dtn (u/dtn) - Readit News

dtn commented on This is not the future blog.mathieui.net/this-is... · Posted by u/ericdanielski

xvector · 4 days ago

One thing I've noticed - artists view their own job as more valuable, more sacred, more important than virtually any other person's job.

They canonize themselves, and then act all shocked and offended when the rest of the world doesn't share their belief.

Obviously the existence of AI is valuable enough to pay the cost of offsetting a few artists' jobs, it's not even a question to us, but to artists it's shocking and offensive.

dtn · 4 days ago

> One thing I've noticed - artists view their own job as more valuable, more sacred, more important than virtually any other person's job.

> They canonize themselves, and then act all shocked and offended when the rest of the world doesn't share their belief.

You could've written this about software engineers and tech workers.

> Obviously the existence of AI is valuable enough to pay the cost of offsetting a few artists' jobs, it's not even a question to us

No, it's not obvious at all. Current AI models have made it 100x easier to spread disinformation, sow discord, and undermine worker rights. These have more value to me than being able to more efficiently Add Shareholder Value

dtn commented on This is not the future blog.mathieui.net/this-is... · Posted by u/ericdanielski

BloondAndDoom · 4 days ago

I understand artists etc. Talking about AI in a negative sense, because they don’t really get it completely, or just it’s against their self interest which means they find bad arguments to support their own interest subconsciously.

However tech people who thinks AI is bad, or not inevitable is really hard to understand. It’s almost like Bill Gates saying “we are not interested in internet”. This is pretty much being against the internet, industrialization, print press or mobile phones. The idea that AI is anything less than paradigm shifting, or even revolutionary is weird to me. I can only say being against this is either it’s self-interest or not able to grasp it.

So if I produce something art, product, game, book and if it’s good, and if it’s useful to you, fun to you, beautiful to you and you cannot really determine whether it’s AI. Does it matter? Like how does it matter? Is it because they “stole” all the art in the world. But somehow if a person “influenced” by people, ideas, art in less efficient way almost we applaud that because what else, invent the wheel again forever?

dtn · 4 days ago

> I understand artists etc. Talking about AI in a negative sense, because they don’t really get it completely, or just it’s against their self interest which means they find bad arguments to support their own interest subconsciously.

Yeah, no. It's presumptuous to say that these are the only reasons. I don't think you understand at all.

> So if I produce something art, product, game, book and if it’s good, and if it’s useful to you, fun to you, beautiful to you and you cannot really determine whether it’s AI. Does it matter? Like how does it matter?

Because to me, and many others, art is a form of communication. Artists toil because they want to communicate something to the world- people consume art because they want to be spoken to. It's a two-way street of communication. Every piece created by a human carries a message, one that's sculpted by their unique life experiences and journey.

AI-generated content may look nice on the surface, but fundamentally they say nothing at all. There is no message or intent behind a probabilistic algorithm putting pixels onto my screen.

When a person encounters AI content masquerading as human-made, it's a betrayal of expectations. There is no two-way communication, the "person" on the other side of the phone line is a spam bot. Think about how you would feel being part of a social group where the only other "people" are LLMs. Do you think that would be fulfilling or engaging after the novelty wears off?

dtn commented on Age Simulation Suit age-simulation-suit.com/... · Posted by u/throwup238

safety1st · 4 months ago

I didn't realize this until a couple of years ago (in my 40s) but boy did it alter my perspective on life. And I've heard what you're saying here from a couple other people in their 60s too. When you're young you don't really think about it much, health comes for "free."

But as you age your biology will force a choice upon you, one option is you spend progressively more time maintaining your health, in which case it drops off MUCH less than you'd expect. Or you can neglect that maintenance, in which case your quality of life WILL drop off in a big way due to health problems.

That's what it is, it's a choice, one you don't get to opt out of, but there is a path where you're in remarkably good shape for less effort than you would probably assume... for most people even just 2-3 hours a week of moderate exercise at the gym is probably a game changer.

I'm a little worried about the health of younger people today, because I read the statistics about obesity, blood pressure, ED and so on all going up for them. I'm also occasionally taking 20-30 minute walks with people in their 20s, who want to take a car, they're exhausted at the end of it, and they can't keep up with me. I get it, I was like that a couple years ago before I started hitting the gym, but really, at 25, you can't handle under a half hour of brisk walking? Oof, habits sure have changed.

dtn · 4 months ago

> When you're young you don't really think about it much, health comes for "free."

I can't stress this enough. So many of my peers have complained about back pain and other physical ailments, as if it was an unavoidable part of turning 30.

No, it didn't just suddenly appear the moment you turned 30, it's the symptom of accumulated damage from a sedentary lifestyle.

For what it's worth, I've managed to get a lot of them into fitness, and they're doing much better now

dtn commented on Lazy-brush – smooth drawing with mouse or finger lazybrush.dulnan.net... · Posted by u/tvdvd

rerdavies · 4 months ago

I don't think I've ever seen this feature ever before (keeping in mind that the purpose of the tool is to draw smooth lines, and there would probably be another tool for drawing signatures). It's quite brilliant!

dtn · 4 months ago

Lazy Nezumi has been around since 2009. Stabilisers,etc. are a lot more prominent in the digital art community.

dtn commented on Burning in woman's legs turned out to be slug parasites migrating to her brain arstechnica.com/health/20... · Posted by u/sea-gold

dtn · 10 months ago

Ugh. Rat lungworm. When I think of parasites, I always think of this story from a few years back: https://edition.cnn.com/2018/11/05/health/man-dies-after-eat...

dtn commented on Hunyuan3D 2.0 – High-Resolution 3D Assets Generation github.com/Tencent/Hunyua... · Posted by u/TheGuyWhoCodes

noch · a year ago

> here's a human-made piece that I appreciate a lot

I like your art. I'm glad you made it. What I like most is that it's fun to look at and think about which is what you say you intended. I hope I get to see more of your art.

