#METADATA/REALITY

[dogluxer]

a lot of blacked-out subreddits (not most of them but A Chunk) are starting to come back for real and. for most of them I'd personally call the mods mean names.

but there's one that accomplished exactly what it needed to:

(from Reddit Blackout Tracker)

[dogluxer]

i rbd another critical AI art post making perpendicular points to the whole "AI art isnt real art" thing, that I think ends up being more important than these kinds of analogies - but the very end of this thread, in particular, speaks to me in a specific way.

Do you want to Create art or Consume art? Either one is completely fine - and creation usually requires some level of consumption anyway!

But someone can't spend centuries combing the Library of Babel to find a fully-formed novel, and then still claim that they "created" it. People have used an analogy of "commissioner" (the prompter) vs "artist" (the model) before, and I think it's pretty decent, but it misses one important thing: Diffusion models don't have an intentful "style" or "process" beyond denoising colorful static. When you prompt them, you're just restricting that denoiser to one particular section of a massively-multidimensional curve.

That's not creation; that's Google Images with a different search function.

of course that doesn't necessarily matter to the people who might want to replace writers and artists with "AI" lmao

LOUDER FOR THE PEOPLE IN THE BACK

[ered]

in the latest episode of Adobe Premiere is trash: with the latest update, if your export folder's name has letters that aren't in the latin alphabet, the exported video files turn out broken! Haha!

[hkthatgffan]

The image used in the background of the Gravity Falls logo HAS BEEN FOUND!!

It's located in France!!

I made a thread on Twitter explaining the full story and how I even asked Ian Worrel and Alex Hirsch about it, but lemme run down quickly how it was found and where it is!

After 3 years of searching with some friends on and off, we had no real luck. I've been working on a video about it for a while but decided to try one more time. My friend @trickengf suggested looking at international logos as they may have more of the image available and sure enough...we found logos like the Japanese and Russian GF logo had more visible detail of the image.

From that, Tricken made a remake of the image and used it to find it. He ended up finding the source at about 3AM for me, lol!

My friend Fried Oreos then confirmed the image was old enough to fit the criteria of pre GF pilot, by determining the image was on the Textures website it was sourced from since 2008!

Then, my friend Alex M managed to buy the HD image and we were able to analyze its metadata for more info!

Turns out, the image, called "LandscapeMountains0009," was taken by a Nikon D70 camera on April 18, 2007!

THE GRAVITY FALLS LOGO IMAGE IS ALMOST 18 YEARS OLD!!

From there, we began looking for the location. The meta data had no location, but other images taken around the same time showed signs of maybe the location being in Europe.

After over a day of searching, Tricken, Alex M and Oreos FOUND IT!!

The location of the image is a mountain range near the town of Sers, France...near the border with Spain.

Exact coordinates of the closest viewable angle of the image is 42°54'23.2"N 0°06'05.6"E

This is a major discovery and one I cannot believe we did. While this search was started by me in 2021 with some friends, it was TrickenGF, Alex M and Fried Oreos who deserve all the credit for this discovery! They were the geniuses who tracked all of this down and were able to connect the dots to get to this point.

You guys are amazing and I am beyond grateful for all of this.

Finding this image means that fans can now recreate the Gravity Falls logo as they want with anything they want. For example, Tricken made this for me using the image :D

Or, you can do this, lol

We now have it!

For 12 years as we looked at the Gravity Falls logo...we were in reality looking at a mountain in France...NOT Oregon!

So, I guess this is a major W for France but sorry, Pacific Northwest, Gravity Falls is actually French, lol!

I still can't believe we found this. I'm so happy :P

[clothinglennyco]

The Rise of Visual Search: Optimizing for the Lens-Led Future

  The Rise of Visual Search: Optimizing for the Lens-Led Future In the ever-evolving world of digital marketing, where the only constant is change (and the occasional caffeine-induced panic attack), a new hero has emerged in the realm of SEO: Visual Search. Yes, in 2024, we’re not just typing, speaking, or telepathically projecting our search queries (okay, maybe not the last one… yet). We’re…

[dogluxer]

the Logitech lawsuit one was explicitly (humorous) misinformation btw (although Logitech stock did apparently drop somewhat). The blog that posted it was literally named along the lines of "fake news" and the spread of that one image has made them rework how they're going to do their posts going forward.

