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Coopr8

@ Coopr8 @kbin.earth

Posts
13
Comments
306
Joined
6 mo. ago

  • Free Software Foundation Turns 40, Unveils LibrePhone

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  • Huh, they still work for all my banks here in the US. Not sure how you're supposed to access your bank account on your PC otherwise. Some banks you'll have to use the "use Desktop version of the site" option in a mobile browser to get it to work, but it will still work.

  • "Why does everything I touch die?"

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  • thanks for reminding meto water my plant!

  • Free Software Foundation Turns 40, Unveils LibrePhone

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  • That said, didn't hird basically die because Linux gained critical mass faster and peeled off the core developers? It would be nice to imagine another bottom-up mobile OS emerging and stealing the thunder of this one, but it seems like the hope here is that Libre Phone will gravitate in some of the devs from the existing top-down open phone projects. Who knows if that will work.

    One thing I wouldn't count out right now though: China is very much in favor of getting software and hardware monopolies out from the control of US companies. Free/open(ish) LLMs are the big example, maybe they will jump on this to try and break Google's stranglehold on the mobile market.

  • Free Software Foundation Turns 40, Unveils LibrePhone

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  • It isn't encouraging that they "launched" the initiative bit have no dedicated webpage or git for it yet. Seems like going off half-cocked

  • A cartoonist's review of AI art - The Oatmeal

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  • This take gets so close to a nuanced view then doesnt quite make it there.

    TL;DR Generative AI is just a tool Authorship is still fundamental to Artistry. Artists will use AI to author great works, but most users will not. There is no shortcut to previsualization and taste.

    The core point is that AI Image Generation is a tool, a tool that is getting more tool-like every day. To use his analogy about Magic Lasso, it was a tool that made a step in the process of image editing faster and easier when it worked, but many people using Photoshop might never even touch it because they don't need or haven't learned its use case.

    Most people today using AI image generation do not know what ControlNet is, or how to successfully create a repeatable reference for a character to be generated.

    While the generalist application of the core technology "text to image" is easy to fool around with for the layperson to generate images they haven't pre-visualized it is an entirely different process to pre-visualize and then pursue the specific execution of an image. This is artistry, not putting a brush to paper but creating an idea and then executing it to the predetermined specification.

    As a necessary aside, yes there is artwork which is "spontaneous" "generative" or "Process-Driven" but in those cases the artwork is framed around the process and/or the concept. The story of its creation is fundamental to its value. "So I wrote a prompt and generated the image" isn't going to command much clout in the Fine Art world.

    To go back to the definition of an artist as one who conceives of and then executes artwork, and how this relates to the use of specialized AI tools, we need to discuss curation and producing.

    A curator is one who does not make art, but instead relates works of art to one another and exhibits them in context to perceivers of that art, they do not fundamentally create the value of the art, but can add to the value of the work through discussion, illumination, and exhibition. Much if the relation of individuals to artwork on the internet is mediated through the exchange of curation, that is to say we curate what we like when we repost the works of others and comment on them, and consume art online most often in this context of being curated by our extended social network.

    Contrast this with the role of the Producer in cinema, the producer's role is to curate talent to achieve a cohesive and successful work of art. They are almost never the Artist themselves, except in specific cases of Auteurs which I will touch on later, rather it is their job to match up Artists with each other to assemble a tram capable of executing an effective synthesis in the final work. The director works the Actors into. the shape of the performance they have conceived, the Production Designer creates the physical or digital space in which the performances take place, etc.

    Is your general member of the public typing prompts into an image generator more of an Artist, a Curator, or a Producer? To me there is no one answer, instead the person is taking more of the approach of one of these by way of their process.

    Now we come to Auteurship, in cinema when there is one artist who has fully conceived of the final work of a film in every detail, and takes on the role of final decision maker in every aspect of the artwork, taking authorship from the others working on the film and placing it solely on. themselves, we call them an Auteur. The Auture is usually the Director, but very occasionally might be the Producer, or even the Writer, but in all cases they are the ones who have created ahead of time in their mind's eye the specific aesthetic, pacing, story, performance, and even score of the film and are striving to bring the reality of what is being created as close as possible to that vision, everyone else on the production is then placed in the role of technician, or perhaps craftsperson. The Auteur is the Artist, and the film is their work.

