EEVblog Changes?

[nctnico]

Since last year there is a law in the NL which rules that government ICT projects need to be assessed by an independent committee which' advice can't be overruled or ignored. According to the news such a law is pretty unique in the world.

I like that.   I really wish we had such an assessment law, too.

Wrt. EEVblog changes, I just looked at Dave's recent video catalog with the thought "what other videos would I like in this set?", and couldn't come up with anything that would likely have a wider audience than the current videos.

I obviously don't mind a discussion dipping into commentary on current politics, but I would not watch videos about those.  Unless it is about some big project that failed, and exactly why it failed and how the failure could have been avoided.  Humans fail, yes; the thing is to learn from them, and avoid repeating the same failures in the future.  I count the debunking videos in the latter class, because Dave describes his reasoning, instead of just presenting an opinion like they do on the telly news.

I agree about politics; there are excess Youtube channels for that. I have not watched any of those and I don't think Dave will do anyone (including himself) a service by going the thunderf00t route.

I partially disagree about the debunking videos though. There is way more to learn from failure of complex projects than just defaulting to 'this is a stupid idea, it can never work'. One of the hardest parts of engineering is taking a product from a lab situation into a real world situation. How do you test a product properly so it will work when installed? How to specify the (environmental, human factor, etc) conditions for a product to work as expected? How to setup a test environment in a lab so it matches the real world situation as close as possible? Even if a project fails, you have to respect the engineering effort as there is a lot to learn from failures. And this circles back to 'motivating wall phrases'; one I spotted at a startup incubater lab at a university said 'I just found 10000 ways it won't work'.

[thm_w]

Again, the bar is literally:
1) Did you reply
2) Did you use cohesive sentences

In that case you likely had already set up an email auto-reply for being away, or your manager should know you are holiday and replies on your behalf stating that.
Or, because it's been such huge news, you likely saw it so you like in remotely and reply yourself.
It's not rocket science, it's basic business operation stuff.

How would a manager reply on my behalf, with my address, to an email sent directly to me?
Why should I be expected to follow "huge news" when I am sick or on vacation? Some of us don't care to follow the news.

[wilfred]

 Even if a project fails, you have to respect the engineering effort as there is a lot to learn from failures.

I recently heard that super glue was an accidental discovery resulting from Kodak trying to develop a clear plastic for optical lenses.

It was in a recent Veritasium video.

[EEVblog]

Again, the bar is literally:
1) Did you reply
2) Did you use cohesive sentences

In that case you likely had already set up an email auto-reply for being away, or your manager should know you are holiday and replies on your behalf stating that.
Or, because it's been such huge news, you likely saw it so you like in remotely and reply yourself.
It's not rocket science, it's basic business operation stuff.

How would a manager reply on my behalf, with my address, to an email sent directly to me?
Why should I be expected to follow "huge news" when I am sick or on vacation? Some of us don't care to follow the news.

You are micro-thinking something that isn't designed to be.
It's simple, HR does the firings, and HR knows you are on leave. So if the company is the least bit competent, they will defend you in that situation and not fire you because you didn't respond to an email. This isn't rocket science.

[EEVblog]

I agree about politics; there are excess Youtube channels for that. I have not watched any of those and I don't think Dave will do anyone (including himself) a service by going the thunderf00t route.

I have only done a couple of political videos very early on, but that was local politics, and people just aren't as crazy as the yanks, so no one really cared that much.
I did a video debunking Trumps solar wall announcement way back, and it's the only time I had to actively moderate the comments section.
No way I want that again, it's bad enough when I do videos covering from a technical aspect some things like Tesla battery day, Tesla robots, and SpaceX, I get branded the worst possible things right up to and including being a Nazi.
No thanks.

[Nominal Animal]

There is way more to learn from failure of complex projects than just defaulting to 'this is a stupid idea, it can never work'.

Absolutely, but I haven't watched any debunking videos that default to that.  (I'm sure there are those, too, but I don't watch them; they've no value to me.)  In particular, in every debunking video Dave explains the better approach/solution.  I like that.

Whenever someone says "This is a stupid idea, it can never work", I immediately ask Why? followed by What do you suggest as an alternative, then?, because those are the interesting and useful things about debunking.  I assume that is what every self-respecting engineer and scientist does, too.  Opinions are worthless, only the reasoning behind those opinions is interesting because the reasoning can be evaluated and compared, opinions cannot.

