tal

tal, 1 month ago

It might be nice if auto reviewers included a "privacy rating" for a vehicle based OK whether it broadcasts anything via radio (e.g. cell or tire-pressure systems can be used to identify someone). It's not just auto manufacturers, but anyone who wants to set up a radio monitoring network, if there are unique IDs being broadcast.

I don't know how a reviewer could know whether there's a way for a manufacturer to gather logs during maintenance.

tal, 2 months ago

I can't imagine that it'd be possible to do that and conform to building code without some kind of special exemption.

Honestly, I'd think that if there's demand for a leaning pub like that -- and I think there is...I mean, I've heard about that thing repeatedly, seen video in it, and I live in the US -- it'd be easier to just build one whose owners want to run one, let them gave whatever building code exemptions are required. IIRC, that pub is kind of out of the way, not really where one would expect to put a new pub, given the choice.

tal, 2 months ago

AGI is not a new term. It’s been in use since the 90s and the concept has been around for much longer.

It's not new today, but it post-dates "AI" and hit the same problem then.

tal, 2 months ago

VS Code is going to require a newer version of glibc than Ubuntu 18.04 comes with. One does not simply upgrade glibc.

One might have an application-private newer build of glibc and set LD_LIBRARY_PATH to the directory containing it prior to launching VS Code.

tal, 3 months ago

If she's the only alternative in the primary race and he has a heart attack or something, I would assume that she winds up becoming the Republican nominee.

tal, 4 months ago

In the Lemmy Web UI, beneath a post or comment from a user, click the three dots and choose "Block User".

In the Jerboa Android client, tap the three dots beneath a post or comment by the user and choose "Block".

If you're using a different client, it'll depend on that client.

I'd point out, though, that @Track_Shovel doesn't just do gross-out AI art. He also submits stuff that you may (or may not) like more, like this series of Warhammer 40k images in various media:

https://lemmy.today/post/3476458

So even if you really don't like gross-out art -- I myself am not a fan of the genre -- you might just want to downvote stuff that you don't like and upvote stuff that you do, or you could miss future stuff that he submits that's more up your alley.

Consider that you've submitted a broad range of stuff yourself:

• Sexy Gadget
• Some New Zealand art
• Fried spaghetti memes
• A chibi Sailor Moon Christmas nativity rendering
• A "serious" photographic image of a girl
• A joke image of Santa breaking and entering
• A papercraft fox
• A detailed antique bottle in a store
• A model snowy village

That spans a lot of types of image; someone might like one but not another.

tal, 4 months ago

checks Lemmy Explorer

https://lemmyverse.net/communities?query=eyebl

!@eyebleach looks to be the Threadiverse analog.

Or, I mean, we are an AI art generation community and all. This is like someone at an Olympic swimmer convention asking "can someone be a lifeguard?"

https://lemmy.today/pictrs/image/0ba12f67-d700-41d4-98a0-8f955e3ef20b.png

dog, beagle, heroic painting

Steps: 20, Sampler: DPM++ 2M Karras, CFG scale: 7, Seed: 14, Size: 1024x1024, Model hash: ebf42d1fae, Model: realmixXL_v15, Version: v1.7.0-133-gde03882d

tal, 4 months ago

Fourth Geneva Convention on civilian persons in occupied territories; Russia is a party to this treaty.

https://www.icrc.org/en/doc/assets/files/publications/icrc-002-0173.pdf

Article 51

The Occupying Power may not compel protected persons to serve in its armed or auxiliary forces. No pressure or propaganda which aims at securing voluntary enlistment is permitted.

The Occupying Power may not compel protected persons to work unless they are over eighteen years of age, and then only on work which is necessary either for the needs of the army of occupation, or for the public utility services, or for the feeding, sheltering, clothing, transportation or health of the population of the occupied country. Protected persons may not be compelled to undertake any work which would involve them in the obligation of taking part in military operations. The Occupying Power may not compel protected persons to employ forcible means to ensure the security of the installations where they are performing compulsory labour.

