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fionwe1987

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Everything posted by fionwe1987

  1. I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, till the very rushed end. And there's nothing earlier I'd seriously consider cutting, so they'd have had to make the movie longer. But that was an excellent adaptation, on the whole. There's a lot to quibble about, and I agree with several I read here, but Definitely a movie I want to watch again. And the IMAX experience was truly worth it.
  2. Yeah. It's bonkers, really. I get it from a cost perspective, but you can't just use that to justify any and every mangling of a story. If doing longer and better stories means somewhat less visually stunning shows, I'll take that tradeoff any day.
  3. Rushed, and mostly meh. That's my verdict after finishing the season. It isn't a disaster, and I agree with whoever said it has the potential to recover, but if they cannot understand why this story needs breathing room, side quests, and character centred episodes, it never will. The CGI was nice. Some decent set pieces, some decent action. Utterly unsure why they felt they had to mash up Hei Bai, Koh and the Fog of Lost souls. That's too much packed together. Bumi and Omashu felt weird, also. They were much more successful with Kiyoshi island. Having Azula be the one driving Zhao wasn't the worst idea, but it meant Zhao became a completely useless villain, and the animated version is just far superior.
  4. Korra ain't for 10 year olds! The more I watch this show, the more I feel Netflix fucked up by picking Last Airbender to live-actionize. Korra is much better suited, tonally, and 8 hour long episodes would actually allow them to deepen that story, and the restrictions of the animated medium, which prevented them more than hinting at Korra and Asami's attraction, etc. could be shown more explicitly. For ATLA, I think the cost of making the live action show drove them to tonally change it in ways to attract a broader audience that end up seriously hurting the story. What works so well in the animation is the innocence and genuine childishness of the gaang in the backdrop of a generational war of conquest. It's clear now why Bryke left the show, this just doesn't feel right.
  5. I just started. It's a terrible call, to start with the Airbender genocide. It just doesn't land. If I didn't know the show, why would I care about any of this, and so soon? This should have been flashback, as it was in the animation. A grittier flashback, fine, but don't lead with it, that makes no sense.
  6. Not watched this yet, gotta wait till the weekend. The reviews are very mixed though. Pacing seems to be the major complaint. And the acting, which was expected I suppose.
  7. Can you cite some sources on this? The big foundation models from Google, OpenAI, Meta, Mistral, etc are reported at taking hundreds of millions of GPU hours using NVIDIA's A100s. The notion that a cluster of PS5s can match this is fantastical, and if you're going to make such a claim, please prove it. No. But that's the point. The kind of video models we're seeing now require the best, and still struggle. The less than best gets you Will Smith eating spagetti, which isn't as much of a threat to elections. What are the sizes and parameters for these models, roughly? Are these comparable in scale to foundation models? That's the point. Its not the concept of GPUs, its the manufacturing bottlenecks that make them regulate-able. There's exactly one company in Netherlands that makes the photolithography equipment you need to make A100s, or any advanced chip. What they are actually is a cluster of closely related component manufacturers that are just not easy to replicate. We shall see. You seem to have a view of the extraordinary ease of this that matches nothing I've read or seen. As this article notes: That's regulation, working. China may have the resources and know how to overcome this. At some point. But every individual company will not. Thus, my point stands. Regulating AI is possible, and the route to do it is through the high-end chips needed to train foundation models.
  8. In other news, the One Power is now real! https://venturebeat.com/ai/true-source-unveils-ai-llm-service-based-on-the-wheel-of-time/ With these jokers in charge, I can hardly wait...
  9. From your lips to our AI-overlord's ears: https://venturebeat.com/ai/true-source-unveils-ai-llm-service-based-on-the-wheel-of-time/ And which geniuses are behind this? These dinguses!
  10. Running the model is not training the model. The larger the model you have to train, the longer it will take on older/less powerful chips, and you hit real limits if you use GPUs in regular PCs and XBOXs. Now, this holds for the largest foundation models, which are the ones that, so far, have been able to do the kind of impressive things the Sora model is doing here. That is beginning to change, but we're still nowhere close to a PC GPU being able to train a relatively large model. When/if that happens, we truly would be in an un-policeable madland. Nope. There's a reason NVIDIA shot up to being more valuable than Amazon and Google recently. The tech is proprietary, and they have a pretty deep moat. There are definitely attempts by other companies, and also China, to get to their level, but Foundation Model training right now, at the scale Open AI etc, do, requires that class of chips. Google, and maybe Amazon, are the only folks running close. Apple is a wild card, and probably will have something they're yet to release. Fei Fei Li is a good person to read/listen to, about this. The concern has been that these chips have been hogged up by big tech, so even all Universities in the US combined cannot come close to the level of compute needed to train something like GPT 4 or Gemini 1.0. This isn't stuff you can do in your garage. Yes, I'm talking about training only.
