(sorry to add even more; I just made another comment about this and I am familiar with most of these concepts.)

Actually, that would be much easier. TV stations back then mostly received shows via satellite dish. Pointing a low power directional antenna directly at the dish’s LNB would work great. Satellite transmissions weren’t strong and were rarely encrypted back then so that would theoretically be super easy if you knew your RF and deep RF knowledge was much more common place +30 years ago.

I am not sure if they used point-to-point microwave antennas back then for TV, but it would be the same concept. (Microwave antennas are typically the round, cylindrical looking, covered antennas we see all over the place today.)

It would require as much, or more, power to drown out a TV broadcast signal at the source. I believe many of the old towers were 200kW-1000kW so it would have taken one hell of a pirate signal if interfering close to the main source. However, RF follows the same principle as light using the inverse square law so the further you get from the primary transmitter, the signal quickly becomes exponentially weaker for any receiver.

If you had a TV transmitter on a small hill that is a fair distance away from the target audience, like many were, splitting the distance with a directional antenna wouldn’t require nearly as much power from the pirate signal to overtake the original transmission.

If I wanted, I could interfere with ham radio signals with as little as a watt of power (in my immediate local area) even though people might be communicating through a ham radio repeater that transmits at a couple of thousand watts that is many miles away. (It’s actually a permitted emergency technique to “break into” active conversations. Actually, other ham radio operators are familiar with what interference sounds like, even for signals that can’t fully overtake a transmission. It’s customary to stop the conversation if detected and wait for the “break”.)

Lulz. I was instance banned by the head comrade himself, so it fits.

Lemmy.ca is where my primary account is at. Those are all actually ml bans on my lemmy.ca account.

Right-wing politics basically requires one or more sub-cultutes to demonize. It’s hate and blame politics, pure and simple.

As long as the politicians have someone to wag a finger at and blame for all problems, it rallies their supporters. Nazis had the Jews, Republicans have everyone else that they declare different.

Just by looking at it, this model should scale easily in the slicer. (Scale up by 21.5% if my math is correct.) It may look odd, but even scaling up one axis (Y) may work too.

Here is the follow-up post on the joke, btw.

Wustite, ferrous oxide, is black. FeO.

Typical rust, usually found as hematite, is Fe2O3 and is red/brown. Also an iron oxide.

Magnetite is also another black iron oxide, Fe3O4.

There are quite a few other flavors of iron and oxygen too.

“the gays” in Russia:

I am usually the one to talk very seriously with you about your behavior tonight, but my ears are still ringing from this grenade you tossed over the fence.

Dunno about “lost all meaning”. The shrapnel from all the butthurt is spraying quite a few instances right now. Lulz.

Just glad to see ml/memes is getting a taste of its own shit for once.

[censored] - rule 1

When? That shit is already happening.

Well, to shorten everything down, there are few original building blocks. “Original art” can absolutely be original but, at the end of the day, is usually made up of large blocks of existing stuff. How those blocks function as a whole could be considered the “original” bit when talking about my specific arguments.

I mentioned music because there really aren’t many methods that haven’t been discovered and used hundreds of times over. If I had a nickel for everytime I sketched out a four-to-the-floor drum variation, I would be a wealthy man. (Nearly every EDM/House/Techno beat uses something like it.) Chord progressions and transitions are best learned from the classics: Beethoven, Mozart, etc… (Hip-hop/Pop artists are notorious for trying to sue each other over sample theft even though the samples are generally common musical phrases… Eesh… That is a mess of a situation, btw.)

But. Original art made with original components can still be made. This is a big world, after all.

To clarify though: I do not support the theft of data for the use of training AI. Period. I also don’t particularly care for AI art, personally.

I actually agree with that. I don’t actually appreciate AI generated stuff more than what we see on the surface. It’s not highly complex and I never said it was.

(I was just arguing AI generated stuff can be a means to an end and still carries a hint of creativity as stated by the original prompt. It’s a tool. Personally, I detest nearly all of these LLM parlor tricks. I think people who were giving counter points thought I was pro-AI stuff when I really am not.)

Cool. I just realized how many definitions there are for the word “creativity”, so I posted a reply to another comment that explains which one I was using. It may help frame a response for you, it may not. This is just an attempt to keep the forks in this road to a minimum. ;)

We are talking about a word with multiple definitions and it’s getting philosophical now. Depending on where you look or what context you use, creativity is how you choose to define it. (I hate saying that here because, well, its philosophical and any back-and-forth rapidly becomes subjective. On the intertubes, that usually doesn’t work out very well for discussion.)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creativity - Creativity is the ability to form novel and valuable ideas or works using one’s imagination.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/creativity/ - We may ask the same question not just of artworks but of any creative product, whether it be a new scientific theory, a technological invention, a philosophical breakthrough, or a novel solution to a mathematical or logical puzzle. (There is more to this regarding creative process, so feel free to read more.)

https://dictionary.apa.org/creativity - the ability to produce or develop original work, theories, techniques, or thoughts. A creative individual typically displays originality, imagination, and expressiveness.