The work shall be carried out only in the occupied territory where the persons whose services have been requisitioned are. Every such person shall, so far as possible, be kept in his usual place of employment. Workers shall be paid a fair wage and the work shall be proportionate to their physical and intellectual capacities. The legislation in force in the occupied country concerning working conditions, and safeguards as regards, in particular, such matters as wages, hours of work, equipment, preliminary training and compensation for occupational accidents and diseases, shall be applicable to the protected persons assigned to the work referred to in this Article.

In no case shall requisition of labour lead to a mobilization of workers in an organization of a military or semi-military character.

tal, 4 months ago

https://lemmy.today/post/2426962

And specifically that comment:

https://lemmy.today/comment/2877043

tal, 4 months ago

https://lemmy.today/pictrs/image/fb437603-f73a-407a-95ef-b21396fb4951.jpeg

tal, 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago)

It depends on the definition of "support ended". Like, there are various forms of extended support that you can pay for for versions of Windows, and some companies do.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_XP#Support_lifecycle

Support for the original release of Windows XP (without a service pack) ended on August 30, 2005.[4] Both Windows XP Service Pack 1 and 1a were retired on October 10, 2006,[4] and both Windows 2000 and Windows XP SP2 reached their end of support on July 13, 2010, about 24 months after the launch of Windows XP Service Pack 3.[4] The company stopped general licensing of Windows XP to OEMs and terminated retail sales of the operating system on June 30, 2008, 17 months after the release of Windows Vista.[114] However, an exception was announced on April 3, 2008, for OEMs producing what it defined as "ultra low-cost personal computers", particularly netbooks, until one year after the availability of Windows 7 on October 22, 2009. Analysts felt that the move was primarily intended to compete against Linux-based netbooks, although Microsoft's Kevin Hutz stated that the decision was due to apparent market demand for low-end computers with Windows.[115]

So for those, we're all definitely a decade past the end of normal support. However, they have their extended support packages that can be purchased, and we aren't a decade past the end of those...but most users probably aren't actually getting those:

On April 14, 2009, Windows XP exited mainstream support and entered the extended support phase; Microsoft continued to provide security updates every month for Windows XP, however, free technical support, warranty claims, and design changes were no longer being offered. Extended support ended on April 8, 2014, over 12 years after the release of Windows XP; normally Microsoft products have a support life cycle of only 10 years.[118] Beyond the final security updates released on April 8, no more security patches or support information are provided for XP free-of-charge; "critical patches" will still be created, and made available only to customers subscribing to a paid "Custom Support" plan.[119] As it is a Windows component, all versions of Internet Explorer for Windows XP also became unsupported.[120]

In January 2014, it was estimated that more than 95% of the 3 million automated teller machines in the world were still running Windows XP (which largely replaced IBM's OS/2 as the predominant operating system on ATMs); ATMs have an average lifecycle of between seven and ten years, but some have had lifecycles as long as 15. Plans were being made by several ATM vendors and their customers to migrate to Windows 7-based systems over the course of 2014, while vendors have also considered the possibility of using Linux-based platforms in the future to give them more flexibility for support lifecycles, and the ATM Industry Association (ATMIA) has since endorsed Windows 10 as a further replacement.[121] However, ATMs typically run the embedded variant of Windows XP, which was supported through January 2016.[122] As of May 2017, around 60% of the 220,000 ATMs in India still run Windows XP.[123]

Furthermore, at least 49% of all computers in China still ran XP at the beginning of 2014. These holdouts were influenced by several factors; prices of genuine copies of later versions of Windows in the country are high, while Ni Guangnan of the Chinese Academy of Sciences warned that Windows 8 could allegedly expose users to surveillance by the United States government,[124] and the Chinese government banned the purchase of Windows 8 products for government use in May 2014 in protest of Microsoft's inability to provide "guaranteed" support.[125] The government also had concerns that the impending end of support could affect their anti-piracy initiatives with Microsoft, as users would simply pirate newer versions rather than purchasing them legally. As such, government officials formally requested that Microsoft extend the support period for XP for these reasons. While Microsoft did not comply with their requests, a number of major Chinese software developers, such as Lenovo, Kingsoft and Tencent, will provide free support and resources for Chinese users migrating from XP.[126] Several governments, in particular those of the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, elected to negotiate "Custom Support" plans with Microsoft for their continued, internal use of Windows XP; the British government's deal lasted for a year, and also covered support for Office 2003 (which reached end-of-life the same day) and cost £5.5 million.[127]

