Antirender: remove the glossy shine on architectural renderings
(antirender.com)1815 points by iambateman 2 days ago
1815 points by iambateman 2 days ago
For those like me not up on the hip memes: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-world-if
It's funny to see as a joke, but you can go the other way with this too. Image editing models and LoRAs for "previz-to-render upscaling" workflows are actually incredibly useful.
I was just writing about this (scroll about halfway down to the images of Sam Altman - though if you like that, do watch the second video):
https://getartcraft.com/news/world-models-for-film
The best model I've found for this, that almost bakes in full ControlNet capability, is oddly gpt-image-1.5. It's absolutely OP at understanding how to turn low-fidelity renders into final draft upscales.
Here are some older experiments:
https://imgur.com/a/previz-to-image-gpt-image-1-5-3fq042U
https://imgur.com/gallery/previz-to-image-gpt-image-1-x8t1ij...
I just wish it didn't require invoking such heavy-weight, slow, and expensive models to do this. I'm sure open models will do this work soon, though.
You are able to do this stuff with open models for 1-2 years now, i for example have a comfyui pipeline that achieves a similar setup. It’s of course more work and you have to dig into the details more. I also have to adjust the pipeline and tweak it and use different models for each use case. But overall you can definitely achieve that level of control with open models already, it’s just not that user friendly
It's funny how know your meme has to sanitize the 4chan out of memes.
The 'how society would look without x' has been a racist trope on 4chan since way before the cited examples.
That doesn't pass the sniff test, many other pages on knowyourmeme correctly attribute memes to 4chan.
If you were right that would be easily verifiable. Do you have an example of a post dated before 2018? Maybe you're getting tricked by the fact that 2018 was 8 years ago?
OK this is too fun. I did Reverse Anti-Render on a dreary scene in Moscow:
I remember looking at an architect representation thinking, but the sun is always on the other side of the building.
Pretty good. Compare with a real sunny day on that street.
Or Dundee. The third "after" pic needs more Surron tracks up the grassy bank though.
Your image made the reddit front page: https://www.reddit.com/r/memes/comments/1qrwa2l/society_with...
Reddit shows cached versions of posts on the front-page, so it might actually remain there for a couple of hours after the subreddit mods deleted it.
> Thank you for submitting to /r/memes. Unfortunately, your submission has been removed for the following reason(s):
> Rule 1 - ALL POSTS MUST BE MEMES AND FOLLOW A GENERAL MEME FORMAT
> All posts must be memes following typical setup/design: an image/gif/video with some sort of caption; mods have final say on what is (not) a meme
Reddit mods, man.
> 4,613 points
> 96% upvoted
> Removed by a single moderator for subjective reasons while the sub's front page is full of crap
Ah, the quintessential Reddit experience.
I was also wondering how the image got 16k+ views (as of now) (the stat was on imgur)
I was wondering what/how many HN users clicked on the image (not knowing it was uploaded to reddit too)
But now I seriously wonder out of those 16k (as of now), how many were/are from the hackernews community and how many from reddit.
That may be quite close to the truth. Here are pictures from some abandones pavilions from the 2000 World Expo in Hannover. Sad to see this, as I lived in Hannover at that time and had a really good time at the Expo.
Complete aside, but it's beyond infuriating I need to enable a VPN here in the UK to view this link.
> Complete aside, but it's beyond infuriating I need to enable a VPN here in the UK to view this link.
Here, I uploaded the image to catbox.moe if anyone's interested.
https://files.catbox.moe/c4smhd.png
I don't think that catbox is blocked within the UK.
Does anyone have a mirror? I’m in authoritarian UK so the link is blocked
The rimigo proxy works for me: https://rimgo.vern.cc/a/nFQN5tx
The link is blocked by imgur themselves, not the British government (authoritarian or otherwise), because the ICO was going to fine them for historic poor handling of children's data. https://ico.org.uk/about-the-ico/media-centre/news-and-blogs...
