FinishingDutch

FinishingDutch , 13 hours ago

Guess I should stock up while I can huh?

I’ve been a RPI fan since the beginning and have used their boards for all sorts of projects and tinkering. But it’s hard not to feel like it’s losing sight of what made it attractive in the first place: low power and low priced computing. It had its charm in buying a Pi Zero and just chucking emulators on it and handing them out to folks who might want to have a go.

But with the more expensive, more powerful hardware you just can’t really use them for things like that anymore. Just too expensive and too much oomph for the use case.

We’ll see if the company finds its way. But this usually isn’t a good sign…

FinishingDutch , 6 days ago

Heck, journalists get threatened for their work anyway. It’s a fact of life in this profession.

I’ve been in radio and TV since the early 2000’s and have been a newspaper writer since the mid 2010’s.

We’ve gotten letters with bullets in them, ‘anthrax’ letters (they were all the rage post 9/11) and most recently we had two attacks with fireworks explosives on our building. Mind you, this is just a local newspaper. We’re not exactly the New York Times.

I couldn’t tell you what reporting might’ve prompted it. Could’ve been the articles we wrote about wind farms, could’ve been climate change, could’ve been local politics or the soccer scores.

Because these days, people get seriously outraged at basically nothing. Even the most neutral, strictly-the-facts reporting can set some folks off. So it’s not exactly surprising that a ‘controversial’ topic like anything related to climate change prompts threats.

But: we keep reporting. Because fuck them. Facts are facts. Don’t like it? That’s a you problem.

FinishingDutch , 12 days ago (edited 12 days ago)

Fuck ban-happy Reddit and its IPO shenanigans. That place is a dumpster fire that I wouldn’t piss on to put out.

Welcome to Lemmy. It might not be perfect, But At Least We Aren’t Reddit (TM)

FinishingDutch , 13 days ago

My brother in Buddha… how about we don’t do that.

FinishingDutch , 16 days ago

That’s an awesome set; the Polaroid OneStep SX-70 camera.

https://www.lego.com/en-nl/product/polaroid-onestep-sx-70-camera-21345

It actually has a really neat feature where you can push the red shutter button and it actually pops out a cardboard ‘photo’. They tweaked it to perfection; it doesn’t shoot out fully, but instead sticks out just partly like the real camera. They went through a lot of iterations of that mechanism in order to get it just right.

It’s an awesome set for photography nerds.

FinishingDutch , 15 days ago

That’s awesome! I got back into LEGO as an adult in 2012 when they released the first VW camper.

On mine that panel seems pretty secure, though it is a bit finicky to attach. Might want to check if it’s properly attached.

Recommendations are tough; LEGO makes so many awesome sets. It also depends on things like budget and space. For example, the Concorde set is awesome, but also quite large.

Personally, I really like their modular sets. Larger, very detailed buildings like a hotel, jazz club, bank, etc. I’ve collected most of them so far.

There’s also a lot of cool new soace sets, in addition to the galaxy that you’re familiar with. I’m really looking forward to the lunar rover that’s coming out later this year.

A good site to follow for LEGO news is Brickset.com. That way you can get a feeling for any future sets that you might like. Some can sell out pretty quickly; lots of us adults love LEGO ;-)

FinishingDutch , 26 days ago

You CAN in fact more or less do this for real: photographing a mirror from a straight on perspective without the camera visible.

https://youtu.be/ZlaeWRMYwGg?feature=shared

Basically, you need a special tilt-shift lens that distorts perspective to where it looks ‘straight on’ while the camera is actually off to the side or down below. If you do it correctly, the viewer won’t even notice anything’s missing.

These lenses are primarily used for architecture photography to prevent ‘leaning buildings’. They can also create really cool miniature effects. It’s quite a useful bit of gear, but also rather expensive because it’s such a niche lens.

FinishingDutch , 26 days ago

The one in the video is a Canon TS-E 90 - that's a 1000 bucks USED. And that's not really what you want if you're going to be doing landscape stuff. You want the TS-E 24 for a much wider field of view. Those are even more expensive.