For the typical, individual end user, one probably wants to have been off Windows XP by 2008.

tal, 4 months ago

The Kremlin has threatened Europe and the US with “serious consequences”, including tit-for-tat financial seizures or even a break in diplomatic relations, if Russian assets held abroad are given to aid the Ukrainian budget and war effort.

If I were Zelenskyy, probably any escalation by Russia against the US and Europe short of maybe nuclear war would probably be near the top of the list of things I'd enjoy seeing. It would simplify a great many things about the conflict for Ukraine.

googles

Churchill used a similar phrase ("this certainly simplifies things") about Pearl Harbor in his history of World War II; up until that point, the US had been theoretically neutral, though supplying the UK. At Pearl Harbor, Japan attacked the US and declared war, followed not long thereafter by Italy and Germany. For Churchill, who was -- and I think as history has shown, rightly so -- far more interested in the grand strategy implications, not the operational impact, the attack was very much a cause for celebration.

In two or three minutes Mr. Roosevelt came through. “Mr. President, what’s this about Japan?” “It’s quite true,” he replied. “They have attacked us at Pearl Harbour. We are all in the same boat now.” I put Winant onto the line and some interchanges took place, the Ambassador at first saying, “Good,” “Good” – and then, apparently graver, “Ah!” I got on again and said, “This certainly simplifies things. God be with you,” or words to that effect. We then went back into the hall and tried to adjust our thoughts to the supreme world event which had occurred, which was of so startling a nature as to make even those who were near the centre gasp. My two American friends took the shock with admirable fortitude. We had no idea that any serious losses had been inflicted on the United States Navy. They did not wail or lament that their country was at war. They wasted no words in reproach or sorrow. In fact, one might almost have thought they had been delivered from a long pain.

No American will think it wrong of me if I proclaim that to have the United States at our side was to me the greatest joy. I could not foretell the course of events. I do not pretend to have measured accurately the martial might of Japan, but now at this very moment I knew the United States was in the war, up to the neck and in to the death. So we had won after all! Yes, after Dunkirk; after the fall of France; after the horrible episode of Oran; after the threat of invasion, when, apart from the Air and the Navy, we were an almost unarmed people; after the deadly struggle of the U-boat war – the first Battle of the Atlantic, gained by a hand’s-breadth; after seventeen months of lonely fighting and nineteen months of my responsibility in dire stress, we had won the war. England would live; Britain would live; the Commonwealth of Nations and the Empire would live. How long the war would last or in what fashion it would end, no man could tell, nor did I at this moment care. Once again in our long Island history we should emerge, however mauled or mutilated, safe and victorious. We should not be wiped out. Our history would not come to an end. We might not even have to die as individuals. Hitler’s fate was sealed. Mussolini’s fate was sealed. As for the Japanese, they would be ground to powder. All the rest was merely the proper application of overwhelming force. The British Empire, the Soviet Union, and now the United States, bound together with every scrap of their life and strength, were, according to my lights, twice or even thrice the force of their antagonists. No doubt it would take a long time. I expected terrible forfeits in the East; but all this would be merely a passing phase. United we could subdue everybody else in the world. Many disasters, immeasurable cost and tribulation lay ahead, but there was no more doubt about the end.

Silly people – and there were many, not only in enemy countries – might discount the force of the United States. Some said they were soft, others that they would never be united. They would fool around at a distance. They would never come to grips. They would never stand blood-letting. Their democracy and system of recurrent elections would paralyze their war effort. They would be just a vague blur on the horizon to friend or foe. Now we should see the weakness of this numerous but remote, wealthy, and talkative people. But I had studied the American Civil War, fought out to the last desperate inch. American blood flowed in my veins. I thought of a remark which Edward Grey had made to me more than thirty years before – that the United States is like “a gigantic boiler. Once the fire is lighted under it there is no limit to the power it can generate.” Being saturated and satiated with emotion and sensation, I went to bed and slept the sleep of the saved and thankful.