    The last thing to say about the Auteur is this: there are many good Director, Producers, and Writers, but very few good Auteurs.

    This is the case for AI, as the tools are developed to create specific, predictable outcomes using generative tools, the burden of technical execution deminishes, but the burden of Authorship, of Artistry, can not be deminished.

    Generative AI is just a tool, but it is vision and storytelling that will enable its output to be Art and recognized as such by Curators and the public, and as with every other art, the process will be fundamental to its value, and that process will not be a single offhand written prompt into one generalized algorithm.

  • A cartoonist's review of AI art - The Oatmeal

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  • He did, he talked about generating backgrounds for works so you can focus on illustrating the subject. A brief touch om the subject, but he acknowledged AI is a tool that can be used as a part of a process rather than replacing the process entirely, and that those two things are different.

  • Trump classifies “anti-capitalism” as a political pre-crime

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  • This is the entire goal of Palantir, presictive policing using mass surveillance data on citizens. Tie in digital ID and you have an even worse version of the CCP's Social Credit system.

  • Free Software Foundation Turns 40, Unveils LibrePhone

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  • The project just launched and is a software-first project. We won't see a Libre Phone available for a while yet.

  • Recommendations for a 4k projector

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  • Ah, I get kt, Pixel Shift means that it is actually sequentially projecting 4 different grids of 1080 pixels shifted from eachother to achieve the 4k resolution, which is why it can achieve 240hz in 1080, because it's effectively projecting 4x60hz 1080p images composited to get 4k. There must be some cost benefit to CPU speed vs GPU bandwidth making this work on paper. Hey, also long as the clarity is good I'm happy, and it seems like I will still need to stream 4k for best clarity.

  • Recommendations for a 4k projector

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  • OK, weird, it clearly accepts 4k input. So it is downsampling the 4k input then upscaling it before projection? How does that make sense?

  • Recommendations for a 4k projector

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  • Yes, VisionMaster Max was definitely my top pick but I need to keep the budget down. I went with the NexiGo TriVision Ultra for $1299 on sale right now, which as far as I can tell is true 4k and tests well.

  • Recommendations for a 4k projector

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  • Yeah, I actually went ahead and bought the Trivision and a 100" dropdown this morning, I'm just not sure whether the 9'2" is from the lens (probably) or the back of the projector. the 100" will probably be oversized. I can return it but I don't want to out holes in my ceiling too many times

  • Recommendations for a 4k projector

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  • That's a good deal, but I can't really make ultra-short throw work for my setup

  • Recommendations for a 4k projector

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  • Thanks, yeah the Trivision Ultra is currently top of my list, the only downside is it's fixed focal length. I'd much rather be able to mount the projector at the wall and have my screen be ~100 inches at 9ft throw, but it seems like I would have to bump up to a higher price point to get that or go with a Nebula projector which isn't made for ceiling mount.

  • Lootrion app launches to move TTRPG shopping sprees out of the session

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  • I can see the utility of this as a between sessions tool. My two crnts is that I will never give you my email without seeing what the UI actually looks like, you should have screenshots on your site to show off the design and features.

  • How to stop having remorses for your actions?

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  • Pay the church for indulgences to erase your sins.

  • Why do companies always need to grow?

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  • If the owners primarily want to make money by taking out a portion of revinue as dividends or distributions, like a family business typically does, then stable revenue is more important in some ways than reinvesting in growth.

    If the ownership wants to make money by eventually selling their stake (shares or equity) in the company then growth is fundamental to the strategy.

  • TIL Robert Kehoe discovered reports that the chemical benzidine caused bladder cancer. His client, DuPont, made benzidine. Instead of alerting the American public, Kehoe stuffed the report in a box. T

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  • Excellent article! The invention of clean room procedures for environmental testing probably exceed even his successful campaign to ban lead in gasoline as far as positive impact on society. Clair Patterson is a true hero of science.

  • (sorry if this doesn’t fit) i don’t speak russian, so today i learned “lunch” and “dinner” apparently use the same word (although dinner also has ужин)

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  • It's all just supper after all.