He's got a really fun video with an old Soviet games console I particularly enjoyed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mqXT-zj47s

I think projects like this, as well as Disney's recent incredible robots (e.g. https://youtu.be/-cfIm06tcfA?si=D3SKsNekOaDQFeVU) mean it's just a matter of time until we have pretty real, embodied robots in people's homes. There will probably be some viral videos about that, and I imagine some company that can sell at an attractive price is going to make a lot of money one day.

I'd love to see something like this manufactured at scale once the LLM ecosystem matures a little bit. As someone who has never quite felt comfortable using voice assistants, it might actually be the ingredient I need to make the whole thing feel enjoyable.

I have nothing to do with this channel, but the final product is really cool.

For a monochrome display of that size, probably around 20kV

> Is this safe?

Just don't stick your fingers in there while it's on.

Given that this guy built the entire thing, he clearly has enough knowledge on electronics to understand the dangers of the flyback transformer.

Isn't there a design principle that says that if you make something look cute, it should also be safe to touch?

I think this does not work. My one cat looks very cute but is not really safe to touch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7oD9j814nQ

Now, if you open up an old TV, what you REALLY need to watch out for are the big capacitors in the power supply. Those may be only the voltage of your power grid, but hold enough charge to power the whole TV for several milliseconds. On a 28”, that’s enough to kill you dead. Luckily the leads on those caps are not exposed unless you disassemble the TV (removing the PSU PCB).

The leads might be connected to other parts of a PCB which may be exposed.

Empathy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXrbqXPnHvE

Servitude:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXsUetUzXlg

BattleBots Missing Link vs. ChiaBot:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rx3VKd8yDqI

BattleBots Complete Control VS Super Chiabot:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELZI2Cx6kWA

The one minute movies never ran due to contractual problems between NBC and SAG. We used hidden cameras, and the humans were real unsuspecting people, but I'll admit it's true they didn't accurately portray the everyday lives of actual robots in the real world: the robot's injuries and Professor Johnson's phone number were fake, and the robot waiter was fired.

The point of NBC's one-minute reality shows was to tell short entertaining two-part cliffhanger stories, which NBC would broadcast as interstitial programming at the beginning and end of commercial breaks, to compel people to keep watching TV and submit to more advertisements.

But the point of Will's stories and performance was to explore how people interact and empathize with robots, discover what their beliefs and expectations are, and probe to test how easy humans are to fool or convince to play along with real-time tele-robotic wizard-of-oz man-behind-the-curtain mumbo-jumbo.

https://web.archive.org/web/20141028194536/http://www.allent...

>In 2003, NBC attempted to add a new feature to prime-time television with "One-Minute Movies." Each original movie unfolded in its first 30 seconds and ended with a cliffhanger, and then a conclusion in the last 30 seconds. The One-Minute Movies were to be used as interstitial programming between commercials and possibly where a show ends a minute earlier than its scheduled running time.

>The idea for the series was brought to NBC by John Wells (“E.R.”) and director Paris Barclay. The ten unique films were written, produced, cast, directed and filmed by assorted talent. Among the talent appearing in or lending their voices (one was animated) to the projects were Michael Richards, Tom Arnold, Carmen Electra, Bill Bellamy, Eddie Cibrian, Garcelle Beauvais-Nilon, Paula Marshall, Jackee Harry, Danny Masterson and Amber Valletta.

>With mechanical robots designed and built by Will Wright (creator of “The Sims”), the two segments directed by James Moll are comedic short films featuring fully functional robots in hidden-camera situations.

>The first, “Restaurant” features a robotic waiter. Coffee shop diners were asked if they would be willing to be seated at a table that will be served by a mechanical server. Then, surrounded by tables filled with hired “extras,” the unknowing customer is approached by a 6-ft tall, fully functional, computerized, talking robot.

>The second film, “Empathy,” also features hidden-cameras. In this case, a broken down, severely damages robot was planted next to a dumpster on a side street in Berkeley, California. As people would pass the robot, it would suddenly move and talk to the passersby. “Help me,” the poor helpless robot would say. Hidden cameras captured various reactions, everything from apathy to empathy.

>After airing only one of the films – featuring “The Pussycat Dolls” -- NBC decided not to continue airing the remaining twelve films.

After a short and unsuccessful career as a waiter, Slats eventually decided that his one true goal in life was to reproduce himself.

So we took him out in public around Berkeley, and shot some video of Slats attempting to seduce men and women off the street.

