> no one was stopping anyone from using any map type they desire

They still aren't.

You somehow managed to go from correctly stating that the choice of projection is always a trade-off, to calling the pragmatic switch to a projection more suited to today's use "far-left idealism".

Thinking that the planet needs a declining human population doesn't need brainwashing, just the realisation that with an indefinitely growing population on a planet with limited resources, at some point the math no longer adds up, and nature will decline our population for us, the hard way. And it seems we're getting precariously close to that tipping point.

The question is not if we want a shrinking population or not. It's if we want to achieve it by acknowledging the facts and having less children, or by ignoring them and waiting for the extinction events.

I just used the word "written", but of course I meant slop-vomited. Not one second of a human's effort went into that post.

A kingdom for an edit feature on /.

Why do articles these keep showing up on /.? Seriously, I'm wondering. Who here cares what these out-of-touch middle managers have to say?

Flogging their employer's AI tools, which I'm sure they're doing without any coercion or ulterior motives... bragging about these weird things that never seem to be anything but EXTREMELY vague, and if they aren't, then hopelessly useless... casually ignoring that neither the economics nor the legalities behind it work out at all... and presenting it all through the most obvious, vapid, garbage AI slop text generation with no obvious post-editing and obviously no valuable, personal insight.

Seriously, anything this person has just written is an utter waste of space, bandwidth, and time.

I never had any sympathy for them either. But oh, how the tables have turned. That the GenAI hype would lead to major labels being in the clear moral (and legal) right for once, and actually aligned with the interests of the artists, wasn't on my bingo card.

I hope the music industry hands the AI bros their asses to hell and back, that OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, xAI et al. end up trillions in dept and eff the hell off, and that Altman, Amodei, Zuck, Musk and all those grifters spend the rest of their lives miserable and in jail. The minimum of justice.

Licenses exist.

Try using the freely available preview copy of a photo from the Getty library in your next commercial project, and see how that goes.

This is a precedent that very clearly will fall again, hopefully really soon. Because it has literally no basis in law.

To reiterate: "[... ] criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching [...], scholarship, or research [...]"

Claiming that training LLMs falls under any of those categories takes more than some degree of creativity. In fact, it seems to be the epitome of what Fair Use law was worded to exclude.

Yes, you actually can. As an originator of the work, the copyright is yours, and YOU decide the license and terms under which you release it. If you want to prohibit their use in training LLM models, or commercial use of derivative works based on them, then you can decide so.

Just because something is accessible without payment on the public Internet does NOT automatically imply that it's in the Public Domain. It never did, and I'm confused how the GenAI age managed to convince so many people (apart from the AI bro grifters themselves, of course) otherwise.

Also, not all technology is the same. Equating recording technology, which enables an artist to work, with LLMs, which generate bland and worthless mass garbage slop knockoffs based on statistical distillation of real, illegally used art, is ludicrous. The two have nothing in common.

Only in a world where quality of the result is of absolutely zero concern.

Yes, I'm aware of the fact that that's, in many places, pretty much the world we find ourselves in.

What makes you think they would do that? That would come at a huge expense, set up and maintain such a service, hosting and serving those scans, active preservation (backups, re-copying etc.) until they can be legally shared... all without any discernible way in which that could eventually benefit them financially.

For the Internet Archive,it makes sense because they (still, sometimes) give people access in a controlled manner, and this is how they get people to donate and keep the lights on. Amazon, on the other hand, would probably just see the idea as potentially hurting their sales of reprints and other books

I can guarantee to you that a lot of great music today is created and performed entirely without any "AI" involvement. True artists with something to say, and who make music for other reasons than wanting to be rich and famous (haha) still exist.

To give just one example among thousands: Daptone Records is one of the most consistently brilliant record labels, and they don't even allow computers on the studio floor.

I guess I skipped over the "successful".

I still don't think it's generally true. What distinguished the major pop artist from the indie artist is mostly stuff unrelated to the artistic side, I think. Meaning, maybe their managers, promoters, copywriters, cover designers... feel like they have to use LLMs, but not the artists or producers, in the studio.

This is maybe again biased by my preferred genres, but I don't see how an artist using AI in their songwriting or production would even appear on my radar. They wouldn't end up in any of the places where I find my music (local concerts, festivals, human DJs, personal recommendations...) they simply would be disqualified from all the channels that matter (or be unable to appear in them, because they can't perform live). If any slipped through, that would be a Milli Vanilli style situation.

What? I don't think I understand what you're saying. Making music is as easy as it's always been.

1. Pick up a an instrument.
2. Play it.

Some of the best music doesn't involve more than that.

Of course, people without any skills are going to have a hard time, at first. They can either put in the practice, or otherwise they can just get the heck out of music because they're clearly not interested in it for any of the right reasons.

It's easier than ever to get your stuff recorded and published. That used to be almost impossible without a label that would lend you money for studio time and pressing a record. Now you just click record in your basement and upload to a digital distributor. You never needed "AI" for any of that before, and you certainly don't now.

It was fresh when Cher used it in '98. But I also think barely anybody has done anything worthwhile with it since then.

Do the manufactured acts really still work these days? Maybe I'm biased by the genres I listen to, but my impression was that most of the artists who end up becoming reasonably popular start out being ignored by the major labels, build a reputation and fanbase through independent releases, concerts, freeform radio etc., until suddenly they end up on some A&R's radar and suddenly every major wants a piece of the pie.

I'd still call that discovering, even though I think it's mostly trying to react, always lagging behind the tastes and trends people are building elsewhere.