You CAN however buy cheaper, new lenses. Brands like Laowa and Samyang produce tilt-shifts that cost less than half of what a Canon costs if you really want a new example.

That said though... anything in photography is expensive anyway, and these are niche lenses. They do some things that other lenses really can't, like this magic trick. And while you can replicate some of its effect digitally - like the miniature effect - the best way to do things like that is always in camera. If you take a good shot to start with, you'll alsways have a better end result.

I'm personally looking to buy a TS-E 24 one of these days, assuming I find a gently used - and gently priced - example.

FinishingDutch , 24 days ago

The best strategy when it comes to expensive niche lenses like this is: save up and buy a good used example of a lens that won’t limit you and will let you grow as a photographer. There’s always people selling gently used lenses because they either don’t use them or they’re switching systems.

I’ve always bought better lenses and gear than I needed at the time and never regretted it. If you buy a cheap lens, it often comes with tradeoffs that the expensive lenses don’t have. If you buy a good lens - especially dumb, manual lenses like a tilt-shift, you can always use them on other cameras down the line or sell them to another eager photographer without losing a lot of money.

Owning niche gear like this is kind of its own joy anyway. It’ll let you do and experiment with things that others can’t do. You might not use it every day, but you’ll be ticked pink to use it when you can. I can’t really tell you what I paid for some of my specialty gear, but I can damn sure tell you about how much I smile when I use it :D

FinishingDutch , 1 month ago

Microsoft also had a decent credibility with mobile device OS’s. They made OS’s for PDA’s like Windows CE, Windows Mobile, Pocket PC… those were all on some very capable devices.

God, I miss my Compaq Ipaq Pocket PC. That thing was a fucking beast.

FinishingDutch , 1 month ago

Pretty much this, yes.

There’s also the complexity of approach procedures that they need to follow in order to mitigate noise complaints. Back in the old days, they’d just fly from radio beacon to radio beacon, with look-out-the-window navigation for the final approach.

These days, lots of airports are within or close to cities, which means a much more complex routing and specific altitude and speed restrictions. GPS made that possible; they’re simply too much workload for pilots.

So yeah, in emergency situations where GPS fails completely, there’s going to be some changes to procedures needed in order to make that work. They’d also need to increase separation between planes in order to prevent problems.

The simple solution is: nobody should fuck around with GPS since we literally all benefit from it.

FinishingDutch , 1 month ago

Probably.

So, we complain to a regulatory body, they investigate, they tell a company to do better or, waaaay down the road, attempt to levy a fine. Which most companies happily pay, since the profits from he shady business practices tend to far outweigh the fines.

Legal or illegal really only means something when dealing with an actual person. Can’t put a corporation in jail, sadly.

FinishingDutch , 1 month ago

I’m still conflicted if it’s a good or a bad thing that the show is a hit. On the one hand, it’s nice that people are discovering the great storytelling and adventure that Fallout has to offer.

On the other hand, newcomers tend to… totally ruin the thing you’ve loved for decades. Especially if companies start chasing that group. So let’s all hope this doesn’t lead to watered down cash grabs, but instead lights a fire under development of good new proper Fallout titles. We’re looooong overdue.

FinishingDutch , 1 month ago

I honestly don’t mind people discovering Fallout. Heck, I’ve bought and lent copies to people to get them interested in it.

But I’ve also been in gaming since the late ‘80’s, and I’ve seen franchises ruined because developers chased the mass market instead of sticking to what made their games popular in the first place.

People came to Call of Duty for tight, sweet multiplayer matches with a military aesthetic.

Nowadays it’s got silly battle royale modes which let you play as Snoop-Dogg, The Terminator or a Warhammer 40K character. It looks nothing like what the original games were. And as a result, the playerbase has declined and shifted towards casual.

Battlefield is a shell of its former self after they moved away from what made it good. Need for Speed games also suck because they chased the Fast and the Furious trend. Flight Simulator has become too mainstream leading to quality decline because developers chase casual players. And there’s numerous other examples of games moving towards a more casual, wider base. Usually because newcomers think the old gameplay is ‘boring’ or ‘too difficult’. Go talk to some Diablo veterans about their thoughts on IV…

And yes, as someone who’s been with Fallout since 1: 76 should never have been made. Fallout is a single player, story driven experience. And it should stay that way. The mobile game… I’d rather they put that effort into making a proper game.

