My response to people defending AI use in the sims community because many workplaces make the usage not optional and therefore it's hypocritical to call it out.
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You should never, to the best of your ability, download and/or install anything on your computer, phone, etc., that was coded using generative AI. I don't even have to touch on the moral reasons because it is, point blank, actually dangerous.
Your electronic devices are just millions of lines of code with a fancy interface, and every time you download and install something, you're trusting that whoever programmed it, 1) knew what they were doing and, 2) is acting without malicious intent.
Something wrong with GShade or ReShade could wreck your GPU. A bad update to a video game could trigger a memory leak with potentially devastating consequences. Data being stored in the wrong format is just waiting to be stolen. Tons of people are right now being listened to or watched via their webcams because of exploits.
And this is with people who KNOW what they're doing. It's part of why historically it was so important to install security updates as they rolled out.
It's also part of why, in my opinion, more so than anything else in the AI slop realm, gen AI-based vibes "coding" is the most despicable because it puts so many people's very expensive computers and very exploitable data at risk. The person generating the code doesn't actually know what the code is doing or how to fix it, and these programs get bloated quickly because any attempt to fix bugs usually just results in Claude or Grok or w/e just generating more code to slap on top of what's already there, frequently leaving the "bad" code intact.
LLMs are also... just kind of dumb? and capable of being "poisoned." Like it's possible to "break" ChatGPT by asking it to show a seahorse emoji because someone on Reddit was convinced it existed in a parallel universe. Imagine what could wind up in published code because of such hallucinations or because someone poisoned the well.
In small hobby spaces, part of why so many people publish directly to github is because it allows their code to be audited by the community. Others who know what they're looking at can come in and verify the code does what the publisher says it does and question if anything looks strange. The end result is that it helps keep the community as a whole safer.
Untested, vibes "coded" programs tossed willy nilly into the ether are dangerous, end of story. Seemingly simple and harmless programs can actually do massive damage though malice or incompetence.
Even if it is from a trusted member of the community, the act of publishing something that you don't actually know and cannot verify what it does is blatantly irresponsible and puts everyone who downloads it at risk.
Again, I'm not here to argue the morality of gen AI, because everyone has been talking in circles about it for literally years now.
But purely from a cyber security perspective: you should never, under any circumstances, download and run a program that is not verified to work the way the publisher claims it should, and anything coded with gen Ai is going to be fundamentally more suspicious by it's very nature.
And I really need to emphasize that I do no think that the majority of vibes "coding" is being done in bad faith. I don't think anyone is trying to damage computers or open anyone up to security vulnerabilities.
But if you cannot parse the code yourself--and I certainly can't, so I'm not judging anyone else who can't--when you download and run the programs, you are putting so much faith in whoever published it that, in the case of vibes "coded" nonsense, they genuinely do not deserve.
Hello, actual software engineer/developer here who also worked in cybersecurity for a few years, aka this is my job.
Iâm not going to talk about the ethics behind AI usage because many have spoken about this far better than Iâve had, but I can speak about how how I think generative AI use, if used at all, should be disclosed in a project.
If one uses generative AI at any point in their development process, itâs not enough to say âgenerative AI was used in making this code.â The developer should be able to disclose
What tools they used, what LLM and version they used. Was it through the cloud-based APIs (basically piggybacking on the infrastructure of platforms like ChatGPT or Claude or Gemini)? or was a local LLM used?
How they used these tools. Was it to automate certain actions? Was it used to aid in debugging? Were agents (basically bots who automatically do work for you) used at any point? Where specifically in the code base were AI tools used?
What are the steps taken to ensure safety and security? Has a second pair of eyes taken a look at the code? This is especially important if you use agents to automatically code or debug for you because you need to install guardrails on the agents so they donât go off the rails and do nasty stuff.
Most importantly, if this is heavily vibe coded, do you (the developer) even understand what the code does? Because many vibe coders (in my experience reviewing code) do not understand what theyâre vibing on the IDE. If you donât understand your own code, how can others trust it? đŗ
Also, LLMs make the development process (or most work for that matter) slower, in my experience. Most of my recent work at work is refactoring vibe-coded work, and most of the time itâs easier to just code something from scratch because theyâre so hard to refactor and so hard to debug, even with developers who know what theyâre doing.
I adore this house. I feel that the mini mansion vibe really fits the Pleasant family. I expanded the girls' rooms and connected them via a shared bathroom.
