EwanG

I have a book I've written (first three parts available free at https://www.amazon.com/Summer-of-Wonders/dp/B0CV84D7GR). Is there some way to feed this to the tool and get an animated version out? Or this with some other tool(s)?

Bloomberg - Had a subscription and saw the renewal coming up. Decided to cancel, but you can't do it yourself - you have to go through their service desk and of course they try five ways from Sunday to get you to reup with a cheaper plan (that then jumps to the full price after 1 to 3 months).

Spectrum (previously Time Warner Cable) - To cancel you need your account number (both the TW and the Spectrum ones for folks who were converted) and your PIN for each - which you likely setup only once and may well not have realized you needed since it's only for starting service and cancelling. Don't have them? You can't cancel. Let me emphasize that again, if you don't give them the right number they will continue to charge you until your credit card expires, and then send you to collections. I am fastidious about account info and had mine, but some of my neighbors were less so.

Were you looking for a full list (I have more) or just wanted a couple of examples?

What I didn't see in this (and the couple others I've seen mentioned) is talking with more than one character in a scene, or having multiple scenes with the characters in different positions/poses/clothing.

My particular story has a number of folks with various handicaps (magical realism with a COA vibe), and trying to get an AI to do a reasonable character in a wheelchair is hard but doable, while amputees or folks with hearing aids is nigh on impossible.

To be fair that's probably more a "me" problem than a "you" problem...

So it sounds like I should "keep an eye" on this space and hopefully at some time in the future give this a try. Do you have any VN examples currently just to see where it's at?

I have a VN that I have wanted to complete for years. Having built and deployed using RenPY, the problem is something I wonder if Rosebud can support:

1) I'm a programmer not an artist. If I give a description of a character can the AI create a 2D version of it that will be consistent?

2) I'm a programmer not an artist, if I give a description of a scene/background can the AI create a 2D version of it that will have proper perspective for the character, and that will look similar later in the game when they return there?

3) I'd like to add flexibility to routes. Can I start a route out and then let the AI and the player interact to take it beyond the starting point?

Bought a Fisher Millennium Space Pen in 2000 which came with a lifetime guarantee for the Pen AND the Ink. Here it is 2024 and it still writes just fine. Have not had to get a refill yet (though not sure if they would honor it still).

So I'd argue that might be the "Best Pen" for at least some of us :-)

The important stuff from the readme (if you're not looking to tinker with it directly):

We have tested PowerInfer on the following platforms:

x86-64 CPU (with AVX2 instructions) on Linux

x86-64 CPU and NVIDIA GPU on Linux

Apple M Chips on macOS (As we do not optimize for Mac, the performance improvement is not significant now.)

And new features coming soon:

Mistral-7B model

Metal backend for sparse inference on macOS

I imagine there are more than a few photographers who would appreciate your first app to make it easier to browse their collections. To the extent you ever think of marketing it.

For someone who is a bit techie, but not familiar with much past the original PyTorch, can I get an explanation of why this should matter to me? Are we at the point yet where I can give one of these LLMs a list of characters and an introductory paragraph, and get a 100K word book out of it yet? Totally not asking because I have too many ideas and not enough time to write them all...

So, since I may not be familiar with everything out there right now, what pieces do you have in mind that could possibly cover what is needed? About to retire and this sounds like a project worth putting some time into :-)

I'm just waiting for the tool or toolchain where I can take a manga that I like that doesn't have an anime, and get a season or two out to watch when I feel like it rather than wait for it to get an official release.

Bonus points if I can let the tool ingest season 1 or an OVA of said material where a season 2 is never going to come (looking at you "No Game, No Life")

Compute on theirs is an Intel Nuc 8 (probably explains a decent part of the price). Appreciate the link to the more "hobbyist friendly" device you mentioned. I am thinking it might do well as a platform for light dusting around the house and other things to supplement a Robovac.

Hints of "Lars and the Real Girl" in all of this.

Looking at "Fontly Color Fonts", and some of their other apps, they are mainly repackaging websites as an app. For example check out the actual website at - https://fontly.org/

I don't think that's necessarily a "bad" thing but I hardly find it reasonable to believe they are charging for the privilege.

Honestly, after looking through the "apps" they created and what little I could find about reviews for them, I am having a hard time not feeling that Apple was in the right here.

On the other hand, I certainly understand that having your business shut down with little or no notice and right of appeal lies with the "prosecution" can feel crummy.