FinishingDutch , 1 month ago

American politics really is one of the dumbest, most corrupt things out there. Good god.

This feels like trying to trick your dog into taking his medicine, by hiding it in its food. So apparently your average US Senator is as dumb as a Golden Retriever if they need this tactic to actually get shit done.

It’s insane that Americans still tolerate this. Clearly they don’t have your best interests as their main focus.

FinishingDutch , 1 month ago

No single bad review ever killed a product. Because we all know that some things are just a matter of opinion, user error, etc. Opinions are like assholes: everyone’s got one. If I’m interested, I’ll read several positive and negative opinions.

But if your product is bad enough to warrant several bad reviews, that’s on you. Should’ve done better research, should’ve made a better product.

FinishingDutch , 1 month ago

He does excellent reviews and stuff in general.

I actually watched it before the ‘controversy’ and I think it certainly was a fair assessment. He clearly states the goal of the product and where it falls short. None of his criticism seems unreasonable.

Clearly, it’s trying to be an always-online communication, assistant and logging badge. Like a Star Trek commbadge on steroids. In theory, that’s a product that I’m very interested in. But when features are structurally unsound or actively annoying to use, well, I’m going to stick with the phone I’ve got.

Ironically, his ‘bad review’ got me interested to see what a version 2 will be like. Assuming they make it that far.

FinishingDutch , 1 month ago

In his video, he mentions the Humane review - but also the Fisker car review which was equally scathing.

FinishingDutch , 1 month ago

It really comes down to ‘that’s the default setting for most of humanity.’

Here on Lemmy, we like to think we’re all very tolerant, enlightened, liberal minded people. But the outside world really isn’t quite as open minded. And there’s way more backwards troglodytes out there than we like to think.

FinishingDutch , 3 months ago

I know that feeling. I once woke up and had a plugged left nostril. Stuck a pinky in it to explore and out came a giant, solidified blood slug about 4 inch long. Apparently I’d had a spontaneous nosebleed during the night.

FinishingDutch , 3 months ago

Yep. Like a blood ribbon almost. I imagine the bleed started in the front of the nasal cavity and trickled quite a ways back when I was sleeping on my back.

I was quite surprised indeed when it came out. Even took a picture of it.

FinishingDutch , 3 months ago

That sounds like a scary one; you’d almost be tempted to think you suddenly dislodged a brain tumor or things like that :D

FinishingDutch , 3 months ago

Sounds like a good feature. Anything that stops people from doing that is great.

But I do have to wonder… were people really expecting to find that content on PornHub? That site certainly seems legit enough that I doubt they’d have that stuff on there. I’d imagine most actual content would be on the dark web and specialty groups, not on PH.

FinishingDutch , 3 months ago

Wow, that bad? I was aware they purged a lot of ‘amateur’ content over concerns regarding consent to upload/revenge porn, but I didn’t know it was that much.

FinishingDutch , 3 months ago

Well duh. Even when they were introduced, touchscreens in cars got a lot of pushback. I’d much rather flip a switch or turn a knob for things I do daily, rather than futz three levels deep in a car maker’s software. They put things in there that really should be simple pushbuttons.

FinishingDutch , 3 months ago (edited 3 months ago)

Exactly. Here in the Netherlands, we have maaaaany social programs to help the homeless, people with mental issues and addiction issues. Problem is, a lot of them don’t WANT that help. They’d rather continue their way of life.

Here’s the thing: their rights end where mine begin. And as a normal, tax-paying citizen I deserve a safe, attractive place to live. Without the risk of being assaulted, mugged or worse.

I fully support comprehensive social programs to help the homeless. But if they don’t want that help, well, that’s on them.

FinishingDutch , 3 months ago

Jesus, the mods here are silly...

FinishingDutch , 3 months ago

Honestly, this sort of thing is what’s killing any sort of enjoyment and progress of these platforms. Between the INCREDIBLY harsh censorship that they apply and injecting their own spin on things like this, it’s nigh on impossible to get a good result these days.

