#i spent way too long on this post | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

pomelowed · 10 months ago

Text

Just went down a rabbit hole yippee!!

I follow this blog called @/my-kawaii--world because I like the aesthetics and this post came across my feed: https://www.tumblr.com/my-kawaii--world/753409702367477760/hey-this-site-seems-sketchy-af-as-a-lot-of-the?source=share

Those stuffed animals were so cute that I immediately went to the store to order one! But before I did I, like I usually do when finding new online stores, looked around to see what else they sell. I like doing this just to see if the items are really mismatched or if the other listings seem to be lower quality than what I'm trying to order. Well, the store, called Lavender Creations, seemed to offer a lot of items I saw on places like Alibaba or Temu. In fact, the mushroom purse they sell is one my sister bought off of Aliexpress. No worries though, artists oftentimes get their creations ripped off by dropshippers and their ilk so wasn't a death knell but definitely was a red flag. This led me to check it on scamadvisor and whoo boy.

It scored 36/100. The site has existed for years and it has a SSL but I wasn't worried about the site being a scam that'll steal my credit card info, I was just trying to figure out if it was a dropshipper and welp. One of the negative reviews stated that the supposed flash sale was in fact a daily sale (and I can confirm since me writing this post took long enough that the sale that was supposed to end at midnight is still ongoing despite the fact it's currently 1 AM). That was a dead ringer that this site most definitely wasn't the original creator or at least someone reliable. So, google lens it was for a reverse image search aaaaand

yeah ok unsurprising. Will say, none of these listings have the black & white one I was going to buy and that the dandelionevine was the only other one to sell the white version but also it's selling them for $60 which is way more than lavender constellation that sells them for $44 or $30 with the "sale". Also, amazon link is dead unfortunately because it supposedly was being sold for $25, the cheapest yet.

Now, if this was simply just a case of dropshipping then I would've left it at my reblog I made warning others about it BUT there's that first listing, Plush This?? They're the reason I'm making this post.

As far as I can tell they're the original creators! Awesome, great I can purchase him from here even if it isn't the b&w version I wanted, let me just read the full listing to see the specifics,,,,,, wtf

WHAT??? WHAT DO YOU MEAN IT WAS DESIGNED BY AI????? THIS IS A CAN OF WORMS I DIDNT PLAN TO ENCOUNTER????? Apparently, that's their whole thing: let AI design a plush and then recreate it which is honestly a really cool concept if AI wasn't known for literally stealing others' work (I'm ignoring the fact it would also mean it takes designers' jobs, which is also a shame).

If the AI was ethically trained then I suppose it counts as an original work? It's a bit of a grey area since no one actually owns the likeness of a cat (not yet at least) and plenty of artists create their own works by referencing others. So, who's to say an AI doing the same thing is unethical? I mean, there's a real human effort being put into realizing an imaginary item because this doesn't seem to be the usual AI scam of rendering an image and pretending it's genuine to generate purchases. But that ignores the fact there are limitations to artists on what they can produce (copyright laws exist and fair use clauses do too). So AI shouldn't be exempt from giving its fair dues to the people it should be "inspired" by and it should also be punished if it steals like a human does. Plus, the current state of AI is a lot more like replication than anything near inspiration so really that question cannot be applied in the current generation of AI.

There's one giant elephant in the room I haven't addressed yet: who is to say that the cat plush isn't based on some niche Etsy creator who had their creation ripped off by the AI model? Idk how it was taught so idk if the images were ethically sourced and thus if my money is going into a design that hasn't been stolen in some way. I'm sure they gave the AI a bunch of reference images of a Devon Rex from different angles and told it to make it a stuffed animal. But was the AI fed ethically sourced references of what is a plush? Or was it given Etsy and told to go ham in copying everything??

And, if the AI model WAS trained with stolen images, how awful really is the dropshipping aside from the ungodly prices?? I mean, my usual issues with dropshipping are: they try to sell junk for obscene prices, original works are reproduced without permission, & the profits of the original creator are stolen. But which of those issues are applicable in this scenario? The original work is seemingly high quality as implied with the reviews I see on Lavender Constellations & Plush This, so not all listings are churning out low quality crap, meaning the first issue is resolved. I mean, if people are receiving quality items that they feel is worth the price then there isn't any issue in that department. But those last two issues I have are the kicker, who is the original creator in this scenario?? Is it Plush This or is it the amalgamation of artists that go uncredited?? If the former then, yeah, these sites should not be selling their work. Yet, the latter seems much more in line with what I know about how AI is trained: unabashedly scanning and copying others' works without consent or compensation. Thus, I don't really feel too badly about it being resold on so many stores. It's already stolen work so they're all thieves to me.

