Pattern Ghost

Jumped through the hoops to try Google's AI image generation and boy does it suck.  It doesn't do art styles and it has a strong tendency to use copyrighted superhero/villain designs rather than creating its own.  Highly disappointing.
 
Meanwhile DALL-E 3 really doesn't want to generate images with weapons, which is a problem when I'm trying to get it to do fantasy art.

I don't want this to sound as snippy as it does, and I have run through several choices of phrasing, but the fact is that anything can be taken wrong; as such is true, I felt this preamble to be in order.
 
Again:  not trying to be a jerk here:
 
What are the in-game mechanical effects of a headache? Or a toothache?  Or poison ivy?  Or a wound that is showing early signs of infection?  Or hemorrhoids?
 
When we know that, we can then design their remedies.  For my own games, these things do _not_ have mechanical effects unless they are specifically listed on a character sheet as Disadplications, in which case the mechanic as regards that particular chracter is listed on the sheet.  I have never been submitted a character with hemorrhoids or allergies or "prone to sunburn," so I have never had to worry about it.
 
Outside the character sheet, these are, in my games, _narrative_ problems, and they are dealt with in a narrative fashion:
 
 
You were out way to late on patrol; you've got a spliting headache, and you can hear that alarm clock in your optic nerve.
 
Looks like it is going to be another two-cup morning.  I put the cofee pot on, pop a couple of aspirin and start getring ready for work.
 
You've had your shower amd a quick breakfast, and soon you are finishing off your second coffee and rinsing your plate- not quite enough time to wash up if you're going to catch your ride share to work.  At least that headache has eased off.
 
Yeah, I dont want to be late!  I am sort of hoping that sarcophagus we're studying might shed some light  on the case my alter-ego has gotten tangled up in....
 
 
That sort of thing.
 
 

It's definitely too early but that's partially by design.  Satya Nadella (who is CEO of Microsoft, which owns OpenAI which is ChatGPT and DALL-E) gave an interview in Wired in which he explained why he unleashed AI too early.  In a nutshell, Google was widely regarded as the leader in generative AI, but was progressing carefully to avoid a Skynet event.  Microsoft had acquired OpenAI a while back in order to compete.  When ChatGPT reached version 2.0 OpenAI demoed it to Nadella, and when Nadella saw that it could write code he pulled the trigger on going public.
 
We spend a lot of time in this thread on generative AI imagery and text, but the impact of AI on software development is orders of magnitude greater.  It's literally software writing itself.  And so Nadella moved to seize the initiative, and a chunk of market share, even though ChatGPT was still kinda racist and even though DALL-E couldn't count fingers.
 
The other piece that's often overlooked is that AI is going to completely transform user interfaces.  In the very near future, instead of clicking around in web pages, you're going to open the AI chat window (or even a voice session) and tell the AI "I want to book a flight to Singapore on Friday" or "I need help fixing my plumbing" and the interaction will be conversational from there.  There's already been one attempt to fire a call center and replace them with AI that hilariously crashed and burned, but the day is coming when that will be the norm.  It may be hard to sympathize with call center employees in India and the Philippines, but their days are numbered.
 
 
I think what's actually happening is that the main players all realized they were sitting on enough cash to settle with every starving artist and photographer on Earth, and it's a small price to pay for getting AI out there.
 
 
 
From what research I've done, there are two sides to this: watermarking non-AI images to prevent their use in training AI models, and watermarking AI images so that meatbags like us will be able to distinguish reality.  The latter is difficult because it's extremely easy to crop or photoshop an image to get rid of an AI watermark (ironically, probably with an AI tool).  The former is more of a technique to detect whether a given image was used to train an AI model, but even if it works it would require access to the model, which may not be possible if someone is running a private instance of DALL-E or Midjourney or whatever.

"Evading" was super weird, but here's "black and white pen and ink art "evading attack" highly stylized".
 

 
It's hilarious how it defaults to Batman.
 
Actually all of these were great, just unrelated to the prompt.
 

 

 

 
 
 
I wonder how long those links will work.

So, I was going through the Inktober prompts with Bing/DALL-E, to see what it'd do with them. I get to "dodge" and it just spits out cars. So, I modified it to "dodging" (full prompt "black and white pen and ink art "dodging" highly stylized") to try to get the action of dodging. Instead, I got an illustration for Dante's Inferno, maybe:
 

 
 
I think DALL-E isn't quite ready for prime time.

The downside is that stopping to buy a lottery ticket would delay your departure from Wyoming...

Keith Giffen, Co-Creator Of Rocket Raccoon & Lobo, Has Died, Aged 70

When the rules get in the way of the fun, change the rules.  The easiest approach feels like either allowing Continuous on Healing (the reduced re-use time cost will still keep the recovery rate down).
 
