A pigeon over Paris with a GPS watch

Arguing Against Ads on Twitter and YouTube

Byrichard
Reading Time: 3 minutes

Twitter and YouTube want to make it impossible to block report, or ignore ads. The reason I dumped Facebook and Instagram is that I saw more ads than content by friends. In fact I saw posts by five to ten friends, out of four hundred, but unlimited amounts of ads. This reminded me of how small my Instagram reality was, but also that others were wasting my time to make money for themselves. This is an awful business model.

Twitter has started to flood our timelines with strangers and ads, and in so doing are getting in the way of personal conversations. Twitter was built up around the art of conversation and that has been lost in favour of algorithmic junk.

YouTube wants to force users to view ads, or pay for premium, but I think this is a mistake. When we watch YouTube we watch people playing GTA 5, hiking trails, camping in strange places and more. Each of these videos is promoting products, whether directly or indirectly. If we’re watching videos of GTA V game play this should be counted by Rockstar Games as advertising, or at least promotion.

It should be the brands that are mentioned and promoted in content that foot the bill, rather than customers. If I am watching a video about one thing and I see a promotional video about something else, then my time is being wasted. I am already showing direct interest in a product, by watching a review. Showing me an ad encourages me not to watch the review and then two brands lose out. The content producer loses out because I tune out before I watch the content, and the advertiser loses out because I have navigated away from the content within two seconds of the ad starting.

With all this talk about user tracking, demographic tracking, and more, it seems a shame not to see “This is a video about the Apple Watch SE so let’s charge Apple for this review of their product, rather than adding a third party video that neither the viewer, nor the brand being reviewed have an interest in.

When I watched live television I stopped watching shows during adverts. With YouTube videos if I am forced to watch an advert before seeing if content is worth watching I will give up. If an advert break is put in the middle of a YouTube video I will stop watching.

Even iPhone games expose us to too many adverts. You play a game, solve a puzzle, and you see an ad. The longer you play the more ads you see. These ads are awful, and they’re for games that you have to pay to play. If these games stopped paying for adverts they would be more enjoyable to play in the first place.

If adverts were intelligent, or relevant, people wouldn’t mind them so much. Most of the time I find that we see the same three or four ads hundreds of times over a week or a month. The ads are for crappy games that we would never have an interest in. In some cases we play the games and they’re awful. I felt like installing the games, just to give them a one star review, for having awful adverts.

Instead of forcing people to see adverts, and reminding them to turn off ad blockers, advertisers should rethink how they promote content and products. In the age of online reviews, play-through videos and more, wouldn’t it make more sense to reward people for creating content that benefits brands, rather than having a third party ad?

Reviews are ads. Showing an ad before an ad is irrational.

Similar Posts

My AI Teacher

My AI Teacher

Byrichard

Today I want to discuss something different. I want to discuss using AI as a teacher, rather than as a tool to replace us. For a few days I have been playing with the Instagram json file that I got when I requested my archive. With this json file I thought about things to do, and in so doing asked chatGPT for help, and it provided answers.


Adapting the Questions


When you ask chatGPT to do something it will do what you asked. If you see that you got a partial answer then you can tell chatGPT more specifically what to do. In some cases I would ask it to do something, but I didn’t tell it that the data was in an external file, so I told it the name of the external file and it was added.


You Still Need to Think And Understand


Although ChatGPT is a great tool you need to learn to debug. Sometimes if you get an error message you can ask chatGPT how to resolve it, but in other cases, chatGPT will not realise what the error is.


The Zero Width Asset


A heatmap of photos taken per day from the Instagram JSON data for my account


Yesterday I was trying to generate a heat map of when I took photographs with ChatGPT via the instagram json file but it did not detect that the height for an element had been set to zero. It’s by experimenting that I found this error and fixed it. ChatGPT gave me a useful answer, but only resolved part of what I was trying to achieve. I had to do the rest.


Testing and Double Checking


In one case I told chatGPT that I wanted to make something available in the head element. It helped me to do that but then removed some functionality from another part of the page. I had to tell it “put that functionality back”, not in those words, and it did. Double check everything.


Trial And Error


Coding, and finding solutions, with chatGPT is about having an idea, and seeing if, and how, to get chatGPT to understand the request that you’re making. I find that I often have to ask a question several times, and in different ways, before I get to an answer that is useful for me. The more you play with chatGPT the more you learn about its quirks and how to avoid them.


Context Aware


One feature that I find especially useful with chatGPT is that it is context aware. With Google you can ask how to do something, but usually you can’t go into the specifics because it is not as context aware. The best example I can think of is the array. With an array you have layers within layers and it can be confusing to see whether something is one or three layers down, and how precisely to get to that data. With chatGPT you can say “here’s one array item, I want to retrieve x from that array, how do I do it, and it does. It gives you the request you need to access that bit of information from the array.