> Does anyone have a mirror? I’m in authoritarian UK so the link is blocked
Here you go. I had it uploaded after hearing from the magospietato's comment but then saw you talk about the same so I am pasting the same image link here as well
Pretty much what has long been my dream "make the world better" product (long as in from pre-genAI days), only that this one happens in image space: take an architectural model, look at the surface material specifications, analyze it for where rainwater would run down etc and generate weathering texture, how would this look when it's not new anymore.
Because as I see it, a lot of aesthetic decisions in architecture, pretty much anything that goes in the direction of minimalism, is just putting "newness" in the center of perception. And thus absence of "newness" will be in the center of perception when it stops being new. All these clear geometric shapes? They look awesome at the opening ceremony, but two years down the line they are like magnifying glasses for uneven changes in color and the like. Whereas for a more playful surface full of ornaments, those same years would be hardly more than a blink and they can age gracefully, on the aesthetic level (and on the technical level, required maintenance intervals are much longer anyways). Architects who claim to care for sustainability should demonstrate that they consider how the building will look like later in life.
I see this as well with huge modern buildings with wood parts. They look great the first year. The wood shines red’ish. After a winter the wood part starts to grey out. I understand that this is sometimes a look they strife for but all the preview renders show it in the prestige condition. Nobody is doing a yearly training. And don’t get me started on all the glass survives for elevators, roofs, bus stops, divider panels next to tram stops (I’m mainly meaning Berlin here) which nobody cares to clean or is so difficult to clean that after 2 or 3 years it looks very run down.
Reminds me of how the Statue of Liberty went from being brownish gold to green:
https://old.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/u22v09/t...
Some see a patina with weathered surfaces as desirable.
The beauty of Kintsugi can also be difficult for people to understand. =3
The Statue of Liberty would be red without her patina and would look weird ;). I’m not talking about the beauty of weathering. I think a dirty glass roof which no longer lets any light through a planned weathering tactic. The point was that the plans architects make are always showing the building in prestine condition. And they never reflect how this building will look like in a few years. One example I see every day is a Train-station entrance. It has a very dramatic metal ark that stretches up. Looked great in the past. Now you see dirty water running down the surface. The brushed metal is stained with grime that pilled up. Every time it rains the grime runs a bit deeper. They tried to clean it a few month back. They have to come with a special crane and water jets to remove the grime. But nobody takes the time to polish the surface back up. Is this bad? No of course not. But don’t plan and sell something that will only last for half a year. That’s why I also think this post is brilliant.
Not necessarily. On a design that requires being new to look good, all weathering will be perceived as rot, never as patina.
The point is that some approaches to architectural beauty make it more or less impossible that any amount of weathering could ever be perceived as patina, while others look good both new and old.
That's maybe nice for prestige projects but imho the main problem in architecture is projects on a budget and how money is allocated. There should be a law that says that X% of the building costs should be in the facade, the part that everybody sees. That alone should help a lot in making cities look nicer.
> There should be a law that says that X% of the building costs should be in the facade
Cities solve this with design requirements and through the approval process. Specifying a minimum spend isn’t going to make the buildings look nice by itself. You’d just get weird budget games being played.
Cities with restrictive planning commissions can push buildings toward certain looks. People get angry about it, though, because it gets harder and more expensive to build things in an era where it’s already too expensive to build.
That sounds like a recipe for skimping on safety and design systemically. No thank you. You can’t legislate aesthetics, and there’s already a huge incentive to make buildings look great. People already spend a lopsided amount on the facade making it look better than it is, rather than spending on where they should: foundation, structure, good design, and longevity. In my city, apartment buildings used to require steel structures and lawmakers relaxed the requirement so they went back to wood because it’s cheaper. Now the new ones look great but they’re burning down and falling apart at higher rates than before.
> In my city, apartment buildings used to require steel structures and lawmakers relaxed the requirement so they went back to wood because it’s cheaper. Now the new ones look great but they’re burning down and falling apart at higher rates than before.
