#AI Training PC

[budgetgameruae]

Best Graphics Card for AI Development at Budget Gamer UAE

Choose a powerful GPU like the RTX 4090 or RTX 3090 if you're looking for the best graphics card for AI development, whether it's neural networks, computer vision, or data science. Combine it with a strong ecosystem that includes a CPU, RAM, storage, cooling system, and power source. Additionally, Budget Gamer UAE, your local expert in high-end AI development PCs, offers the greatest service, pricing, and performance.

[pinyatapix]

i think there’s a particular irony to anti-ai artists saying shit like “ai is not creative! only humans can be creative!” when they all end up mindlessly jumping on a trend bandwagon redrawing that one ai generated image of hatsune miku 2266717377462773773 times, same pose same composition same colors same everything. bitch u accuse the machine of being derivative and uncreative when you urself are creating nothing BUT entirely derivative and uncreative works. there is no new ideas, no imagination involved with copying an image of hatsune miku down to the exact colors and measurements for the umpteenth time. following a dumb trend for clout is a very mid-af way to make a comeback at someone. uurrghhhh

[detectivedrewshouldgetaclue]

I asked AI to animate Prof. Hotchkiss and Charleena Purcell as animals, and, apparently, they, too, are anthropomorphic cats (holding cats??). 🐱

[givrally]

Or 4. Small artefacts from AI image generation (especially in the Fourier Transform) are used to deduce whether an image is AI generated without sacrificing accuracy. AI art doesn't die, and people on tumblr keep seething. A perfect solution !

[ecrivainsolitaire]

A summary of the Chinese AI situation, for the uninitiated.

These are scores on different tests that are designed to see how accurate a Large Language Model is in different areas of knowledge. As you know, OpenAI is partners with Microsoft, so these are the scores for ChatGPT and Copilot. DeepSeek is the Chinese model that got released a week ago. The rest are open source models, which means everyone is free to use them as they please, including the average Tumblr user. You can run them from the servers of the companies that made them for a subscription, or you can download them to install locally on your own computer. However, the computer requirements so far are so high that only a few people currently have the machines at home required to run it.

Yes, this is why AI uses so much electricity. As with any technology, the early models are highly inefficient. Think how a Ford T needed a long chimney to get rid of a ton of black smoke, which was unused petrol. Over the next hundred years combustion engines have become much more efficient, but they still waste a lot of energy, which is why we need to move towards renewable electricity and sustainable battery technology. But that's a topic for another day.

As you can see from the scores, are around the same accuracy. These tests are in constant evolution as well: as soon as they start becoming obsolete, new ones are released to adjust for a more complicated benchmark. The new models are trained using different machine learning techniques, and in theory, the goal is to make them faster and more efficient so they can operate with less power, much like modern cars use way less energy and produce far less pollution than the Ford T.

However, computing power requirements kept scaling up, so you're either tied to the subscription or forced to pay for a latest gen PC, which is why NVIDIA, AMD, Intel and all the other chip companies were investing hard on much more powerful GPUs and NPUs. For now all we need to know about those is that they're expensive, use a lot of electricity, and are required to operate the bots at superhuman speed (literally, all those clickbait posts about how AI was secretly 150 Indian men in a trenchcoat were nonsense).

Because the chip companies have been working hard on making big, bulky, powerful chips with massive fans that are up to the task, their stock value was skyrocketing, and because of that, everyone started to use AI as a marketing trend. See, marketing people are not smart, and they don't understand computers. Furthermore, marketing people think you're stupid, and because of their biased frame of reference, they think you're two snores short of brain-dead. The entire point of their existence is to turn tall tales into capital. So they don't know or care about what AI is or what it's useful for. They just saw Number Go Up for the AI companies and decided "AI is a magic cow we can milk forever". Sometimes it's not even AI, they just use old software and rebrand it, much like convection ovens became air fryers.

Well, now we're up to date. So what did DepSeek release that did a 9/11 on NVIDIA stock prices and popped the AI bubble?

Oh, I would not want to be an OpenAI investor right now either. A token is basically one Unicode character (it's more complicated than that but you can google that on your own time). That cost means you could input the entire works of Stephen King for under a dollar. Yes, including electricity costs. DeepSeek has jumped from a Ford T to a Subaru in terms of pollution and water use.

The issue here is not only input cost, though; all that data needs to be available live, in the RAM; this is why you need powerful, expensive chips in order to-

Holy shit.

I'm not going to detail all the numbers but I'm going to focus on the chip required: an RTX 3090. This is a gaming GPU that came out as the top of the line, the stuff South Korean LoL players buy…

Or they did, in September 2020. We're currently two generations ahead, on the RTX 5090.

What this is telling all those people who just sold their high-end gaming rig to be able to afford a machine that can run the latest ChatGPT locally, is that the person who bought it from them can run something basically just as powerful on their old one.

Which means that all those GPUs and NPUs that are being made, and all those deals Microsoft signed to have control of the AI market, have just lost a lot of their pulling power.

Well, I mean, the ChatGPT subscription is 20 bucks a month, surely the Chinese are charging a fortune for-

Oh. So it's free for everyone and you can use it or modify it however you want, no subscription, no unpayable electric bill, no handing Microsoft all of your private data, you can just run it on a relatively inexpensive PC. You could probably even run it on a phone in a couple years.

Oh, if only China had massive phone manufacturers that have a foot in the market everywhere except the US because the president had a tantrum eight years ago.

So… yeah, China just destabilised the global economy with a torrent file.

