/reader

Gambling and sports don’t mix for me. I want a version of games without the gambling. I don’t know how parents can let their kids watch games with all the gambling ads.#

How did the music industry get through hip-hop sampling in the 80s without blowing itself up? I was paying attention to copyright issues in software at the time, we used copy protection, but we knew it didn't work. It was just how things were done.#

The beautiful art that came with the season finale of Severance could have been drawn by ChatGPT, it's that good, in the way that machine art is good. There's a point of view reflected in its creations, looking into a soul that in no way exists. We're learning about it, but it's a moving target, evolving before our eyes, in huge steps. #

My server has been coughing up hairballs tonight. It coughed up a link to this piece from two years ago, when Twitter pulled the plug on their API. It knocked everything I had built on the Twitter API off the air. Every thing. Just like that. That's what tonight was like here. It was just some of my apps, suddenly, not working. Whew. #

WordLand and Scripting News and a bunch of other sites/apps were off the air starting about 1AM Eastern, but mostly things seem to be working now, shortly after 6AM. It was a big scramble, I had to provision a new server on Digital Ocean. #

More weird ChatGPT fun#

• The prompt: Here's a drawing and a profile picture. I'd like you to insert the person in the profile into the drawing, and adapt it as you see fit, but the face of the person in the profile should be in the same style as the ones around it. #
• I gave it a snapshot of the art from the season finale of Severance, and my profile picture from Facebook. #

• I laughed out loud as this was revealed by ChatGPT.#

Bluesky is today brimming with irreverance. #

When Apple bought NeXT, it wasn't long before we understood that it was the other way around. #

Great artists, before they die, should share their secrets, so the next generation can be even greater.#

There's now a home page for Radio Free America. Once we have more feeds, the home page will be a timeline of news that can be acessed outside of Bluesky. Please subscribe now, and help spread the word. Via the dynamic OPML file that's publicly available there can be many such pages on the open web. #

More ChatGPT fun#

• Yesterday I uploaded an image of a pizza pie, in a New York pizzeria, with a couple dressed in evening clothes with a NYC cop and off-duty sanitation worker lurking in the background. #
• Paolo Valdemarin writes from London, "Have you tried adding more images to a prompt? From my experiments it can easily keep 'in mind' five different images and mix them. You can get a bunch of people sitting in the same room, with a very detailed version of the room." He sent two examples which are somewhat embarrassing, but you'll probably enjoy them. :-)#
• First, he uploaded my profile picture from Facebook. And asked ChatGPT to add me to the picture and then to "sit him next to the couple, with both of them kissing him on the cheek, and as you can see ChatGPT complied!#

• Facebook profile picture.#

• Original pizzeria.#

• Dave inserted.#

• Awwww.#

The US is being run like a TV show, with predictable results. #

When you put a hack into a piece of software you have to say out loud "It's a hack." That makes it okay.#

We had it all on the web, and we will again#

• When we flatten out the differences between the different social networks, we'll start with their RSS feeds, if it works, ultimately there will be no need for different social networks. And again, if it works, we'll bring back the features of the open web that Twitter left out.#
• This is a much better approach to federation, delivers the benefits long before hashing out the diffs betw ATP and ActivityPub will take. And we really have the choice that Bluesky says they will deliver, and yes, it will also be billionaire-proof.#

What is art?#

• Yesterday I posted four new ChatGPT-created drawings, created with the latest upgrade of ChatGPT's drawing functions which are better than previous versions. The usual controversy is rekindled on the networks. The concern as always is that it learned how from human artists, puts artists out of business, and human artists create art, machines can't, and since this is created by software, it isn't art. #
• This gives me a chance to write a piece I've been wanting to write for a while. The meaning of art imho comes from what it says to and about the person observing it, what it does to them, how it changes them, what they experience. For most people, most of the time, they don't have any idea who created the art beyond their name, nationality and when they lived. If you see enough of their work, you learn about the work, not the person. What you learn from art is always going to be about yourself. #
• My father once told me, in all seriousness, the cliche about an abstract work of art -- it isn't art, my father said. I said to him, Dad that you feel so strongly about it means to you it most definitely is art. I believe if he were more truthful about his response, he would say what's behind the feeling, he's experiencing dishonesty, stolen valor, the artist is a profiteer, the person who made it a con artist not a real artist. Pretty similar to what people say in 2025 about art-making machines. #

More art examples#

• I gave ChatGPT a picture of a man and woman, reading the screen of a computer, then asked for various renditions. #

• In the style of Leonardo da Vinci.#

• In the style of the cover of a John Steinbeck novel.#

• As if it were an illustration inside Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.#

• As if it were Mr Caputo and Chapman from Orange is the New Black.#

• From Succession with Logan and Sioban Roy.#

• From Severance, with Mark S and Helly R.#

• If you step through the pictures after giving each a bit of your time, by the time you get here, if you were asked if it's art, I hope you'd say Who cares. If it helps you see something new about anything (probably yourself) whether or not it's art is not the most interesting thing.#

Is software art?#

• I believe it is. When people say my software thinks like they do, what's really happening is the software has gotten out of their way, they've incorporated the way it works into the base of their spine, so they can remain in the world they're writing about, and forget that they're using a piece of software. They perceive that as the software thinking like they do, which is fine -- it's the goal. But it's quite possible they have a totally different experience that takes them out of their suspension of disbelief by not working the way they expect, the same way it did the last 100 times, or it failes to open a file, or whatever might cause them to leave their own world and have to deal with the one I, and generations of software developers, have created, which can (as I know) be excruciating, humiliating, and whatever else you may feel. #

• ChatGPT's drawing function has gotten a huge upgrade. I've been doing tests for the last 24 hours. #
• First I gave it a screen shot of WordLand and asked for a nice colorful poster for the product. Then I had it make a movie poster for Mutiny on the Bounty with different actors, and As Good as it Gets, and then a stunning rendering of an El Salvador news photo in the style of Edward Hopper. It refused to do an R Crumb rendering or Doonesbury, but it was OK with Hopper.#

• WordLand poster by ChatGPT. #

• Mutiny on the Bounty starring John Belushi and Jeff Bridges.#

• As Good as it Gets starring Jackie Gleason and Melissa McCarthy.#

• An Edward Hopper rendering of Secretary Noem at the El Salvador prison.#