I mean, anyone can point out details in every single human project that are stupid.  Sometimes those are necessary, because the alternatives are even more stupid, and without that stupid bit the really useful smart bits cannot be done at all.  Therefore, pointing out something stupid is utterly useless, unless you have a better alternative to offer.

I personally also accept the first time anything is tried to be found utterly stupid, and not blame anyone; that happens.  It is repeating the same thing over and over again, expecting different results this time, that I object and consider waste of money.  For example, every supposedly-Green trial project seems to need to be repeated in every country, preferably over and over again, in as many municipalities as possible, everyone starting from the same point, instead of looking back at previous trials and learning from them.  To me, that is either literally insane, or unnecessary waste of money that allows the project funders to grandstand in public collecting cookie points how progressive and pro-environment they are, completely ignoring the actual value of the projects' results.  Because face it, typical politicians aren't engineers or scientists and usually do not grasp the details of these things, so easily slide to "I'll do what seems best for me" because there is no opposing pressure, and "best for me" is the normal, healthy default human behaviour.

You'll understand what I mean, if you ever get to play with other people's money with nothing but your own conscience as a pushback.

[bostonman]

I didn't read through every post in this thread, however, being a fan of your site and videos including a great appreciation for the contributors, I wanted to think out loud for a moment.

First of all, without your site and the people who contribute to answers, some items I've had to repair over the years may never have happened. Some members have taken extensive time remaining on a project I've had that resulted in the issue(s) being solved, others have taken time to create a 3D model for me allowing me to download the file to print, some have edited/created code for me to download. You appear passionate about what you do, so I just wanted to emphasize that you've helped not just me, but many all over the world.

With this being said, the reason I wanted to comment isn't necessarily because I have an idea, but, if you're seeing a decline, one thing to keep in mind is more will start to use AI for answers.

As a result, you may see less activity because of this. Unfortunately I don't have an answer on how to keep your site more attractive than this alternative and/or other sites, but it's an issue I thought was worth mentioning.

Also, I think some want the solution to an issue rather than reading through long threads. Some threads tend to deviate from the topic (it's an easy thing to do), other threads result in the OP not providing enough detail, vanishing, etc... Maybe this drives individuals to seek other sites in hopes of resolving an issue immediately. Not much you can do about the OP vanishing or other anomalies, but I was just thinking out loud.

As for AI, recently I've used ChatGPT for a few things, not because I think it's better than this site, but because I've wanted to be walked through things like assembly code and Arduino code where I can just waste it's time with silly questions. It has some useful answers, but I wouldn't consider it better than the friendly collaboration from this site. I've just used it because I don't want to post numerous questions because I'll waste the time of others and eventually get a bad reputation as a result due to being a serial poster.

Unfortunately others may see AI as a tool to replace this site and that was my point of replying to this thread to provide feedback on where I think things can go from here.

[EEVblog]

Unfortunately others may see AI as a tool to replace this site and that was my point of replying to this thread to provide feedback on where I think things can go from here.

There is a dedicated thread on this topic.
This forum is at no risk from AI replacing it. People aren't here just for an answer to a question.

[tggzzz]

Unfortunately others may see AI as a tool to replace this site and that was my point of replying to this thread to provide feedback on where I think things can go from here.

There is a dedicated thread on this topic.
This forum is at no risk from AI replacing it. People aren't here just for an answer to a question.

Just so.

The bigger problem, IMHO, is people using an LLM's emissions to as a reference/justification for the points they have made here. That's already happening.

Provided they explicitly denote it is an LLM, I see no problem - we can simply mention "AI hallucination" and point to references to that problem and others.

[iMo]

I would never ever allow the national flags on my forum..
With world's entropy rising you have already lost many productive EE contributors..
Btw., you know pretty well how many flags here are false..

[EEVblog]

I would never ever allow the national flags on my forum..

Because it's often handy to know where someone is from when answering questions, or adding context to what they have said.

With world's entropy rising you have already lost many productive EE contributors..
Btw., you know pretty well how many flags here are false..

So just give up, hide everything lest someone get upset?
How about having a global filter that automatically hides key works people offensive?
Who is leaving because there are flags on profiles?

It works the other way too. A really big user everyone liked left because we wouldn't allow them to put a political message in their profile footer.