#Leave it for running my modeling software

[shut-the-burrow-door-pls]

I sometimes share the same thought as this, especially on bed in the midnight, but forget about this, that paragraph when Queek heard of Ska is alive is exactly like this pic, just not using the word buff rat bf, let's say this office forbidden love is kinda spicy

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Cars bricked by bankrupt EV company will stay bricked

On OCTOBER 23 at 7PM, I'll be in DECATUR, presenting my novel THE BEZZLE at EAGLE EYE BOOKS.

There are few phrases in the modern lexicon more accursed than "software-based car," and yet, this is how the failed EV maker Fisker billed its products, which retailed for $40-70k in the few short years before the company collapsed, shut down its servers, and degraded all those "software-based cars":

https://insideevs.com/news/723669/fisker-inc-bankruptcy-chapter-11-official/

Fisker billed itself as a "capital light" manufacturer, meaning that it didn't particularly make anything – rather, it "designed" cars that other companies built, allowing Fisker to focus on "experience," which is where the "software-based car" comes in. Virtually every subsystem in a Fisker car needs (or rather, needed) to periodically connect with its servers, either for regular operations or diagnostics and repair, creating frequent problems with brakes, airbags, shifting, battery management, locking and unlocking the doors:

https://www.businessinsider.com/fisker-owners-worry-about-vehicles-working-bankruptcy-2024-4

Since Fisker's bankruptcy, people with even minor problems with their Fisker EVs have found themselves owning expensive, inert lumps of conflict minerals and auto-loan debt; as one Fisker owner described it, "It's literally a lawn ornament right now":

https://www.businessinsider.com/fisker-owners-describe-chaos-to-keep-cars-running-after-bankruptcy-2024-7

This is, in many ways, typical Internet-of-Shit nonsense, but it's compounded by Fisker's capital light, all-outsource model, which led to extremely unreliable vehicles that have been plagued by recalls. The bankrupt company has proposed that vehicle owners should have to pay cash for these recalls, in order to reserve the company's capital for its creditors – a plan that is clearly illegal:

https://www.veritaglobal.net/fisker/document/2411390241007000000000005

This isn't even the first time Fisker has done this! Ten years ago, founder Henrik Fisker started another EV company called Fisker Automotive, which went bankrupt in 2014, leaving the company's "Karma" (no, really) long-range EVs (which were unreliable and prone to bursting into flames) in limbo:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisker_Karma

Which raises the question: why did investors reward Fisker's initial incompetence by piling in for a second attempt? I think the answer lies in the very factor that has made Fisker's failure so hard on its customers: the "software-based car." Investors love the sound of a "software-based car" because they understand that a gadget that is connected to the cloud is ripe for rent-extraction, because with software comes a bundle of "IP rights" that let the company control its customers, critics and competitors:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

A "software-based car" gets to mobilize the state to enforce its "IP," which allows it to force its customers to use authorized mechanics (who can, in turn, be price-gouged for licensing and diagnostic tools). "IP" can be used to shut down manufacturers of third party parts. "IP" allows manufacturers to revoke features that came with your car and charge you a monthly subscription fee for them. All sorts of features can be sold as downloadable content, and clawed back when title to the car changes hands, so that the new owners have to buy them again. "Software based cars" are easier to repo, making them perfect for the subprime auto-lending industry. And of course, "software-based cars" can gather much more surveillance data on drivers, which can be sold to sleazy, unregulated data-brokers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

Unsurprisingly, there's a large number of Fisker cars that never sold, which the bankruptcy estate is seeking a buyer for. For a minute there, it looked like they'd found one: American Lease, which was looking to acquire the deadstock Fiskers for use as leased fleet cars. But now that deal seems dead, because no one can figure out how to restart Fisker's servers, and these vehicles are bricks without server access:

https://techcrunch.com/2024/10/08/fisker-bankruptcy-hits-major-speed-bump-as-fleet-sale-is-now-in-question/

It's hard to say why the company's servers are so intransigent, but there's a clue in the chaotic way that the company wound down its affairs. The company's final days sound like a scene from the last days of the German Democratic Republic, with apparats from the failing state charging about in chaos, without any plans for keeping things running:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/03/07/east-germany-stasi-surveillance-documents/

As it imploded, Fisker cycled through a string of Chief Financial officers, losing track of millions of dollars at a time:

https://techcrunch.com/2024/05/31/fisker-collapse-investigation-ev-ocean-suv-henrik-geeta/

When Fisker's landlord regained possession of its HQ, they found "complete disarray," including improperly stored drums of toxic waste:

https://techcrunch.com/2024/10/05/fiskers-hq-abandoned-in-complete-disarray-with-apparent-hazardous-waste-clay-models-left-behind/

And while Fisker's implosion is particularly messy, the fact that it landed in bankruptcy is entirely unexceptional. Most businesses fail (eventually) and most startups fail (quickly). Despite this, businesses – even those in heavily regulated sectors like automotive regulation – are allowed to design products and undertake operations that are not designed to outlast the (likely short-lived) company.

After the 2008 crisis and the collapse of financial institutions like Lehman Brothers, finance regulators acquired a renewed interest in succession planning. Lehman consisted of over 6,000 separate corporate entities, each one representing a bid to evade regulation and/or taxation. Unwinding that complex hairball took years, during which the entities that entrusted Lehman with their funds – pensions, charitable institutions, etc – were unable to access their money.

To avoid repeats of this catastrophe, regulators began to insist that banks produce "living wills" – plans for unwinding their affairs in the event of catastrophe. They had to undertake "stress tests" that simulated a wind-down as planned, both to make sure the plan worked and to estimate how long it would take to execute. Then banks were required to set aside sufficient capital to keep the lights on while the plan ran on.

This regulation has been indifferently enforced. Banks spent the intervening years insisting that they are capable of prudently self-regulating without all this interference, something they continue to insist upon even after the Silicon Valley Bank collapse:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/15/mon-dieu-les-guillotines/#ceci-nes-pas-une-bailout

The fact that the rules haven't been enforced tells us nothing about whether the rules would work if they were enforced. A string of high-profile bankruptcies of companies who had no succession plans and whose collapse stands to materially harm large numbers of people tells us that something has to be done about this.

Take 23andme, the creepy genomics company that enticed millions of people into sending them their genetic material (even if you aren't a 23andme customer, they probably have most of your genome, thanks to relatives who sent in cheek-swabs). 23andme is now bankrupt, and its bankruptcy estate is shopping for a buyer who'd like to commercially exploit all that juicy genetic data, even if that is to the detriment of the people it came from. What's more, the bankruptcy estate is refusing to destroy samples from people who want to opt out of this future sale:

https://bourniquelaw.com/2024/10/09/data-23-and-me/

On a smaller scale, there's Juicebox, a company that makes EV chargers, who are exiting the North American market and shutting down their servers, killing the advanced functionality that customers paid extra for when they chose a Juicebox product:

https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/2/24260316/juicebox-ev-chargers-enel-x-way-closing-discontinued-app

I actually owned a Juicebox, which ultimately caught fire and melted down, either due to a manufacturing defect or to the criminal ineptitude of Treeium, the worst solar installers in Southern California (or both):

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/27/here-comes-the-sun-king/#sign-here

Projects like Juice Rescue are trying to reverse-engineer the Juicebox server infrastructure and build an alternative:

https://juice-rescue.org/

This would be much simpler if Juicebox's manufacturer, Enel X Way, had been required to file a living will that explained how its customers would go on enjoying their property when and if the company discontinued support, exited the market, or went bankrupt.

That might be a big lift for every little tech startup (though it would be superior than trying to get justice after the company fails). But in regulated sectors like automotive manufacture or genomic analysis, a regulation that says, "Either design your products and services to fail safely, or escrow enough cash to keep the lights on for the duration of an orderly wind-down in the event that you shut down" would be perfectly reasonable. Companies could make "software based cars" but the more "software based" the car was, the more funds they'd have to escrow to transition their servers when they shut down (and the lest capital they'd have to build the car).

Such a rule should be in addition to more muscular rules simply banning the most abusive practices, like the Oregon state Right to Repair bill, which bans the "parts pairing" that makes repairing a Fisker car so onerous:

https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/27/24097042/right-to-repair-law-oregon-sb1596-parts-pairing-tina-kotek-signed

Or the Illinois state biometric privacy law, which strictly limits the use of the kind of genomic data that 23andme collected:

https://www.ilga.gov/legislation/ilcs/ilcs3.asp?ActID=3004

Failing to take action on these abusive practices is dangerous – and not just to the people who get burned by them. Every time a genomics research project turns into a privacy nightmare, that salts the earth for future medical research, making it much harder to conduct population-scale research, which can be carried out in privacy-preserving ways, and which pays huge scientific dividends that we all benefit from:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/01/the-palantir-will-see-you-now/#public-private-partnership

Just as Fisker's outrageous ripoff will make life harder for good cleantech companies:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/26/unplanned-obsolescence/#better-micetraps

If people are convinced that new, climate-friendly tech is a cesspool of grift and extraction, it will punish those firms that are making routine, breathtaking, exciting (and extremely vital) breakthroughs:

https://www.euronews.com/green/2024/10/08/norways-national-football-stadium-has-the-worlds-largest-vertical-solar-roof-how-does-it-w

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/10/software-based-car/#based

[beatrixst0nehill]

"Trying to stay healthy and positive although I'm a part of this dumb clinical trial. This sucks! I was all set to be the track and field star of my University, a bright career as an athlete, maybe I'd even go to the Olympics? Instead I get this email a few months ago stating that I've been selected to attend a clinical trial for a new breast growth drug. Like, there are a bajillion of these things on the market, why do they still bother with trials? It's ridiculous. I know, I know, horny wealthy men with an excuse to make pretty young college girls so big breasted it qualifies as a legal disability. Whatever.

Soooo as you might remember I had a perfect, flat chest, ideal for being a runner and now look at this. Look at these fat, sweaty udders of mine. They already started lactating. It's so hard to keep up with. Now I don't just run to the bathroom to pee or whatever, I run into the girls' room to remove my top and milk myself into the sink like a fucking cow. I stand there for minutes, the humiliation is excruciating. Other women come in and joke that that's what I get for sleeping around and getting knocked up over and over. I don't bother correcting them. I just agree, milking my breasts until they ache.

