vibinya

Started going to a small local coffee shop a little over two years ago, and I’ll never go back to the giant chains. The people working are always happy, greet regulars by name, always go out of their way to interact or talk with me- usually remember something we talked about before, comp my orders every now and then, host little events, etc. It’s not just them either - I always have a way better experience going to non-chain coffee places. Oh, and the coffee is always waay better and priced better.

When I signed up they had a very easy process which allowed migration of playlists. I believe it was a 3rd party utility/website which you could actually use to migrate playlists from and to any of the music streaming services.

I absolutely love Tidal as well. Was a long time Spotify subscriber, but their UI/UX decisions, especially for their desktop client, finally frustrated me enough to switch. Had almost no issues moving my playlists over, have a shuffle which actually shuffles, still have daily recommendation playlists, and my favorite part -patch notes; I know what’s happening and why. They actually listen to user feedback and make updates based on it.

Started working for my current company as tech support. No degree, in a homeless shelter, just good with tech and helping people. It bothered me not understanding how things I supported worked, so I started to teach myself to code and offer ideas for potential fixes when submitting tickets. Ended up being approached and hired by the head of development who allowed me to continue learning on my own. I’ve been with them for 12 years now, and in the first few years hobbled together the product/feature which became their flagship. Find people who are eager and excited to learn and they’ll thrive.

It’s odd where people draw the line. It’s pretty much the same as previous generations fawning over radio personalities and all the Oprah’s and such. To me, modern influences are equivalent to radio/TV hosts - personalities which are paid to promote and market products and lifestyles. Just because there’s now more and more specific niches for them, doesn’t make them any less valuable in the people’s lives who enjoy them and their content.

My favorite has been locally hosting Automatic1111’s UI. The setup process was super easy and you can get great checkpoints and models on Civitai. This gives me complete control over the models and the generation process. I think it’s an expectation thing as well. Learning how to write the correct prompt, adjust the right settings for the loaded checkpoint, and running enough iterations to get what you’re looking for can take a bit of patience and time. It may be worth learning how the AI actually ‘draws’ things to adjust how you’re interacting with it and writing prompts. There’s actually A LOT of control you gain by locally hosting - controlNet, LORA, checkpoint merging, etc. Definitely look up guides on prompt writing and learn about weights, order, and how negative prompts actually influence generation.

This is great. Article explains the method and sample size. This could be a great tool, and I hope it can be applied to any age. Many people who are on the spectrum and are high functioning can go most of their lives without a diagnosis while struggling to understand why the world feels so different to them.