> To this point, I don't believe there's such a thing as "bad art" (all works have something to say about the artist!).

As a classically trained oil painter, I know for sure there is bad art especially because I've made more than enough bad art for one lifetime.

Bad art begins with a lack of craftsmanship and is exemplified by a poor use of materials/media and forms, or a lack of knowledge of those forms (e.g. poor anatomical knowledge, misunderstanding the laws of perspective), or an overly literal representation of forms (a photograph is better at being literal, for example).

> Here's an example of some "slop" from the AI Art Turing Test […] But it's very clearly AI-generated. Can you figure out why?

It's only "clearly AI-generated" because we know that AI is capable of generating art. If you saw this without that context you wouldn't immediately say "AI!" Instead, you'd give it a normal critique that you'd give a student or colleague: I'd say:

- there's too much repetition of large forms.

- there's an unpleasant hierarchy of values and not enough separation of values.

- The portrait of the human is the focus of the image yet it has been lost in the other forms.

- The composition can improve with more breathing room in the foreground or background which are too busy.

- Here look at this Frazetta!

However, my rudimentary list could just as easily be turned into prompts to be used to refine the image and experiment with variations. And, perhaps you'd consider that to be a human making decisions?

dtn · a year ago

> I like your art. I'm glad you made it. What I like most is that it's fun to look at and think about which is what you say you intended. I hope I get to see more of your art.

Just to be clear, it's not my art.

dtn commented on Hunyuan3D 2.0 – High-Resolution 3D Assets Generation github.com/Tencent/Hunyua... · Posted by u/TheGuyWhoCodes

esperent · a year ago

This is a better AI gallery (I sorted all images on the site by top from this year).

https://civitai.com/images

There's still plenty of slop in there, and it would be a better gallery of if there was a way to filter out anime girls. But it's definitely higher than 20% interesting to me.

The closest similar community of human made art is this:

https://www.deviantart.com/

Although unfortunately they've decided to allow AI art there too so it makes comparison harder. Also, I couldn't figure out how to get the equivalent list (top/year). But I'd say I find around the same amount interesting. Most human made art is slop too.

dtn · a year ago

I think you fundamentally misunderstand what people use "slop" to describe.

> Most human made art is slop too.

I'm assuming you're using the term "slop" to describe low-quality, unpolished works, or works where the artist has been too ambitious with their skill level.

Let me put it this way:

Every piece of art that is made, is a series of decisions. The artist uses their lived experience, their tastes and their values to create something that's meaningful to them. Art doesn't need to have a high-level of technical expertise to be meaningful to others. It's fundamentally about communication from artists to their audience. To this point, I don't believe there's such a thing as "bad art" (all works have something to say about the artist!).

In contrast, when you prompt an image generator, you're handing over the majority of the decisions to the algorithm. You can put in your subject matter, poses, even add styles, but how much is really being communicated here? Undoubtedly it would require a high level of technical skill to render similarly by hand, but that's missing the forest for the trees- what is the image saying? There's a reason why most "good" AI-generated images generally have a lot of human curation and editing.

Here's an example of some "slop" from the AI Art Turing Test (https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/how-did-you-do-on-the-ai-ar...) from a while back: https://i.imgur.com/RAMFKP1.jpeg There's definitely a high level of technical expertise that a human would require to paint something like this. But it's very clearly AI-generated. Can you figure out why?

---

As a side note, here's a human-made piece that I appreciate a lot. https://i.imgur.com/AZiiZj1.jpeg The longer you explore it, the more the story unfolds, it's quite lovely. On the other hand, when I focus on the details in AI-generated works, there's not much else to see.

dtn commented on MitmProxy2Swagger: Automagically reverse-engineer REST APIs github.com/alufers/mitmpr... · Posted by u/AbuAssar

dtn · a year ago

Isn't that the point of mitmproxy? https://github.com/mitmproxy/mitmproxy

dtn commented on Procreate's anti-AI pledge attracts praise from digital creatives theverge.com/2024/8/19/24... · Posted by u/TheCleric

unraveller · a year ago

It's just not convincing. When your tools start moral posturing instead of building great software that gets out of the way it's all down hill.

dtn · a year ago

Au contraire, when your tools add the Hot New Thing for the sake of it, rather than any coherent product strategy- that's when things go downhill.

dtn commented on Motorola Razr 2024 Review: A $700 Steal Despite an Underwhelming Camera gizmodo.com/motorola-raze... · Posted by u/walterbell

gruez · a year ago

>I really like how small this phone is

At 74mm wide, it's as wide as most android phones, and noticeably bigger than "smaller" mainstream phones like the pixel 8 (70.8mm) or the S24 (70.6mm). True, it's much shorter than those phones, but for gripping ergonomics it's the width that matters the most.

dtn · a year ago

You're really underestimating how much the folding helps with handling.

The shortened length makes it extremely easy to handle with a single hand, and fits much better inside a pocket (a lot less cumbersome to pull out of a tight spot!)

Depending on how long my device lasts, I might make the move permanently to folding phones.

t. daily driving a Galaxy Z Flip 5