I replaced all our blog thumbnails using DALL·E 2 • Hacker News Board

Re: I replaced all our blog thumbnails using DALL·E 2

#41

Post by Syonyk » Mon, Aug 08, 2022, 9:30 PM UTC

mym1990 wrote: post #22

sbf501 wrote: post #6

You should've invested in CloudFront first because your site isn't loading.

Just curious, is there any general number range for how much traffic a front page post might get? Less than 10k, 10-100,000, 100,000+, etc

I'll see on the order of 10k-25k hits (hard to say exactly, most of HN uses adblockers/tracker blockers and I use CloudFlare for caching) from an article on the HN frontpage. It's not that bad, and I could almost certainly serve it off my colo'd server without any trouble - bandwidth just isn't that high.

But as my blog is entirely static (except for the comment threads, hosted on my Discourse forum), I just let CloudFlare serve it. I had to do some tweaks to the configs to say, "No, really, cache everything!" (it doesn't do that by default for a range of very valid reasons, none of which apply to me), but once that change went in, I'll see 98.5% or higher "served out of cache" ratios when I'm seeing a lot of traffic from HN or somewhere.

I'd originally designed it to be hosted out of a Google Cloud bucket with CloudFlare (egress traffic is cheaper that way than out to the internet), but I eventually decided to host on my server, as I could then do Tor and some other stuff more easily. I've got the server anyway...

One of these days, I may play with dropping analytics entirely and just passing requests through to my server, let images remain cached as that's the bulk of my bandwidth. Then I can go even more oldskool and parse my server logs for stats and referrers and such!

Re: I replaced all our blog thumbnails using DALL·E 2

#42

Post by ceeplusplus » Mon, Aug 08, 2022, 9:32 PM UTC

ravenstine wrote: post #12

superchroma wrote: post #2

When asked about what jobs the robots would come for first, I would have had to say that digital artist was pretty low on my ranking before now.

It's coming for us, too. It won't be long before most software engineer positions are eliminated while some are replaced by software "technicians" with enough expertise to command AI to generate working code. Perhaps the technicians will be tasked with building tests and some automation, but even that stuff can be delegated to AI to an extent. This may seem far off because the present economy is accustomed to paying…

The problem with that theory is that writing code is easier than reading code. This is generally not the case in other professions. It is definitely not the case for an artist.

You still need correct code, and the halting problem says you can't prove whether code does what you want it to. At the end of the day, someone needs to be able to go in and fix shit the AI did wrong, and to do that you need to understand the code the AI wrote.

Re: I replaced all our blog thumbnails using DALL·E 2

#43

Post by upupandup » Mon, Aug 08, 2022, 9:32 PM UTC

akamaka wrote: post #9

Am I one of the few people who finds these generated pictures really bad? They often have weird and unsettling details when you look closely. I mean, it’s an incredible achievement in AI that we can generate images at this level, but I don’t want them shown to me on a daily basis while I’m reading blogs.

They are good enough for most people and over time those details will get better until we have no need for illustrators.

Already I see website agencies and bloggers using DALL-E. What I do see is that it is easy to pick out DALL-E generated images, in that its too fantastic. Way over the top to a fault.

Re: I replaced all our blog thumbnails using DALL·E 2

#44

Post by jiggawatts » Mon, Aug 08, 2022, 9:33 PM UTC

petercooper wrote: post #33

ajqreh wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article isn't loading for me, so I can't really comment on the images it contains, but I've found telling the ai to apply an impressionistic filter does wonders for removing the unsettling aspect. Obviously that limits you to a specific style of image, but I imagine there are other stylistic filters you might apply that achieve the same goal. I could spend all day looking at the output of "impressionist cats" and…

I'm over 1000 credits into Dalle so far (I know, I know..) and you're on the money. You can go a lot further than impressionism, though. Specifying the names of famous illustrators, photographers or artists. Specifying the media used. Lens types. Colorways. Film types. Lighting. The right combinations can yield some incredibly realistic looking things, even faces, and then for the rest of it, there's Photoshop, Gigap…

Dall-E is very “first generation” in its design and interactivity with the users.

It’s just a matter of time until setting a “consistent art style” becomes a feature of these things.

