tal

joined 1 year ago
[–] tal 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

IIRC, the sprites were pretty large for the time.

[–] tal 3 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Well, on the up side, last year the news was on drought.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/drought-spain-empties-reservoirs-forces-limits-water-use-2023-08-08/

Drought in Spain empties reservoirs, forces limits on water use

August 8, 202312:52 PM PDT

AGULLANA, Spain, Aug 8 (Reuters) - Artur Duran holds his hand out by his waist to show the level of water he remembers two years ago at the Darnius Boadella reservoir in northeastern Spain.

Then, it was still deep enough for sailing. Now a long drought has nearly emptied it.

"We have never seen (it) so low," the 79-year-old local resident told Reuters at the reservoir, which is only 20% full.

[–] tal 3 points 3 weeks ago

A 401k isn't mandatory. If you've got an issue with having a 401k, you don't need to do so. I suspect, however, that you'll be hard-pressed to find a route that will provide long-term returns as solid as regularly dropping funds into an index fund in a 401k.

[–] tal 7 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

My brother or sister, invest in index funds, not the stock market.

I mean, while I get what you're saying and don't disagree, I'd phrase it as "hold an index fund rather than stock in individual companies". ETFs themselves are traded on the stock market.

[–] tal 15 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

EH!T!!

It eventually became apparent that it wasn't that generative AIs in 2024 had poor text-rendering skills, but simply that they had unfortunately included Golden Age comic books in their training corpus.

[–] tal 3 points 3 weeks ago

I don't know where this sort of "silhouette of a line of children" image originated, but I've seen many such created via traditional means.

https://www.google.com/search?q=silhouette+children+field&sclient=img&udm=2

Might be that art schools assign it as a standard assignment. Maybe it's just useful clip art or something.

But I thought that it'd be fun to give it an !imageai@sh.itjust.works take.

[–] tal 6 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

I dunno if it's the worst relative to historical stuff for Lahore and Delhi, but India tends to be at about the back of the pack globally when I look at AQI maps.

kagis

https://waqi.info/#/c/6.168/6.699/3z

They're gonna have some pretty hefty smog going on.

[–] tal 21 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Well, I suppose that that was going to happen sooner or later.

According to the news site TechCrunch, security experts estimate the number of stolen Social Security numbers to be around 270 million.

There are 334 million people in the US, so that's probably just about everyone.

[–] tal 1 points 3 weeks ago

One other visual element that people find scary: glowing eyes.

I'm guessing that this is because it's a characteristic of nocturnal predators.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tapetum_lucidum

The tapetum lucidum (Latin for 'bright tapestry, coverlet'; /təˈpiːtəm ˈluːsɪdəm/ tə-PEE-təm LOO-sih-dəm; pl.: tapeta lucida)[1] is a layer of tissue in the eye of many vertebrates and some other animals. Lying immediately behind the retina, it is a retroreflector. It reflects visible light back through the retina, increasing the light available to the photoreceptors (although slightly blurring the image).

The tapetum lucidum contributes to the superior night vision of some animals. Many of these animals are nocturnal, especially carnivores, while others are deep-sea animals. Similar adaptations occur in some species of spiders.[2] Haplorhine primates, including humans, are diurnal and lack a tapetum lucidum.

UI: ComfyUI

Model: STOIQNewrealityFLUXSD_F1DAlpha

The image is a vector illustration.

The image is very high contrast. The image contains only pure black and pure white.

The image contains hard light, directional light, backlighting, silhouetting, and negative space. The image contains no fill light.

The image is at night.

