Stable Diffusion is a machine learning model developed by Stability AI to generate digital images from natural language descriptions. The model can be used for different tasks like generating image-to-image translations guided by text prompts and upscaling images.
Unlike competing models like DALL-E, Stable Diffusion is open source and does not artificially limit the images it produces. Stable diffusion was trained on a subset of the LAION-Aesthetics V2 data set. It can run on most consumer hardware equipped with a modest GPU and was hailed by PC World as "the next killer app for your PC".
Since Stable Diffusion is run locally and not in the cloud, as mentioned there is no limit to the number of images that you can produce but in order to use it you will have to get down a little dirty with setting your PC environment for it since it is not really an application, it is a command line text based descriptor that will use python to generate your images, so there is no install nor GUI.
In this guide, we will show you how to both install and run Stable Diffusion on your local PC so you can start producing some cool images all by yourself.
Make no mistake, Stable Diffusion will not run on a potato PC, in order to harvest the power of AI-generated imagery this is what you will need:
For this tutorial, we are covering the installation and running of Stable Diffusion on Windows PC. The steps presented here are presented in a way that installation can be performed on any operating system but precise instructions will be for Windows OS.
The first thing to do is to install GIT. It is a tool that will let you easily maintain and install repos from the internet. to install it go to: https://git-scm.com/ and click on download. Follow the instructions for your version of the operating system. If you are a developer you are familiar with GIT and if you already have it installed you can skip this step.
One thing that is important when installing GIT locally is to select to use it via the command line (the second option that says "Git from the command line and also from 3rd-party software").
Now when we have GIT installed, next thing is to use Miniconda3 to install python and all required libraries that are needed. Get the installer at: https://docs.conda.io/en/latest/miniconda.html
Miniconda3 is basically an easy installer so you do not have to install tons of stuff manually from different websites and sources, it is nicely packaged in the installer that will take care of everything.
After the previous two steps, we are ready now to actually install Stable Diffusion. Go to https://huggingface.co/CompVis/stable-diffusion#model-access and install the latest library (as of the writing of this article currently it is stable-diffusion-v1-4-original, the last one on the right), the library is almost 5GB in size so be prepared for big download.
After installing stable diffusion's latest library it is time to update it to the newest version. You can download ZIP from GIT HUB https://github.com/CompVis/stable-diffusion
Once downloaded click on the Windows start button and type in Miniconda3 and click on open. Create a folder and name it how you want on a drive of your choice. For this example, we will install it all in disk C under folder AI_art, follow the instructions below but use your own names and destination instead. Do not close Minicoda3 after typing commands!!!
cd c:/
mkdir AI_art
cd AI_art Extract GitHub files that you have downloaded into your new folder and get back to Minicoda3 and type the next commands:
cd C:\AI_art\stable-diffusion-main
conda env create -f environment.yaml
conda activate ldm
mkdir models\ldm\stable-diffusion-v1Let the whole process finish, some files are large and it might take a while. After the whole process is finished and completed, copy the checkpoint file that you have downloaded into: C:\AI_art\stable-diffusion-main\models\ldm\stable-diffusion-v1
After the file is copied rename it to model.ckpt and you are finished.
The created environment is needed in order to actually use Stable Diffusion to create images. Each time you want to use it you will have to run it, so go into Miniconda3, and inside it type:
conda activate ldm
cd C:\AI_art\stable-diffusion-mainafter we are inside the folder call the script with the parameters:
python scripts/txt2img.py --prompt "TXT DESCRIPTION OF IMAGE THAT YOU WANT TO CREATE" --plms --n_iter 5 --n_samples 1and that's it, your image is created and it is located in C:\AI_art\stable-diffusion-main\outputs\txt2img-samples\samples
You can prevent starting of app installations files if they have not come from the MS store inside Windows 11.
This can make your PC more secure because all apps in the store will have to be digitally signed and overall it can provide you with more control over what will be installed.
Follow the guide below to find out how can you easily turn this feature ON.
DuckDuckGo has risen in the public eye as a private search engine offering searches without tracking. A less known fact about DuckDuckGo is that they have their own browser, well they have it for the Android platform and it was stated that it is coming for desktops soon.
People were excited for this new browser for a few reasons, one of them being privacy and another that it is built from scratch, not using existing chromium runtime that assured users that privacy is the main focus. Still, lately, things got a little out of control. Duckduckgo is under fire from users since a security researcher has discovered that there is an exception for Microsoft trackers inside Browser.
The main feature of their browser is that it blocks tracking scripts and most online advertising with the goal of preventing servers from collecting data about your online behavior. Of course, tracking protection is never 100% effective since it requires a lot of manual labor from people to add sites and links to blocklists but it was discovered that DuckDuckGo has a defined exception in the browser for Microsoft owned ad networks and tracking scripts giving them free pass even when they are related to privacy compromisation.
Zach Edwards first pointed out the exception in a series of tweets, after noticing DuckDuckGo on iPhone and Android wasn’t blocking LinkedIn and Bing advertisements on Facebook’s Workplace site.
