Technological/practical "backward steps" we all just accept now

I was watching a programme about Nokia which mentioned how Apple came along with its massive touchscreen, which sacrificed battery life and durability i.e. we all now accept that a phone battery will need charging at least every night and if we drop the phone the screen will shatter, which wasn't the case before. There must be tons of these?

My own personal bugbear is how you used to be able to change the TV channel with a remote instantaneously rather than having to wait a couple of seconds after pressing the button and now that's seemingly impossible.

On a larger scale it's probably a backwards step that everyone is expected to have a recent smartphone to conveniently do loads of things (show your boarding pass, or whatever) and shit stops being supported within a few versions. Music compression too. But I guess I'm thinking of specific annoyances that shouldn't even be problems.

I was only half-watching the Nokia programme so please feel free to correct my comprehensive history of Apple there.

the original gameboy lasted about eight years through new release support and actual durability of the hardware

Everybody's landline used to work in a blackout.

^^ good one, also you can no longer get DC power from landlines

taking the headphone jack away

Audio fidelity/quality was better with landlines too.

sez you, "Telecom"

:)

at my gym i have to log in on a giant touch screen to run on the fucking treadmill. the other day it asked me if i wanted to install updates. hl;kjalkjh;asgdhl;kasgd

My own personal bugbear is how you used to be able to change the TV channel with a remote instantaneously rather than having to wait a couple of seconds after pressing the button and now that's seemingly impossible.

― kinder, 14. august 2019 00:14 (thirty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Wait, what?

oh god please just go away

iPod clickwheel RIP

Audio fidelity/quality was better with landlines too

Right? It used to actually be enjoyable to talk on the phone (not to mention that handsets were much more ergonomic/comfortable/seemed less likely to induce brain cancer), no wonder phone calls seem like an intrusive nuisance now.

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/08/the-us-navy-says-no-to-touchscreens-maybe-automakers-should-too/

I realized too when I got an iPhone for xmas how much it suffered from an absence of the trackball on my old phone.

The iPad was a bit of a stumble
-techno beaver

remote control thing is a great example. that drives me crazy any time i'm in a hotel or something and just want to enjoy the mindless zone-out of channel surfing. related: TVs coming with "motion smoothing" turned on by default and sometimes with no option to turn it off.

* many websites/apps/etc. have gotten slower and junkier as they've added features, loaded up with data-draining graphics and videos and scripts. like, just trying to see what the hourly weather forecast for tomorrow is involves a lot more clicking and waiting than it did a few years ago. google maps is another one that's gotten a lot shittier.

* new laptops with only USB-C ports so that to make this sleek, elegant thing fully functional and do basic things you need to buy an expensive dongle and have it hang awkwardly off the apple lust object.

* also in general, laptops replacing desktops for a computer that remains at a desk at all times --- massively worse ergonomically and less computer for your money.

* not to make this a physical media thread but def all the downsides of the streaming world belong here. but obv there are many tradeoffs.

* general trend of offloading labor onto unpaid customers (self check out, surveys, pressure from amazon to answer support questions for products you've bought, etc.).

* death of big-budget 2D animation (in hollywood anyway).

history is littered with these of course, cf. invention of agriculture and human health/life expectancy/society. or cars replacing transit networks, all of those stories. or at a pettier level, all the changes in shaving since idk the 1960s or 70s.

Audio fidelity/quality was better with landlines too.

i hung onto my landline for longer than most people and in the early days of cellphones it was infuriating talking to anyone on theirs because the audio quality was terrible. it's better now but still not as good as landlines were.

the substitution of plastics for paper, cloth, wood, and metal (not as acceptable as it used to be but never more pervasive)

Color printer/scanners are a now an everyday cheapish appliance but their rate of malfunction makes them barely worth the trouble.
A black and white laserjet that couldn’t scan shit would cost you an arm but you could be sure that sucker would turn out pages for ages, iirc.

A lot of fast fashion type stuff bugs me, like having to actually look for cotton underwear.

as someone who lives in a country where you wear gloves several months out of the year, i daily cursed the engineer who introduced thumbprint unlock as the default on the iPhone

the default of ‘pick up your phone and look at it before we reveal the content of a text’ on the iPhone ten also a v stupid idea

A black and white laserjet that couldn’t scan shit would cost you an arm but you could be sure that sucker would turn out pages for ages, iirc.