Similarly, asking the AI to produce multiple views/poses of the same thing will likely become a common feature.

Re: I replaced all our blog thumbnails using DALL·E 2

#45

Post by wyager » Mon, Aug 08, 2022, 9:33 PM UTC

brundolf wrote: post #30

dsmmcken wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know. I wasn't actually expecting to hit front-page. Trying to reinforce it best I can.

Fwiw, in my experience you don't actually need a CDN just to survive HN. It may be enough to just make sure you're not hitting a DB on every request; ideally you'd be caching the HTML output wholesale (via static site generator or otherwise) For reference: with cached HTML, my single Node.js process running on Heroku's cheapest tier has weathered the front page multiple times without breaking a sweat

I switched backends a bunch of times because everything I tried (Go stdlib HTTP, Tornado, etc.) kept getting taken out whenever I would hit the front page, either due to CPU overload or some sort of resource leak. I ended up using Warp+Wai+Servant (https://github.com/yesodweb/wai) and it has been smooth sailing since then off my $3/mo VPS. It can take thousands of req/sec without flinching (which is higher than what you see from top of HN - that maxes out at a few hundred req/s).

Re: I replaced all our blog thumbnails using DALL·E 2

#46

Post by wyager » Mon, Aug 08, 2022, 9:34 PM UTC

dsmmcken wrote: post #26

mym1990 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just curious, is there any general number range for how much traffic a front page post might get? Less than 10k, 10-100,000, 100,000+, etc

I can tell you it's more than a $5 dreamhost box can handle right now.

My $3/mo vultr box can handle HN loads easily when using a fast and well-designed (namely resource-leak-free) backend (I've settled on https://github.com/yesodweb/wai based apps - the only thing that has worked well for me so far).

Re: I replaced all our blog thumbnails using DALL·E 2

#47

Post by thrown_22 » Mon, Aug 08, 2022, 9:34 PM UTC

echelon wrote: post #28

substation13 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Programming requires far more breadth and precision than 2D art. I think that in the very long run programming work will be automated, but by that stage we will either be post-scarcity or reconstituted in computation substrate.

You say that with such confidence. I'm looking for ways to hedge my reliance on my skills.

>This time will be different.

The 20th time you hear that is when you stop caring.

Re: I replaced all our blog thumbnails using DALL·E 2

#48

Post by wyager » Mon, Aug 08, 2022, 9:35 PM UTC

mym1990 wrote: post #22

sbf501 wrote: post #6

You should've invested in CloudFront first because your site isn't loading.

Just curious, is there any general number range for how much traffic a front page post might get? Less than 10k, 10-100,000, 100,000+, etc

10-100k iirc. Peak requests maybe 200-500req/sec (but not sustained). I had a few posts get >250k but those were on Reddit as well.

Re: I replaced all our blog thumbnails using DALL·E 2

#49

Post by gk1 » Mon, Aug 08, 2022, 9:37 PM UTC

mym1990 wrote: post #22

sbf501 wrote: post #6

You should've invested in CloudFront first because your site isn't loading.

Just curious, is there any general number range for how much traffic a front page post might get? Less than 10k, 10-100,000, 100,000+, etc

I just hit #1 last week and frontpaged a bunch in the past. Peaked at around 250-300 concurrent visitors, totaling around 10k in a 24-hr period, which is on par with past experience.

Re: I replaced all our blog thumbnails using DALL·E 2

#50

Post by thrown_22 » Mon, Aug 08, 2022, 9:38 PM UTC

ravenstine wrote: post #12

superchroma wrote: post #2

When asked about what jobs the robots would come for first, I would have had to say that digital artist was pretty low on my ranking before now.

It's coming for us, too. It won't be long before most software engineer positions are eliminated while some are replaced by software "technicians" with enough expertise to command AI to generate working code. Perhaps the technicians will be tasked with building tests and some automation, but even that stuff can be delegated to AI to an extent. This may seem far off because the present economy is accustomed to paying…

AI has been over promising and under delivering for 50 years.

There's a reason why the general models aren't being released. The second you look under the hood and start poking the unhappy paths you see that it doesn't understand anything and you're talking to something dumber than a hamster.