Are you in Denver?
Most of the mega projects are in authoritarian states. So in a way it is about the photo op at opening. And then the next mega project.
Some of my favorite examples of graceful aging in architecture are concrete - but those are never the ones that celebrate efficiency, they always have some playful element that will still be playful when the newness has faded. Ribbed concrete (if you don't know what that means: worth googling!) alternating with smooth surface for example. But sure, once the structure reaches a certain size threshold, you better play the "glass & steel" card a lot, it has been dominant for almost a century for a reason. But even that can be overdone and concrete exposing aging can be a nice contrast.
You can do regular maintenance on concrete to keep it looking nice, but nobody wants to spend the money. Everyone understands that a wooden house exterior has to be repainted now and then, but thinks "concrete = no upkeep costs". Architects have complained bitterly about this for a while; I don't love brutalism but I can sort of see their point.
Wow, someone finally made Poland-filter. It all looks exactly like I'm used to.
Pretty much any place with brutalist architecture, really. I'll happily take pretty much any revival or classical style over "modern" or brutalist style.
There's nothing more depressing than walking by beautiful historic old buildings only to turn a corner and see a monstrosity of concrete and glass somehow reaching the epitome of bland and uninviting.
Hard disagree. This is what brutalism looks like in sunny, subtropical Brisbane, Australia: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:QPAC_Exterior.jpg
If the straight concrete isn’t your thing, they’re also currently extending it with a glasshouse: https://www.snohetta.com/projects/queensland-performing-arts...
I don't hate brutalism but I'd much rather have the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Exhibition_Building than QPAC, rain or shine.
I never understood the dislike for brutalist architecture. To me, at least it looks like something. It's got soul and expresses an artistic idea even if that idea is "the overbearing power of the state". Personally, I'd take that over the soulless glass and steel buildings that seem to be today's alternative.
Brutalism does make for some sweet Quake maps, however: https://qbj3.slipseer.com/
Apart from some lucky places, most of the world cities looks like this or worse.
That is something I've found over the years with traveling.
You watch a bunch of travel videos and think the place you're visiting is going to be so different but its just the same overcast sky and ocean and washed out color palette as home.
Once you remove all the filters, color correction, and drone shots from influencer travel videos a lot of places look the same IRL.
I cannot relate to this at all. Even just Valparaiso and Venice (two towns) are so different from each other. Even if you make weather dreary it’s a different feeling.
Then you consider Patagonia or Norway and compare it with the California Coast. The world is full of beauty.
Really? I drove from Kansas to the Florida Keys in November, stayed at an ocean front hotel where it was a blissful 83°F, and it felt like our own slice of heaven. We stayed a few extra days over Thanksgiving just to laze in the pool while our kids splashed in the water. Being able to drive away from the snow and the cold into paradise was amazing, and being able to go with my family made me feel richer than a king.
I traveled a little and was also happy to mostly see the nice side of most places. Some of us are lucky, some just always try to see the best in things. Beauty is in the eye of beholder. Also, some people here commented that they like this antirender look. Maybe by contrast. I talked with someone from Ecuador and they said they like when it rains. It was this lat autumn, when we didn't see sun for several weeks and everything was gloomy, looking even worse than in those photos, additionally colored by bad mood of everyone.
Hmm.
I'd say that despite similarities for places built at the same time as each other, there's a huge range of variation in the places I've been.
First trip to the US was California, and the geography of the hills around Central Valley were substantially different in different places just within that region. Southwest, I saw hills that looked like Bryce's default textures which I'd previously assumed were mediocre approximations rather than based in reality; the Redwoods and Yosemite are very different from each other and the aforementioned, and the hills west of Winters and east of Sacremento are different again, and of course all are different to the Valley itself. On another trip I saw the Bonneville Salt Flats, I've yet to see anything else like them. All these are very different from the views around Zürich, or the UK South Downs (which unsurprisingly given the name is similar to New England and Brittany), and all those are different to the west coast of Wales; when I later saw the Spanish Mediterranean coast and the area around Athens, they reminded me of some of the wine areas around Paso Robles (which shouldn't be surprising given wine).