Is this as a heads up due to it's upcoming occultation of Betelgeuse or...?

As another data point (possibly useful), we were at the La Quinta that is midway up the island but located on the beach. There's a pier just down from there that has a decent view (through binoculars or a small telescope).

Even there, when it went up, the door to the beach (which we had open to see if we could hear it) was rattling, as well as the windows in the room.

Obviously there is something to be said for being at the park, but I suspect there is something to be said for being a bit further north - particularly if you want to avoid the worst of the crowds leaving afterwards.

Do plan to spend some time on the island afterwards - as the main route back is a longish two lane bridge that will back up significantly for a couple hours as the early birds try to rush out.

Let me introduce you to the world of PI planning where two days of every quarter are spent with approximately 100 people (developers, program managers, etc) for each line of business to plan out the next quarter of work - even if 90% of it is continuing the work from the last quarter...

My half baked project (more of an idea really) is a toe-clipping robot.

No really, I'm serious.

Like many older folks I have some mobility issues. Nothing that stops me from doing most things I need to do, but trying to bend over every couple of weeks for minutes at a time, and trying to get a good look in an awkward position to make sure I'm getting a reasonably straight cut to avoid ingrown nails is a challenge.

Of course there are all sorts of folks (like myself) who somehow manage, but there are a lot more who can't.

Yes there are things that claim to be solutions out there. A big one is a clipper attached to a long pole with a trigger to squeeze the clippers. If you already have mobility issues that ends up feeling more like a Rube Goldberg solution (I highly recommend trying it yourself sometime if you need proof it doesn't really work).

Yes, you can pay for a pedicure - but those are a little expensive if you go out for it, and very expensive if you pay for them to come in.

The robot itself would need to be able to manipulate two stainless steel plates to clip the nail but not the toe. I suspect a vacuum that has both Lidar and a Camera could be hacked into such a beast - though the programming would obviously be a challenge.

And yes, if you can price it under $1k I guarantee to buy the first one :-)

Presuming the remote work location has decently fast internet with very good uptime, and the distance to the local health provider who can provide quality care is reasonable. I've found that many inexpensive places are lacking one or both of the above.

Not saying remote work doesn't expand the options - just that it isn't a panacea for all the issues that lead to expensive housing.

I seem to recall that this is a known "side effect" of measles where it removes many immunities if you catch it.

If anyone at the Times is reading this... a case study for your consideration...

I dropped my subscription to the NYT a bit more than a year ago due to just this kind of blocking silliness. I like to be able to share articles I read with others, and if I have to get an archive.is/ph link anyway to do so, why should I be paying to read it first myself? If the value of eyeballs on articles is mainly to serve ads, and adblocking is an issue, then I'd say charging a subscription to try to make up for it (which it doesn't according to their own numbers) is kind of going in the wrong direction.

I gather that the NYT itself thinks that "News" as a product is a dying market and is why they are putting most of their time/effort/money into building up the Games and Recipes subscriptions. I wonder if that isn't a fatal case of mission creep.

Personally I can't really get into it because there is no web interface. IOW, as far as I can tell if you aren't willing to use the App, you can't interact with it. I like having a full keyboard and a text box large enough I can actually read things. For all that I'm not a Twitter fan, this seems worse to me.

First thought was that we finally have an answer for Symphony No. 8 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._8_(Schubert))

The presumption, from an investing standpoint anyway, is that working on this version will give you a first mover advantage for a V2 in two years that will have slightly upgraded chips, similar display, and cost half as much.

Any of these alternatives that have an active Anime and/or Manga community? The few links I've seen suggest "not so much", but I'm not certain I'm looking at the right things.

+1 if they also have a Photography community (why yes, I am a multitude) :-)

Quick summary - As K-Mart did to Sears, and then WalMart did to K-Mart, so Reddit has done to Usenet.

I have seen several folks on here mention Usenet subscriptions as another option. What I haven't found is any good Usenet tutorial on how to actually get from "I know the name of something I want" to "I have downloaded it".

The irony that I used to run a UUCP node on the original version of Usenet does not escape me :-)

Made 11 years ago, still holds up (unfortunately).

"Unfortunately the challenge isn't just "make enough enough money to pay the writers and keep the lights on." They have to do that, and then make enough additional money to keep the corporate overlords happy and interested."

Which rather well describes what just happened to DPReview. One wonders if some of the community there might be able to do something like this...