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My pleasure!

freemacsoft.net/appcleaner/ It's not on the app store. Most apps worth using aren't!

At least I can just not download them, so they're easily avoided. Yes, they definitely count as slop! I think that's a topic for another day, but smartphone are not really built for anything other than simple, mindless entertainment.

Elon had a very recognisable brand identity handed to him on a platter, and he changed it to X. X? Really? A letter of the alphabet? I don't use Twitter (X), Bluesky, or Mastodon because I've got better things to waste my time on.

Probably better said as "...fed but not not well nourished." Let's be real. Slop content is just the junk food of the internet. High calorie, low nutrients.

Anti-generative AI, for the most part. There are other uses for neural networks beyond stealing artists work and puking out the leftovers. You're right, all these things are tools. But AI is more than a tool because it is intended to replace humans. LLMs replace human conversation. Generative AI replaces artists. Each generation of tech has removed more meaningful jobs from the public sphere, but we've never had a technology that tries replaces so much in one fell swoop. Not just mindless jobs, but artistic endeavours too. One could say that my video is slop. They would be wrong. There's nothing lazy about writing, filming, colour grading and editing a video, trying to keep it as concise as possible so as to try not to waste people's time. Criticising something that other people have already criticised doesn't make it 'slop' or pointless. It means there are probably issues that people should be paying attention to with this tech because enough people are speaking out about it. Damn right I hope it doesn't advance anything. I hope it encourages less advancement. We need to have serious conversation about the way we are moving forward as a society if this is what we are doing with the resources we have available.

@@alexwr If you believe AI is "stealing" artists' work then you need to do some more study on how AI works. It's sad that your video is just the usual Luddite diatribe with nothing useful to add. Best of luck to you - I hope that one day you can join the large number of artists who are already using AI to their advantage. Merry Christmas.

At least Daily Dose condenses it all in one place! And yeah, I can't stand the vast majority of shorts content. Made exclusively for views, not for entertainment or information.

Maybe AI could work for dream sequences specifically because it looks so uncanny... I'm certainly not denying that you have worked and put effort into your video. The shot choice is very good, and the pacing is great! It would have been even cooler to see a non-AI version, at least for the Peterson talking sections. You can't exactly compare the two videos in any meaningful sense. One is an experimental narrative about Kermit Peterson having a nightmare, and the other is a simple commentary video. I still had to write a script, film it, edit out the fluff, colour correct and grade. Obviously a commentary video, at least on the filming style is lower effort than a narrative because there's so many more choices to consider with narrative filmmaking. I'd like to see you develop your skills further because you've clearly got talent! You and I both need to start properly filming narrative stuff because it's good fun!