  11. Well, you can definitely police the chips needed to train these models. There's a real dearth of those, and hopefully, no one is going to be idiotic enough to give Sam Altman the 7 trillion (not a typo) $ he wants to build more chips. From there, you can build a regulatory infrastructure atop continuous access to these chips.
  12. You can tell its AI generated if you go in knowing what you're looking for. That said, scary impressive stuff. Especially in an election year, which is probably why it hasn't been released yet. Till they can make it refuse to make videos of real people in an airtight manner, they shouldn't release this to the public. One minute is more than enough to screw up elections.
  13. I'm not saying all home schooling is awful. I'm saying most states do nothing to prevent it from being awful, and have no standards for what home schooled kids need to learn.
  14. This conversation is surreal when most states allow home "schooling" with no standards or no reporting requirements of any kind.
  15. They've said they've removed Sozin's Comet, for now, to allow for time jumps between the seasons, given that the actors will age significantly between the seasons. So if they do bring that vision ahead, it'll be replaced by something completely different than the threat of Sozin's comet returning. Probably some threat to Tui and La, or some more generic threat of the Fire Nation destroying the Northern Water tribe.
  16. Sigh. I suppose I'll have to get used to saying "What live action show?"
  17. https://ew.com/avatar-the-last-airbender-live-action-cover-story-what-to-expect-8551028 The heck? I get why they'll need time to elapse between seasons. But why does that mean no Sozin's comet? Just extend the friggin clock!
  18. Firstly, why on earth does the show need to be "properly" anything? It isn't obliged to follow its inspirations 100%, and neither does ATLA. Secondly, no, Vaatu being held captive didn't mean evil ended. Nor is that true after his disintegration in the end of Season 2. He carries on, and the chaos and darkness he embodies never goes away. Hence the need for balance, which Raava initially provided by battling him constantly to keep his powers in check after he forced open the Sprit portals, and achieved later by Raava and Wan fusing. No. Normal possession kills the human. Raava and Wan fused, and were only able to do so during Harmonic Convergence. Same for Raava and Korra, who is the first Avatar of this new cycle. It is not a possession, because if it was, killing the Avatar in the Avatar State wouldn't end the Avatar, since Raava could just repossess the reborn spirit of Wan. I'd like some proof of that, given how obviously wrong so many of the statements in the link are. They were the only ones who were physically in the mortal realm. Zhao specifically says so, and it is why they're susceptible to his fire bending, unlike other spirits like Hei Bai, who were not affected by bending one bit. As manifestations, not as physically present bodies. They were not affected by bending, unlike Tui and La, and unlike the Spirits who roamed the human world during Wan's time. Physically, no, they are not. They're able to cross over as projections, just as humans can project themselves into the Spirit World, which is different from when they physically enter the Spirit World through the portals. Uh huh. The Lion Turtle specifically says "In the era before bending, we bent not the elements, but the energy within ourselves. To bend another's energy, your own spirit must be unbendable, or you will be corrupted and destroyed." And this knowledge is used by Aang to energybend Ozai's bending away. So are you arguing energybending works only one way? That the opposite is possible, and that the Lion Turtles themselves can do it, are both clearly implied and stated in the bit of dialog from ATLA. There's no retconning here. Not sure what this has to do with anything. The Lion Turtles are the only ones, outside of the Avatar, that could energy bend. Who is the rando who you're objecting to? Again, not mutually exclusive. By the time of ATLA, bending is hereditary, but you had to train to do it well. In the time of Wan, just being granted the ability didn't mean much. Wan stood out because he practiced his abilities with the help of dragons, and got spiritual connection, and then with the help of Raava, learned the other elements. Nothing Yes, they're merely mentioned and don't fit in with any of the lore, and play almost no part in the main story. Which is why compariosn to Beginnings is nonsensical, because it is both consistent with ATLA, and what is revealed there drives the story not just for the rest of Season 2, but also S3 and S4. Well I'm sold. Especially given how many details you missed from S2, clearly you have a great eye for substance. Huh? She surrenders to Zahir in S3, and very clearly does her hardest not to punch in S4, and only ends up succeeding when she takes a punch for Kuvira. Again, you have every right to dislike the show, but sticking to facts might help sell your criticism a tad more. I