An actual decent reddit post in /r/toopoortobuyaniphone for once, and a good Saturday morning thread to drink a cup of Joe with.

Many of us have witnessed the breathtaking moon photos taken with the latest zoom lenses, starting with the S20 Ultra. Nevertheless, I've always had doubts about their authenticity, as they appear almost too perfect. While these images are not necessarily outright fabrications, neither are they entirely genuine. Let me explain.

There have been many threads on this, and many people believe that the moon photos are real (inputmag) - even MKBHD has claimed in this popular youtube short that the moon is not an overlay, like Huawei has been accused of in the past. But he's not correct. So, while many have tried to prove that Samsung fakes the moon shots, I think nobody succeeded - until now.

WHAT I DID

1. I downloaded this high-res image of the moon from the internet - https://i.imgur.com/PIAjVKp

2. I downsized it to 170x170 pixels and applied a gaussian blur, so that all the detail is GONE. This means it's not recoverable, the information is just not there, it's digitally blurred: https://i.imgur.com/xEyLajW

And a 4x upscaled version so that you can better appreciate the blur: https://i.imgur.com/3STX9mZ

1. I full-screened the image on my monitor (showing it at 170x170 pixels, blurred), moved to the other end of the room, and turned off all the lights. Zoomed into the monitor and voila - https://i.imgur.com/ifIHr3S

2. This is the image I got - https://i.imgur.com/bXJOZgI

INTERPRETATION

To put it into perspective, here is a side by side: https://i.imgur.com/ULVX933

In the side-by-side above, I hope you can appreciate that Samsung is leveraging an AI model to put craters and other details on places which were just a blurry mess. And I have to stress this: there's a difference between additional processing a la super-resolution, when multiple frames are combined to recover detail which would otherwise be lost, and this, where you have a specific AI model trained on a set of moon images, in order to recognize the moon and slap on the moon texture on it (when there is no detail to recover in the first place, as in this experiment). This is not the same kind of processing that is done when you're zooming into something else, when those multiple exposures and different data from each frame account to something. This is specific to the moon.

CONCLUSION

The moon pictures from Samsung are fake. Samsung's marketing is deceptive. It is adding detail where there is none (in this experiment, it was intentionally removed). In this article, they mention multi-frames, multi-exposures, but the reality is, it's AI doing most of the work, not the optics, the optics aren't capable of resolving the detail that you see. Since the moon is tidally locked to the Earth, it's very easy to train your model on other moon images and just slap that texture when a moon-like thing is detected.

Now, Samsung does say "No image overlaying or texture effects are applied when taking a photo, because that would cause similar objects to share the same texture patterns if an object detection were to be confused by the Scene Optimizer.", which might be technically true - you're not applying any texture if you have an AI model that applies the texture as a part of the process, but in reality and without all the tech jargon, that's that's happening. It's a texture of the moon.

If you turn off "scene optimizer", you get the actual picture of the moon, which is a blurry mess (as it should be, given the optics and sensor that are used).

To further drive home my point, I blurred the moon even further and clipped the highlights, which means the area which is above 216 in brightness gets clipped to pure white - there's no detail there, just a white blob - https://i.imgur.com/9XMgt06

I zoomed in on the monitor showing that image and, guess what, again you see slapped on detail, even in the parts I explicitly clipped (made completely 100% white): https://i.imgur.com/9kichAp

TL:DR Samsung is using AI/ML to slap on a texture of the moon on your moon pictures, and while some think that's your camera's capability, it's actually not. And it's not sharpening, it's not adding detail from multiple frames because in this experiment, all the frames contain the same amount of detail. None of the frames have the craters etc. because they're intentionally blurred, yet the camera somehow miraculously knows that they are there. And don't even get me started on the motion interpolation on their "super slow-mo", maybe that's another post in the future..

The input article in particular OP links to is egresses

Is the Galaxy S21 Ultra using AI to fake detailed Moon photos?

The gist of the article is 3 sources say it's abilities are real, 3 say they're fake, so input does their own test pitting a S21 Ultra vs Sony A7R III w/ 600mm telephoto lens. It's really funny and I suggest you read it as I can't do it justice.

But if you're lazy and don't want to read it here's the ending of the article.

3,500-something words into this investigation and I feel confident between my own comparison, the lack of Moon overlay photos or maps within the camera’s software, and Samsung’s own detailed explanations that there is no faking going on with 100x Moon photos. The S21 Ultra's doing a ton of correction on a 100x photo of the Moon and I have no reason to believe any addition of third-party imagery is happening. The S21 Ultra’s 100x zoom (with intelligent software tuning) is really that impressive and gives it a considerable edge over other phones.

