So I came across this new dudesy video titled "George Carlin: I'm Glad I'm Dead" and it put me down a weird rabbit hole. I'm not a Carlin super fan but I know some of his famous bits and respect his work and maybe that's the perfect setup for watching this because... I'm honestly blown away. I planned on listening to 3 minutes of it to make fun of stupid AI but ended up letting it run for the entire hour and actually laughed quite a bit. It all makes sense. It does sound like him. I don't know how much editing went into it, how much prompting and discarded material. I especially don't know if it just dug up old jokes somewhere else and copied them. But still.

It feels like we just had awkward AI-wordsalad experiments and things like the infinite Seinfeld stream which was fun in a so-bad-it's-good kinda way but... I mean, it obviously was bad. The funny part was that it was unpredictably bad.

But only a year later we're having some uncanny valley shit. I looked it up and apparently this started with a comedy podcast with an AI co-host which produced a clip for a fictional Tom Brady standup routine which turned out popular enough to get them sued, apparently.

There's this part in the fake Carlin special where he talks about the future of entertainment being 24-hour streams where an AI comedian comments on daily news events in real time or something and I can't say I wouldn't watch that. Just to see what it's like. But I also get people calling it disgusting. It kinda is. I get [his daughter says "machine will ever replace his genius"](machine will ever replace his genius), she's right of course. But that video got close IMO.

You can still point at little flaws here and there with AI generated content but with this trend, it will be 3 or 5 years before we get perfectly polished content machines that don't trip over any of the easy and obvious stuff. What place would such content have in the entertainment industry?

What do you guys think?

I typically listen to music and discover new music through YouTube, but the gradual creep of ads and the possibility of videos being deleted in the future has made me interested in building up a personal library of tracks on my own computer instead of streaming.

What do you use to manage your songs, and buy songs when you find ones you like?

My main computer runs Debian so I'd prefer Linux compatible options, but I'd be interested I hearing whatever other people use regardless.

I like to write notes for work and sketch/draw in my spare time. I'm about to finish another paper notebook, and I noticed a few ads for the ReMarkable & decided to check it out. A few YouTube videos later, I'm now quite interested in getting an e-ink tablet to replace the notebooks I've been going through.

Thing is, with this type of technology I'm always a bit worried that I won't use it enough to justify the price. If anyone has one of those - have they managed to replace the classic paper/pen combo for you? Do you regret your purchase or are you happy with it?

If anyone is curious, I was specifically looking at the ReMarkable 2 and the Supernote Nomad. The ReMarkable seems to be the most popular choice, but I really like how the Supernote emphasizes repairability (notably, the battery is replaceable). I'm also very much open to other suggestions if you have any!

How do people here keep up with upcoming niche games? Most of the blogs I've followed for this have been abandoned over time and I'm looking for new one(s). Ideally, I'm looking for something that:

• Supports RSS
• Highlights trailers or other creator-made pages showing off lesser-known games
• Focuses on the "hobby itch.io experiment" to "Annapurna / Devolver-published" segment of the Lo-Fi to AAA spectrum (nothing more AAA than that)
• Posts occasional reviews/interviews with games/creators (optionally)
• Has no/little focus on industry-insider news

I'm obviously biased towards "small-web" blogs or forums, but I'd love to hear about however you stay up to date with cool things creators are making!

situation: Watch video until the end, and want to get back to "home" with as little drama/clicking as possible.

Current process:

• hit the tiny ass'd "x" at the top right to close the suggestions overlay (usually after several attempts)
• drag the video position back 30+ seconds so that the "up next" overlay is no longer obscuring the minimize video carat in the upper left.
• hit the tiny ass'd minimize video carat (usually after several attempts)

I keep wishing there was just a 'go back to home screen' option available at the end of videos that I'm just missing.

Find yourself watching tons of great videos on [insert chosen video sharing platform], but also find yourself reluctant to flood the Tildes front page with them? Then this thread is for you.

It could be one quirky video that you feel deserves some eyeballs on it, or perhaps you've got a curated list of videos that you'd love to talk us through...

Share some of the best video content you've watched this past week/fortnight with us!

My whole life I have lived with the regret of not becoming proficient in a musical instrument. I grew up with a piano and acoustic guitar in my childhood home, and I actually took lessons for both but never committed to practicing or improving. As a result I grew up tinkering with both hit never learned how to read music or actually develop any fundamental techniques to play either.

I am an autodidact and have always felt that with the right resources, and a little discipline, I could at least learn enough to play a few songs on either instrument, and possibly with time become a sight reader.

To that end, I am curious, musicians of ~Tildes, what resources are the best to self-learn piano and guitar? Books, videos, apps, anything that you’ve used or know people have used and actually went from complete novice to reasonably proficient?

Thanks and happy new year!