They start with some simple AI image generation and move on to more and more complex examples that includes a brief introduction to some key parameters, changing and including broader image sources, and then generating various famous artistic styles.
They finish out the intro with some links to help you learn more:
Lexica — a repository of images generated using Stable Diffusion and the corresponding prompt. Searchable by keyword.
Stable Diffusion Artist Style Studies — A non-exhaustive list of artists Stable Diffusion might recognize, as well as general descriptions of their artistic style. There is a ranking system to describe how well Stable Diffusion responds to the artist’s name as a part of a prompt.
The AI Art Modifiers List — A photo gallery showcasing some of the strongest modifiers you can use in your prompts, and what they do. They’re sorted by modifier type.
Top 500 Artists Represented in Stable Diffusion — We know exactly what images were included in the Stable Diffusion training set, so it is possible to tell which artists contributed the most to training the AI. Generally speaking, the more strongly represented an artist was in the training data, the better Stable Diffusion will respond to their name as a keyword.
The Stable Diffusion Subreddit — The Stable Diffusion subreddit has a constant flow of new prompts and fun discoveries. If you’re looking for inspiration or insight, you can’t go wrong.
There’s a whole host of gripes about Windows 11. There have been performance and compatibility issues that are not present on Windows 10. Others greatly dislike the UI changes (this is my big gripe). Still others mention being told their hardware is incompatible. However, you may, like many others, find yourself FORCED to upgrade to Windows 11 whether you want to or not. Windows has a nasty habit of pushing such upgrades without asking.
If you want to make sure you don’t get a Windows 11 upgrade but still keep getting Windows 10 updates, you can try this trick:
First, navigate to Windows Update, then hit Pause Updates on that page.
Run services.msc, find the Windows Update service and Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS), right click on them and pick Stop.
Next, browse to C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\, and delete the contents.
That is it. The two services will eventually restart on their own, and next time it checks for updates it will only get Windows 10 updates.
Edit – If you want an extra layer of assurance, run the tool InControl from GRC, this free utility changes a few Microsoft sanctioned registry keys to specify what version and feature update of Windows you want to remain on. There are also details on those registry keys for those that would rather manually configure it themselves: https://www.grc.com/incontrol.htm
“Air gapping” is a security measure that involves a computer being physically isolated and incapable of connecting wirelessly or physically with other computers or network devices. It’s used in high security setups. The idea is that if the system is physically incapable of connecting to other systems or networks, it should be safe. Right?
Researchers created a malware program that regulates CPU load and core frequency in a particular manner to make the power supplies on air-gapped computers emanate electromagnetic radiation on a low-frequency band (0 – 48 kHz).
While the attack requires at least one instance of physical access to install the malware, such attacks have happened. Examples include the Stuxnet worm in Iran’s uranium enrichment facility at Natanz, Agent.BTZ that infected a U.S. military base, and the Remsec modular backdoor that collected information from air-gapped government networks for over five years.
Mordechai Guri explains the primary source of electromagnetic radiation in switched mode power supplies is due to their internal design and switching characteristics in the technical paper. “In the conversion from AC-DC and DC-DC, the MOSFET switching components turning on or off at specific frequencies create a square wave,” the researcher details. The electromagnetic wave can carry a payload of raw data, following a strain of eight bits that signify the beginning of the transmission.
The attack works against air gapped pc’s, laptops, and even a raspberry pi. The receiver can be as simple as a cell phone.
Disney published this paper about using AI to digitally age and de-age actors in a fraction of the time it usually takes for normal frame-by-frame manual aging techniques used today.
FRAN (which stands for face re-aging network) is a neural network that was trained using a large database containing pairs of randomly generated synthetic faces at varying ages, which bypasses the need to otherwise find thousands of images of real people at different (documented) ages that depict the same facial expression, pose, lighting, and background. Using synthetically generated training data is a method that’s been utilized for things like training self-driving cars to handle situations that aren’t easily reproducible.
The age changes are then added/merge onto the face. It appears this approach fixes a lot of the issues common in this kind of approach: facial identity loss, poor resolution, and unstable results across subsequent video frames. It does have some issues with greying hair and aging very young actors, but produces results better than techniques used just a few years ago (not that the bar was very hard to beat).
The Markup reports that tax filing services like H&R Block, TaxAct, and TaxSlayer have been quietly sending their financial information to Facebook.