Within cities, Berlin has incredibly wide streets unlike anything I've found elsewhere; Athens is the exact opposite, with at least a few of roads in the tourist core (near the Parthenon) almost too narrow even for the smaller size of car common in Europe and pedestrian paths only a few cm wider than my elbows are apart, and so many ancient ruins you could practically trip and fall over them. The UK and Germany where I've lived, one can quickly learn to spot which era any given house was made in, with a handful of still-standing medieval buildings in the UK (mostly churches), then typical stylings visible for late 18th century (e.g. Bath), then a gap to the late 19th century to early 20th (in both countries but with more Gothic in the UK and more Neo-Classical and Art Nouveau in Berlin), then another gap where little survives to today, then post-war (British housing estates and DDR soviet style Plattenbau); these are very different to Swiss rural styles, to the narrow buildings you can find in Amsterdam. The UK and France also still retain a lot of medieval castles in various states of repair and museum-ification.
Bologna still has a lot of medieval structures around, including two leaning towers. Venice may be famous for the canals, but the famous ones are not the entire set, the ones I remember seeing went right up to the hotel I was in and functioned like roads, with a similar vibe to the roads of Athens (only without the footpaths at all because footpaths were a completely independent system), while the canals in Amsterdam were broad and felt more like the spaces dedicated to the Straßenbahn and U-Bahn in Berlin.
Budapest felt like a decaying museum to itself, or a ruin in which people nevertheless still lived and worked.
NYC deserves the name "urban jungle", it was like walking through canyons where the "mountains" (skyscrapers) were so distant and large as to defy not just the instant parallax between my eyes, but also the time-delayed parallax one normally gets from walking towards or away from a thing.
Cyprus (caveat: I've only been to Larnaca) was a mix of British road furniture, medieval castle, and a Church that pre-dates England (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_Saint_Lazarus%2C_Lar...), with the half-finished look to many properties where the rebar was still poking out of the uppermost surface of enough buildings to notice and visible water tanks on most of them (https://www.google.com/maps/@34.9108686,33.6190677,3a,15y,41...)
Nairobi mixed a British 50s-60s Brutalist core (presumably because of who was in charge in the 50s-early 60s) with main streets that were variously poorly repaired and unpaved, and minor streets that varied from "this could be any middle class residential area in Europe" to "this has been accidentally cobbled by people treading plastic bottles into the soil as they pass"; there is another easily recognisable style here, best shown rather than described, this kind of wall lack-of-surface-finishing: https://www.google.com/maps/@-1.2844081,36.9005201,3a,30y,35...
Most of Singapore looks like the Soviet Union: https://www.google.com/maps/@1.3756813,103.9459007,3a,90y,26...
Sun/Light has a lot to do with it. The place linked looks fine/tolerable but put that in the northern of Europe/America and you'll looking at the edge of depression (at least for myself).
Before the dystopian black and gray fad arrived most buildings that went up were sort of OK. And I didn't mind the pastel paint on commie blocks either. But a decade ago someone decided that gray cuboids with asymmetric windows were an improvement...
Even so, I think North American cities are on average uglier than most Polish ones. Overall we're not doing so bad but I want the Slavic city memes to continue lest we get Prague or Amsterdam level tourist invasion.
What would happen if you run it on a spacecraft? Blank image comes back?
There are plenty of grungy spacecraft images out there.
Buran in storage: https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/baikonur-buran-soviet-...
Image link: https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/17103111131...
Im a professional cleaner, there is lots of wonderful looking design out there that is impossible to clean. There is also a huge difference in how quick it looks dirty. Some things are easy to clean but if you have to do it 3 times per day in stead of once a week its going to be needlessly expensive and still look dirty half the time.
