Marvin

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Marvin
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  • Surgeons say Apple Vision Pro saves them pain and injury

    hogman said:
    All I got from this is, how does a monitor cost $30,000? Especially when all the monitors I see in hospitals display simple graphs and numbers.
    It's similar to reference monitors for movies. Apple compared their XDR displays to $20000+ reference displays from Sony. They tend to have better calibration and features for their use cases.

    https://www.monitors.com/collections/surgical-displays
    https://www.monitors.com/collections/surgical-displays/products/barco-mdsc-8358-k9307938

    https://synergymedco.com/product/sony-lmd-xh550mt-55in-4k-3d-2d-lcd-medical-monitor/ (medical features listed)
    https://www.medicalecart.com/products/sony-lmd-xh550mt-55-inch-4k-3d-2d-lcd-monitor-high-performance-medical-monitor-box-of-01.html

    Low glare, picture-in-picture, 3D image input, color accurate, designed for easy cleaning for hygiene etc.
    jahbladeAlex_Vwatto_cobra
  • Commemorating Steve Jobs and his continuing influence on technology

    nubus said:
    charlesn said:
    As for Vision Pro being a dud--that's hilarious for a product that has been in the hands of consumers for all of 32 weeks. Please cite fact-based sources for its "failure" that include Apple's actual internal projection for sales and how actual sales have fallen short of that number. 
    AVP was presented in June 2023 and 16 months later all we get are quarterly dino videos. The current hardware / pricing / positioning is a failure. Most developers and customers have long forgotten AVP and so have most of us at AI. AVP is what happens when a non-product, non-founder CEO decides to invent the future of computing. We have been here before.
    There are Apple patents for this product from 2006:


    The images in the patent look almost exactly like AVP.


    The problem is this technology is still at the large helmet stage, even after nearly 20 years since this patent was filed and the above video was made.

    What it really needs is a major technology breakthrough like how the multi-touch glass interface enabled the iPhone. There's a missing piece for AR and they are stuck with trying to shoehorn technology that's currently available to make it work.
    ronnDAalseth
  • macOS Sequoia can run on Valve's Steam Deck with hacks

    tipoo said:
    Now if only Apple dropped a bag of cash at Valve to bring that ARM Proton port to macOS natively, so that Steam games "Just Work" on macOS...That's the dream. 
    This is currently available to an extent due to Apple's Game Porting Toolkit, which uses Wine like Proton and has a DirectX to Metal translation layer.

    Valve's Proton has a DirectX to Vulkan translation layer (DXVK), which would need MoltenVK to convert to Metal as Mac doesn't support Vulkan directly.

    Crossover and Whisky integrate Apple's D3DMetal translation to run Windows games like Proton. It supports a lot of games, there are over 500 games tested on the following channel:

    https://www.youtube.com/@macprotips/videos

    It supports higher-end recent games like Horizon Forbidden West:



    The only problem with this setup is you have to install Steam inside the compatibility layers, then install the games inside this, sometimes with patches. It's not very user-friendly.

    If it was possible to use either the App Store or native Mac Steam and install a pre-wrapped version of each game that is already setup and tuned, that would be much easier and a license per install could be paid to the company that provides the wrapper if it's from a 3rd party.
    muthuk_vanalingamwatto_cobra
  • Apple is reportedly not investing in OpenAI

    chasm said:
    The "Harry Potter" models are interesting, but I don't quite understand why "Harry" always looks freshly beaten up in the graphic provided.
    The AI model training works like search engines where they scan images and then add labels. This is why high quality training data is needed for good models. The marketing material for Harry Potter shows images like this were he is injured:


    The AI does face recognition on images like this to find it contains an image pattern for Harry Potter and stores the pattern. When someone asks for Harry Potter, it uses this pattern as a source. It may not understand that this pattern contains injuries but AI models will eventually be trained to understand this. For now, people have to use negative prompts to tune image output so they request that the output doesn't match certain patterns.
    watto_cobra
  • Big Tech-funded TV facing a 'schism' in production styles claims Jon Stewart

    entropys said:
    AppleZulu said:
    entropys said:
    chasm said:
    entropys said:
    Writing by committee is no doubt a key factor in the malaise plaguing Hollywood these days. That and risk averse studios doing remakes, sequels and having series run way beyond their use by date.  
    I think you misread the article somewhat. Stewart is arguing FOR writing by committee, but that’s not how most streaming shows work — scripts now are generally written by a single person or a very small team (two, three people tops).

    Your comments on the problems with risk-averse studios, however, I heartily agree with.
    Oh, I didn’t read it wrong,
    I just whole heartedly disagree with Stewart’s view. In fact his whinging he only had four writers instead of his usual 14 seemed like a “let them eat cake” moment. 
    Each story as a general rule should only have one writer. One.  maybe I would admit a writer and an apprentice. But that’s it. 
    This is why we can’t have nice things. People who have no comprehension of how something is made or done come in as management and treat everything like interchangeable widgets. They walk in, look at a process they know absolutely nothing about, slash staff and costs, then wonder why the result is terrible. 

    So you fire all but one and a half of the writers and demand that they “produce content” on a tighter deadline. You only register the lower quality when viewership falls, because as a widgeteer, you have no idea what’s funny or not. 

    Next, you fire the writer and keep the less expensive apprentice. Things get worse. You threaten to replace the apprentice writer with AI, which ironically “produces content” by distilling and regurgitating the output of all those writers rooms that used to exist, but algorithms have no actual sense of what’s funny, so that “product” stinks as well, and nobody’s watching your more efficiently managed show any more. 

    But sure, you know more than the “whinging” Jon Stewart, who has nurtured and shepherded a writers room that produced a generation of the top comic actors and writers who have themselves gone on to collectively produce billions of dollars worth of the best comedic “content” in the last couple of decades. 

    Of course, you’ll be oblivious to what you’ve destroyed and file a report on how you saved money, first by cutting the 14 writers, then by closing down a failing production unit. Your fellow widgeteers will reward you for all the money you saved and give you a huge bonus. Next thing you know, you’re a hot commodity hired by Boeing because they need an expert Vice President of Widgeteers to slash costs to meet their mysteriously falling revenue. 
    It isn’t about money, I just don’t believe you can be creative by committee. You don’t get a work of art with 14 people working on it at once. Heck I would be happy if the one writer got paid as much as the 14 currently do cumulatively, if the product was good.

    Writing by committee is the path to mediocrity.
    Different types of content have different production pipelines. Jon Stewart is talking about a daily current affairs comedy talk show. Those writers aren't all working on the same material, it's a joke factory where they are looking at current news and trying to come up with something funny to say about each news segment:


    A TV show with a storyline needs fewer writers as it has to follow a story arc. Game of Thrones only had a few writers. Here's an episode credits:


    George R.R. Martin was the original writer of the book and David Benioff and D.B. Weiss adapted it for a TV screenplay.

    Foundation was written by Isaac Asimov, screenplay by David S. Goyer and Josh Friedman with some editors:


    There can be a disconnect when production companies who are accustomed to making narrative TV shows try to produce comedy talk shows the same way and vice versa.
    muthuk_vanalingamStrangeDays