themachinestops

joined 2 years ago
 

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/28095114

Vapor World: Over The Mind is a Soulslike Metroidvania with an evocative, painterly art style reminiscent of Lies of P and the narrative platformers of Playdead. According to Korean studio Alive Inc, the game had 100,000 wishlists just before its early access launch on August 19, mostly on the strength of a demo available since January 2025.

But what should have been a triumphant early access launch went pear shaped very quickly. At launch, few talked about the quite distinctive worldbuilding or the parry-heavy combat. Instead, all focus was trained entirely on something absent from the popular demo: very obvious AI use.

 

cross-posted from: https://kbin.earth/m/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com/t/3120649

As AI tech companies increasingly buy and destroy books to feed to their AI models, Anna's Archive is calling for volunteers to help preserve them for the public record.

 

The relevant section is blunt. "The Software is licensed to you, not sold," the EULA states. "You are granted a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, and personal license to play or use the Software for your private, non-commercial use on the system or device it was intended for."

The terms also restrict renting, modifying, or obtaining games through unauthorised means. Nothing in there is new, technically. Sony's EULA has always said this. The timing is what makes it land differently right now.

[–] themachinestops@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

As soon as they go public it will be lets maximise shareholder value. It is horrifying how much power these private companies have these days and how evil they have become. Morals basically don't exist with them and their are no consequences. This is why I don't like AI though it does improve programming by leaps that even people who don't know how to code can make a fully working application. If the trend continues and people depend on AI for programming these companies will have big influence over the world, look at what happened with the international court, they depended too much on US technology.

There needs to be regulations on AI and people still need to learn programming even if you depend on AI for most task. We can't give these companies our ability to program too.

[–] themachinestops@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

My mistake I meant Oligopoly.

[–] themachinestops@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (6 children)

It is important because AI is an Oligopoly, you can't locally host a model like Claude. They also claim they are ethical and avoid harm. His wife is an Advisor for Anthropic.

https://www.anthropic.com/constitution

Lots of people associated with Epstein appeared in News articles. Simply put no one even knew she was Dario Amodei's wife that is why she is only appearing now in the news.

[–] themachinestops@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (8 children)

This email is from 2012, Epstein was registered as a sex offender since 2008. She approached him for a Luxury Porn company.

 

Cami Clark—who started what she called a ‘revolutionary porn company’ where she sought investment from Jeffrey Epstein—keeps a low profile but is a key adviser to the AI chief. Its coming IPO could top trillions.

Don't forget that when you use LLMs you are helping these types of people:

https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/claude-dario-amodei-wife-anthropic-e1eeda7d

Cami Clark—who started what she called a ‘revolutionary porn company’ where she sought investment from Jeffrey Epstein—keeps a low profile but is a key adviser to the AI chief. Its coming IPO could top trillions.

[–] themachinestops@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I also wanted to know what the rare books are and this is what I Found:

https://finance.biggo.com/news/37a2899b-5f1a-4571-9bb5-1156c0ac4605

I also heard that they are also scanning old outdated medical books.

So are not really aiming for rare, they are just gathering at random and getting their hands on any old book they can find. Some rare books might or might not be in the books they scan.

 

Best Buy Removed Half The RAM From A Gaming Laptop Because It Said The Laptop Only Supports 32GB

A customer sent a Lenovo Legion 5 in for warranty service with 64GB of RAM.

The Best Buy repair report confirmed the laptop had two 32GB RAM sticks, but the technician said the laptop "only accepts 32GB RAM maximum."

The removed RAM was sent back to the customer with the laptop.

Original Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinfuriating/comments/1vpew29/best_buy_sold_me_a_64_gb_ram_laptop_and_it_worked/

Laptop specs(it supports 64 GB): https://psref.lenovo.com/product/legion_5_16irx9?tab=spec

[–] themachinestops@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 week ago (3 children)

This article might give some clues about the types of books: https://www.irishexaminer.com/business/technology/arid-41897035.html

[–] themachinestops@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 1 week ago (4 children)

This is what I believe they are doing:

https://finance.biggo.com/news/37a2899b-5f1a-4571-9bb5-1156c0ac4605

_**The owner of MW Books in Ireland also reports that since May, the shop has been receiving large orders with wildly varied content. "The orders are piecemeal, presumably machine-driven, and there's very little thematic rhyme or reason to them: everything from 18th-century African agricultural implements to biographies of 1950s racing drivers," he says. "Personally, I don't think we have the right to dictate what customers do with books after they buy them, but the selection is certainly intriguing."