Man, idk. It's unfortunate AI isn't simply a tool and the current state of things have festered and spread thanks to the lack of regulations. I imagine the AI models we have today that are made of stolen artworks will just be the concrete foundation and people wont see reparations for their work. Kinda one of those "them's the breaks (brakes?) kid" where laws will come into place that'll prevent AI from stealing others works. The question is will the people it already stole from be repaid? Or will they just have to live with the fact that the AI modules that are common use have stolen their work and wont stop continuing to profit off of that theft into the foreseeable future?

All of this is to say I'm not even sure if Plush This is the real creator!! I know I said I was almost certain they were but that's really only because the whole marketing scheme of their site is that the plushes they create are based off AI generated images and that kind of statement is too specific to only use as a selling point.... right?? Well let me start with this:

So, yes, according to Leila Wang, creator of PlushThis (why no spaces?), everything is AI to physical. Grand. Don't get me wrong, that's a real skill thats being just wasted imo, but back on track. Here's the website for you to check it out yourself: https://plushthis.com/ also they use MidJourney according to this article from last year: https://www.24-7pressrelease.com/press-release/503245/introducing-plushthis-worlds-first-ai-generated-plushies-brand-revolutionizing-stuffed-animal-design

Scamadvisor gives it a 90/100 but only gives one review as an example when most of the listings have reviews, which is odd. This part is literally just me putting on a tinfoil hat so take the bit with a grain of salt, but I think they're having their AI write their reviews. They're all very,,, bland? I don't know if anyone has played that website game called "Human or Not" but the reviews are giving AI. As an example, here's the listing for a dragon plush they have:

and then here's a comment under it

It's a strange mix up to have when it's very clearly white. Worth noting they also sell a green dragon plush.

Also, the rest of the comments tend to usually have a comment on how soft they are? And if not that then how high quality the fabric is. And they all have the same grammar with what I think the nail in the coffin being the fact not a single review has missed adding at least a period to the end of the last sentence. Yes, that level of proper grammar isn't uncommon,,,, but for every single review??? Yeah, I'm not buying it. All this added to the fact Scamadvisor only pulled one positive comment out this sea leads me to believe these aren't real reviews and are just HTML code or whatever tf.

Ok, whatever, site is faking reviews with AI and staged photos. Big whoop, just don't buy from them,,,, WELL this is all going back to how I'm not sure PlushThis is the real creator of that cat plush. Tbh what I think is happening is a mix of dropshipping and "orginal" plushes. Why?

This lil blurb states every first image listed is an AI generated image.

Let's look at this guy: https://plushthis.com/products/cute-rabbit-stuffed-animal?_pos=72&_sid=8df0505e5&_ss=r

There's only two images given and when I look him up in reverse image search:

Look at all those. PlushThis doesn't come up despite this image supposedly being AI.

This guy? https://plushthis.com/products/pink-black-racoon-stuffed-animal-toy?_pos=1&_sid=ffe901991&_ss=r

Yeah, only PlushThis matches.

So, what does this mean? I think it means that the cat more than likely IS a dropshipped item THAT THEY DIDNT CREATE??? Which is crazy because the blurb attached to it is one of the few times they mention in a listing that the stuffed animal started as an AI image. In fact, that blurb is what caused me to spiral down into this!! IT ALSO THROWS OUT MY PREVIOUS STATEMENTS ABOUT THE ETHICS OF ALL OF THIS!!! This isn't my only receipt as the cat that started this all is listed here: https://www.dscopilot.ai/products/1005006873166491

It states that the supplier is the whitebeard' store on aliexpress. Now, this could always be a ripoff of PlushThis' original creation but I doubt they're the original creators at this point. Since every creation's first image is AI, that either means they didn't share the AI image, their whole gimmick, or it wasn't designed by AI and thus couldn't provide a generated image. So, the next course of action was seeing if Taihua Toys Hong Kong Co, PlushThis' parent company, is related to any of the sellers on other sites and that's too tall of an order for me. That's a way bigger deep dive than I'm capable of in this moment, but if I ever do try and see if I can confirm my suspicions, I will reply to this. Hopefully soon since a lot of the sites listed when I reverse image searched the cat no longer have it for sale. Is it possibly a parent company trying to clean up the internet and make it less obvious the item is actually cheaply mass produced?? Who knows, not me.

