But nobody needs a fancy poster. A small org doesn’t have to pay for a designer. They can literally open Word, and make something in half an hour that communicates the details of the event. You’re all acting as if the choice is between AI slop posters or paying a professional who will make the most fancy art. A poster really just need to show the brand/name of the org, maybe a logo, and info about the event

They like how the AI poster looks better. They have no visceral anti-AI reaction to it because they don't spend their lives in online bubbles where AI is the new heresy.

Have you spoken to a young person recently? Like at all? Say what you want about thinking that an AI-gen poster actually signals high competency to you, but acting like there's not a huge swath of people that hates AI and trying to dismiss them out-of-hand as an extremely online fringe just seems irrational. No, there are a lot.

I would class something quickly run up in a word processor as much the same as the AI "slop" in comparison to a professional designer. I would prefer it but the basic signal that its not professional work is the same.

The difference between them, as pointed out elsewhere in the comment thread, is authenticity. A basic, unassuming poster made by an amateur conveys a simple, grassroots event with no frills. A professional poster made a by a graphic designer signals effort and attention to detail. The average AI-generated poster says that the organizers don't have time or money, but really want to seem like they do. It's like how people tend to perceive someone who wears or owns an obvious knockoff of an expensive status item - it's seen as worse than having the real deal and worse than having nothing at all, because that person is trying to create an appearance of something that's not true.

Posters for small events, a well known space where you will find „top artwork“… you really just need to spend 1h in Inkscape to get something decent

You're really overestimating how many people can draw something "decent" in Inkscape. Most likely they will take a template. That's not necessarily better than AI either.

A template is perfectly fine to use

I don't claim to be an artist and a template is still done with the caring eye of a professional. It's way better than an AI generated poster. Or at the very least, there's many less instances where I've seen overly used templates than I have badly designed AI generated designs.

Why you making me check for you?

The first one I clicked on is at a stock photo site that says:

Every visual at iStock is crafted through human expertise, creativity, and ingenuity. We do not allow AI-generated visuals in our library.

Are you aware we don’t all get the same results from a google image search? Or do you seriously believe if I search the same keywords we will be looking at the exact same images?

That's not what I said. I said the first one I saw was not AI art via simple inspection. I wondered if you even looked.

Did you even look?

> yet have the audacity to criticize as if top artists owe them free output

Literally nobody is saying that, what are you talking about

Which critic is proposing funding better artwork, made by good human artists? Sometimes, silence says more than words. Non-decision is also a decision.

So you can't criticize something without coming up with some fantasy plan that will only exist in whatever corner of social media you left that comment, to make that criticism somehow now valid?

Do people really care much about how beautiful a human made poster look like? I don’t think I’ve ever seen that as an issue, a poster doesn’t have to look fancy. Though if I love any art piece then learn later it was made by AI I will for sure update my judgement and dismiss it as if I was tricked in the first place. You’re way better using Word art for your poster than delegating to an AI if you don’t want to receive negative attention

Makes sense, no? That’s a pretty terrible world

Did you think the same thing when Photoshop became mainstream?

Did you even realize basically all commercial images you've seen for the last 30 years were already heavily modified?

There is a big difference between a real image or video that has been modified and one that was created out of thin air via AI

Can you articulate those differences?

Most people aren't aware of the prevalence of stock imagery during the 2000s. AI is just synthetic stock images, which I have zero problem with.

Artists with taste are the ones creating the best AI images, just they were the ones who photoshopped the best things out of stock images when that was the main mode, and just as they created the best stuff when everything was manual typesetting and dark room photography.

That assumes that AI is only used in place of stock imagery.

In reality it is seeping into our lives at an alarming rate which I worry is disrupting our shared sense of reality (which was already tenuous.)

AI has capabilities that were impossible (or very difficult before.) You could easily generate a realistic video of me saying terrible things or kicking a puppy or doing a pornographic act. You could clone my voice and call my grandma asking for money. It’s very hard to tell what is real now and it will get harder as the capabilities improve.

