Now, the alarming aspect of this story is that the very same technology is probably what tumblr is using to identify porn. Now, if it can’t tell that an empty field is not, in fact, full of sheep, what hope do we have that it can’t tell an empty room isn’t full of writing human forms engaged in passionate coitus?
this really does sound like an episode of black mirror
This is gonna produce some absolutely baffling pornography.
…. oh my fucking god they actually are using open source software. They’re using a fucking one-layer unidirectional bicategory tag-trained neural network. This will never work. Literally, it will never work. There’s just not enough algorithmic complexity to do what they’re asking of it. I bet you I could prove on a mathematical level that this joke of a neural net fundamentally lacks the abstraction necessary to do its job.
This will never get better. Their algorithm will never stop fucking up, it will never actually flag porn reliably and it will always require a massive quantity of human hours to deal with the deluge of mistagged pictures. This isn’t just a case of an insufficiently trained algorithm, it’s just … this is the most basic neural network you can make. It probably hasa a lot of neurons and has loads of training data but like … you can’t just brute force this kind of stuff. One layer of neurons is just Not Enough.
Also, just to make this clear, Tumblr lied. I mean, we already know this, but I mean they liiiieeeeed. All that stuff they promised about what would or would not be censored? That cannot be delivered on with a system this simple. Nude classical sculptures, political protests, male-presenting nipples (really Tumblr?), nude art outside the context of sex, all that? You cannot train a bicategory one-layer neural network to exclude those things. It cannot be done. Tumblr never intended for those things to actually be permitted, they were just lying. Because the system they have cannot actually do what they said it would and never will be able to.
Also, this kind of system is super vulnerable to counter-neural strategies. I bet you before the end of the month someone hooks up their own open source one layer bicategory neural network which puts an imperceptible (to humans) layer of patterned static over arbitrary images, and trains it by having it bot-post static-ed images to Tumblr and reinforcing based on whether the images are labeled nsfw or sfw. Seriously, within a month someone will have an input-output machine which can turn any image ‘sfw’ in Tumblr’s eyes.
This is genuinely pathetic. Like, I have real pity for whoever implemented this, because it’s clear Tumblr doesn’t actually have any engineers with any expertise with machine learning left at all and they foisted the job off on some poor bastard who has no idea what they’re doing and is going to get all kinds of flak for their (perfectly reasonable and predetermined) failure from management.
Okay, folks. So. Tumblr’s jumped the shark in a big way, and I’m not even just talking about indiscriminately blocking all “adult” content on a platform that IS, in fact, primarily 18+.
Many blogs, like the wonderful @blackkatmagic , that are not especially NSFW have vanished.
(And I for one LIKE being able to go to curated porn blogs run by actual people and have a chance of finding stuff to my taste, it was one of the things that kept me on this hellsite, but that’s another issue entirely.)
I know lots of people are talking about migrating, but none of us are sure to where yet. Pillowfort seems to be an option, some people are talking about Twitter. But for now, it’s a mess, and even if we knew where we were going, it’s often a huge process, and a lot of us have stuff on tumblr that ONLY exists there.
One possible quick solution to save your blogs, both NSFW and personal, is to import it to WordPress. I found this solution through from frantic googling on how to save an entire blog, text posts an all. There are several apps for downloading all the pictures from a tumblr, (Plently for Windows, but only a few paid ones for mac, of which Tumbelog Picture Downloader is working for me so far) but this is the only solution I’ve seen so far that allows you to save EVERYTHING. I downloaded my NSFW blog in like 10 min. My regular blog, which is significantly larger, is in the process of importing, but I don’t anticipate any problems. I will, of course, update you if I have any.
This tutorial I found worked really easily. http://quickguide (.) tumblr (.) com/post/39780378703/backing-up-your-tumblr-blog-to-wordpress
I put parenthesis around the .’s like we’re back in FF-Hell, just in case tumblr’s new thing about outgoing links kicks in. You know what to do.
To break it down, just in case:
Sign up for a WordPress.com account at wordpress (.) com/start
You’ll have to create an account, with your email, a username, and a password. They should send you a confirmation email immediately, check it, activate it, and you’re good to go.