It was kind of like Speed Dating meets Demon Seed: he tried to talk people into giving him their eggs and sperm, because he needed their genetic material to reproduce himself.

Demon Seed Trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNUEp5A9eKU

Demon Seed: The Birth:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyjrQfNtK0I

Speed Dating with Cupid:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVUP9OXmHTM

>Cupid $959 Are you tired of dating weasels, hedgers, pussyfooters and wafflers? Are you ready to dispense with all the beating around the bush you're forced to put up with just to find a yes at the end of a marriage proposal? Let Cupid, the Equivercator help you cut to the heart of things and land yourself the mate of your dreams. No need to wear yourself ragged trying to win the affections of the one you desire. Let Cupid help you secure the proposal, and then you can spend your time on more important matters: You've got a wedding to plan!

The results of our research: It turns out to be a lot easier for a robot to talk a man out of his sperm, than to talk a woman out of her eggs.

This is Slats, the unemployed robot waiter, roaming the streets of Berkeley:

http://www.donhopkins.com/home/RobotMovies/Slats1.jpg

http://www.donhopkins.com/home/RobotMovies/Slats2.jpg

http://www.donhopkins.com/home/RobotMovies/Slats3.jpg

Nancy the Van Seat - Stupid Fun Club:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvXG4gQ2FWI

Creativity by Will, Slats & the Stupid Fun Club folks:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZljgktEr5E

I get that not everyone wants a dense information-packed how-to video - and indeed, a lot of DIY creators (Colin Furze, for example) seem to have gradually trended away from this style over time. It may therefore be that trying to please the Youtube algorithm ('all hail the algorithm') can drive video producers in counter-intuitive directions, but I really hope that this is an outlier trying to boost their video length, and not the sign of yet more things to come.

So I'd hazard that he just likes making beautiful and entertaining videos in addition to making beautiful and entertaining devices.

Nothing i love more in Youtube videos when the person showing their idea/what they made/ their guide etc opens with "anyway lets get into it"

The author also has a patreon for any interested

https://www.patreon.com/workshopnation

I think it is fair, although personal criticism (I liked this, disliked that). The questioning is also constructive. Just look at the replies. They are interesting, as you can see why people liked or didn't like the "fluff". It also suggests a simple, but not obvious answer to the questioning. Creators do this because people like it.

To answer your question less sarcastically, I watch quite a lot of 'technical' or project Youtube videos - e.g. Stuff Made Here, Superfast Matt, Colin Furze, Aging Wheels, Bad Obsession Motorsports, Matthias Wendel, Peter Sripol, Tom Stanton... and the video style in this case was such an outlier (even considering the trend I've seen in recent years across multiple channels) that it was mildly noteworthy. I can't remember the last time I skipped such large segments of a video from any of the producers I listed above (apart from sponsor segments, natch).

If it's the quirk of the individual producer, then of course it's his prerogative, no question. But if his goal is to grow his channel, such feedback may actually have value, given it might turn some viewers off.

Prevalent or not, the ide gives off creepy vibes to me personally .

Sorry but that's really not it, I just don't watch a video on a topic I'm interested in for 30 seconds of city skyline views with some light music..

My attention span has nothing to do with it, my patience for wasting my time does however.

Edit : Just to reiterate, I liked the video, cool idea.. Just the balance seemed off to me. It's not worth an argument to be honest. Maybe I shouldn't have said anything.

Like your argument boils down to why watch planet earth when you could look at a few photos and read the wiki

It’s not just about conveying information here

However, I do find it enjoyable when you allow yourself to get lost in, for instance, a great opera song accompanied with cool images.

There is beauty in letting go of this guilt for not being 100% productive all the time.

The trouble with such 'side notes' is they end up eating the thread and are effectively completely unrelated to the thing being presented.

I felt the same way but didn't want to comment as it felt a bit rude, I even want to see his profile because the amount of production 'fluff' seemed excessive for a relatively low 84k subscriber count.

A low amount of videos (14 right now) and ~80% of the video views on this one, it feels weird.

All in all, interesting video and at least he pointed out the elephant in the room about merging to some GPT model.

As for the disproportionally produced nature of it, sometimes smaller creators who have money to spend will pay producers, editors, artists to help them on their video. These people have a portfolio that they advertise and they sell their services with some personality. Either this individual has experience video editing and has created all the fluff themselves for some reason, or the person has enough money to spend they dicided to hire a professional editor, who has made all these sections and spliced them into the video. Possibly the creator gave the editor a minimum length to produce and not enough real footage. Possible this exact thing happened but the creator and editor are the same person.

