RE: https://mastodon.art/@MicroSFF/114149050576447349

** Reposting this story I wrote last year
#GnuTerryPratchett
**

If you hired a translator and they sent you a Google Translate translation, they would be a bad translator.

If you hired an artist and they sent you an image generated by Gemini, they would be a bad artist.

If you hired a programmer and they sent you a slopcoded website, they would be a...?

Yeah.

What is it with programmers and their desire for mediocrity?

I’m officially done with takes on AI beginning “Ethical concerns aside…”.

No! Stop right there.

Ethical concerns front and center. First thing. Let’s get this out of the way and then see if thre is anything left worth talking about.

Ethics is the formalisation of how we are treating one another as human beings and how we relate to the world around us.

It is *impossible* to put ethics aside.

What you mean is “I don’t want to apologise for my greed and selfishness.”

Say that first.

So, in less than a year we went from "we just want porn sites to block minors" to "you must verify your age to use any internet-enabled devices" (New York bill S8102A).

We're not even going down a slippery slope anymore, we're straight up walking the plank.

#Privacy #AgeVerification

There used to be an old sign by the path, warning passers-by of the local sleeping willow, which would trap the unwary with fatigue, engulf them while they slept, and release them a hundred years later.

There was a new sign:

"This sleeping willow is full."

And a map of other locations to try.

#MicroFiction #TootFic #SmallStories

🚨 Mastodon DOES NOT ask you to verify yourself, EVER. 🚨

Currently there are scammers who want you to click a link by acting like #Mastodon staff

Please REPORT these accounts so we can ban them across the #Fediverse

WE DO NOT VERIFY PEOPLE ON MASTODON 

So I'm guessing all those UK citizens currently working in the Middle East because the UK's tax rates are just *too* high, will now be expecting the British state to step in to evacuate them if the war continues to escalate?

Perhaps they should have thought of that before they decided paying tax was only for dummies?

#MiddleEast #politics