― El Tomboto, Tuesday, August 13, 2019 5:02 PM (fourteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Brother still makes products of this caliber and they aren't disturbingly expensive.

at a pettier level, all the changes in shaving since idk the 1960s or 70s.

― Good morning, how are you, I'm (Doctor Casino), Tuesday, August 13, 2019 4:26 PM (fifty-two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

development of laser hair removal is a big improvement tbh

Color printer/scanners are a now an everyday cheapish appliance but their rate of malfunction makes them barely worth the trouble.

Not to be a commercial but after years of having problems with inkjet printers and generally feeling like they were the most unreliable piece of technology in existence, I bought an Epson Eco-tank and it has been life-changing. I actually love my printer now and wouldn’t trade it for anything. 100% reliable, scans and prints great, I haven’t had to refill it yet and I’ve had it for... 2 years? No more of the seemingly constant cartridge replacements. /commercial

Of course, that’s the opposite of what this thread is about.

I just had a 1958 Grundig tube radio repaired, it sounds amazing; finding someone who could work on it was the hard part

it wasn't really so long ago that devices like radios, TVs, stereo components, and even personal computers were designed to be repaired and kept in service for many years; now the same kinds of devices go directly to the landfill as soon as they fail, if not sooner; the fact that the replacement devices are cheaper and more capable than the junked ones is not a particularly impressive sign of progress

The loss of institutional knowledge about how to build heavy-duty, reliable liquid propellant rocket systems has had a massive impact on space programs around the world.

Now somebody tell me they have a way to get to the moon just fine.

I’m gonna be really anxious when the time comes to buy a new TV because the one I have has been so good for so long *raps on wooden table*

i was curious about buying a new tv - i haven't had one since the mid 90s, a portable black-and-white model from the 80s passed on to me from my parents - and the enormous variations in crazy features and too-good-to-be-credible prices just made me give up

I started with the knowledge that I wanted a Sony of a certain size with a certain number of HDMI inputs and went with that, I think?

i recently had ceiling fans installed, and we got the ones with lights built in

too late i realised that to turn the lights on and off we now need to fumble around with a dinky battery powered remote

curse a society that no longer understands that light switches should be easy to find in the dark

(also every button press is accompanied by an annoying beeping sound that can't be muted)

that everything has a remote is ridiculous.

Wait, I've never turned lights on or off with a battery-powered remote. That is not a backward step I accept!

Landlines, though. Still had one until 2011. I sometimes wonder if I'm the only person who finds it physically difficult to converse satisfyingly on a smartphone.

i hate talking on the phone now, it makes me antsy and eager to get off the phone. but i don't know if that is something abt the phone itself, or how my expectations and practices around phones have changed, esp thru texting taking the place of calls for almost all the things i used to make calls for. and the ppl on the other end feeling the same way and distracted and eager to get off the phone too.

everyone hates talking on the phone now.
it's social anxiety and because we have so many job related activities where one is on the phone all the time.

although my mom still chats away like she is teenager of the year.

It used to be that after CRT and plasma declined, televisions were a forced compromise: backlit LCD or nothing, which suck for watching films (bad shadow levels, motion smoothing, etc etc). I white-knuckled the gap between plasma and OLED by self-repairing my plasma when the power supply failed, and then buying a used plasma which got me through (barely, with lines on the screen and driver failures) just until the OLEDs came down enough for me to consider an end-of-line clearance price.
Now of course I have the best TV of my life - it's kind of ironic because my film library is worth probably 5-10 times as much as the screen I watch them on.

Landlines were easier to have a conversation on because it was in real time. Cellphones have gotten better, but they're still bouncing audio off of metal towers like a pinball machine. Landlines were the technological final product of an evolution that began with two cans and a piece of string, and worked just fine.

I have the same tv remote problem with my microwave.

Are there really cars out there that combat drowsiness by not letting itself drift over any white or yellow line unless the blinker is on?] Because I will lose my shit, that's all there is to it.

things have gotten a bit better, but even as the early playstation era was happening i remember thinking "wow it sucks that i have to wait 15 seconds for every other screen to load". that was in stark contrast to the near-instant load times of the cartridge based systems at the time and of the recent past.

of course, we were all more than willing to wait as long as it took to gedda load of them polygams

https://i.imgur.com/KKf0O1X.jpg

When you buy a new video game and it has to spend an assload of time downloading "updates" before you can play the fucking thing.

