Baskentmuhendislik

Tag: times

  • Apple slices its AI image synthesis times in half with new Stable Diffusion fix

    Apple slices its AI image synthesis times in half with new Stable Diffusion fix

    Two examples of Stable Diffusion-generated artwork provided by Apple.
    Enlarge / Two examples of Stable Diffusion-generated artwork provided by Apple.

    Apple

    On Wednesday, Apple released optimizations that allow the Stable Diffusion AI image generator to run on Apple Silicon using Core ML, Apple’s proprietary framework for machine-learning models. The optimizations will allow app developers to use Apple Neural Engine hardware to run Stable Diffusion about twice as fast as previous Mac-based methods.

    Stable Diffusion (SD), which launched in August, is an open source AI image synthesis model that generates novel images using text input. For example, typing “astronaut on a dragon” into SD will typically create an image of exactly that.

    By releasing the new SD optimizations—available as conversion scripts on GitHub—Apple wants to unlock the full potential of image synthesis on its devices. And it notes this on the Apple Research announcement page: “With the growing number of applications of Stable Diffusion, ensuring that developers can leverage this technology effectively is important for creating apps that creatives everywhere will be able to use.”

    Apple also mentions privacy and avoiding cloud computing costs as advantages to running an AI generation model locally on a Mac or Apple device.

    “The privacy of the end user is protected because any data the user provided as input to the model stays on the user’s device,” says Apple. “Second, after initial download, users don’t require an internet connection to use the model. Finally, locally deploying this model enables developers to reduce or eliminate their server-related costs.”

    Currently, Stable Diffusion generates images fastest on high-end GPUs from Nvidia when run locally on a Windows or Linux PC. For example, generating a 512×512 image at 50 steps on an RTX 3060 takes about 8.7 seconds on our machine.

    By comparison, the conventional method of running Stable Diffusion on an Apple Silicon Mac is far slower, taking about 69.8 seconds to generate a 512×512 image at 50 steps using Diffusion Bee in our tests on an M1 Mac Mini.

    According to Apple’s benchmarks on GitHub, Apple’s new Core ML SD optimizations can generate a 512×512 50-step image on an M1 chip in 35 seconds. An M2 does the task in 23 seconds, and Apple’s most powerful Silicon chip, the M1 Ultra, can achieve the same result in only nine seconds. That’s a dramatic improvement, cutting generation time almost in half in the case of the M1.

    Apple’s GitHub release is a Python package that converts Stable Diffusion models from PyTorch to Core ML and includes a Swift package for model deployment. The optimizations work for Stable Diffusion 1.4, 1.5, and the newly released 2.0.

    At the moment, the experience of setting up Stable Diffusion with Core ML locally on a Mac is aimed at developers and requires some basic command-line skills, but Hugging Face published an in-depth guide to setting Apple’s Core ML optimizations for those who want to experiment.

    For those less technically inclined, the previously mentioned app called Diffusion Bee makes it easy to run Stable Diffusion on Apple Silicon, but it does not integrate Apple’s new optimizations yet. Also, you can run Stable Diffusion on an iPhone or iPad using the Draw Things app.

  • Wordle players break streaks to support New York Times union walkout

    Wordle players break streaks to support New York Times union walkout

    Comment

    What would it take for you to break your Wordle streak?

    On Thursday, the Times Guild, a union representing a variety of employees at the New York Times, staged a one-day walkout as part of a high-profile contract bargaining process in which the union and the newspaper’s management have been unable to come to agreement on issues such as compensation, remote work and health care. The union asked readers to avoid interacting with Times content on that day — including avoiding the Times’ mega-popular word game, Wordle. For Wordle players, skipping a day could mean breaking their winning streak, a sacrifice some were willing to make.

    “Read local news. Listen to public radio. Pull out a cookbook. Break your Wordle streak,” the Guild tweeted Wednesday, ahead of the walkout.

    The New York Times purchased Wordle from creator Josh Wardle in January for an “undisclosed price in the low seven figures.” Like several of the Times’ other games — including the crossword and word game Spelling Bee — Wordle has a “streak” counter, which tracks how many days in a row players get the correct answer. Missing a day or getting an answer wrong breaks the streak and resets the counter. While this might not seem like a big deal, the psychology behind streaks can make breaking one a difficult pill for players to swallow.