#long post #dropshipping #scam #ai art discourse #ai art discussion #stuffed animals #stuffies #online shopping #PlushThis #I spent way too long on this post #No one is even gonna see this LMAO but hey if some youtube documentary comes out about these guys or their practices remember me #conspiracy theory #< that one just because this shit is not full proof and def needs a lot more resources and citations before I try to pass it off as legit #edit: TIL hyperlinks arent automatically added

14 notes · View notes

iwillstabyou · 2 months ago

Text

TMAGP 31 - A Computer Nerd’s Breakdown Of The Error Logs

It’s round 3, bitches! (tumblr crashed twice when I was writing this so I’ve had to start again multiple times. I do in fact see the irony, considering the subject matter)

I was listening to TMAGP 31 and as a computer nerd, oh my god those error messages just HIT DIFFERENT. There are so many subtle details hiding in those lines that a typical non-computery person would probably miss, so I feel it is my duty to explain them and their possible implications. So that’s why I’ve decided to fully break down each part of the error report, complete with what they could potentially suggest — think of this as “the TMAGP theorist’s guide to deciphering Chester’s yapping”

So without further ado, let’s get this party started…

(NOTE: lines from the transcript are in red, ‘translations’ are in purple, jmj specific stuff is is green, explanations are in black)

Starting off with Category: fatal programmer error, notice it says programmer, not program. There is nothing wrong with the code - the user has truly fucked up. Uh oh, Colin has made a big mistake…

Also, clever double meaning here with the word fatal. Obviously we know it was fatal to Colin (RIP king 🥲), but error logs also typically have a criticality level describing if immediate action needs to be taken. There are 6 commonly used levels, with the most critical being, yep you guessed it, ‘fatal’ - this means that whatever Colin was doing was a critical threat to the system. In other words, Colin had figured out the problem and was dangerously close to fixing it so Freddie just went “oh shit, we need to deal with this guy quickly or we are in serious trouble.”

Then we’ve got the next line, attempted host compromise (the Errno611 isn’t significant - error codes vary from system to system). When it comes to network terminology, a host is basically just any device on the network, so in full this line basically means “somebody’s tried to damage part of the network.” Importantly, “host” seems to suggest that the computers aren’t the source of this evil but merely a vessel for it. Freddie is just the mouthpiece for these supernatural forces - a bit like a non-sentient (as far as we know…) avatar. Whatever these forces are, they didn’t come from within/they weren’t created by Freddie.

(NOTE: I will come back to jmj=null in a bit)

The program traceback, Traceback <module> by extension BECHER, is rather interesting. A network extension is a way of providing network access to remote users (think along the lines of a VPN) by creating a personal direct ‘route’ to the network. Therefore if it’s the subject of an error report, it means there’s been an issue with data transmission along that path. So this bit means “there’s a problem with this specific network route that’s allocated to Colin.” However, the darker implication here is that Colin is an extension of Freddie. Although he wasn’t initially a part of all of this, he’s become tangled in the web (no pun intended) to the point that he and Freddie are inseparably intertwined. The OIAR employees may be able to quit their jobs, but they’ll still be a part of Freddie…

There isn’t much to say about Host=self.host in this context. It’s just convention when it comes to object oriented programming. Not important here.

Extension BECHER compromised isn’t just saying “there’s an issue here.” It’s saying “there’s an issue here that is a serious threat to network operation.” In other words, Freddie’s going “uh oh. Colin needs to be dealt with.”

The next bit is pretty self explanatory. I really don’t think I need to explain what <hardware damage_crowbar> means for you guys to understand. This bit made me laugh so hard. One thing that’s interesting though is that it gave it a DPHW, so Freddie processed this like it was an incident… Perhaps this fully confirms that the ‘thing’ controlling Freddie is of the same origin as the cases - it’s not something else entirely?

And now onto Administrator privilege revoked. This was the moment when I fully realised “oh no. Colin is fucked,” because any control that Colin may have had over the situation is now gone for good. Freddie’s basically just said “fuck you Colin. You’re not in charge anymore. I am.”