Another anonymous UK used bookseller reveals that some seemingly random orders, possibly from different buyers, all end up being shipped to the same address. He provided a delivery postcode used by different buyers, which corresponds to a cluster of freight warehouses near London Heathrow Airport. The bookseller says that since January, he has received orders covering 6,000 books from similar buyers, amounting to thousands of pounds. These buyers are willing to pay "top prices" and haven't asked for discounts even when purchasing large quantities at once. "That doesn't happen very often. It's disruptive to the used book trade."**_

They are probably buying books that don't have any digital copies since they are perfect for training AI. As for why they are using destructive scanning, I believe it is because either destructive is cheaper and faster or they don't want the competition to have access to the training data. Since these are not easy to find books, Amazon sells books, any book they try to obtain is probably extremely hard to find anywhere.

 

The symbol for Amazon's VGT3, the Las Vegas facility where it scans book for AI training data.

Amazon is buying massive quantities of books, scanning them for AI training data, and destroying them in the process.

A 404 Media investigation was able to reveal Amazon’s book buying operation, which hasn’t been previously reported, by placing a tracking device in a rare book we suspected would be acquired by an AI company for training data, and following it around the country to its final destination.

That final destination was an Amazon warehouse in Las Vegas, Nevada. Amazon employees who work at this location say all they do is receive massive shipments of printed books which they then cut the bindings off in order to scan the books more quickly. The printed book is destroyed in the process. The logo of the Amazon team that works at this warehouse, called VGT3, is a dinosaur, brandishing its teeth and with a book in its hands.

“Amazon purchases books through commercial channels to help develop and improve the products and services our customers use,” an Amazon spokesperson told me in a statement.

The world’s AI companies are constantly looking for, and spending extreme resources to locate, more material to train their AI models. With books, that sometimes means destroying them in the process, something that large parts of the public have spoken up against, and which we can now confirm Amazon is doing.

In July, I published a story about booksellers who reported a historical spike in sales starting in the past year. They suspected this spike in sales was due to AI companies acquiring any books they can in search of new training data. Printed books are valuable as training data because a lot of the text they contain is not readily available on the internet, which AI companies have already scraped. The data is also conveniently organized and, if the book was printed before 2022, is guaranteed to be free of AI-generated text, which can make any AI model that is trained on it worse via a recursive process called “model collapse.”

📖 Do you know work at a facility where you scan books? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at @emanuel.404. Otherwise, send me an email at emanuel@404media.co.

These booksellers suspected AI companies were behind these large bulk purchases because of the high number of books they were buying, the seemingly random choice of books, and the fact that these buyers, unlike libraries and universities, did not seem price sensitive at all. But booksellers couldn’t say for certain who was behind the large purchases because the marketplaces where they sell their books keep the buyers anonymous. When an order comes in, a bookseller ships the sold books to a warehouse operated by the marketplaces, where books are sorted and then sent to the buyer.

In July, one bookseller told me they received a very large order of around 1,000 books on Biblio, one of these marketplaces. The seller agreed to put an Apple AirTag provided by 404 Media in one of the books included in this order so we could see where the book was going. And by extension, which company, AI or otherwise, was behind this massive order. 404 Media granted the bookseller anonymity because they worried sharing this information would harm their business. Biblio did not respond to a request for comment.

Another article to provide some clarity on the types of books: https://finance.biggo.com/news/37a2899b-5f1a-4571-9bb5-1156c0ac4605

AI is useful as tool like he said, unfortunately these days in many organisations it is used as a replacement rather than a tool.

His conclusion was that as AI tools get more capable, the people who actually understand how systems work become more valuable, not less — because someone still has to review, maintain, and take responsibility for what the tools produce.

Humans still need to learn how to code.

[–] themachinestops@lemmy.dbzer0.com 60 points 3 weeks ago (19 children)

Don't forget that you can't use VPN now, use the web version on mobile, and most accounts gets banned as soon as they are created by the automod.

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