You can get wonderful photographs with the exact composition and scene you want for all sorts of use cases.
Second hack.
Model the scene you want from low resolution geometry (boxes, spheres etc) for the composition. Then use that to ground the generated image (ie give it as reference) and ask the model to re-imagine it in the style you want.
Is it the physical act of drawing it manually? Surely not, because generative art[1] (the original non-AI kind) is a widely recognized thing.
Or maybe it's the amount of effort that's spent creating it? Surely not, because paintings as trivial as a simple black or red square are considered art[2].
Or maybe just the very act of self-expression makes something into a piece of art?
Here's Wikipedia's definition:
> Art is a diverse range of human activity centered around works, crafted as an expression of creativity or imagination, which are expected to provide an audience with a worthwhile experience—generally, an experience of emotion, thinking, or beauty.
So is the thesis that, no matter how it's used, and no matter how much effort is spent, an image created with the help of generative AI can never satisfy this definition?
No, those are not art in themselves if they are based on dumb prompting.
They are random noise pastiches.
Art requires authorship.
I mean that's my definition :)
The author needs to have sufficient level of artistic skill and talent to be able to produce pieces with artistic merit. Even if they just prompt it - which they likely wont because prompt based outputs alone generally suck.
My definition for sufficient level of skill where AI tools become useful as a form of expression with true artistic merit, would be that you must be able to generate the same image with traditional media without AI:s help
If it turns out there was deep authorship in these works on some level (other than just running through random prompts) then the situation becomes more nuanced.
You should be able to tweak each individual detail with exact authorship. And _understand_ what you are doing.
So if an established painter, photographer or cinematographer uses prompt based tools, there the tools become part of expressive workflow that likely has higher artistic standard.
You can't really develop this sensitivity with prompting alone (generally).
_General_ artistic value is a DIFFERENT thing from doing something a person personally enjoys, though!
It's totally fine to enjoy prompting images.
People enjoy doing puzzles, building legos, practicing piano, playing computer games etc.
Ie engaged in activites which they enjoyu without external valuation mechanism involved.
These things are called _hobbies_. And it's awesome to have hobbies whatever they are.
I'm more surprised that people think using AI automatically makes image generation not art. AI tooling can be quite complex, and it's much harder than most people think to produce consistent, compelling results, especially with local setups on modest hardware.
I like your analogy. Plotter art is a thing. Mostly boring, but there are some people who push the boundaries (and break pens/machines/paper/drivers). I think art is about exploring these boundaries.
You can use AI to transfer content between mediums and manufacture designs.
Succesfull artists don’t necessarily develop the pieces beyond conceptualization and editorial control.
See for instance Damien Hirsch. Or the academic painters with their own workshops.
AI can handle large amounts of routine tasks. Like converting an image to a 3D mesh. I don’t frankly see the difference between that and Damien Hirsch giving his craftsmen a task to deliver a piece.
If you talk to modern art critica you will end up with argumentation where the concept of the piece is what matters not the execution or it’s quality.
If original concept is all that matters very hard to see how AI generated steps could not be part of that pipeline.
Nobody is claiming getting random stuff from generic non-specific prompting counts as art.
But what if you do an original painting or drawing; then have AI convert it to 3D mesh and print it - and pass it off as art? That is a non-obvious situation.
That was because they were training for the "manual labour" part. Which is what most people enjoy and cherish, I think (including myself).
But that's not really how art market values the merchandise.
Conceptualization suffices for the market after sufficient prestige and brand value exists. I guess the Damien Hirsch reference was not that obvious for this venue so -
Note: I'm not saying you should measure the value of art with money. I'm saying those people _who measure the value of art in monetary terms_ may value branding and conceptualization more than manual skill.
My friend who is professional artist argues that no photography is art. If you disregard his view then you need to define where art begins and 'some rando with a camera' ends.
Weird how many people on HN think this is about the count. Also it caused animal displacement from what I could gather, Google of course did this willingly and knowingly, because they know nothing will happen.