    For some, breaking their streak to support the union was an easy choice. Wordle player Chuck Smith, from Toronto, told The Washington Post he broke a 338-day streak. “I feel pretty OK about it,” he wrote in a Twitter DM, “my streak was a (rather pointless) point of pride for me with the friends and family I share results with every morning, but I’m happily in solidarity with the striking workers.”

    Wordle player Danny Groner, from New York, told The Post he broke a 51-day streak, a thing he noted doing from “time to time. If I got them all right, all of the time, I would have dropped the game a long time ago for being too easy.”

    One player told The Post via Twitter DM that they changed their computer’s clock to do the Wordle early and avoid breaking a 90-day streak.

    Wordle is 2022’s top Google search term, above both Ukraine and the queen

    Players and labor activists on social media also spoke about sacrificing their streaks to support the union.

    “Let your broken streak be a badge of solidarity,” tweeted pop culture critic Matt Baume, posting a picture of his 166-day streak.

    “Break your streak. It will be OK,” tweeted the AFL-CIO, America’s largest federation of unions.

    Some fans shared Wordle alternatives, and Chris Pitts of Texas even made their own version, Strikle, which, according to Vice, plays the union song “Solidarity Forever” and thanks players for not being “scabs,” labor slang for a person who crosses a picket line, if they get the right answer. (I did not get the right answer.)

    Other players weren’t aware of the union’s call to skip the daily puzzle. On the Wordle subreddit, some lamented not knowing about the call sooner. On social media, other players declined to break their streak consciously, with some claiming they didn’t see the point, and others not interested in taking such an action.

    A broken or intact Wordle streak can be about more than just some numbers you see every day, or share with your friends on social media. As The Cut explored in 2019, people can become attached to their streaks, and the bigger a streak grows, the more a person might feel they have to lose by breaking it. This can be especially true if the streak is recorded: A June 2022 study in the Journal of Consumer Research noted that people “consider maintaining a logged streak to be a meaningful goal in and of itself.”

    We all use phones on the toilet. Just don’t sit more than 10 minutes.

    Many video games encourage users to engage with them every day, notes Naomi Clark, chair at the New York University Games Center, which she called “appointment gaming” in an email to The Post. These appointments can feel bigger than just an everyday habit, Clark wrote.

    “[W]e want to feel in control of our lives. When something good happens a few times, we want to believe it could keep on going — that it could be a bright fixture in the worryingly dim and hazy landscape of the future … Even if we know a Wordle win after six guesses is no big deal, we’re relieved to know that this part of our lives is still there, still controllable. Our life is going to go on, right? More or less like this? Isn’t it?”

    Breaking a streak, therefore, can introduce a lot more uncertainty into our lives than just what to do over our morning coffee. But for Wordle players deliberately breaking their streak in service to a cause they feel is good — or for anyone who missed that last guess on today’s puzzle — a broken streak could also be a good thing.

    “Deliberately breaking a streak,” wrote Clark, “ … [is] a conscious act of will, cutting yourself off from the past chain of events. That past is no guarantee of what your next streak will look like, but a broken streak is also a new opportunity, a weight lifted, a moment where you can reaffirm your dedication to your practice by throwing yourself back into it … or take a break!”

    Mourn your streak a little, if you need to. Then, embrace the chaos of the unknown.

  • iPhone 14 Pro lead times marginally improve in slow return to normal

    iPhone 14 Pro lead times marginally improve in slow return to normal

    iPhone 14 Pro



    AppleInsider may earn an affiliate commission on purchases made through links on our site.

    Lead times for deliveries of the iPhone 14 Pro models has slightly improved in China, as the march to return to normal supply levels slowly continues.

    Apple’s supply of iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max handsets have been heavily impacted by the Zhengzhou factory problems, which have included COVID lockdowns and employee riots. In JP Morgan’s 14th Apple Product Availability Tracker, there’s more signs that things are turning around, but they are still baby steps.

    Analysts claim that supply for the Pro models has “incrementally improved,” driven by a moderation of lead times in China. However, lead times are still “modestly elevated” relative to those observed before the Zhengzhou COVID outbreak.