Youtube has changed a lot in the past 5 years. There a huge industry of video editors and artists who support the professionalization of even first time youtube creators, as the bar is raised ever higher and higher to be heard above the noise

I dislike that you're being criticized. In a technical forum we should be demanding more efficient uses of our time and less manipulation and more facts-based presentation. I feel a little sorry for people who grew up in the youtube influencer age. These techniques are totally normalized for them and I don't think they realize how deeply manipulative your average popular youtuber is.

A lot of us just want a fact-sheet kind of thing that is neurodiverse and "busy technical person" friendly. The marketing-style media is really meant for executives and potential customers. I always shy away from those kind of presentations, find them hard to focus on, get impatient, and just google for a fact sheet, credible review, or technical reddit posting or other text-based info. And if there is video, it should be justified. Like a short clip illustrating something that is hard to explain or appreciate otherwise.

The other big bonus is how easily I can copy and paste these text items, make a bulleted list, etc to share with other busy people. "Hey Boss, check out this robot project, I think we can try that here," is going to be an easier sell with a page of text and some photos than "Hey Boss, here's a 40 minute video of a robot project."

I can't stress how badly the move from a text based internet to a video-based one has badly hurt people like me. I'm autistic with adhd and the constant demands to "hey just watch this video if you want to learn this technology," is just too much. I seek out text tutorials with screenshots or code snippets or whatever. I think we're becoming what happened to the boomers. That is to say the rise of TV, TV news, etc moved them way from books and newspapers that were far less centralized and had more potential for merit, variety, and lower barriers to entry. For someone like me, I could never be a slick youtube video producer, but I could write a good hack-a-day article. Why should the former have more merit? Why should we be applauding slick production techniques outside the ability of nearly all technical people?

I'm sorry if this rant is going odd places, but honestly, the mass videofication of all things has incredible downsides, but is incredibly profitable hence we're stuck with it, but we should be able to call it out if we are displeased with it.

The video is really about the sense of nostalgia for a past where we had a more optimistic idea of a future. The emotional level is the point of the video.

So please call out the mass videofication of things but this is not an good example of it.

If you don’t want to consume videos for entertainment, then don’t watch it.

---

Even more of a tangent, but regarding the march of videos on the internet, I have been surprised by how much I've enjoyed (and even derived value from) TikTok, which I would have expected be the worst of the worst. But thanks to its nature, it's both far more efficient at enabling discovery, and almost always far more concise, than Youtube. And oddly, TikTok has done a lot to drive off-internet pastimes, thanks to discovery of new books to read, recipes to shop for and cook, films to watch, exercise routines to try, etc. It's so weird so write this, but I find (my little slice of?) TikTok unbelievably wholesome.

A lot of boomers didn't like the TV-ization of the world. For a long time Neil Postman's "Amusing ourselves to death," was a top rated academic commentary on how TV is ruining society by moving us more towards sensationalized news, easy manipulation, centralization, etc. Its sad to think that war is long over and TV has won. And now that same war has been lost on the internet with things like youtube.

I'd argue tik-tok is a new artform and not TV or youtube like at all, and works pretty well for what it does. It doesn't ever, at least for me, take the place of written materials or photo tutorials or technical articles, but youtube is doing its best to replace those items. Tik-tok is more a unique media that wants to create a new space in your life and badly constrained by its short video focus, but youtube trying to eat the internet by eating up traditional spaces like written media.

i use this to see if the rest of the fluff is worth it :)

Skipping around without a bunch of buffering lag and ability to increase volume up to 300% in poorly recorded/mixed videos alone are game changers.

The signal:noise ratio of the content there is awful, it requires better tools than what they provide for obvious reasons.

Superfast Matt reference?

(For me, a wonderful example of a channel that almost perfectly balances information and entertainment. One of only ˜2-3 channels that make me want to drop what I'm doing, whenever I see a new video has been posted.)

To me, Amazon is a total mess. The account management is terrible. It has all these crazy region restrictions when you try to buy books, and I just assume that whenever I buy something from the store I'm getting scammed. Everything on Amazon looks like a scam.

Then I hear people in the US buy their groceries on Amazon and use Alexa. It's crazy, what am I missing? The entire company seems like it's strung together with duct tape. I have zero trust in Amazon as a brand to do anything right.

I live in Seattle. A lot of random things I can get shipped the next day (sometimes even the same day!) for free (I pay for Prime, but there is no additional cost), like if I need a USB drive, compost bags, or dish soap.