I'm not a fan of intentionally spreading misinfo just cause it's funny, but there's a problem if you're trusting this meme anyway... this might be Just Me but I think it's only funny because you go and look it up and find out it's true

[wip]

Hello! Would you ever consider bringing back different post types, especially audio? I appreciate that audio posts now display the artist, song title, and album name, but unfortunately newer audio posts don’t play in Tumblr-based music players like egoisticalgoat.de or robinpx.github.io/boombox because they’re read as text posts. Thank you for reading!

Answer: Hey there, @stepintomusic!

Sadly, the answer here is no. We’ve been moving away from legacy post types and towards the Neue Post Format—a format that allows multiple types of media in the same post—for many years. The new features available in NPF basically guarantee that we won’t ever switch back to the legacy format.

(If you’re interested in peeking behind the scenes here, there are a few posts about NPF over at @engineering.)

Now, to get into the meat of the issue. While it would be amazing if we could support every third-party tool forever, the reality is that we can’t. We’re a surprisingly small team to begin with, and even if we weren’t, that support would come at a cost.

To start, there’s the development tax. Now, would it have been cool to ensure all third-party tools (and all custom themes) worked 100% perfectly with posts stored as NPF before releasing NPF to the public? Yeah, it would have been… for third-party tools and custom themes. For us, it would have meant delaying NPF (and all the features it brings with it) for months, possibly years. Imagine a 2023 where Tumblr still doesn’t have polls: that’s the alternate future we’re talking about here.

And then, there’s our maintenance tax. The engine that powers Tumblr themes is already incredibly complicated—complicated to the point that we’re already finding it difficult to maintain and add things like, as you mentioned, NPF audio metadata. If, every time we found some third-party tool that doesn’t play nice with the latest changes, we tried to make an affordance for it… the engine would just become even more complex. And it would do so quickly, and complex to the point of being impossible to keep up with as a maintainer.

There’s a great article here by a former Mozilla developer about the pitfalls of prioritizing a third-party ecosystem over your own software. Did you know that Firefox was essentially a single-threaded application until 2018? This meant it would still visually lock up when saving files to disk, or collecting crash data. Chrome launched in 2008 and was multiprocess from the start. But it took Firefox ten years to catch up because supporting all existing third-party add-ons was seen as necessary. (Spoiler alert: in the end, they had to drop support for those add-ons anyway.)

My own recommendation around third-party software like this is: get in contact with its developer! If something in their software isn’t working, there’s nobody more qualified to update it. (Or, if they’ve abandoned the project but had made it open-source, maybe someone else could step up to maintain it. Maybe you! You never know until you try.)

I talked about the maintenance tax from the first-party side, but let’s talk about it from the third-party side, too. As a theme author and add-on developer myself, I have long accepted that the cost of maintaining these things can never be zero. When your software interacts with an online service, and that online service is being actively maintained, your software also needs to be maintained.

I hope all this has been enlightening! Thanks for your question, and please, have a great day.

—April

[nick-cassidy]

people I’d like to get to know better!

tagged by @eriecanal real meets real

last song: kiss me - sixpence

last book: recently DNF’ed earthling by sayaka murata . tragic story, wasn’t for me but would recommend . when I finish the semester I can fully focus on nails and eyes by kaori fujino

last movie: heretic 2024 . reminded me of my evil profs . Would recommend also

last tv show: hotel hell . I luv watching shitty reality tv . Last night I watched a guy obsessed with Ferrari make it into a hotel and all the walls were bright red

sweet/spicy/savory: all of the above for a good dish

relationship status: none

last thing i googled: arcgis pro can i switch where my project is saved to . LOL you can but you better hope ur metadata bs is correct 😭

current obsession: finishing the semester 💔🥲

and I shall tag thou @jagcedes @rgrfederer @nnato @jack-doohan

[dogluxer]

knowing that I am speaking currently as a visually abled person who doesn't need a text description on most, if any, images - there has to be a better way to do mobile alt text than this. it IS a weird edge case, but specifically on tumblr, it seems incredibly common for screenshots of tags to have hard-to-infer words covered up by the ALT button. I don't even mind slowing down my scrolling, but I'd rather do it for a good article or video than waiting for the tumblr app to load an image.

