Is it possible to collect actual observations to confirm or deny the results of this modeling? A key part of any well formed scientific hypothesis is that it can be validated or disproved by real world experimentation or observation (falsifiable). Where will that data come from in this case? Computer models are an important part of science, but if they can't be validated against data, what's the point?
(I'm a dev on the project.) We have another background-removal service, ClippingMagic.com, that is built around an editor to let you fix the errors in the automatic result. You may want to give it a try for your mineral photos.
(I'm a dev.) Not everyone has macOS, and running a DL model in your browser is not exactly mainstream. Which is why segment leader remove.bg gets an estimated 35M in monthly organic traffic. Also, we believe our results are significantly better than those offered by the open-source models we've seen.
(I'm a dev on the project.) It is free while in beta. We've not implemented pricing yet, as we are a small team and just shipped the latest version of the model.
(I'm a dev on the project.) We have no plans to jack up prices. We see the whole market moving to low-margin cost+ pricing and we want to lead rather than follow. If we raised prices later, we'd only expose ourselves to being disrupted in the way that we are hoping to disrupt right now. Low margin plays are all about operational efficiencies, so that we can turn a profit at price points that other providers cannot. That is our laser focus, which is why our processing time is so quick.
Clipping Magic is a totally different product. It is editor-based with a bunch of post-clip effects and features. The editor allows you to fix errors in a way that a single-shot DL-based solution simply does not. We don't actually see the services as competing with each other, since DL-based solutions have taken over the portion of the market where 80-95% success rate and some errors are ok, so long as it is fast and cheap.
(I'm a dev on the project.) The privacy policy is an old and generic one that we use across a bunch of sites. It should be updated. Our retention policy on this site is as stated on the front page FAQ. After five days, the records are deleted.
(I'm a dev on the project.) We've not decided on the exact term of the credits, but they will be long-lasting, so you can pay $5 for 250 images and use that over the course of a few years. We'd make them non-expiring, but that creates an unbounded liability.
In the third paragraph, the author writes that COVID was probably "cooked up in the kitchen of nature", and links to an article to support that assertion. But the linked-to article does not make that point. In the comments section of the article, a commenter pointed this out, and the author replied to that specific comment with an answer that did not address the issue but expressed the author's personal opinion on the matter, and has not updated the article to be more clear.
I'm the other main developer on this project. We see this as part of a broader trend where the margins are going to shrink dramatically for those selling AI tools online. Rather than fight that and come in with prices only a bit below our main competitors, we have decided to just jump straight to the eventual end state and price our services as cost-plus.
This means we are dramatically cheaper than our competitors. It is not even close. But we have solid quality and great dev ops.
The broad development is excellent news for consumers of this technology, and is the inevitable future anyway.
I deleted all social media over the span from 2016 to 2019, and after an short period of actively missing it, I don't even think about it anymore, unless the topic comes up as one of societal concern, or in connection with my kids. Phones are still distracting without social media, but materially less so. Being off social media has not just been a net positive, it is almost an unmitigated positive. The social connection it promises to provide is illusory, and it gets in the way of actual social interactions. It is sad to see people who obviously know each other sitting next to each other while staring at their phones, many of them presumable looking at social media. I see it among young people at my kids' events, among my social set, and especially among other families out to dinner.
The harm it appears to be causing to kids is my main concern, given social pressure to do what other kids are doing. Banning communication platforms for kids would be hard to implement in practice. A good starting point would be to ban phones from K-12 schools. They are raising a generation of kids with really bad habits and poorly developed social skills, attention spans, and creativity.
I'm the other main dev (and co-founder) on this project. Some interesting things to note:
* This is all our data from our other site, so it is very real-world and diverse. We don't have a short list of supported categories like some of our competitors seem to use, but a single monolithic network that handles all inputs.
* We are really focused on speed and efficiency, so this is using a fairly small network compared to the huge networks that have been coming out in recent years. This keeps (our) costs and runtimes down, so the site is fast and we can offer more for free than our competitors without it hurting too much.
* This market (for background removal) has stagnated a bit, with the top couple players seeming a bit entrenched. This means there has been a lot less price competition than I would have expected, given how many upstarts there are. Unclear why that is, but we're hoping to shake things up a little.
Regarding all the anecdotes, I would have said the same thing 8 years ago when I moved to my current house in suburban Minneapolis. Then we had some landscaping done and added a bunch of planting beds to the otherwise boring grass-only yard. And my kids threw some milkweed seeds on a slope that is too steep to mow. Now we've got tons of bumblebees, honey bees, monarch butterflies, and other insects. I think the range of most insects is quite small, so maybe people who miss the bugs just need to plant a bit more in their yards :).
Second point: the windshield splats proxy is too confounded to be useful. Use actual measurements or reasonable people will discount the claims (as I have done).