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Microsoft Designer

designer.microsoft.com

181–190 of 230 posts

Re: Microsoft Designer

#181
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be pretty easy to improve: do the same thing but without pervasive ads and tracking.

That's like saying you can easily fight climate change by reducing CO2 emissions. It's not wrong but it ignores human behaviour and profit-oriented incentives.

And yet, entire ecosystems exist where this behaviour is not prevalent.

Re: Microsoft Designer

#182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno man, Teams has only given me a slight headache this morning instead of a cluster migraine.

I'm not sure that that's due to an improvement in Teams, it's probably more the formation of scar tissue that's offering a bit of respite. But something else might suddenly happen to rip the scab off and you'll be right back where you started.

One time I decided that I wanted to edit the dictionary used by Teams because I was tired of getting a spelling underline when I use contractions. Apparently, the dictionary didn't include contractions.

Anyway, many rabbit holes later, I found out that Teams uses an undocumented hard-coded call to the dictionary used by Google Chrome. You cannot edit the dictionary, you cannot supplement it with a custom dictionary, and you cannot modify the hard-code address or use a different dictionary. You can't even turn off this call.

And don't get me started on how Teams ignores every UI standard that other Windows programs use, and it's basically not modifiable in any way.

Thanks, I hate it.

Re: Microsoft Designer

#184
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a million newsletters and other mailings sent out by random employees without any formal education in design. The kind of people who used Comic Sans and Word Art, if you still remember. Companies that send out professionally designed mailings won't start sending half-assed AI generated stuff.

Absolutely. People who already pay professional artists will not stop paying them because of this. This kind of products will create many entrants into the design space. People who still haven't paid a designer/artist yet, many of whom weren’t ever going to- will form the stark majority of users of this product. This is something very simple that many people refuse to understand.

> People who already pay professional artists will not stop paying them because of this.

But they may as well pay them less or work them harder because of the perceived AI threat. Remains to be seen how it all unfolds

Re: Microsoft Designer

#185
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counter example: Cameras often do rely on other professions to have existed to do their thing. e.g. Architects who built city buildings, fashion designers who designed clothes, and engineers who built cars. They don’t get paid every time their work gets put on Instagram, etc.

I don't know how it is in other countries but in general in France you cannot just take a picture of a building and put it on Instagram without asking the architect for rights : > the image of a building cannot be reproduced without the authorization of the architect who holds the copyright or of his successors in title. Otherwise, the reproduction of a protected work without the authorization of its author constitut…

France must get a lot of money from all the photos of the Eiffel Tower on the internet. Has anyone been sued/convicted of breaking that and paid reparations?

Re: Microsoft Designer

#186
post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To name just one thing that bugs me: You can't switch modes with function keys any more. Previously you could go between Scientific,Programmer, etc. with function keys and now you have to use the miserable hamburger menu. I absolutely hate the UI as well, but that's probably subjective. For example, why isn't the input area clearly distinct instead of blending into the surrounding with no border ?

Which Windows had the switching with Function keys? I just tested with the one from windows 7 and you switch modes with alt+number. Function keys are only used in programmer mode to switch between hex/dex. Those same shortcuts work in the new one. Same with the one from XP that has only two modes, but you can't switch between them using alt+number.

Ugh you’re right. I misremembered which combo does what. I seem to recall function keys not working in programmer mode for a while, but now I am also doubting my mental stability

Re: Microsoft Designer

#187

I feel a deep sadness, a sympathy, or sense of loss for the countless artists who have toiled to produce beautiful works over the decades (centuries?), just for them to be approximated by a single click as a vector mashup in an AI generative search space. And without so much as a by your leave. I'm not saying it's logical to be against AI image generation, but definitely have a feeling that something has gone wrong h…

>When Microsoft, a billion dollar global software firm, can profit by generating these images I must ask if they are the ones that worked for such reward. The vast majority of the image generation crowd are (surprise surprise) adamantly against paying artists for training materials.

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft Designer

#188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By way of OpenAI, Microsoft is attempting the biggest triple-E bait-and-switch in its history—this time not against open-source developers but anyone who was silly enough to share creative work in the open. Worst of all, the majority here seems to be hailing them for this. My take as to what exactly has gone wrong here is that it’s loss of attribution. I think this is quite intentional: given relevant metadata, the n…

I’m not sure how you track attribution through a billion or so floating point values.

If it were ChatGPT it would trivially attribute Jonas Salk as the inventor of the Polio vaccine, right?

That attribution would be a product of the floating point values (weights) of the model, right?

Re: Microsoft Designer

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By way of OpenAI, Microsoft is attempting the biggest triple-E bait-and-switch in its history—this time not against open-source developers but anyone who was silly enough to share creative work in the open. Worst of all, the majority here seems to be hailing them for this. My take as to what exactly has gone wrong here is that it’s loss of attribution. I think this is quite intentional: given relevant metadata, the n…

I’m not sure how you track attribution through a billion or so floating point values.

With another billion or n^x pointers and floating point values...?

Re: Microsoft Designer

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree it's overwhelming

It's also not practical example of it's use, if I'm going to be using that tool to make a book about "baking ideas", I'd expect to have actual photos of the food I'm making in the book, is that too much to ask for? Maybe that's supposed to be showing "mock ups" or something?

I think they made it pretty clear this is a tool to confront the "blank canvas" problem, aka writer's block. For me, this has been the best use of tools like stable diffusion and chatgpt; when I'm trying to be creative, I just start typing in the text box, and then with a few prods from the AI the ideas start flowing.
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