Month: November 2023

I wonder if you happen to know who is currently the number one in significantly enhancing photo resolution by “drawing” missing details through Machine Learning? I know about ESRGAN, GFPGAN, but they work quite poorly. It would be interesting to find out why there isn’t remarkable progress in this area? After all, there are many high-resolution faces, or a lot can be done, and it seems quite logical to train the system on a before-and-after basis. The result of ESRGAN from the first blurry picture in the comments is really far from what is desired.

Good channel. Peter Santenello travels to various interesting places and interacts with locals. He has a series about the Amish, and this video about Mormons (LDS). Specifically, in Utah, there are areas with their high concentration, and there is a lot of uniqueness.

To add something interesting – there are almost no bars or coffee shops, a large and very affordable Christian university BYU with 30,000 students, among the younger people there is a practice called NCMO – non-committal make-out, which are meetings (say through Tinder or any other method) for one day or night without breaking the “law of chastity” and with the right to forget pompously the next day as if nothing happened.

Link below

It is said that Sam was fired by the board of directors after they opened a door labeled “Top Secret GPU Room – DO NOT ENTER” and discovered 21,700 people in the basement of the OpenAI headquarters manually answering all the ChatGPT questions

Update: the curious board of directors has ceased to exist

I created a calculator that shows the profitability of installment plans or loans considering inflation. In the US, the inflation forecast for the coming years is between 2 to 2.5%. In 2022, for example, it was 8%.

If you follow the link below and enter an amount, the number of months, and zero for an installment plan or something greater than zero for a loan—be it for a house, a phone, or education—in the frame, you’ll see the difference between money paid based on its value today and money calculated based on its value at the end of the period. For instance, if you buy a car for $50,000 on installment over 3 years and there’s an alternative to pay it outright now, the installment saves almost $2,000 if the inflation forecasts (2.5%) match reality. And if inflation shoots up again to 8%, the difference would be as much as $6,000. However, if it’s not an installment but a loan, the higher the rate, the less the interest, of course.

For example, in the case of buying a home for $450,000 with a 30-year loan at 3% and 2.5% inflation, the difference between the money at the end of the period and today reaches $23,714. This raises the question of whether it is beneficial to make a large down payment.

By the way, my house has a fixed rate of 3%, not a variable rate, as is often the case. I bought the house in 2021, so the 8% inflation in 2022 has already affected me. Inflation expectations by the end of 2023 are 4.5%. Nobody offers 3% now; the average mortgage rate is now 7-8%. I figured that just on inflation, savings for the house were about $1,400. Of course, this is good only when income growth accounts for inflation. It was even more on that front when I timed it right when 3% fixed was still possible, but now we’re talking about inflation.

Those who understand economics—is this sound reasoning?

During one walk with Yuki around the pond by the house, I encountered a hawk and a heron. Look how beautifully it flies!

How I bought an almost top-tier iPhone 15 Pro Max 256GB for $5.5 per month on a 2-year installment plan (plus $72 in taxes) with a trade-in of a three-year-old iPhone 12 Pro Max 128GB.

Right after the Apple presentation, there was so much talk about whether it was worth buying the new model or not. About how Apple rips you off and all that stuff.

Here’s my experience. I had a dying iPhone 12 Pro Max. The battery lasted from morning until about 3 PM. That’s why I already bought two cases with built-in batteries, so it would last till the evening. It had an extremely slow screen response when even a drop of water hit the screen. It would only go back to normal after a thorough wipe. In light rain, I could only listen to YouTube from my pocket, and even then, it would glitch from moisture. And other small things. But it was an otherwise fine phone, I didn’t need to replace it. Only, replacing the battery was more expensive than getting a new phone.

AT&T took back my old three-year-old iPhone 12 Pro Max for $1000. I bought it from them in February 2021 for $1099. So, the new iPhone 15 Pro Max with a shelf price of $1199 only cost me $1199 – $1000 = $199 plus taxes (about $70). And these $199 were spread over three years, at $5.54 a month. Assuming that the average inflation rate remains at about 2.54%, as it has been over the last three years, for the next three years, installment payments knock the price down by about another $15.

Yes, I’ll have to stick with AT&T for another three years because the phone is locked to AT&T, but I’ve never really had a reason to leave AT&T, and maybe I won’t have one.

Yes, part the cost of the phone is included in the tariff. But the rate is such that whether you buy a phone or not. And at AT&T, the full unlimited plan is generally quite high—at $40 per line, including full unlimited roaming in any country for $10 per day for each day of phone use there. In the US overall, mobile service is expensive, and you can only get much cheaper than $40 by forgoing unlimited plans and such upgrade offers. For example, at T-Mobile, it would be around $35.

So if you’re already with AT&T and are paying for service anyway, upgrading your phone becomes nearly free. If you’re not with AT&T, the terms would be different (but still quite good).

What about Androids. Just compare two stores right now in one of the malls. Apple Store and Samsung. By the way, this Apple Store was the first one Apple opened some year.

The “editorial” channel has released a cool story about the life and career of Igor Sikorsky, the one who is the “father of helicopters”, the one who became an American legend after coming from the USSR, where he faced repression threats.

It was interesting to learn that during tough times for Sikorsky in the USA, Rachmaninoff came to his aid, gave him money, and agreed to become the first vice-president of Sikorsky Aero Engineering Corporation. Eventually, their interests aligned and as a marketing gesture, Sikorsky’s S-29A airplane transported two pianos from New York to Washington, to a store and to the estate of President Herbert Hoover’s wife.

Well, it would make a good plot for a feature film. It’s surprising that it hasn’t been made yet.

I was reading a book and stumbled upon the funny word brouhaha. It means hubbub. “Or crazy situation that has gone completely higgledy-piggledy”. Did everyone get that?

Seriously though, it also comes from French. Damn, that wasn’t serious. No, really, it’s from French. But how it got there is unclear. It is used to denote noisy and excited reactions or disputes. It can mean excitement, tumult, a noisy demonstration of dissatisfaction, or just a big tumultuous dispute. Basically, the word is used to describe a situation with lots of noise and disorder, often with a negative connotation.

In general, hubbub means about the same thing.

higgledy-piggledy – it denotes disorder, confusion. Also unclear where it originated from.

Now at all cash registers in all U.S. supermarkets. Never knew such a thing existed