As you can probably guess, Unexpected data isolated/resolved just means that the crowbar’s been dealt with and the program can run as usual. Similarly, the Colin threat is fixed now he’s not an administrator i.e. he can no longer control the system. However, it then gets weird with Independent operation permissions revoked… It’s not saying Colin can’t use the network independently, it’s saying that Colin can’t be used independently of the network. Remember what I was saying earlier about Colin being a part of Freddie? Yeah, well now he purely is a part of Freddie. They’re turning our boy into data!

NOTE: I know in the audio it said everything was discarded but I’m going by the transcript. Idk why they’re different

You know it’s a bad sign when you hear Re config: self.host - Freddie’s evolving. The network is literally reconfiguring itself to now include Colin. And then Freddie goes through each of his alchemical elements one by one and fucking deletes them! How rude. You go and eat this man only to spit everything out!? I guess he’s feeling generous though, because he decides to keep the sulphur, which in alchemy, refers to the soul… If this isn’t just a coincidence, then that means Colin’s actual soul has been uploaded to Freddie. That could be really cool. And messed up. But mostly cool.

Starting with the final line, everyone knows what New administrator permissions assigned means, but we don’t know yet who they’ve been assigned to. Maybe it’s Gwen? Maybe it’s a new character? Maybe there is no system administrator anymore? It’s a mystery.

Now that’s out the way, let’s get on to the real juicy stuff…

The top few lines are pretty simple - it’s Freddie’s way of saying “Colin was a problem. We ate him. Now he’s not a problem anymore.” The next line, however, is a reminder that none of this is simple” - .jmj error not resolved. There it is again. The infamous jmj error. What does it mean? Jon? Martin? Jonah? Is that you???? Nobody knows. One thing we do know though is that jmj=null (from the start of the error log). Now when it comes to interpreting values, null is weird. It’s not zero, it’s not empty, it’s sort of nothing but it’s not nothing. It’s just null. It means no value, but it doesn’t mean that the variable doesn’t have a value (if that makes any sense to you guys???). Ooh I think I know how to explain it?? Imagine you’re Jonathan Sims, head archivist of the Magnus Institute and you’re digitising some archived ID photos when you find one without a name. The recorded name in the database would be null - you can’t put anything in particular, but that doesn’t mean the person in the photo doesn’t have a name. I guess null means unknown or missing here. So basically, what jmj=null means is that the jmj is unknown and that is a problem because it can’t get ignored/it is important. So what it’s basically saying is that jmj is a mystery not only to us, but also to Freddie.

Take a look at Data integration cycle ongoing <0.02%> - Data integration is the process of combining data from multiple sources into a single source of truth. There are 4 stages: data ingestion, cleaning, transformation, and unification. Thanks to the whole Colin ordeal, I’m sure you are all quite familiar with these stages by now (and that, students, is what we call a case study!). The peculiar thing here though is that we’ve just witnessed most of the data integration cycle - surely it should be higher than 0.02%? Yes, that’s correct. It should be far higher than that. It makes no sense. UNLESS this isn’t about Colin. Most of Colin’s data has probably already integrated. This is something else entirely - something so much bigger and foreign than these computers were designed for (the only comparison I can think of is trying to run the sims 4 with all expansion packs on a 15 year old laptop. It really shouldn’t work, and it probably won’t, but it’s gonna try regardless). This seems to follow on nicely from the jmj=null comments above, because Freddie is clearly struggling to integrate something (hence System function margins down to 82%), and when you try to read data that hasn’t been fully integrated with the system, you end up with a lot of missing & unknown values. Sound familiar? Yep, that’s right - until more data is synchronised, many values will be null, like our good friend jmj. Why is it taking so long to integrate jmj? We don’t know. Perhaps its origins are so supernatural and otherworldly that it’s simply not tangible enough for Freddie to process it? That’s what I think at the moment, at least.

So yeah, that’s my line by line analysis done! Hope you found that helpful/interesting. This podcast is so well written I’m actually going insane! Jonny and Alex, you are the guys of all time! As I’ve already said, feel free to expand on any of this - I’d love to hear your theories

Signed, your friendly neighbourhood computer nerd who is very autistic about TMAGP :)

292 notes · View notes