This is what makes this technology anxiety inducing at best…

So, for yourself, you have no issues seeing the artificiality of the image due to your extensive exposure to and knowledge of photographic principles. This is fair… that said, I have read your earlier comment about the various issues with the photo as well as this one about light sources, and I keep going back to scrutinize those elements, and… for the life of me… I cannot pick out anything in the image that, to me, absolutely screams artificial.

I’m fairly sure most people who look at these verification photos would be in a similar boat to me. Unless there’s something glaringly obvious (malformed hands, eyes in the wrong place, a sudden cthulhu-esk eldritch thing unnaturally prowling the background holding a stuffed teddy bear) I feel most people would accept an image like this at face value. Alternatively, you’ll get those same people so paranoid about AI generated fakes they’ll falsely flag a real image as fake because of one or two elements they can’t see clearly or have never seen before.

And this is only the infancy of AI generated art. Every year it gets better. In a decade, unless there are some heavy limitations on how the AI is trained (of which, only public models would ever really have these limitations as private models would train be trained on whatever their developers saw fit… to shreds with what artists and copyright said), there would probably be no real way to tell a real image from a fake out apart at all… photographic principals and all.

Interesting times :D

Not so weird… A Knife I can understand. There are a number of uses for a knife beyond being an offensive or defensive weapon. I’m not a knife person, personally, but even I have a few to cut food, or open sealed boxes. I’ve seen knives used to cut bindings and they can even be used to craft art (whittling being an art form where the knife is the primary tool of choice)!

A gun? Outside of a legit, active warzone? A gun either says you’re hunting, or your scared. That’s it! I have all the respect for a hunter going into the forests to hunt game animals. I do love myself a burger and a steak… but in a public setting? What’re you hunting? What utility is a gun in a public Walmart?

Actually, no… it’s telling you that it thinks it’s not a legal copy. The company doesn’t actually know. It’s not like they sit down and write out by hand every key that is created. Those keys are generated by some algorithm. The company can identify if an algorithm was compromised (either the generation method identified or a significant portion of keys from said algorithm being used without them having been generated by the company), or they surmise that a chunk of codes, that had been previously generated for distribution, were nabbed when a number of them start to get activated without the company seeing a corresponding increase in sales. They more than likely do not have an exact list of which codes were stolen, just an assumption.

Here’s an example for ya… Company gives Legit LTD a set of codes to sell. Unfortunately, the thieves seal hack into Legit LTD’s systems and are able to copy a chunk of those codes. Legit LTD does not realize the breach for a day, or a week, and sells those codes to customers. At the same time, the thieves setup a seeming legit web store and started selling their ill gotten codes on that site. Two different customers are looking for Company’s software. One buys a code from Legit LTD. The other buys from thieves seemingly legit store. Just so happens that both stores sold the same code. Now two people have a copy of the same code. Both customers, in this case, believed they were buying a legit code. Both believe their code is valid. Before either can activate those codes, however, Legit LTD realizes they’ve been hacked and tell Company. Company, not knowing exactly which codes were stolen, decides to invalidate the batch… but there are legit customers in the wild that have codes from that batch and there’s no way for Company to tell who bought from who. BOTH customers, at this point, go to activate their code and both are told they’re running a pirated code. Neither of them really pirated, however. The thief did, but the thief isn’t the run using the code.

As such, no… Company and Legit LTD would find it very difficult, if not impossible, to determine who bought legitimately. Most companies, when this happens, would say, fuck’em and let both customers suffer. This company chooses to tell them they’re running suspected pirated codes (though, they don’t know for sure), and, regardless, neither customer would be pirating because both believe they purchased legit codes all above board.

Welcome to software, my friend. :D

That’s the key, though… KNOWINGLY stolen! If you purchased an item but where unaware that it was stolen, there’s no legal issue and, unless there’s something that can link that item back to it’s original owner… I guess it’s yours then.

As far as the digital key is concerned, this is even more nebulous. Sure, their database or software thinks the key is stolen, but that’s just a binary bit somewhere which could, by accident or by a bug in the software, be in error. If, as a purchaser, you were unaware that the dealer from which you purchased said key was selling keys illegally, they is the same as buying a stolen TV from the flea market. Unless you knew, you did nothing wrong. As for the software telling you it’s stolen… again, that’s only what the software things. It could be wrong.

