AI Apocalypse: How Google is Changing the Internet-- Implications for SolderSmoke

Here's what happened in a nutshell:  During the spring of this year Google rolled out an automatic AI search feature.  So now, when you have a question, Google's AI looks at websites across the web and writes up a nice, specific answer to your question.  Good for you, but disastrous for those who built blogs and websites on the assumption that Google searches would be sending a lot of people to our sites.  Why go to the sites if the nice AI has already given you the answer?  Many of us have seen precipitous drops in the numbers of visitors.  I have noticed an especially large drop in the number of comments on my blog posts.   And I have noticed that many of the other blogs listed on my blog site are no longer posting regularly. 

This is not imaginary. 

Here is a BBC article on what has happened: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20250611-ai-mode-is-google-about-to-change-the-internet-forever

Here is TWiT TV talking about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDdLw1ubLaY&t=86s

Andreas Speiss (White gloves, Swiss accent, motorcycle hat) talks about the YouTube trends that are causing him to stop regular video production: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTerwIniB24

Leo Sampson talks about the pressure to get high hit numbers on YouTube (scroll forward to the 3 minute 20 second mark): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4tSOQO3kxY

Fraser Cain of Universe Today talks about the Google ""AI apocalypse" (scroll ahead to the 18 minute mark): https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/universe-today-podcast/id794058155?i=1000714736434

This is unfortunate, and it does seem unfair.  The AI is essentially taking our content, repackaging it, and serving it up for readers.  The AI site gets to monetize the visits -- the blog owners that the AI gets the information from do not.  

But what should we do in response?

Well, we will resist the forces that seem to be pushing us into oblivion.  We know we are a very niche operation.  At best we are NIMCELS:  "Niche Internet Micro-Celebrities."  We are content with our NIMCEL status.  We know that our posts and podcasts about homebrew rigs will never go viral nor rival the hit counts of Taylor Swift or Arianna Grande.  And we are not in this for the money (!).   Some additional comments would be encouraging -- these comments let us know that we are not blogging/podcasting into the abyss. 

So,  just keep reading the blog, listening to the podcast, perhaps become a Patreon sponsor  and -- perhaps above all -- put comments on the blog site and the YouTube channel. Help spread the word about our efforts. 

An old fashioned RSS reader may help.  Feedly works well:  Here are some recent recommendations: 

https://zapier.com/blog/best-rss-feed-reader-apps/

Here is the RSS feed for the SolderSmoke Blog: http://feeds.feedburner.com/SoldersmokeDailyNews

And here is the RSS feed for the podcast: http://www.soldersmoke.com/soldersmoke.rss

Here is the ID for the SolderSmoke YouTube channel.  Please subscribe and comment!  https://youtube.com/@soldersmoke?si=mYMzMNtsPyKot7q4

Become a Patreon sponsor for SolderSmoke: https://www.patreon.com/c/SolderSmoke

We thank you for your support. 

Spanish! Urdu! Watch SolderSmoke Videos with Sub-titles in YOUR LANGUAGE

Wow, this is something that I've wanted to fix for a long time.  I wanted to make it possible to display subtitles in many languages on my YouTube videos.  Andreas Spiess (the guy with the Swiss accent) just showed me how to do it.  YouTube never really explained this very well.  But Andreas did.   This is how it works: 

I just tell YouTube to display English language subtitles.  People can watch these English subtitles, or turn them off.   But here is the cool part:  People who want to see the subtitles in a language other than English, just go to AutoGenerate Subtitles, and select the language they want.  Apparently YouTube just has an AI translate to the target language from the original English transcript.   BOOM!  Roberto es tu tio!  

Here is what you have to do: 

1) After you turn on the video,  go to Subtitles/CC and turn it on. 

2) Click on English (auto translate) 

3) Then click on the arrow and select the language you want to see the subtitles in. 

Once you do this and select your language, all you will have to do in future viewing sessions is to hit the CC button on the YouTube video toolbar.  Subtitles in your language should then appear. 

You may have to play with this a bit, but it works, and this should make a big difference for many viewers.  If you run into trouble, watch Andreas's video (above) or send me an e-mail.   

I need to go through all of my videos and set the original language to English.  For some reason YouTube had it set to Azerbaijani.  I don't know why, but I will --starting from the most recent -- go back and change the original language of the videos to English.  I have changed the settings so that all future videos should generate the English subtitles automatically.      

I tested the mechanism in Spanish and in Urdu.  It works.  Below you can see the Urdu subtitles on a recent video: 

Thanks Andreas!  

Help SolderSmoke! Playlists for SolderSmoke YouTube Videos

In response to popular demand, I am putting up YouTube Playlists for SolderSmoke videos.  

Most of these lists are rig or project specific.  For example, my Hammarlund HQ-100 has its own playlist. 

But there is also one MASSIVE playlist with about 214 YouTube videos.   This one is especially good if you just want to keep SolderSmoke videos playing in the background as you work on rigs in your hamshack.  This video will also cause a big increase in the "SolderSmoke hours watched" metric of YouTube. 

Here are the Playlists (more will be added over the next few weeks): 

(20) SolderSmoke - YouTube

Here is the big Playlist with 214 SolderSmoke videos: 

(20) Polyakov Direct Conversion Receiver on 80 meters - YouTube