On a Light surface tiny stains stick out, on a dark floor tiny flecks of dirt stick out as if under blacklight, a concrete color with some smudge patern may get extremely dirty without anyone noticing it (which might also not be what you want) a dark floor with a pattern of tiny white dots can also look very clean while dirty.
Any porous material is a terrible idea, you get lots of surface area that you cant reach. Carpet, curtains, upholstery.
Gaps between things should be big enough for how deep they are. Tiny legs under sofas or closets are not useful for anything. Adjust the size of the gaps between wall panels to your favorite kind of insect or rodent.
The funniest one i've seen was a city with a lot of mosquitos where someone put giant neon letters outside under a roof. In a few days it was completely covered in highly active spider turf war dens enough to make a grown man scream. Apparently spiders love roofs and they obviously know flies like light.
Top of HN and people are loving it, but there's got to be a better way of getting some $$ rewards for fun viral ideas like this than "Buy me a coffee". I'm betting he's got tens of thousands of sessions currently and nobody is tipping. https://ko-fi.com/magnushambleton
Is there a better way? Asking for myself, also.
This will be an unpopular answer but one way that could have worked is just good ol' advertising, because it directly converts "virality" into income.
Any solution that requires the user to bust out a credit card and put down his billing address has way too much friction for the median user to get through.
My CPM is not great (not Google) and that's 25-30k impressions
Doesn't an ad require the user to bust out their credit card eventually?
No? Advertising money is paid upfront. X number of impressions. You get paid a cut for hosting the ad. The ad might be a huge failure and lead to zero clickthrough or purchases. But the money has already been paid for the campaign.
Yes, nothing happens until you trade a dollar for something, but it does not have to be this site they spend money at.
Advertising isn't even about getting people to open their wallet, it's more about influencing their decision when they do go to spend money or make a purchase.
Yea, but most advertisers come only after something went viral, not when you are building something and you try to say to potential advertiser: "this will go viral trust me bro". And such small viral things are usually short lived, by the time the advertisers come it will probably starts to die down. But yea, maybe he would have got a little more financial support than donations even if he puts up ads after it went viral.
Another way he could benefit from this is when people want his skills to build them similar things, so it's basically already an advertisement for his skills.
I saw it going viral before going to bed last night and spent 15min trying to enable payments but failed so made it block you after 2 gens using cookies and try guilt you into donating instead. Made me $160 in donations compared to the $500 in AI credits burned so not a huge success but at least slightly offset the loss.
If the demand continues after this blip I’ll try add ads or make real payments work.
There have been alternatives suggested. While better is a subjective term, most alternatives have either not been successful or have not yet meaningfully achieved a level of success to matter.
Flattr took one approach without much success. They represented the problem well though. When someone does something that is of a small but not insignificant benefit for a large number of people, how should they be rewarded? When the reward due, divided by the number of people paying for it, gets low enough it seems to not reach a threshold that it makes sense for any individual to pay.
You could charge a fee above the threshold, and many people do take this path. It is essentially requiring a small number of people to massively overpay to cover those who don't pay at all.
A Universal Income takes the approach that if everyone gets what they need there is no particular requirement to be monetarily rewarded. You essentially have been rewarded for whatever it is you do.
Advertising plays the small threshold thing both ways, They offer you a chance to sell a little corruption below your threshold for thinking it is damaging, and in return they accumulate the corruption and the money and send you the money and deliver the requested corruption to their customers.
Part of the fundamental difficulty is in determining the size of the reward due. How is that determined? There are plenty of people who will offer services to do that if it means they can take a cut. I don't see that path going well unless it is a mechanism governed by strict non-profit rules, and even then I would have doubts.
A purely rule based system would be intrinsically unfair and subject to gaming, but often times this turns out to be the least worst solution. By agreeing to a set of rules people can accept that while flawed, adhering to them by agreement can make a system that cannot be taken over by a malicious individual.
In short, right now, No I don't think there is a better way. There may be people with a financial interest that it remains that way.
> Is there a better way?
