SkoomaDentist
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User ID: 84
SkoomaDentist
4d ago
Ah, the good old drawing the rest of the owl-method.
SkoomaDentist
5d ago
No, I’m explaining why people in Germany and Europe overall consider that state as ”Abortion is legal.”. There is no meaningful group trying to ban abortion and thus no opposite group pushing for equally ridiculous policy in the other direction. Then it becomes a boring matter for medical professionals and ethics theoreticists to debate over 12 vs 16 weeks. You can’t run up furor over those sorts of numbers, particularly when people are just going to look at neighbouring countries with very similar rules.
That's because Europe hasn't had a US style batshit insane anti-abortion movement outside small rare niches. Meaningful opposition to abortion has been almost purely from catholic conservatives where the dynamics have been different and that faction has fairly decisively lost the battle. The result is that abortion is viewed as a practical health issue where the de facto status is what matters instead of what the official wording is. So you have things like Germany's "prohibited in theory but in practise entirely legal" where the nominal prohibition is kept due to a technicality and as a way to allow conservatives to signal "morally appropriate behavior".
SkoomaDentist
7d ago
I should clarify that I misspoke in my prior comment - I'm talking more about a national identification system rather than merely a list of people with citizenship. A list that tells you John Smith, Fictional Nation ID# 123-456-789, is a citizen isn't much use for identification purposes (immigration enforcement or otherwise) unless it also tells you how to identify John Smith.
As soon as you have a database that assigns a unique ID to every person, other databases can (and should) use that ID as the person identifier. John Smith uses a bank account? That ID is in the bank's database. Phone number? Same thing. IRS records? Again, same ID. Drivers license? Same deal.
As long as John Smith has had any ID at all, the national ID is inherently linked to it and the ID number now tells how to identify John Smith (even if the information is outdated assuming John Smith goes off grid).
SkoomaDentist
7d ago
in the US at least
That's very much a US specific issue (so much that there should be a whole string of very's there).
It's also a pointless concern. The IRS already knows who you are.
SkoomaDentist
7d ago
I'd call full page images in an A4 photo book and 14"-20" framed pictures a "standard use case" for high quality photos.
That may be standard for some segment of hardcore photography enthusiasts but the actual standard for almost all people who take photos is computer / tablet / phone screens, meaning 2 - 4 MP. For that extremely common scenario phone image quality is most of the time perfectly fine (as evidenced by how many people are happy with it) and any issues are more due to forced overcooking by the phone algorithms.
I know a fair few photographers as well as being a hobbyist myself but I don't know a single person who's printed a large size photo in years. It's all viewed on screen.
SkoomaDentist
7d ago
I'm sure for many use-cases a modern mirrorless takes far superior pictures, especially when used by a experienced photographer. But the AI has been amazing for normies.
Image quality is largely a red herring. It's been plenty good enough for common uses for quite some time now.
The real difference is about the actual experience of taking photos and the range and types of photos you're able to take. A phone fundamentally has the same limitations as compact cameras do except with much worse user interface. It just isn't going to work for any small subjects that aren't right in front of you or anything distant.
Realistically, the Anglosphere countries are going to have to become papieren bitte cultures if we want effective in-country immigration enforcement.
You're coupling two things where that isn't necessary: the culture of being ID'd by the officials randomly and the practise of having a central registry and thus some national ID number that uniquely identifies you. You can have the latter without having the former. Eg. There is no requirement to carry an ID with me but I've had a national ID number since birth as has everyone else here in Finland since 1962.
All you have to do is to make it effectively impossible to get a bank account, phone number, get paid and other necessities without having an ID number and then freeze those functions for people who have are illegally in the country and they'll end up largely deporting themselves.
SkoomaDentist
9d ago
Modern smartphone camera sensors and lenses are decent (when compared to compact cameras), and modern camera software is - frankly - completely insane. The combination of the two now easily beats my skill level on a DSLR camera that has orders of magnitude more sensor area, lens diameter and aperture diameter. I'm generally a software skeptic (progress in software development over the last 10 years has resulted in very little "real" value being created), but camera software amazes me. Instead of taking a still image, phones now always capture a short video instead and distill the final image in post - a mostly automatic process that results in sharp, correctly lighted and color balanced shot.
I've gone the other direction and bought a real camera a while ago. I got fed up with the overcooked processing phones do, the extremely limited choice of focal lengths (wide and ultrawide unless you buy an expensive and huge phone with a "portrait" lens) and the bad image shake. Most importantly, the ergonomics of taking photos on a phone are shit tier compared to any halfway decent camera that has a viewfinder and where the body has been designed for the task of taking photos. I don't see phones getting better in ergonomics or focal lengths as improving those would make them directly unappealing to 90% of the market and 99% of the influencer market: people who want a sleek looking device for using social media.
Of course I'd also hate to use an old style massive and heavy DSLR. Luckily there have been good lightweight mirrorless cameras on the market for over a decade.
One thing is certain: Phones have killed the compact camera market for good except for hipsters who want a retro looking toy that also happens to function as a camera and a few rare holdouts. For casual snapshots of groups of friends etc. phones are great.
SkoomaDentist
12d ago
I had a chance to try Neapolitan style pizza by actually visiting Naples some 20 years ago. It was ok, but also not categorically different from other decent pizzas I’ve had. The ”authenticity” is much overrated.
SkoomaDentist
15d ago
The claim that has no proof (beyond marketing speak) is that they are the same thing. I don't believe the claim and the evidence doesn't show anything to support the claim as opposed to just skipping the text encoder and talking directly to the actual image generator in its native format.
SkoomaDentist
15d ago
My man, if you'd read what I said carefully, you'd see I was talking about what the LLM assistant does when asked to edit pictures. They're not in-painting.
