David Vienna's Blog, page 30
August 9, 2023
I can see your posts, but can’t “heart” them. Wyatt and Boone are rocking their teen years!
Thanks! They totally are, aren't they?
And not sure why you can't like my posts, but I know a few others have mentioned the same issue. I won't take it personally.
mathcat345:
vaginadude:earhartsease:
jaks21:icycove:psi1998:ste...
Can everyone who reads this PLEASE reblog it?!?!? Libraries literally saved my life as a child!
Being abused at home, bullied at school and lost in the world, the library and all the books I could escape to the most amazing worlds, kept me alive!
I would walk to the library, and spend all day, from 10 am to 9 pm reading there!! I got special awards for how many books I read, I wrote little blurbs on why i loved the books (probably why I love to BETA and do ARCs)
PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE Just hit the green arrows and the reblog!!!
As a 50 year old woman, the library offers me so much. Digital art pads to borrow, 3D printing, book clubs that are face to face (yeah, the introvert likes face to face because a moderator will stomp on anyone getting snarky)
New books in LARGE PRINT! I’m visually challenged and as much as I love my kindle, The feel of a real book in my hands will always be a beloved feeling!
Our library also has quarterly books sales of almost free books!! For 5$USD we get in a day early and can buy as many as we want. Anyone else has to wait and there is a limit for the first 2 days.
Also many, many libraries have inter library loan(it may be called something different). This means if they don’t have the item you want, they can get it for you. This may include photocopy/pdf of articles. This can also include along with books and DVDs, microfilm/fiche which is also a huge resource. Check around for libraries that are listed as depositories if you want to look at government documents.
Remember that many colleges and universities have open stacks for the public. You will likely have to pay a membership fee but you will get to stuff.
I love the library ☺
The library was one of my favorite places to go as a kid and I still live to go and just. Sit and read. Or do homework. The university I’m at has a massive 8-story one I love to just wonder around in~ Great places
Libraries are amazing places, we need to protect them to ensure their continued existence.
I used to wander about the fiction section in my local library, and choose books with the most interesting titles - I discovered two amazing authors that way
If you feel disconnected from your local community & want to find ways to get involved, seriously consider spending some time at the library. Go to some events! Organize a reading group!
Support your libraries!
Read banned books!
People who don’t learn can be more easily controlled and told what to think!
Echoing @mathcat345, if your school has banned a book, your library will likely have it. Read it. Fuck censorship.
To quote DJ Khaled, “Another one.”
To quote DJ Khaled, “Another one.”
I mean, that’s might be why it was created, but…
I mean, that’s might be why it was created, but…
To quote DJ Khaled, “Another one.”
I mean, that’s might be why it was created, but…
August 8, 2023
PSA: “Shaxpir” AI writing software: AVOID!
The tl;dr: A guy is selling subscriptions to an AI-based software tool to “help you write better novels.” And to train it, he’s used tens of thousands of novels from authors you know, without those authors giving him permission.
…Sometimes things seem to blow up with unusual speed. This particular shit seems to have hit the fan yesterday, primarily on Twitter, when various authors discovered the guy’s website, prosecraft.io. This site featured “clippings” of writing from the authors he’d stolen from… and the revelation that he had scraped their entire books, not just excerpts, to train his AI. (“2,470,720,986 words,” his website bragged, “from 27,668 books, by 15,622 authors.” The only authors who were off limits, apparently, were people using [or paying for] his software.) Though the guy hastily took prosecraft.io down when the online explosions began, if you take a look at this Google search you can see the covers of just some of the books the entire contents of which he exploited for AI training.
This usage goes well beyond the “fair use” defense that he belatedly (and ineffectively) attempted to employ on Twitter. It’s straightforward copyright infringement, on a massive scale: good old-fashioned theft.
Gizmodo has a goodish breakdown of the broad situation here. AV Club also has one here.
The only upside to this sorry situation is that, at the legal end of things, this guy is certainly about to get nuked from orbit… because all those authors’ full-text works will still be in the guts of the guy’s AI, which is being used by him for commercial purposes. (Among the authors he made the gross tactical error of stealing from: Stephen King, James Patterson, the Pratchett Estate, and Nora Roberts. This… is not going to go well for him.)