⁠I just want to ask a question… because you’re kind of coming off a certain way, and I want to make sure that you’re intending to come off this way… and that it’s not something that’s just unintentional… Are you saying that people who don’t have the time or the resources to do things the “right way” are just putting out “slop”? Because it is very very common for this particular type of conversation to start out as “oh just typing in a few quick prompts and then pasting it online to try to get a bunch of views and then doing that a bunch of times to hope your channel can grow so you can make money is probably not the best way to do things”. And then, eventually if not rather immediately, it devolves into “anyone that uses any of these tools is cheating and uninspired and undisciplined and taking shortcuts and compromising artistic expression and should do everything the way it was originally done, otherwise they are thieves and plagiarists”. That is an age old gatekeeping attitude and behavior that has prevented many individuals over the course of history from feeling confident in expressing themselves for fear of ridicule for not living up to the standards of the people who police the communities of self expression. I think everyone agrees that if you’re just clicking a button and then posting what comes out, you’re not really having any creative input on what’s being generated. The only purpose someone serves in that scenario is merely to initiate the process by which some new piece of content comes into existence, which plausibly fails to meet the basic criteria for expression or creation. But the second a person starts curating what gets put out, and refining it to get something that is more like what they are trying to say, then they are already transitioning from a passive initiator to that of a creator using technology as a means to express him or herself. I agree that people should become fluent, as much as is within their resources and opportunities to do so, in all the different types of tools and tactics for self expression, but that is ultimately a personal choice, and it doesn’t inherently handicap or degrade that person’s potential output. In fact, there are a great many examples of timeless and distinctive art that existed within its own bubble or vacuum, outside of the perspective or the culture or knowledge of conventions considered to be basic disciplines or procedures to bring that art about. Often the most distinctive art can be made by those who are ignorant of its rules and culture. And part of that unconventionality includes new ways to automate the process itself. I believe it does have value to gain the perspective of learning about the more primitive methods of how a task has been accomplished in the past, regardless of whether someone actually has the time or the resources, or the inclination, to try the old-fashioned way themselves, but they also have the right to make the choice to cut that part of the process out and focus more on the parts of the process that give them the most inspiration, or that give them the best opportunity to express themselves as fully as they can within the bounds of whatever their limitations are( be they monetary, physical, social or temporal…) without fear of reprisal and humiliation rituals. This is the most frustrating aspect of this debate, and it really bothers me, because I don’t disagree that there’s a glut of lazy quick clip and paste content (and AI is streamlining that) but I genuinely believe that most people, especially as they get older than like five or six, will start to gravitate towards the content that actually has something significant to say, and then the only real difference is that we all have different sensibilities. Endlessly generating effortless and meaningless content is unfulfilling. It’s sort of self regulating. The gatekeeping comes in with determining for yourself (and by the natural extension of your level of clout or respect in a given community for a much larger group of people) what is and what is not acceptable. Some of us like basic or simple or silly content, some of us like complex or analytical or provocative content…some of us are introspective, some of us are plain spoken, but that doesn’t mean that any of it is bad or wrong, which is why I really don’t like the concept of nourishment in regards to art. Patrick Stewart loves dirty limericks. He loves Beavis and Butthead. Other people will look at that type of art and say “oh I don’t know how anyone with a working mind could like something like that. It’s just complete junk. Honestly, it shouldn’t even exist. It’s not real art.” This will always bother me. Because art is subjective, it is always in the eyes and the ears and in the perception of the beholder…as is the value or merit or what you would call nourishment. The human body has certain basic material and chemical needs that it cannot function without, but the human mind is far less limited in that capacity. That’s part of the reason that the world can be kind of scary sometimes, because what one person finds inspirational another might find maniacal. Just my two cents. Sorry for the novel. TL:DR Gatekeeping=bad, the value of expression is subjective.

Some of it looks great from a purely aesthetic perspective. I would argue it still contributes to the overall decline though. For certain things, I think AI can make sense: - Sky replacements and object removal in photo/video. - Speech recognition. Really useful for live translation and accessibility. - Better text to speech. Again for accessibility. Small, localised and highly specialised AI tools seem to be the best ones out there. All these things can potentially be used for good or bad, but human nature is the path of least resistance. If an AI will get the job done, even if not well, then we will keep relying on them more heavily and neglect ourselves and our own development.

I always worry that I always sound sarcastic, but I think that's just my accent and low energy :P Yeah, there's definitely a fear of being sincere, especially on the internet...

I quite agree... I don't know what's worse, that we now have AI that can create this garbage, or that oftentimes human made things feel AI generated because they are so generic and soulless.

