comfy

Context: Pony Diffusion v6 is one of the most popular SD models, and the upcoming v7 has the potential for similar popularity. An interesting aspect is their controversial decision to use AuraFlow as a base model, rather than Flux or SD3 The creator of Pony Diffusion (AstraliteHeart) was interviewed on a Civit.ai stream two weeks ago where they discuss this further. I don't use Discord so if you have more visibility and insight into the details, I'd like to hear it.

As mentioned in the stream, as of Nov 2024, some of the big drawbacks with AuraFlow are the high VRAM usage (apparently 24GB VRAM to generate a 1024x1024 image) and the lack of tooling (afaik there are no ControlNets, or training scripts for making LoRas, and many generation UIs like A1111 don't even support it yet). These sound like big issues, although the stream host points out the recent release of Mochi:

Mochi, the video model release two weeks ago, on release the developers said you're going to need three H100s [80GB each] to run this model. And now, two weeks later, you can run it on 12GB of VRAM. So I wouldn't be too worried about this,

There has been a long-standing claim that the missing tools will be built and optimized by the community once there is a decent community using AuraFlow and it's reassuring to have real examples of these rapid leaps in accessibility and efficiency to look at. And I believe the Pony project is one of the things which does have the real potential to bring in that rapid development activity.

Which brings to mind another side of the choice to use AuraFlow, which I would casually call an activist aspect. And I don't mean 'activist' in a melodramatic way, I mean it just as much as me saying 'You should help make Lemmy more active because reddit abuses its users' is activism: I believe one tool is better for our communities and therefore I choose to use my small influence to promote it. I'm also not saying 'activist' as a solid claim, accusation or glorification because AstraliteHeart's contextual reasons for choosing AuraFlow could effectively be 'I prefer their commerce-enabling license' or 'I think this base model is more effective for this one specific project', I honestly don't know, but on the other hand, I notice they praise Simo and their team for this open project. And whether or not it's intentional, Pony shines a big spotlight on their admirable work. Further than that, upon launch, Pony could even be the catalyst to enable AuraFlow to receive major community support and remain competitive with the venture capital-fueled Flux, SD and others.

If PonyFlow is deemed a groundbreaking finetune, with strong enough results to bring its huge audience from SDXL to AuraFlow, that's a powerful force and one big enough to bring technical development, just like the reddit API exodus brought a wave of devs into Lemmy development, resulting in important improvements in a relatively short time. When I say a powerful force, here are a few stats from civit.ai on the stream:

468,000 downloads, 160 million on-site generations Out of the 3,500 LoRas that we train every 24 hours [...] the vast majority are Pony-based.

If PonyFlow can show those people it's worth crying out for, generation services like civit.ai would be crazy not to try and support it and there will be significant demand for other open-source tools like generators and trainers to support AuraFlow. So if Pony can bring those kinds of boosts to an open project, then I say good on them for it and I think that anyone wary of venture capitalist enshittification should support this push towards a more open tool.

edit: just found this

Films and TV shows and more often have subtitles, which are helpful for enjoying muted video, translation, people with hearing impairment, people struggling to understand accents, checking fast unclear dialogue and other reasons. They are important, and sometimes it's clear when they do something right or wrong.

Maybe we can't expect them all to be works of art, but there are certainly some easy wins even in the industrial media environment. What do you think?

The English-speaking web has many different types of websites. For social media, there are link aggregators (Lemmy/Mbin/etc., reddit), microblog sites (Mastodon/Pleroma/etc., Xitter), forums like BBS boards, and more.

This post talks about Misskey and how it diverges from Western-made Fediverse culture. This reminded me of some other Japanese-style websites, such as textboards, chan imageboards and booru sites (booru imageboards are essentially a tag-based media archive, which similarly to chan boards have entered into the English-speaking internet but remain niche, mostly centered on art communities such as anime and furry fandoms).

What other styles of websites exist beyond the English-speaking internet? Does their design reflect a different culture? Are they better in some ways?

Maybe it's just a reddit/Threadiverse thing, maybe it's stronger in political communities, but I constantly see sarcasm everywhere online, far more than anywhere else. Scroll down and you'll even see it here.

Funnily enough, in a vacuum, one might expect online forums to avoid it more, since written text can mask tone and make sarcasm unintentionally ambiguous, to the point where it's common to see people adding tags to clarify. It's not rare to see arguments started when people don't recognise non-literal language.

Is it merely a habit being repeated? Is it a widespread coping mechanism for frustration? Is it simply the lowest form of wit, a simple and popular way to make fun? Is it an effective way to normalise unpopular views with the plausible deniability of just making jokes?

The megathread mentions Diffusion Toolkit, although this is a Windows-only tool.

There is also Breadboard, however I consider this abandoned and lacks some features like rating/scoring.

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So I'd like to start using a purpose-made tool instead, but I'm struggling to find any other options. I'd rather know if a good tool exists before I start rebuilding my duct-tape conveyor belt.

I want to buy a new GPU mainly for SD. The machine-learning space is moving quickly so I want to avoid buying a brand new card and then a fresh model or tool comes out and puts my card back behind the times. On the other hand, I also want to avoid needlessly spending extra thousands of dollars pretending I can get a 'future-proof' card.

I'm currently interested in SD and training LoRas (etc.). From what I've heard, the general advice is just to go for maximum VRAM.

• Is there any extra advice I should know about?
• Is NVIDIA vs. AMD a critical decision for SD performance?

I'm a hobbyist, so a couple of seconds difference in generation or a few extra hours for training isn't going to ruin my day.

Some example prices in my region, to give a sense of scale:

• 16GB AMD: $350
• 16GB NV: $450
• 24GB AMD: $900
• 24GB NV: $2000

edit: prices are for new, haven't explored pros and cons of used GPUs

At the end of the day, my hardware is not appropriate for SD, it works only through hacks like tiling in A1111. And while that's fine for my hobby experimenting, I would like other people, or even myself once I finally upgrade my desktop, to be able to recreate my images in better quality, as closely as possible (or even try and create variations).

I already make sure to keep the "PNG info" metadata which lists most parameters, so I assume the main variable left is the RNG source. Are any of the options hardware-independent? If not, are there any extensions which can create a hardware-independed random number source?

Every place has its different environment, whether it be the level of organisation, reputation of socialism, dominant values of society, history and experiences, conflicts and crises. Because of these dynamics, I'd expect to see stark differences in what the movement looks like around the world. An obvious example familiar to most here is seeing the widespread and militant union mobilisations in France's retirement age protests.

Which countries do you have experience in, and how are their labour movements different?

The title is intentionally vague by saying 'labour movement', so you're welcome to talk about workplace attitudes, unions, socialist organisations, legislation and more.

Which really shouldn't be a surprise to anyone!

(Found this on Nuclear Change /social/)

Dear consumer: do not operate this motor vehicle while experiencing emotion

edit: I've updated the title as I've discovered more information: a credible death threat isn't quite the same as attempted murder

For details, see the Release notice section Bigger new windows.