Monday, October 03

Geek

Daily News Stuff 3 October 2022

Getting The Bone From The Trom Edition

Top Story

  • PayPal has banned using its services to buy, well, books. (Hacker News)

    The terms are so broad that they cover all works of fiction and probably all non-fiction except for trigonometry textbooks:
    You may not use PayPal's services for activities that

    ...

    5. involve the sending, posting or publication of any messages, content or materials that, in PayPal’s sole discretion, (a) are harmful, obscene, harassing or objectionable, (b) depict or appear to depict nudity, sexual or other intimate activities, (c) depict or promote illegal drug use, (d) depict or promote violence, criminal activity, cruelty or self-harm (e) depict, promote or incite hatred or discrimination of protected groups or of individuals or groups based on protected characteristics (e.g. race, religion, gender or gender identity, sexual orientation etc.) (f) presents a risk to consumer safety or (financial) wellbeing, (g) are fraudulent, promote misinformation or are unlawful, (h) infringes the intellectual property rights or other proprietary rights of any party or (i) are otherwise unfit for publication.
    Romance novels? Banned. Medical textbooks? Banned. Historical fiction and non-fiction alike? Banned. Mark Twain and Charles Dickens? Banned to hell and back. Shakespeare and Chaucer? Banned so hard they're still spinning in their graves.

    The Bible? Banned. The Koran? Oddly enough, also banned.

    Oh, and they want you to snitch on that samizdat copy of Ivanhoe:
    We encourage you to report violations of this Acceptable Use Policy to PayPal immediately. If you have a question about whether a type of transaction may violate the Acceptable Use Policy, or wish to file a report, you can do so here.
    So that PayPal can steal all their money:
    If you are a seller and receive funds for transactions that violate the Acceptable Use Policy, then in addition to being subject to the above actions you will be liable to PayPal for the amount of PayPal’s damages caused by your violation of the Acceptable Use Policy. You acknowledge and agree that $2,500.00 U.S. dollars per violation of the Acceptable Use Policy is presently a reasonable minimum estimateof PayPal’s actual damages - including, but not limited to, internal administrative costs incurred by PayPal to monitor and track violations, damage to PayPal’s brand and reputation, and penalties imposed upon PayPal by its business partners resulting from a user’s violation - considering all currently existing circumstances, including the relationship of the sum to the range of harm to PayPal that reasonably could be anticipated because, due to the nature of the violations of the Acceptable Use Policy, actual damages would be impractical or extremely difficult to calculate. PayPal may deduct such damages directly from any existing balance in any PayPal account you control.
    Do not leave any money in your PayPal account. Ever.

Tech News

  • Are theses new "AI" art generators really applying artificial intelligence or are they just picking out elements of a vast library of existing images and putting them together?

    Yes.

    The creator of that page took the prompt

    A woman with flowers in her hair
    in a courtyard, in the style of ...


    And ran it through the Stable Diffusion algorithm with 1500 different artists names.

    On the one hand, most of them are not very good. Sturgeon's Law applies at least as much to AI-generated art as to human efforts, and no-one went through the 6000 results (there are four examples for each artist) to filter out the crap.

    On the other hand, it is doing pretty much what it says on the tin.

    I was preparing some examples of this myself, getting long-dead masters to paint the Space Shuttle, but I didn't have this much time to dedicate to such a project.


  • Linux kernel 6.0 is out. (Phoronix)

    So what's the big change that led to the jump in version numbers? Linus himself explains:
    So, as is hopefully clear to everybody, the major version number change is more about me running out of fingers and toes than it is about any big fundamental changes.
    It was up to 5.19, but it version numbers count from zero, so nothing essential is missing.


  • The story behind the 2018 Tumblr containment breach that unleashed insanity on an unsuspecting planet. (The Verge)

    It all came down to - as so many things do - money. Tumblr contained all kinds of weird porn, and all the weird people who like that shit, and the payment processors didn't want to go near it.

    So Tumblr's parent company at the time - I don't remember which bunch of idiots was running things right then - banned porn. All of it.

    Rather like lancing a boil on a patient with bubonic plague... In a crowded subway car.


  • If we increase the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, doesn't that mean trees will grow faster and lock away more carbon? Yes. (Phys.org)

    The effect is measurable and consistent, but currently CO2 is increasing faster than plants can soak it up, so some gradual and carefully planned adjustments to industry and transport are in order.

    By which I mean nuclear powered cars.


Disclaimer: Mention of lancing boils on patients with bubonic plague not to be taken as medical advice. Also not to not be taken as medical advice. Please just pretend that paragraph never happened.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:20 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 878 words, total size 7 kb.

1 Dear PayPal:
Congratulations, and thank you for showing me how a company relying on capitalism and the free flow of money and ideas can become a goose-stepping automaton that can put every negative word in the dictionary into some sort of righteous verbal stew to make it sound like you are somehow better than the people you supposedly are asking money from.
Meanwhile, of course, you still take and give money to whoever sucks your  . . . eula, while you play with yourself and your woke friends while strangling the expression of ANYTHING you think might cause trouble for ANYONE you think reads the same magazines and votes the same way you do.

Posted by: furball321 at Monday, October 03 2022 10:34 PM (VZYxJ)

2 On further reading, doesn't it sound like companies are just trying to get away with whatever bullshit they can to break rules and make money, and if prostituting themselves to social justice, they will, so they get upvotes from the woke zombies who've been educated by the Frankfurt school? Or at least get a pass from the "political class" while they rape the values of the nation that gave them the benefits they take advantage of?

I remember watching an online economics class a few years ago from a Chicago college. The professor invited a friend of his he had gone to college with to come to his class. The friend had gone into private business with a corporation and openly admitted that his branch of the business spent all their time trying to figure out how to get around law, to the benefit of the business, law, rights and morals be damned.

Posted by: furball321 at Monday, October 03 2022 11:09 PM (VZYxJ)

3 Not leaving money in your PayPal account won't help, they will happily raid your linked bank account (And if you have overdraft protection, any other account you have).

Posted by: Mauser at Tuesday, October 04 2022 01:26 PM (BzEjn)

4 BTW, it sounds like that EULA is racist, pretty much bans all Rap CDs from purchase with PayPal.

Posted by: Mauser at Tuesday, October 04 2022 01:27 PM (BzEjn)

5 I've never done business with paypal, and certainly swore I never would, but now I guess I'll have to double swear.  I mean, the notion of letting some obviously horrible bunch of slimeball jackasses have essentially unfettered access to my back account for the privilege of paying 15-30% transaction fees seemed pretty stupid 20 years ago.  I really truly honestly with all my heart hope nobody goes all Saint Nasim on the lot of 'em.

Posted by: normal at Wednesday, October 05 2022 01:38 AM (LADmw)

Posted by: Magic mushrooms at Tuesday, January 16 2024 05:11 AM (yLdgg)

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Apple pies are delicious. But never mind apple pies. What colour is a green orange?




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