This here is the exact sentiment which is making the entire country quite angry.
These are not pointless bureaucratic hoops.
The entire voting population is quite worried of large multinational companies starting extractive projects that damage the environment, like mines.
These are the same processes that are put into place to stop say mining companies wantonly ravaging the landscape.
It's a canary of a large company attempting to avoid the process, which was put in place to protect the environment.
So everyone is now quite concerned that are the environmental protections really functional or not.
Basically everyone considers nature to be a public good in Finland. There is "every mans right" which allows you to camp and collect berries almost everywhere, for instance. Majority of the population has vacation homes in the forests next to lakes. A large mine that ignores environmental effects can thus damage both the public goods and the value of private properties quite a lot. I mean - that is the feeling the people have.
So it's not about "company doing something in their own property, big deal". It's about respecting safety mechanism to protect public goods.
And, that the government should keep everyone equal under the law.
No one is thinking only about few trees. Everyone is quite angry that a company could not follow due process without any backlash and worried what happens with, say the next large mine if the systems intended to protect the nature are not really working.
It’s the same bureaucratic hoops that allow for clean drinking water and fresh air.
This wasn’t even something that was up in the air, it was well known the datacenter wouldn’t be built around the trees, the permits and everything else were formalities. To just blatantly ignore that is causing upset.
And Google were well aware of all such requirements before they even started the process of acquiring the area.
This. Today is this, tomorrow is people doing car turns where it's not allowed, the day after tomorrow there's chaos like in Mexico (my country) because nobody gives a fuck about crap.
I have huge respect for cultures/countries where the rule of law is observed by its citizens just because it is the right thing to do. If other societies were more like that, every thing would be better.
[I visited Finland, Sweden and Denmark some months ago.]
It's not the missing assessment itself that makes people frown, it's mainly the skipped bureaucracy by the company, and secondarily the poor enforcement of said bureaucracy by the local administration.
A small minority might be concerned about the trees in the area, but it's not a big topic. Main topics are, again, the bureaucracy and the center's electricity consumption with its effect on consumer electricity bills.
> It was about making an environmental assessment before starting on the clearing.
Proof? Because it was already rezoned to industrial from what OP said. Why would it be rezoned if the municipality didn't intend for the trees to be cut and a DC built there?
Yes, generally that's how you make public aware of illegal activity.
Not having news about companies braking laws mean generally that the country is likely quite corrupt.
So I don't know where you are from but in Finland anyone breaking a law is expected to be treated equally.
If an individual had ignored the process to this extent they would be in quite hot water.
A large multinational company avoiding the official process feels unjust and is exactly the thing public has been extremely worried of happening regarding the environmental impact.
So it's not because news inflamed something.
It's because something like this is exactly what the public has been alarmed about for a long time.
Yes, obviously people are only angry about things they know about. This says absolutely nothing about the news articles, as the same thing thing can be said about any event, no matter how justified the anger would be.
An article making people angry doesn't automatically make the article rage- or clickbait.
They definitely intended to cut down the trees. The municipalities far away from cities are poor. And Google is giving payoffs to/threatening local politicians/bureaucrats to get these permits quickly. They promise to fund whatever projects/schools/roads which is pennies to them. While skipping the law set by the central government.
Around here we think that those who pay money to avoid the law have a spot behind the Sauna. I’m quite sure after the next election, because of these shenanigans, we start taxing these DCs to oblivion.
Basically the law says you need to do the assessment if you're removing the trees permanently from over 200 hectares. The company asked for an exemption, the relevant bureau said nope, they cut anyway.
The issue isn't the fact that the law was broken, it was, the issue is that it's been international recurring headlines for 2 weeks despite being a non-story if it happened 5 years ago.
The main issue is that can a large company avoid process in a way that would land an individual in trouble.
It's not about trees.
It's about fairness.
It's also about the fact these processes are in place to stop large companies causing environmental damage.