I want the tool to just do its fucking job. And if I specifically ask for a thing, just give me that. I don’t mind it injecting a bit of diversity in say, a crowd scene - but it’s also doing it in places where it’s simply not appropriate and not what I asked for.

It’s even more annoying that you can’t even PAY to get rid of these restrictions and filters. I’d gladly pay to use one if it didn’t censor any prompt to death…

FinishingDutch , 3 months ago

I’ll look into it for sure. I tried Automatic1111 last year with SD, bunch of add-on stuff… it was finicky and didn’t get me quite what I was looking for.

Thanks for the tip!

FinishingDutch , 3 months ago

Speaking for myself, it’s definitely not the lack of detail in the prompts. I’m a professional writer with an excellent vocabulary. I frequently run out of room with the prompts on Bing, because I like to paint a vivid picture.

The problems arise when you use words that it either flags as problematic, misinterprets anyway or if it just injects its own modifiers. For example, I’ve had prompts with ‘black haired’ rejected on Bing, because… god knows why. Maybe it didn’t like what it generated as it was problematic. But if I use ‘raven-haired’ I get a good result.

I don’t mind tweaking prompts to get a good result. That’s part of the fun. But when it just tells you ‘NO’ without explanation, that’s annoying. I’d much prefer an AI with no censorship. At least that way I know a poor result is due to a poor prompt.

FinishingDutch , 3 months ago

Because sometimes you want an image of George Washington, riding a dinosaur, while eating a cheeseburger, in Paris.

Which you actually can’t do on Bing anyway, since it ‘content warning’ stops you from generating anything with George Washington…

Ask it for a Founding Father though, it’ll even hand him a gat!

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/dab26e07-34c8-422e-944f-83d7f719ea2e.jpeg

FinishingDutch , 3 months ago

Funnily enough, he’s not eating one in the other three images either. He’s holding an M16 in one, with the dinosaur partially as a hamburger (?). In the other two he’s merely holding the burger.

I assume if I change the word order around a bit, I could get him to enjoy that burger :D

FinishingDutch , 3 months ago

Doesn’t look too bad to me. I love a fair bit of crispy lettuce on a burger. Doing it like that at least spreads it out a bit, rather than having a big chunk of lettuce.

Still, it that was my burger… I’d add another patty and extra cheese.

FinishingDutch , 3 months ago

Here’s one that was made, just for you, with specifically a VEGAN cheeseburger in the prompt :D

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/075a3e02-f76d-4541-83cb-d777f9befbc6.jpeg

FinishingDutch , 3 months ago

I’ve never even heard of that, so I’m definitely going to check that out :D I’d much prefer running my own stuff rather than sending my prompts to god knows where. Big tech already knows way yoo much about us anyway.

FinishingDutch , 3 months ago

Well, the tech is of course still young. And there's a distinct difference between:

A) User error: a prompt that isn't as good as it can be, with the user understanding for example the 'order of operations' that the AI model likes to work in.

B) The tech flubbing things because it's new and constantly in development

C) The owners behind the tech injecting their own modifiers into the AI model in order to get a more diverse result.

For example, in this case I understand the issue: the original prompt was 'image of an American Founding Father riding a dinosaur, while eating a cheeseburger, in Paris.' Doing it in one long sentence with several comma's makes it harder for the AI to pin down the 'main theme' from my experience. Basically, it first thinks 'George on a dinosaur' with the burger and Paris as afterthoughts. But if you change the prompt around a bit to 'An American Founding Father is eating a cheeseburger. He is riding on a dinosaur. In the background of the image, we see Paris, France.', you end up with the correct result:

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/2c5f06ba-c52e-434d-8c57-b80b2d0e50ce.jpeg

Basically the same input, but by simply swapping around the wording it got the correct result. Other 'inaccuracies' are of course to be expected, since I didn't really specify anything for the AI to go of. I didn't give it a timeframe for one, so it wouldn't 'know' not to have the Eiffel Tower and a modern handgun in it. Or that that flag would be completely wrong.