-- Winston Churchill, The Grand Alliance

tal, 4 months ago

If you compare what it used to take to ship a package and the kind of selection that a local store might have, it's pretty great.

Also, a lot of that is automated to take a bunch of the drudge work out. Twenty years back, I remember that a guy I worked with at a research lab was working on some of the in-production-back-then automated-sorting-and-aligning-of-boxes-on-conveyor-belt stuff, which was done in a pretty clever way, by just activating and deactivating rollers on a conveyor belt, no robotic hands or anything mechanically-fancy needed.

googles

Not the system in question, but an example of another:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqLYhhV7u7Y

tal, 4 months ago

I believe that it is, in fact, an area of focus right now. I see Stable Diffusion papers coming out on the SD community and the Midjourney guys were putting in text synthesis work in their most recent update.

https://www.greataiprompts.com/guide/midjourney/how-to-get-midjourney-to-write-text-in-image/

tal, 4 months ago

Posting from a kbin.social account to avoid the lemmy.today issues -- on lemmy.today, the current behavior looks like the messages in the queue go out when the instance is restarted, but not until then. It's running 0.19.1.

I am not the admin there, but wanted to make that available in case other instances are affected and trying to diagnose similar behavior; federation problems themselves can cause communication problems in trying to understand the issue.

tal, 4 months ago

I can see your comment from lemmy.today and on lemmy.ml and on kbin.social.

I can see a response to you from @dandroid on lemmy.today and on lemmy.ml. I cannot see that response from kbin.social.

tal, 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago)

What if I have quad 12-core Xeons with 196GB of RAM?

I have a 24-core i9-13900 and 128GB of RAM and I briefly tried it and recall it being what I'd call unusably slow. That being said, I also just discovered that my water cooler's pump has been broken and the poor CPU had been running with zero cooling for the past six months and throttling the bajesus out of itself, so maybe I'd be possible to improve on that a bit.

If you seriously want to try it, I'd just give it a spin. Won't cost you more then the time to download and install it, and you'll know how it performs. And you'll get to try the UI.

I just don't want to give the impression to people that they're gonna be happy with on-CPU performance and then have them be disappointed, hence the qualifiers.

EDIT: Here's a fork designed specifically for the CPU that uses a bunch of other optimizations (like the turbo "do a generation in only a couple iterations" thing, which I understand has some quality tradeoffs) that says that it can get down into practical times for a CPU, just a couple of seconds. It can't do 1024x1024 images, though.

https://github.com/rupeshs/fastsdcpu

I haven't used it, though. And I don't think that that "turbo" approach lets you use arbitrary models.

tal, 6 months ago

Won't show up on thermals, unlike a lot of other stuff in this conflict.

tal, 6 months ago

It's possible that Ukraine is using Russian mines that they've removed from fields. If so, it'd be the opposite.

tal, 6 months ago (edited 6 months ago)

Could be. I've seen video of someone in Vietnam clearing mines, and they just did it with a knife. Didn't detonate the thing.

I'd assume that anti-tank mines, unless they have anti-handling mechanisms designed to target people disarming them, probably won't go off on a person.

EDIT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeCLs_p3lLg

Video of an American volunteer non-destructively clearing mines in Ukraine.

tal, 6 months ago

Text-based-games and MUDs are not the same thing. There's a considerable library of text-based interactive fiction out there.

tal, 6 months ago

Wow, such fast response!

The roof appears to be wet in the first image. It's dry in the second. I doubt that they're that close in time.

EDIT: Though the timestamps claim that these are close in time. Hmmm.

tal, 6 months ago

£

Ugh, didn't think of that interpretation.

Pound sign, as in "#".

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

tal, 6 months ago

No, though it could be the first character in a hashtag. A hashtag includes the characters that follow.

EDIT: The article I linked to says that in Canada, it's typically called the "number sign", in the US, the "pound sign", and in the UK, the "hash mark".