[thegalleonsnest]

OK since I haven't seen too many people talk about this since twitter news usually strikes pretty fast over here whenever e'usk does anything ever, let me give ya'll the run down on two things that will go live on NOVEMBER 15TH and why people are mass migrating to Blue Sky once more; and provide resources to help protect your art and make the transition to Blue Sky easier if you so choose:

The Block function no longer blocks people as intended. It now basically acts as a glorified Mute button. Even when you block someone, they can still see your posts, but they can't engage in them. If your account is a Public one and not a Private one, people you blocked will see your posts.

They say because people can easily "share and hide harmful or private information about those they've blocked," they changed it this way for "greater transparency." When in reality, this is an extremely dangerous change, as the whole point of blocking is to cease interaction with people entirely for a plethora of reasons, i.e. stalking, harassment, spam, endangerment, or just plainly annoying and not wanting to see said tweets/accounts. or you know, for 18+ accounts who do not want minors interacting with them or their material at all (There is speculation saying these changes are specifically for Elon himself so he can do his own kind of stalking, and honestly, with the private likes change, it lowkey checks out in my opinion)

Also, this straight up goes against and may violate Apple and Google's app store policies and also is straight up illegal in Canada and probably other countries as well.

If this ACTUALLY goes through, twitter will only be available in select countries, probably exclusively in the US, which would collapse the site with the lost of users and stock, and probably be the last push it needs to kill the site. And if not, will be a very sad and exclusive platform made for specific kinds of people who line up with musk's line of thinking.

2. New policies regarding Grok AI and basically removing the option to opt out of Grok's information gathering to improve their software.

And anything you upload/post on the site is considered "fair game" with "royalty-free licenses" and they can do whatever they please with it. Primarily using any and all posts on twitter to train their Grok AI. A few months ago, there was a setting you can opt out of so they couldn't take anything you post to "improve" Grok, but I guess because so many people were opting out, they decided to make it mandatory as part of the policy change (This is mainly speculation from what I hear).

So this is considered the final straw for a LOT of people, especially artists who have been gripping on to twitter for as long as they can, but the AI nonsense is too much for people now, including myself. Lot's of people are moving to Blue Sky for good reason, and from personal experience, it is literally 10x better than twitter ever was, even before elon took over. There is no algorithm on there, and you can save "feeds" to your timeline to have a catered timelines to hop between if your looking for something specific like furry art or game dev stuff. It's taken them a bit to get off the ground and add much needed features, but it's genuinely so much better now

RESOURCES

Project Glaze & Cara

If you're an artist who's still on twitter or trying to ride it out for as long as you can for whatever reason you have, do yourself a favor and Glaze and/or Nightshade your work. Project Glaze is a free program designed to protect your art work from getting scrapped by AI machines. Glazing basically makes it harder to adapt and copy artwork that AI programs try to scan, while Nightshade basically "poisons" works to make AI libraries much more unstable and generate images completely off the mark. (These are layman's terms I'm using here, but follow the link to get more information)

The only problem with these programs is that they can be resource intensive for computers, and not every pc can run glaze. It's basically like rendering a frame/animation, you gotta let your pc sit there to get it glazed/nightshade, and depending on the intensity and power of your pc, this may take minutes to hours depending on how much you wanna protect your work.

HOWEVER, there are two alternatives, WebGlaze and Cara

WebGlaze is an in browser version of the program, so your pc doesn't have to do the heavy lifting. You do need to have an account with Glaze and be invited to use the program (I have not done so personally so I don't know much about the process.)

Cara is an artist focused site that doubles as both a portfolio site and a general social media platform. They've partnered with Glaze and have their own browser glazing called "Cara Glaze," and highly encourage users to post their work Glazed and are extremely anti-ai. You do get limited uses per day to glaze your work, so if you plan on doing a huge backlog uploading of your art, it may take awhile if your using just Cara Glaze.

Some twitter users have suggested glazing your art, cropping it, and overlaying it with a frame telling people to follow them elsewhere like on Bluesky. Here's a template someone provided if you wanna use this one or make your own.

Blue Sky Resources and Tips

So if your a twitter user and your about to realize the hellish task of refollowing a massive chunk of people you follow, have no fear, there's an extension called Sky Follower Bridge (Firefox & Chrome links). This is a very basic extension that makes it really easy to find people on Bluesky

It sorts them out by trying to find matching usernames, usernames in descriptions, or by screen name. It's not 100% perfect, there's a couple people I already follow on Blue Sky but the extension could not find them on twitter correctly, but I still found a huge chunk of people. Also if your worried that this extension is "iffy," they do have a github open with the source publicly available and the Blue Sky Team themselves have promoted the extension in their recent posts while welcoming new users to the platform.

FEEDS and LABELS

OK SO THE COOLEST PART ABOUT BLUESKY IS THE FEEDS SYSTEM. Basically if you've made a twitter list before, it's like that, but way more customizable and caters to specific types of posts/topics. Consolidating them into a timeline/feed that exclusively filled about those particular topics, or just people in general. There's thousands to pick and choose from!

Here's a couple of mine that I have saved and ready (down below). Some feeds I have saved so I can jump to seeing what my friends and mutuals are up to, and see their posts specifically so it doesn't get lost in reposts or other accounts, and also specialized feeds for browsing artists within the furry community.

The Furry Community feeds I have here were created by people who've built an algorithm to place any #furry or #furryart or other special tags like #Furrystreamer or #furrydev. They even have one for commissions, and yes you can say commissions on a post and not have it destroyed or shadow banned. You are safe.

If you want, and I highly recommend it to get visibility and check out a neat community, follow furryli.st to get added to their list and feeds. Once your on the list, even without a hashtag, you'll still pop up in their specialized feeds as just a member of the community there. There are plenty of other feeds out there besides this one, but I feel like a lot of people could use one like this. They even got ones for OC specific too I remember seeing somewhere.