Yes, UBI. Then you can create what you want and your livelihood doesn't depend on it going viral.
How do we ensure that we don’t enter the failure mode of “not enough necessities get made”?
Like it seems like people are ideologically for or against UBI, but I’ve never seen anyone discuss how the mechanism would avoid this outcome. Like I’m not saying it’s 100% the outcome that would happen on whatever time frame, just that even e.g. a 10% chance of that happening would make it too risky to attempt at scale. And like I don’t accept “some people just love farming” or “a lot of stuff that isn’t needed gets made now”, I need an actual mechanism description.
> How do we ensure that we don’t enter the failure mode of “not enough necessities get made”?
Pay higher when someone does things. UBI + income. If you want to live better, try doing something that will bring you money, but if you fail, you can still live and try something other next time.
Current model: if you try something and fail, you are homeless and starving.
UBI discussion invariably is way off the mark. The only thing UBI solves is how to give out the money, which is a massive misdirection, the real problem is how to get the money. Do you gut the state and allow people who don't work to have enough money to barely survive as an underclass, or do you end billionaires and usher in a new renaissance where all needs are met and labour shall just be at our whim. These two vastly different visions are both UBI, but most discussion about UBI completely sidesteps that as it requires touching upon the more difficult issues.
Once you have control of the money to give out, literally every way of redistribution is as good as UBI. If you calculate how much money would be required for a reasonable UBI.. then imagine what could be done if that money was spent on communal, humane, services then it would be able to revolutionise the world every bit as much.
Necessities get made because there's someone to buy them. Only 5% of people are employed in agriculture and 15% in manufacturing. 80% of working people could do nothing and we'd still be fine when it comes to necessities. And we don't even have peak automation.
Most people want a lot more out of life than basic necessities.
UBI does not mean you don't work, nor you can't earn a lot of money. It just means we don't let you starve if you don't work and we stop making you work out of fear of leaving you starve if you don't.
I'm a psychiatry resident and developper. I have never been paid for my dev work but have produced quite a lot on my free time (site: w.olicorne.org ). I would do psychiatry pretty much no matter how much I'm paid for it.
In my view the most productive people of every field are not incentivized by money and would do it anyway. UBI would free up time and cognitive load of the most productive people I believe. Following a 80/20 kinda rule.
Hence UBI here would mean that the dev would not *have to* monetize.
That's why it works, lol. Those already driven by the bet paying off still have their incentives, and those who would love to try something ... can! Because they don't have overdue bills to pay with extra interest.
...and rather depends on the whims of the feeding hand instead.
Like, haven't got your 22nd cocksuckie virus booster? Get lost and die from hunger.
You can make cool shit without having to do the work of productizing and monetizing it
I built a browser extension for a hackathon that enabled crypto payments direct to site owners. "registration" was just sticking a formatted payment address in a DNS TXT record, and if you were at a supported website, the extension would light up, and facilitated payment.
I still think it's a neat idea but I can't be bothered to build a real version
I had a similar idea for a library used to collect how much you owe who:
Ideally the model would be run locally in the browser, so the author isn't paying whatever they're paying. But the web standards to do complicated stuff locally aren't there yet and probably will never be.
That's not a practical answer but it's my two cents.
I wish I could give him two cents without having to try. HTTP status 402 with micropayments or something needs to become a thing. The platforms do it... (subs, tips, donations, rewards etc etc.) Why can't the web.
I had an idea for a library used to collect how much you owe who:
Maybe, but WASM still has its limitations and pains. If you compile with emscripten you're still using thousands lines of generated javascript to glue the wasm and javaecript together.
Especially in the age of AI tools, I also thought about this a few times. The current idea I have is something like a parking meter. Every expensive transaction (like calling a model) would subtract from the money pool, and every visitor could see how much is still left in the pool. In addition, a list of the top 5 donors with their amounts might improve the group dynamic (like on pay-what-you-want pages like humblebundle.com).