There is a nude woman standing in an open doorframe looking at the viewer. The woman is barefoot. The woman is a pure black silhouette. The woman's eyes are illuminated in white.

glowing-eyes-workflow.json.xz.base64/Td6WFoAAATm1rRGBMDXDclbIQEWAAAAAAAAADWezaHgLcgGz10APYKAFxwti8poPaQKsgzf7gNj HOV2cM7dN97GoIvoTF/iSMYEQoJZBJzI3UDxBXrl3MvcMb5e6h3lATBYjawf1klb5xXG0y783VSu rsL7JTqCcpc7ml6EBcQysA/lczXi4/z4NEU2MzJ6gMxLs5qhHCWRzV2fkgD1H3KHbl2of4CNliwR JNef6hoZP4HFMLybTP66HNwa0oszmGtepDwWHXSrlYVAso8imkQU11LM4qXGRXQKKo6EvjyTeYPG eZvQb4FxhvQIkQHLQWfLOyENpBMbl2mOgW0siOFXT72aS9mBHSeYP8AzU1giF+yk4IQh8W8UCh+k wncXTpG2M2mdiF0t0fMlAoOmMD0dDDSlpTIhgkEUgqjuFzi7YRnIgI9xJ4RbMQqrVgcEj4C8LWsP q8Pt9DnxVUmUQXwS04QFJpghbh6a73UsV1kjFiQZ9yo4RhR5ouTehVLXwyXn9E0/MW3nIZGdW6cW BqD/FwjDedfDigE0VsQAWD9OfH1I4pjkNePpmoHErOG2KQ9vec7Rd5iPWUIgxnBiNdg8Hczv3Ggy e02Chw1yzKXcTaIVW6tMxm5H62cyRRwy5a0Rn3KVLVQTyaZt2f+GplozjiLe3T1X8E7sKPoVWNsX cVGRPGouZdNO00VQlpmaKnpf9BXG+ujVGn0WCzsTBZZLqJNfGE5CwOMGqqib2L3pNFfDThiFFYLs Bfs4RXa44G+ecsWZig3N8by/vlm8WQFqFXytkdrd0gE8MYxhJY9tLYQ7wlUSZl1e249UHfijs1jT YsZBWDQtD6cUVDfesKtrnvoWh9PWnHG85pBT5MSechav895DCwK93d7kbSb1/JciGOFAKmr3aovm 8LkMp6kx4c1dfOaMbpKVzCVVjCadSxwWwQCTY07CnSirPHcs9tosTbhxKMol83kFKDpvpGVMR3PA RegYcxz8h9zXFyYFJSu6kkoCytJP1R5TTsiwd41qXBXGNHbMoZqW/6RNGjEKUFUennerbbOHh5qF BCEeBwq8LG/Whzm8tNXkZmTZoXwrIc/QHTlb30YhOvJMxkHCQcIdlDslguBo7y0PtMgFcw31VBdE 5U1XWCQBRp42X2/3SP1XZ1ZFRQO28wmBKNjtVNGbygg2egVH4++ZtSR66YzkASCCd8lVfPFh6chN y4HHcI4q8mBwSaSXPTMTI92ry6V72ZJXvsecN03ISiWftX9HmWuJz5HnkzNzrrBbBwX8P8fJoeOu 71L9gz++NgrvjX9scKfHP7FZ6TFrbtor/ynP2NrkpvBlaP8FHpILQgKmmbwP00IsO0bBiKMzV970 XJfgsv6Dd+s8Isjb2VpZrqf/aXmCrZrjsqqZ4+ayN30xMp8XaLageOOizHpfYJmDxJhE7qb31AS1 aV8TMmt++i6Uk/IpBsFrTjJL/NOAKt9N6cdRCHtmGoMqbK5EuEQbA0MP0FRoPiPoGXqvZZ4duGkH WRKnGBj/Mdjqy7kMCeeHmVzibbahgZOFhkivu3I51xH8xPIh0a6JJ9MNDZi8Mj+1WYVoEgQqyRo0 AkLvJkmewRTARxhQtCWwerjXttTlr1Dmg/SA8dMIj6dRs7C3fnyeXkLS7yGyutO9Z+Y2mJWiq2FZ se8LQUAD/tnPhcR6wpGdUvRYWXc4n5SK2W5Rpre65VdVwBu8bxNF2tDgsIu1yterr7j+DLazJccn 3yrNCn09hgtbbVSGa0xIq4azhLwYL220NPdPklFiVUPvPVonaKKjgBxAMZZswF/ftnYmp8h574j2 virS2BRTQfeVB14cb+grCE2OeV1k/2BMlX4IjATebO5LpS01pvQkckjmN6xxSZJvv/MgXxpORCLX x+SuK/BiJ+DawhMFt8QyvgEKiuTKmXw1zv0WmhJErceq9ontQx67y2BNSxcVUIGZU+xuR10vHKCr 8XGSNaOE3Gp34GmqNhAgTvR7GIVM4KLXmWvvSgDecMwLylz443fFxp/FFGrWQpFani2vPiHUrbvg Ses11u2W8KdrkIg2+gYznKewun6QJBWouGitewsZZQjwFiGHfTRh790gNSVG1DwS0jbCFlhpBOs9 qInyJkpx1gOgNYCfSR5HSJ7NCxD9sLn9qBvNMuBJbT3hVoyea8LzZadtqyplYcqv78JYwtemCXBu tp/6TJ8OAeScC4FNKLEbBMow7FkyQIj5ljp+YeMsc94p1s1XYzo7XHpoKlKjwBItwA9MQ3wxTyQf oO+2NIXf5yiPKFD9RIRdGGeYc61rgV1ZKek5k/RymxoGtkCzLZt2gWzkAllUyn+lEL+A922iq76b DB+E0IL1a7NNOsDA0xJgAABKQtIVuRYZIQAB8w3JWwAABhtvw7HEZ/sCAAAAAARZWg==