Practical Example


The Instagram Archive JSON is thousands of elements, but they all have the same structure, as long as they have the same data. The first step is to create the foreach loop to cycle through the data. Getting the first bit of info, with the instagram json file was easy, but deciphering the exif element wasn’t, so I asked chatGPT for help within this specific context, and it worked fine. I could then copy and paste for the exif that I had not asked it to help me with.


Converting Time Stamps from Epoch to Human Readable Dates and Times


There are plenty of places where you can find where to convert from epoch to machine readable time. chatGPT can also provide you with a context relevant solution, rather than a generic one.


Learning by Repetition


People may say “but you’re not learning, you’re just playing with chatGPT in the hope that it will give the right answer, to which I answer that we all learn in different ways. People that studied computer science and understand all of the theory might be able to read the fabulous manual, and understand everything, but for those of us that are learning bits and pieces, in an informal context, chatGPT allows us to ask “how do I do this in that context?”


We are learning three skills in processes such as mine. The first is to think about how to write functions for an app. The second is being able to communicate this desire to an AI. The skill has a name: Prompt engineering. It wouldn’t have a name if it wasn’t an important aspect of working with AI. The final skill we are learning is how to assemble code to make it work as we want it to work.


ChatGPT doesn’t just give us a few lines of code. It provides us with relevant contextual information to help us understand what is happening.


In short chatGPT can be used as a tutor, or course program, to teach us how to write better code, when others may not be around, or have the time to help us.


Udemy Courses


At least two of the “teachers I followed on Udemy, to learn about JavaScript and other technology have now made courses teaching people how to use AI to help them with their workflows. Rather than watch how others are using chatGPT I am playing and learning, with projects I think up. It’s fun. I should call it experimenting, rather than playing, but in the end I am playing.


Does this make sense to chatGPT?


Does that make sense to chatGPT?


Would chatGPT understand what I mean if I asked this?


ChatGPT and Debugging


I find it really interesting that chatGPT can be used for debugging. It tells you, do this using that library, assuming that the library is installed, but if it isn’t then you need to install it, but that’s not the end. You need to see which version chatGPT meant for you to implement. I got error messages and asked chatGPT for help, tried one version, got another error message. I then shared the new error message and chatGPT said “Oh, if you’re using this version then you’re meant to use this code, rather than that code.” I didn’t change the code. I swapped versions and the app worked.


Conclusion


The more time you invest in prompt engineering, with a specific goal in mind, the more you will learn, and the more you learn, the more useful chatGPT becomes. It goes from being an interesting curiousity to being an interesting tool.

| | |

SeesmicAIR and mobility

Byrichard

Last night at Four AM I got an alpha release of SeesmicAIR from Critter and I started to play with it. My initial response was good. It’s fast, intuitive and it doesn’t a browser. Today as I had lunch I went mobile with my laptop, relying on battery.

Those who follow my blog know that I’m using a macbook pro and those that follow my tweets know that I was happy about something. Usually when i seesmic I go into the user interface and I get told that my battery will last about an hour and a half to an hour as I seesmic. Today though I had almost three hours of battery life whilst being able to keep an eye on seesmic.

That’s because SeesmicAIR is running off Adobe and rather than use most of the CPU to work it’s running with far fewer resources. As a result I can lurk on seesmic without killing the battery or running a hot machine.

I saw that both Loic Lemeur and Johann are on the Eurostar and I was able to comment on seesmic and keep an eye on reactions. Vinvin answered my question and it’s good.

I love the fact that I don’t need to worry about battery life anymore. I’ve had time to prepare lunch, have lunch and then still have an hour and a half of battery life to write this post. I really enjoy having the ability to do this. It means that I can do something in the background. In brief SeesmicAIR is just as useful as I thought it would be.  It’s still a little buggy but that’s normal when dealing with Alpha.

Manu Chao At Paléo
| |

Manu Chao At Paléo

Byrichard

The Manu Chao Concert

Manu Chao was on the Grande Scène at Paléo last night. His concert lasted for an energetic two hours. He kept saying”Vous êtes Fou, Paléo”. He gave a lot of energy and so did the audience. For two hours he jumped around, for two hours the audience jumped around too. The sea of faces and people were impressive. In the distance you could see pac-man and a few ghosts bobbing up and down with the music.

Online sharing has evolved

While I was at this year’s Paléo two things were different. The first is that we now have unlimited data plans. When I was last at a Paléo Manu Chao concert we had limited data plans and it was a geeky thing to share to stream the event. Today you see that many people are sharing the event with their facebook friends. The other difference is that we are now capturing Paléo souvenirs in 4K and sharing panoramas with our friends.

Panoramas

When you take panoramas and share them to facebook the image pans as you pan the mobile phone. I tried creating panoramas during a few of the concerts. The image above was created with an Iphone SE and the inbuilt panorama function. It works well as long as you’re lucky enough not to have sudden changes in light.

I like panoramas because you’re in control. You can pan the camera to see what you want to see. It’s also a means by which to get context.