And in terms of labels, they can be either ways to help label yourself with specific things or have user created accessibility settings to help better control your experience on Blue Sky.

And my personal favorite: Ai Imagery Labeler. Removes any AI stuff or hides it to the best of it's abilities, and it does a pretty good job, I have not seen anything AI related since subscribing to it.

Finally, HASHTAGS WORK & No need to censor yourself!

This is NOT like twitter or any other big named social media site AT ALL, so you don't have to work around words to get your stuff out there and be seen. There are literally feeds built around having commissions getting and art seen! Some people worry about bots and that has been a recent issue since a lot of people are migrating to Blue Sky, but it comes with any social media territory.

ALSO COOL PART,

you can search a hashtag on someone's profile and search exclusively on that profile as well! You can even put the hashtag in bio for easy access if you have a specialize tag like here on tumblr. OR EVEN BUILD YOUR OWN ART FEED FOR YOUR STUFF SPECIFICALLY!

So yeah, there's your quick run down about twitter's current burning building, how to protect your art, and what to do when you move to Blue Sky! Have fun!

[verbrannt74]

Time for something new! - or old, since here could be your wolf character in retro games' style, low-poly and with pixelated texture.

🐺 Multi-slot (3 slots) YCH – 3D low-poly wolf character model

🔸 Price per slot: 50$

🔸READ THE INFO BELOW BEFORE CLAIM! ⏬⏬⏬

No additional accessories or extra parts (wings, horns, tufts, etc.)

Non-symmetrical coloring is okay

Minor model adjustments are possible (like body thickness, cheeks shape, tail length)

Fine details may be simplified or lost due to the low texture resolution

If you're unsure whether your character fits, please ask before claiming a slot!

🔸 What you get:

poses list (see the 2nd image)

38 static renders

3 turnaround animations (mp4 & transparent gifs) ⏩[look at them!]⏪

.blend files included (you should have a PC & Blender 3.6+ to open them)

10 static poses

256x256 px texture (I'll colour the original grayscale base)

.txt file with simply guide

***

🔸 Model usage rules

Allowed Uses

You may use the model for personal projects, renders, animations and non-commercial purposes*

You may modify the textures and rigging for customization (please don’t heavily redesign the model into something unrecognizable)

You may showcase renders of the model in your portfolio, social media, or online galleries (crediting me optional but appreciated)

Prohibited Uses

Do not resell, trade, or share the .blend files or textures with others

Do not claim the original model as your own

Do not use the model for NFTs or AI training

Additional Terms

I keep the right to use the base model for my portfolio and other personal projects

I keep the right to use coloured base model for my portfolio

* Purchasing the YCH grants you a custom-colored version of the model, but not exclusive rights to the base mesh. Write me a note before claiming if you want to use it for commercial purposes.

🔸 By purchasing this model, you agree to these terms.

***

🔸 Payment within 48 hours after claiming. After payment I'll start the work & send the files to you after finishing.

I use folders on Google Drive.

🔸 Payment via PayPal this time!

(via my intermediary)

No refunds after receiving the files.

🔸 or via Hipolink

(using !bank cards)

No refunds after receiving the files.

[the-world-annealing]

The rise of AI has caused incredible damage to art, or: what ate up their brains and imagination?

(Surface Level, by me just now)

This used to be even longer, believe it or not. A bit more personal than I thought it was going to be and there's a few sections where I mostly talk about myself - the bored reader is invited to simply skip those.

I enjoy worldbuilding. I've written probably a small novel's worth of worldbuilding Tumblr posts by now (especially if we're including Dawn of Worlds, a collaborative worldbuilding RPG that I played in 2023 and 2024). Other creative hobbies of mine include writing one-page TTRPGs, or designing custom Magic: the Gathering cards, or designing fakemons, or fangames, or whatnot. None of this is good enough to sell, nor do I need it to be. I simply enjoy working on it.

As I understand it, 'art' is increasingly synonymous with 'creative expression', so I suppose I might be a capital-A Artist, but I don't really use that term for myself. 'Creative' feels more neutral, and more honest. 'Tinkerer' captures how it feels to me, having all these pieces and trying to crystallize them into an arrangement that makes sense. That's what I named myself after - the world annealing, see?

Back on topic: I might not call myself an artist (for visual arts specifically, the picture above is as good as it gets) but I think I share a lot of the key motivators. I enjoy creating. I enjoy displays of skill. I like making something that others can use and giving it to them for free. I want to make good, useful, or interesting things, and I want them to look nice. Most of all, I want to add my own ideas to the endless conversation that humans have been having since the dawn of time.

One of my favorite authors is Alexander Wales (whose tumblr you can find here), best known for giant-sized webnovels like the 1.6 million words Worth the Candle. In a post fittingly titled The AI Art Apocalypse, he writes:

["Art is a communicative act. It’s a conversation. You see a picture and it makes you feel a certain way, and yes, sometimes you silently process that art, but most of my favorite aspects of art as discussing it with other people, wrestling with the art in public, teasing out what it’s trying to do, or what it’s doing without trying. I generally think that this is one of the best parts of being an author or an artist, this very public back and forth."]

I agree with this completely.

-----------

That was as good a bridge as any, let's talk about AI now.

A lot of the points leveraged against AI art are kind of bad. Gaming for an hour on a decent consumer PC consumes about 0.5 kWh - generating a hundred images with stable diffusion takes 0.005 kWh (other models are less transparent due to their proprietary nature, but given that it's ultimately corporations paying the power bill I don't see why electricity costs would be needlessly higher). Arguments that focus on the training data being used without permission need to contend with the fact that fully licensed generators are a reality now.