the important parts, i think, being:

placement needs to be consistent - e.g. using an algorithm to choose the corner for the button is iffy, because then you have to spend more time looking for it

needs to be pretty easily visible - i think the current ALT button can sometimes blend in actually, but no subtle gradients or indicators the size of a pinhead

regardless of what form it takes, should be recognizable as some kind of "text description" and be a natural part of all image posts - hiding it as a setting means people who need it might not see it

side note that I don't like the "image ID" format only because it's a messy solution to pre-alt-text tumblr and people not writing alt text for their images. i've seen image IDs that were posted three comment reblogs after the original image - i absolutely get why you'd do this (e.g. you want to share a reblog chain but the image further up doesn't have alt text) but it's just... messy and on occasion confusing. in many cases (sharp images of reasonably-scaled text) IDs are a much bigger waste of screen space, although still just as necessary for screenreaders. "community captioning" feature built into tumblr perhaps, to let would-be transcribers add alt text themselves?

i don't think this is an actual "problem" for the tumblr interface btw. i would rather have the current ALT button than anything less accessible. it is just a weird self-set design challenge I will be turning over in my head the rest of the day - to get the button "out of the way" of the actual image, in an aesthetically pleasing way, and without compromising the actual accessibility it provides...

[mariacallous]

Some Fortune 500 companies have begun testing software that can spot a deepfake of a real person in a live video call, following a spate of scams involving fraudulent job seekers who take a signing bonus and run.

The detection technology comes courtesy of GetReal Labs, a new company founded by Hany Farid, a UC-Berkeley professor and renowned authority on deepfakes and image and video manipulation.

GetReal Labs has developed a suite of tools for spotting images, audio, and video that are generated or manipulated either with artificial intelligence or manual methods. The company’s software can analyze the face in a video call and spot clues that may indicate it has been artificially generated and swapped onto the body of a real person.

“These aren’t hypothetical attacks, we’ve been hearing about it more and more,” Farid says. “In some cases, it seems they're trying to get intellectual property, infiltrating the company. In other cases, it seems purely financial, they just take the signing bonus.”

The FBI issued a warning in 2022 about deepfake job hunters who assume a real person’s identity during video calls. UK-based design and engineering firm Arup lost $25 million to a deepfake scammer posing as the company’s CFO. Romance scammers have also adopted the technology, swindling unsuspecting victims out of their savings.

Impersonating a real person on a live video feed is just one example of the kind of reality-melting trickery now possible thanks to AI. Large language models can convincingly mimic a real person in online chat, while short videos can be generated by tools like OpenAI’s Sora. Impressive AI advances in recent years have made deepfakery more convincing and more accessible. Free software makes it easy to hone deepfakery skills, and easily accessible AI tools can turn text prompts into realistic-looking photographs and videos.

But impersonating a person in a live video is a relatively new frontier. Creating this type of a deepfake typically involves using a mix of machine learning and face-tracking algorithms to seamlessly stitch a fake face onto a real one, allowing an interloper to control what an illicit likeness appears to say and do on screen.

Farid gave WIRED a demo of GetReal Labs’ technology. When shown a photograph of a corporate boardroom, the software analyzes the metadata associated with the image for signs that it has been modified. Several major AI companies including OpenAI, Google, and Meta now add digital signatures to AI-generated images, providing a solid way to confirm their inauthenticity. However, not all tools provide such stamps, and open source image generators can be configured not to. Metadata can also be easily manipulated.

GetReal Labs also uses several AI models, trained to distinguish between real and fake images and video, to flag likely forgeries. Other tools, a mix of AI and traditional forensics, help a user scrutinize an image for visual and physical discrepancies, for example highlighting shadows that point in different directions despite having the same light source, or that do not appear to match the object that cast them.

Lines drawn on different objects shown in perspective will also reveal if they converge on a common vanishing point, as would be the case in a real image.

Other startups that promise to flag deepfakes rely heavily on AI, but Farid says manual forensic analysis will also be crucial to flagging media manipulation. “Anybody who tells you that the solution to this problem is to just train an AI model is either a fool or a liar,” he says.

