My pet peeve is lazy "documentaries" where the uploader doesn't even bother to edit their input text. This results in a lot of weird verbal errors that you'd never hear from an actual human speaker. They instantly distract listeners from the content, so why even bother?
There are quite a few links to this kind of content every day on HN.
Not meaning to derail the thread, but ... What typo blew up the space shuttle? Challenger was lost when managers in a rush to launch overrode the recommendations of Thiokol engineers. Columbia was lost when a piece of insulation struck the leading edge of the left orbiter wing at launch and the risk to the shuttle was not recognized by those in charge.
I think the same will happen over time with the AI voice over slop that people don't bother correcting. These include weird pronunciations, missing punctuation that leads to weirdly intonated run-on sentences, pronounced abbreviations like "ickbmm" instead of "icbm", or the opposite, "kay emm ess" instead of "kilometers" and so on.
"The digital world gave him something new control."
Why do people not bother checking their AI voice overs and correct mistakes like this. It ruins the experience because it is so distracting. Humans don't make verbal mistakes like that, so it really stands out in the most obnoxious way.
If you hired someone to do the voice over, you'd never put up with such shoddy output. So why put up with it just because it's AI? It would require only the additional time needed to an occasional period or dash. Carelessly leaving such obvious mistakes in content is why people hate "slop" so much.
Take time to understand the difference between convenience and outright laziness.
YouTube will be so inundated by AI cat and dog videos that people stop watching them altogether. People will automatically assume anything labeled "cute" is fake.
I am in a hospital ward on a ward floor: everyone, every single person, every age, is scrolling 30s AI 'funny and cute' videos 247. It is quite eye opening as I never saw this close enough to actually see what they are doing. I asked why: they say it is funny, entertaining and if there has been no humans involved, they don't care as it is entertaining and fun: they rather have more different than more original/human.
I saw my neighbour here watching shorts about fat americans abusing all you can eat restaurants, generated by AI, for 7 days in a row now, whenever he is awake. He is 45 years old and wants to show me the funniest ones.
I told some of them and they said so what basically. But I guess many indeed really do not know. It is incredibly obvious but if its funny, I guess people will just laugh and not be critical.
Facebook is already like this. People didn't stop watching. In fact, they mostly stopped caring if it's fake. And no point in debunking the obvious BS: they scroll faster than you can say AI.
My mom sends me AI videos of cute cats doing the impossible (flying around the room, washing raccoons, etc). When I told her they were AI, she said “so what, they’re cute”
I wish, but from what I've seen, most "normies" don't care at all as long as they are entertained. It makes me depressed seeing my friends consuming and sharing all that AI slop while either believing it's true, or not even asking themselves if it is. At least they're having fun while they still can... right?
I remember trying to get NeXTSTEP 3.3 running on x86 hardware, it was so fussy with the hardware it supported that I had to take apart 3 computers from the office as well as a personal (not mine) Everex cube PC. (That's just for what was used, I'd taken apart way more to try and fail with so many cuts on my hands.) Then there were so many precise moments where you had to hit keys, eject floppy, or other hardware shenanigans that it felt like playing Dragon's Lair.
Was finally able to get it to boot to 2-bit grayscale on a DECpc with a LocalBus video card and some kind of SCSI drives. [After a few days, I had to return the parts to the users' PCs]
The NeXTSTEP desktop was nice. Interface Builder though blew my mind.
Most people now forget that 50+ years ago, the husband was the sole bread winner, kept his job for most of his life, and could afford the house, car, 4 children and a few pets.
I read somewhere that when women started working in the war efforts, businesses took advantage and skewed home prices and whatnot to make it so women had no choice but to continue working. This worked out well, because women wanted to work and have similar social treatment as men.
The issue then is that things kept skewing to the point where today a childless couple with high paying jobs can barely afford a vehicle and tiny apartment.
This may or may not be accurate. But it is an interesting opinion that I've heard a number of times over the years.
> Most people now forget that 50+ years ago, the husband was the sole bread winner, kept his job for most of his life, and could afford the house, car, 4 children and a few pets.
When people say things like this, they gloss over the fact that the standard of living, of what most people find acceptable, has gone up dramatically. Average home size has more than doubled, while family size has gone down. Cars have significantly more technology in them. Everyone now needs a $1k smart phone in their pocket.
I live in a home from the 1940s. I’m sure at some point there was a family of 5 living here. My dad grew up in a similar home in the 1950s with 6 people in the home. I think you’d be hard pressed to find someone these days who think my house is big enough for a family that size.
My parents both have some emotional scars I’ve seen from growing up poor in the idyllic era everyone likes to reference.
I think debt has really allowed things to get out of hand. The availability and normalization of using debt for everything has meant companies don’t have to keep prices affordable or pay decent wages, they just need to convince the public that having excessive amounts of personal debt is ok and normal. Then they also create new forms of debt to hide it from people and keep them spending, like BNPL. The idea of living within one’s means has shifted to mean if a person can make the monthly payments.
“ the husband was the sole bread winner, kept his job for most of his life, and could afford the house, car, 4 children and a few pets.”
We don’t _forget_ this. We refute it. It’s not true. It’s a dream that real estate developers _sold_ that wasn’t real.
In 1975 the women’s labor participation rate stood right around 50% its around 55% now [0].
In 1975 the US home ownership rate was 65%, its 65% now [1].
There were more families with no cars in the 70s than now. 1 and 2 car families were about the same rate (with more 2 car families now) but the big difference is how many more families have more than 2 cars now than then [2].
More stats for you:
- food as a percentage of family budget is lower now than then (and the only reason its close is that we eat out way more now)[3]
- houses are bigger now than then[4]
- data on employee tenure doesn’t go back that far, but the data we do have to the 80s shows employee tenure hasn’t changed [5]
There are lots of interesting economic challenges now, but _generally_ more people now are living better lives than then past economically. Anyone that sells you some story about some glorious past is lying to you for some reason.
Home ownership rates are always the tell. The US had very stable home ownership rates in the 45% range until the New Deal efforts that started subsidizing like crazy home ownership. They rose in the post war era until about 1960 when they reached the mid 60s. They have fluctuated in a tight curve in that band since then. The home ownership rate is tightly correlated to mortgage rates, not generational values, and spikes in 2005 (right before the bubble burst) not in the dim past [6].
It took me ages to find what you were referencing in [3], but it’s not inflation adjusted, so meaningless. I’ll assume the rest of your citations are equally meaningless.
Also home ownership rates, it’s by owner occupied dwellings, which would include owner occupied duplexes and triplexes. My building is technically owner occupied, he claims the in-law unit and receives mail there. But both flats are rented out.
Percentage of budget is naturally inflation adjusted…
The census owner % methodology is by respondent address. So if those are 3 addresses then that’s 33% owner occupied building. If you are all sharing an address and the landlord is the respondent then its 100% owner occupied. But importantly the methodology has been largely the same across measurement periods back to the 70s.
It gets harder before that because the census didn’t track the data.
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