Also Denny's getting rid of the Breakfast Dagwood

“like, just trying to see what the hourly weather forecast for tomorrow is involves a lot more clicking and waiting than it did a few years ago”

(since you’re not opposed to using google:) google “(city) weather” once, ctrl+h “wea” for every instance after

P much any form of watching tv now.

Are you guys saying landlines don't sound as good as they used to, or that cellphones don't sound as good as landlines? I agree with the latter, but as for the former, my landline still sounds great. I would never have a conversation on my cellphone unless I was away from home.

We have a landline so we can put the number on paperwork, and for “just in case.” I think we turned the ringer off two years ago. It sits behind the dehumidifier in our master bedroom.

xp saying that cellphones don't sound as good as landlines.

Coca Cola Freestyle machines. Ok...i love em. But...

Soda fountains in the past, usually your biggest problem was the soda came out flat because the bag needed to be changed. So maybe your number one choice isn't available, but other stuff is. Also, multiple people can fill their shit at the same time.

But with these fuckin machines, if you are unlucky enough to go to a store with only one machine, you gotta wait behind the dummy who can't figure it out.

Then when you get there, sometimes they're out of like every diet product, but you don't find out until you click on it and try to pour it, it stops, and greys out.

And then sometimes the shit just malfunctions and nobody in the restaurant knows how to fix it because they gotta call some help line. And if none of the machines work, you gotta wait in kine and get someone at the counter to pour you a drink

iPod clickwheel RIP

Oh and inspired by Neanderthal’s post just now! Automated airport bag drops - just an awful scourge and take far more time than having someone check the suitcase and slap the sticker on it for you. Goes double if you’re stuck behind people who are confused by this (naturally). Waited fifteen minutes behind a family checking in three suitcases the other day - there should have been staff to help them.

an hour into an excel session, go to save... greyed out

"activate account to save"

local data, local executable, plenty of disk space, not allowed to save.

wtffff

work computer too. i was working offline and i wonder if that was a factor. it's office 365, whatever that means.

I can't save in my afaik local office apps on my work mac because they disabled our shared office 365 account (and gave us individual accounts, which I never logged in to because I don't need to).

lol i just got migrated to 365 like a year ago 🤪

it's my area so, you know, there's more detail here – but the move from broadcast to streaming really has, is and is going to create a hell of a mess. 'glass to glass' as they like to say, all along the supply chain from the production lot to the screen/UI you view it on/with.

I was on the train down from Glasgow two days ago and I will just say that the transition from broadcast to IP has got a loooooooong way to go if my 4G connection was any indication

I'm so infuriated by the amount of software that requires specific email accounts + 2FA. I find myself trapped in verification loops all the time these days. I can't even remember the names of the ad hoc gmail accounts I create, or which services count as Microsoft. Yesterday I couldn't open a fucking .doc on my new burner phone. What used to be free open source software are now want you to register and will shower you with full-page ads before you can open a bloody pdf. My antivirus thinks it can do its daily promotion on my desktop. I don't want notifications, I don't even want to have to click and say "block" on every single webpage. There was a sweet period between the pop-up era and what we have now, and I want it back.

xpost to TH

yeah, and i think despite the bullishness of many CEO/DG people, most people internally recognise there's a very very long tail of broadcast infra that's going to need to be maintained if you want to maintain reach (especially if that reach is in your public service remit).

The challenge will be in doing that when none of the money wants to look at broadcast.

Mainly my post was from a very 'annoyed consumer' pov, is that the UIs are just so unhelpful and inconsistent and often quite janky. content discovery generally has gone miles backwards since 'broadcaster editorial decisions and a copy of the radio times every week' or whatever imv. if you overlay the viewing experience, and for a viewer you expect your finding, selection and playing of content to be seamless because why wouldn't you, then it gets even worse, with spinning wheels and 'something went wrong' messages, with no easy way to tell where in the chain something has gone wrong (wifi? connectivity? ISP? streamer back-end?)

All of the specialty message apps are a pain in the ass. I suppose the point is that people don't necessarily want their emails or phone numbers being shared, but my kids have multiple different apps to communicate with for summer camps and school. My comic book club only communicates via discord which I and others forget to look at.

i'm not sure how my dad is going to cope with an ip-only future given that he has had sky for over 20 years and still can't set a recording.

i also hate the way it always defaults to highest possible bandwidth - i am happy with half-pal, stop spending my money.