    With ongoing challenges ahead of reaching more normalized levels of production, it is expected this could lead to “more muted” December quarter seasonality, as well as push revenue into the March quarter.

    The iPhone global tracker puts at-home delivery for the iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Plus at 3 days apiece, the same as week 13 one week ago. The Pro models saw their figures dip from 29 days to 27 days.

    In China, the base iPhone 14 models saw their lead times rise from 1 day to 4 days, which continues to track with the iPhone 13 and mini lead times at this stage. The iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max saw lead times shrink from 39 days to 32 days.

    For the U.S., lead times are stable at 3 days for the non-Pro models versus 4 days one week ago, and being comparable to the iPhone 13. The iPhone 14 Pro models had their lead times stay static at 25 days.

    In Europe, times in the UK and Germany saw declines for the iPhone 14 pair at 2 to 3 days, against 3 days in the previous tracker. For the Pro, German lead times stayed static at 25 days, while the UK saw a small improvement from 27 days to 26 days.

    The Wearables Tracker indicates supply-demand for the Apple Watch models and AirPods are “balanced.”

  • Seattle Times, Brands Complain Over Senate Campaign Ad That Is Clearly Protected Speech

    Seattle Times, Brands Complain Over Senate Campaign Ad That Is Clearly Protected Speech

    from the c’mon-guys dept

    There is something about when corporate brands get used in political advertisements that seems to make everybody forget about the very concept of fair use or international equivalents. One previous example would be when a bunch of foodstuff brands claimed trademark infringement over an anti-littering campaign in Canada, arguing that the use of their own packaging in photographs was somehow a trademark violation. It wasn’t, but that particular city campaign caved anyway.

    But this all gets way more frustrating when an organization that depends on the First Amendment to exist decides to ignore its primacy over a political ad. And that is exactly what happened between the Seattle Times newspaper and Tiffany Smiley, who is running for the Senate in Washington. The Times, along with Starbucks and the Seattle Seahawks, complained about an ad described below. The Times went so far as to send a cease and desist notice to Smiley’s campaign.

    In the challenged 30-second campaign ad, Smiley begins by pointing to a shuttered Seattle Starbucks and saying, “These doors are closed because it’s too dangerous to ask employees to work here anymore.” Then, while she says that opponent Murray has “spearheaded reckless policies,” the Seattle Times logo and headline appear, saying, “Seattle’s Awful August Shows the City Continues to Backslide on Crime.”

    Similarly, when Smiley complains that the city is suffering from “so much crime that you can’t even get a cup of coffee from the hometown shop on Capitol Hill, even if you can still afford it,” another Times headline appears that underscores her point. This one reads, “Starbucks to Close 5 Seattle Stores Over Safety Concerns.”

    This is 100% a textbook case of fair use. And the Seattle Times should know that. Does know that. Certainly whatever lawyer crafted the C&D knows that. The branding was used as part of political speech and they were accurately represented in the advertisement. Smiley is also not competing with any of those brands. The Times complaint was that it had actually endorsed Smiley’s opponent and suggested the use in the advertisement implied an endorsement from the Times. But it doesn’t. At all.

    And regardless, this all still amounts to protected speech.

    Joel Ard is a Washington state-based lawyer who has experience with intellectual property and fair use law. After viewing the ads, he told The Center Square Thursday in a phone interview, “It’s so blatantly fair use that if someone wanted to make this claim in federal court, they’d likely be sanctioned for it.”

    Uh huh. And the real headache-inducing part of this whole story is that the complaint is coming from a newspaper that absolutely relies on the First Amendment and fair use to do what it does. Would the Times like this flipped around? Should the Smiley campaign be able to control when its candidate appears in the paper? Should it be able to keep the paper’s website from showing Smiley’s political ads and commenting on them?

    Of course not! But Smiley’s speech is every bit as protected as the Seattle Times’. And while I normally roll my eyes when politicians claim media bias in most circumstances, when Smiley says this…

    “While unfair and bias reporting and commentary is likely protected by the First Amendment…that speech protection does not apply to providing corporate resources to a campaign,” explained the complaint letter to the FEC by Charlie Spies and Katie Reynolds, co-counsel for the Smiley for Washington campaign. “What is illegal is for [the Seattle Times] to provide its resources to Patty Murray, and her campaign committee People for Patty Murray, while at the same time denying such resources to her opponent.”

