I don’t know what’s a chicken and what’s an egg here. But ROCm support is often missing or experimental even in very basic foundational libraries. They need someone else to double down on using their chips and just break the software support out of the limbo.

There're a strong disdain agains any AI among the artists. I've seen these kind of comments many times, like people getting upset someone uses AI-generated profile pic in Discord.

I get that they're scared. They should be: it was difficult to make a living for many artists even before AI. The market was already oversaturated and they had to accept low-paying irregular jobs. But now there's literally no light in the end of the tunnel for 99.9% of artists.

That being said, boycotting AI use will get them nowhere.

I'd say there's strong disdain from people who make a living producing art, but it's not nearly as universal with artists outside that group. I do resent people who have a monetary interest in an activity being presented as the only ones with a valid interest. I have seen more people becoming interested in personal creative expression since diffusion models, than I have ever seen before in my life, and that's a good thing.

Well, also, I mean, the output is generally bad.

(AI 'art' also has the fascinating, and possibly unique, property that, the more you look at it, the worse it is; it is fractally bad, in that the badness tends to crop up in small details more than anywhere else. I actually kind of enjoy it in small doses for this reason; it's fun to play "spot the broken thing".)

Something I read elsewhere was "if someone is using an AI avatar, they were never going to be your customer anyway".

I used to commission avatars every year or two from a specific artist. It wasn't super cheap (hundreds of dollars). At the end of the day though, spending hundreds of dollars, waiting weeks, and then maybe getting 85% of what I wanted doesn't make sense when I could instead spend ~$0, wait 30 seconds, and get 98% of what I want.

In my view, artists should be moving up the 'stack'. If they are a commission artist, they should be having customers come to them with their '98% efforts' or only taking on commissions that either mean too much, too elaborate for AI, or otherwise sensitive.

Humans want art. Humans love pretty things. AI will never replace the entire need for artists. I see it as getting rid of the bad commissioners (price sensitive, beggars, etc) and making it easier for people to express themselves thereby making an artist's job easier to extract info from their commissioners.

This is very foreign to my way of thinking.

I commission artists somewhat regularly, and if I had to name the top two reasons, they would be 1) I really like their style, and want a piece in that style 2) I want to support them so they can continue making the art I like.

Meeting my checklist of inclusions is important, but definitely secondary to the reasons above. (And sometimes the deviations are reflections of the artist's particular style and therefore welcome.)

> Something I read elsewhere was "if someone is using an AI avatar, they were never going to be your customer anyway".

Is your point that what you quoted is false?

> I used to commission avatars every year or two from a specific artist. It wasn't super cheap (hundreds of dollars). At the end of the day though, spending hundreds of dollars, waiting weeks, and then maybe getting 85% of what I wanted doesn't make sense when I could instead spend ~$0, wait 30 seconds, and get 98% of what I want.

...because you just gave an anecdote that shows the truth is "if someone is using an AI avatar, they might have been your customer before AI".

> In my view, artists should be moving up the 'stack'. If they are a commission artist, they should be having customers come to them with their '98% efforts' or only taking on commissions that either mean too much, too elaborate for AI, or otherwise sensitive.

That doesn't make sense. That's not "moving up the stack," that's the work drying up and only a small remainder of the most difficult/sensitive things being left. And that might mean being driven out of your profession because there's not enough left for you to feed yourself.

> because you just gave an anecdote that shows the truth is "if someone is using an AI avatar, they might have been your customer before AI".

I stopped commission artists for avatars years before that because of "It wasn't super cheap (hundreds of dollars). At the end of the day though, spending hundreds of dollars, waiting weeks, and then maybe getting 85% of what I wanted"

I got tired of waiting weeks only to get honestly a middling result. I stopped buying art and won't go back because the economics don't make sense to me regardless of AI.

> only a small remainder of the most difficult/sensitive things being left

Yep. It's what happens to industries as technologies progress. Horse carriage drivers and elevator operators either found something more specialized or moved out of the industry. If someone is making a living off onesie-twosie low-dollar commissions and can't figure out how to translate that to something else in the industry, they don't have any other choice.

Personally I think a lot of technology progression is long-term positive for humans because it means humans get to do something more fulfilling than rote work. It's dystopian and awful but personally, it's a shove for artists to move onto better art.

> Personally I think a lot of technology progression is long-term positive for humans because it means humans get to do something more fulfilling than rote work. It's dystopian and awful but personally, it's a shove for artists to move onto better art.

Dude, you need to update your memes. It's 2026: technology progression means humans "get" to do more rote work as the fulfilling creative and intellectual aspects are automated away.

Have machines do the creative part of building the system, so you don't have to! Instead you get even larger piles of code reviews instead!

Europe in general is a wide term. Like, UK is in Europe and is a surveillance state.