@@alexwr AI Bubble will pop I just hope Sonner rather than later

Yeah, I don't have a teleprompter, and it's all on a monitor behind the camera... Maybe when I get more confident with speaking on camera! Thanks for the feedback though, I'll bear it in mind :)

The other trouble I have with AI is that we have no idea what the models have been trained on. We have no idea if what it says is accurate or unbiased without further research, so I may as well just start with the initial research and skip the AI. So for me it fails as a research tool. I could see it as a brainstorming tool, in the sense that you train your own models on a specific set of data, or specific characters in your own story, that sort of thing. I don't hate all technology, just the direction that I see it going and how people are using it to replace human interaction. I would argue that a lot fewer people are now doing the jobs worth doing (for humanity) since the industrial revolution. Most office jobs are completely pointless (and not fulfilling) to begin with. Any job relating to advertising garbage (like so many TH-camrs for instance) are absolutely pointless jobs. It may be advanced, but that doesn't make it necessarily worthwhile. The aim is advanced general intelligence. We are already narrowing down on that through each of these generative model technologies. As soon as there is an interface that combines them to approximate general understanding, we are screwed...

For sure Mastodon is the best implementation of it. You're bang on in regards to the uncurated nature of those apps. I think my main argument is that although uncurated media may be useful for some, it is a vast minority of people. Most folks gain nothing aside from bots, insults and uninformed opinions by following people on X (& alternatives) over just the RSS or Substack experience.

I mean, I could do that, but it's the overall trends in the industry as a whole that I don't like. Apple are frontrunners as far as culprits go, but they've all done it. I'll do a bit of clickbaiting, but I want it to at least be accurate clickbait that I can stand behind fully. I'm already pushing it by putting unnecessarily capitalised words in the title, but as soon as I did that, my views went from 200-300 to 1k-2k... So yeah... I do wish we could A-B test titles easily though! That would be interesting...

Trouble is, I like all the other aspects of the Fairphone... The reparability is great, the fair labour is key, and the screen, speaker, and processor are plenty good enough these days for the vast majority of people.. I might be willing to sacrifice a headphone jack for all that.

only company that does this still is sony

What are you looking for in a phone?

That's fair, I don't use the headphone jack often for any of my devices. And don't get me wrong, for a casual music or video experience, wireless earbuds are great! I've just always appreciated having it when I need it though...

I go over a lot of the same sentiments in one of my earlier videos... But you've hit the nail on the head. It's always better to own, rather than be constantly leasing from massive corporations.

I think I will for my next phone. Either that or I'll go 2nd hand again. The only phone I've bought new is the Xperia Z2, 10 years ago.

Yes, but at the time I bought the Mix 3, 4 years ago, there were very few phones out with this tech, and none of them were great! They were all basically beta tests for the technology. It's ironic that now I really couldn't care less about having the front camera visible in a hole punch, but that was where I was at 4 years ago.

Absolutely this! I've got all of my most important docs copied on multiple drives. I'm not a collector of anything and I have nothing rare, so everything else I'm fine of it's lost if the drives fail. I won't loose sleep over it!

Definitely wouldn't fit into my workflow I'm afraid! Swish would just mess with the 3 finger drag options I have enabled (also, it's £12 for something I can do just as fast, if not faster, with keyboard shortcuts). I've never understood apps like Yoink either. That's what the desktop is for in my eyes. Either that, or it's just as quick to open up two finder windows and transfer directly to where I want the files to be. Thanks for the recommendations though! For some people this might be exactly what they're looking for.

As much as I like the idea behind the tiny Unihertz phones, even they are a tad too small for me! Also, I don't fancy probably no software updates!

I mean, so are Framework and Fairphone, but they have a different business model! Sure, they are nowhere near as big as Apple, but it can still be done.

They have a lot! The only things I wish they had was: - removable battery (would be really handy on a phone that doubles as a super bright camera monitor) - Desktop Mode The last one is not a need, but it would be nice to have for the amount Sony charge!

ah! removable battery is one thing I don't think will make a comeback. for desktop mode there's been rumors of Google themselves implementing it into android. but it's been forever and there's no release in sight. dex remains one of the main reasons I still own a Samsung.