    …it’s kind of hard to argue she doesn’t have a point. Her opponent, Murray, also uses Seattle Times branding in her ads without complaint.

    Yeesh, folks, you’re a newspaper. Be better than this.

    Filed Under: fair use, political ads, political speech, tiffany smiley, trademark

    Companies: seattle times

  • Cooking Times And Temperatures

    Higher temperatures are for boiling water or browning. The lowest setting is used primarily to keep the food heat previous to serving. Copper clad pans are lovely and unequalled in relation to heating food evenly, however I’m nonetheless not a fan. They must be scrubbed with copper polish incessantly and that’s not how I want to spend my time. The finest chrome steel cookware has an aluminum or copper core sealed inside its base, which strikes me as the most effective of all worlds. These copper core pans provide you with excellent conductivity without demanding fixed sprucing.

    It additionally creates employment opportunities for CK culinary graduates and residents of Camden. Chiara Iacoviello is a marketing and occasions consultant Food for The Whole U and a former culinary enterprise proprietor and chef at the Andretti Winery in Napa, California.

    Easy Tostada Recipe

    This will work as long as the food isn’t too dry. By the way, scrambled eggs and corn are nightmares to work with as they’re small and wouldn’t have a lot of liquid inherent in them. The corn likes to stay to every thing, including the spoon, and the eggs are firm believers in entropy (they scatter everywhere!). I had to play with the way to make the reduce in the plastic bundle these foods got here in before I was lastly ready to do this in a not-too-messy of a fashion. Then it is necessary to very slowly take away the spoon. To get the eggs to behave I combined a few of the sauce I was using, within the case of the crab salad, mayo, with the eggs while the eggs have been still in their unique package. This gave the eggs some cohesiveness they usually could be transferred as a lump into the mixing “bowl.” I actually discovered that technique to work with any small, dry, loose particles.

    Food & Cooking

    Research exhibits when families cook at home, they’re extra prone to eat at residence most days of the week, make more healthy food selections, and get monetary savings. I decided to meaningfully inform the ways families can work along with youngsters in the kitchen.

    Mary Berry Recommends Her Favourite Cookbooks

    However, some researchers suggest that buyers who try to eat local meals will eat a lot fewer processed meals, decreasing their intake of fats, sugar, and preservatives. Locavores are also more likely to eat more fruit and veggies, growing their consumption of important nutritional vitamins and minerals.

    • Air fryers are great for vegan favorites like French fries, tempura, and falafel.
    • You can get essentially the most out of this equipment by purchasing Kathy Hester’s terrific, The Ultimate Vegan Cookbook for Your Instant Pot.

    To these immersed in the world of professional delicacies, he is a well-known name within the culinary arts area, with numerous cookbooks, nominations, and culinary shows. This is an exceptionally lengthy-lived blog, a true Methuselah of the food blogs. The creation of skilled cook, baker, cookbook creator,David Lebovitz was launched in 1999, when many of the now bloggers, if already born, surely hadn’t heard about food blogging.

    The Vanilla Bean Blog

    In different phrases, eating healthy food can turn out to be a behavior. French food writer Clotilde Dusoulier celebrates the joys of every day cooking with contemporary, easy ideas. Clothilde loves healthy, pure meals and simple meals that everyone will take pleasure in. The makers of The Knot and The Bump created The Nest, a blog helping new couples navigate their new life and it Food & Cooking is chock stuffed with residence, food and relationship content. Which, lucky for us, extends to dog food recipes like this divine crunchy kibble recipe. This recipe is ideal for the pup who just so occurs to love their commonplace dry food and for whom you’d identical to to fancy-up the old standby. Herbs and spices may also be added to your dog’s kibble, so long as they don’t seem to be thought-about toxic to your dog .

    Food & Cooking

    Neighbors pitched in to herald crops similar to corn and wheat. After the work was done Cooking, everyone would possibly have fun with feasts, bonfires, and dancing.