Additionally, purchasing suspect keys is even more legal as there’s no intrinsic value to the key itself. It’s just a string of numbers and symbols. Keep it, it’s yours. Have fun. Play hangman. The company who owns the software for which that key was intended… didn’t loose anything. They still have their software. If the key worked? Well, if the key worked, that means the company and/or software doesn’t think the key stolen or otherwise illegitimate (which, can also be an error on the companies part).

In this case, the company says, in essence, “We think this key is stolen, but we cannot prove you did the stealing. We’re not going to belabor the issue. Keep on, and let your conscience guide you”

Sounds like that may rankle your sense of right and wrong, but, them’s the fact. You have never seen someone arrested for purchasing a software key, nor have you seen anyone arrested for purchasing a physical product they believed to be legit even when it wasn’t.

I am not a lawyer, but… This does not prove you’re pirating the software. It’s informing the customer (who, as far as they may be aware, obtained the key in a totally legit manner) that the company thinks the key to be a pirated key (of which, it might not actually be, but, rather identified as such by the company or software in error). It is definitely designed to illicit some form of guilt if you did in-fact pirate the software (which is between you and your conscience), but it is not proof that you pirated it. That said, I totally back what this company is doing!

As if any of that is more complicated than running your off the shelf Windows computer… at about the same cost… because, ultimately, they’re the same thing… an operating system, running one or more storage drives, plugged into a network. If that is too complex to wrap one’s mind around… well… shrugs

If you have a computer, and it’s on the internet, you have NAS… Network Attached Storage… your computer is on the network, and it has storage, then it’s network attached storage. Everything else is just software controlling it all. FFS

So… my opinion regarding how I perceived C# and followed that statement up with it being subjective (aka, opinion), in your view, devalues the rest of my post. That’s your hang up?

Cool beans

I disagree. Even if one is new to programming, learning GDScript still teaches one how to program. Loops, conditions, variables, functions… basically all that is programming is still part of GDScript and it would be no more difficult, once learned, to switch from GDScript to any other language as it would to switch from C#, C/C++, Python, etc. That is to say, once you understand how to program, it’s nowhere near as hard to switch languages as initially learning your first one.

That said, the same could be argued when working with different engines within the same language. C# in Unity, C# in Godot, and C# in ASP.Net applications all have their idiosyncracies that might make the language feel different, even though, at it’s core, it’s the same language. How a library functions can have a drastic effect on how you program a language, and if you change one library for another, even in the same language, you may find you have to alter your programming style.

Additionally, languages can be ported. GDScript currently only exists in Godot, but nothing is stopping anyone from writing a python-like or nodejs-like runtime interpreter for the language that allows you to use GDScript sans-Godot.

As for how nice the language looks… that’s subjective. I, honestly, find GDScript to be a very clean looking language (much like I do Python… probably unsurprisingly). C#, on the other hand, I find to be a verbose mess, seeming to take 100 lines of course to accomplish something I can do in 10 in other languages. But, again, that’s subjective

My issue with typescript… and, correct me if I’m wrong… is it doesn’t exist without Javascript. Typescript needs to be compiled down into Javascript to be run. It has no stand alone interpreter (that I’m aware of) and definitely not one baked into web browsers or NodeJS (or adjacent) tools. In essence, Typescript is jank sitting on top of and trying to fix Javascript’s uber jank, simultaneously fracturing the webdev space while not offering itself as a true competitive and independent language for said space.

That’s my amateur two cents for what it’s worth.

I believe that AMD has flipped the script on this in recent years. From what I recall, AMD has been actively releasing a large amount (if not all) of their drivers as open source for integration into the Mesa driver (which I think is the same driver than handles Intel graphics as well). Arguably speaking AMD GPUs work more out-of-the-box now than NVidia do.

That said, I switched to an AMD card about a year ago as an upgrade from an Nvidia. My Nvidia never gave me issues, it was just getting a little long in the tooth (gtx 1050 ti upgraded to a RT 6600)

The first phrase spoken when opening a new project, be it yours or someone elses… “What the fuck…”

If your phone is Android… then the phone’s operating system is “open source” ( for reference ). Also, the kernel of Android is Linux, which is, itself, an Open Source project.

Now, those are just the core systems that run an Android phone. Obviously not every app on the phone is Open Source. Most likely, not even the majority of apps are open source. That said, if you look into it, you’d probably be surprised to find far more Open Source apps on your phone than you think there are.