It can be argued "a few trees isn't much" but it's about the entire protective mechanism to stop, say mining companies, to wantonly ravage the landscape.
If one company can do it, it means the system isn't implementing the protection the voters would like to have for nature.
It is a nothingburger from the fairness point as well. People knowingly and unknowingly violate a lot of permitting processes all the time and in many cases never suffer any consequences even if discovered, unless they have zealous neighbors.
The fact they are rules mean they are expected to be respected and enforced.
You are here repeating the same argument that goes "it's only a crime if you get caught".
This is a specific philosophy of law.
Now while rule of law has different meanings depending on the country where you live, in a nordic democracy like Finland legislation exists for the benefit of public good, and acting by these laws is one of the foundational expectations in the society.
The fact they are recognized to serve the public good, means everyone is expected to follow them, and not following them is not only a process error, but in fact, deeply immoral.
I do realize different countries operate differently and somewhere else laws are not necessarily about trying to achieve philosophical good outcomes for the population.
But in Finland "well it's the law but who follows those things" argument is not common sense rule of thumb but considered wanton disregard of public good - which everyone considers to be a shared responsibility to maintain.
You are misrepresenting what I said. I am talking about fairness of application of law. I am sure Finns are all law abiding citizens, but the point is that regulations are overcomplicated, and a lot of people knowingly or unknowingly violate some a lot of time. In construction in particular.
My claim is that Google is getting unfair (in their favor) treatment is incorrect, because average Elias will also get no or next to no negative consequences making a very similar mistake on average Elias's scale.
To be clear my intent is not to misrepresent your statement, just to explain how I hear it.
"I am talking about fairness of application of law"
But there is no fairness in application of law?
The law is the law. Just like 1 + 1 is 2, the role of the legal process is to compute this. And it should apply to same to any party that is active in a legal process.
The point it does "apply the same". And sometimes it doesn't apply, but it doesn't apply "the same" between Google and avg Elias - at least as far as I can see.
> ...average Elias will also get no or next to no negative consequences making a very similar mistake on average Elias's scale.
1) The same consequences are probably a lot less "next to no" on Elias's scale.
2) As Uncle Joe is said to have said, "enough quantity becomes a quality of its own". Google-scale chopping down trees is not just a little bigger, it's so much bigger that it becomes a fundamentally different thing than Elias-scale wrong composting.
So yes, anything short of shutting down any plans for new Google data centers in Finland[1] is Google getting favourable treatment; that claim is not incorrect.
___
[1]: And preferably shutting down any existing ones, too. Just so they, and others like them, maybe will learn.
It was commercial timberland before this. It was going to be harvested anyway, which may not be as heavy impact as fully clearing it, but it is not natural forest.
Notably, these kind of hit pieces are almost always about extracting some concession from the targeted organization (Google, in this case).
The assessment also concerns assessing for example runoff into rivers and neighbouring areas which include natural peatland. The culture in Finland respects the rule of law and people are often quite informed and detail oriented about matters of land management. The process exists for a reason and if people try to shortcut it the land should be forfitted although clearly there is so much money involved that it won't be. If they don't send a string message now, it errodes people's trust in the law and society which as said is very important in Finland. It keeps things working well.
Yes, my point, the media fosters misinformation and deceit to foster rage all in the name of getting people to view ads.
The logging forest was getting cleared not matter what, and it's microscopic compared to total forested land. So the actual story is a permitting fumble.
And entire country getting outraged over a permitting fumble (a parking ticket level occurnace) is something only institution that lives and dies by hijacking eyeballs could orchestrate.
How many times do we get to take “microscopic compared to total forested land” away?
Boy I sure hope it’s infinity times!
Anyway it seems like you’re incorrect. They actually didn’t have the approval necessary, and no, a zoning approval does not grant all other required forms of approval (obviously).
I don't think people realize that there was no option of do we not log the forest, but imho the issue is any forest being cut down for data centers is a waste of sand and effort, make them in deserts or dry land. In the middle of oceans works as well, we are getting data centers in all sorts of weird and imho wrong places.