But those arguments are also not why people are against AI art in the first place. That goes back to all the subjective, intangible values I brought up in my introduction - the desire to create something personal, or interesting, or new, or inspiring, or useful. The desire to have an audience, however small. The desire for individual expression, for something other than Extruded Corporate Media Product, forever. For art that speaks and invites response - for conversation.

-----------

Creation is compromise. As I said, my real interests lie in the directions of prose writing and game design. If I was also a skilled visual artist, I could create illustrations to accompany my stories and games and 180-card custom MtG sets, and this would almost certainly improve them.

But I'm not a skilled visual artist, and I don't have infinite free time, and even if I could draw real well I think I would prefer ten hours of writing over four hours of writing and six hours of illustrating it. Nor do I have the money that would make it realistic for me to commission a hundred and eighty digital paintings. So it goes.

-----------

In Dawn of Worlds, each player takes the role of a god and helps shape the development of a world. My character was Haebarik, god of travel, a lanky red-haired giant with skin the color of slate, born from a tree on the world's first island. Distraught at the emptiness of the early world, he tore off his right arm, and cast it over the horizon, and where it landed it became the first continent. I liked this beat - it felt very mythic, not like a sanded-off modern fantasy narrative.

This was my own creation, and I am proud of it, even though it's irrevocably tainted.

See. when the game started I decided that I was going to need some kind of visual reference of my character, for the benefit of the other players if not myself. I spent some time prompting and tweaking the then-new stable diffusion, and eventually got an image I found acceptable - except that, in the wonkiness typical of such models, it'd only drawn a single arm. But seeing it, I was struck by inspiration, and in the end it made my work better.

(and to reflect the myth, the continent I drew on the map was shaped like an arm, and that shape inevitably influenced the other player's actions, and after a while I created a species that like their god only had one arm, and all of this enriched the conversation we were having and the art we were creating - or did AI poison it all?)

-----------

As I mentioned, I'm in a lot of creative spaces that aren't for visual art per se but that are often adjacent to visual art. There's a lot of people there who've clearly put a lot of effort in their craft, whose work has genuine passion and genuine personality. And sometimes I see those people reach for AI art because they've decided that illustrations would improve their work, and then they get brigaded for it.

What are we even defending here? Not beauty (it doesn't have to look good, just don't use AI), not authenticity (it doesn't have to be yours, just don't use AI), not even individual vision (it doesn't have to look like you want to, just don't use AI). It's so depressingly negative - art not defined by the presence of a human, but the absence of a machine.

More charitably, I suppose these people are asking for 'effort' or 'personality', but by what standard does a 1-minute MS paint doodle count as effortful and personal, but not The Secret Origin of Wally ManMoth? Are we guarding individual expression, or forcing it into a straitjacket?

(TSOoWM of course also doubles of a beautiful example of how DALL-E's 'overcooked plastic' look is not inherent to AI - and how someone skilled at 90% of a creative process can use it to fill in the gaps)

-----------

I'm not afraid that AI will kill art - it can't do that; nothing can. But this post's title wasn't a lie: I really do think that something awful has happened. There's an ever-sharpening divide between the communities willing to experiment with this new tool and those vehemently against it, a divide that might actually be sustainable in this age of algorithmic feeds and walled gardens.

Art is a communicative act. We are seeing the emergence of a side that would not merely cut off communication with the other, but deny they are worth listening to - deny they could speak, definitionally. If people actually started to believe that, it would betray a greater failure of imagination than any glassy-eyed slop ever could.

[budgetgameruae]

Best PC for Data Science & AI with 12GB GPU at Budget Gamer UAE

Are you looking for a powerful yet affordable PC for Data Science, AI, and Deep Learning? Budget Gamer UAE brings you the best PC for Data Science with 12GB GPU that handles complex computations, neural networks, and big data processing without breaking the bank!

Why Do You Need a 12GB GPU for Data Science & AI?

Before diving into the build, let’s understand why a 12GB GPU is essential:

✅ Handles Large Datasets – More VRAM means smoother processing of big data. ✅ Faster Deep Learning – Train AI models efficiently with CUDA cores. ✅ Multi-Tasking – Run multiple virtual machines and experiments simultaneously. ✅ Future-Proofing – Avoid frequent upgrades with a high-capacity GPU.

Best Budget Data Science PC Build – UAE Edition

Here’s a cost-effective yet high-performance PC build tailored for AI, Machine Learning, and Data Science in the UAE.

1. Processor (CPU): AMD Ryzen 7 5800X

8 Cores / 16 Threads – Perfect for parallel processing.

3.8GHz Base Clock (4.7GHz Boost) – Speeds up data computations.

PCIe 4.0 Support – Faster data transfer for AI workloads.

2. Graphics Card (GPU): NVIDIA RTX 3060 12GB

12GB GDDR6 VRAM – Ideal for deep learning frameworks (TensorFlow, PyTorch).

CUDA Cores & RT Cores – Accelerates AI model training.

DLSS Support – Boosts performance in AI-based rendering.

3. RAM: 32GB DDR4 (3200MHz)

Smooth Multitasking – Run Jupyter Notebooks, IDEs, and virtual machines effortlessly.

Future-Expandable – Upgrade to 64GB if needed.

4. Storage: 1TB NVMe SSD + 2TB HDD

Ultra-Fast Boot & Load Times – NVMe SSD for OS and datasets.

Extra HDD Storage – Store large datasets and backups.

5. Motherboard: B550 Chipset

PCIe 4.0 Support – Maximizes GPU and SSD performance.

Great VRM Cooling – Ensures stability during long AI training sessions.