It would be more about covering the cost than about making someone rich, but I think that is what most of the people who build stuff care about. Sadly, I don't know a service yet that offers this model.
This won't work when the meter is at zero due to human psychology. New visitors will say: "no one subsidized my experience (indeed I don't even know what $thing does) but <creator> wants me to subsidize $thing for others".
The whole "subsidize for other visitors" concept is weaker than "pay <creator>".
If there’s one thing I learnt from HN it’s how many people can’t comprehend this. Is it a byproduct of growing up in a very transactional or selfish environment?
Yes. First being a YouTube creator became a business, then twitch, tiktok, twitter. GenZ basically grew up with everything being/becoming a business "opportunity". Making money is the goal for "creators", to the point where ads have become normalized and not having a sponsor is leaving money on the table.
I'm almost sure it is. I don't understand it personally, and it feels like grifting to me.
Sometimes it would be nice if you could just break even though. Particularly for these AI projects.
I don't think donation approaches are necessarily bad, but yes it should not be as simple as putting a kofi link at the top of a page.
This person doesn't just do that though. Right after the part where you've uploaded your own examples, there's a reminder: if you had fun buy me a coffee.
Though this is slightly offset by the fact that they state you have 2 free trials and then you pay. It's a complete incentives mismatch if you ask for coffee for something you explicitly presented to them as a marketing offer. Though, I suppose leaving the donation option on doesn't hurt in this case either.
In my experience, donationware works best when the donation request is polite, personal, uncoercive, unintrusive, and comes at a moment of surprise right after you would have seen actual value from a product, and from a product that has not otherwise asked you for any money so far (including showing you ads).
KeepassXC Android is a good example: the guy asks for a beer during octoberfest :)
> Is there a better way?
If one's visitors are gamers, perhaps one might use gaming payment providers to sell an "supporter badge"? But that's perhaps be pushing their envelope.
If one's visitors are from the "rapidly-developing world", with well-adopted candybar-scale micropayment systems - China, India, Indonesia, Brasil, Kenya, SK, Sweden... hmm. Direct access from elsewhere seems still very limited, but perhaps one might use a global payment gateway like Adyen? My impression is transaction cost is more than $0.10 but less than $1.
In the "less-rapidly-developing world", X.com has been working towards a similar superapp with Visa for the US. The Visa/MC duopoly seems to have shifted from its years of preventing US micropayments, to something like "maybe 2030-ish".
Thanks for the highlight. Doesn't seem like there's much activity on his Ko-Fi for being on the front page of HN. I sent him a tip, although privately.
I had an idea for a library used to collect how much you owe who:
Yeah - fine tune it a bit more (it’s a little too worst-case-scenario-in-the-dead-of-winter) and sell it to architectural firms and developers for a fee. This is simple to monetize and not up to us to figure out how to turn processor cycles into dollar bills.
Monetization: People can now use ChatGPT for this if they have the idea, so it’s a tight goal. Would people in urban planning pay to see this? If not, then this was just the “15 minutes of fame” experience”, and people who are not career influencers have difficulty monetizing that. Of course, thank you for your concept.
This should be compulsory for pitching architects and entrepreneurs. Prove that your design can withstand real weather and the washed out decay of time. Classical architecture withstands weathering and littering remarkably better. Architects are even using corrugated steel sheets intended for ugly shacks as the fascade of new buildings intended for people to live in. It couldn't be worse.
My wife worked at an in house architecture firm for a fancy brand. The amount of times design team wanted to “hide the top part of that wall because it looks too dark” is nauseating. They literally would make impossible buildings happen on design photos and then the higher ups would get mad when the building had walls…
If corrugated metal were not associated with shacks, would it be so concerning? Most materials can look good with the right execution. The difference comes from form and detailing.
"Classical" architecture is (thankfully) dead and will never return. It's too costly and we lack the skilled labour force required. For those that nonetheless demand it, we get cheap imitations of classical details that look worse than a simpler but well-considered alternative.