Alternatively, what about a "time delay" limitation on Power Defense? It doesn't take Extra Time to activate, just Extra Time to reduce the Adjustment taken. That relies on the attack applying against Power Defense, though.
 
If it were my game, I'd look for a way to keep the cost down, even if it's handwavy, as I don't think this would come up all that often.  If these effects could be avoided entirely with 25 points of power defense, recovering faster should cost less than the 25 point cost of full immunity.

Cranky old man. I already have the costume.

Deciding it needs to be done.  Once I can't get around that, I'll get it figured out.
 
 

We laugh but I'm pretty sure Neal Stephenson wrote Zodiac in a weekend.
 
Then again, bulk word output has never been a weakness of Neal Stephenson.

Wet.
 
I am going to be wet for Halloween.  Since I first came to Georgia in '79, it rains on Halloween.  Every single one of them.
 
 
 
 
Dude, I'm a sixty three year old curmudgeon.  Be thankful when I have pants on, let alone a costume.  If you see me on the front porch, it's because I don't want to walk upstairs to pee.
 
 

Cyberwarfare against Israel has started. Russian-backed hacker group Killnet is claiming responsibility and making threats of more attacks. A WSJ article (paywalled) reports that US intelligence say there haven't been any serious attacks so far, just DDOS and defacing attacks against Israeli government websites. I'm not linking anything. because it doesn't appear anyone really knows anything yet. No point in posting any rush to be first articles.
 
 

Cyberwarfare against Israel has started. Russian-backed hacker group Killnet is claiming responsibility and making threats of more attacks. A WSJ article (paywalled) reports that US intelligence say there haven't been any serious attacks so far, just DDOS and defacing attacks against Israeli government websites. I'm not linking anything. because it doesn't appear anyone really knows anything yet. No point in posting any rush to be first articles.
 
 

Repetition. You can go about it in many ways, but moving things into long term memory basically requires repetition. Or trauma. But since trauma's a bit impractical -- eventually the subject will get desensitized to most common methods employed to instill trauma in a classroom setting -- it really comes down to some form of repetition. I think how you receive the information matters to a degree, but not as much as sheer repetition. (As you'll see, a good amount of variety in input methods is helpful, IMO. I just don't buy into the "visual/verbal/tactile" learner model as being that important.)
 
If you want to remember facts, you can simply feed yourself the facts through repetition, maybe varying the intake methods. If you want to learn theories, proceed the same way, but you'll probably want to involve some practical thinking exercises in your repetition, similar to learning a physical skill. If you want to learn a physical skill, you perform it many times, until it's an ingrained skill. 
 
Here's a strategy that works well for most college work: Do your homework. Keep up on your assigned reading. Go into class, and take notes on the lecture (ideally, the reading topic is assigned in advance of the lecture, so the lecture serves to reinforce the reading. Immediately after class, if you have time, re-read your notes. Correct any sloppy writing so you can decipher it later if necessary. That little bit of repetition is very useful for shoving stuff into longer term memory. You go home, you rewrite your notes or type them up again. Then you do your homework. Re-read those notes periodically. and review all of your notes for the class, and think about how all of this fits together. (And classes should be designed so that they reference earlier material in later lessons if possible.) Also keep notes on your reading. Screw highlighting. Write the important points down. The act of writing helps shove that stuff up into the brain better.
 
Other forms of repetition for learning languages, used by students (and a bit by me) in DLI: Flash cards. Labeling everything in your environs in your target language. Watching news broadcasts in your target language. Outside reading in your target language -- newspapers and periodicals are good here, but you can read literature as well if you're more intermediate to advanced. Playing games in your target language, if available. Full immersion, communicating only in your target language (at one point, you didn't get fed at the chow hall if you couldn't order your food in the target language, and the chow hall was divided by languages, but they weren't doing that while I was there.) All forms of repetition. 
 
 

Cranky old man. I already have the costume.

Cranky old man. I already have the costume.

I am going to be Jason with a facehugger on my face as well as his regular mask. I got both the Jason mask and the facehugger.

Cranky old man. I already have the costume.

Most of Russia's Black Sea fleet which was based in Crimea, have been compelled to withdraw back to Russia, under threat of missile and drone attacks. A country with no navy to speak of has defeated an entire fleet.

That's unkind to semi-feral dogs.

Yes. If the goal of forcing a screen to be on displaying the message is to get the message read, then there's a design failure if it kills a battery in the process. 
 
Also keep in mind that phone batteries drain faster with age. You're supposed to swap them out after they take less than 80% of their original charge. People without the means to do so, who may even be getting by on hand me downs with weak batteries, would be negatively impacted. So, it's a system design that also impacts the poor.
 
Of course, it's probably their fault for being poor, right?
 
There are a lot of other situations -- including a large scale emergency -- that may result in a phone not being charged at all times.