6. Power Supply (PSU): 650W 80+ Gold

Reliable & Efficient – Handles high GPU/CPU loads.

Future-Proof – Supports upgrades to more powerful GPUs.

7. Cooling: Air or Liquid Cooling

AMD Wraith Cooler (Included) – Good for moderate workloads.

Optional AIO Liquid Cooler – Better for overclocking and heavy tasks.

8. Case: Mid-Tower with Good Airflow

Multiple Fan Mounts – Keeps components cool during extended AI training.

Cable Management – Neat and efficient build.

Why Choose Budget Gamer UAE for Your Data Science PC?

✔ Custom-Built for AI & Data Science – No pre-built compromises. ✔ Competitive UAE Pricing – Best deals on high-performance parts. ✔ Expert Advice – Get guidance on the perfect build for your needs. ✔ Warranty & Support – Reliable after-sales service.

Performance Benchmarks – How Does This PC Handle AI Workloads?

TaskPerformanceTensorFlow Training2x Faster than 8GB GPUsPython Data AnalysisSmooth with 32GB RAMNeural Network TrainingHandles large models efficientlyBig Data ProcessingNVMe SSD reduces load times

FAQs – Data Science PC Build in UAE

1. Is a 12GB GPU necessary for Machine Learning?

Yes! More VRAM allows training larger models without memory errors.

2. Can I use this PC for gaming too?

Absolutely! The RTX 3060 12GB crushes 1080p/1440p gaming.

3. Should I go for Intel or AMD for Data Science?

AMD Ryzen offers better multi-core performance at a lower price.

4. How much does this PC cost in the UAE?

Approx. AED 4,500 – AED 5,500 (depends on deals & upgrades).

5. Where can I buy this PC in the UAE?

Check Budget Gamer UAE for the best custom builds!

Final Verdict – Best Budget Data Science PC in UAE

If you're into best PC for Data Science with 12GB GPU PC build from Budget Gamer UAE is the perfect balance of power and affordability. With a Ryzen 7 CPU, RTX 3060, 32GB RAM, and ultra-fast storage, it handles heavy workloads like a champ.

[hjbender]

Hey Bender, what was that writing program you recently posted about that was an alternative to google docs? My computer died today and when i get a new one i think i wanna make a switch to something that DOESNT have the authority to spontaneously lock me out of all my work and train Ai by stealing it

Proton! Specifically, Proton Docs, which is currently a feature of Proton Drive. Pretty much exactly like Google but without the bullshit.

I've been using Proton Mail for a while now, but for the longest time there was no real alternative to GDocs, especially in terms of accessibility across multiple devices (PC, phone, etc). Now there is, and I'm really happy about it. Give it a try and see if it works for you.

[duskvsdawn]

Can I request prompt 7 with Claude Clawmark? (plus sized reader if you can😣) Can be Nsfelw but please add a lot of fluff to it! I'm completely deprived of Claude fics (I've already read them all) 💔💔

ANYWAYS THANK YOU!! (lastly, could I be 🗿anon HIHI!)

-🗿

≫ A/N: Hello, you got it :) I decided to go the SFW route because I really need to write more of it. It is a bit suggestive here and there, but I mostly kept it pretty innocent, compared to what I normally write. Uh, this isn't really long, but I hope that's okay! I was running out of ideas for this one, sorry.

Content: female reader, reader is plus-sized, Clark absolutely adores her curves even though she hates it, she is a bit depressed because she would love to wear her boyfriend's clothes but none of them fit, until she finds something that does fit her just fine and it makes her so happy!

Art credits: I searched far and wide for them, but the image seems to have kind of disappeared off the web.

✩*⢄⢁✧ --------- ✧⡈⡠*✩

If you like my works, please like, comment and reblog! It is much appreciated ❤ And if you really enjoyed it, please follow me so you can be kept up to date on future uploads! Please do not re-upload, translate, or use for AI training.

You look kinda cute wearing that

You sighed as you stood in front of the mirror in just your underwear. You had just taken a shower, and you were inspecting your reflection, pointing out all the stuff you hated about your body, and the instant disgust surfaced once more, like it always did. You knew that your boyfriend loved your body the way it was, but you didn't. You knew he adored having some more to hold, it always seemed to drive him absolutely insane, but you couldn't disagree more. You were quite a bit bigger than him, so you couldn't do that adorable girlfriend-wears-boyfriend's-clothes thing. You really wanted to wear some of his cool clothes, but none of them fit you. So with another sigh, you picked up the clothes you had already put aside for today and put them on. But then, an idea hit you. Maybe there was something that fit you.

You went downstairs to walk to the coat rack. Bingo. He had left his cloak at home. You took it off the hook, and you sniffed the collar. Mmm, it smelled just like him. Smelled like his signature body smell, combined with all the weird ingredients he would use while he was busy brewing potions. It's a scent that you had started to learn to like over the years. You inspected it thoroughly, letting the fabric run through your hands. You had seen him in this cloak millions of times, so it wasn't new to you. It also wasn't like you hadn't touched it before, since you had touched and kissed him thousands of times, grabbing onto the fabric to make sure he couldn't get away, or to pull him even closer to your body.

You decided to take your chances, and you started putting it on. It had always been super oversized on your boyfriend, and it seemed to fit you pretty okay. You hurried back up the stairs to properly inspect yourself in front of the large mirror once more, but wearing his coat this time instead of being in your underwear. You felt way more comfortable in clothes anyway, so this wouldn't be too bad. You looked in the mirror, and you were pretty happy with the result. It fit you perfectly, and it made you happy that you were finally wearing something that your boyfriend wore all the time.