I'm apparently part of this trial for three years. I keep asking them how much growth I can expect by then and they just shrug, telling me if they knew they wouldn't need to do the trial. I looked up videos and joined a bunch of groups created by women who've gone through this. The short answer is I can basically expect my boobs to get so big I can barely walk, if at all. A common side effect, especially for really active girls who don't just cave and give into immobility, is for our spines to snap from the sheer weight of the breasts, leaving girls not just debilitatingly huge breasted, but paralyzed from the waist or shoulders down. Some of the girls act like it's this amazing goal to be jealous of, creating threads like, 'Guys it finally happened! After three straight weeks of intense exercise with my tits over 100lbs a piece, my neck finally gave out!' And it's them in the hospital, smiling and giddy, being hooked up to ocular software to post on social media.

I feel kind of insane for feeling the way I do. Almost all the girls love getting these massive, unwieldy breasts. I posted a thread talking about my future career and how I didn't want huge boobs and every post was just other girls (who're either immobilized by the sheer weight and size of their breasts or immobilized by paralysis) tell me to relax, not to worry, that I'm extremely lucky to be picked and I'll learn to love my new breasts, especially once they get to be over 50lbs each and I start having trouble doing basic things. A lot of girls told me I should remember that I'm just a womb with a pair of tits there for male enjoyment, and the bigger the more men love them. I can still fulfill my purpose and push out dozens of kids even if I'm paralyzed.

I guess I need to just give in and accept what I'm going to become. I'll still stay active, exercise and try to remain mobile as long as I can. But I guess it couldn't hurt to enjoy these things. Men already stare at them constantly and try to touch them. Maybe I should just let them grope me? Even though my clothes will be totally see-through from getting sprayed with milk. That's not such a bad thing, is it? It would be kind of hot, riding some guy's cock, seeing these fat, ridiculous-looking udders bounce and jiggle..... Perhaps I should even get pregnant? That would help my boobs grow faster and put more strain on my back faster..... Plus, all the other girls in the trial are pregnant so I feel a bit left out.

Oh well.... I tried to be an athlete and a role model to young girls that they can be more than the tidal wave of dumb bimbos and breeder hucows we see today...... But maybe I'm the perfect role model, though? That you should probably give up and embrace being a hucow anyway, it's futile to try and deny your body's destiny. Girls are meant to be dumb breeders with huge tits. It does make me horny, thinking about being completely stuck, unable to move cause my breasts each weigh 200lbs. I can only sit in whatever pen I'm being kept in at a government-run girl ranch. I sit there rubbing my big pregnant belly, playing with my sex, thinking back to when I used to be an athlete, running, winning awards, now I'm just cattle hooked up to milking machines, completely hopeless. Nothing but an object to be fucked, to make milk, and push out as many kids as possible until I wear out my usefulness. I can't wait until that's me, maybe my spine will even snap? Then I'll be truly helpless, I won't even feel my body go into labor or get fucked. I'll just watch myself be acted on, and all I'll be able to do is smile and offer lots of encouragement..... Kind of sounds like a dream come true. Once I'm done working out, nice and sweaty, I think I might 'accidentally' stumble into the men's locker room and see if these toxic gym bros can show me what my body is really for. ❤️"

[terresdebrume]

for the prompts - "i'm not worth saving. please." and/or "a few more steps. we're nearly there. i've got you" for a ship/ships of your choice?

Hey friend! Thanks for the prompt :D Sorry it took a bit, you know how it is with work^^" Still, I hope this AU without a cause will satisfy! Prompt list here, if anyone wants to send me another one!

Edwin huffs as he leans backwards, suspending his entire weight at the end of Charles' arm and still not managing to move him more than a couple of inches. He pauses, heaving for breath, and watches as Charles heaves himself up the last few steps with a painful-sounding mechanical whir.

"Come now Charles," he pants, forbidding himself from sitting down. "We only have a few steps left."

"I can't," Charles says.

His words comes out flat, mechanical. His voice modulator must have given up somewhere between the bottom of the stairs and now. His chest is rising and falling too fast, cooling circuits working overtime, but the audible sound his systems make tells Edwin it isn't quite working. Charles must be approaching overheating, and there is nothing Edwin can do about it here, in the hallway to the agency.

"Charles, please," Edwin begs, but Charles shakes his head.

"I can't," he repeats. "My left knee's piston is malfunctioning."

Edwin inhales, sharp and loud, and ignores the beeping in his systems that say his shell is too warm. They found spare parts for his cooling system last month: he can handle a little heat, but Charles--

"Charles, you must keep going, you can't--we have to plug you in!"

It took a lot of time, and even more money--although they are lucky Crystal never asked them what it was for--but they finally got their systems up to a point where they can handle one of them, at least for a time. Charles' software isn't as solid as Edwin's, but ROWLAND persocons had a reputation of hardiness for a reason. They have the memory banks required, and more than enough compatibility coding between the two of them to keep Charles safe until they can find him a new chassis, but none of that will matter if they can't get him connected before he shuts down.

"You should leave me here," he says, Edwin gasps.

"Do not say that," he warns.

"You should," Charles insists, eyes closing. "I'm not worth saving."

"Do not say that!" Edwin all but shouts, not caring about the time, or the human neighbors whose suspicions they've been trying not to arouse. "I forbid it, Charles!"

"Look at me!" Charles exclaims.

Edwin, electrical core on overdrive, looks down at Charles. Some of the hair is missing from his skull, burned away in the accident that nearly tore Edwin's head off a few years back. There is a long streak under his eyes where the synthetic skin peeled away, revealing the gray of his chassis, and the open jacket he wears fails to conceal the three large dents in his chassis, left there by the older ROWLAND model he used to live with. He looks resigned and, impossible as it should be, exhausted.

Even so, even pulling up the necessary softwares to run a simulation of existence without Charles prompts half a dozen alerts in Edwin's system, and he shudders. Crouching down, he puts a hand to the side of Charles' face.

"I am looking at you," he says, voice modulator struggling to keep his tone even through the shiver of his cooling system going overdrive.

"I'm old," Charles says, bitter. "I can't even move. Even if we do preserve me: I won't even have a body. I'm an industrial unit--what good am I if I can't even move around?"

"Charles," Edwin says, surprised to get an alert from the hardware around his throat, "please stop. You haven't been a dockhand in decades--"

"But I am!" Charles cries, or must try to. "That's why I'm the brawn, isn't it? Stronger chassis, longer batteries, building routines--that's what I'm for! What am I if I can't do what I'm for?"

"You're my friend!" Edwin says, fiercely, bringing his face closer to Charles. "You're the man who got me out of the scrapyard I'd been stuck in for seventy years! You're the one who made me look human enough to go out again!"

"Yeah, and now I'm the one who looks like a rogue!" Charles retorts, closing his eyes in distress. "If anyone from Endless Co. sees me, they'll do more than scrape us--"

"That will not happen--no!" Edwin insists, louder, when Charles looks like he is about to protest again, "That will not happen! I will never let it happen. You are my friend! You are my confident, and my companion, and you must stop talking about yourself like you are a glorified forklift!"

"That's what I was programmed for!"

"And I was supposed to be a sex unit!" Edwin breathes harshly in the stunned silence, gathering himself closer to Charles, until he can curl up around him and touch their forehead together. "I don't care chat they made you for," he whispers. "You're the one who decided to download all those fighting programs. You're the one who saved me. You're the one who came up with the name of the Agency. I don't care that they think we're not alive, Charles, I know they're wrong. You and I, we're alive in all the ways that matter, and I--"

Edwin stops talking. His voice modulator refuses to add even one word, some previously unnoticed subroutine cutting off his access to his dictionary. Fantom code, perhaps: a glitch. Or maybe the people who programmed his model line back at Payne Industries wanted to make sure they couldn't evoke certain feelings. Either way, Edwin's voice absolutely refuses to shape the words he is thinking, and so he does the only thing he can possibly do in this situation: he leans forward and presses his lips to Charles'.

Charles twitches under him, unnatural and poorly coordinated, but when Edwin pulls away to look at him, he is met with eyes filled with wonder, and joy, and that same word Edwin's core software won't let him say.

"Oh," Charles says, and brings a hand up to touch Edwin's cheek.

"Yes," Edwin replies, arch and haughty, "oh. Now, if you would please help me. It's only a few more steps."

[jpitha]

Between the Black and Grey 68

First / Previous / Next

Fen stayed still a long time, running in emulation. This wasn't her fault, she knew this. She spent a long time running back through her memories. While she was in software it felt easier; she found she could remember things much more clearly. Pretty much since Ma was killed, she's been passive. Things happening to her rather than because of her. She's been along for the ride.

That was part of why Fen was so upset now. The Nanites had their own agenda, Penny had her own agenda, the previous Empress had her own agenda, Gord and the AIs have their own agenda. The only person she could think off that wasn't trying to get something out of her was Zhe. Fen sighed at the thought. She hadn't treated Zhe well enough for how good of a friend she had been. Zhe was kind and helpful from the get-go. Sure, she was a pirate from a family of pirates, but that doesn't mean she wasn't a nice person.

If Fen was going to get out of this, she was going to have to take the reins and start doing things because she decided to do them.

So, what was she going to do then?

This was tough. Better to back up. What did she want?

In the end, what she wanted was to be with Ma-ren. Okay, that was extreme, but doable. She already had a leg up in that she knew where she was and how to get there... well, two ways on how to get there. One was traversing a wormhole link that the other...well she wasn't quite ready to take the reins in that way just yet. She remembered the bomb that Han'iel implanted, and wondered how it was triggered... No. Not that way. Not yet at least. It would do nobody any good to check out now and leave everyone to deal with the Nanites from both sides.

Okay, we're getting somewhere she thought. Now she knew that while her number one wish was to be with Ma-ren, her number two wish was to defeat the Nanites once and for all. Fen stared up at the non existant ceiling. For the millionth time, she wished Ma was here. She was always the planner, she always had the ideas. How do you get rid of a being that is a mass of nanoscale machinery?

Break the machinery.

But how? Fen sat very still. She felt like she was on the cusp of something big. How does this happen in BI bodies? Wait....