I'd prefer to buy things from Amazon vs other sites simply because I'm used to Amazon. I have an account; they have my address and payment information. I just need to click a few buttons and have what I need the next day.

If something goes wrong, customer support is still pretty good in most cases, although sometimes Amazon has dropped the ball. Amazon is great with returns -- most of the time, I don't even need to box up and label my return. I just need to show up at an Amazon Fresh store or some other dropoff point (there are many in Seattle) and hand them my item/scan a QR code, and that's it.

People have complained about fake products on Amazon. I've bought hundreds of things from Amazon, from CPUs to consumer electronics to batteries. I'm sure I received some knockoff at some point, but I've never noticed.

I would gladly switch away from Amazon if something better popped up, but I don't see how any alternative could be better without eventually becoming Amazon again.

It's actually funny, ever since Wheel of Time released and we got Prime to watch it, it's not just that we started buying from Amazon instead of individual stores, but we've actually bought a bunch more stuff over the internet than we would have before anyway. Stuff like air blowers for cleaning out electronics, verifiably safe toys for the cats, spring-loaded arms to hold phones up, a Kindle to read ebooks. The Kindle is the other thing I'll give credit to Amazon for being just very good and very good value like their streaming service, the Kindle is a very good device. Annoying DRM on my books, sure, but I've got them backed up for when it gets cracked.

Fast forward a decade or so and it's exactly as you say, finding anything reputable on their website is an exercise in frustration and unpronounceable randomly generated "brands" which have paid to be pushed up the search results. Alexa works maybe 50% of the time when I try to use it now (mostly I've switched to HomePods and Siri), the devices with screens are a constant flurry of pointless distractions ("There's nothing on your shopping list"... cool, maybe just don't tell me about that then). FireTV is a barely functional shit show which often takes multiple seconds to validate I've entered the parental control PIN correctly, and can take anything up to half a minute to fully populate the home screen with adverts.

The thing that really took the biscuit for me was when I cancelled my Prime subscription recently. Now whenever I try to buy something from Amazon I get interstitials trying to dupe me into reupping, often cryptically worded such that it looks like I'll be paying £10 for delivery if I don't. This is probably a good thing as it just encourages me to go elsewhere.

The Alexa stuff is a little weirder for me. It’s gone in waves of being amazing and being terrible. I just noticed that for the last six months they’ve stopped with the “by the way” bs after I ask for the time, so that’s nice. A month from now they might turn the dials and make it annoying again.

Their e-Ink Kindle hardware is very nice and they have more ebook titles than anybody, but the DRM is such a downer. I’m cheering for the DeDRM people to crack it, but so far KFX seems to be holding…

My biggest Amazon complaint is their review system. It’s so gamed it’s almost useless. I pretty much only look at 3 star reviews because 1 and 5 are rarely fair or accurate.

I think there are fewer region restrictions here, maybe because they were a US-first company. Their account management and customer service is certainly lacking.

I see a lot of hate for Amazon on HN, maybe it depends on the location. I never had a problem with them and neither did any of my friends.

Due to the way things are co-mingled in the warehouses there isn't really much distinction between “sold by Amazon” and “fulfilled by Amazon”: if something has the same product code the system assumes it is the same thing, so the picker is sent to the closest one on the assumption that they are the same thing. In my friends case this resulted in him getting a counterfeit SD card. He noticed oddities on the packaging before actually opening it, so we don't know how far it was from spec. The return process was smooth and the right product was received the next day, but it was a faf he could have done without and if he'd not noticed he might have had a shock later if the card corrupted itself after writing a small amount (many fake storage devices pretend to be far larger than they are and stop writing (or worse: data is silently corrupted) once you approach their real size). Luckily it wasn't needed urgently, so the extra day wasn't a massive inconvenience.

Amazon is just so much more reliable than other retailers. Is it perfect? Of course not, but it is much less of a hassle than most others.

I've bought I think three things from amazon just to try it out. My lesson is that the entire site has a toxic interface and my credit card got falsely charged sometime afterward, which I cannot prove but I'm pretty sure was related to my use on their site. It looks like a cheap scam bazaar.

I don't understand its apparent US ubiquity...but then I don't understand the desire for something like Alexa either.

Agreed, the ubiquity of this stuff is hard to understand from the outside but for me it was extremely clear from within.