Affinity Photo Panorama

Affinity Photo is a photo editing software that I bought when it was on promotion. It has a panorama function to stitch multiple images together. During one concert I took a series of pictures looking up and down. When I got home I used the panorama function and this is the result.

Learning To Code By Building CMSs
|

Learning To Code By Building CMSs

Byrichard

It’s easy to use Facebook or other CMS every day without thinking about how the code works. This summer I have coded two CMS using Linkedin Learning. One of these CMS was running with PHP and MySQL and the other was running with Ruby On Rails and MySQL.


The PHP CMS


In the process I learned how to install MySQL, how to get MySQL and PHP to talk to each other. How to organise files between private and public folders on a web server and more. Getting MySQL to talk with the web server was a challenge that took a few days to get right.


With the PHP CMS I learned about arrays, about interacting between PHP and MySQL and I learned to be attentive to using the correct syntax. Sometimes though, a single typo would block my progress for a period of time. It wasn’t rare for me to compare the code I wrote with the code written by the instructor line by line to find my typos.


I could have cut and pasted the code but I found that simply typing the code character by character was enough to force me to read the code carefully. When I made typos it taught me to attentive to details as well as to be more aware of the syntax.


Ruby On Rails


Ruby on Rails was an interesting learning challenge. I got stuck before I even finished setting up the project. As a result of this I went back and followed a course on essential Ruby. This worked as a nice complement to what I learned from that point on.


During the project configuration process I got stuck because I created the project with the wrong database connection type. I left it on the default and when I tried to correct this I failed, and failed, and failed again. Eventually I decided to delete the application and create a new one, with the right database connection and this time it worked well.


The challenges I faced were that the Puma Server wouldn’t start because a gem was missing, that the CMS wouldn’t start because of a mistake in the routing file and more. Eventually I would restart the server but I spent a lot of time debugging.


One of the most persistant problems I had with Ruby on Rails is that it’s hundreds of lines of code across multiple files and although the error messages are obvious you need to learn to read them. For two or three days I couldn’t find what the error was, despite looking through every page and its code. Eventually I found that I had written “visible” and forgotten a “:visible”. That error crashed the Puma server consistently.


With Ruby On Rails, I learned to work within a framework. This knowledge is transferrable to working with other frameworks. I’ve gone from knowing how to install and use a CMS like WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal to learning how to create one and to understand how arrays and functions work. I have also learned how to think about security and how to use blowfish and other encryption technology to keep passwords etc. more secure.


With Ruby Gems I could work on projects of my own and be less reliant on other websites. One project I would like to work on is creating a heatmap of all my walking activities and the easiest way to do this would be to find some code and adapt it to have the functionality I desire.


The Next Step


The next step is to learn to use JavaScript. I will then know how to use HTML/PHP for content, CSS for layout and finally JS for interactivity.



| |

Travian, an online game

Byrichard

Travian is one of those games you would have loved to play after reading a few Asterix comics. There are three civilisations you can be, Gaul, Roman or Teuton. Each player starts off with one village and expands from there.

There are four types of resources. These are wood, clay, iron and wheat. As your village begins you need to decide on what resources you want to grow. Click on the land type and you will see a display with the amount of time it will take for the order to be completed. The next step is to look at your town. Build a granery, a cranny, a warehouse and other buildings that make a village what it is. Overtime as your buildings improve so the town is large enough for more buildings. These are stables, palaces, residences for kings and more.

Getting your village to expand is just one step. The next step is to make sure that you’re safe. Around you are many other villages and some of these players have been playing for a number of months. As a result they have amassed many resources and alliances. They will attack and pillage you therefore you must defend your land with troops. As you expand and form alliances so the game becomes more interesting. At this point you are competing not just as a village but as alliances to see which can be the most prestigious.

It’s a fun game, reminiscient of such games as Civilization amongst others. If you need a two minute break whilst working on a long project then this may be the game for you. I’ve enjoyed it and so may you.

| |

Slow data transfers and self satisfaction

Byrichard

Playing with technology is a great way of learning new skills but occasionaly you are let down by it. This happened to me tonight when I wanted to do episode four of twittervox. The entire day I had an excellent connection and things were downloading at a good speed. Wait until it’s time for twitter vox and the connection crashed down to just 500 bytes per second up and 1.5 kilobytes per second up. That’s hardly enough to do text chat.

There are two reasons why this problem may occur. The first of these is that someone is downloading torrents and this is eating up all the bandwidth. The second option is that because this home is using a cable rather than adsl connection the speed ebbs and flows according to how many people are using the connection.

Tomorrow at some point during the day I will record some answers to the various points in such a manner that I will have participated even if it’s with a lag of several hours. If I can’t use the technology when I want then there is so much redundancy that I will use other methods.

One Comment

  1. @admin I've stopped using anything that shows me ads. You're absolutely right, they're wasting your time to make very small amounts of money, something in the order of tenths of a cent. If you paid even $5 per month for a lot of online services that would be more than they'd ever see from you in ad revenue.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.