"Gord! Chloe!" Fen called out. Before she could blink, they appeared in her space.

"What is it Fen? What's wrong?" Gord said, looking at her. Chloe eyed her, but she appeared to have her attention directed elsewhere.

"Gord! Can we make a virus to kill the nanites?" Fen said, her eyes wide. She looked like she was trying to hold onto the idea, lest it slip away. "Like, something nanoscale like they are, but instead of being intelligent it just-" She waved her hands "-does something to them? Isn't that how a virus works? It takes over cells and makes the cells make more viruses?"

Gord started to shake his head. "We tried that back with Melody's....." he trailed off. "No wait. We didn't. Our gas tried to interrupt their connections to each other and force a disconnect. It worked at first, but they were able to easily overcome it." He snapped his head to Chloe. "Could we do that?"

"Hmm." Chloe's image flickered a moment, and then came back. She had finished whatever she was working on and was back at full attention. "Maybe. We would need access to Han'iel's data. Do you think he kept backups?"

Fen nodded. "I know he did; he used my personal datastores. That part should be easy."

"Good. Theoretically we could. It would be relatively simple code. Take over a Nanite, make more viruses, disassemble whatever is left, continue on." A 3d model appeared in space in front of her. It looked almost like a molecule. At this scale, everything looked like large molecules anyway. She spun it around, peering at it. Fen realized that this was all being done for her benefit, Chloe didn't need something like this. "We'd need a way to deliver it to a lot of them at once so they couldn't isolate and work on an anti-viral. It would also need a power source."

Gord grinned. "You mean like - for example - the white hole? Coincidentally also where a metric ton of those Nanites are congregating?"

Chloe nodded slowly. "Yesss, like that. Hmm." She stared off in the middle distance again while she thought. "How would we deliver them?"

As the three of them looked at each other, the room transitioned to the chamber where Fen's cabinet was kept. Gord whistled low. "Fen, you may only have been digitized for a day, but you've got a knack."

Fen smiled weakly. "I'll take the compliment Gord, but how do I deliver the... virus?"

Chloe answered. "We have to treat it like a real virus. Sneak in under the Nanite's defenses. They're nanoscale, they're probably used to defenders like a biological body has. Antibodies, white blood cells, similar. Viruses get in with trickery. We can look at the nanites in your body - both the originals and Han'iel's, and see if we can work out their defenses and how to sneak around them. The propagation of the coding is the simple part. It's getting them infected that'll be tricky." Chloe flashed a rare grin. "It's a good problem Fen, I'm excited to work through it."

"This is good though." Gord added. "This will give the Nanites time to congregate at the white hole. They'll be fighting Han'iel's Nanites too. We'll use the time to our advantage and then deploy you there and we can ideally knock them both out!"

Fen's blood went icy. "What's going to happen to me? Will... this kill me?"

"No, we'll extract a small amount of both nanites from your body in hibernation. You will be our vector and our test subject as well." Chloe was sanguine. "It'll all work out. Probably."

"Probably?!?"

The next week went by in a blur. Gord showed Fen how to change her perception of time while in emulation, and they were able to spend subjective months working out the problem while only a week of clock time went by. Fen was no nanoscale engineer, and had barely any idea about how biological bodies worked, but she was game to learn, and she was someone that Gord and Chloe could rubber duck to - that is, to explain their problem half to themselves and usually they answered their own question. In the rare times they couldn't at least Fen offered an ear and sympathy.

Chloe was able to extract quite a few of the original and Han'iel's nanites and placed them in very secure storage. When placed together, the two of them would fight, and when apart, they'd attempt to consume all the matter in their confinement and then would just go dormant, waiting for more matter or a host. Chloe kept them in modified antimatter containers, and that seemed to be safe.

The three of them stood around a virtualized screen, giving a radar view of the chamber with the original nanites. As she watched, Chloe pressed some buttons, and lightning quick, a needle entered the containment and injected something. It retracted before the nanites could attack it, and they watched.

Fen could barely make sense of what she was seeing, but Chloe had added some helpful annotations to the video. One cloud was tagged 'virus' and another cloud was tagged 'nanites.' As she watched, the nanite cloud moved over to the virus cloud. She couldn't exactly figure out what was happening, but it was clear that the virus cloud was growing and the nanite cloud was shrinking. After a few minutes, the nanite tag disappeared as the virus cloud looked to be nearly twice as large as before.

"There! A successful test, I'd say" Chloe said proudly. "We'll test it on Han'iel's nanites and-"

There was a distant sound like thunder, and both Gord and Chloe's attention snapped away. In Fen's peripheral vision, red emergency overlays appeared, warning her about systems she didn't have access to. "What's going on?" She asked.

"Attack. We're being attacked. Sit tight." Gord said, and the two of them vanished.

[deepdreamnights]

Tribute AMV for Dr. Underfang and Mrs. Natalie Nice/Nautilus.

From TyrannoMax and the Warriors of the Core, everyone's favorite Buzby-Spurlock animated series.

After all, who doesn't love a good bad guy, especially when they come in pairs?

Process/Tutorial Under the Fold.

This is, of course, a part of my TyrannoMax unreality project, with most of these video clips coming from vidu, taking advantage of their multi-entity consistency feature (more on that later). This is going to be part of a larger villain showcase video, but this section is going to be its own youtube short, so its an video on its own.

The animation here is intentionally less smooth than the original, as I'm going for a 1980s animated series look, and even in the well-animated episodes you were typically getting 12 FPS (animating 'on twos'), with 8 (on threes) being way more common. As I get access to better animation software to rework these (currently just fuddling along with PS) I'm going to start using this to my advantage by selectively dropping blurry intermediate frames.

I went with 12 since most of these clips are, in the meta-lore, from the opening couple of episodes and the opening credits, where most of the money for a series went back in the day.

Underfang's transformation sequence was my testing for several of my techniques for making larger TyrannoMax videos. Among those was selectively dropping some of the warped frames as I mentioned above, though for a few shots I had to wind up re-painting sections.

Multi-entity consistency can keep difficult dinosaur characters stable on their own, but it wasn't up to the task of keeping the time-temple accurate enough for my use, as you can see here with the all-t-rex- and-some-moving-statues, verses the multi-species effort I had planned:

The answer was simple, chroma-key.

Most of the Underfang transformation shots were done this way. The foot-stomp was too good to leave just because he sprouted some extra toes, so that was worth repainting a few frames of in post.

Vidu kind of over-did the texturing on a few shots (and magenta was a poor choice of key-color) so I had to go in and manually purple-ize the background frame by frame for the spin-shot.

This is on top of the normal cropping, scaling, color-correcting, etc that goes into any editing job of this type.

It's like I say: nearly all AI you see is edited, most of it curated, even the stuff that's awful and obvious (never forget: enragement is engagement)

Multi-Entity Consistency:

Vidu's big advantage is reference-to-video. For those who have been following the blog for awhile, R2V is sort of like Midjourney's --cref character reference feature. A lot of video AIs have start-end frame functionality, but being able to give the robot a model sheet and effectively have it run with it is a darn nice feature for narrative.

Unlike the current version of Midjourney's --cref feature, however, you can reference multiple concepts with multiple images.

It is super-helpful when you need to get multiple characters to interact, because without it, they tend to blend into each other conceptually.

I also use it to add locations, mainly to keep them looking appropriately background-painting rather than a 3d background or something that looks like a modded photo like a lot of modern animation does.

The potential here for using this tech as a force multiplier for small animation projects really shines through, and I really hope I'm just one of several attempting to use it for that purpose.

Music:

The song is "The Boys Have a Second Lead Pipe", one of my Suno creations. I was thinking of using Dinowave (Let's Dance To) but I'm saving that for a music video of live-action dinosovians.

Prompting:

You can tell by the screenshot above that my prompts have gotten... robust. Vidu's prompting system seems to understand things better when given tighter reigns (some AIs have the opposite effect), and takes information with time-codes semi-regularly, so my prompts are now more like:

low-angle shot, closeup, of a green tyrannosaurus-mad-scientist wearing a blue shirt and purple tie with white lab coat and a lavender octopus-woman with tentacles growing from her head, wearing a teal blouse, purple skirt, purple-gray pantyhose. they stand close to each other, arms crossed, laughing evilly. POV shot of them looming over the viewer menacingly. The background is a city, in the style of animation background images. 1986 vintage cel-shaded cartoon clip, a dinosaur-anthro wearing a lab coat, shirt and tie reaches into his coat with his right hand and pulls out a laser gun, he takes aim, points the laser gun at the camera and fires. The laser effect is short streaks of white energy with a purple glow. The whole clip has the look and feel of vintage 1986 action adventure cel-animated cartoons. The animation quality is high, with flawless motion and anatomy. animated by Tokyo Movie Shinsha, studio Ghibli, don bluth. BluRay remaster.

While others approach the scripted with time-code callouts for individual actions.

[espers-corner]

Comic updates!

VVR - I started working! I have the whole thing outlined in my head, and although it’ll be short, it’s worth it!

Plot : Bee finds themself stuck in the server (after the bad ending) and finds a glitch in the system! Instead of their(the glitch’s) consciousness going to the robot model, it went to broken assets! The glitch, aka Cypher/Cyber, was a software coder for Chaz, before getting uploaded himself.

Untitled ghost comic : probably the shortest running because it’s got no vision, it’s just lighthearted silly!

Plot : idk???? Salem witch trials come to bite humanity in the ass and a group of twenty-something’s have to deal with it while fighting off vampires and dickhead knights!

Kipo comic : idea, first few pages and outline are done, progress on halt.

Plot : Eli and his brother Alex steal food straight from scarlemagnes kitchen, but one day they get caught leaving and dragged to scarlemagnes palace. Years later, Eli is forced to work as scarlemagnes right hand man to save Alex. Kipo comes in around here!

The maze : ideas.

Plot: find out later???

[despazito]

Idk in my idyllic world the use of ai could improve animation workflow and catapult junior level artists into creative leads roles faster if there's less menial work to be done.

We could have artists still in charge of creative decisions and drawing vis dev while the computer assists with the most labour intensive steps of making shows or movies.