There have been some promising advances in automated machine carving of stone, but it's still expensive. It has a bright future as part of a hybrid aesthetic enabled by contemporary technology. We need to look forward and not back.
I wouldn't hold up Toyota as anything special. My old Toyota pickup looked like swiss cheese from all the rust. Have never seen a car rust so much as that one.
> I wouldn't hold up Toyota as anything special
I would, actually.
There is a reason why a Toyota Hilux or Land Cruiser is the vehicle of choice for the most demanding use: the "Technical", on and offroad ad-hoc military insurgency, across Africa. (1)
The Hilux has a deserved reputation as "indestructible". (2) Not literally, but the best reliability for the money. Even after the bodywork rusts.
1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_(vehicle)
https://defaakto.com/2021/06/20/the-technical-how-a-pickup-t...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_War
2) https://www.slashgear.com/1247281/toyota-hilux-indestructibl...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterlyon/2018/01/04/robust-mee...
As someone living in Central-Eastern Europe, I approve. Finally, stripping away that Disney saccharine and making things real and familiar.
In Polish, we actually have a new word for this: marcopad. It’s a portmanteau of March (marzec) and November (listopad). It describes this cold, rainy weather perfectly: no leaves, no snow, just dirt. It's generally depressing and really makes you think about global warming from December to February.
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Depends where you live I guess. For me that looks exactly like November here
It's like a dream come true!
I've been thinking of something like this for decades, as I mentally compared the utopian displays at construction sites to the existing buildings next to them. Like "wow your fancy new building is going to be so perfectly white and clean, but what will it really look like after 10 years exposed to the elements and no cleaning, like the one next door?"
New construction is sold on a literal blue-sky promise. How does it really look like a decade down the road? All construction has a decades- if not centuries-long lifespan. It's worth thinking about them long-term.
I absolutely love the streak of rust coming off the saddle of arches on the bridge example. That's exactly what I'm talking about.
This filter seems to also change some architectural details and features, as well as degrade the quality of some materials in an unrealistic way.
Likely. You can go into Nano Banana or ChatGPT right now, upload a pretty architectural rendering, and tell it to make it look old, weathered, winter, etc and it will come out looking very similar. Give it an example to really dial it in.
It's GenAI. It does something that's kind of like what you asked it to do, but it will skip some details or add other ones or whatever.
Dreary architectural pictures will be more likely to have electrical boxes, poor materials, etc, so when it moves the buildings from the latent space for cheery bright architectural renderings to dreary wet November architectural renderings, it will be more likely to add some of those details, because that's what's in its latent space.
Don't expect GenAI to be magic.
Yeah - same things I noticed with people enthusiastically using genAI for old photo coloring. Initially it looks awesome, until you realize it can even alter the human face in such a way, that it no longer looks like that person.
My father was really happy with some old photos colored, until I pointed out he does not look like him. Strangely enough he wasnt bothered...
This drink is not a smoothie, it is a blend of fruits and berries.
I put in an image and it generated piles of shipping pallets along a walkway.
It also added drainage that would actually improve the building.
Used it on some Fortnite screenshots, I'd play that depressing version!
https://files.catbox.moe/i8tfkl.jpg
https://files.catbox.moe/mw8vbc.jpg
Then I thought what would it make from an already dark and grim scene, like HL2 Ravenholm
https://files.catbox.moe/d7z77h.jpg
but nothing really? Just made the whole thing a different color scheme + changed some architecture
What is it with people?
Is there some weird force dropping electrical enclosures on bridges (the cables on top even?) and random places in the street.
Those random protruding manholes next to two other drainage gates nowhere near a slope?
Why are these even the examples.
This is just like turning the HDR tone mapping up to 200%
These necessary things are usually missing from the original plans as people who do these have no idea how actually cities function, so oftentimes they are an afterthought and actually look like that. It's like when you look at pictures of electric appliances and they almost always hide the cords.
I ran it on the "society if..." meme lol
https://imgur.com/a/nFQN5tx