The accusation was insistently fielded by some malicious actors back when the early access version launched. It was debunked multiple times but it seems like it stuck to some anyway.
AI image generation wasn't good enough in early 2022 to generate game assets. Yeah you could probably generate pokemon-like looking stuff, but it wouldn't be usable as-is in a game.
Edit: and even today. Generate textures for blocky assets? Sure. But full pokémon models that wouldn't need a ton of rework? Nope.
> But full pokémon models that wouldn't need a ton of rework? Nope.
Well, that is the core benefit of using AI - you can save a lot of the groundwork, especially in concept art. Making 20, 30 versions of "fat rat in yellow with lightning bolt symbols in their fur" is cheap with AI, but prohibitively expensive if you're using humans. You're starting running already.
Immutable systems like this are great in a lot of educational setups where a lot of different students work at potentially many different workstations while always needing access to the same tools and in general having a "unified" experience.
Not sure if this fits but compsci student from Germany here.
Ever since I was unceremoneously kicked out of my parents' house after graduating from HS I've lived in a student dorm, now sharing a flat with a friend splitting rent.
Been somewhat "cruising along" financially in the sense that I gained roughly enough to pay my monthly expenses with not much wiggle room. Had to go a bit into debt to fund moving into the dorm initially and never exactly recovered from that debt, just hovering with nothing really changing.
Recently lost access to my student loan as I am too slow to study for their requirements but I've managed to offset that by working as sysadmin/tech support at a small uni lab. My main sources of income being this job, "child benefits", and a half-orphan pension (lost my mom to alcohol when I was 15, dad remarried later). This half-orphan pension now _also_ fell off until I have the paperwork handled to re-request it after they asked me for proof that I've been studying two years ago, which I sent in too late. This pension also covered healthcare automatically.
Now with my pension out of the picture until they process it I have been thrown into the regular healthcare system, which added a monthly expense that I was not prepared for, especially because they are also requesting that I retroactively pay up for 3 months of apparently missed contributions/fees. Sent them an email a few days ago asking if it was possible to pay this off in monthly rates to hopefully make it a bit more manageable, but they have a very archaic policy of not responding to emails and only sending out paper mail. I also tried calling but the person I talked to wasn't exactly helpful outside of "have you tried sending an email".
I am honestly at a bit of a loss as to how to approach this.
There were some pipe dreams of finding more work but the job market is, excuse the expression, fucked. Nobody would employ a student who hasn't finished their bachelor's yet. I'll probably try to find a job at some fastfood place or grocery store next and put my studies on pause. This might bite me back later because of credit point requirements from my course but still better than having debt collectors on my ass.
I understand that this is all over the place. It would mean the world to me if someone could even find the time to chime in and give some advice.
10-year lurker, first time poster here - also studied CS in Germany.
Healthcare costs: Does your uni or city offer free legal consultation? They might be able to help with how to ask your health insurance for monthly rates or a delay in bills.
Rent: How close are you with your friend? Would it be a possibility that they temporarily loan the rent, so that you can cover your unexpected bills?
Work: How close are you too finishing your studies and how close are you to the maximum study duration? If possible, you could reduce the amount of ECTS you're taking for the semester to make time to work up to 20h or more during semester breaks / exam phases. Taking a semester break for paid internships / any work is also a good possibility, unsure what you mean with credit point requirements. You could argue for an official "vacation semester" due to personal hardships. Working any job to make a living and cover your expenses is honorable. If possible, focus on building a track record of technical jobs. How comfortable are you with programming? Please try applying as working student or freelancer to companies in your area, as programming jobs likely pay higher per hour and build career capital for your next application. Likely, mid/large companies have no open headcount at the end of the year, headcount for these companies typically comes early in the following year. Startups, small local companies, and web/marketing agencies looking for freelancers might be different and also are more likely open to hire someone with little experience. Most CS people I know overuse the internet to look for jobs and underutilize their network. Ask fellow students, friends, and extended family if they know any open roles.
Credit: Have you considered taking a Studienkredit or similar type of loan for students?
I am not aware of any such consultation offerings but I will investigate if that is an option, thanks for pointing this out.
After consulting her fortunately that is most likely an option, we have a buffer on our shared account to pay rent for ~3 more months but I'd just be shifting the debt to a place that wants it back less urgently, I still have to figure out how to get the extra income to make it happen.