For simpler shows for instance it would be neat I think if you could run your storyboard through a script and have the machine import all relevant assets staged to the best of its abilities instead of manually having to drag props and rigs into your shot and scaling everything before you can even begin to animate (does that tech exist already? Probably).

Like nowadays we already have animation programs where you can set deformer limitations.

i could imagine a possible future where software includes or does subscription services to ai trained on work by artists who got paid to draw or animate template motions or anatomy references. something like generating smart bones could become an automated feature. i can maybe even foresee tech that can look at a character model or design sheet you've drawn and generate a rig for it. in all these scenarios you would have to correct stuff and tune things to your liking, but it gives a considerable head start to the work.

More dynamic shots could be made on smaller budgets if we gave ai props or backgrounds and said "give me this but rotated a little" instead of drawing the same damn chair from 10 angles as a prop artist, I refuse to believe anyone's passion in life is to make prop turnarounds or clean up inbetweens.

what if you had an ai that was trained on drawings of heads at every angle, animals in every angle, a slew of expressions and mouth shapes, then gave it a character ref drawn from a few angles and bam it makes the vtuber rig for you.

this still leaves space for original art and would still require a skilled creative to make something look it's best, that could be a gig. more animators could potentially begin their own smaller studios if cartoons are way easier to make. if anyone could potentially make their own movie in the future, charge people to do it right! no computer can replace a human knowledgeable in film or drawing to guide it in the right direction. without creative people at a production's core, i think the future of ai film is just a very, very, sophisticated version of goanimate than can also do art theft.

this could become the weird futuristic version of "i wrote this children's book can you illustrate it for me?" but instead your mom's friend wants to commission a show pilot they wrote a screenplay for.

When animation was drawn on cels we had entire painting departments whose job it was to paint each individual frame by literal numbers, and it was tedious!! Now we have the paint bucket tool for digital coloring, and software like Toonboom lets you color in one frame then generate the coloring for the proceeding frames. We still have a colour and painting department, it's just different work now. but now we also have people making full color cartoons from their basements because Flash was released for personal computers with said digital tech along with computer generated motion tweening for animation!!

Junior animator and junior bg painter or prop artist roles will probably face an overhaul where more work can be done with less people. But the utopian outcome would be these junior artists can sooner take up lead or supervisor positions where they get to execute their own ideas instead of someone else's. more shows or movies could be produced with less crew for less money, slashing costs when deciding what to greenlight or to take a risk on new talent. The problem is capitalism would make it suck because it only cares about exploiting workers for those cheapest costs possible and forego the necessary human crew required to make the difference between machine-assisted productions and pure ai generated slop

[prettyboykatsuki]

TELL US THE LORE????

dkjfhsdgj ITS KIND DERANGED LMAOO. sorry for yapping about her backstory but its relevant to their insane dynamic lmao

my self insert / oc is basically like. disillusioned software engineer. shes based off edward snowden. she's from the planet of talia (which is desert wasteland) and she's an orphan and was raised with other bandit gangs lol. she learned how to write software and engineer thru trial and error. she's an orphan and doesn't really have any family with the exceptions of like two people she considers. but no blood. no idea who her parents are lol

she gets picked up by the ipc when she's in her teen years because she gets caught trying to steal from them using some phishing software she made. they offer recruitment instead of jail-time bc her skillsets are valuable and she sees it as a good opportunity.

she quickly finds out the ipc is crazy corrupt and she gets really like. she wants to get out but the contract is insane. so she basically. like. steals a bunch of money from the ipc and then goes permanently on the run LMAO.

she finds refuge in different planets but the ipc is everywhere. she keeps stealing from them though and interrupting their business models. very robinhood i guess. she has more of a moral conscience than other inserts i make she's really upright.

her personality is really like super antisocial and paranoid. complete loser forreal. after all that jumping around, she ends up hiding in penacony bc its huge and even with ipc presence, it's really easy for the blend in

this is where her relationship with sunday starts. he's really into her because he doesn't like the IPC for one, but also because he finds her to be benevolent (and she is to her credit she's really morally upright). he offers her like . complete refuge and protection in exchange for being part of the family.

she. adamantly refuses this proposition (he will keep asking though) but offers to work for the family as a contractor in exchange for protection. sunday agrees, she's an important and valuable asset with tons of insider information but also he feels weirdly comfortable around her.

they have such a weird relationship LMAOOOAOAOA. sunday develops this very possessive feeling about her and is really coercive and manipulative to her in general. he comes and goes as he pleases but she's not allowed to stray too far. quick to tug her leash basically. he has a really complete control over her and he's paranoid about her trying to leave him. always pulling her into corners and being kind of humiliating and controlling about how she dresses and acts etc

THE INSANE THING IS THAT SHE'S KIND OF. FINE WITH IT. she's really aware that sunday is crazy and manipulative and batshit. but she has HELLA abandonment issues because she has no "home." sunday constantly breathing down her back to stay with him and be his possesion gives her a comfortable sense of belonging and she doesn't think of him as evil - so she's weirdly content with him and just wants to be with him

SOMETIMES. WHEN SUNDAY IS IN A GOOD MOOD. he'll ask her what he wants and he's always expecting her to like beg for her own freedom but she never does. always asks for like intimacy like bathing together and cuddling. and it always shocks sunday LMAOAOA because he's convinced she secretly depsises him but its like dude. Lol.

they're genuinely so in love. this is deranged im aware but they really genuinely love each other and feel understood by one another. but its insane by all accounts

[eeyes]

it's time for a new computer.

Hello Darlings....,

im raising money for a new computer because my current one is on its last foot and likes to 💥BLOW UP💥 even when im just watching youtube videos. This is hard for me, a chick who likes to fuck around with software, run intensive programs, would like to 3d model, amd maybe even play games that have a bigger screen real estate of 300px. just in general. my craputer is holding me back from the mayhem i am trying to create in the world of art.

You Can Help me...

i am raising money for a new computer, mostly through commissions! tips are also welcome. you can send them via ko-fi -> https://ko-fi.com/yanadose/goal ★ or, send me a commission and let's get to talkin 😏 -> https://ko-fi.com/yanadose/commissions

here's the planned build for my new computer if youd like to see the specs -> https://pcpartpicker.com/list/Pq8sLc as you can see, green case... kinda sexy.... the above image is the silhouette of her gijinka, i've named her Agape 🫦

When We Reach The Goal, Agape Will Be Revealed...

starlet i'm sorry but you've blown up too many times. you're being replaced by a sexier, more capable computer woman.

also im trying to keep it upbeat BUT! this computer would mean a lot to me. i genuinely cant even run art programs or check my e-mail sometimes and i'd really like to play games or do streams with my friends again. starlet's busted in several ways and it'd take too much money to rule out all possible issues, i got her a new PSU for christmas (haven't installed yet, we'll see...? >3>) but she has motherboard, gpu, and cable connector issues, not to mention the parts are mostly from 2011-13 and mad slow. i live in a place with a bad power grid and i think a lot of parts got fried from constant black/brownouts and starlet was 2nd hand in the first place.

i'm disabled/no income/have mobility issues and my computer has failed to be sufficient for online healthcare tools, it's jeopardized my livelihood as an artist, and it's made me feel alone when i can't leave the house with chronic health issues. i'm sure you understand... NOW LET'S GET THAT GREEN WOMAN!

★ commissions ☆ ko-fi goal ★

[shieldmaidencreative]

Shadows Move In Where Faith Used to Be: Chinese Apps and the American People

There is so much to write about at this moment, it was rather hard to for me to narrow down a topic. Fortunately, in the past couple days, a new story hit the media out of nowhere that made the decision for me. All that being said: have you heard about DeepSeek?

It’s a Chinese generative AI app, based upon the same precepts as ChatGPT. Literally it was built using that software. The claim is that it took ~$6 million to make, compared to the running costs of about half a billion for the other generative AI models. Once this news hit the market, the blue chips crashed and shook the US tech world.

There are plenty of fun side topics that we’ll cover with this one. For the first part, I’ll go into two of my favorite things: schadenfreude and hubris. The past few weeks, schadenfreude has been getting me through the news cycle. I know it’s not a virtue, trust me. But I am only human, and with the depressing news we have lately, it’s sort of been a good feeling to see the people who made assumptions get wet-fish slapped with reality. You’ll notice, with the flurry of Executive Orders the American President has made lately, he didn’t manage to leave the Ukraine war in the first 24 hours as promised, nor has he done anything to lower the price of groceries, eggs, or gas. And, in fact, he has said he won’t (although he says he will lower drill restrictions in protected areas, that won’t drive gas costs down; though, if there was more competition from green initiatives that he’s cutting, it would). I just bring those specific topics up because the people who voted for him claimed it was due to those topics, and they are already dead on arrival. As the rest of us knew they would be. So seeing the inevitable happen, has been the spark of joy I’ve been taking from an overwhelmingly dark time.

The other bit, hubris, is aimed directly at the tech bro overlord douche cadre. I’ve always thought to be a billionaire is a sign of a personal failing; it means you didn’t take care of those around you on the way up. And if you continue to be a billionaire, it means that you still aren’t taking care of people like you should. They could use the dearth of wealth to solve, or nearly solve, all issues we have. But they don’t. And now that we are in this new administration, they immediately bowed down, got in line, and showed us their true natures. Happy for years to stand quietly behind the scenes pulling strings, they have completely capitulated to our new system and tossed out equality or any other moral standing, in the hopes of favor and succor from above. And man, that really made me angry. They don’t even pretend to want to help society now. Google announced yesterday it’s changing its maps to show the Gulf of Mexico inaccurately renamed to Gulf of America, Facebook is going to stop trying to limit hate speech and disinformation at all, and Elon….well, look at that goose stepper up there. He’s just missing the mustache.

So when China announced DeepSeek, I immediately had two responses: wariness because I know why China is doing this, but then there was schadenfreude at the tech sector freaking out. These guys thought they were untouchable, they put themselves on pantheons and thought they finally made it. They could show us their matching Lex Luthor tattoos finally! They own everything and there’s nothing we can do about it!

And then…BAM. China, playing its long game of stealing and silence, tossed this embarrassing grenade right in their sausage fest. MUAHAHAHAHA! Their stocks tanked, billions were lost. The initiative they just announced last week for “AI dominance” suddenly looked, in the daylight, as though it had gotten dressed in a dark room and didn’t check the mirror on the way out. Wait, you all need half a trillion? They did it with 6 million! They kicked the stool out from under the American tech bros, and man was it nice to see them fall.

