Don’t forget "internet appliances"
(Always thought that was a sucky marketing term)
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Whenever I’m trying to debug anything, the standard advice is to use “safe mode,” i.e. to disable all my changes to the settings.
For a MacOS issue, that would disable my defaults settings, which block some of the blinking cursors, and my mouse tools, which let me scroll. That’s impractical. For some reason, the system doesn’t let my install Gnome classic, disable blinking cursors, and enable wider scrollbars. … But unlike Ubuntu, it doesn’t certify hardware without any functioning drivers as “compatible” because of a hack that reads a hand passing near the touchpad as a serious of clicks, drags, and double-clicks.
For a Firefox issue, that would disable my animation-blocking fixes, and test whether my strobe sensitivity still only involves migraines, vomiting, etc. or has progressed to cause seizures.
Anyway, when tech support consists of either “please unfix whatever you have fixed,” or “please call this number,” I end up trying to avoid fixing anything I don’t need to fix, although there’s a lot I do need to fix.
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For sure we’re using vast generalizations obviously.
I grew up in a house of tinkerers and watchmakers and engineers. It was drilled into me that you open shit up to look inside before asking others to fix stuff for you, and you did that before buying a new one. And I just assumed everyone knew how to use and owned a skill saw if not a jigsaw (I was woefully naive there!). But in general, that is part of my job security in a way that the people I work for and the people that work for me do not seem to have and I worry about that. Mostly this thread seems to be about that existential dread. What do we do when people in general don’t know how to “do” anything? I find that worrying. I don’t see anything to allay that fear, your daughter and her young man seem to be the exception not the rule.
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The group has not released any music but plans to drop their first video in April.
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Wait for natural selection to take its course?
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I checked out their YouTube channel. Definitely KPop meets Boy Band - very teen Asian girl. Think their gender bending thing is a good idea. All the pop stars manufactured for younger teen girls always look like girls anyway.
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Sounds like an architect to me!
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I swear I had not read this when I posted the exact same thought!
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It does sound a lot like an architect. But maybe even sadder, it also sounds like an artist – one who happens to have a good understanding of the geometry they might draw – or a mathematician – one who is able to make good depictions of their ideas.
I mean, setting aside the mysteries of 3-point perspective or Escher, the first thing that came to my mind were illustrations like this (by Roger Hayward):
This is the hexagonal structure of ice for a book about chemical bonding; which is to say its purpose is purely to convey a geometric concept. And plainly that takes both understanding the concept and how you might draw such a thing. Each enables the other.
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This fixes so many things…
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I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that Sophia’s technology is impressive, but the design isn’t moving in the healthiest direction.
I also think it’s creepy that most of the humanoid robots making the news are either gender neutral or designed to mimic a cishet woman. No men. I don’t think I’ve even heard of someone making a sexy male robot outside of a fictional story/film.
Once again, it appears technologists don’t want women’s money.
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In contrast, here’s an article which at least raises the moral and ethical issues around AI, robots, racism, and sexism. Oh look! The founder of the company is a woman. (Which I know doesn’t guarantee anything, and certainly men can behave ethically, but it’s interesting about how often these issues don’t come up when men are interviewed.)
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Huh. That’s an excellent point; neither have I.
What would a sexy male robot look like? Just… like a sexy man? How realistic would it minimally need to be in order to be successful? I am under the impression that some men who employ sexy robots for sexytimes might have a tendency (or at least an ability) to find a measure of sexual interest in the merest approximation of genitalia or other organs of prurient interest, to the neglect of the whole object of lust as a person rather than as… an object. Which, yeah, in the employment of a masturbation aid, isn’t necessarily a particularly unhealthy misuse of the product.
But, I mean, enough straight guys are sufficiently interested in such things to make increasingly-realistic sex dolls a viable marketplace. Would there be a similar level of interest in higher-end male sexbots to financially justify their development?
I suspect the answer may surprise me.
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Robot/android, yes.
“sex doll”, no.
If we had fully functional androids like Data, then yes, women would be all over them. Honestly we’d probably prefer them simply because we could program them to take on the mental load. And they’d be actually logical. LOL
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Stay tuned after the break to find out more.
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There’s actually a whole area of porn where women use robotic devices for pleasure. They look really industrial and kinda scary. I don’t know if this is one of those fetish things where men enjoy watching women get messed up, or whether there are women who enjoy the feeling of being jackhammered. But, I think rather than having a male robot, women just want sex toys.
Also there’s this:
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A robot built on a butler archetype, who cleans while I’m away, calmly reminds me to do the chores he can’t do himself, and is DTF when I come home from a night out where I don’t find a guy? Doesn’t take too much imagination…
Edit: given the explosion in romance genres in the era of the Internet & Kindle I’d be surprised if this concept wasn’t already explored pretty thoroughly in those fictional works, at least.
Edit 2: bookmarking this for further, uh, research
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I think I know the porn you speak of, and I doubt very much that its made for women. I do think it is about men watching women get messed up and very few women would enjoy that.
I remember reading article about the dying of the porn industry, how actors are being asked to do more and more for less and less money. And the journalist was on set with (very young) women and one of those machines. The directors and producers love those sets. Because “the machines don’t get tired”. No thought to the women on the receiving end. At one point, a woman who had to be talked into a scene, and was done, got a surprise second round when someone tripped and bumped the switch and turned the machine back on and she burst into tears.
I’m pretty much done with porn these days. The older I get the less I feel like its even consensual on basic level. The number of women who have left the porn industry with tales of rape, assault, coercion, blackmail and every flavour of abuse… the more I think its an industry that needs to end.
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I think feminist porn could help, or certainly could not hurt. But I can’t watch any porn without getting triggered by stories about abuse in industrial porn. And abusive porn can advertise itself as feminist porn.
I have to wonder though, if every half-decent person avoids watching porn, is the industry chasing after sadists who still watch porn?
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You might also be interested in Chester 5000 by Jess Fink (NSFW): http://jessfink.com/Chester5000XYV/
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