Aftermath

I originally read about this story from https://aftermath.site/the-worlds-best-stereo-system-what-happened-ken-fritz in Dec 2023.

I was happy to start reading another treatment, with a new perspective, and from WaPo, who might have the funds to spend even more time on research. However, I found OP to be ignorantly disparaging on the tech side, and quite cold and glib in the human interest side.

Audiophiles are often foolish, and fathers are sometimes cruel, cold, and dictatorial. In my opinion this story doesn't justify its criticisms on either front. The author hears the stereo at its worst and can't get the wow factor. We have the story of one son who himself has truly cruel words for an ill old man, and for the rest, there were no vacations, there were lots of early mornings, etc.

To me, the above doesn't justify the depressive and dismissive subtext and resolution of the article.

The aftermath post is explicitly from the perspective of a fellow hobbyist obsessive, so it is not attempting to accurately state whether it was "worth" it, in an objective sense, as a listening experience. It has a prior that hobbyist obsession can be fulfilling for oneself, and most importantly, others that you share wtih. It also completely ignores/avoids his family life. But in spite of that, to me it provides a richer portrait.

I actually used to have the exact same position when stable diffusion came out.

All my artists friends where criticizing it and I was thinking it was some form of Neo-Ludditism that they were following. Why not embrace progress? No one is stopping them to not use it but if it helps lower the barrier of entry isn't that great? Surely generative AI could be used to enhance of the workflow of an artist?

Oh, how I have been wrong. In reality it has only been used to replace artists. To devalue their work. It has not place in a artists pipeline.

https://aftermath.site/ai-video-game-development-art-vibe-coding-midjourney

I think the use of generative AI or at least of generalist LLM's is something fundamentally different than artists embracing new media and new processes. Like digital drawing is still roughly the same process as drawing on paper. The process is largely the same and most skills carry over. You are still in control. Using a prompt to create images is something that is not drawing.

I also recommend:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1L3DaREo1sQ

That's true. From the quanta article it looks like many affected researchers went on to work on LLMs successfully.

I do wonder how people are adjusting to similar, ongoing shocks across other industries. For instance, the ArtStation protest against AI art a couple years ago showed widespread hostility towards the technology. In the time since, AI art has only gotten better and been adopted more, but from articles like [1] it doesn't seem like concept artists have much benefitted.

[1]: https://aftermath.site/ai-video-game-development-art-vibe-coding-midjourney

While owning a printer is still a curse (1), and software continues a cloudward spiral (2) I’ve made solid progress on a local-first indie barefoot app for designing and printing labels. I just shipped a new feature where you can use modern JS to build logic for each label, modifying variables, hiding and showing objects, formatting dates, etc. More at https://label.live/guides/add-logic-with-script-variables

[1] https://aftermath.site/printers-suck-so-bad

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41300888

Previously/Related:

The Person Saving The Media You Love Is You

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40177657

https://aftermath.site/the-person-saving-the-media-you-love-is-you-vhs-decode-domesday-duplicator-ld-decode-laserdisc