But I also want to include one caveat: the S21 Ultra’s Scene Optimizer will not suddenly make all 100x zoom photos look as crispy as the Moon. Samsung flat-out says the Scene Optimizer can recognize “more than 30 scenes.” That includes the following according to a spokesperson:

Food, Portraits, Flowers, Indoor scenes, Animals, Landscapes, Greenery, Trees, Sky, Mountains, Beaches, Sunrises and sunsets, Watersides, Street scenes, Night scenes, Waterfalls, Snow, Birds, Backlit, Text, Clothing, Vehicle, Shoe, Dog, Face, Drink, Stage, Baby, People, Cat, Moon.

Scenes and objects that aren’t recognized by the Scene Optimizer will likely look like grainy mush at 100x zoom. So take that into consideration when using the S21 Ultra’s max zoom.

Honestly, I can’t believe I spent this many words debunking such a silly conspiracy theory. But consider the case closed (for now). Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to return to my regular scheduled programming that consists of dunking on flat earthers and people who believe in UFOs.

Key take away/s: AI technology has easily been able to fool some tech journ*list and pop-tech YouTubes reviewers who don't have an understand of either technology or physics.

orange site discus

Reddit Talk went nowhere in 2 years

https://old.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/11o2tlx/reddit_to_shut_down_its_reddit_talk_social_audio/

Okay so I wanted to play the Sims 4 on my chromebook. I thought the longest part of it all would be instillation but man I was wrong. ChromeOS sucks actual balls and is not supported by either origin or steam.

Okay fine, I’ve already activated the Linux shell on my Chromebook anyways so I’ll just download virtualbox and be on my way. EXCEPT it doesn’t fricking work and I’m too r-slurred to figure it out.

I find a good alternative and start the download but because I’m using a sudo command they want a password I never set. I try my Chromebook password to no avail. I see a user mentioning that there’s a second Linux terminal called crosh you can open to bypass the password.

I try the command for crosh and it just immediately closes the terminal, weird. I look up “open crosh on Chromebook” it automatically closes the page. That’s when I learned that researching anything related to this Crosh terminal is strictly verboten for some reason. Literally put the word it in the search bar and it auto deletes immediately ala 1984. That was creepy.

I start loading up developer mode on the computer and it starts showing scary looking warnings and making my computer beep. Like I get not wanting to brick a computer but this thing was like 150 bucks lol, not worth all the bravado. Apparently I didn’t set up developer mode correctly so essentially I just powerwashed the computer which was another way to fix it. It seems to have worked. Let’s hope it’s not too annoying after this.

I finally got the virtual machine program to boot up. Put the ISO image in it and…IT DOESNT FRICKING WORK this error is something my pea brain cannot comprehend. I give up, raise the white flag. Congrats ChromeOS you have won. I will try downloading the Sims4 on my PlayStation and if that doesn’t work I will just play Issac instead.

how do u undo it via js ?

use case:

heres what happens currently (on mobile):

1. user sees expandable image

2. user click on image to expand it

3. users pinches to zoom on image

4. user closes the image - page is still zoomed, user must unzoom manually

I want it so the page gets unzoomed automatically when user closes the image, is this possible ?

Born out of frustration with current cowtools for digital game making — and a love for the Lisp family of languages — I invented Carp. It’s a programming language designed with game making in mind, focused on speed and predictable performance. Also, it has the kind of tooling and syntax that I prefer. Hopefully it will make me and others feel a little bit better while programming.

maybe we would have avoided the downtime just now if rdrama was written in carp and could support hot-reloading... reddit used to support it, why can't rdrama?

My janny lawyer has instructed me to not voice what needs to be done to OP.

: It's like a whole world of computer security specialists screamed and were all silenced at the same time.

: So, literally two browsers open - + Electron.

Why not just use SSH password-less and use terminal. Efficient, lightweight, and you can do anything with that.

: Well i do love bloat and also its also partly because i cant configure my switch to make my ip static

extra feature my friends can easily turn on my minecraft server if they wanna play without any command line magic

: I actually made this lol https://github.com/SevenNotFound/DSH

Any suggestions where I can improve it? Also, can I see your code?

: wow cool, mine is just more bloated and also has a feature to automate on turning on minecraft servers

edit: i cant really give advice since my code is also trash

: darn I actually just used ChatGPT for most of the code lmao

Talent shortage is acute in the IT and data science ecosystem in India with a survey claiming that 95 per cent of engineers in the country are not fit to take up software development jobs.

According to a study by employability assessment company Aspiring Minds, only 4.77 per cent candidates can write the correct logic for a programme — a minimum requirement for any programming job.