don't disagree on the last, but that also seems to have been because Nickelodeon refused to commit to more than one season at a time. Honestly, replace Unalaq as the villain of S2 with Noahtak/Aman, have Korra not regain her bending right away in book 1, and S2 falls into place much better. S3 I'd leave largely unchanged, except to dwell more on Kuvira's character, make her more prominent so then what happens in S4 flows better. I'm far from believing LoK was perfect. Neither was ATLA. But I think LoK made for a worthy successor that successfully expanded the world and mythology without rehashing anything at all, and made very restrained use of the original cast members, despite the easy temptation of just introducing them as oldies and making them major characters. While Mako is an annoying and totally one dimensional character, and they criminally underused Asami, Tenzin, Lin, Su and Jinora are all great secondary characters. And they somehow made me go from total loathing to confused fondness for Varrick, which I never thought would be possible. The villains, barring the truly dismal Unalaq, were all better drawn and more interesting than the ATLA villains, especially Zaheer, and Aman also was excellent, if underused due to the small number of S1 episodes. Seriously, if they gave another season to Aman, and expanded Kuvira's role in S3, I'd have precious little to complain about. Oh, and Nick should have let them openly explore Korrasami from S3, rather than forcing them to do the small hints that felt like queerbaiting before finally at least allowing them to hold hands. I still love that moment, but it is just so fecking unfair.
  19. Methinks he'd prefer the other Terry, of the Yeard and Evil Chickens, given his rants against American society.
  20. Yes, Season 3 was definitely firing on all cylinders. And that rough ending for Korra lead to Korra Alone, which was the best Korra episode overall, I think. Definitely devastating for her, though. I remember wet eyes all around the crowd who watched the S3 finale.
  21. Except the "good" spirit, came from where? The heart of the "evil" spirit. Precisely as in the Yin-yang symbol. The heart of darkness is light, and correspondingly, in the heart of light is darkness. Ummm that is what the Avatar is, an entity that is both a powerful spirit, and a human. Did you perhaps just read about the episode? These are not mutually exclusive, as, again, the show makes very clear. What source is this? Why is the Avatar a "him" only? This seems like a fansite explanation based on someone's (bad) interpretation of the show. The original series already deviates from the classic concept of an Avatar in multiple ways. For one, said Avatar is always alive, not just incarnating at need. For another, the Avatar may be male or female. They already were extradimensional. Tui and La, the moon and ocean spirits, we are told, "crossed over to the mortal realm", which made them susceptible to bending, which is exactly what we see happens to the spirits in the normal world during Wan's time. Whereas when humans project themselves into the spirit world, as Aang does in ATLA, they cannot bend. Didn't the Lion Turtle teach Aang how to remove bending? Using, one might add, the exact gesture they use to grant it? Nothing about Korra season 2 is remotely as terrible as the midiclorians. It fits perfectly with what we got about the spirit world and bending in ATLA, and yes, they're explaining the mechanics in greater detail, but not in a way that is contradicorily. That said, I'm not a great fan of the Dark Avatar too, but that's more because Unalaq made no sense as a character, and in a series with excellent villains, he manages to be even lower dimensional than the one-dimensional Ozai. But Korra isn't just Season 2. Whatever your issues with that season, 3, and most of 4, stand right up there with ATLA. Season 1 has that one dreadful love triangle episode, and a rushed ending because they had no clue how well the show would be received, but manages to still be entertaining and a nice expansion of the world. The animation in the show is amazing (barring the first 6 episodes of season 2, where they had to switch studios), and Korra's arc and character growth is fantastic. The world expands in sensible ways. The stories are different enough while still feeling part of the same universe. As sequels go, I can't think of many that do a better job, especially after such an excellent original.
  22. You may dislike it, but Korra definitely measures up to ATLA. Lolwut?
  23. Sorry I worded that badly. The comics aren't excellent, though I definitely dislike them less than you seem to have. But they also weren't written by the Konietzko and DiMartino, though the guy who wrote them "collaborated closely" with Bryke, for what it's worth. I'd say the comics are more like the Star Wars novels or something. Expansions of the lore, but not by the original creator. Korra, on the other hand, was by the original creators, and disagree all you want, I found it excellent.
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