above, you’ll never know what’s human-made in the very near future. At some point, bots with human identities will flood websites, then what?

See what I just said.

Sure, there will most certainly be a web like the one you're describing and realizing how lazy most people are it will most certainly be a huge hit. But no matter how successful it is it will still be 100% of no interest to me and to people like me. So me and those other people we would focus our time (and money) on a man-made Web without worrying how machines monkey humans. And if one day they make it so that it's not possible to access any man-made content online, well, we will fall back on IRL-meeting, with real people. Like going to church, or to a book club, go to concerts or make some music in a band, go listen to poetry, go places to play board-games, whatever.

We don't need our lives to be online at all time. As a matter of fact, we used to not spend it online at all up until very recently ;)

AI generated content, which now includes incredibly convincing videos of people, will grow exponentially over the next weeks, months, and years.

At some point, the majority of the content you see will be fake, and any usefulness or connection to humans will be lost.

(...)

To that end, when will the internet be so untrustworthy, “soulless”, and useless to you that it crosses the tipping point?

Depends what you read. Blogs are still a thing and on many there is not the slightest hint of AI and in some there is even not even a single ad to be seen. It's still people talking about what they truly care. Not people trying to farm likes or views by spreading some low-effort shit content, be it videos, pictures or text.

The corporate/marketing-owned Web is filled to the brim with utter crap but that's not new, and it has been so well before AI became a thing. I've quit bothering about its existence a decade ago or so. So, I would not even notice it that corporate-owned Web was to suddenly vanish back into the nothingness it never should have left.

But the human-made web is still a thing. It's just not promoted as much as it once was and certainly it's not promoted where nowadays crowds gather to get spoon-fed content. Aka, in those handful of places that are all owned by corporations, corporations that don't want people to go see elsewhere. But corporations not wanting to promote human-made web doesn't make that human-web go away.

It's there for anyone to taste and, if they're willing to, to participate in. But it's up to those people to move their ass and change their habits. If they don't do that effort to try to go see elsewhere, well, they'll the only one losing out on a potentially more interesting (and less faked) content.

It's out there. One just needs to open the door or jump the fence to get the fuck out of their walled garden and start exploring the World Wide Web.

edit: clarifications.

isn't that the case for every country to favour national buyers over foreigners? It's a real question (even though I'm French ;)

I have trouble understanding what people are actually programming if it isn’t their job. Like, you go to your computer and start working on…what?

I've written some simple shell scripting to ease repetitive tasks, that's about it (like play random video/audio files in MPV media player, resize & convert images I post on my website, and so on). Does that count as programing? ;)