Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment The only books they're destroying... (Score 3, Informative) 56

....are books that they can buy by the meter, for pennies on the dollar, if that much. These are surplus books that publishers - the world's leading destroyers of books - would have to destroy anyway.

Trainers can't afford to buy actually rare, desirable books.

It's a shame that all of this data is locked up on private servers, but that's really more of a problem of the copyright system than anything else. Anyone who scanned these books would be banned from making it public.

Comment Re: Took 7 years but... (Score 1) 137

References I could find say they want to build a 10GW solar panel factory, which if accurate wouldn't even make the top 10 world wide. Most of the larger ones are in China, but the Canadian Solar one is also larger than that.

Couldn't find data for the PCB factory, but I'd be very surprised if it was anything like the scale of the Chinese ones.

Speaking of, they are launching from barges off-shore, due to geography. Has the additional benefit of not destroying the launch complex when the rocket explodes.

Comment Re:Oh give it a fucking rest (Score 4, Insightful) 144

The boomers introduced many of the policies that screwed things up, largely based on the assumption that every subsequent generation would be larger (more people) and wealthier. Climate change when they knew it was causing problems is a part of it, but so is the pension system that is basically a ponzi scheme, and house prices.

Every subsequent generation was smaller and less well off, but the boomers are still demanding what they promised themselves. They aren't willing to use any of their oil-based wealth to mitigate climate change either. In fact a lot of them seem to want to accelerate it.

Comment Re:I bet he does it for 2 reasons (Score 2) 124

This is all moot because it's false that if you use AI you cannot gain copyright on the work. I literally hold a copyright registered with the US copyright office (I registered with them, despite not being a US citizen, because they're precedent-setting), fully disclosing the use of AI in the process, and directly speaking about the matter with a copyright examiner.

What the standard is is that raw, unfiltered outputs are not copyrightable (and even then, there's wiggle room; the argument put forward by the copyright office was "based on their current understanding" (as of several years ago) and presumed very minimal control by the user over the outputs (which was actually already obsolete by the time they put it out, but that's nitpicking)). But the human creative action you take with those outputs can cause the resultant product to be copyrightable. This can be things like sample mixing, mastering, adding vocals, etc, but can also even just be the selection process itself. Yes, assemblage, selection, curation, etc are all potentially copyrightable acts.

In my case, while the samples were (overwhelmingly) AI, the whole project was weeks of work, involving hundreds of generations, track splitting and reassembling, things down to the level of editing individual phonemes (or for example in one part, stripping the vocals and instruments from a sample down to just the residual "other" channel, throwing it into reverse, and then piling on progressively more reverb and volume up to a sudden cutoff to create a tension-point transition). No issues whatoever registering the copyright on it. I'm sure you could do far less and still have a copyrightable work.

Comment Re:I bet he does it for 2 reasons (Score 1) 124

I think people need to keep in mind that marketability (aka enjoyability), talent, and effort are three independent axes. You can be talented at one or more aspects of music production, a genuine skill (play a guitar, sing, etc), but put forth either high or low effort, and make good or terrible music, all independently. You can put forth a lot of effort, but you may or may not be talented, and it may or may not be good. You may make a great enjoyable marketable track, but may or may not have notable talents, and may or may not have put in a lot of effort.

In general: I judge how much I want to listen to it by its enjoyability; I attribute how much the author deserves credit / how much it's "art" by how much non-rote effort they put in; and I value the artist's skill based on their demonstrable talent. All of this independent of what specific tools were used. That said, knowledge of certain facts may colour one's enjoyability of a track. If you hate AI and know / suspect it's AI, that'll strongly colour your enjoyability of it. Or if you know the artist is a bad person or whatnot, that again can colour your enjoyability of a track that you'd otherwise enjoy in a vacuum.

Comment Re:Not a pop yet (Score 1) 64

One thing I've been thinking recently is being in the AI trade but only with high seniority, not common stock. So if there is a "pop", but the underlying business remains sustainable, the high seniority investors end up with the assets and make a mint when the market returns to balance, whereas the stockholders are the ones who suffer. This could mean a mix of convertible bonds / convertible ETFs, preferred shares, senior corporate debt, physical infrastructure (power suppliers, REITs, etc), BDCs and private credit vehicles, etc. Or possibly even common stock in some of the diversified giants (Google, Microsoft, etc), who - while they'd take quite a temporary hit in a crash - would survive and then buy up all the distressed players.

Comment Re:They weren't creating anyway (Score 1) 124

Comic Tropes just released a video about this sort of thing.

Two Japanese manga artists, one accused of plagiarism and the other not. Both copy poses from fashion magazines and photos of famous artists, but one traces them directly while the other takes inspiration from them and then draws his own version from scratch.

A subtle distinction, but an important one.

Comment Re:I bet he does it for 2 reasons (Score 1) 124

To be fair he has developed a lot of other people in the industry, and created the Beats brand that was sold to Apple.

There is always an element of luck - right place, right time, or born to wealthy parents - but he does seem to have some talent and understanding of the industry.

Arguably this is a demonstration of that. In the end people won't care if the bass line was made with AI, that's not why they listen to the kind of music he produces.

Slashdot Top Deals

The two most common things in the Universe are hydrogen and stupidity. -- Harlan Ellison

Working...