You decided to work behind your pc for the rest of the day, doing some photo editing and writing. You loved art as an outlet for your negative thoughts about yourself. After some work, you went downstairs to grab yourself something to drink. When you walked through the living room towards the kitchen, you heard keys jingle in the front door. Your boyfriend entered the house and looked at you in awe.

"Wow... Well, hello there..." the cleric said as he walked closer to you and put his hands on your shoulders. "Give me a spin, darling," Claude said as he took a step back to admire you. You did your spin, and stood still in the same spot, really nervous about this all of a sudden now that you were caught, sorta. Your boyfriend whistled, and then a deep purr left his lips. "Do you... Like it?" you asked as you fumbled with the hem of the sleeves. "Like it? Babe, are you fucking kidding me? I love it! It looks great on you. I should get one made for you, too," the cleric said as he approached you again, wrapping his arms around you to pull you in for a hungry kiss. He purred against your lips once more in between kisses as his hands entangled themselves in your hair to deepen the kiss.

You pulled back to breathe for a little bit, but he wouldn't let you go for that long. As quickly as he could, he pulled you closer again as his tongue entered your mouth again. Your tongue brushed against the piercing that you had grown to like more and more, and a hum of approval left your boyfriend's throat. His hands wandered under the coat to grab your butt and squeeze it. "Fuck, you look so cute wearing this. Absolutely irresistible," the cleric said as he bit his lip while one hand moved up to lightly squeeze your love handles. You looked away, your insecurities taking you over just like they did earlier when you looked at yourself in the mirror with nothing but underwear on. You didn't know why, but even if he loved every single centimetre of your body, it always made you feel uneasy. The cleric noticed you were getting distracted by your thoughts again, and he wanted to pull you out of this negative spiral happening in front of him.

"I know what you're thinking, baby. 'Oh, here he goes again with squeezing my entire body.' Sorry, I just can't help myself. You just look stunning, absolutely stunning, and I love every single part of your body. Even if you think otherwise, I will never see you any other way, trust me." your boyfriend said as he left some searing kisses on your neck while one hand travelled down once more to give your butt another squeeze. You couldn't deny that these kisses made you feel really desired and wanted, and they really turned you on, too. And you knew he wouldn't lie to you about any of this; you trusted him.

For the rest of the day, the two of you were chilling on the couch. Your boyfriend occasionally put his hand on your thigh, to sometimes let it travel in between them. He adored you in that outfit, after all. He kept pulling you close to make out with you every now and then as well. He then patted his lap, signalling you to sit on top of it. He knew you didn't like being on top in any way, shape or form, but he had to have you now. He asked you to keep that cloak on, though. It simply looked too good on you. And seeing you in it really did things to him.

[canmom]

using LLMs to control a game character's dialogue seems an obvious use for the technology. and indeed people have tried, for example nVidia made a demo where the player interacts with AI-voiced NPCs:

this looks bad, right? like idk about you but I am not raring to play a game with LLM bots instead of human-scripted characters. they don't seem to have anything interesting to say that a normal NPC wouldn't, and the acting is super wooden.

so, the attempts to do this so far that I've seen have some pretty obvious faults:

relying on external API calls to process the data (expensive!)

presumably relying on generic 'you are xyz' prompt engineering to try to get a model to respond 'in character', resulting in bland, flavourless output

limited connection between game state and model state (you would need to translate the relevant game state into a text prompt)

responding to freeform input, models may not be very good at staying 'in character', with the default 'chatbot' persona emerging unexpectedly. or they might just make uncreative choices in general.

AI voice generation, while it's moved very fast in the last couple years, is still very poor at 'acting', producing very flat, emotionless performances, or uncanny mismatches of tone, inflection, etc.

although the model may generate contextually appropriate dialogue, it is difficult to link that back to the behaviour of characters in game

so how could we do better?

the first one could be solved by running LLMs locally on the user's hardware. that has some obvious drawbacks: running on the user's GPU means the LLM is competing with the game's graphics, meaning both must be more limited. ideally you would spread the LLM processing over multiple frames, but you still are limited by available VRAM, which is contested by the game's texture data and so on, and LLMs are very thirsty for VRAM. still, imo this is way more promising than having to talk to the internet and pay for compute time to get your NPC's dialogue lmao

second one might be improved by using a tool like control vectors to more granularly and consistently shape the tone of the output. I heard about this technique today (thanks @cherrvak)

third one is an interesting challenge - but perhaps a control-vector approach could also be relevant here? if you could figure out how a description of some relevant piece of game state affects the processing of the model, you could then apply that as a control vector when generating output. so the bridge between the game state and the LLM would be a set of weights for control vectors that are applied during generation.

this one is probably something where finetuning the model, and using control vectors to maintain a consistent 'pressure' to act a certain way even as the context window gets longer, could help a lot.

probably the vocal performance problem will improve in the next generation of voice generators, I'm certainly not solving it. a purely text-based game would avoid the problem entirely of course.

this one is tricky. perhaps the model could be taught to generate a description of a plan or intention, but linking that back to commands to perform by traditional agentic game 'AI' is not trivial. ideally, if there are various high-level commands that a game character might want to perform (like 'navigate to a specific location' or 'target an enemy') that are usually selected using some other kind of algorithm like weighted utilities, you could train the model to generate tokens that correspond to those actions and then feed them back in to the 'bot' side? I'm sure people have tried this kind of thing in robotics. you could just have the LLM stuff go 'one way', and rely on traditional game AI for everything besides dialogue, but it would be interesting to complete that feedback loop.

I doubt I'll be using this anytime soon (models are just too demanding to run on anything but a high-end PC, which is too niche, and I'll need to spend time playing with these models to determine if these ideas are even feasible), but maybe something to come back to in the future. first step is to figure out how to drive the control-vector thing locally.