[–] tal 4 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

I've done a few of these sorts of "single image with seasonal transitions spanning the image" before with Stable Diffusion models in Automatic1111 and I think I may have submitted at least one before. In Automatic1111, the way to do this sort of thing is to use the Regional Prompter extension and break the image up into strips; you can then set different prompts for different regions and the degree to which blending should span regions.

As best I can tell from poking around, using a prompt directing a "blended composite" progression in Flux-derived models gets the same effect with a lot less effort. ComfyUI also has ways to combine different prompts for regions in one image via nodes, but if I can do it from the prompt and it gives enough control, that's preferable from my standpoint; less work.

[–] tal 3 points 3 weeks ago

kagis

It looks like not; apparently this used to be configurable in about:config, but that preference was removed some years back.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=333714

[–] tal 18 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

.io is especially popular because it resembles the computer term “input-output.” It is huge with start-ups and IT companies.

Well, those companies should also have the technical chops to know better.

I still think that most of opening up the TLD space was a mistake, not just the two-character stuff. Very few new TLDs have actually provided a lot of use, but they have created a "brand tax" on companies that don't want confusing use of similar registrations and who then go register the equivalent domains.

.biz vs .com is a great example.

24
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by tal to c/gaming@beehaw.org
 

This was something I started wondering about when I was reading a thread about Star Citizen, and about how space combat flight games were much less-common than they had been at one point, how fans of the genre were hungry for new entrants.

Looking at this list:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_space_flight_simulation_games#Space_combat_games

...there really were far more games in the genre being released in the late 1990s and early 2000s than there have been recently.

A similar sort of phenomenon occurred for World War II first-person shooters.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_World_War_II_video_games

Back around the same time period, there was a glut of games in the genre, and they really have fallen off quite a bit.

Whether it's a genre like these two, that hasn't seen many new entrants recently, or a genre that just never grew as much as you'd like, what genre would you like to see more of?

15
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by tal to c/imageai@sh.itjust.works
 

cat,white ink,black background, (red eyes:.3), (uncanny wide smile:2)

Steps: 20, Sampler: Euler a, CFG scale: 7, Seed: 0, Size: 1024x1024, Model hash: ebf42d1fae, Model: realmixXL_v15, Token merging ratio: 0.5, Version: v1.5.1

 

(ninja:.1), ice sculpture,colored lighting

Steps: 20, Sampler: Euler a, CFG scale: 7, Seed: 8, Size: 1024x1024, Model hash: ebf42d1fae, Model: realmixXL_v15, Token merging ratio: 0.5, Version: v1.5.1

 

(barack obama:.5),running,blue,orange,red, by Frank Miller,style of sin city

Steps: 40, Sampler: Euler a, CFG scale: 7, Seed: 0, Size: 1024x1024, Model hash: ebf42d1fae, Model: realmixXL_v15, Token merging ratio: 0.5, Version: v1.5.1

This is really to showcase another neat phenomenon I've run into -- I didn't spend time trying to find the coolest image I could find.