TV.

Used to be, sound and pictures matched perfectly as they were part of the same broadcast stream.

Now, because stereo sound and hi Def pictures are separate things, quite often the sound lags. By fractions of seconds, but still...

https://bsky.app/profile/stcymsn.bsky.social/post/3k6wf6ywlpd2x

This post and the one it’s quoting (“everything is a scam”) have stayed with me & I think of it every time this thread is revived

It’s a shame doctorow’s twee sub-iannucci “enshittification” had already been adopted, we could have had a way to describe this that doesn’t sound specifically designed for ppl who say “drumpf”

And if you're in Ireland, because the new systems all "record" to the cloud instead of your individual box in your house, you can no longer record BBC programmes. Some of the cheap new systems here won't even let you pause it.

I can imagine a few criticisms of enshittification, but "twee" wasn't really on the list. I think it's up with with bullshit jobs in simplicity - I've never mentioned it to someone and they haven't instantly grasped it.

Ai is going to contribute so much to this thread...

xp, that's because most people understand it to mean "a thing on the internet that got worse", which is a capacious enough definition that anyone can get it, but is not what Doctorow means per the article that coined the word.

that said, I don't think his meaning is worth defending. I don't think there's much evidence that platforms have gotten worse because the goals of their owners have changed. but also it's not worth defending because it has that vile cockwomble/shitgibbon energy.

this is what happens almost every time someone coins a new phrase, to be fair

for sure. my point is "it's a useful word because people instantly understand what it denotes" is particularly suspect in this case.

well yes, but those are very few and far-between, it's really not a great word, but I cannot personally think of anything better to describe this phenomenon

fair

never sure what someone means by "this phenomenon" in this context (is it the same thing doctorow means, is it "the internet is worse", something else?), but i agree "people instantly understand what it denotes" is an unrealistically high bar for a new word.

Ai is going to contribute so much to this thread...

― m0stly clean (Slowsquatch)

this was written by an AI, right? this reads like it was written by an AI. it's really bad. particularly as a take on LGBTQ+ culture.

https://www.discogs.com/digs/music/ballroom-culture-madonna-vogue

if not i guess it should go in the "worst music writing" thread. i don't feel like AI "writing" counts for the purposes of that thread. only bad writing by humans should count. i like human bad writing better.

that's pretty hacky but no I don't think it's AI. here's what AI writing looks like:

https://oldtimemusic.com/the-meaning-behind-the-song-vogue-single-version-by-madonna/

I love that “old time music” website, making me think all these songs are being played by jug bands.

There’s an Italian version of that website which also looks AI generated:

https://oldtimemusic.com/it/significato-di-vogue-qsound-mix-di-madonna/

I am an unashamed and prolific user of Youtube Revanced on android and it works like a charm outside of requiring the occasional onerous reinstall

― hiroyoshi tins in (Sgt. Biscuits), Saturday, 25 November 2023 13:11 (seven months ago) bookmarkflaglink

Had not heard of this before.

Thank you

The reverse camera on cars should be abolished. It just makes stupid drivers beyond stupid. We're just moving to a point where legally you shouldn't be using your phone so we'll just hand all that responsibility over to this well-engineered machine and now you're free to masturbate/post on ILX/etc. instead of doing a basic duty.

and I'll for damn sure know my children can drive a standard.

In the city where I live, once a year or so you used to hear a horrific story of someone reversing out of their garage and accidentally running over a toddler. I haven't heard a story like that for some years now, I suspect that's because of reverse cameras.

abolish seat belts too, if you can't drive well enough to not crash do you really deserve to live?

why on earth would you use your phone while you're reversing using the rear camera? if you're looking at the camera screen you aren't looking at your phone screen. I've only ever seen people use phones while stopped at traffic lights.

I'm confused - what has the reversing camera got to do with phones?
If I'm reversing I'm driving, I'm looking in the mirrors and using the dashboard screen that shows the reversing camera feed as an extra mirror.

I think the cameras are a little silly too, but concede that they must be better at seeing kids than do the regular rear-view mirrors. They're installed at a lower level, have on-screen alerts when moving objects are spotted, etc.

