Updated install instructions for Flux AI
Dominik Bößl made a pretty straightforward video on how to get FLUX.1 installed and using StabilityMatrix as package manager so you can use multiple different generative AI packages.
AI Brings History to Life
AI can bring still images to life. I wrote about MyHeritage Deep Nostalgia tool before.
Trying to convince AI they are living in a simulation
Several companies are developing AI powered NPC’s for games – complete with behaviors and realtime voice synthesis. This YouTuber decided to try and tell the NPC’s they were living in a simulation – and the results were not so different than what would happen if you tried this on the streets in real life. With science telling us reality may be a simulation, maybe we’re all just layers of bots in the ether…or destined for a higher reality.
Browsing the internet on a Mac Plus
Hunter Irving picked up a 1986 Macintosh Plus and helped create MacProxy Plus, an open-source app that lets vintage Macs browse the modern web.
He uses a BlueSCSI device to emulate a rare mac ethernet adapter (Daynaport SCSI/Link-T) and a Macproxy to convert modern web pages to something 90’s era html only browsers can display. He improved Macproxy to have modular components with custom handling for specific websites. Thus, MacProxy Plus. He used claude.ai to help write some of the proxy.
He then went on to handle images – and video – using dithering and generated ASCII art.
Links:
- BlueSCSI v2 Pico-W: https://bluescsi.com/v2
- Github: https://github.com/hunterirving/macproxy_plus
- Follow author at Gobbler ( https://hunterirving.com/gobbler ) and Huntergram ( https://hunterirving.com/huntergram ).
AI runs 100m dash
AI Warehouse tasked a group of five AI agents to complete a 100-meter dash. Each was trained using Deep Reinforcement Learning and each agent has different physical characteristics. It’s kind of like watching AI play QWOP.
AI Generated Vintage Christmas
AI Retro Rewind has a few AI generated channels going for Christmas. This one combines AI generated 50’s retro-futuristic images with AI jazzy tunes. Oh, what the AI world has wrought.
Using AI as a character animation compression algorithm
Daniel Holden from Ubisoft gave this great talk at GDC 2018 on how data-driven analysis of their character animation control system turned into a AI system that vastly reduced the complexity and manpower involved in building an animation system for character control.
AI Black Mirror
The AI Black Mirror YouTube channel has some real nightmare fuel videos. The All Purpose Everything Sauce ad demonstrates what a hard time AI has with understanding how people eat.
McDonald’s quits AI
McDonald’s is ending a test run of AI drive-thrus. It paired with IBM and put it in more than 100 restaurants since 2021. The goal was to simplify voice-activated ordering. It certainly couldn’t have anything to do with replacing workers with automation given the new $20/hour minimum wage for fast food restaurants (CA is considering another 3.5% increase in 2025).
Two sources familiar with the technology told CNBC that among its challenges, it had issues interpreting different accents and dialects, which affected order accuracy. McDonald’s will keep using IBM’s other solutions, but AI ordering seems to be on hold.
Reminds me of some issues iPhone has in Scotland.
Neat visualization
This could make a fun little demo – flying through a cityscape with buildings that are constantly generated by AI – getting funkier and funkier as you go along