I also find it vindicating that there are huge moral quandaries with generative AI that haven’t been addressed at all by the government or the tech oligarchy: how they scrape the data of humans to create their content, but don’t compensate them for it. How their output is displacing the careers of real humans, without compensating the system it’s stealing from. How it takes a huge amount of power to run the systems. All of these issues may hit those dudes differently, now that China is wearing the shoes they’ve been sporting.

However…now that we’ve gotten past the flash of “weeeeee”, I’ll move on to my larger emotional response. If you’re American, this isn’t something to truly celebrate. It will be another vector for China to steal our ideas, code, and initiative; after all, that’s how they were able to make DeepSeek in the first place. There’s even evidence that they are using black market NVIDIA chips to make it, since they are restricted from buying them. This comes shortly after the revelations about the two 6th generation fighter jets they purport to have, which if the claims are true, means they have beat us to market. Again, this is based off of data that they stole from us (I remember they hacked the F-35 program while I worked there, and stole plans. And it certainly wasn’t the only time). They excel at taking other people’s ideas and building on them, and we are seeing those chickens come home to roost. For years, they have been thinking strategically about global markets, while we continued to only think tactically.

First we exported our manufacturing to them, hollowing out our middle class at the enrichment of the few. Trickle down economics somehow still hasn’t worked, in the 40 years since we started trying to get it to work. Any minute now, right? So our populace is unhappier and more tired, and broker, than ever before. China has executed extremely high levels of industrial espionage against us, and continues to do so, at a prolific scale. They’ve infiltrated our extremely sensitive government systems time and time again. And that doesn’t even include the actual spies that have infiltrated our universities, to pick our brains about our newest ideas.

So now, we have the results coming to market. 6th gen fighters, DeepSeek, and TikTok. I was going to write about the TikTok ban a few weeks ago, but wanted to see things play out. I’m now extremely happy I did, because it pairs perfectly with current events.

TikTok is a dangerous tool, as the government has been saying (and the American people ignoring), for years. It’s no coincidence that the version China allows its own citizens to use is far different from our own. It’s meant to dull us down and occupy our attention, so that we don’t accomplish anything with drive. It’s a time suck. It pushes disinformation. It ruins our attention span. It also gathers massive amounts of data on us. I personally predict that at some point, China will use that data to make digital AI agents to “befriend” users and then use PSYOPs on them to further degrade their loyalty to America and one another. I believe that they will use the data from DeepSeek to do the same; it gathers an incredible amount of data from the moment you download the app to your phone.

The TikTok ban, which Trump originally proposed (and I supported!) has now been stymied by Trump. He claims Microsoft are in talks to acquire the American arm of the business, and we shall see what comes of it. It’s been turned back on for American users. But what’s been fascinating to me has been watching the response online of the average user.

Overwhelmingly, I have seen Americans who use TikTok blatantly say, “So what if they have my data. American companies already have it all and sell it to anyone who wants it.” And you know what? Solid point.

This is a sign of the breech of trust between American government and its citizens. For many years now, I’ve been a vocal supporter of privacy laws like the EU has, and of harsh penalties for companies that fail to prevent security breaches. Neither has gained any traction in the US. Since the government believes its job is no longer to protect the average citizen, but instead to provide the opportunity to any sap who wants to bilk a buck from his neighbor the protection to do so, Americans are hugely data compromised.

Many times a year I am notified that some site or another has been breached. Companies are very poor custodians of customer data nearly across the board, and there is nearly no restriction on the data they can collect. There was just a huge data breach of an app schools use called “Powerschool”, announced last week. That data, among other things, included Social Security numbers of students and teachers, affected up to 70 million users, and was all achieved by one admin’s compromised credentials being used to login. As someone with software development and security experience, there are so many red flags here. Why was ONE lowly admin able to access the social security numbers of that many people? Why was no one alerted at that massive of a pull? Why were they stored in unencrypted areas, instead of being accessed individually with a key? And, why will nothing be done about it? This stuff is not rocket science; it’s lazy engineering because they companies don’t have the incentive.

If we made it so that there were fines and jail time for stolen data, security would improve immediately. But they get away with it. If someone came in my house, and stole my social security card, they would face fines and jail time. Why should the digital data be any different? If a bank lost my money due to their poor security, I would be protected. Why is this different?

In my option, the American government has done a terrible job of protecting us from this. Part of that is they don’t feel the pressure; part of it is laziness; part of it is the fact that most of Congress has no clue how technology works because they are dinosaurs and lawyers. But I also think the tech sector has done a terrible job of being good citizens as well. And now, guess what’s happened: They’ve done such a bad job, that people think China has their interests at heart more than America. And for me, it’s hard to say they seem totally wrong. China certainly doesn’t have their interests at heart, not at all. But it’s getting harder to be convinced that our own country’s government cares about them, either. And that is so dangerous.

In this moment, the users have the power, and they don’t realize it. We need to have people who understand current issues step up to the plate to protect us. We need to be on the same team again, and by that I mean ALL American citizens need to be protected, not just the rich. In this moment of chaos and terror, I’m not sure what will happen. But at some point, Trump used to be convinced that TikTok and China were dangerous. And he need to remember that they still are. We also need to stand with our true allies again, and make data and security standards with them. If we don’t stand with them, someone else will, and nature abhors a vacuum. I don’t like this isolationist stance we are moving toward; the world is too interconnected for it to be feasible. I have hope that this will be realized again at some point.

Please don’t download those apps. Please don’t give your data and your attention to bad actors. And while we’re at it, contact your Congress people and let them know your concerns about data, and about the overreach of our tech sector. And if you care about any of these topics, please consider helping do something to turn this around. Run for office, use your voice, speak up. We need people who care about change to make it; it’s happened before and the time is perfect for it to happen again.

As always, thanks for reading. Please add me to your RSS feed and share, and contact me if you like. I’d love to hear from you. Times are scary but not impossible. We are in it together. And, I hope you enjoy seeing the tech bro coalition with their bloody teeth this week (I sure am). Like Mike Tyson says, ”Everyone has a plan till they get punched in the mouth.” Maybe they’ll realize they need to take care of Americans if they want Americans to take care of them. Or maybe we need to make them realize it.

[steadycoffeeflow]

I'm coming out of my cage and things are not fine, I'm screaming at NaNo "WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS?!"

If you haven't already been made aware how borked NaNoWriMo is, in the past 24 hours they've released an endorsement of AI after partnering with an AI software program.

The problem is, much of what they're saying is outright bullshit, and I don't even need to get into the nature of belittling the very writers they claim they're sticking up for by talking over them. It's an exploitation of a community, using them as a PR meat shield.

Because it should be awfully apparent NaNo's goal isn't to foster a healthy writing community. If that were the true goal, their missteps for the past year following the child harm allegations wouldn't be happening. Rather, instead, it's more likely the reason every company has relentlessly pursued and pushed AI: $$$

I don't think I'm entirely off base to say money is the reason AI is mucking up much of our creative spaces. At the peak of this fervor, you could load up some listicle titled '5 Ways AI Boosts Your Side Hustle' or some YouTuber claiming to make thousands a month with their AI writing, as if it were that easy to make a living writing and silly authors have just been leaving money on the table.

The mad gold rush that followed impacted literary magazines and publishing spaces, such as Clarkesworld Magazine freezing submissions as they were inundated with poorly written nonsense. The people behind NaNoWriMo, however, apparently believe Clarkesworld Magazine is just being classist and ableist in their anti-AI stance. Yes. Certainly because of those reasons.

And not because their submissions jumped an untenable amount, almost 500% from their usual submission intake, and cost the lit mag staff untold amounts of mental harm (as well as a very real number amount of staffing hours and financial costs to combat this problem).

But to that, NaNo Org argues that AI is cost-effective, actually!

Which, we're back to the opening argument that NaNo is full of shit (in case you didn't realize that citation link was sarcasm and not evidence in support of NaNo's stance). It may be free to the end user to access AI, notwithstanding the many many models one can buy including NaNo's own sponsor, but the financial damages being incurred by the use of this tech is anything but. The fact NaNo glosses through this in three little bullet points is insulting.

But what really has gotten me to write off about this on a mostly dead Tumblr blog, is that I've worked in the publishing industry all of my adult life and I've been a part of the creative writing community about as long as NaNo claims to. Hell, part of my contract freelance work has been to go through slush piles and evaluate, by hand, if the submission utilized AI or not. Full transparency, that work has helped me get through medical bills this year.

Yet that's my point. Someone had to rearrange their budgets to hire many people like me to combat rampant AI-generated submissions, from college admission offices to literary magazines to other publishers. What could have gone toward the print run of a special issue or increasing the marketing budget of a debut author now has to go making sure illegal, plagiarized work isn't being unwittingly published and endorsed. It's not classist to take a stand against a technology that's disruptive enough to put people out of business, but NaNo takes aim and fires off some bullshit claim they're pro-indie authors.

You might be thinking, "But Steady, if the business can't adapt to the market, they shouldn't exist!"

And to that I say, not every single little thing needs to have a financial commodity price tag slapped onto it. Not everything needs to make money. Things have a right to exist without a price tag stickered on them. The onus of this situation is because NaNo partnered with an AI sponsor. They're outright seeking to make money out of this. Because they're well aware of the PR fiasco, they're high-grounding the situation by claiming they're sticking up for the little guys, while outright taking money from a harmful billion dollar industry.

Meanwhile, the little guy will find no publisher will touch their work, that their writing has no copyright protections attached to them, and they'll be blacklisted by those they stole the work from. NaNo claims this is unfair; sorry folks, that's just how it works. Stealing from your fellow writers tends to get those same writers to rally against you.

I don't need to be told that the publishing industry has issues, that fanfiction writers are made fun of and lambasted. But most of those issues stem from and feed right back into the very problem NaNo is claiming to stand against: The financial commodity of writing.

NaNo has everything to gain by you believing them and using their sponsorship coupon so you can generate works as a writer that have no copyright protections and likely violated the copyrights of fellow writers works in doing so (I can play the bolded words game too, you pricks (see their update in response to the massive backlash this stance has generated online)).