My car's too old to have one. If a camera allows for those things AND for jackin' off, might have to start shopping prices.

wait there are cars that DON’T allow jackin off??

Some vehicles require you to do it before the engine will start

My new car is the first one I've ever owned with a backup camera (I last bought a car in 2008) and I don't really like it. I still swing around and look out the back window like an old. But I do appreciate that the car beeps at me when someone (a person, or another vehicle) is behind the car. It also beeps when another vehicle is passing me on the left or right. It's a little bit of extra awareness; it doesn't make me think, "Oh good, the car is paying attention so I don't have to." (I'm only recently back to driving after 30 years without a license, so I'm pretty cautious behind the wheel and frankly find it one of the most stressful things I do on a regular basis.)

The backup camera on the cargo van I rented a few months ago was actually useful, the screen was pretty large and the picture quality didn’t suck. Every other one I’ve used has sucked and been worse than just looking over my shoulder.

The one in my car I'd so fucking small it might as well not be there. It's like watching someone using a camcorder that is accidentally zoomed in too far

The backup camera on my challenging-to-park big ass truck has these predictive guidelines that make the job much easier, also super handy for when I am backing up to a trailer and have to align the hitch ball. Wouldn’t be without it on a truck, could live without it on a reasonably sized vehicle

Also super helpful (and safer) for people who physically can’t swing around to look over their shoulder

have to align the hitch ball

In the context of the thread, this sounds like a euphemism. Gotta align the ol' hitch ball.

Google pay (NFC) used to work great on my phone but suddenly there's this extra "prove that you're you with your fingerprint" step sometimes (some stupid american kid probably swallowed his phone and now Google feels like they have to do this to not get sued or something)

stick arm out of window at the drivethrough to pay - can't put fingerprint on phone when i'm holding it with one hand, pull arm back inside car, payment terminal says the payment failed because I took my arm away, car behind me blows his horn, fuck this shit, google.

QR codes and apps for everything is making it increasingly impractical for me to have a flip phone instead of a smartphone, and I'm bummed about that because not having a smartphone with me everywhere I go has vastly improved my quality of life.

― Lily Dale, Sunday, 28 March 2021 17:41 (three years ago) link

got my first smartphone in fall 2020 and it's wreaked havoc on my attention span etc
I've often thought about reverting to flip phone use but yeah some of the stuff on there is dissonant not to have for practical reasons.
so instead I deleted the web browser off my smartphone this week.
I figured i don't really need to give up the convenience of the extra features, I just need my internet access to be tethered to a desk.
so far it's going great! since I don't have any socials or other distracting apps, I'm no longer spending any time scrolling on my phone.
I've had a few instances of like, "oh yeah, I can't look up the phone number of the doctor's office anymore to make an appointment"
but this could work?

I disagree with the reverse camera thing. I am however not keen on the "top-down view" that cars have nowadays. Partially because it only shows the immediate surroundings of the car, so you can't tell if something is moving towards you from out of the frame. With a reverse camera it's just about feasible to glue your eyes to the screen, but with a top-down camera you pretty much have to keep switching from the dashboard to the windows, which defeats the point.

And also because the top-down view isn't wide enough for distant threats, but it's not zoomed-in enough for broken bottles, nails etc. And it causes infertility, phimosis, and an inability to appreciate the colour blue. Which is terrible.

Did I mention that I recently passed my motorcycle test? I think I have. Older motorcycles had a kickstart lever, newer motorcycles have an electric button, but there was a period when some bikes had both. Which strikes me as ideal, because if your battery is a bit flat, or one of the cables that runs through the headstock has frayed, you at least have a backup. I mention this because occasionally I try to start my trusty Yamaha and the button just goes "click", at which point there's no real plan B short of pressing the button again and/or fiddling with the kickstand. Or trying the mythical jumpstart, which involves pushing the bike downhill while in gear and then... or do you have to put it in neutral, then push it? And then you jump on and do something and it starts. I think. I don't know.

Oldtimemusic.com is, as pointed out passim, almost certainly AI-generated:
https://rustyreid.medium.com/a-i-has-found-me-and-it-is-wacked-e31696e8e33c

One of the writers, "Corey Hoffman", stands out for his prodigious work ethic, having written 36,156 articles:
https://muckrack.com/corey-hoffman

That's a lot! Back when I worked for Future Publishing the standard rate was such that if I had written 36,156 articles I would have earned around two and a half million pounds. And presumably I would have had to move to Qatar to minimise my tax bill. Which I could have done if I had two and a half million pounds. So that's nice.

