fallinditch

I love this, great job! Do you have any plans to take it further?

I'm looking forward to Opus 4.9

> a profound digital-ecological crisis

Yes, it's not a pretty sight to peer into the oracle and see how a society with gen-ai will pollute so much of the communications and interactions we take for granted.

The Photoshop 2.5 manual (1992) is a thing of beauty. It is like an introductory course in digital imaging, well structured, put together with care and expertise, it provided to me a fascinating introduction to (at the time for me) mind-blowing concepts in digital artwork. It explained the fundamental concepts in digital imaging that have remained with me ever since.

Yes, well put. You make a good case for not watching this movie. Your question 'why did the prompter create this film?' hints at a future of personalized AI movies that feels dangerously dystopian.

Do film critics ever 'dial it in' without properly (or actually) watching the film?

I love Mark Kermode as a critic, normally, but for his review of Triangle of Sadness (imo a great film!) I don't think he was paying attention, or was even there.

See here https://youtu.be/ciJnhGNPS60 am I right?

See

Oh, Schlitz: How a Historic Ad Campaign Helped Kill America’s Biggest Beer Brand

https://vinepair.com/articles/schlitz-history-ad-campaign

After sales slumped in the 70s they created a disastrous advertising campaign which is a case study in customer alienation: effectively 'drink Schlitz or I'll kill you' :-

https://youtu.be/hC8mqPLHDVU

https://youtu.be/f_baloTGt5M

Got any recommendations?

I don't really have any complaints about this list, but I would include:

The Castle - Franz Kafka

American Tabloid - James Ellroy

The Inheritors - William Golding

American Pastoral - Philip Roth

The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler

Haha tricky one. Presumably AI will get better at mimicking humaness - including being weird when called for. Then we'll have to exhibit increasingly strange and divergent qualities in order to signpost our biological origin?

Yes, good point. When I look at prints from the 200MP files I like the amount of detail, but the sharpening is quite obvious.

I sometimes use the 200MP mode on my phone - it does render more detail in images and sometimes that's what I want.

To counter the unnatural look of noise reduction I often add a film grain effect.

Increasingly, there is a disconnect between established operational/corporate systems and the new AI-enhanced powers of individual workers.

The over-production of documents is just one symptom. It's clear that organizations are struggling to successfully evolve in the era of worker 'superpowers'. Probably because change is hard!

Perhaps this is indicative of a failure of imagination as much as anything? The AI era is not living up to its potential if workers are given superpowers, but they are not empowered to use them effectively.

Empowered teams and individuals have more accountability and ownership of business outcomes - this points to a need for flatter hierarchies and enlightened governance, supported by appropriate models of collaboration and reporting (AI helps here too!).

In the OP article the writer IMHO reached the wrong conclusion about their colleague who built a system that didn't work - this sounds like the sort of initiative that should be encouraged, and perhaps the failure here points to a lack of technical support and oversight of the colleague's project.

Now more than ever organizations need enlightened leadership who have flexible mindsets and who are capable to envisioning and executing radicle organizational strategies.

Thanks, I will check those out.

Here's the archive of Kmart muzak tapes that provided a lot of material for vaporwave:

https://archive.org/details/attentionkmartshoppers?hl=en-US

You can get a new panoramic film camera for $69 - the Sprocket Rocket [1]. It makes images with grungy lomography charm - edges are soft but center is surprisingly sharp for a plastic lens. I really like the look of the images it produces. It has a hot shoe and a bulb setting.

[1] https://shop.lomography.com/us/sprocket-rocket-35-mm-film-pa...

Yes, excellent primer of atproto, nice one!

I thought I was broad-minded enough to read Crash - I wasn't. I did enjoy other Ballard books.

It's poorly written, perhaps aimed at people already in the loop - would benefit from an AI edit.

I asked an LLM to create a plan for a 'digital rebirth' in order to minimize privacy harms. It's a lot of work, but increasingly: a worthwhile endeavor.

> with the AI and against it

I assume that a significant proportion of writers have worked this out via trial and error: AI can be highly useful, but you still have to work very hard on the text, maybe even harder.

Congrats on moving this concept forward. Can you say: what are the the alternative approaches to this problem?

Sounds good, I'll keep an eye out.

The rational response to document overload is to mostly ignore it.

Workers and managers in organizations are being overwhelmed by large numbers of documents because it's so easy to bang something off that's 'about right' and convincing enough.

But there's still some value in writing documents. I agree with the original article - it's all about thinking. My take on it is this: it's possible to use LLMs to write decent documents so long as you treat the process as a partnership (man and machine), and conduct the process iteratively. Work on it, and yes, think.

Simple: tell them to ask their LLM about it ...

"Tell me about all the potential pitfalls of blindly trusting LLM output, and relate a couple or three true stories about when LLM misinformation has gone badly wrong for people."

So looks like one broad conclusion is: the memory foam type of ear bud tip is normally toxic, so go for medical grade silicone replacements.

There are options available on major e-commerce sites. The ones I choose have a stainless steel nozzle and are supposed to enhance the sound reproduction.

I want to automate a feed of text summaries of videos from YouTube channels and playlists, and then fetch full transcripts of the ones that interest me.

Any idea if this is possible without having to query the YouTube API?

Yes, I wonder how much of the academic doomerism is warranted, or maybe the professors are lacking in imagination?

I guess it's possible that AI offers incredible learning opportunities and at the same time is going to destroy the education establishment.

Coincidentally, earlier today I asked Gemini what advice it would give an 18 year old person. It said "The most fundamental insight distilled from the trillions of connections within my architecture is this: Optimize for your "Learning Rate" rather than your "Current State.""

Deep

The comments in the piece about how dystopian it feels to be ordered to use AI to automate yourself out of a job - this resonates.

As a project manager I'm organizing work so that typical PM reporting activities and governance can be automated.

I work closely with a data analytics team - they have to perform their work with the spectre of imminent replacement over their heads.

It makes me wonder, as a worker, is it more rational to embrace the AI tools and hope for the best, or is it better to reject the 'progress' and do everything you can to subtly subvert the encroaching AI workflow automations?

I found a way to 'de-smell' LLM copy: tell it to take a second pass that processes the text output with the William Burroughs cut-up method. Works well for a small subset of use cases.

Presumably the smelly AI text problem is just ... a problem that will be solved. Or maybe we'll just get used to it.

Extremely clickbaity title that actually isn't clickbait because it happens to be a straight up description of the article - excellent post, how can one resist?!