I really like hard-light, black-and-white pen-and-ink drawings (as, with the above example, Frank Miller did with Sin City). And Stable Diffusion can do a pretty good job of imitating those styles. However, those can be a little intense, very high-contrast, be a bit overwhelming to the viewer.

It looks like, if one adds a few color names to an image, Stable Diffusion winds up starting with the black-and-white art style, but will then fill in limited amounts of color...and does so in reasonable places.

Here's the same prompt without the color terms:

(barack obama:.5),running, by Frank Miller,style of sin city

Steps: 40, Sampler: Euler a, CFG scale: 7, Seed: 0, Size: 1024x1024, Model hash: ebf42d1fae, Model: realmixXL_v15, Token merging ratio: 0.5, Version: v1.5.1

A few other examples, starting with black-and-white styles, and using the same prompt:

(barack obama:.5),running,blue,orange,red, by Alex Toth

Steps: 40, Sampler: Euler a, CFG scale: 7, Seed: 0, Size: 1024x1024, Model hash: ebf42d1fae, Model: realmixXL_v15, Token merging ratio: 0.5, Version: v1.5.1

(barack obama:.5),running,blue,orange,red, by Steve Ditko

Steps: 40, Sampler: Euler a, CFG scale: 7, Seed: 0, Size: 1024x1024, Model hash: ebf42d1fae, Model: realmixXL_v15, Token merging ratio: 0.5, Version: v1.5.1

These aren't ideal images -- it'd probably be better to reduce the "barack obama" weight further so that the more-detailed, photographic appearance doesn't noticeably come out in the final image on the face, something I've observed happening with a number of images of politicians. But they do a pretty good job of demonstrating the effect.

 

noble weasel, rococo

Steps: 20, Sampler: Euler a, CFG scale: 7, Seed: 0, Size: 1024x1024, Model hash: ebf42d1fae, Model: realmixXL_v15, Token merging ratio: 0.5, Version: v1.5.1

 

I wanted to highlight a feature available in Stable Diffusion (as well as perhaps other generative AIs) -- regional prompting. Midjourney looks like one can do it manually; I don't know about others.

It can be difficult, when generating an image, to specify that it contains multiple people with distinct attributes, because the prompt applies to the whole image. Specify a name, and the prompt affects both people. Making one person is easy, and making twins is easy...but making two distinct people isn't.

Thelsim ran into this in a comment yesterday, where the face of a scared woman was placed on the head of a giant robot.

There are two ways I know of to deal with this. One is inpainting. This gives a great deal of control, but is time-consuming. If one inpaints, one generates an image, then erases part of the image, and then regenerates just that part with a new (potentially different) prompt. The problem with this is that it takes a while, and makes it hard to go back and change something in the original image.

The second approach is to use regional prompting. This permits the image to be divided up, and different prompts applied to only portions of the image.

I'm going to walk through the regional prompting process here, in case anyone else hasn't done it before. For Stable Diffusion, you'll want to install the Regional Prompter extension, in the Extensions tab.

Okay, let's take our first stab at the image:

ursula von der leyen and angela merkel sitting side-by-side, by neal adams

Steps: 20, Sampler: Euler a, CFG scale: 7, Seed: 11, Size: 1024x1024, Model hash: ebf42d1fae, Model: realmixXL_v15, Token merging ratio: 0.5, Version: v1.5.1

Well, that didn't work very well. On both women, we've got Angela Merkel's face combined with something like a cross of von der Leyen's and Merkel's hair.

