Tech guy. Car guy. Nerd at large.

Vancouver, WA
Joined January 2019
Stan Hanks retweeted
If you want to know who survives AI, look at what happened to Hollywood in the 1970s. Movie Studios used to enforce tight “shooting ratios”; usually 5:1, maybe 10:1 TOPS. As in, for every 5 feet of film shot, at least 1 foot had to end up in the final cut (35mm was expensive!) In the 70s, there was a rapid elimination of production constraints. Improvements in film cost and camera portability made the old studio rules…obsolete. Why not take multiple angles, roll simultaneously? Set could have 3, 5, even 10 cameras rolling at once. Shooting ratios *exploded*, 50:1, even 100:1 (Apocalypse Now)! Of course, it also *radically* changed the workflow. Editing use to be the quiet, thankless job in the studio years (30s-50s). Suddenly, they became the most important people on the totem pole! How do you find the masterpiece hiding in the (literal miles) of film? A ton of the footage was…trash, of course. But as each individual camera because *less* important, it opened up directors to take on significantly higher risks. Now, don’t get me wrong. Insane shooting ratios were still *kinda* a niche in the 70s. More traditional directors stuck with only slightly inflated shooting ratios (15:1, 30:1 common); it was the more experimental pioneers (Coppola, Scorsese, etc) that hit the big 100:1 numbers. The huge ratios were still crazy. Until they weren’t. You can probably guess what happened in the early 2000s. Digital cameras reduced the cost of individual footage to a complete non-constraint. Effectively free, don’t even cut on set, just keep the camera rolling. Suddenly…*EVERYONE* starts shooting 100:1. Entire new forms of content get created, like Reality TV, where ratios can hit 500:1! Massive shift of human labor to the editing side. I’d say, we’re currently in the “1970s Hollywood” of AI. It can be easy (and cheap!) to produce things (code, tools, etc), but YOU have to be the ruthless editor. It’s the “miles of film” problem all over again. Hollywood solved it by throwing massively more resources on the editing side, and editing became a “constantly talking with the director about vision/direction” job, instead of a “hide in the back office and do your work” job. It’s a hunch, but I’d bet that filmmakers closer to the experimental 1970s “ratio explosion” directors handled the later 2000s digital shift *much* better, because the underlying principles were the same. They’d certainly be ahead of the curve predicting it, and (hopefully) were less surprised when the digital ratios did hit. I’m not saying AI is exactly the same problem. But it’s a good idea to look at parallels in history where rapid elimination of constraints changed an industry, and how that industry handled it 5, 10, even 50 years later! When something starts to get cheap…helps to imagine what would happen when it’s free!
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Stan Hanks retweeted
It’s time to make your own ice cream bars at home! Let me show you how to make a Ben & Jerry’s bar at home! They’re delicious and will satisfy your cravings for an ice cream bar, all while you boycott Magnum. #freebenandjerrys
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Permanent USB Port Locks $8.13 each 5971N11 Prank your coworkers, nothing could possibly go wrong! (I am not responsible for changes in your employment status)
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Truth. Isn’t Open Source wonderful? “Free” means no one is paying to make sure it’s secure
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Wow, seriously, @Costco? I order a "limit 2" item. You CANCEL MY ORDER on an undocumented technicality regarding payment. I try to re-order -- and can't get the advertised price because of an previous order THAT YOU CANCELLED?? That's "best in class" customer service??? Really?
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Verifying myself: I am sph4 on Keybase.io. PaMef7ApIOw74zqS5gpdwggBE8WykQm_sLjR / keybase.io/sph4/sigs/PaMef7A…
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