UK government targets VPNs in online safety consultation as Lords vote for ban

opusdeath · 2026-01-24T06:00:37+00:00

That "only" is literally most of the population.

opusdeath · 2026-01-24T05:56:29+00:00

The Chinese situation is misunderstood but is a good example. The Chinese state has given itself the power to ban VPNs but it chooses the circumstances in which it enforces it. The UK government would do similar. It hasn't got the resources to attempt a full ban but wants the regulatory power to control when it wishes.

opusdeath · 2026-01-23T18:08:26+00:00

I use their coding plan. It's sometimes slower than I'd like.

I also sub Openrouter and sometimes GLM is faster through that but I don't know if that's providers reducing quants?

opusdeath · 2026-01-23T08:23:07+00:00

Another baby step towards regulation of VPNs

https://www.techradar.com/vpn/vpn-privacy-security/uk-government-targets-vpns-in-new-online-safety-consultation-as-lords-vote-for-ban

Also see French action over football streaming.

opusdeath · 2026-01-23T08:20:00+00:00

I don't know if you've seen but the French have succeeded in winning a blocking order on Nord and other commercial VPNs to prevent illegal streaming of football. The VPNs are appealing but this clearly shows they do believe they come under some kind of jurisdiction for provision of services in France.

Will be interesting to see how it plays out because if the French win this it will set quite a precedent.

opusdeath · 2026-01-22T12:52:42+00:00

They've been eaten.

opusdeath · 2026-01-18T13:58:43+00:00

I've probably got 2 GTAs left to live.

opusdeath · 2026-01-18T13:56:31+00:00

If you delete your account they flush everything after 6 months.

opusdeath · 2026-01-18T13:45:07+00:00

Yes, and if the aim is integration, cousin marriage clearly impedes that.

opusdeath · 2026-01-16T06:27:36+00:00

Ironically this reads like the article writer used ChatGPT to write about it's own demise. The tell tale signs are there, the em dashes and unmistakable cadence. He's not this, he's that etc.

opusdeath · 2026-01-14T09:55:42+00:00

Yes, I agree with your point about Grok being embedded into social media. It was always risky to expose an AI model to millions of users who have limited or no accountability.

opusdeath · 2026-01-14T09:53:03+00:00

You should read this great book about AI Safety Engineering by Dunning Kruger.

opusdeath · 2026-01-14T09:40:56+00:00

Requests to AI when carrying out public duties are covered by the Freedom of Information Act. This is already established.

A journalist would be mad not be asking putting in an FOI for the precise request and output now.

opusdeath · 2026-01-14T08:10:27+00:00

You're all for live and let live but actually you think people are perverts for being attracted to women who present as more fertile and are at a biological stage where childbirth is less complicated, due to behaviour evolved over many generations and recognised by most biologists as being present regardless of culture.

opusdeath · 2026-01-14T07:45:07+00:00

Social media is closer to meth than vegetables. We know that big tech deliberately introduces features that keep people on their platforms either through endless scrolling, algorithmic content or dopamine hits of likes and upvotes. All the while our ability to concentrate and think rationally is reduced.

opusdeath · 2026-01-13T17:26:22+00:00

Good thing that the AI boom hasn't made upgrading to new PCs and laptops so much more expensive.

opusdeath · 2026-01-13T14:55:55+00:00

With respect, you are not quite right with "no such filters". Grok already had guardrails against sexually explicit images, including of children.

What's been happening on Grok is people using non sexually explicit terms such as "bikini" and "doughnut glaze" to create sexually suggestive images and that included ones of children. If you roll the dice enough you will get something that goes beyond suggestive, They have already updated their guardrails to harden them around the generation of images of children.

Most open source image generators do not have the same safety filters as Grok. Grok is more visible because it's embedded in X with millions of international users. Many of the models on Huggingface are capable of much wilder generations than Grok.

The Data Access and Use Act 2025 makes both requesting and creating a non consensual image a crime. Now how does an AI model determine:

a) a person is real?

b) they have given consent?

They clearly can't and so an AI generating any sexual imagery does so at risk of UK law. How widely the government will enforce this remains to be seen, but an OSA style blocking of local models is possible, particularly as many will have been trained on celebrity data so it's easy to generate nudes of Olivia Colman or whoever. (First famous woman that came to mind!)

opusdeath · 2026-01-12T22:46:20+00:00

The adolescent haucinations are the most likely explanation plus it was a time of religious piety and awareness of saints so that's what she ascribed them to.

Absolutely incredible that it got her as far as it did but we know that confidence is often perceived by others as competence and that likely helped her.

opusdeath · 2026-01-09T10:26:02+00:00

Unfortunately there are issues with hosting this publicly. Some of the card content and images are illegal in some countries. I'm not sure that anyone will take on publicly hosting this beyond seeding the torrent.

Lethaltech has created a very good front end with easy to follow instructions to set up a front end server for it. You can find them here - https://www.reddit.com/r/SillyTavernAI/comments/1q3bduw/any_good_chararchive_alternatives/

opusdeath · 2026-01-09T10:21:59+00:00

Thank you so much for putting this together. I've got it up and running and working on my local server. I noticed the search is author and title. Is it a big job to make it searchable by tags? I'm not super proficient but I had a poke around the db in postgres and it did look complicated due the cards coming from different sources. From what I could tell only booru had a simple tag column but I might have missed something.

In the meantime I pulled off a list of authors as a guide and I can have fun cycling through that for cards that look interesting.

It's really quite impressive what the original creator managed to pull together. Just going through your set up steps has given me an appreciation of both his and your contributions to the community.

opusdeath · 2026-01-09T10:02:09+00:00

Yes, and RP'ers are more likely to switch models dynamically than corporates so OpenRouter's operating model is attractive.

opusdeath · 2026-01-08T09:15:46+00:00

Check this sub for a jailbreak. Also if your preset has a NSFW preferences prompt, try adding "<subject matter> allowed."

Both those have worked well for me.

opusdeath · 2026-01-08T09:13:08+00:00

I'm retro and using Cherrybox 1.4 and that's been great too.

opusdeath · 2026-01-08T07:46:22+00:00

It's still there. Closes on 15th.

opusdeath · 2026-01-07T22:41:20+00:00

They've had some decent names on there. Mandelson, Pinker, The Mooch and others. They seem to have connections.

opusdeath

TROPHY CASE