Activate the regional prompter, down at the bottom of the txt2img tab. Check "Use common prompt". click "Visualize and make template". This will show you how you have the image set up to be divided up -- currently, two equal-size boxes split vertically down the image. It'll also give you some text to paste into the prompt box:

ADDCOMM 
ADDCOL 

The text before "ADDCOMM" is the common prompt, that applies to the whole image. The text between ADDCOMM and ADDCOL apply to the left side of the image. The text after ADDCOL applies to the right side of the image.

ursula von der leyen and angela merkel sitting side-by-side, by neal adams ADDCOMM ursula von der leyen ADDCOL angela merkel

Steps: 20, Sampler: Euler a, CFG scale: 7, Seed: 11, Size: 1024x1024, Model hash: ebf42d1fae, Model: realmixXL_v15, Token merging ratio: 0.5, RP Active: True, RP Divide mode: Matrix, RP Matrix submode: Horizontal, RP Mask submode: Mask, RP Prompt submode: Prompt, RP Calc Mode: Attention, RP Ratios: "1,1", RP Base Ratios: 0.2, RP Use Base: False, RP Use Common: True, RP Use Ncommon: False, RP Change AND: False, RP LoRA Neg Te Ratios: 0, RP LoRA Neg U Ratios: 0, RP threshold: 0.4, RP LoRA Stop Step: 0, RP LoRA Hires Stop Step: 0, Version: v1.5.1

Doesn't look much different; the right side and the left side each favor one woman a bit, but not by much. Let's let it start with a scene that has any two women sitting side-by-side -- no reason to start with just scenes that have von der Leyen and Merkel already being the people there, and by totally removing Merkel and von der Leyen from the common prompt, that'll prevent Merkel from influencing the left side or von der Leyen the right.

two women sitting side-by-side, by neal adams ADDCOMM ursula von der leyen ADDCOL angela merkel

Steps: 20, Sampler: Euler a, CFG scale: 7, Seed: 11, Size: 1024x1024, Model hash: ebf42d1fae, Model: realmixXL_v15, Token merging ratio: 0.5, RP Active: True, RP Divide mode: Matrix, RP Matrix submode: Horizontal, RP Mask submode: Mask, RP Prompt submode: Prompt, RP Calc Mode: Attention, RP Ratios: "1,1", RP Base Ratios: 0.2, RP Use Base: False, RP Use Common: True, RP Use Ncommon: False, RP Change AND: False, RP LoRA Neg Te Ratios: 0, RP LoRA Neg U Ratios: 0, RP threshold: 0.4, RP LoRA Stop Step: 0, RP LoRA Hires Stop Step: 0, Version: v1.5.1

Okay, that's not bad, and now the Neal Adams hand-drawn art style is coming through, but the two are looking suspiciously well-endowed in the breast department, probably because of the model I'm using that's being influenced by images of other women that it's been trained on. Let's turn down the relative strength of the generic "two women" bit. You can do that by putting a term in parentheses, putting a colon and then a strength modifier after it. An unmodified term has a strength of 1, so I'll use .1, only a tenth the strength:

(two women sitting side-by-side:.1), by neal adams ADDCOMM ursula von der leyen ADDCOL angela merkel

Steps: 20, Sampler: Euler a, CFG scale: 7, Seed: 11, Size: 1024x1024, Model hash: ebf42d1fae, Model: realmixXL_v15, Token merging ratio: 0.5, RP Active: True, RP Divide mode: Matrix, RP Matrix submode: Horizontal, RP Mask submode: Mask, RP Prompt submode: Prompt, RP Calc Mode: Attention, RP Ratios: "1,1", RP Base Ratios: 0.2, RP Use Base: False, RP Use Common: True, RP Use Ncommon: False, RP Change AND: False, RP LoRA Neg Te Ratios: 0, RP LoRA Neg U Ratios: 0, RP threshold: 0.4, RP LoRA Stop Step: 0, RP LoRA Hires Stop Step: 0, Version: v1.5.1

And there we have our final image!

 

Track_Shovel submitted some neat Art Deco poster-style images of a WW2 aircraft carrier. I like Art Deco posters, so I thought I'd try looking into figuring out what sort of prompt could produce that sort of effect.

Stable Diffusion.

manhattan restaurant, silhouette,by Christopher DeNoon,art deco,silkscreen,minimalist

Negative prompt: (woman:.1)

Steps: 20, Sampler: Euler a, CFG scale: 7, Seed: 13, Size: 1024x1024, Model hash: ebf42d1fae, Model: realmixXL_v15, Token merging ratio: 0.5, Version: v1.5.1

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