You can capture data within the DuckDuckGo so-called private browser on a website like Facebook's https://t.co/u8W44qvsqF and you'll see that DDG does NOT stop data flows to Microsoft's Linkedin domains or their Bing advertising domains.
iOS + Android proof:
👀🫥😮💨🤡⛈️⚖️💸💸💸 pic.twitter.com/u3Q30KIs7e— ℨ𝔞𝔠𝔥 𝔈𝔡𝔴𝔞𝔯𝔡𝔰 (@thezedwards) May 23, 2022
DuckDuckGo’s CEO and founder, Gabriel Weinberg, replied with his own series of tweets.
Most of our other protections also apply to MSFT-owned properties as well. This is just about non-DuckDuckGo and non-Microsoft sites, where our search syndication agreement prevents us from stopping Microsoft-owned scripts from loading, though we can still apply protections post-load (like 3rd party cookie blocking). We are also working to change that.
DuckDuckGo says it uses over 400 sources for search engine results, including the company’s own web crawler, but typical link results are sourced most commonly from Bing. According to Weinberg, DuckDuckGo’s ability to use Bing search results depends on a carved-out exception for Microsoft’s ads in the mobile browser. A representative from DuckDuckGo told that third-party cookies from Microsoft services are still blocked.
Of course, the main aim and campaign of DUckDuckGo's rise was private search and private browsing so this kind of news did not go well among long supporters. The latest statement from them is as follows:
We have always been extremely careful to never promise anonymity when browsing, because that frankly isn’t possible given how quickly trackers change how they work to evade protections and the tools we currently offer. When most other browsers on the market talk about tracking protection, they are usually referring to 3rd-party cookie protection and fingerprinting protection, and our browsers for iOS, Android, and our new Mac beta, impose these restrictions on third-party tracking scripts, including those from Microsoft.
What we’re talking about here is an above-and-beyond protection that most browsers don’t even attempt to do — that is, blocking third-party tracking scripts before they load on 3rd party websites. Because we’re doing this where we can, users are still getting significantly more privacy protection with DuckDuckGo than they would using Safari, Firefox and other browsers. This blog post we published gets into the real benefits users enjoy from this approach, like faster load times (46% average decrease) and less data transferred (34% average decrease). Our goal has always been to provide the most privacy we can in one download, by default without any complicated settings.
nbtstat -R nbtstat -RR netsh int reset all netsh int ip reset netsh winsock reset
“0x80242006, WU_E_UH_INVALIDMETADATA. A handler operation could not be completed because the update contains invalid metadata.”Here are some troubleshooting tips you can try to fix Windows Update Error 0x80242006.
“There were some problems installing updates, but we’ll try again later. If you keep seeing this and want to search the web or contact support for information this may help: (0x8024002e)”.Common symptoms include:
Error Causes“Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations.” This means you do not have any missing or damaged system files.OR you may receive a message saying:
“Windows Resource Protection could not perform the requested operation.”To resolve this problem, run the System File Checker in safe mode and make sure that the PendingDeletes and PendingRenames folders exist under %WinDir%WinSxSTemp.
OR you may also receive a message saying, “Windows Resource Protection found corrupt files and successfully repaired them. Details are included in the CBS.Log%WinDir%LogsCBSCBS.log.” OR you may receive a message saying, “Windows Resource Protection found corrupt files but was unable to fix some of them. Details are included in the CBS.Log%WinDir%LogsCBSCBS.log.”
Most scrollbars are hidden by default if they are not used in Windows 11. If you are not ok with this feature and want scrollbars to be always visible and available do not worry, turning them ON is very easy.
Windows 11 will save settings automatically and apply setting right away. Close settings and continue with work.
“Microsoft Windows Network: You can’t connect to the file share because it is not secure. This share requires the obsolete SMB1 protocol, which is unsafe and could expose your system to attack. Your system requires SMB2 or higher.”In this post, you will be guided on how to check if the SMB2.0 version can be installed on your Windows 10 computer. To get started, follow the steps below. Step 1: Tap the Win + X keys to open the Device Manager. Step 2: After that, click on the Windows PowerShell (Admin) option. Step 3: In the Windows PowerShell window, type the following command and hit Enter:
Get-SmbServerConfiguration | Select EnableSMB2ProtocolNote: After entering the command, you will see the following content on your screen which means that your Windows 10 computer is now capable of running the SMB2 protocol Now all that’s left for you to do is to enable the SMB 2 protocol on your Windows computer by enabling the SMB 1 protocol first and then upgrading it to SMB 2 afterward. Refer to the steps below for more details. Step 1: Tap the Win + I keys to open the Settings app. Step 2: Then type in “control panel” in the search area and click on Control Panel from the search results. Step 3: After opening Control Panel, click on Programs. From there, select the “Turn Windows features on or off” option under the larger menu of Programs and Features. Step 4: After that, Windows Features will appear on your screen. And from there, make sure that you select SMB 1.0/CIFS File Sharing Support and then click on OK. Step 5: Now let it install all the required files and then restart your computer to apply the changes made successfully. After your computer has restarted, the SMB 2 protocol should now be supported on your Windows 10 computer. Note: On the other hand, you can also enter the following command in the Windows PowerShell window. Just make sure you have admin rights to enable it.
Set-SmbServerConfiguration –EnableSMB2Protocol $true
Runtime Error ‘429’: Active X component Can’t Create Object
Error Causes