AI is a tool—but it's currently ripe for abuse. Elecrow responded after I called out an AI clone of my voice being used without consent on their YouTube channel.
The full story, and some lessons learned:
They stole my voice with AI
Elecrow—an electronics company that makes Pi and ESP accessories—used an AI voice for multiple tutorial series which sounds _almost exactly_ like me.
I never consented to have my voice used to promote Elecrow's products.
A Discord is not a substitute for a website. Or a support forum. Or an issue queue.
Or really pretty much anything besides maybe IRC or Matrix if you're not worried about the openness of the chat platform.
"But you can't make local infra as resilient as the cloud!"
Pfft, I think we have a decade of proof that statement is false. Local's also faster, and cheaper, if you invest anywhere near the same resources and don't just have a revolving door of contractors.
The original Raspberry Pi was $35 in 2012, and the 2GB Pi 5 is $50 in 2024. Inflation-adjusted, it's a tiny bit of a price bump (also .25 to 2 GB RAM lol) but not as bad as you'd think.
It would've been cool to hit $45 for the 2 GB Pi 5 but IMO $50's not bad.