These tools are also much more accessible than photo editing software. Before, few people had the skill to create realistic fakes. Now anyone can do it. This has led to a flood of fake images, videos, and text online. This crowds out real humans and makes it hard to know what is real. My older relatives especially have Facebook feeds filled with fake content they think is real.

The capabilities combined with the scale make it hard to know what is real in a way Photoshop never did.

PE4I (“Practical Electronics for Inventors”) has a whole chapter dedicated to sensors

“We are selling to willing buyers at the current fair market price”

https://youtu.be/wYlptbR0Dkw

I read that in his voice.

I give the scene to really junior people as the most realistic depiction of how to survive hammered in a late night high stakes meeting.

“You would never sell anything to any of those people ever again.”

That’s also what I really like about “Practical Electronics for Inventors”, the authors explains the underlying physics for each component. Though the theory chapter can be heavy if you want to follow everything. “Secrets Life of Circuits” seems to be a bit more approachable

I'm hoping you're right. I enthusiastically bought PEFI but found it to be way over my head. I'm eager to get SLOC because I'm hoping it can be sort of a bridge between my "MAKE: Electronics" book and PEFI.

PEFI/PE4I as a technical reference when you need details about a specific topic, SLOC as an overall introduction to give a good intuition, and M:E for more practical project tutorials, if that’s what we (hobbyists without any formal training) end up with that would be awesome :)

AlphaPhoenix YouTube channel is also a great source of information to clarify theoretical topics. I find it very helpful to just see how he think about electricity in his various projects: https://youtu.be/X_crwFuPht4. And his enthusiasm is contagious!

One personal note: as someone coming from software I find learning electronics pretty hard as it requires a completely different mental model and way to approach systems. Took me years of various failed attempts to finally internalize I have to stop relying on metaphors and shortcuts, and instead understand the actual physics at play to develop an intuition that makes sense. That looks daunting and I thought I would hate that part but in fact after pushing through the first weeks it becomes really satisfying! Accept things take time and that you will be uncomfortable for a while, and move at your own pace. And here LLMs are actually really helpful to clarify topics you’re not sure you understand fully, once you start to learn the terminology (I use instructions that makes it clear they shouldn’t solve things for me and instead evaluate my understanding)

To me, transistors are the best example of how hard EE can be. I heard "transistor is a switch" or "transistor is an amplifier". So I bought some MOSFETs and tried to use them. No go. Well, I had to learn (through random web pages and some books) that microcontrollers struggle to switch mosfets. Fine. I'll get a gate driver. Then I have to very carefully pick a bunch of resistor values that make my system behave. Eventually, I learn that transistors aren't switches at all, but can be coerced into sort of behaving like switches, but in reality, there is always leakage and a hundred other variables you have to understasnd and control for. You can see one of my threads here: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskElectronics/comments/1omqn4d/con...

Yeah, I went through almost the same process :)

For transistors vs MOSFET I really liked https://youtu.be/DKYguNg1vmk as an overview

Also as a person who came to Embedded/Electronics from the Software side, i found the following incredibly useful to bridge the software-hardware gap using MCUs;

1) Introduction to Embedded Systems: Using Microcontrollers and the MSP430 by Manuel Jiménez, Rogelio Palomera, Isidoro Couvertier - https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-1-4614-3143-5

This has more of a hardware interfacing slant than most books on embedded systems which is what a software person needs. Every topic is first introduced in a general way with lots of illustrations and then its application in MSP430 is shown. Hence we can easily transfer our understanding to any other MCU family. A really good textbook for serious students of embedded electronics.

> as someone coming from software I find learning electronics pretty hard as it requires a completely different mental model and way to approach systems

I went from electronics to software and one thing that has puzzled me is how much people dislike reading docs as in reference manuals. People can get by with sloppy code full of hidden bugs and when those bugs arise they’re like deers frozen by headlights.

Imagine building a circuit without any ideas how it operates. I’ve encountered web devs that don’t understand how http works.

I like Elicia White’s Making Embedded Systems because it covers a lot of practical stuff like how to read a datasheet. It’s a good book for existing programmers.

A lot of electronic books struggle to find balance between super easy projects, very specific cookbook recipes or a laundry list of components.