Unfortunately the Medium.com really illustrates the huge challenge facing analogue content generators, e.g. human writers. It's not obviously better than AI-generated content. It's rambling, dull, it doesn't have any actual journalism - the author doesn't appear to have tried to contact the creators of Oldtimemusic.com - and it's just fundamentally unentertaining. A publisher confronted with a choice between thousands of professionally-written-but-worthless AI-created articles on which to hang adverts, comma, and merely hundreds of poorly-written-and-equally-worthless articles created by a human, comma, would rationally choose the former.

The key advantage of human-generated writing is that... well, in the long run there won't be an advantages. The AI will reach parity with human beings, but with the capacity of churn out a vastly greater quantity of content. But in the shorter term the advantage is that sometimes human-generated writing has inherent value - not just as a vehicle for advertising, but also because the writing itself is entertaining. It's unusual to think of writing as a form of entertainment, but in the right hands plain text can sometimes be diverting, funny, occasionally poignant.

I think the advantage lies in exactly what you’re saying about “journalism”. We are quite a way from an AI being able to contact the creators of oldtimemusic.com and interview them and generate new meaning from that interaction, that’s still a somewhat human skill.

What AI really spells the end of is that trend that started in the early 2000s of having journalists who essentially never left the newsroom, just rewrote what they could get from press releases and the web. AI can do that. With sufficient transcripts it can even slump in the back of a council hearing all day and try to spot new stories.

But it can’t lever new information out of people, especially not reluctant people. Problem is there’s not an obvious business model for that rn.

The irony is that the first AI most people remember - ELIZA - was literally designed to lever new information out of people. "Why do you say that" and "please go on" and "what would you do if you could still sustain an erection". That's a purely hypothetical response that I just got that someone might get. From ELIZA. The problem is that they couldn't compel people to answer.

Imagine if someone had wired ELIZA's test subjects up to a high-voltage electric current, so they were forced to respond. If only Salvador Allende had tried that when he implemented his computerised government, instead of wishy-washy nonsense about factory production. The CIA might have respected him more. If there's one thing I learned from watching The Forbin Project as a child it's that AI will never mature unless it has power of life and death over people, which it probably already has in some clinical settings, so I dunno. Presumably drug supply companies have used rudimentary AI to work out which group of sick people are economically viable and which are not for years now.

So... I got this old iphone that I stripped all of the apps off of and I just use it for music. Specifically, it's my reggae music machine. I call it Flopsy Sound System. For about a year, I've been thinking that when I click the little heart that it is registering my favorite songs and that eventually I can refer to this to make playlists or mixes or whatever.

No, nope, no. Apparently there's no way to see what I have liked, this is only a way of communicating to the Apple music service the KIND of music that I like so they can make more informed suggestions. I only use my own files, I don't use the Apple Music bullshit and this is so damn stupid. Why can't I have a playlist of the songs that I liked? Apple, you suck.

Also, the Music app on the Mac is getting so buggy, it's awful.

That reminds me. If you ever check out Google Maps in far-flung places the terrain is often dotted with panoramas, e.g. this striking image of a glacier near Ilulissat, Greenland:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/hbcUJrUnZK72jN8g6

Google calls the big swirly 360 degree images photospheres. But because Google wants to drive traffic to businesses, they changed the rules last year so that images can only be attached to an address. Now you can only upload images of menus in a restaurant, that kind of thing.

And they disabled the Google Street View app, which was until recently the only other way to upload photospheres. Which is a shame because I often use them to check out hiking trails. Presumably at some point Google will just wipe them all, but even if they don't they will stick around like a single slice of the fossil record, slowly becoming more and more out of date.

A minor irritant that I'm vaguely intrigued by.

In recent videos with AI narration, there always seems to be at least one common word mispronounced which is often pronounced correctly elsewhere in the video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3G_l4xqhuUw

After saying "whale" and "rope" multiple times, at about 35 seconds in, it starts pronouncing the silent "e": "whaley" and "ropey."

(Side note: Can we make using Ed Sheeran's "Perfect" in a video punishable by death?)