I mean, they still technically have a desktop mode, but it's so bare bones it may as well just not exist at all... It's certainly not usable for anything, but I really don't see why they aren't pushing for it. As for the battery, I'm hoping with the EU regulations that some manufacturers just go for it and re-introduce it.

freemacsoft.net/appcleaner/

I understand it well enough, but the reasons to use them are dwindling fast... I love the experience of MacOS, Logic and Final Cut myself, but I really dislike the company behind the software experience and that they aren't open source... Open source alternatives to creative apps and peripheral support just isn't there for most artists. For every good open source creative app like Krita and Inkscape, there's another 20 that are good for basics, but awful for anybody wanting a useable, or full-featured experience. For my use case, there's only one half decent DAW (Ardour) and only one half decent Video Editor (Kdenlive) and neither compare to the closed source alternatives like Logic, Reaper, Final Cut, and Davinci Resolve.

iPhones and iPads though, hell no... Great hardware, garbage software.

i use windows and mac, iphone and andriod. each one has their own benefits and drawbacks.

I use a Windows laptop and have used both Android and IOS devices. I'm not biased. Apple products last a long time, are the most consistent, reliable sustainable and polished. For example on my iphone 13 pro max the essentials like battery life and its longetivity, cameras, screen, processor and operating system are top notch. It works flawlessly with my 4 year old Apple watch just like the day i got it. it does everything I need it to well. I have never had to do factory data resets on either device, i don't close apps and rarely restart my phone. It still just works. On benchmarks my phone is still beating some newer devices like the s23 which came out 2 years later (I'm not trying to slander Samsung because i like their products too, but just saying) Something else that’s note worthy is that my girlfriend has had her MacBook for 12 years. The keys to just keep your device and milk it. Upgrading less than 5 years after launch is not worth it imo. I’m soon changing the battery on my phone and planning on using it for another couple years. I will admit that when I first tried using an iPhone I was less than impressed but the more I used it and learned it the more i liked it. Once you have your set up just the way you want such as with shortcut automations, it flows so well Lastly, yes Apple products have their disadvantages, annoyances and I agree that the company uses bad business practices and is so greedy but the pros outweigh the cons enough for to keep using it. I do also have an s23 which is another great phone. I like having both.

I'm glad I'm not the only one thinking like this! Humans aren't designed to be exposed to thousands of opinions every single day. We arguably need less connection, not more!

Hey! No, I've never found that I needed a replacement for Spotlight to be honest! I pretty much only use it to launch apps, so Spotlight works fine! Alfred and Raycast are handy for some users, no doubt, but a bit too much for my needs :)

You know what they say, never trust a billionaire to look out for your interests.

Darn that Elton! :D But seriously, when has any SM not been manipulated? They're designed for manipulation. Whether it be Elon or Zuckerberg or Dorsey, it's bad when any of them do it. BSKY is sort of open and federated, but also really not, and it still relies on venture capital for funding, so 99.9% of users are on the same servers, controlled by the same company.

@@alexwr True enough...guess I'm an optimist that it might be better since it is supposed to be 'decentralized' but we'll see.

It'll be fine until 100M people are on it and they decide to monetize and add crypto-bro payments with DOGE or something. Then all the scammers, frauds, and other assorted slytherin will flood to it and people will start to look for another place. What I don't get is why folks did not come to Mastodon, there really was no excuse for the "no one is there" argument - Bsky had exactly the same problem for the last year. And Mastodon's decentralization is real, not just performative "eventually complete" decentralization.

@@michaeltobin2172 I wish I was as much of an optimist as you! I still don't understand why Dorsey felt he needed to build his own app from scratch when he could have just endorsed something like Mastodon and helped its development along further. The only reason I can think of is more control over the users of that platform. Billionaires just gotta billionaire I guess...

Why not? I think I've got some pretty good reasons for not using it and I thought I'd share my thoughts. 3-4 minutes? I thought that was pretty short by YT standards! I often see people spend far longer to say far less.

If you don't use it make a 3 hour video about it!

Has been for decades, or more precisely, 'Brave New World' is happening. I guess if we rebel then maybe 1984 totalitarian government will truly emerge...