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The raccoons who made computer magazine ads great

technologizer.com

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Re: The raccoons who made computer magazine ads great

#21

Post by CursedSilicon »

sgt wrote: post #17

I asked ChatGPT to imagine pretty much the same scene as that top drawing. It's such a great example of LLM's - having zero understanding of the real world - has the racoons looking at the computer but from behind it. https://sdmntprwestus.oaiusercontent.com/files/00000000-c810...

They look so dead eyed and bland, too. AI "art" just makes me sad.

There's so many furry artists out there, just pay one of them to draw raccoons and computers. You'll get something created with love and beauty that expresses something real

https://cursedsilicon.net/racc.png

Re: The raccoons who made computer magazine ads great

#22

Post by hhh »

sgt wrote: post #17

I asked ChatGPT to imagine pretty much the same scene as that top drawing. It's such a great example of LLM's - having zero understanding of the real world - has the racoons looking at the computer but from behind it. https://sdmntprwestus.oaiusercontent.com/files/00000000-c810...

missing the entire point of the article award

Re: The raccoons who made computer magazine ads great

#24

Post by linksnapzz »

bregma wrote: post #19

Not a single one of those images depict a single trash panda eating garbage, having babies in an attic, or defecating all over the house.

Those raccoons work on the IT side; only the more presentable marketing raccoons get into catalog pics.

Having a PC Connection catalog w/ raccoons doing more stereotypical rural NH shenanigans (driving a snowmobile drunk on NightTrain; fleeing the cops on dirtbikes, operating bootleg roadside fireworks stands...) might've been hard to get approval for.

Re: The raccoons who made computer magazine ads great

#25

Post by WillAdams »

danielvf wrote: post #14

It's buried deep in the article, but what made PC Connection amazing was the shipping. You could phone call a human in the wee hours of the morning, and have it show up later that same day. Or pay only a little and have it into two days. Compared to every other mail-order retailer in the universe at the time, it was insane, to have such selection and speed.

Yeah, apparently the warehouse which made this workable was in Kingston, Tenn. adjacent to the FedEx Hub, so things could go straight to the plane which was taking them to the FedEx distributor closest to the delivery address.

Still have the Wacom ArtZ I bought from them in the wee hours of a Monday morning when I decided I desperately had to have one.

Re: The raccoons who made computer magazine ads great

#27

Post by Dylan16807 »

hhh wrote: post #22
sgt wrote: post #17

I asked ChatGPT to imagine pretty much the same scene as that top drawing. It's such a great example of LLM's - having zero understanding of the real world - has the racoons looking at the computer but from behind it. https://sdmntprwestus.oaiusercontent.com/files/00000000-c810...

missing the entire point of the article award

Did you read the whole comment? I need you to explain why you think that.

Re: The raccoons who made computer magazine ads great

#29

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

4ggr0 wrote: post #16

I'd love to have a poster of the picture in the "PC Preppy" advert from October 1984[0]. I wonder how I could aquire the highest resolution possible... Love raccoons [0] https://d1pkj6r18lfvhs.archive.is/BxyNA/d05003d20de92f868e5b...

There are ML upscalers optimized for illustrations you can run locally for these scenarios. Doesn't require bleeding edge hardware either.
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