The need for a reality check extends beyond Fortune 500 firms. Deepfakes and manipulated media are already a major problem in the world of politics, an area Farid hopes his company’s technology could do real good. The WIRED Elections Project is tracking deepfakes used to boost or trash political candidates in elections in India, Indonesia, South Africa, and elsewhere. In the United States, a fake Joe Biden robocall was deployed last January in an effort to dissuade people from turning out to vote in the New Hampshire Presidential primary. Election-related “cheapfake” videos, edited in misleading ways, have gone viral of late, while a Russian disinformation unit has promoted an AI-manipulated clip disparaging Joe Biden.

Vincent Conitzer, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and coauthor of the book Moral AI, expects AI fakery to become more pervasive and more pernicious. That means, he says, there will be growing demand for tools designed to counter them.

“It is an arms race,” Conitzer says. “Even if you have something that right now is very effective at catching deepfakes, there's no guarantee that it will be effective at catching the next generation. A successful detector might even be used to train the next generation of deepfakes to evade that detector.”

GetReal Labs agrees it will be a constant battle to keep up with deepfakery. Ted Schlein, a cofounder of GetReal Labs and a veteran of the computer security industry, says it may not be long before everyone is confronted with some form of deepfake deception, as cybercrooks become more conversant with the technology and dream up ingenious new scams. He adds that manipulated media is a top topic of concern for many chief security officers. “Disinformation is the new malware,” Schlein says.

With significant potential to poison political discourse, Farid notes that media manipulation can be considered a more challenging problem. “I can reset my computer or buy a new one,” he says. “But the poisoning of the human mind is an existential threat to our democracy.”

[drunkenskunk]

I'm gonna infodump about one of my OCs, and nobody can stop me!

There's a character of mine that I have very occasionally posted about here: Tuera Ashama. And I think... I should probably explain what she's all about. Especially since I commissioned artwork of her a while back from the two most amazing people in the world.

(Animation by @b0tster)

(Artwork by @pommycore)

Tuera is a character that has existed in my head for a very... very long time. And I keep forgetting that a lot of the places where I used to talk about her kind of... don't... exist anymore? So whenever I start to talk about Tuera, nobody has any idea who the fuck she is or what the fuck I'm talking about.

Fuck, I'm old.

So who the hell is Tuera Ashama, anyway?

I suppose if I wanted to be boring, I could just repost those redacted documents I made for that project thing I'm working on for my own amusement, and call it a day.

But this doesn't really tell anyone who the fuck she is, especially with so much covered in all that black ink. This is just a fictional document created by a fictional government agency of fictional multiverse space cop assholes. And starting with this document is really getting ahead of myself, in more ways than one.

Tuera has a very specific origin, and I want to apologize for the jumpscare that's about to happen:

Yeah.

Tuera was originally a warlock alt of mine in World of Warcraft, from when I played the game all the way back in fucking high school.

To the best of my recollection, I probably came up with her sometime before April 2006. And I only know that because of the metadata from a scanned image that I somehow managed to save from back then:

Tuera was originally meant to be nothing more than a villain for my main on that account, a human rogue named Sheason. She was literally supposed to be a "villain of the week" for the RP guild I was in at the time. Because that's the kind of nerd I was back in high school: the kind of idiot who played Warcraft III for the story and bought the officially licensed d20 Warcraft ttrpg before World of Warcraft was even a thing. I was there day fucking one for WoW, playing on Shadow Council, a fucking RP server.

She didn't really have much of a personality when I first came up with her, beyond existing as a literal foil for Sheason. He was a dude; she was a girl. He was a relatively grounded spy with no magic; she was a half-demon warlock. He was a bitter and reluctant hero who tried to fix things from the shadows; she was a Card Carrying Villain, and a narcissist who loved the spotlight and committed crimes in full view of everyone. He was always flying by the seat of his pants, and trusting his gut instincts more often than not; she had plans within plans within plans, and considered herself a mad genius who studied magic like others studied science. He just wanted to survive; she had an insatiable lust for power.

Even when she became a more reoccurring problem and I started slowly fleshing out the character, her vibe was very firmly entrenched in the territory of Supervillain, because that's all she really needed to be, especially because every time she died (and she's died A LOT), she'd come back stronger.

