Hacker Cinema
The Astronaut Farmer
2007 · Film · 104 min
Directed by Michael Polish
Science FictionAdventureComedyDrama
Texan Charles Farmer left the Air Force as a young man to save the family ranch when his dad died. Like most American ranchers, he owes his bank. Unlike most, he's an astrophysicist with a rocket in his barn - one he's built and wants to take into space. It's his dream. The FBI puts him under surveillance when he tries to buy rocket fuel, and the FAA stalls him when he files a flight plan – but Charles is undeterred.
1 positive5 neutralfrom 6 commenters
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6 comments on Hacker News
> Are astronauts riding horses now represented in the training data more than would have been possible 5 years ago? Yes.
Though I'm a bit confused why this became the goto. If I remember correctly the claim was about it being "out of distribution" but I have high confidence that astronauts riding horses are within the training dataset prior to DALL-E. The big reason everyone should believe this is because astronauts have always been compared to cowboys. And... what do we stereotypically associate with cowboys?
The second reason, is because it is the main poster for the 2006 movie The Astronaut Farmer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Astronaut_Farmer
But here's some other ones I found that are timestamped. It's kinda hard to find random digital art that is timestamped. Looks like even shutterstock doesn't... And places like deviantart don't have great search. Hell... even Google will just flat out ignore advanced search terms (the fuck is even the point of having them?). The term is so littered now that this makes search difficult, but I found two relatively quickly.
2014: https://www.behance.net/gallery/18695387/Space-Cowboy#
2016: https://drawception.com/game/DZgKzhbrhq/badass-space-cowboy-on-robot-horse/
But even if the samples did not exist, I do not think this represents a significantly out of distribution, if at all, image. Are we in doubt that there's images like astronauts riding rockets? I think certainly there exists "astronaut riding horse" along the interpolation between "person riding horse" and "astronaut riding <insert any term>". Mind you, generating samples in distribution but not in training (or test) is still a great feat and impressive accomplishment. This should in no way be underplayed at all! But there is a difference in claiming out of distribution.
> I'd like to see what this approach can do if trained exclusively on non-synthetic permissively licensed inputs One minor point. The term "synthetically generated" is a bit ambiguous. It may include digital art. It does not necessarily mean generated by a machine learning generative model. TBH, I find the ambiguity frustrating as there is some important distinctions.
Since my divorce, I've found that I get a lot of help out of media like this for recharging my spirit to work on things. Sometimes kids' movies are the best, because they aren't at all about the 'how', but they are about the 'why'. Here's a list of a few that I find helpful:
Tomorrowland
Big Hero 6
Robots (2005)
The Martian
Sneakers
Real Genius
Wargames
Macguyver (80s show)
Cosmos
October Sky
Iron Man
The Astronaut Farmer
Flight of the Phoenix
Something Ventured
Now if I can only figure out how to get a team behind me like in those movies... :)
An explainer movie. (1)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Astronaut_Farmer
This reminds me about "Astronaut Farmer" movie.
I misread the title, I thought they hired some farmer who builds a rocket in his barn, similar to the movie The Astronaut Farmer.
Turns out it's a regular farmer... growing rocket fuel?
Actually... if the new rocket is using methane could they be growing crops that decompose into lots of methane? Are they experimenting with alcohol/LOX? Are they growing biofuel to refine to RP-1?
This reminded me of the 2006 film The Astronaut Farmer with Billy Bob Thornton.