A discussion about a definition is usually fruitless. I just have to cap this saying that I simply maintain that AI can be a tool for creating original art. (Art doesn’t need to be a painting or a picture.) We, as creative humans, can create art with any tool we are given.

If you want to get philosophical, please do. I won’t argue my point further that it still takes a human to provide creative input to get some kind of unique output.

Sorry if you couldn’t see my points, but that is OK.

I’ll go off and create some corporate logos then…

Example: My picture of the Lemming.

I knew exactly what I wanted before I even typed in the prompt: My vision was for a nervous, burned-out lemming to be sitting on a log, hunched over a laptop smoking a cigarette with bloodshot eyes surrounded in crushed beer cans.

That is not creative? Saying I have no imagination or creativity is kinda rude and giving all my credit to AI is downright insulting. Sure, I didn’t draw it and I absolutely do not have the ability to draw it. However, you cannot (reasonably) deny that the idea is mine. I’m not exactly the most creative person in the world, but damn… (The image will show up under my username over at least two instances over the span of 1-2 years? It’s mine, is my point.)

If you saw my edit, you should know exactly what I thought when you said “artistic process”.

However, my underlying point about derivative process or technique was to shoot a hole in the arguments of “cobbled together bits from wherever” and why I specifically used music as an example. Drum lines are openly copied. Not derived: blatantly copied. It’s considered a compliment in many cases, actually. Progressions and transitions are all just copies. You don’t even need AI to “statistically generate” music patterns. With every chord I choose to start a progression, there are only X number of chords that will work correctly after it.

I believe there have been some projects to generate (within reason) every chord progression possible and every kind of melody that would fit it… statistically. Almost every bit of popular music you hear is a derivative or a copy or reused or whatever, is my point. How many times have you heard the “Amen break”? More times than you actually know, unless you know your music, then you do. Much of music is just, for lack of a better term, math.

Creativity is an idea or multiple ideas. It’s anything that exceeds the sum of your existing knowledge. AI by itself isn’t “creative” and it is impossible for AI to be creative, we both agree. Again, from my perspective, AI can be used as a tool to fill in the gaps between two different ideas. It’s the assembly of different ideas or components that is important. The sum of the key bits.

In my CAD work, I use formulas and simulated physics to automatically generate connecting features or structures. Are the designs I create exempted from “art” because of that?

Putting creativity and art into a box and saying you must follow “creative process” or “artistic process” is just odd. You can think that way if you want, but it’s very limiting. The artists I study make a habit of saying “fuck the rules, fuck the process and do what makes you feel good.”

Just for lulz, I was wondering what another machine would think of my Lemming. It kinda got it, but kinda didn’t. Statistically, it figured out the parts, but you should know darn well what my intent was:

Just playing devil’s advocate here. Let me lay out some counter points … (it’ll take me an edit or two to format this right, btw.)

1. Instructing a machine to assemble bits in a specific way takes creativity. My prompt to AI is that creativity and without it, you can’t even get much of a copy of anything. Even though AI is generally assembling stolen bits, the end result (ignoring copyright law) can be original.

2. Music has been mostly “figured out” and many songs we have heard over your lifetime use many of the same exact chord progressions. I-V-vi-IV being one of the most common and used in the following songs:

Journey – “Don’t Stop Believing”

James Blunt – “You’re Beautiful”

Black Eyed Peas – “Where Is the Love”

Alphaville – “Forever Young”

Jason Mraz – “I’m Yours”

Train – “Hey Soul Sister”

The Calling – “Wherever You Will Go”

Elton John – “Can You Feel The Love Tonight” (from The Lion King)

3. Musicians may use patterns or progressions from other songs. Painters may use the same colors and brushes designed by other artists. In both cases, techniques that have been known for thousands of years are being used in self-expression.

I assert that given the correct instructions, you can still give someone plenty to analyze, via prompt, that has enough detail to extract a deeper meaning:

FWIW, I am extremely fed up with this AI hype now. “AI” is just a tool, and that is it. I could go on for hours about this mess, but I am trying to make a valid point: Regardless of how you interpret copyright, art is just self-expression.

There are endless examples I could give about technique re-use when it comes to creating art with machines. From my perspective, a particular brush stroke might be the same as using a specific bit at a particular depth of cut on a CNC. The art theft for AI training is one aspect, for sure. The biggest issue I see is that many people don’t understand how to create original art and the AI just spits out a copy of something it was trained on and something the user already saw.

Edit: After reading many of the other comments here, many people have a strange definition of “art”. Yes, art can be about communication, it can be about sending a message, it can express a style of creativity or hundreds of other things.

Art is just… art. It’s something a person sketches, composes, speaks, signs or farts. You don’t have to like it or agree with it. Hell, you don’t even need to recognize something as art for it to be art. Art is just self-expression. It’s a feeling that is converted into some kind of other medium that others might happen to see, feel or hear, smell, taste or a combination of all of those things.

As much as I hate to admit it, a banana taped to a wall is art. Someone eating said banana is also art. I think it’s fucking stupid, but who am I to not call it someone’s self-expression?