Leverage’s John Rogers sums it up succinctly:
ALT
Meanwhile: the guy who created this whole mess is still selling subscriptions to his Shaxpir software (I’m not adding the URL here) that he trained using stolen goods. So—until someone stops him—you might like to reblog this info for the attention of others here who prefer their writing to stay human-made as well as -fueled, and not to support the seriously ethically-challenged.
Hi, yeah, that’s the guy who scraped my book, for the prosecraft.io portion of his portfolio. THAT was supposed to lure people into using & paying for Shaxpir. My suspicion is he got a lot of these titles as part of the mass scraping of Internet Archive that swamped its severs and crashed the site a while back.
THAT has been a concern of mine for a while with the archive itself. Even for legally aquired work that’s *not* in public domain safeguards against scraping really aren’t there.
The Shaxpir dude “took down” the prosecraft.io (which is what people were first flipping about), where I found my stuff had been used, but has made NO claim about what he intends to do with the data, you know–THE ACTUAL WORKS HE SCRAPED. The intent all along seemed to be to use it for Shaxpir, for a premium subscription thing. Which means, BOOM, making money off other people’s work that was taken without consent. To train his “AI.”
One thing, you ABSOLUTELY DO NOT FUCK WITH NORA ROBERTS. Of literally every living author whose work you might fuck around with you do NOT touch NORA FUCKING ROBERTS. Your ass will be sued back to your primordial state. On a multinational level. From the UK side, The Society of Authors is investigating. From the US side, The Authors’ Guild is looking into it.
Of course his claim will be “fair use” which is incredibly hard to prove. When you claim it, it’s a DEFENSE, so you’re already starting from behind. Then, say you’re against Nora Roberts, who keeps no small part of publishing afloat, and some incredibly litigious Big 5 houses with so much money to burn they can let their entire staff strike for months on end without really thinking about it because HOOOOLY COW.
Uh. You do not want to go to court on that. You want to take all your shit down, eat the document, and go live in a hole.
And once more, for the record, and for anyone ever contemplating attempting shenanigans: YOU DO NOT FUCK WITH NORA ROBERTS. EVER.
Wow
Meanwhile: the guy who created this whole mess is still selling subscriptions to his Shaxpir…
The tl;dr: A guy is selling subscriptions to an AI-based software tool to “help you write better novels.” And to train it, he’s used tens of thousands of novels from authors you know, without those authors giving him permission.
…Sometimes things seem to blow up with unusual speed. This particular shit seems to have hit the fan yesterday, primarily on Twitter, when various authors discovered the guy’s website, prosecraft.io. This site featured “clippings” of writing from the authors he’d stolen from… and the revelation that he had scraped their entire books, not just excerpts, to train his AI. (“2,470,720,986 words,” his website bragged, “from 27,668 books, by 15,622 authors.” The only authors who were off limits, apparently, were people using [or paying for] his software.) Though the guy hastily took prosecraft.io down when the online explosions began, if you take a look at this Google search you can see the covers of just some of the books the entire contents of which he exploited for AI training.
This usage goes well beyond the “fair use” defense that he belatedly (and ineffectively) attempted to employ on Twitter. It’s straightforward copyright infringement, on a massive scale: good old-fashioned theft.
Gizmodo has a goodish breakdown of the broad situation here. AV Club also has one here.
The only upside to this sorry situation is that, at the legal end of things, this guy is certainly about to get nuked from orbit… because all those authors’ full-text works will still be in the guts of the guy’s AI, which is being used by him for commercial purposes. (Among the authors he made the gross tactical error of stealing from: Stephen King, James Patterson, the Pratchett Estate, and Nora Roberts. This… is not going to go well for him.)
Leverage’s John Rogers sums it up succinctly:
Meanwhile: the guy who created this whole mess is still selling subscriptions to his Shaxpir software (I’m not adding the URL here) that he trained using stolen goods. So—until someone stops him—you might like to reblog this info for the attention of others here who prefer their writing to stay human-made as well as -fueled, and not to support the seriously ethically-challenged.
Hi, yeah, that’s the guy who scraped my book, for the prosecraft.io portion of his portfolio. THAT was supposed to lure people into using & paying for Shaxpir. My suspicion is he got a lot of these titles as part of the mass scraping of Internet Archive that swamped its severs and crashed the site a while back.