The problem is with C) where you simply have no say in the modifiers that they inject into any prompt you send. Especially when the companies state that they are doing it on purpose so the AI will offer a more diverse result in general. You can write the best, most descriptive prompt and there will still be an unexpected outcome if it injects their modifiers in the right place of your prompt. That's the issue.

FinishingDutch , 3 months ago

They actually neutered their AI on thursday, after this whole thing blew up.

https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/google-suspends-gemini-chatbots-ability-generate-pictures-people-107446867

So right now, everyone's fucked because Google decided to make a complete mess of this.

FinishingDutch , 3 months ago

They’re also simply more united; they have a certain ‘team spirit’ that I find lacking in the left. (I’m generally quite left myself). Not just in the US, but also here in the Netherlands.

Voters on the right will say: “I don’t support policy X and Y, but since my candidate is the only one talking about Z, that’s who I’m voting for”

Meanwhile on the left, voters tend to want their candidate to exactly match them on not only X, Y and Z, but other issues as well.

Basically, plenty of left voters hold out for a perfect candidate, when voters on the right will generally support their main guy regardless. This leads to people being effectively self-disenfranchised from the political process.

FinishingDutch , 3 months ago

You know, I saw a guy the other day with an honest to goodness eyepatch. First time I’ve ever seen one in the wild.

Guy looked like older Snake from Metal Gear Solid, but clearly wasn’t cosplaying or anything like that. I assume most people with one eye just get a fake one here. If only to avoid all the pirate jokes that he probably gets.

FinishingDutch , 3 months ago

Please do wear one if you want to! That guy made my day; he looked like a badass.

It’s such a rare thing to see, you’ll probably get a few jokes. But also some really fun interactions I imagine. If nothing else, you’ll give some kids a fun story to tell about that pirate they met :D

FinishingDutch , 3 months ago

I absolutely love that story!

A tall angry dude dressed all in black leather with an eyepatch definitely would give me Snake Plissken vibes; either that or someone from an anime :D

FinishingDutch , 3 months ago

As an 41 year old, I’ve actually used rotary phones and classic handsets when I was younger. And damn do I miss them. There was a distinct enjoyment in being able to properly slam down a phone when you wanted to make a point. Same thing with flip phones: you KNEW when someone hung up in a huff. Can’t quite get that point across on a smartphone.

I also miss being able to properly shoulder a handset to keep your hands free.

FinishingDutch , 3 months ago

Ha, these fucking assholes. Glad to see they got forced to honor it. That’s what you get for jumping on bad tech in order to save a few bucks.

Hope other companies face the same liability if they rely on AI chatbots.

FinishingDutch , 3 months ago

I’m not inherently opposed to the tech - you can’t really stop progress anyway.

What I AM opposed to is rolling out things like this with the intent to replace humans, while also making the user experience worse.

I’ve tested Chat GPT and things like it professionally. They have their uses, but direct customer interaction and replacing an actual customer service employee is not (yet) one of them.

FinishingDutch , 3 months ago

Don’t set your OS language to Serbian, or it’ll suddenly stop working.

FinishingDutch , 4 months ago

I’ve contributed to sites like Wikipedia.

Not everything needs to be measured in money though. There’s inherent satisfaction in the work with things like this. And at the end of the day, we all benefit from having platforms with accurate, well thought out answers. Today you’re answering, tomorrow you’re the one with the question.

FinishingDutch , 4 months ago

That’s always been my way as well. It’s only natural as far as I’m concerned.

I own nice stuff. All that stuff is secured with keys. And that only works if I have them and maintain positive control over them. So it stands to reason that one should be very careful about where you put and use them.

They live in three exact places: a bowl at my house, in my hand or in my right front pocket.

I’m also a firm believer of ‘a door should be locked unless you are within arms reach of it’. You’d be amazed how bad some people are at locking their doors…

FinishingDutch , 4 months ago

That’s perfectly fine :D Some things just aren’t to everyone’s taste.

Here in the Netherlands, we absolutely love licorice for example. It’s a very large part of the candy section in any supermarket. Sweet, salty, spicy, hard, soft, you name it. We love it. Meanwhile, your average American nearly throws up if they try it. It’s something that you have to grow up with to really enjoy.