The primary bedroom and en suite were my favorite to decorate, though. Mary Sue may not have her personal life together, but you can't say she has bad taste.
Daniel's main input into the home decor is the neon sign above the nectar bar.
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I had a ton of fun putting this place together. Something about the home gym with barely anything in it and the samurai swords he bought just 'cause samurai swords are cool really tells you all you need to know about Don.
Similarly to the Broke trailer, this place was nice once, but Darren has been too depressed to care for it properly in years.
There are bathrooms, but I didn't bother taking pics.
Darren's studio got moved to the back porch, so he can at least get some fresh air while he works. Dirk's room is a vibe. He spends a lot of time locked up in there, but they do have a little hang out/storage room upstairs for when his friends come over.
Just a little makeover for Brandi and the kiddos. I wanted it to have a "rundown, but could be nice again with some TLC" kind of vibe. They don't spend too much time in the backyard anymore.
Aka: the clarity and communication that you deserve
Hi everyone. As some may have caught already, GoS is not dead (anymore)! During the period that it was, however, so much drama started and if you ask me; it all comes down to people not knowing what's going on and making assumptions that further sparked panic. So, let's clear some stuff up for those who got caught in the rumor mill.
Oh and if you haven't, it's worth reading @julessims excellent writeup on how she got GoS working again.
This is gonna be focused a bit more on communications stuff. Like, a bit more general I guess?
Q: what did you do?
A: I helped get GoS back online. @julessims did the actual hard work of upgrading the forum. @teaaddictyt played a role by facilitating communication and doing some PR (even if that wasn't received well by many a simmer) and ofc hugelunatic provided files, databases and the occasional bit of relevant information. I approached lunie and provided help with hosting, DNS and ensuring the files were safe and handling some communication. It was teamwork (and jules did most of it if you ask me).
Q: why didn't lunie communicate that it would be rehosted?
A: I'm not sure what lunie's exact motivation behind cancelling the hosting was and if I knew it wouldn't be mine to share, but I do know that @julessims and I upgrading and rehosting wasn't planned. It was a spontaneous action on our ends and so lunie couldn't have told you beforehand. I'm really glad that lunie decided to trust us with this and hope GoS will have many more years!
Q: why didn't you communicate any of this?
A: I thought my time would be better spent actually doing the work instead of playing communications department, fielding questions and countering people's wild speculations. I did think about making a post clarifying matters when it became clear people were making some pretty wildly incorrect statements, but I had other things to do. Better to focus on what matters than to get caught up in more miscommunications.
Q: GoS looks different now. Why?
A: the new look of GoS is a direct consequence of the upgrade. The old theme was not made to fit the new software and the conversion process does not convert themes. Seeing GoS in the default (white) theme felt so wrong, so we picked a good-looking dark theme and @julessims modified it to look more like classic GoS, with great success, I think. Still, it is and never will be truly identical. I don't think it's a bad thing.
Q: is the site in archive mode or can I comment?
The site is not in archive mode. It is a live forum. Posting works, registration works, if anything doesn't work, you should find a mod to message so either they or @julessims or I can try to troubleshoot and fix the issue.
In fact, you should comment! Forums are best when people leave comments and engage. Go express how much you like a piece of CC, contribute to the current theme (fittingly about renovating old things) or talk about something!
Q: why did it have to be upgraded? Couldn't it have just stayed now it was?
A: no. It really couldn't. GoS was running SMF 1.1.21 on PHP no higher than 5.3. The newest version is 8.5. PHP 5.3 had been obsolete since 2014. It would've been difficult to find a host that would be willing and able to host GoS and even if that could be found, it'd still leave it vulnerable to bugs and vulnerabilities resolved in newer versions of SMF and PHP. Credit to lunie's host for having continued to support it for this long, many wouldn't. Now that the forum has been upgraded and is running nicely on 8.3, it should be all good to go for many years to come.
Q: just a forum upgrade? So why did it go down?
A: make no mistake: going from something running on PHP 5.x to 8.x is no small leap and had to be done in steps. There were a lot of issues converting the database to the new format which resulted in all sorts of errors that needed manual database conversions. Upgrading a forum, particularly an old one with more than 600.000 posts is in fact not a piece of cake. There were also traces of a prior attempts to upgrade that complicated matters even more. @julessims made an excellent write-up of the technical bits if you're interested.
Q: who is running GoS now?