If you want an idea of what she was like at her peak of Full Supervillain Mode, imagine a cross between Thanos, Blofeld, the Phoenix Force, and Pisha.

From Thanos: the megalomania, the ego, the love of monologuing, and the mad genius. From Blofeld: the seemingly inexhaustible resources to construct elaborate supervillain lairs in increasingly absurd locales (she even have a volcano lair at one point). From the Phoenix Force: tremendous and terrifying cosmic power capable of shattering reality. And from Pisha, the nagaraja vampire from Bloodlines: an abyss of time behind her eyes, a collector of powerful and strange occult artifacts, and an existence beyond petty morality, being shunned by mortal and her own kin alike.

I mean, you could probably swap Thanos with Doctor Doom and lose nothing, because her most defining feature was her uncanny ability to cheat death with a variety of methods. But that's just quibbling over semantics, especially since they both did the "Doombot" thing.

The only reason I chose Thanos instead of Doom is because one of her biggest fortresses was in space, and Thanos is a far more cosmic adversary than Doom.

Thing is, the more I wrote about Tuera, the more fascinated I became with her as a character. The more depth I wanted to give her, outside of being just a cardboard cutout of a villain. I started to flesh out her backstory more. She was originally a half-succubus, because of course she fucking was, I was a desperately horny high schooler. But this is also where things get slightly interesting.

Fun fact! I realized that Tuera was trans LONG before I realized that I was. And, with the benefit of hindsight, it really does feel like my subconscious was desperately screaming at me to figure this out. It's almost funny, because I originally justified it to myself by being like "oh, I'm just filling in a plot hole, this doesn't have any deeper meanings that I should maybe examine."

See, I did eventually realize that she shouldn't have been the result of her father fucking a demon, that's just stupid and immature. No, it was a much better idea to have her be "designed" and "grown" instead of being born. Her "father," Venthrax, was an evil genius with designs on universal conquest, and would've created her to be a living weapon of that conquest. Except... why would he make her a girl? He'd be shoving her full of different genetics and demon blood and alien anatomy, but the base he'd be working with would naturally be a clone of himself, wouldn't it? Venthrax is a fucking asshole who obviously believes that he was the perfect organism, so he'd want his living weapon to be a copy of himself, but Better.

And Tuera didn't agree with that assessment. For more information, please read this:

Even funnier, at least to me: it was around that time that one of her abilities changed that further cemented the whole "you're definitely trans, dipshit" thing that I wouldn't realize until years later. Because at first, being "half-succubus," she was meant to be a prolific and skilled shapeshifter. But after I changed her backstory, the shapeshifting was slowly but eventually dropped in favor of her making portals and using teleportation spells. This is funny to me, because many, MANY years later, I'd come across this tweet:

The moment I saw that, I was just like "...yeah, that tracks."

Speaking of the teleportation, that's another thing that changed. Long before I finally realized Blizzard games aren't actually written well at all, causing me to lose all my interest in WoW, and long before I swore off Activision Blizzard King games entirely after Black February, Tuera just... left Azeroth. I kept writing stories about her hopping around the multiverse, but she was no longer tethered to the worlds of warcrafts.

It was around that time, writing these short little unconnected vignettes about her adventures across time and space, that I realized: she's much more interesting when she's not a supervillain.

Like, don't get me wrong, she's still not really a good person She's still very much selfish, and self-centered with, in her own words: "a casual tolerance for murder to rival even the hardest of hardcore dungeon crawlers," but... I mean, she's just not a dick for no reason anymore, y'know?

It's kinda funny, because she's still doing the same kind of things she used to do, just... for slightly different reasons, and I no longer consider them overtly villainous. For example: one of her first villain plots in the RP guild I was part of involved Tuera starting a cult to try and topple the Stormwind monarchy and take it over for herself. And now... she'd still want to destroy the monarchy, but just not to replace it. It'd be more out of a sense of a "fuck the nobles, death to all tyrants" kind of mindset.

To be honest, I think the main appeal of Tuera as a character for me is that she is more than a little bit of a wish fulfillment power fantasy. She can live unapologetically as herself without worry. She doesn't care about the opinions of anyone but herself. She lives without fear, because everyone who has ever tried to kill her has either failed, or it didn't stick. She's loud, she's brash, she stylish, and she does so many things simply for the aesthetic of it. When she sets her mind to something, she is completely unfettered in the pursuit of her goals, and will never stop. She's defied death, she killed gods, she's visited times and places I can't even imagine.