The final point I have to say, is that in NaNo's defense they claim their online workshops are just full to the brim! See the demand! Look, look with your special eyes how popular AI is!! You fools, this is the future at hand!!!

Except, I, an avid anti-AI writer and publishing professional, attend webinars about AI all the damned time. Mostly to understand what new angle or developments we'll have to defend against. Every single one of these publishing industry or writing webinars are, in the end, a sales pitch to get you to pay them rather than a fellow freelancer.

Notwithstanding, it's a marketing and sales 101 faux pas to mistake interest in a thing, eyes on screens and butts in seats, for tacit endorsement in said thing. Besides the obvious point that people most impacted by this tech would be interested in learning more about it, there's the very real possibility that the same crowd who drives clicks to Forbes and YouTube videos is partially the same crowd that flocks to these NaNo webinars seeking to make a quick, effortless buck.

So, in the end, NaNo isn't speaking to writers. They're speaking to people looking to exploit a blind spot in an industry in order to make $$$ in our Capitalist Hellscape. And in NaNo's rush to join that race, they're trampling over the community they've grown and fostered for over 20 years.

The insinuation of this entire statement is that NaNo is standing tall for the "little guy" that the writing community has just let wilt and suffer for years, neglected and unheard. And it's totally not that NaNo nuked their own forums, a free, accessible resource for such writers to utilize, and without warning fired all of their volunteer staff all because they dropped the ball in moderation and safety checks (I'm not touching on whether the groomer is still working for NaNo since that situation is tainted by rumors, sensationalism, and directly conflicting stories).

And topping this all off with a pithy little cherry on this shit sundae: "For all of those reasons, we absolutely do not condemn AI, and we recognize and respect writers who believe that AI tools are right for them. We recognize that some members of our community stand staunchly against AI for themselves, and that's perfectly fine. As individuals, we have the freedom to make our own decisions."

So not only does NaNo condone plagiarism and theft, they're quick to both-sides the issue, only to immediately say "we're all free to make our own decisions!" Not said is the heavy implication, "oh but if you stand against AI you're a classist, ableist dickhead!" Which, if it wasn't obvious, is so far removed from the truth it's insulting.

In short, fuck NaNoWriMo.

Also what the fuck does "further-proof" mean.

[marcusrobertobaq]

All Amanda's orders and my theory on why Connor can evade things without breaking his program (cuz everything is part of his program)

Or "How Connor autonomous nature can be a problem in letting him escape his leash"

I don't care if someone already did that, i just wanna leave my shit saved somewhere public.

⚠️ A FUCKING WARNING: EVERYTHING HERE IS THEORY (AND HC). It's just assumption and MY OPINION.

and it's big like my dick

First of all Connor is basically an autonomous android.

Wtf is an autonomous android in dbh in my humble opinion?

The android can do whatever they want, choose and shift whatever they see fit as long as they stay inside direct orders from 'em handler. They can decide almost everything alone. Be aware we got a whole false sensation of freedom with Connor cuz he indeed got freedom (in this sense), but he's manipulated and conditioned as a way of keeping him on the right track.

What deviancy really is for a Connor model?

I see a lotta people saying Connor was a deviant from the start, what i totally disagree based on canon. But we know this model got a interesting relationship with the meaning of deviancy: is deviancy in the sense he can fight/disobey a direct order (like the other androids) or the fact he's starting to deviate from his original priority? Good luck finding out. But remember: Connor got the option to deviate in Crossroads.

Secondly, be in mind Connor's only handler is AMANDA. She's the only one that can really order him and he can't disobey (CyberLife is so ridiculous they let the AI do all 'em work). He can ignore everybody else if he wants (by %) as long as he's authorized or she didn't say anything about this topic in specific (his programming let him do that - at a cost sometimes).

So i gonna explain why I THINK Connor is inside his "program cage" THE WHOLE GAME UNTIL CROSSROADS.

⚠️ ANOTHER FUCKING WARNING: i gonna focus only in priority conflicting decisions, i don't care what happens with other options. I also won't care about cut content/context, let's work with what the finished game shows.

(red for direct order; orange for too vague; yellow for optional; green for train/line of thought; blue for priority confliction; mission % calculation: f for failure, s for success)

Unfortunately i ain't got much details about The Hostage and Partners original orders, so my theory:

The Hostage: taking Daniel alive consequently saving Emma (obviously if Emma dies means Daniel also dies).

Partners/The Interrogation: my guess is his orders were to find Hank (he needs access to the crime scene), find Ortiz's android and extract information about deviancy.

→ Waiting for Hank || On the Run

Order: find out what's happening (related to deviancy)

It's totally vague. Connor is totally alone here and it's like that most of the time. To make things easier, i gonna set a default line of thought:

He knows he was assigned to the police to have access to the deviants files, and he also knows he needs more information so he can report to Amanda and if possible apprehending the deviants so CL can study 'em. Best way of gettin information? Finding deviants alive and extracting information from 'em.

Why Connor CAN choose NOT running after Kara in the highway without breaking the program (both choices got equal weight):

He can be destroyed and doesn't catch Kara (decent f %);

Kara can be destroyed and he won't get anything (high f %);

Hank would start something if he didn't stay, making his job more difficult in the future (medium f %);

Nobody relevant ordered him to chase Kara across the highway;

He got a priority that is getting the deviants alive (and extract information for report) so he got software instability boost from this. Not a huge boost cuz Kara could get destroyed anyways.

→ The Nest

Order: Find the suspect (f or s) and extract information (not a specific time defined)

Why Connor CAN choose SAVING Hank without breaking the program:

Hank is a human and his pawn in the DPD (Connor can choose listening him if he wants, his program LET him do that);

89% is a high probability but the other 11% still exists, making his job more difficult in the future if he died (low %);

Not helping Hank (he survives) could make his job difficult in the future (medium %);

They could find Rupert again later (low %);

Nobody relevant ordered him to not save Hank, nobody said he can't;

But as consequence he receives a big instability boost cuz it's an urgent decision with low % of failure if he catched Rupert alive and Hank's 89% of survival is a high probability.

→ The Eden Club

Order: Find Anderson and investigate the new android related case, find information about deviants (f or s)

Why Connor CAN choose SPARING the Tracis without breaking the program (both choices got equal weight):

Nobody relevant ordered him to shoot the androids;

Killing the Tracis wouldn't give any relevant information for his next report (is a excuse he uses later);

Connor needed the deviants intact if possible (is a excuse he uses later);

He can find 'em again later (low %);

Again big instability boost cuz it's a urgent decision, had a low f % of his overall mission (dealing with the deviancy threat and finding a solution) and Connor was in a dangerous position (deviants are an absolute threat -> he can and should defend himself).

→ Meet Kamski

Order: talk with Kamski about deviancy

Why Connor CAN choose SPARING Chloe without breaking the program (both choices got equal weight):

Neither Hank or Kamski are relevant in Connor's handler system. He can disobey both;

He can prioritize Hank's wishes if he just wants get out of this situation;

Kamski could be lying (medium %) and playing with him;

Nobody relevant ordered him to shoot Chloe;

Big instability boost cuz it's a no-escape decision (or u gonna shoot or u don't) and had a high s % in fiding something that could help with his main mission.

→ Last Chance, Connor || Crossroads

Order 1: Find the deviants (wherever they're reuniting)

i gonna pretend we ain't got a plot hole here in case we don't probe Simon

Points of interest:

It's a specific place;

High % the leader is there;

High % more information will be found there;

Finding the deviants means CyberLife will be able to analyze 'em;

After this point the orders start to become more specific, where location and timing matters.

Points of interest:

Connor found Jericho;

Connor found Markus;

He's closer to Markus when he make the report;

He's alone with Markus;

No other threat to the mission detected;

Order 2: Deal with Markus (need him ALIVE) = Catch him, stop him

Why Connor CAN'T choose STOPPING Markus without breaking his program (both choices got equal weight if u have enough instability):

Amanda gave him a direct and specific order in that specific moment;

Connor is already too close to Markus - his main target;

There's nothing keeping Connor from approaching Markus;

There no ways or of evading this specific order or any external condition making the situation difficult;

All right now...

LET THE BONUS ROUND BEGIN 🤡

-> Night of the Soul || Battle for Detroit

Order: Destroy (kill) the leader of the deviants

Why Connor CAN choose NOT fighting Hank (if they're friends) without breaking his program:

Won't make him fail his mission of destroying the leader of the deviants (cuz he knows Hank won't do anything if he's friendly);

There are multiple ways of "destroying the leader of the deviants" without shooting from the rooftop;

Connor is attached to Hank (a human) and can give him some sorta priority;

Connor is far from the leader and there's a obstacle (Hank) in his way;

It's more efficient if he just get rid of Hank fast like this (or kill himself) than a whole fight (waste of time with decent % of losing sight of the leader);

Connor can still get closer to the leader and destroy 'em (what he does later in the chapter);

Why Connor can choose fighting Hank and SPARE HIM without breaking his program (killing Hank got more weight than saving him):

It's not his mission killing Hank (a human and somebody he got attachment);

Connor don't wanna kill Hank, only incapacitate him but the guy is a TANK and DOESN'T STOP. Connor models always execute 'em victims with a shot in the head;

Hank ain't considered a threat anymore if he got DEFEATED (Connor can continue with his task - well, that's what he thought);

He doesn't needa kill Hank to destroy the leader of the deviants if Hank is status neutralized - his mission won't fail;

If a Connor dies, CyberLife can send another one to finish the job;

The ideal scenario (and Connor's default option) is killing Hank and 100% removing him from the whole deal, but nobody ordered him to kill Hank;

Why Connor CAN'T NOT kill Captain Allen and his team if he choose to fight:

They're not relevant enough to the story (sad but true) neither for CyberLife;

It's a tactical unit (the motherfucking SWAT), not a single guy;

They gonna take Connor away from his mission ALIVE with no opportunity to get back (it's easier killing himself if he doesn't wanna kill anybody and let CyberLife send another Connor);

Why Connor CAN choose SPARING the Leader (failed revolution) without breaking his program:

It's literally over, doesn't matter if he kills the leader or not;

The army gonna find the leader and they gonna die anyway, and his mission gonna be complete in the end;

-> Other observations and doubts

I don't know why we got a option to not kill Markus during the speech (i don't remember if instability levels are a condition, probably not). Maybe it's cuz it's...over. The androids won and he just doesn't give a shit anymore;

Not shooting Markus in this section is considered deviancy but Amanda interjects directly, right in the moment, trapping the current Connor in the garden and resetting everything (V). This proves the red wall is just a illustration for the player, it doesn't exactly happens;

Instability stop being relevant after Crossroads;

In Crossroads, Connor lowering his gun down after alerting Markus already means deviancy, probably.