A: lunie is still forum admin and it will be up to her to decide what to do about the day to day running of the forum. Whether she'll be running it herself, with the help of others or elect someone else will be her choice in the end. As for hosting: that would be me.
Q: so does that mean we can stop archiving?
You could, but I would honestly suggest at least backing up your own favourite CC, regardless of where it's shared or hosted. Also, you can consider looking up an "auto archiving" extension for your browser that will automatically save pages to the wayback machine. The web archive has a page with resources
Q: *insult angry comment about hugelunatic*
A: you are 100% entitled to your anger and frustration. GoS is an important part of the Sims community and losing it, even for a little bit was a huge blow. It's understandable to be angry. Angry comments, however, were never gonna resolve the issue. Angry comments would not get GoS back nor would comments defending hugelunatic for that matter. What did help was working with hugelunatic. No files+database = no forum. Squabbling was not gonna get either back. Saying that, it's important to acknowledge that I was in a good position to do what needed to be done in regards to skills and connections which is not a privilege most people have. I get why people were angry and given that most were not privy to what was going on behind the scenes, it's no wonder everyone got as upset as they did. I also wouldn't have reacted well if I wasn't in direct communication with lunie and working on getting the site back.
Q: what's the plan now?
A: well, sims2artists still needs an update. I hope we can do that sometime soon. I'll also be keeping an eye out for any errors and aim to implement some extra security headers for the site. We also still need to fix some matters in regards to the domain and DNS. I also hope to have some more contact with the GoS mods so we can discuss hosting and what my responsibility and theirs is. Like, write down who is responsible for what and who can be contacted by my host should I pass away unexpectedly, for example. These things happen, so it's good to have backup plans and emergency contacts.
Q: did you have any freakouts tho?
A: certainly. First, when GoS and S2A went down. I was afraid the files and the S2A DB could be gone for good. I was also afraid that lunie wouldn't be willing to work with us and truthfully I also had the fear that if she got more agitated, we could risk losing the files and database. Fortunately this didn't happen, in fact: lunie gave us the resources and helped us out where necessary so we could get GoS back online. I'm very thankful for that.
I also got dragged by my emotions a bit when an unhelpful reddit post suggested that Delphy of MTS infamy might have something to do with hosting and when lunie mentioned something about an offer of hosting as is, no upgrade required. I may have freaked out and freaked out some other folks in the process (my apologies for that. You know who you are). There were many freakouts and I think it was good I didn't make any tumblr posts about this before we got GoS back. I stand by my decision it wouldn't have helped. Freaking out in private was bad enough.
Q: can you tell us what you actually did technically?
A: certainly! First, I set up hosting and new empty databases for GoS (and eventually: sims2artists). I made sure all the required aliases were in place so that when the DNS records for gardenofshadows.org.uk were switched over, it'd find the correct place on the webserver to go to. I also provided a subdomain on a domain of mine to test the forum live before it'd be moved back to the correct domain.
I also got access to the FTP for the original GoS hosting and was able to grab all the files and reupload what was necessary to the new server. While jules was in PHP hell I also cleaned up some stuff on Sims2artists. It's not gonna be anything you notice, but it's something.
I also did a number of things on the webserver, including changing directories. At some point I accidentally moved the forum to example.tld/gardenofshadows/gardenofshadows/gardenofshadows/index.php if you'd believe it. Finally I helped set the DNS records for the move. An SPF record went missing, but was quickly fixed. I also added some HTTP Headers to be served when visiting GoS and a lil something to hopefully keep AI bots from scraping and spamming HTTP requests. If you notice link previews not working: sorry, that'd be the X-Frame header.
Tldr: webserver and domain and DNS stuff; hosting infrastructure
Q: what about hosting costs?
A: right now they're so low we could call them non-existent. Should that change, I don't expect it to be above âŦ100,- per calendar year. Probably closer to âŦ50,-. Aka: it's not an issue. No need for ads. Should fundraising ever be needed, I will discuss it with the mods first.
Now go leave some comments on GoS!
Anyways, if you have any more questions, don't hesitate to ask. There's a lot more to say about this. But hopefully this does clarify some matters.
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Has anyone come across a neighborhood deco parking garage? I swear that I used to have one, but I've had to rebuild my CC folder from scratch after my hard drive died last year and I haven't been able to track it down.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
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A conversion of Island Living's wetsuits for children, including a default replacement for cubodysnorkel (yk, the ugly swim outfit with the blown up duck)
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