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Andy Baio
@andybaio@xoxo.zone
mastodon 4.7.3I write @waxy@xoxo.zone, made @xoxo@xoxo.zone, Skittish, Upcoming.org, Belong.io, Playfic, Kind of Bloop. Helped build Kickstarter. P.S. I love you.
15055 Followers
817 Following
40 Posts
Joined April 05, 2017
Boosted by @trending@homestead.social
RE: https://xoxo.zone/@waxy/116772625748491745
I wrote about how I discovered that a new site for The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, John Koenig's long-running Tumblr project-turned-book, was a bootleg made by a marketing agency. They published the complete book verbatim, then added AI-generated art and new AI words, entirely without permission.
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I'm kidding, of course. I would never watch a movie this epic as a pirated cam on my computer! I'll wait to watch it on my phone during my next long-haul flight.
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Ze Frank's The Show was self-hosted QuickTime videos on a blog with comments and an RSS feed. A community forum, wiki, and series of interactive web pages tied it all together. Social media was a bunch of blogs linking to each other. Facebook opened to everyone in September of that year, Google bought YouTube in November, Steve Jobs announced the first iPhone in January 2007. Twitter blew up at SXSW in March and iPhone came out in June, the beginning of the end for the dominant open social web.
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Also 20 years ago this week, on March 17, 2006, Ze Frank posted the first episode of The Show. https://youtu.be/VxyiRMcNIVo
For the last two weeks, a Sicilian Redditor named ItalianSausage2023 has been digitizing classic musical SNL performances from their own VHS collection. The audio and video quality's great, better than most copies of these recordings online—if they exist at all. https://www.reddit.com/user/ItalianSausage2023/submitted/
RE: @xoxo@xoxo.zone
This was a lot of work and we're really proud of it. Don't miss all the new merch! https://xoxofest.com/blog/2026-launching-xoxo-explore/
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@cabel@social.panic.com OMG, amazing find! If anyone wants to quickly try it themselves, copy the code here: https://gist.github.com/waxpancake/c6b287e725347cc6981a87bb8fdd11ea
And use the menu in the bottom-right of this excellent browser-based C64 emulator to paste text from clipboard, and hit enter to run it! https://ty64.krissz.hu/
makeup artists and hair stylists, pee elsewhere
Twitter just announced free access to the Twitter API will end on February 9, with unannounced pricing or usage details, effectively killing every free fun and useful thing ever built with it: bots, games, mashups, visualizations, research projects, autoposters, autoblockers, deleters, and so much more. https://twitter.com/twitterdev/status/1621026986784337922
You may have seen this story blowing up about Will Smith using AI to generate fake audiences to promote his latest tour, but the truth is more complicated. The audiences are real, but the footage was manipulated: first by Will Smith's team and then, without permission, by YouTube itself. https://waxy.org/2025/08/will-smiths-concert-crowds-were-real-but-ai-is-blurring-the-lines/
Neal.fun's Internet Artifacts is an online museum of artifacts from the early internet, including the first spam email, first MP3, first livestream, and dozens of notable early websites with a working browser and Flash emulation. https://neal.fun/internet-artifacts/
Boosted by @quinn@social.circl.lu
Replying to on xoxo.zone
Of course, there's an NFO file. "If you enjoy this product, consider buying it." https://www.pouet.net/prod_nfo.php?which=105954&font=1
I'm amazed I've never seen this before: a photo licensing company shaking down someone for hosting an image used in an Open Graph tag. https://www.alistairshepherd.uk/writing/open-graph-licensing/
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Like all demos, you're losing something watching a video on YouTube. It was meant to be viewed running real-time on your computer. If you have a Windows PC with a good graphics card, give the party-optimized executable linked on Pouet a try, or wait for the proper release. https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=105954
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@pb@xoxo.zone @Vivaldi@social.vivaldi.net The deprecation of RSS support in the major browsers still infuriates me. It's not Gopher, it's still widely used! Good for Vivaldi for supporting making it more accessible.
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@davew@mastodon.social my blog 20 years ago, I'd just gotten a C&D from Bill Cosby's lawyers https://web.archive.org/web/20060314164125/http://www.waxy.org/
"YouTube only continues to exist because of a delicate dance that keeps rightsholders happy and the music industry paid, but the future of Google itself is a bet on an expansive interpretation of copyright law that every creative industry from music to movies to news hates and will fight to the death." Absolute banger of a post by Nilay Patel. https://www.theverge.com/2023/4/19/23689879/ai-drake-song-google-youtube-fair-use
Last week, a Redditor fine-tuned an AI image model on the work of one illustrator, sparking a debate about the ethics of reproducing a living artist's style. I talked to that artist to see how she felt about it, and the person who made it. https://waxy.org/2022/11/invasive-diffusion-how-one-unwilling-illustrator-found-herself-turned-into-an-ai-model/
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@andymcmillan@xoxo.zone After going to Wagamama in London, I probably would've had the same reaction.
RE: @xoxo@xoxo.zone
Last chance to get the XOXO merch before we shut it down forever!
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@jonhendry @abacabadabacaba YouTube: "We'll fix that for you, whether you want it or not"
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@abacabadabacaba It's most obvious with facial features or anything out of focus in the original footage. It all got unnaturally sharpened with darker lines and smeary shadows.
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@andrew@xoxo.zone He's definitely been on a tear lately. This was amazing too. https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/28/23428132/elon-musk-twitter-acquisition-problems-speech-moderation
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@RyunoKi@layer8.space You're referring to Ruffle, right? That's what he's using for the Flash animations, they're all playable.
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@minimaxir@sigmoid.social he turned this schtick into a book in 2020! (note the careful use of scare quotes from the publisher) https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/I-Forced-a-Bot-to-Write-This-Book/Keaton-Patti/9781524858346
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@ryansingel@writing.exchange Ironically, he'd have to pay mechanical license fees to Ghostwriter since it would be a cover of the original. Otherwise, he could be sued for copyright infringement.
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@a2_4am@mastodon.social Fair! I just thought it was a clear explanation of the fair use conflict at the heart of Google's AI aspirations and YouTube's ongoing relationships with publishers.
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@brianstorms@mastodon.social right, it’s all internet stuff, not a list of computer networking firsts. No BBS stuff in there either for the same reason
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@darius@friend.camp @jonbro@friend.camp If you have corrections, I can let Neal know! Send me whatever you have.
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@ryansingel@writing.exchange Maybe if the song was generated with an AI model, but the lyrics, vocals, and arrangement were all made by Ghostwriter, who then used a voice cloner to change his voice to sound like Drake/The Weeknd. So he owns the copyright!
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@heidiS@mstdn.social There were a bunch of earlier arcade games that had speech synthesis circa 1980 (e.g. Stratovox, Wizard of Wor, Gorf, Berzerk). But maybe it was the first to use speech synthesis for full voice acting? Love the robotic French accent. https://youtu.be/Kc8H1hiZHjw