Tuera has complete autonomy over her own life. True freedom.

And I just... I compare that to my own life. The fact that, while I can admit I'm trans here on the internet, I'm so deathly terrified of trying to transition in real life because of... [vaguely gestures at everything] that I still haven't yet. And, to be honest, I probably won't get the chance before I die.

There is just so much about her that I wish I was.

But I'm not.

Ah well.

At least I can write my silly little stories, scratch out my silly sketches, and occasionally commission fantastic artwork from amazing people.

... wait, I just realized. I spent all this time talking about Tuera, but I still haven't gotten around to explaining what the fuck is up with that fake redacted document from the beginning.

Maybe I'll talk about D.I.C.E. another day.

[dogluxer]

i have like a billion things i'd say about this if half of them weren't just stating very obvious things about the situation (what the fuck, how are they this bad, why would they do this, etc)

but the one thing I think actually matters is that this SHOULD be illegal in the United States (a market that matters significantly to FB). As a proud and learned 🇺🇸 American 🦅, I know we have laws regarding disclosure of Personally Identifiable Information (PII) that boil down to "never give PII, no matter where it's from, to anyone else without the consent of whoever the PII identifies." BUT those laws only apply to federal agencies and any of their contractors - so not Facebook.

Beats me why we wouldn't apply something similar to any corporation who collects/stores data. As it is, if a company leaks PII that isn't covered by some other law (like your name), I think your only recourse is suing for damages and proving that the leak harmed you in some way, which is... costly, but also difficult for cases like this (where the harm is difficult to pin down)

this is so fucking insidious

[notfinancialadvice]

# atty rambles about wordpress

this is a tag I am creating because I am chewing hard on this bone and it is a weird stress reliever

as is this blog in general

SHOPIFY BLOG VERSUS WORDPRESS STORE

WordPress Store

WordPress can host (reasonably well) an ecommerce store. Via WooCommerce (their main system), Shopify's "here is a button" system, and/or countless other things.

WordPress does blogging very, very, very effectively at a very, very low cost. Pick a host, press a few buttons, you have a wordpress blog. Depending on the host, but for almost all of them, 99.9% of your maintenance will be handled for you.

The issue is less "an issue" and more "reality" in that a WordPress store is not a store, and so between 50% - 95% of the "store mechanics" are not in the box -- they have to be built, designed, written, maintained.

"Thank you for your order!" pages -- etc. there are ten billion tiny gears to a shop -- all have to be built. Maintained. Etc.

Shopify Blog

Shopify can handle the store mechanics very well. If your needs are specific and/or huge, you'll probably struggle, but to be blunt, at that level you are a medium-sized business (my opinion) and should be looking into a more bespoke system anyway. Either using Shopify as a backbone and/or something unique.

I am explicitly talking about thousands of products and hundreds of thousands of dollars in sales.

If you are not at that level, it (probably) can do everything (almost everything) you need it to do for somewhere between a few hundred and several hundred dollars very well-to-extremely-well.

Except. Blogging.

There is a limit of authors to users on your account, you cannot easily access or sort backend metadata (but you can create it, I say, interestingly enough, I say, angerily).

Tags, no categories, also difficult to sort.

Your ability to sort tags is brutally elementary. As is designing specific templates (tags, author, etc.)

It is an extremely weak system.

I think this is one of the reasons why art shops tend to be... difficult... to build and maintain.

Before there was social media (fuck I'm getting gray) there were blogs and webrings -- these still exist of course but not nearly in scope or scale.

Social media is "blog, public, in a forum" -- so it allows art shops etc. to replace / augment (let's be honest... replace) blogging, which has allowed ecommerce platforms the ability to ignore blogging as a platform to construct and flesh out.

My suggestion is WordPress (or someone else) replace Shopify's blogging system with a native structure

I would be willing to pay a huge chunk of cash for this. I hate Shopify's blogging system, it is so weak. I do not want to maintain a billion things on my own, so I am not interested in using blog-shop-structure.

I am fleshing out the Post's blog on Shopify's system anyway because it is the best possible of uncomfortable choices.