I did read what you said. Both your description, the web page you linked to and the very demonstration video itself are exactly what you'd get from inpainting (optionally enhanced with image prompting).
I also read your specific claim: "It will then edit the original image and present the version modified to your taste, unlike all other competitors, who would basically just re-prompt and hope for better luck on the second roll."
That claim (in particular the highlighted portion) is just outright false. There are multiple models (including SD itself) which are far more capable than just "re-prompting and hoping for better luck". Don't start insulting me just because you later decided that you really meant something other than what you actually wrote.
Nobody calls the step through which an LLM's tokens get converted into textual output a separate "text generator". Ergo, there isn't a separate image model of any kind involved.
I don't see a single proof for such claim that the LLM itself is generating the pixels (which would be required for actual native image output) or indeed anything that doesn't point towards simply replacing clip encoder and using image prompting. The rest is just marketing speak.
SkoomaDentist
15d ago
unlike all other competitors, who would basically just re-prompt and hope for better luck on the second roll.
That claim is just flat out false. Inpainting only specific areas of the original image (even from text description) has been in use for multiple years now (there's even an extension for that for the open source AUTOMATIC1111 Stable Diffusion webui). Only complete novices rely on rerolling.
I think you're being blinded by your single minded enthusiasm for LLMs and are massively overestimating their capabilities as well as ignoring the wider state of the field.
The LLM doesn’t just “talk” to the image generator - it is the image generator, processing everything as tokens, much like it handles text or audio.
The LLM is still talking to the image generator. It just does so using native tokens and vectors instead of going through a text encoder layer in-between.
Great vision guy and good executive producer who desperately needs someone else to write the screenplay and direct the movie so his bad ideas can be shot down.
SkoomaDentist
16d ago
The question was "the reason electric cars exist", ie. why did manufacturers start building electric cars?
Back when Tesla hit the scene with Roadster and then Model S they were the only electric car manufacturer who tried to make an actually good car with clear benefits (performance, styling, driving experience). Meanwhile every other manufacturer made an electric car that was worse than regular cars where the selling point was just "for the environment!". Of course Tesla's success forced the other manufacturers to react and start building actually decent electric cars.
SkoomaDentist
16d ago
Tesla was the first manufacturer to make a non-concept level electric car that was actually better and desirable instead "like regular car but shittier because it's electric".
SkoomaDentist
18d ago
Would we criticize the dog for that?
Of course we would. Or rather, we'd call people idiots if they claimed dogs were going to evolve Real Soon Now (tm) into superintelligent beings.
LLMs are ok as text predictors. That's also what they are: text predictors. That's what they'll stay as without significant revamp of the entire structure that gives them learning capability.
SkoomaDentist
18d ago
Advances aren't magic, people have to find and implement them.
And the silicon to do so has to be there. The silicon that notably hasn’t been able to increase exponentially for two decades now without a corresponding exponential increase in the investment.
Hundreds of years of history. Until the October revolution, Russia was for ruled for hundreds of years by a Tsar with absolute authority that was considered to rule by a divine feat. Stalin returned the country to de facto absolute rule after a brief interruption and that only ended with his death in 1953. 40 years of communism and a decade of chaos followed until Putin restored normalcy by assuming absolute rule.
Poland, Hungary and Romania didn’t have a similar centuries long tradition of absolute rule and had a history that wasn’t all that different from Central European countries until WW2 and thus had both a similar tradition and compatibility with western style society. Notably they all had a strong internal desire to join the west as soon as that became an option.
You could say both Russia and Poland / Hungary / Romania reverted to their previous trajectories after the fall of communism. It’s just that those trajectories were completely different.
SkoomaDentist
21d ago
So again I ask: can anyone explain to me, in specific terms, what Canada could do to reverse these tariffs?
I'm pretty sure assassinating both Trump and Vance would accomplish that. Of course pulling such a thing off without getting caught is somewhat non-trivial...
Other than that? Probably nothing.
China see itself as the "middle kingdom" that should rightfully be at the center of Asia, and ideally the world.
Now where have I seen that... I'm pretty sure it had something to do with hats making something great...
Deals with other nations are entered into not out of any sort of altruism or common ground, but as purely transactional interactions,
This is de facto US foreign policy for the next four years or possibly longer.
I wager after a decade they will learn their lesson and either return to the American fold
Why would they when the Trump administration is doing their utmost to let everyone know that US is not interested in anything other than at best a transactional relationship (with a sideline of threatening to just take what they want)? An alliance requires trust. "I've just altered the deal. Pray I don't alter it again." isn't exactly the type of message to inspire anything like that.
SkoomaDentist
23d ago
I can only hope that they're simply strapped for GPUs, especially for inference, and are using the bulk of their compute on the 4.0 models they're cooking.
This is somewhat unlikely. The GPUs that you need for training cost a fortune (or rather, NVidia can charge a fortune for them since they have almost zero large scale competition) while much cheaper ones can be good enough for inference.
SkoomaDentist
24d ago
Norway is a US treaty ally
Norway was a treaty ally until Trump signaled extremely clearly that Nato countries cannot depend on US if the push comes to shove by making threats about annexing another Nato country's territory into US and cosying up to the country Nato was founded to protect against (that's actively engaged in sabotage in Norwegian territory as well as Norways neighboring countries' territories).
If the US says "Fuck you, you're on your own now!" to a group of countries, it's no wonder when those countries say "Ok, if that's how you want it..." in response.
SkoomaDentist
27d ago
Is there any way I can opt out of this bloodbath?
Easily. You have no chance of being drafted into Ukraine, so all you have to do is stop following Ukraine related news and ignore every Ukraine thread here.
What does having had sex have to do with having physically struggle against a woman anyway?
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