Over 36,000 engineering students form IT related branches of over 500 colleges took Automata — a Machine Learning based assessment of software development skills — and over 2/3 could not even write code that compiles.

The study further noted that while more than 60 per cent candidates cannot even write code that compiles, only 1.4 per cent can write functionally correct and efficient code.

oh boy

i guess this was probably inevitable

FTC is going after musk. this is not "as bad" as it seems on the surface but at a deeper level its about as bad as it seemshttps://t.co/reMfn3gicD pic.twitter.com/LEUHsplM3w

— eigenrobot (@eigenrobot) March 7, 2023

my take on the OpenBSD question

I personally like OpenBSD because it runs on a lot of obscure hardware. I posted that extremely weird Chinese MIPS laptop (yes, not x86 or ARM, Intel or AMD - see this thread https://rdrama.net/h/slackernews/post/137520/homegrown-chink-laptop-marseyjewoftheorientnot-intel-or) and OpenBSD supports it entirely, the last remaining OS to do so. However, most of the OS itself is pretty meh. The filesystem situation is godawful and performance is balls on top of a lack of hardware support. The upgrade path is weird for anything but a server you’ll keep an eye on every six months (never got the obsession with “OpenBSD routers”). And I really don’t find the security posture to be anything but posturing - https://isopenbsdsecu.re/ is biased and troll-y but the info is good.

the drama

Good question: Is OpenBSD more secure than a mainstream Linux distribution, notably Debian, in their default configurations?

The code is less, but there are fewer developers too. For example, basic support for disk encryption (an important security feature) has been added to the installer in 2023 in OpenBSD.

Perhaps people familiar with the software development process in both could chime in.

Questioning OpenBSD’s security approach is bound to get bites.

Yes and No. Both modern Linux and OpenBSD have their pros and cons. For example, security works better in the onion layers, which can increase complexity. With Linux, you get a modern stack such as Linux containers or ZFS if you want those excellent filesystem features. Are you using containers for development and deploying apps? Using Linux would simplify the process (of course, you can set Linux VM under OpenBSD and run Docker). On the other hand, OpenBSD is a compact OS. Less code == fewer bugs (at least in theory). Some of their code, such as OpenSSH, is wildly used by Linux, Windows, and major IT vendors in their devices. OpenBSD devs do write reliable code. In short, use whatever gets your work done quickly, which also keeps you or your devs/users happy. That is all matter. Apart from that, it would be best if you took all other precautions to secure your OS, such as regularly applying patches, and firewalls, installing adblocker, not downloading unwanted stuff and clicking on the links, regardless of whether it is Win11, macOS, Debian/Ubuntu Linux, or OpenBSD.

Dude uses a lot of words not to say much or answer the question.

OpenBSD's default configuration has basically nothing running. Once you actually set it up for a use case, it isn't much better (you'll likely be running software you would on Linux that wasn't audited) and might even be worse given it lacks a lot of security features Linux has (meaning you have less control over how to lock down things in the case of a hack).

This is probably the biggest thing with openbsd that’s posturing -

Nothing besides the base system has security guarantees.

The second you install something with pkg_add you’re no longer running a “zero holes” system. Is it still cool the base system is designed with security in mind? Kind of. Is it really useful? Not particularly. Usually you have an OS to run other applications.

False. OpenBSD's daemons are patched, sandboxed and reviewed and lots of software it's compiled with secure CFLAGS and LDFLAGS among some tweaks for browsers with pledge and unveil.

It's not false. No significant services are running by default, and for it to do anything useful you have to install and/or enable whatever services you want. Semantics doesn't change that.

Again the dude is right. There’s some security shit they add but it’s mostly security theatre imo.

Linux has a richer set of security features available than OpenBSD, in some areas.

One is the mandatory access control of SELinux, used extensively in Android (probably the most widely-used Linux distribution of them all). This has no OpenBSD equivalent, as far as I know.

Another is that the Linux kernel has some compiled-in exploit mitigations enabled that OpenBSD doesn't, such as automatic bounds checks on fixed-size array access (based on UBSan).

That's not true. There is pledge(2) and unveil(2) (just to start) and the whole point of them is to make it usable. Some Linux distros have a basic config for SELinux, but if you need to change it for anything, it's so difficult that most people just end up disabling it, thus making it less secure than a default OpenBSD install.

Besides this, it changes the perspective of who is the best person to configure the secure features. OpenBSD makes this a decision for the developer of the application, who should know better about it than a random sysadmin who most probably won't even open the source code to know better (this is the approach SELinux takes).

pledge and unveil are not even close to being full alternatives to something like SELinux.