I am aware of all of the Shopify blogging apps. They are paint on a house that needs to be rebuilt.

[vague-humanoid]

@bigskydreaming @dirhwangdaseul @positively--speculative @ubernegro

There has been a constant conversation of late about what ails the direct market, with much of the handwringing focusing on the Big Two of DC and Marvel. It’s generated endless discussions, with every social network, private forum, and convention bar hosting unplanned symposiums on the topic. Naturally, everyone has their own pet theories as to what is really going on.

Some swear by the idea that it’s the lack of sales charts creating the problem. If we knew what was or wasn’t selling, it would be a path to resolution, or so the hypothesis goes. Others blame rising cover prices, or any number of other monetary elements. Those costs, both for readers and retailers, are leading to sinking sales and orders respectively. Of course, there’s the cadre of commenters who insist it’s the progressive approach of creators and publishers putting a cap on interest. That’s their boilerplate argument against everything, though, which makes them impossible to take seriously. The point is, though, that everyone has a take, and they aren’t afraid to share it.

In reality, what’s creating this challenging environment for the direct market is much more than any one thing, no matter how much people want to boil it down to a single item. The health of the economy and its perception. Waning foot traffic, especially in shops located in the heart of major cities. The endless stories everyone can engage in across any number of mediums and platforms, including a bevy of superhero films, shows, video games, and beyond. The trouble with metadata. Disinterest in the single-issue format. The current state of comics marketing. The crushing number of comics and publishers vying for our attention. Too many variants. The potential factors are practically limitless. Add it all up, though, and that’s how you end up with major headwinds facing comics retail.

And yet, it feels as if one idea has taken the lead of late, at least to some degree. It’s a pretty simple one, a premise perhaps best stated by ICv2’s Milton Griepp in a recent piece titled “Can Comics Be Saved?” In it, the former head of Capital City Distribution

turned journalist said, “I think there’s a very general reason why Marvels and DCs aren’t selling: they aren’t very good.”

Griepp’s not the only one who has suggested this, of course. That idea has been proposed by any number of people,

and I’ve even written about how some shops have reported that customers believe this to be true. It’s also not just limited to the Big Two. There seems to be a pervasive belief that at least as far as direct market comics are concerned, the quality just isn’t there. And you know what?

I don’t think that’s true.

Or, I should say, I don’t think that’s the entire truth.

[aionlinemoney]

Google Photos Introduces AI Labels: A Step Towards Transparency and Better Image Editing

In the era of advanced image manipulation, Google Photos, regarded by many as the best app to edit pictures, is rolling out a new feature that identifies when a photo has been edited using artificial intelligence (AI) tools. This update reflects Google’s commitment to AI transparency and is designed to help users distinguish between authentic images and those modified with AI. As AI tools become more accessible, these labels will play a crucial role in preventing misinformation and ensuring user trust.

AI Transparency in Google Photos

Google is integrating labels to clearly mark any image edited with  artificial intelligence. This will help users track the use of AI tools, ensuring they know when a picture has been altered. These labels aim to promote transparency, as photo edits—while creative and helpful—can sometimes be used to manipulate reality. Users will be able to access these details by simply swiping up on any image in Google Photos, which will display metadata such as the location, camera used, and AI-related information.

Transparency is becoming increasingly essential as companies integrate AI into their platforms. For example, Instagram, owned by Meta, has also introduced AI labels to address the rise of deep fakes and manipulated content. In a world where manipulated media is prevalent, these steps are critical to maintain trust and credibility across platforms.

Google’s AI Tools: Powerful Yet Responsible

Google has been a leader in AI innovation, offering tools like the Magic Editor within Google Photos, which many users consider the best app to edit pictures. These tools allow users to make advanced edits with ease, but Google understands that with great power comes responsibility. By adding AI labels, the company aims to prevent misuse and educate users about the impact of AI on photo editing.

AI can enhance creativity by offering suggestions, removing distractions from photos, and improving the overall aesthetic. However, it is equally important to use these tools responsibly. If you’re seeking image editing tips, Google encourages users to explore these features while also being mindful of how such edits affect the authenticity of images.