[blue-ten]

Windows 11 and the Last Straw

Bit of a rant coming up. TL;DR I'm tired of Microsoft, so I'm moving to Linux. After Microsoft's announcement of "Recall" and their plans to further push Copilot as some kind of defining feature of the OS, I'm finally done. I feel like that frog in the boiling water analogy, but I'm noticing the bubbles starting to form and it's time to hop out.

The corporate tech sector recently has been such a disaster full of blind bandwagon hopping (NFTs, ethically dubious "AI" datasets trained on artwork scraped off the net, and creative apps trying to incorporate features that feed off of those datasets). Each and every time it feels like insult to injury toward the arts in general. The out of touch CEOs and tech billionaires behind all this don't understand art, they don't value art, and they never will.

Thankfully, I have a choice. I don't have to let Microsoft feature-creep corporate spyware into my PC. I don't have to let them waste space and CPU cycles on a glorified chatbot that wants me to press the "make art" button. I'm moving to Linux, and I've been inadvertently prepping myself to do it for over a decade now.

I like testing out software: operating systems, web apps, anything really, but especially art programs. Over the years, the open-source community has passionately and tirelessly developed projects like Krita, Inkscape, and Blender into powerhouses that can actually compete in their spaces. All for free, for artists who just want to make things. These are people, real human beings, that care about art and creativity. And every step of the way while Microsoft et al began rotting from the inside, FOSS flourished and only got better. They've more than earned trust from me.

I'm not announcing my move to Linux just to be dramatic and stick it to the man (although it does feel cathartic, haha). I'm going to be using Krita, Inkscape, GIMP, and Blender for all my art once I make the leap, and I'm going to share my experiences here! Maybe it'll help other artists in the long run! I'm honestly excited about it. I worked on the most recent page of Everblue entirely in Krita, and it was a dream how well it worked for me.

Addendum: I'm aware that Microsoft says things like, "Copilot is optional," "Recall is offline, it doesn't upload or harvest your data," "You can turn all these things off." Uh-huh. All that is only true until it isn't. One day Microsoft will take the user's choice away like they've done so many times before. Fool me once, etc.

[spark-hearts2]

Okay so let’s say you have a basement just full of different computers. Absolute hodgepodge. Ranging in make and model from a 2005 dell laptop with a landline phone plug to a 2025 apple with exactly one usbc, to an IBM.

And you want to use this absolute clusterfuck to, I don’t know, store/run a sentient AI! How do you link this mess together (and plug it into a power source) in a way that WONT explode? Be as outlandish and technical as possible.

Oh.

Oh you want to take Caine home with you, don't you! You want to make the shittiest most fucked up home made server setup by fucking daisy chaining PCs together until you have enough processing power to do something. You want to try running Caine in your basement, absolutely no care for the power draw that this man demands.

Holy shit, what have you done? really long post under cut.

Slight disclaimer: I never actually work with this kind of computing, so none of this should be taken as actual, usable advice. That being said, I will cite sources as I go along for easy further research.

First of all, the idea of just stacking computers together HAS BEEN DONE BEFORE!!! This is known as a computer cluster! Sometimes, this is referred to as a supercomputer. (technically the term supercomputer is outdated but I won't go into that)

Did you know that the US government got the idea to wire 1,760 PS3s together in order to make a supercomputer? It was called the Condor Cluster! (tragically it kinda sucked but watch the video for that story)

Now, making an at home computer cluster is pretty rare as it's not like computing power scaled by adding another computer. It takes time for the machines to communicate in between each other, so trying to run something like a videogame on multiple PCs doesn't work. But, lets say that we have a massive amount of data that was collected from some research study that needs to be processed. A cluster can divide that computing among the multiple PCs for comparatively faster computing times. And yes! People have been using this to run/train their own AI so hypothetically Caine can run on a setup like this.

Lets talk about the external hardware needed first. There are basically only two things that we need to worry about. Power (like ya pointed out) and Communication.

Power supply is actually easier than you think! Most PCs have an internal power supply, so all you would need to do is stick the plug into the wall! Or, that is if we weren't stacking an unknowable amount of computers together. I have a friend that had the great idea to try and run a whole ass server rack in the dormitory at my college and yeah, he popped a fuse so now everyone in that section of the building doesn't have power. But that's a good thing, if you try to plug in too many computers on the same circuit, nothing should light on fire because the fuse breaks the circuit (yay for safety!). But how did my friend manage without his server running in his closet? Turns out there was a plug underneath his bed that was on it's own circuit with a higher limit (I'm not going to explain how that works, this is long enough already).

So! To do this at home, start by plugging everything into an extension cord, plug that into a wall outlet and see if the lights go out. I'm serious, blowing a fuse won't break anything. If the fuse doesn't break, yay it works! Move onto next step. If not, then take every other device off that circuit. Try again. If it still doesn't work, then it's time to get weird.

Some houses do have higher duty plugs (again, not going to explain how your house electricity works here) so you could try that next. But remember that each computer has their own plug, so why try to fit everything into one outlet? Wire this bad boy across multiple circuits to distribute the load! This can be a bit of a pain though, as typically the outlets for the each circuits aren't close to each other. An electrician can come in and break up which outlet goes to which fuse, or just get some long extension cords. Now, this next option I'm only saying this as you said wild and outlandish, and that's WIRING DIRECTLY INTO THE POWER GRID. If you do that, the computers can now draw enough power to light themselves on fire, but it is no longer possible to pop a fuse because the fuse is gone. (Please do not do this in real life, this can kill you in many horrible ways)

Communication (as in between the PCs) is where things start getting complex. As in, all of those nasty pictures of wires pouring out of server racks are usually communication cables. The essential piece of hardware that all of these computers are wired into is the switch box. It is the device that handles communication between the individual computers. Software decided which computer in the cluster gets what task. This is known as the Dynamic Resource Manager, sometimes called the scheduler (may run on one of the devises in the cluster but can have it's own dedicated machine). Once the software has scheduled the task, the switch box handles the actual act of getting the data to each machine. That's why speed and capacity are so important with switch boxes, they are the bottleneck for a system like this.