THAT has been a concern of mine for a while with the archive itself. Even for legally aquired work that’s *not* in public domain safeguards against scraping really aren’t there.
The Shaxpir dude “took down” the prosecraft.io (which is what people were first flipping about), where I found my stuff had been used, but has made NO claim about what he intends to do with the data, you know–THE ACTUAL WORKS HE SCRAPED. The intent all along seemed to be to use it for Shaxpir, for a premium subscription thing. Which means, BOOM, making money off other people’s work that was taken without consent. To train his “AI.”
One thing, you ABSOLUTELY DO NOT FUCK WITH NORA ROBERTS. Of literally every living author whose work you might fuck around with you do NOT touch NORA FUCKING ROBERTS. Your ass will be sued back to your primordial state. On a multinational level. From the UK side, The Society of Authors is investigating. From the US side, The Authors’ Guild is looking into it.
Of course his claim will be “fair use” which is incredibly hard to prove. When you claim it, it’s a DEFENSE, so you’re already starting from behind. Then, say you’re against Nora Roberts, who keeps no small part of publishing afloat, and some incredibly litigious Big 5 houses with so much money to burn they can let their entire staff strike for months on end without really thinking about it because HOOOOLY COW.
Uh. You do not want to go to court on that. You want to take all your shit down, eat the document, and go live in a hole.
And once more, for the record, and for anyone ever contemplating attempting shenanigans: YOU DO NOT FUCK WITH NORA ROBERTS. EVER.
Wow
Boone and Wyatt’s first day of 9th grade!
Boone and Wyatt’s first day of 9th grade!
August 7, 2023
Kicking off a new feature here. Prepare yourselves for…
Kicking off a new feature here. Prepare yourselves for…
So, sharpen your pencils, polish your keyboards, and follow the #tumblr writing workshop with betts…
Calling all #writers on tumblr! We have something very special lined up for you here on @books this month: Your very own Betts (@bettsfic) is running a writing workshop!
Who is @bettsfic?
Betts has been on Tumblr since 2012, where she mostly answers writing advice asks but occasionally goes on reblogging sprees of fleeting hyperfixations. She’s the Editor-in-Chief of OFIC Magazine (@oficmag), a literary journal for original fiction by fanauthors. She also leads the Fanauthor Workshop (@fanauthorworkshop).
Beth’s fiction has most recently appeared in The Write Launch, Barren Magazine, and Rivet Journal. She received the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund Grant and was a Hudson Prize and Launch Pad Prose Competition finalist. Her work has been supported by the Millay, Jentel, and Kimmel-Harding Nelson Center artist residencies, among others, and she’s been teaching creative writing for seven years as a college instructor and a freelance writing coach. You can find out more at bethweeks.com.
What’s this about a workshop?
A writing workshop is generally a gathering of writers sharing work and giving feedback. In this case, we’re hosting what’s called a generative workshop, which means we’ll be introducing core writing concepts and providing prompts for you to work on and share.
How does this work?
Each Monday over the next four weeks, starting August 14, we’ll post a workshop post for the week at 10 AM EST. On Wednesdays, Betts will answer any questions you might have. Please send us your questions here on @books on Monday/Tuesday, so she can review them and prepare answers for posting on the Wednesday of that week.Every Friday is Feature Friday! Betts will select work from the #tumblr writing workshop with betts tag page, and we’ll reblog it to Books.How to join:
You can get as involved as you like. Message us here at Books to be included in the tag list on each Monday workshop post so that you get a notification. You can also simply follow along quietly on the #tumblr writing workshop with betts tag page.Questions?
Ask any questions you might have before we start here, and Betts will answer them here on Books through this next week.
So, sharpen your pencils, polish your keyboards, and follow the #tumblr writing workshop with betts tag, and we’ll see you in the writers’ room <;3
August 3, 2023
That said, if the kid that sent that stuff to your did learn it from their parents, at least you…
Some kid sent the most vile memes to my kid – antisemitism, racism, school shooting jokes. Took me 10 minutes of Internet sleuthing to find the parents. Do I tell them? Because there’s a good chance the kid learned it from them.
We found out a kid was sending really inappropriate stuff (i.e. violent porn link) to our boys and other friends. We reached out to the parents, but from a place of caring rather than blame.
That said, if the kid that sent that stuff to your did learn it from their parents, at least you know which numbers to block.