Why AI Transparency Matters

With the rapid development of artificial intelligence, companies need to ensure that users can trust the content they see online. AI-generated or modified content can blur the line between reality and fiction, leading to potential misuse. Google’s decision to label AI-edited images ensures that people can differentiate between real and altered visuals, which is especially important in today’s digital landscape.

These labels also play a crucial role in educating users. As people explore the best app to edit pictures with advanced AI tools, they gain awareness of how artificial intelligence  can both enhance and alter imagery. For instance, the Magic Editor allows users to change elements in a photo with just a few clicks, but the AI label will ensure transparency. For those interested in image editing tips, knowing what tools were used on a photo offers valuable insights into editing techniques.

Other Platforms Following Suit

Google is not the only company moving towards greater transparency with artificial intelligence tools. Meta has introduced similar labels on Instagram to address the growing concerns about manipulated media. As these tools become more accessible, ensuring transparency becomes critical to maintaining trust. AI has the potential to reshape digital content, but without clear communication, it can also mislead viewers.

Conclusion

The introduction of AI labels in Google Photos is a thoughtful move that reflects Google’s focus on responsibility and transparency. As AI becomes more integrated into photo editing, these labels ensure that users remain informed about the origin of modified content. Whether you’re using Google Photos to enhance your memories or seeking image editing tips, understanding how artificial intelligence tools shape your images is essential. AI is changing the world we should take appropriate & true steps to learn it by reading AI related blogs & news articles.

By providing clear AI labels, Google Photos not only strengthens user trust but also solidifies its reputation as the best app to edit pictures. This change empowers users with transparency and encourages the responsible use of AI tools, helping them create stunning images while staying informed.

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Minor fandom gripe turned impassioned speech about AO3

So I saw some people complaining that people tag minor (but present!) ships, so if they want to search for Marcille/Falin they also have to exclude m/m fics to avoid seeing gay fics.

And like...

Okay so first off, sounds like they could still find what they wanted. Second, if seeing m/m fic when looking for f/f fic is such a bother, why not check that box by default on all searches? (There's even add-ons you can find to do that automatically for you.) Third, this sounds like a complaint rooted in the desire to filter out unwanted search materials. Consider then, the fact that other people might want to filter romantic Farcille out when they're looking for m/m ships. (Maybe they like them better as friends, maybe they like the pining and unrequited dynamic, it doesn't matter, the point is that other people have different tastes they might want to filter as well.)

And lastly, but of course most importantly - it's an *archive*. The purpose is maximally searchable metadata! Site policy and norms are always going to be for more detailed tagging (within limits, looking at the thousand tags debacle).

The purpose of archive of our own is not to prioritize any particular fandom experience or desired search criteria mechanically. It is to store as much fanfiction material as possible with as much searchability as possible.

Now this is also normally the point where I would say that AO3 makes all of its code open source so that people can make their own archives which only have f/f dungeon meshi ships, or whatever they want. But to be honest, that would be disingenuous. Because the reality is that that's not going to happen, because AO3 is better.

People have chosen, time and time again, that they prefer a large centralized archive that's more likely to have what they want posted there. Going to the big archive and filtering out a few things you don't like is just a better experience than bouncing between half a dozen smaller sites which cater to more specific tastes and using their specific search idiosyncrasies to find a particular flavor of fic which, because big sites get more attention than small sites, is just more likely to be in the big archive in the first place. The hypothetical f/f only dungeon meshi AO3 clone doesn't exist because the very people who complain about AO3 prefer its experience to the reality of what that site would be provide compared to having a central archive.

And it's a little unsettling because monopolies on anything are always scary, but a) A03 is fully democratic and independent and has managed the test of time wrt to upsets of that process, and b) that's part of why it makes its code open source. So that if it is ever taken over by bad actors and goes to the dark side, or just has a less good user experience, successors will be able spring up for the lowest possible entry cost. It's important to be able to make alternatives easily, but it's not bad that people prefer one big archive over a thousand fractured sites.

AO3 the organization is the living embodiment of the principle that the systems we create as collective, large communities are preferable to the small fractured systems we create as more isolated and exclusionary communities. And yes, that comes with costs. It comes with the minor inconveniences of sharing space with people who aren't there for the same reasons you are.

And if that inconvenience is checking a box each time you search, or downloading an addon to do that for you, I think it's worth it.