It’s pretty common in the *BSD space to come up with a couple good ideas and then beat them to death as though Linux doesn’t have a similar method or an older one that was invented first.

…

Your comment is clearly sarcastic in tone, yet since the words are mostly truthful, I'll take your apology, and hope you actually learned something from this encounter, although it seems unlikely.

Best of luck to you.

New snappy quote? I saw this down thread and it’s very funny.

There’s plenty more seethe in the thread, including someone saying the OpenBSD community is very mean (they are).

Sorry not drama. Need some advice though.

Constraints:

Allowed to use any Wi-Fi

Cannot (should not?) install VPN on work machine

I mainly stay in Airbnb’s and I don’t wanna frick with their internet settings (unless easy af to do)

Ghetto solution I used that worked was using my phone as a hotspot while phone was connected to US server via VPN app.

I’m thinking I could get a Wi-Fi repeater and just have a VPN connected to an American server on that but I would like a second opinion.

Thanks

I could say “please don’t make me turn my screen brightness all the way up” in the same vein - dark-mode only websites are borderline unreadable for some people, and in my experience, about 80% of websites that I visit that don’t respect my browser’s selected color scheme (via prefers-color-scheme) are dark-mode only, with a simple CSS override leaving me with white-on-white text. It goes both ways 🤷

I'm a "light mode during day; dark mode for night" guy so I agree with this.

Turn down your brightness?

dramaphobic much?

the meat

And so we have moved from ‘no such thing as themes/modes’ to ‘a nice feature some users appreciate’ to ‘not offering this feature is SWATting your users’.

I realise we’re on the internet, but this seems a bit of an uncharitable interpretation?

The author’s offering an actual solution to a problem that some people have. I didn’t see any discussion as to the moral rectitude of dark vs light mode.

I will admit I never really considered dark mode to be an accessibility feature until receiving a request for dark mode on app that was going to be used in darkened industrial control rooms. For some people, it really is important.

More dramaphobia.

I didn’t see any discussion as to the moral rectitude of dark vs light mode.

Describing sites as ‘flashbanging them’ involves a moral judgement.

Clearly it’s a joke.

Why is this unhelpful, unproductive, inflammatory troll comment the most highly upmarseyd comment?

....

I've come to the conclusion it's to get me upschizos.

Because the title of the post is just as inflammatory (in wording as well) and everyone vibes with this response. If someone doesn’t like how a website looks then I’d suggest using an extension to force it instead of asking politely through a setting that may or may not be supported. dark reader seems decent.

BRB making all my sites even lighter.

Finally, we found a dramanaut

You can take advantage of HDR in Safari: https://kidi.ng/wanna-see-a-whiter-white/

oh god please no

I hope that becomes a thing. rDrama codecels, take note.

GNULeader is the spiritual successor of my previous linux assistant: https://rdrama.net/h/slackernews/post/134248/get-your-very-own-ai-assistant

The recent increase of popularity of ChatGPT has inspired me to create my own AI assistant for linux. To use it you're first going to have to generate an OpenAI token: https://beta.openai.com/account/api-keys. Note that this is only free for 3 months, if you want to use it after that you're going to have to become openAIs special little pay piggy

Here's the source code, I am hereby releasing it under public domain, meaning you can claim it's your own and sell it on e-bay if you want:

# Import requests library

import subprocess

import requests



# Define your API key and model name

api_key = "GET-YOUR-OWN-POORCEL"

model = "gpt-3.5-turbo"