On the site, it will ask you for a site name. That page asks you a bunch of other information too, but you only have to fill out the site name.
Then you have to give your site a URL. If you’re lucky, your tumblr URL is still available, if not you’ll have to come up with another one, sorry.
It will tell you if that option is still available for free.
Then it will ask you to pick a plan. Free is really good enough, I swear.
Now you’re set up! You can import your tumblr!
The only differences from the linked tutorial are that the Import button is now on the first level menu, not in tools.
Hit Import, then you have to follow the link for “other importers” at the bottom, to find the option for Tumblr.
Then you’ll have to sign in with tumblr, using your normal tumblr credentials. You’ll be redirected there automatically.
You’ll have to allow WordPress permissions on your blog.
Then your blogs, including all your sideblogs, will show up in wordpress.
Hit import, wait a WHILE depending on the size of your blog, and you’re done!
ALSO!!
I made my NSFW blog private for now, since I don’t know WP’s policy on NSFW.
This means that to access it, someone has to have an account and request access. But hey, part of our problem on this hellsite has been people going places they aren’t wanted, so I don’t personally see this as a bad thing. They can send a request from the landing site on your blog, you get an email, click a link in the email, and PRESTO, they have access.
To make it private, go to Settings > Reading > Site Visibility. Go back and check, it took me changing the setting twice for it to actually stick.
tl;dr, you can import your entire blog to wordpress in just a few steps.
I’m going to tag the hell out of this, in no particular order. PLEASE reblog this and spread the word so people know it’s an option. If you’re having trouble, PM me, and I’m happy to help.
There’s been a major development over the past 24 hours: another member of Congress just came out in support of the House Congressional Review Act resolution to overturn FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s net neutrality repeal.
This is a big deal and could help push other lawmakers do the same, but we have to act fast because the deadline is just over a week away.
We’ve been fighting for months without seeing any movement in Congress, watching the clock ticking down to the deadline. But Rep Joe Morelle (NY-25) his support for the Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution could change that.
If we act fast, we can leverage this new momentum to unleash a small landslide of other representatives coming out for net neutrality before the December 10th deadline, which will make a huge difference in the battles ahead.
Your voice matters. As part of today’s Internet-wide day of action, thousands of others are speaking out, along with celebrities, musicians, and websites like Tumblr, Postmates and Etsy.
You can join them and show your support for net neutrality by submitting an ‘I support net neutrality’ photo. We will be flooding lawmakers’ social media feeds with pictures, so if they decide to vote against the open Internet we will make them look us in the eye as they do it.
We can’t let this deadline come and go without making Congress remember that the whole Internet is watching. We’re still fighting for net neutrality. And we won’t forget if they betray us.
Tell everyone you know to take action at DeadlineForNetNeutrality.com and spread the word any way you can. Click here to find ideas on how you can use your slice of the Internet – whether that’s your Tumblr blog, a website you run, or any of your social media accounts – to help get the word out. We’re counting on you!
But the redactions were accomplished by drawing black rectangles over
the text, which can still be copied and pasted to read it. This is a
stupid mistake that most people stopped making a decade ago (with notable exceptions).
So we can read the blacked out names the document claims are the Proud
Boys’ new leaders. They are: Harry Fox, Heath Hair, Enrique Tarrio,
Patrick William Roberts, Joshua Hall, Timothy Kelly, Luke Rofhling and
Rufio Panman.
Possibly but you have to wear gambeson anyway as padding, and putting plate over maille is completely redundant. That’s why arming jacks are mostly quilted fabric with a maille skirt and maille patches. It complements plate armor but does not really overlap.
-mod Burgonet
Mixed chain+plate is more of an Asian (Indian, Middle Eastern etc.) thing, isn’t it?
Often known as Zirah Baktar, it is very much a middle eastern thing, popular into India and up into Russia.
but you also see it as far east as the Philippines.
-mod Armet
At least on the Filipino stuff, the edge of the plates have holes that the maille slots into, so they aren’t double layered plate over maille. The Filipino stuff also tends to use butted brass links, for some reason.
Aliquid de Magis 