Same reaction here. I think the author certainly crossed a line by using a diffusion model to publish an image of a dead famous person doing something he never did.
This is total nonsense. Every reader will understand that Jobs was never photographed like that while saying "stop" to anyone crossing his red lines. Even if the photo exists, it would have been out of context.
The only question here is if using that image is tasteful or not.
Also, suggesting that Jobs did not have these red lines is not making the situation any better.
Well, I'm another person who shares that opinion. When I see AI in an article, I think: If an author will use AI to fake one thing, what else is he willing to fake? It totally draws into question the credibility of the whole article.
While it may not be totally sensible, using AI imagery to depict something that never happened definitely does decrease trust. The exact same effect can be seen happening in sports as they added gambling on top. People are losing faith that the truth hasn’t been manipulated because there is ample opportunity to break trust and insert fiction.
But what cause that decrease to happen is by presenting false things as accurate. There will always be someone snooping around and if it’s an obvious false thing then people will make lots of noise about it, the evidence is this post thread.
It doesn’t matter if they actually cheated at sports or if the image is real. The threat of it being untrustworthy is actively eroding trust.
This phrase immediately turned the rest of my hair gray. I'm old enough to still think of Git as the "new" version control system, having survived CVS and Subversion before it.
At my mid 90s Unix shop, everyone had to use someone’s script which in turn called sccs. I don’t recall what it did, but I remember being annoyed that someone’s attempt to save keystrokes meant I had to debug alpha-quality script code before the sccs man page was relevant.
Adding -x to the shebang line was the only way to figure out what was really going on.
I still remember dragging my team kicking and screaming away from Subversion. Which, to be fair, was fine. I think GitHub’s rise was really what won it for git vs subversion. The others though, good riddance.
I'm sorry if it has that effect on you. Personally I've been on tirzepatide for about a year now and have not experienced anything like that.
It seems to reduce my impulsivity, but I still enjoy things very much. I am just able to stop when I "should," or wait for delayed gratification, when previously I had trouble doing so.
I'd say my mood has been higher overall. Feeling like I am in control is an everyday boost.
Glad I snuck in that it's just my opinion! But the article you linked to sort of admits what I'm saying:
> The above thresholding matrix approach describes the Bayer family of ordered dithering algorithms. A number of other algorithms are also known; they generally involve changes in the threshold matrix, equivalent to the "noise" in general descriptions of dithering.
Basically, I'm leaning into "general descriptions of dithering" with my noise requirement, and the lack of noise in "ordered dithering" leads me to consider it not-quite-dithering.
The very first sentence of the general Dithering article [0] connects with my perspective as well:
> preventing large-scale patterns such as color banding
Aside: I probably misspoke with the word "halftone" earlier; apparently that's a specific thing as opposed to an umbrella term. I'm not sure there's a great word (other than "dither"...) for techniques to trade resolution for color.
Dithering is the right term. It was called this even as far back as the Win 3.1 era where program installers typically showed you a full screen window with a background gradient that went from dark blue to black and used ordered dithering to make it look semi-respectable.
The threshold map of ordered dithering is still a source of noise, it just happens to be carefully pre-baked so that (original image + noise)==output makes the output more legible than what you'd get from just mapping the original image pixels to the nearest available color.
The error diffusion is static and baked into the thresholds chosen, but it's still there and choosing the error diffusion properly still matters to getting a reasonable output.
I think that text is somewhat misleading because it leads people to believe that ordered dithering is not a kind of dithering, and also because the noise in general descriptions of dithering is not equivalent to changes in the threshold matrix. Rather, it is equivalent to differences between the input image and the output image. So I've fixed it.
This is fantastic, thank you. Recently when trying to sleep away from home, I went looking for a noise app and was grossed out by the state of the available apps, just like you said.
BTW One unfortunate feature that many noise apps/websites have (including Apple Music's official noise buttons) is that after a few minutes, they fade out and back in or have some other jarring transition when repeating. This is far from ideal for sleep, meditation, etc. So this is an enhancement request, if your app doesn't already solve this ;)
I'm also curious: do you think that the cost of maintaining the app (keeping it up to date with newer iOS versions, for instance) will eventually dissuade you from keeping it available in its pristine state? I've wondered why there seem to be ZERO free apps by hobbyists on the App Store in categories like this...
100% agree with you. Most of my time on this project actually went into making sure the loops play seamlessly—no gaps, glitches, or fades—since even the tiniest hiccup can throw off light sleepers. I’ve also tested the app across different headphones and speakers, with and without noise cancellation, but if you try it and notice anything off, please tell me. I’d really love to make it as smooth as possible.
For the app maintenance side, I’m intentionally keeping both the UI and backend super simple so updates are easy to manage. And honestly, I just enjoy iOS development, so even the maintenance part feels more like fun than work.
I built a free calculator for iOS because I found the free calculators (for iPad) were super spammy and ugly. There was (and still is?) literally video ads that play between calculations. And since Apple didn't (doesn't?) offer a calculator app that came bundled with iPad, it was a huge market.
But I was naive and thought I could just create an obviously superior app and it would find some users. Why hadn't anyone thought of this before? But the app market is so saturated and poorly managed that there's practically no chance you can find users. Or at least I didn't care enough because.. you know.. its a free app. How much can I invest to get you to have a decent experience.
And the other point which was really the death blow to my app, is the ridiculous $100+ a year fee to app store to even host a free app. So after a few years and very few users, I decided to kill it.
1. The search sucks and prioritizes "popular" spammy apps.
Is this a parody of the Dropbox comment or is this sincere? I don’t think iPads have built in ssh… and even if they do, this is a far cry from an app. It assumes you have a Linux machine on your local network and are willing and able to set up ssh to connect to it as well as learn command line tooling for making calculations.
> YouTube gaining an “ask a question about this video” button, this is a perfect example of how to sprinkle AI on an existing product.
lol if this is the perfect example, "AI" in general is in a sad place. I've tried to use it a handful of times and each time it confidently produced wrong results in a way that derailed my quest for an answer. In my experience it's an anti-feature in that it seems to make things worse.
Some people experience major side effects. Neither my wife (semaglutide) nor I (tirzepatide) have had any negative effects apart from minor upper GI disturbances when moving up to a higher dose. These dissipate within a week or so.
That said, these are definitely serious drugs and I wouldn't be taking one if my quality and length of life weren't threatened by metabolic syndrome, and if I hadn't been trying for decades to solve the problem without medication.
I'm so sorry for your loss. I don't have anything super-personal to contribute except what has been said many times already: QModem was my first window on the digital world and a delightfully crafted tool. Developers of today (like me) could learn a lot from your dad.