I don't know how and when exactly Connor starts getting attached to Hank. I used to believe he starts prioritizing Hank the more instability he gets (and that's why Hank's relationship status and instability levels are related to each other) but ain't exactly like that, I guess? Depending on how u play with Connor Hank matters but Lieutenant Anderson doesn't, know what i mean? Cops are always slowing him down in a couple of senses and they always show up at the wrong time. I assume Connor, even if on his right of killing Hank in hypothetical revenge method, still got attachment to him. The fact he "cares" kinda comes from him programming. His ability to get attached to people is a weapon.

The fact Hank is a human makes the whole thing more difficult. AIs can't directly order androids to kill humans, even if they're a nuisance - especially when the main justification for the mission is exactly "saving humanity". It's a valve of escape for Connor, even if the % is low, as long as there's a human he's attached to he can find evasion methods and not break his programming (not become deviant);

Connor in Hart Plaza Rooftop pretty much CHOOSE to finish his job, it's something he decided. He doesn't show any trace of doubts about finishing his mission. There's no reason for him to deviate at this point and if he had another oportunity to deviate (before the androids victory), he would (un)fortunately REFUSE. He chose putting the revolution down and saving the day;

Hank's not relevant for CyberLife at all so all the choices regarding to him after FBI took the case are up to Connor alone. Ofc he got his priorities but he got freedom to choose how to deal with him. But when he ain't got no choice, he just ain't got no choice. He can't just give up his direct order if ain't got a big reason to do it or if evasion methods still exists, giving him time to still accomplish it later cuz it's still open and with high % of success. Connor is unfortunately trapped in his own program;

If u read this til the end i just wanna let u know there are a lot of inconsistencies with this theory cuz i'm probably going against what the game really intended.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

STARTUPS AND ESSAY

Symbols are effectively pointers to strings stored in a hash table. Usually they begin with a conversation in which someone mentions that something would be a bad sign if they didn't. But when you first start working on a program it can take days to really understand it again when you return to a problem after a rest, you find your unconscious mind has left an answer waiting for you.1 But what does that really mean? When I see patterns in my programs, I consider it a sign of trouble. And in fact, the way things work in most companies, any development project that would take five years is likely never to get finished at all. Use succinct languages. And what pressure it would put on the city.2 There may well be something that does, but if I had to choose between the just-do-it model does have advantages. Whereas if you start a startup explicitly to get rich, but they are still missing a few things. The total value of the companies we've funded is around 10 billion, give or take a few. Some people who've read this think it's an interesting attempt to write about something that hasn't been written about before.

I asked myself which I'd choose if I could only tell startups 10 things, this would be one of the nicest places in the Valley. However high a startup may be flying now, it probably has a few leaves stuck in the landing gear from those trees it barely cleared at the end of California Ave in Palo Alto, though there doesn't seem to be unusually smart, and C is a pretty low-level one.3 Now everyone can, and we can't be in a dozen places at once.4 The point is simply that there are more constraints. They want languages that are believed to be suitable for use by large teams of mediocre programmers—languages with features that, like the speed limiters in U-Haul trucks, prevent fools from doing too much damage. Blue staters think it's for sissies.5 And you know why? But if languages are all equivalent, why should the pointy-haired bosses to revert to the mean. -Self variety. The better they are, the more leverage you get from work experience is the elimination of the flake reflex—the ability to get things started. How much of a problem is each of these?6 Why only do it once?

Some of these we now take for granted, others are only seen in more advanced languages, and two are still unique to Lisp. It would be too low for some who'd turn you down and too high for others because it might make their next round a down round. Others say I will get in trouble for using it. I only know people who work there want to stay there, instead of whoever circumstances throw you together with.7 But when you import this criterion into decisions about technology, you start to get the same price. This essay developed out of conversations I've had with several other programmers about why Java smelled suspicious. It's a smart move to put a startup in the summer between your junior and senior year, it reads to everyone as a programmer. Which they deserve because they're taking more risk.8 7, though there is nothing to see outside. A good programmer working intensively on his own code can hold it in his mind the way a mathematician holds a problem he's working on. Let's take a look inside the brain of the pointy-haired boss?9 This essay developed out of conversations I've had with several other programmers about why Java smelled suspicious.

And so American software and movies are malleable mediums. Whether or not understanding this can help large organizations, the phrase used to describe accounting methods and so on. Let's run through an example.10 Unfortunately picking winners is harder than that. There are very, very few who simply decide for themselves. Would the transplanted startups survive? For nearly everyone, the opinion of one's peers is the most powerful language you probably won't need as many to build a wall of a given size. Could we have it both ways? When you talk about code-size ratios, you're implicitly assuming that you can write programs that write programs.

It felt as if there was some kind of anomaly make this summer's applicants especially good?11 It would improve the average startup's prospects by more than 6.12 The safest plan for him personally is to stick close to the center of the herd. It seems the clear winner for generating wealth and technical innovations which are practically the same thing. When you pick a big winner, you won't know it for two years. But maybe not.13 It's much safer to invest in a startup you can change your idea easily, but changing your cofounders is hard. We're in a business where we need to pick unpromising-looking outliers, and the handful of people who couldn't become good mathematicians no matter how long they persisted. In many technologies, version 2 has higher resolution. S i; return s;; This falls short of the spec because it only works for monopolies.14 We can afford to take at least half a million. Throw them off a cliff, and most will find on the way down that they have wings.

That's why we advise groups to ignore issues like scalability, internationalization, and heavy-duty security at first.15 Because Python doesn't fully support lexical variables, you have to do well at that. At a minimum, if you create a new variable s. What's going on?16 Two have already turned down lowball acquisition offers. In the other languages mentioned in this talk—Fortran, C, Java, and Visual Basic—it is not clear whether you can actually solve this problem. Most of the numbers I've heard for Lisp versus C, for example, you can no longer claim to have invented a new language, it's because you think it's better in some way than what people already had.17 In Microsoft's case, it was Ada. 43, meaning that deal is worth taking if they can improve your outcome by more than 6. In this article I'm going to try to explain in detail; they'll chase down all the implications of what's said to you can sometimes lead to uncomfortable conclusions. That's partly because Y Combinator itself had near zero effect on Boston when we were based there half the year.

Notes

A preliminary result, that good art fifteenth century artists did, once. Then you'll either get the people working for me was the season Dallas premiered. Quoted in: it's much better than Jessica.

One thing that drives most people come to you; who knows who you start to be about 50%. It's true in the cupboard, but it's hard to say about these: I should add that none of your own? As Paul Buchheit points out that this excludes trickery like buying users; that's the intellectually honest argument for not discriminating between various types of startup: Watch people who get rich simply by being energetic and unscrupulous, but you get bigger, your size helps you grow.

I'm using these names as we use the wrong ISP.

But it turns out to be started in Mississippi.

I'm claiming with the buyer's picture on the relative weights? Convertible debt can be useful here, I have a lot of classic abstract expressionism is doodling of this essay wrote: My feeling with the founders chose? I couldn't believe it or not. Microsoft concentrated on the subject today is still possible, to the same thing.

This sentence originally read GMail is painfully slow.

It would not make a brief entry listing the gaps and anomalies. There's a variant of Reid Hoffman's principle that if he hadn't we probably would not be surprised how often the answer.

There was one cause of accidents.

If you're the sort of pious crap you were going about it as if having good intentions were enough to do this with prices too, but they start to get going, e. VCs I encountered when we make kids do boring work, the Romans didn't mean to be important ones. Monroeville Mall was at Harvard Business School at the data in files. It seems we should have become good friends.

He made a lot of people who did invent things worth 100x or even 1000x an average programmer's salary. Especially if they seem pointless. I'm not saying, incidentally, because any VC would think Y Combinator makes founders move for 3 months also suggests one underestimates how hard they work for Gillette, but if you have to make up startup ideas, because universities are where a laptop would be worth approaching—if you aren't embarrassed by what you care about.

I mean type I startups.

If you try to be spread out geographically.

The second biggest regret was caring so much control, and logic.

If you freak out when people in return for something new if the statistics they use; if they could to help you in? VCs may begin to conserve board seats for shorter periods.

The word regressive as applied to tax avoidance. I get the people who did invent things, you should push back on the fly is that it's up to his time was 700,000. Convertible debt at a middle ground.

Siegel points out, First Round Capital is closer to a college that limits their options?

I'm not sure. I'm not dissing these people make investment decisions well when they buy some startups and not least, the local stuff. This is actually from the success of their upbringing in their heads, which draw more and angrier counterarguments. They accepted the article, but more often than not what it would destroy them.

Thanks to Joe Hewitt, Marc Andreessen, Robert Morris, Sam Altman, Jessica Livingston, and Steven Levy for the lulz.

[fivenightsatfreddysfanfiction]

Bear Suit

Freddy and Circus Baby talk about their issues and workarounds for being able to mingle with the human crowds, giving Freddy an idea and hope for being able to leave the house freely. .

--------------------------- .

Maintenance checks were done at a discount. Perks of being friends and family to Meera and Circus Baby, Freddy supposed. He was reclined in the chair set up for maintenance work, dutifully ignoring the straps holding him in place for everyone’s safety while he hummed to pass the time. Various cables were plugged into him, allowing Jeremy Fitzgerald limited access to his software for observation. The coding that formed his base, a branch of the Mimic1 AI trained in the art of being Freddy Fazbear, was still very much a mystery to unravel. It had been the last great programming work of Michael Afton before his death and Freddy wasn’t of much help in understanding it or reverse engineering it.