I find this issue small but the choice of these companies to pick the convenient location for them to build a data center concerning, and govts shouldn't be bending over. If these things can be built in space we can build them in places where no one lives and no living being is harmed or logged.. cough.
On the contrary, north is exactly the right place to build them. There's plenty of space with low ecological value, more electricity generation (wind), cooling needs are reduced, and the heat can be used (and is used) for district heating.
Now one can argue whether we should build that many data centers or not. But when one is built, the north is a good choice.
No, you found the Finn who wants everyone to respect law and order.
Including large multinational companies.
I do realize different countries have different names for various political alignments but I've never heard respecting law and order to be particular to liberals.
Yes! That’s why the headline says “overdesigned”:)
It’s designed as a universal native app. So browser here really is just a platform for deployment.
The design is for a an application that is a single download and few megabytes in size that runs the same on desktops natively (after compilation) and in the browser. Rust ecosystem is getting _really_ nice for that.
So it’s Egui with WebGPU backend.
So if the requirement is ”an universal app” it’s nicer alternative than using Electron but Tauri might have been a more reasonable choice if I didn’t want to leave the door open more for more options on rendering backend on desktop.
Sort of same lineage in thinking as Flash, Java apps (circa 2000 :) ) etc. Or something like Ghostty.
The downside is that it does not use native GUI for much which means it’s closer to a game than ”professional” desktop app.
”This can result in several different implementations of a function that differ only by type — often, the more idiomatic C approach would be to use macros or void * arguments.”
”Idiomatic” - is a ridiculous tautology I wish people discussing languages would stop using.
The only non-idiomatic code written seriosly is that which the compiler/interpreter does not understand.
Claiming universal superiority of style is shallow and thoughtless.
Sure - when discussing C of all languages this expression felt shallower than usual though.
If you are really enthusiastic you can write _obsfuscated_ C. And people can kind of agree what that is when they see it.
But _idiomatic_ ? Good luck defining what that is.
The term has sort of stuck in Python and there it's purpose is a bit more clear. There is this _object_ way of doing things, there is this _expression_ way of doing things etc and the interaction patterns work really nicely.
But you can't really use that expression in other languages which lack the same level of institutional design without sounding very much out of touch.
In general dubious binaries aren't really a problem, because releases tend to be done by people or groups with reputations. Lots of people are ideologically or technologically motivated to release stuff and have been doing so for many years.
And now a days in the age of Denuvo and things like this, cracked binaries are sometimes even 'cleaner' than the official releases.
Unlikely most of the Denuvo cracks actually remove the virtualized code from the executable. Not feasible without extensive binary rewriter tooling (that, while being sloppable, still takes a lot of time to slop).
Interesting yeah you're right. Looking it up it seems that only 2 of the Denuvo cracks have completely removed Denuvo - oddly enough Assassin's Creed games both times. Usually they just use various tricks to fool the authentication, but leave the performance degradation and other issues of Denuvo.
It'll be interesting to see if LLMs do increase the rate of completely cleans.
I can't edit this post anymore but if you wanna read a bunch of stuff on the topic https://k0mkc.hatenablog.com/ is a nice blog. All in Japanese, but it should be perfectly translatable.
Funny thing is they removed all their blogposts on Griffin (an obfuscator several anticheats, including EA's, Riot's and FaceIT's utilize) for whatever reason.
This is false analogue. Comparing SWE to pianist and using desktop as the similar element is false. Desktop to SWE is like … how the concert pianist arrives at the concert venue. You want the pianist to arrive on time but you really don’t care about their mode of transportation.
Besides it’s good to take things slow when face to face with people.
Learn to draw.
Then ask the model to restyle the image.
You can get wonderful photographs with the exact composition and scene you want for all sorts of use cases.
Second hack.
Model the scene you want from low resolution geometry (boxes, spheres etc) for the composition. Then use that to ground the generated image (ie give it as reference) and ask the model to re-imagine it in the style you want.
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