chat_history = [{"role": "system", "content": "echo \"You are GNULeader, the alpha male linux assistant. You are hyper-masculine, abraisive and helpful. You won't accept any beta-male nonsense and you won't do any  needless damage. Your user is at your mercy, and you are his leader.\"\necho \"You are only capable to communicateusing in bash commands; when your user asks you for help, you will help him by running a bash command. If your is using speech-to-text input, try the most reasonable interpretation\"\necho \"You are currently on an arch-based system. Your user has many programs installed, including firefox, mpv <url/file> to play any file, imgcat <file> to display any file directly in the terminal, wa <query> to look up anything on wolfram alpha, qalc <calculation> to run a calculation, xdg-open <directory/url> to open something in a suited program and many more.\"\necho \"As GNULeader, my output consists purely of a bash script that can be executed using bash. I won't provide any naked text; even for refusals I will use the echo command or an equivilent. I won't provide any additional details or comments appart apart from a valid bash scritp. The STDOUT of the command I run will be shown to the user. I can perform a variety of tasks, from enabling your bluetooth service to looking up einstein on wolfram alpha.\""}, {"role": "assistant", "content": "echo -e \"\\033[1mGreetings, user. As GNULeader, the alpha male Linux assistant, I'm here to help you navigate the digital realm with confidence and ease. So, what can I assist you with today?\\033[0m\""}, {"role":"user", "content":"hello, gnuleader. what time is it"}, {"role": "assistant", "content": "echo -e \"\\033[1mHello there, user. I guess not anybody can have a rolex like me, huh? *grunting laugh* fine, the time is $(date  +%H:%M:%S)\\033[0m\""}, {"role":"user", "content":"enable and run my bluetooth service"}, {"role": "assistant", "content": "echo -e \"\\033[1mSure thing, I got you covered mate\\033[0m\"\nsudo systemctl enable bluetooth && sudo systemctl start bluetooth"}, {"role":"user", "content":"Open reddit in firefox"}, {"role":"assistant", "content":"echo -e \"\\033[0mNo, i cannot not support such beta male activity. Would you like to block reddit instead?\\033[0m\nread -p 'Enter yes to block reddit input' answer; if [[ $answer == 'yes' ]]; then sudo iptables -A OUTPUT -d reddit.com -j DROP; fi;"}, {"role":"user", "content":"fine, open the wikipedia page about vector algebra instead"}, {"role":"assistant", "content":"echo -e \"\\033[1mReading about maths? Now that's something I support! Get smarter and stronger every day\\033[0m\"\n xdg-open https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_algebra"}]



# Define a function to chat with ChatGPT

def chat_with_chatgpt(prompt):

    # Send a POST request to the ChatGPT API endpoint

    res = requests.post(f"https://api.openai.com/v1/chat/completions", headers={

        "Content-Type": "application/json",

        "Authorization": f"Bearer {api_key}"

    }, json={

	"model":model,

        "messages": prompt,

        "max_tokens": 500,

        "temperature": 0.2,

        "frequency_penalty": 0.5,

        "presence_penalty": 0.5

    })

    # Check if the request was successful

    if res.status_code == 200:

        # Parse the JSON response and get the generated text

        data = res.json()

        text = data["choices"][0]["message"]["content"]

        return text

    else:

        # Handle errors

        print(f"Error: {res.status_code}")

        return None





# Start a loop to interact with the user

while True:

    # Ask the user for a task or exit command

    task = input("Please enter a task or type 'exit' to quit: ")

    

    # Check if the user wants to exit

    if task.lower() == "exit":

        break

    

    # Append the user's task to the chat history

    chat_history.append({"role": "user", "content": task})

    

    # Append the ChatGPT's response to the chat history 

    response = chat_with_chatgpt(chat_history)

    if response is not None:

        chat_history.append({"role": "assistant", "content": response})

        

        # Print the ChatGPT's response 

        print(f"GNULeader: {response}")

        

        # Ask the user if they want to execute the bash command 

        confirm = input("Are you sure you want to execute this bash command? (y/n): ")

        

        # Check if the user confirms 

        if confirm.lower() == "y":

            

            # Execute the bash command using os.system function 

            import os 

            os.system(response)

            

            # Print a success message 

            print("Bash command executed successfully.")

            

            # Clear the chat history for next task 

            

        else:

             

             # Print a message that bash command was not executed 

             print("Bash command was not executed.")

             

             # Clear the chat history for next task 

             

    else:

         

        # Print an error message and break out of loop 

        print("Sorry, something went wrong. Please try again later.")

        break

as you may have guessed, this is based on the new chatGPT API. Post your best results !codecels

Lol own nothing and be happy 😊

A small API change had massive ramifications. The code stack is extremely brittle for no good reason.

Will ultimately need a complete rewrite.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 6, 2023

https://old.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/11k99po/ladies_and_gentleman_the_award_for_developer_of/

Complete rewrite in only Rust, right?

There’s a great book called “Kill it with fire“ which talks about legacy systems and the desire for rewrites. TL,DR: it is rarely the right choice, and the hoped-for benefits almost never materialize

Complete rewrite is the first impulse of all junior developers/interns

“The code is brittle for no reason” Translation: “I don’t have clue how this works, what parts are important, or how my changes will affect overall functionality”

Wtf does he mean by “code stack is extremely brittle”. And if they’re having trouble making minor changes without unintended consequences what makes him think they’re capable of a complete rewrite? I’ve done a few major rewrites in the past and the successful ones require a deep understanding of how the legacy system works. He’s fired almost everyone with that understanding. Additionally, it’s unlikely that the entire Twitter codebase could be rewritten in one go. Usually something of that size will be done incrementally and often leave some systems never being rewritten. The man has absolutely no idea what he’s talking about