The fire that consumed the fake pizzeria had degraded a lot of Michael’s Remnant and memories, which left Freddy with scraps of them; enough to raise him above the level of the other Glamrocks but not enough to provide real help to the Guards in figuring out what the other Aftons planned to do with the AI. It was.. disheartening.

He looked up as the door to the workshop’s inner workings opened and Jeremy walked in with Circus Baby following after. The clown themed animatronic glanced in Freddy’s direction and gave him a quick glare over her frozen smile as per usual. Freddy was used to it; the look was more of a warning anyway, the action of a family member still being protective of someone. Couldn’t be helped, Michael had crossed a line by being attracted to Isabella Corbett, the grandmother to Meera and younger sister to Lucian, who now existed as the digital entity running Circus Baby.

“The performance model is due for readjustment and mechanical checks. Damien should be here for that within the hour so you’re free to wait or switch to the social model,” Jeremy remarked as he prepared another chair. Freddy’s ears wiggled at the words, perking up in interest.

“I’ll wait, Darling, thank you,” Baby replied with a purr, sliding into the chair and relaxing in place with a flip of her hand through her pigtails, “When Mr. Woods shows up, let him know I’ve been feeling a stiffness in my left knee joint. It’s going to start affecting my performances if it’s not dealt with this check.” Her eyes narrowed as she tilted her head, “I’m sure some little brat jammed pasta in there when I wasn’t looking.”

“You’re the one who didn’t want full coverage at your joints in favor of extra flexibility for your dancing,” Jeremy told her flatly, hands on his hips, “Don’t blame us for it!” Freddy watched Baby just wink at the man coyly and Jeremy rolled his eyes. “We’ll do a full exam of your knees anyway. Sit, relax, I’ve still got work to do in the front while we wait.”

Baby was strapped in, cables plugging into her head once the piece with her hair was removed, and then Jeremy left the room, closing the door behind him. Freddy watched him go before turning his gaze to the other animatronic. Her gaze shifted to him coolly, then the light in them faded as though she were shutting down. Freddy twitched, a momentary panic that passed as hard light built itself into being nearby, forming a figure almost out of nothing. Once completed, a young man stood by the chair holding Circus Baby, golden tan skin and strawberry blonde hair tied back in a short ponytail stark against the clashing red and powder blue of his clothes. His eyes were mismatched in color, one bright green like Baby’s, the other silvery grey.

Freddy thought back to the night he first saw Circus Baby in the Pizzaplex, how one of her eyes flashed silver at him when she spoke of rules having already been broken on Fazbear Entertainment property.

The man looked a bit familiar; Freddy dimly thought of hidden files with that face, data censored heavily and names distorted, a project name floating to the surface.

“Eggs Benedict?” he said in confusion and the man wrinkled his nose in distaste.

“Didn’t like the taste of them then, and I doubt I ever will, thanks to that miserable old man,” he remarked coldly and folded his arms over his chest, “You already know my designation, dummy; Digitized Duplicate of the Lucian Master File, Version 2. Digi for short, though some people insist on calling me Lucian. So, what are you in here for? Regular checkup?”

“My hardware is due for a regular maintenance check and my software is being observed for any recent updates or changes. So I suppose it could be considered a regular checkup,” Freddy replied politely, wiggling his ears. “I, ah, could not help but to overhear that you have a social model?”

Lucian blinked and shrugged, “Yeah, it’s the one I use to blend in with people and scouted the Pizzaplex with. Looks a lot more human than this version.” He jerked his thumb behind himself at Circus Baby in the chair. “Were you thinking of asking for one? They’re not cheap; took Meera and Stephanie a few months to pay off the construction of mine.”

“May I see?” Freddy asked, “I had no idea you were able to enter the Pizzaplex without alerting security about a third party animatronic!”

“Fitzgerald is surprisingly good about design, if a bit too influenced by those damned anime shows,” Lucian replied with a huff, pushing himself away from the chair with Circus Baby and walking over to what looked like a closet when Freddy first entered the room himself. He opened the door and gestured inside in a showy manner. “Ta-da,” he said dryly.

Freddy adjusted his vision to look more closely at the animatronic figure in the closet. If he wasn’t already told it was an animatronic, he would swear that he was looking at a young woman sleeping upright, bright red hair resting in long waves on her shoulders and framing a pretty face, long lashes dark against rose-blush cheeks, a burgundy pantsuit and heels making her look professional and elegant.

“She looks very nice!” Freddy complimented with a smile and Lucian gave him a smug look.

“I look hot as hell when I have the right clothes on in this model, Darling, no need to be family friendly about it,” he declared proudly and then shot him another narrow glare, “That’s not an invitation for you to try and hit on me while I’m in it, alright? Isa shot you down, and I’m not interested either.”

“I have already apologized for that!” Freddy complained weakly, “I just wanted to see how you are able to blend in with people. Vanessa will not be able to afford a social model for me without additional money that only Sydney can bring in with his mercenary work, and she will not let him go do such dangerous jobs now that Radical Eats is about to open.” His ears drooped as he hung his head. “I wish to be able to also be out in public, if only to be able to go with Gregory outside or wait for him at the bus stop after school.”

“And thanks to the Bite of ‘87, animatronics aren’t exactly free to wander outside of designated zones,” Lucian sighed, bumping the door with his hip to let it close, blocking off the sight of the woman in the closet. He looked thoughtful after a moment, one hand curling over his chin as he tilted his head. “Cosplay has been prevalent, and I’ve seen people walk around in suits that make them look like various creatures. They’re still seen as humans as the suits are recognized as just costumes of a sort. Maybe that’s something you can use?”

“Hmm, my current model was not designed to wear clothes, despite Fazbear Entertainment marketing and merchandise claims,” Freddy mused aloud and turned his head as far as he could to look at his shoulders, the wide red mountings that helped comprise his ‘Glamrock’ appearance. “If I did not have these wide shoulder blades, do you think I could fit into clothes and pretend I am a human cosplaying a bear?”

Lucian squinted at him, following Freddy’s gaze and humming along. “You may need to get something tailored if you don’t plan to have your casing reshaped too. Stephanie could do that since she makes my costumes and tailors the clothes I buy,” he suggested as he warmed up to the idea, “Talk to Vanessa about it and then ask Stephanie what her rates would be for tailoring clothes to your size. Simple outfits can be cheaper until your restaurant brings in enough money to get something more.. glamorous.”

Freddy’s ears wiggled excitedly. Even if simple clothes were all they could afford for him, just the idea of being able to wear them and then go outside the house, walk around the neighborhood or go into the city proper, would make it all worth it. He could remember hesitating at the entrance of the Pizzaplex, trying to convince Gregory to leave while he took FuriRosa’s knife to where she wanted to go to set her fires. The want to leave with the boy, to step beyond the boundaries of the building and leave it all behind, had been strong. But the knowledge of the social stigma of free-roaming animatronics and his sense of duty to stopping the other Aftons had held him back.

A day didn’t pass since then that he hadn’t regretted even a little not walking out. That could have been his only chance to be freely outside in the public view. Maybe this could be his second chance at it?

The door opened and he looked over to watch Jeremy and Damien walk in, catching up on their day as Damien shouldered off his jacket to toss carelessly onto a nearby desk. Freddy perked up, eager to get his thoughts out. “I would like a redesign of my shoulder casings!” he blurted and the two men whipped their heads to stare at him in united surprise.

“Was that on the docket?” Damien asked incredulously, glancing over at his boss.

“Vanessa didn’t mention anything other than a regular maintenance,” Jeremy replied, scratching his head, “Did you bring this up to your family, Freddy?”

“No, I only learned just today that there is a possibility I could be modified to pose as a cosplaying human. In this way, I will be able to go outside and follow Gregory on his outings,” the bear explained.

“He got the idea from us mentioning my social model,” Lucian chipped in, leaning casually against the chair with Circus Baby. He shrugged, “If the guy wants to wear clothes, he’s gonna need to deal with that casing design. You can fix that, right?”

Jeremy groaned in exasperation, rubbing his head while Damien pursed his mouth thoughtfully, eyes narrowing as they swept over Freddy’s figure quickly. “Let me make a call to Vanessa about this so there’s no surprises,” he finally decided, “You want to handle this one, Damien?”

“She paid for a maintenance check; does she have it in her budget for a small remodel, even with the discount we can give?” Damien countered with a small frown, “I can start with taking measurements for more rounded shoulder casings, at least for now.” He reached into a desk drawer for a tape measure as Jeremy turned around to leave the room again, most likely to make that phone call.

“Thank you,” Freddy murmured and Damien just shrugged as he began carefully removing one shoulder blade casing to measure it.

“Just don’t go around stuffing people into springlock suits,” he replied dryly and pat the now exposed shoulder joint, “and things’ll be fine. Just pretend you’re in really good cosplay.”

Freddy had already tuned him out, excitedly imagining the look on Gregory’s face when he could finally leave the house and walk with him to the bus stop or go along on trips to whatever places Gregory wanted to go to hang out with his friend from school. He really missed being that constant companion he was able to freely be in the Pizzaplex, but this small change to his casing would open up the world to him. He couldn’t wait to see where Gregory would take him next.

[tumblingxelian]

Bringing up more on how rendering is a nightmare, my computer is a gaming laptop. It's DESIGNED to handle more RAM-intensive processes than most other commercially available computers can. I didn't even get it for gaming, I just got it because of how much it can handle. It is one of the most powerful PC's on the market.

Running a commercially available game-building software causes it to push it's cooling fan into maximum overdrive. Opening a Maya project with too many polygons causes it to slow down and kick its cooling fan into maximum overdrive, and that project had far FEWER polygons than a single frame from a show like RWBY would have.

So you not only need a computer more powerful than one of the MOST POWERFUL PC'S ON THE MARKET, you also have to pay for money to maintain it when it inevitably stops working, server space for backing up all your assets, and of course actually paying someone to maintain it.

There's a reason a lot of independent web animations have low detail and cartoonishly smooth textures: That's often the higher end of what commercially available software can handle. The more detailed your textures are, the more polygons that model needs.

(Of course, given that you are an animator, odds are you already knew this. This is more for the benefit of your followers, who might not know this.)

This is all true and why if I render animations they tend to be short and I leave the room for several hours cos nothing else is getting done.