What people value them for varies. I had smart bulbs anyway (so I can vary between soft low light for watching TV and bright white for crafting, etc) and a compatible remotely control able heating control, I wanted to be even lazier than needing to pick up my phone to change things, and a pair of them were dirt cheap in an offer. Setting of timing reminders in the kitchen is pretty handy too. I don't use them for much else them that though. Occasionally I'll have an audiobook play that way via Audible, but the speaker isn't great for music.

I looked into open source variants for simple home automation like this. I look back every now and then and, while things are improving at a pace, it still seems like a chore to setup and potentially flaky (not that Amazon devices don't need resetting almost monthly because they are a bit flaky too) and more expensive in terms of getting good microphones/speakers/etc together.

[All the above would apply the same would to Google's offering; I went with Echo devices because they were cheap at a time that my wallet control was weak, and you can call them “computer” rather than “brand-name”]

I never imagined that that personality would be working for it's real owner (Amazon, Google et al) and trying to control me.

Until it's MY friend, I am not interested in lending some of my soul to it.

We're not on the correct path are we?

On the generative AI front, OpenAI/Microsoft doesn't control me either. I use it as a coding assistant instead of searching StackOverflow, or when I want to brainstorm lists of other ways of writing the same thing when I don't like what I've written and am not sure the best way to improve it.

Could just be you're approaching the tools wrong? But I can't imagine what you're doing where they're controlling you.

Even if you don't believe Alexa and Siri are recording everything you say, I think it's pretty clear that asking them to play music gives them some power to influence you. You're telling them your musical tastes, and you're (presumably) letting them pick some songs for you. (At the very least, by simply not having the song you asked for available.) One reason, perhaps even the biggest reason, that Amazon and Apple created those products is to sell you more shit, and both of these give them some power to influence your buying habits. Perhaps that power is tiny, and the tradeoff is worth it. They're also trying to influence who you buy from, or what services you subscribe to. Vendor lock-in and all that. Is that not them trying to influence you? Perhaps even to control you?

I think (and hope) it'll track a similar trajectory to 3d printing:

1. Expensive systems only approachable to large corporations

2. Lower-cost but affordable as a business expense to cottage industry

3. Affordable to hobbyists, but requiring domain expertise to operate

4. COTS plug and play solutions for the wide audience

Right now we are at (1) with the huge scale LLMs, but scaled models are runnable by hobbyists (2-3) and we are at (4) when it comes to things like image generation and music splitting.

For example, an AI slave (lit. robot) is useless to you because then you have the master-slave mentality so half of you is still a slave. Once we're actually OK inside we won't even think we need technology.

I don't want that.

I want machines that are predictable; not "intelligent" ones that may do one thing one time and another thing another time, for no discernible reason. I expect machines to be deterministic.

I think initially things like Alexa, Siri and Google Home were so much verbose and personality based and now just barely speak and don't do any fun personality stuff, outside of kid-centric features like "guess the animal game", bedtime stories, etc. I think people are just too busy or in a hurry to deal with personality from technology. In fact, Cortana has entirely been cancelled and replaced with a faceless and nameless Bing Enterprise Chat.

Another case is how stoic and boring and lifeless ChatGPT is compared to some of these more personality based AIs out there. People just want the facts and not to be bothered. They actually don't want a virtual friend. Things like MS Bob, Cortana, and various avatars and personality-based agents keep failing compared to simple and fast interfaces. I think that'll probably stick with robotics too. I think the Star Trek "computer" will win out every time. People just want to feel empowered and have a minimal of their time and effort spent.

Bing may be faceless and nameless but i assure you, it's definitely not personality-less.

Character ai is very popular and is based on personality infused LLM instances. There is clearly a big market here. That Open ai try their best to train the personality out of their LLMs by default is not indication there isn't.

https://beta.character.ai/ https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ai.character.a...

Then you have Disney working on things like this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cfIm06tcfA

If you don't think this is potentially a billion dollar market then i don't know what to say. It absolutely is.

I was reading some chatGPT programming workflow Twitter thread the other day and the guy was unusually polite with the thing. Like, does saying "please" or "thank you" actually improve its performance or is it just tech roleplay?

Offer people sugar, and they get obese. Demand doesn't justify anything.

But there should be room for both.

Given time, we'll find out. Maybe I'm completely wrong.

*Of course not including the new LLM-based Skyrim NPC mods

Edit: and if I need a physical robot I want its form to follow its function, not an outdated notion of a future we’ve already passed.

Edit2: I think Alexa is the perfect model, but I don't have one because privacy is not taken seriously where I live (United States). Computing as a universal basic service needs to be wrestled away from the capitalism-winning megacorps, and that's about a century off.