Uhh, connecting this all IBM server rack? That's not needed in this theoretical setup. Choose one computer to act as the 'head node' to act as the user access point and you're set. (sorry I'm not exactly sure what you mean by connect everything to an IBM)

To picture what all of this put together would look like, here’s a great if distressingly shaky video of an actual computer cluster! Power cables aren't shown but they are there.

But what about cable management? Well, things shouldn't get too bad given that fixing disordered cables can be as easy as scheduling the maintenance and ordering some cables. Some servers can't go down, so bad management piles up until either it has to go down or another server is brought in to take the load until the original server can be fixed. Ideally, the separate computers should be wired together, labeled, then neatly run into a switch box.

Now, depending on the level of knowledge, the next question would be "what about the firewall". A firewall is not necessary in a setup like this. If no connections are being made out of network, if the machine is even connected to a network, then there is no reason to monitor or block who is connecting to the machine.

That's all of the info about hardware around the computers, let's talk about the computers themselves!

I'm assuming that these things are a little fucked. First things first would be testing all machines to make sure that they still function! General housekeeping like blasting all of the dust off the motherboard and cleaning out those ports. Also, putting new thermal paste on the CPU. Refresh your thermal paste people.

The hardware of the PCs themselves can and maybe should get upgraded. Most PCs (more PCs than you think) have the ability to be upgraded! I'm talking extra slots for RAM and an extra SADA cable for memory. Also, some PCs still have a DVD slot. You can just take that out and put a hard drive in there! Now upgrades aren't essential but extra memory is always recommended. Redundancy is your friend.

Once the hardware is set, factory reset the computer and... Ok, now I'm at the part where my inexperience really shows. Computer clusters are almost always done with the exact same make and model of computer because essentially, this is taking several computers and treating them as one. When mixing hardware, things can get fucked. There is a version of linux specifically for mixing hardware or operating systems, OSCAR, so it is possible. Would it be a massive headache to do in real life and would it behave in unpredictable ways? Without a doubt. But, it could work, so I will leave it at that. (but maybe ditch the Mac, apple doesn't like to play nice with anything)

Extra things to consider. Noise level, cooling, and humidity! Each of these machines have fans! If it's in a basement, then it's probably going to be humid. Server rooms are climate controlled for a reason. It would be a good idea to stick an AC unit and a dehumidifier in there to maintain that sweat spot in temperature.

All links in one spot:

What's a cluster?

Wiki computer cluster

The PS3 was a ridiculous machine

I built an AI supercomputer with 5 Mac Studios

The worst patch rack I've ever worked on.

Building the Ultimate OpenSees Rig: HPC Cluster SUPERCOMPUTER Using Gaming Workstations!

What is a firewall?

Your old PC is Your New Server

Open Source Cluster Application Resources (OSCAR)

Buying a SERVER - 3 things to know

A Computer Cluster Made With BROKEN PCs

@fratboycipher feel free to add too this or correct me in any way

[collapsecomplex]

i love ai i love neurosama i love watching people build algorithms and training them and watching them become more 'intelligent' i love watching simulations i love NPCs i love enemies tracking our hitboxes

i hate AI that trains off of things not meant for it it shouldn't exist i hate how things like chatgpt have scraped the internet for knowledge i hate how it has tainted the uniqueness and happiness AI brought to people now when people hear AI they think of chatgpt when in reality it could just be someone's algorithm resided on their pc that they built by themselves, trained on their own work, or coded by themselves

in short: fuck chatgpt not all ai is bad

[elbiotipo]

fwiw and i have no idea what the artists are doing with it, a lot of the libraries that researchers are currently using to develop deep learning models from scratch are all open source built upon python, i'm sure monsanto has its own proprietary models hand crafted to make life as shitty as possible in the name of profit, but for research there's a lot of available resources library and dataset wise in related fields. It's not my area per se but i've learnt enough to get by in potentially applying it to my field within science, and largely the bottleneck in research is that the servers and graphics cards you need to train your models at a reasonable pace are of a size you can usually only get from google or amazon or facebook (although some rich asshole private universities from the US can actually afford the cost of the kind of server you need. But that's a different issue wrt resource availability in research in the global south. Basically: mas plata para la universidad pública la re puta que los parió)

Yes, one great thing about software development is that for every commercially closed thing there are open source versions that do better.

The possibilities for science are enormous. Gigantic. Much of modern science is based on handling huge amounts of data no human can process at once. Specially trained models can be key to things such as complex genetics, especially simulating proteomes. They already have been used there to incredible effect, but custom models are hard to make, I think AIs that can be reconfigured to particular cases might change things in a lot of fields forever.

I am concerned, however, of the overconsumption of electronics this might lead to when everyone wants their pet ChatGPT on their PC, but this isn't a thing that started with AI, electronic waste and planned obsolescence is already wasting countless resources in chips just to feed fashion items like iphones, this is a matter of consumption and making computers be more modular and longer lasting as the tools they are. I've also read that models recently developed in China consume much, much less resources and could potentially be available in common desktop computers, things might change as quickly as in 2 years.