These services use Meta Pixel (also known as the Facebook retargeting pixel) – a snippet of code inserted into the back end of your website to track visitor activity. It works by loading a small library of functions which can use whenever a site visitor takes an action (called an event) that they want to track (called a conversion). Tracked conversions appear in the Ads Manager where they can be used to measure the effectiveness.
It turns out the information sent included users’ income, filing status, refund amounts, and other information. The team that found this behavior has a github repo that shows the actual data sent if you want the gory details.
Intuit’s TurboTax also uses Meta Pixel – but they do not appear to send financial information to Meta.
I have a nice MSI MPG Z690 Carbon WIFI motherboard with my shiny new Intel 12th gen i9-12900k processor. Recently, I tried to upgrade my 1TB Samsung 960 EVO M.2 with a 2TB Samsung 970 EVO Plus M.2; but ran into a hitch. When I booted from the Windows 10 installation USB, the NVME drive would not show up in the list of drives for installation. Running Windows repair tools didn’t help.
Hmmm. I tried running the installer repair tools – but it would give a unhelpful errors and no drives would appear. Even though I had 1 NVME drive and a standard old SATA drive as well.
This is probably because you have Intel Rapid Storage Technology enabled. If yes, I would suggest keep using it, because it will let you get as much performance as possible, from you NVMe drives, on Windows 11. You need to run W11 installer (with VMD enabled) and the load Intel drivers. It will make your M.2 drive appear in the Windows installer. https://download.msi.com/dvr_exe/mb/intel_rst_19.0.zip Remember that the drive will never be visible in BIOS when using VMD. It is normal.
If you rather don’t want to use VMD (not recommended) – disable the Intel Rapid Storage (or Intel RAID – don’t remember how it’s called in BIOS).
When I went into BIOS, I noticed VMD (RAID) was indeed enabled in my BIOS because I had a set of RAID 5 drives on my previous installation. For an experiment, I turned off VMD (RAID) in BIOS, booted from my Win10 installer USB, and sure enough I could see my NVME and other drives during Windows installation. If I turned VMD back on, the drives would disappear.
The solution came from something I should have realized earlier. The Windows 10 installer (and apparently Windows 11) doesn’t know about my fancy Z690 chipset storage devices. I needed to download the Intel RAID storage controller drivers, unzip them on my Windows installation USB drive, and then manually load those drivers at the drive selection page during Windows installation.
So, here’s the two solutions (but solution 1 is best)
Solution 1: This method includes full Intel storage controller and RAID support. It’s your best bet for full perforrmance and full functionality.
Turn the system off and install the NVME M.2 drive
Boot to BIOS, turn VMD (RAID) on
Save BIOS settings and boot off the Win10 install USB stick
When you get to the drive selection page in the Windows installer there will be no drives. Click the ‘Load Driver’ button.
Browse to the USB stick, select the directory where you unzipped the Intel RST drivers. Be sure to point to the proper sub-directory with the floppy version of the driver files: <unzip root>\VMD\f6vmdflpy-x64\
You should see at least two Intel devices listed. You don’t need to select anything, just hit ok and Windows will load the drivers
You’ll be returned to the drive selection page and you should see your NVME, RAID, and other drives listed!
Pick the boot drive you want to install too, and hit OK.
Windows 10 will install and you should boot normally after that. You should see all your drives – including any RAID sets you already had.
Be sure to run Windows Update and download/install the latest Intel RAID drivers.
Solution 2: No RAID support later without completely reinstalling Windows. It’s also likely you will not be getting the full performance of your NVMe or other drives either.
Create the USB Windows 10 installation stick.
Turn the system off and install the NVME M.2 drive.
Boot into BIOS, and turn VMD (RAID) off
Reboot from the windows installer USB stick.
Install Windows like normal. Turning off VMD will let you see all your attached drives during the installation phase (all but any RAID drives) and install Win10 on any of them.
You will not be able to use hardware RAID of your motherboard unless you completely re-install Windows. If you turn VMD/RAID on later, the system will ‘lose’ the NVME drive and refuse to boot. If you set it up with the RAID controllers, then the Windows bootloader apparently makes sure the drivers for the VMD device are always loaded. This is why it’s recommended to use solution 1, because it lets you use RAID later if you want.