> we're all expecting China needs to invade Taiwan soon

Ah yes, China has a track record of invading countries.

> or they will run out of soldiers because of the one child policies of the 70s/80s

As opposed to NATO countries who have a steady increase in the number of young conscripts.

> Meanwhile, Ukraine is holding up against a "modern" army with quickly assembled drones.

I don't know why you put modern in parentheses. Russia did make a mistake of not adopting cheap drones earlier in the war. But Russians were the first to use optic fiber drones resistant to electronic warfare which gave them an edge during Summer offensive last year. Ukrainians have since caught up and their allies were able to supply them with large number of drones. But both Ukraine and Russia rely primarily on drone warfare and artillery becomes less important for both sides. Which all explains the static state of this war.

> Ah yes, China has a track record of invading countries.

Claims on Taiwan. Building fake islands in the South China Sea. Encroaching on the Siachen glacier. Attempting to rename Indian states. Port capture in poor nations through default. They have plenty of expansionist tendencies, it’s just early in the game…

Sounds benign compared the kind of shit the Americans do.

China has been “advanced” for a handful of years now. It’s going to get a lot worse because conscience is a throwaway concept for them when it comes to achieving outcomes.

Not good to make assumptions of people you don't really know about.

> Which if you want an actual feel for the true scale of things

The caveat is that more zeros do nothing for our comprehension of the scale. That's the problem because most people can't comprehend how evolution is even possible. We just don't have a mental model for a trillion, it's all the same to us after a certain threshold.

> In most of the world such photos would be deemed of public interest

You'd absolutely get detained by authorities in Ukraine or Russia for sharing consequences of airstrikes on critical infrastructure. I'm sure other countries would do the same (not that it's good).

Well, in Russia you would most likely accidentally fall out of the window that a careless person left open.

You can open Telegram and watch at videos and photos of almost any Ukrainian strike.

A large number of those tend to be vetted. Additonally, frontlines level videos do go through significant vetting and some form of MDM is used on personal phones in the frontlines.

Additionally, on the Ukraine side as well as the Russian side, civilian strike information isn't deemed critical from a NatSec perspective as plenty of Russians and Ukrainians lived on both sides of the border and still have relatives on either side, so both assume the other has granular level knowledge of non-frontline spaces.

In see tons of consequences of attacks on Ukrainian cities. They arw fairly normal thing to see.

Ukraine is not trying they are safe country as of now.

obviously, countries have ways to determine BDAs for their attacks, but you don't have to give it to them for free. The concept of oversharing is lost in the age of social media.

I'm pretty sure most people didn't notice any kind of inconsistency. I myself have a hard time figuring out what's going on. I'm so focused on doing the work with the computer that I don't have the time to notice what's "wrong" with the OS. Which makes me wonder if the whole thing is blown out of proportion.

I never met someone using Apple laptops professionally who thought it was a status symbol. I only keep hearing this from non-Apple users.

The only status it brings is "smart enough to not use Windows 11" or "cares enough to get the work done rather than fighting with Linux on laptops".

(I use Linux on desktop as a first choice, but it's always been an uphill struggle with laptop wifi/power manglement/audio for me. I blame the esoteric chipsets used in the machines I've bought in the UK)

This brand's perception varies wildly between different income groups, but is still one or the other flavor of positive in the end.

I have blue collar friends in California that consider apple products a sign of leftism and I hate to say it, but even sexuality (but that moreso in a joking way.)

Think of those who buy modern motorcycles which have the same performance as a super car for a tiny price and an out of this world user experience.

I did buy my car for reasons other than status. That’s just a bonus.

Yeah, but then MacBook is going to run smoother and faster than the Windows one (and I don’t want to spend even one extra minute on dealing with drivers on Linux). There’re just objective benchmarks for that.

And MacBooks also have a better display and build quality. Like, touchpad is still hit or miss on any non-Apple device.

My work laptop is a common HP model from just a few years ago.

The screen is seriously ‘meh’, a massive upgrade from the previous HP model’s “you paid how much for this?”

Both have plastic cases that are fine but don’t feel tight/solid.

The keyboards are 80% and off center so there’s a numpad, which makes things hard to type for me.

The trackpads are fine. Which is way better than I was expecting.

Neither held a candle in speed or quality to my 16 GB M1 Air, and they are developer laptops, not $600 models.

I’m pretty sure I’d want a Neo over a $600 PC for non-developer work.

And the noise. Spin the fan up. Now down. Now up. Now down. Random spinning HD noises too (2nd disk I don’t use). Just to sit on the desktop.

That’s why you shouldn’t take it at face value. Ethically speaking, the experiment must have been approved by the institutional review board. If there’re ethical concerns, these can be raised with them.

But I don’t think anyone “feeling uneasy” should be an argument once the ethical concerns have been considered and experiment has been approved.