I am about halfway through the required modules to start my bachelor's thesis so I still have a bit to go; The biggest problem is that I have a bunch of failed exams resulting from a multitude of things (both psychological because of the pandemic, idealistic because of some sketchy privacy practices, and very bad sleep causing me to _oversleep_ on exams). This is hard to explain to anyone asking, which happened to me before while I tried to apply for a job.
The course I study has requirements for how many credit points you need at the end of certain semesters to be allowed to continue studying, which I fear I will not reach if I lessen the uni load to focus more on earning enough to pay my bills.
I do have years of hobby-level programming in a multitude of different languages and environments, some of it going as far as almost being "professional" (I was paid on a few occassions to develop custom web solutions) and having contributed to a charity project centered around Minecraft a few years ago. I am unsure how to present any of this and if it actually matters at all, outside of just linking my GitHub profile. The same goes for my Scrum Master certificate, it feels a bit wasted after I found out how little people actually care about it.
I wish I could utilize a network to look for solutions, but outside of my siblings and that flatmate I don't really have any contacts (there wasn't much social interaction during the covid semesters and I never recovered from that). Especially none who would be working at places that'd look for someone like me.
SQLite has a solution for this! There's called strict tables and final SQLite to get mad at you when you try to put a string into a number column, etc.
It took me a while to even begin to understand what Qbix is trying to sell people on. In my humble opinion the website is a disaster, especially on mobile. After a few minutes all I could gather was that it claims itself to be a "social operating system" (nice buzzword). After exploring the GitHub readme it got a bit clearer but it kinda "just" seems like WordPress but for websites seeking out more user interaction?
I have not looked into it too deeply, but I also have not seen any mention of any sort of open standards that would lift Qbix from being another vendor to be locked into. No OID/OID Connect, ActivityPub, etc. Instead it mentions integration with Facebook of all things.
Where is the openness?
I'm particularly interested in their shady data privacy shenanigans. How would this hold up against a GDPR complaint? It doesn't sound like they're properly listing what data is to be tracked, meaning users are by definition unable to consent, so any amount of data collection is unlawful, no?
European here, sorry if I misunderstood, but I always thought the "free speech" protected by the first amendment only protects your right to e.g. voice your political opinion without being punished for your particular views, not your preferences in porn (or the distribution and even existence of it)? As an extreme counterexample the government banned CSAM and one couldn't weasel their way out of such a case by pleading first amendment, right?
That's a so complicated case, that it's an increasingly bad example.
CSAM is basically evidence of a crime, so it's treated as such, private entities are pressured to monitor for it, detect it, quarantine it, etc.
Which in some abstract sense is okay. (We have data on rising child abuse, including sexual, also data on rising CSAM on the internet and so on, so some very effective interest groups are trying to "do something".) Now, of course, it might not come as a complete surprise to you here on HN that the pragmatic concerns about the approach, proposals, implementation, lawcraft and whatnot involved are far outweigh even the wildest claims of benefits, the whole enterprise is very counter-productive, at best security-theater, but in reality it's just a fucking public interest disaster (FOSTA/SESTA, basically War on Sex Work, yet another highly acclaimed installment of the War On series!), an in a convenient secondary effect it's a "free moat" for the incumbents.
The obvious legal issue is that it's "impossible" to say what it CSAM and what is something that looks like that. For example, what if, there's a machine that generates pictures that look like CSAM? You might advertise it, but likely in no time the DoJ and a bunch of other federal and state entities would sue (and of course arrest, raid, detain) you arguing that somewhere there's actual CSAM in the process, it's distribution, etc.
And even if simple plain "aliens in a vacuum" reading of the law indicates that eventually the government would lose these cases, it's very realistic that the courts themselves would just make new law that in effect criminalizes this even more victimless version too.
But, all in all, with enough advocacy it's possible, just there are very few people who want to spend their life on this.
If AI generated CSAM is poisoned by actual CSAM in the process, wouldn't that extend to AI generated art being poisoned by copyrighted work in the process?
It wasn’t that long ago that porn was banned in the US, and ‘obscene’ material still technically is. It’s generally allowed under a 1st amendment exception.
CSAM is not in violation of the first amendment because the supreme court decided that obscenity isn't protected speech. It isn't specifically that the first amendment only protects political speech, like with abortion, obscenity limitations - particularly related to children - are just something the court made up which no one really openly disagrees with (for obvious reasons).
In a way it shows that the first amendment isn't really all that absolute. Say something that enough powerful people find gross and they'll just make it out to be an unstated exception.
