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SoleilAbsolu

548 karma · joined March 17, 2017

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SoleilAbsolu··on Mental Health Workers Say Algorithmic Triage Is Hurting Patients
I work in nonprofit mental health and am a Kaiser patient, and I know multiple clinicians who left our org to work at Kaiser. KP has never really cracked the nut of appropriate mental health care. For years they decided it was cheaper to pay the fines for their violations of "Timely Access" laws (requiring that newly referred clients actually schedule/complete first visit within a certain number of days) than to properly staff mental health. I know they also push a lot of people into group mental health encounters, which are unsatisfying and not the right answer if you need to discuss private matters with just a clinician.

I'm not surprised that they're now farming out triage to the robots, or that specialists now have burgeoning wait lists and are leaving KP in frustration. No clear answer other than "try something new besides all the stuff that isn't working".

SoleilAbsolu··on Corporate political donations shatter record at $646M so far for US midterms
Hear hear! I am a nonprofit tech professional, and a monthly call with ~40 similar folks yesterday started with a discussion of Dolly's passing. At first I thought it was just about loving her music and/or personality, but it was also the fact that several folks, at different nonprofits with varied missions, had received significant funding from the many foundations Dolly had set up over the years.
SoleilAbsolu··on The Religious Experience of Philip K. Dick by R. Crumb (1986)
Username checks out!
SoleilAbsolu··on People sick, 57 hospitalized in 32 states courtesy of contaminated jalapeños
Hope their hotness isn't measured in SCOville Heat Units, beware the copyright trolls!
SoleilAbsolu··on New Worlds: We are living in the future of J.G. Ballard or William Gibson
Was going to say something similar, and my real issue with Gibson is that after reading several of his books - he's a fantastic stylist but, I don't really know what he stands for, compared to someone like PKD, Stanislaw Lem, Octavia Butler, or Kurt Vonnegut.

And any day now - we will actually wake up to realize we are living in Kim Stanley Robinson's Anthropocene climate future from The Ministry of the Future, New York 2140, or the "Science in the Capital" trilogy.

SoleilAbsolu··on Show HN: Check if any of the $656M in unclaimed royalties at The MLC is yours
FWIW - I put in an album I produced on Spotify. Rather than just returning results for that album, it returned some not related to the album by another artist with the same name. It's not worth pursuing based on the number of streams I have, just - this is exactly what I suspected would happen before running search, and it did. So it makes me skeptical of the accuracy in general. But I'm definitely in favor of this.
SoleilAbsolu··on How does IKEA come up with names for its products?
I'm happy to say I'm in the circle of jer...Um...So do I, one of the best home purchases I've ever made!
SoleilAbsolu··on Caring for Rubber in Vintage Devices, the Curators' Way
Not just vintage devices - MIDI controllers I've bought in the last 10 years from Ableton (Push 2) and Keith McMillen have that wretched rubber that starts sticky, gets goopier, and attracts every mote of dust & hair from the surrounding air. Disgusting and makes them harder to sell 2nd hand IMO.

I was hoping the linked article would provide meaningful solutions, "storing in open air or a bag with holes" - that's what I already do - and "don't clean it, that just makes it worse" are pretty useless coming from 'experts'...

SoleilAbsolu··on 2027 memory capacity is reportedly sold out
Time to bring back 32 bit OS, that way you only need 4GB RAM per computer!
SoleilAbsolu··on What Happened to Talenti?
Haha, I have an empty Talenti jar and two La Fermiere cups in my room for trinket storage! FWIW my La Fermieres have interiors with same color glaze as exterior.
SoleilAbsolu··on Ruby Central's Destructive Legacy
I was just gonna post - If MINASWAN, then WATSMFRDHs?
SoleilAbsolu··on Ask HN: Favourite science history book of the 20th century?
Richard Hamming's "The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn" is an insider's (Manhattan Project, Bell Labs) view of how computer science as we know it developed.
SoleilAbsolu··on Show HN: Juggler – an open-source GUI coding agent, by the creator of JUCE
Nothing to say regarding this release, but thanks so much for creating Tracktion (first DAW I ever used back in 2006) and JUCE (I love and use many audio plugins created with it)! Have a great day!
SoleilAbsolu··on Winamp Skin Museum
One thing I loved about WinAmp was its ability to use audio plugins that were if not full VST (a Steinberg-originated format), a very close VST subset. So I could use the same plugins I would in my Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) for music production to apply custom EQs beyond the built-in graphic EQ, compression/limiting, and lowpass/highpass filtering.

I had a job where I was stuck at a desk 4-6 hours a day and this let me have the best possible sound out of cheapo soundcard and speakers. This made a significant improvement to my work experience and state of mind. Allowing standard plugins to snap-in is a brilliant move, and lets those who have the time/need to do so without the app developer having to spend their energy creating native custom EQ, compressors, etc. This philosophy has carried over to REAPER (Winamp dev Justin Frankel's DAW).

SoleilAbsolu··on What to learn to be a graphics programmer
Somewhat surprising there is no mention of basic design principles, or understanding the quirks of human perception. My brother was a production artist for some well-known computer games in the '90s-'00s, and continually complained about programmers and managers with zero visual sense, or curiosity about understanding the artists' side.

Graphics aren't my specialty, but as a musician, sound designer and producer, by far the most effective/influential audio DSP coders I'm aware of understand the basics of music, the physics/acoustics of sounds, and the gotchas at the interface between discrete digital processes and how we perceive and interpret stimuli.

SoleilAbsolu··on Patching my guitar amp's firmware
Love it! I have the THR10 non-"C" version of this amp and often wondered if it's hackable.
SoleilAbsolu··on Ableton Extensions SDK
Also the fact that Ableton has stayed independent (and bought Cycling '74, maker of Max/MSP) is IMO critical to their ongoing success...Compare to how Native Instruments and iZoptope are mere rent-seeking shadows of their founders' visions since PE/VC took over.

One of the features that got me hooked on Ableton Live was how easy it was to do "analog style" audio recording of whatever you're hearing in realtime...not bounce, render, or sample to another device (it can do all of these too). For the master bus - just create an audio track, arm for recording and set input to "Resampling". Can do the same with any number of tracks/groups. This is critical to me for capturing ideas in realtime and continually reprocessing/resampling as I go.

I was astonished when I first started making digital music 20 years ago that this isn't a standard feature in every DAW. Some DAWs (REAPER, Bitwig, AudioMulch) do this as easily, others (Logic, Reason) have workarounds.

SoleilAbsolu··on Ableton Extensions SDK
FWIW you should be "able to" get 2ndhand Ableton Suite licenses for significantly less...IIRC I paid ~$350 a few years ago.
SoleilAbsolu··on What I've learned about the trombone
That is awesome! Back in the '90s I participated in Tuba Christmas in NYC - I played sousaphone. The performance was on the Rockefeller Center ice rink, but the rehearsal was in the sub-sub basement parking garages of 30 Rock (I think).

Imagine hundreds of low brass players activating this enclosed volume of air - I've never experienced anything like it before or since!

SoleilAbsolu··on Show HN: Posthorn, self-hosted mail gateway
My eyes first Spoonerized the title to "Hostporn, selfhosted porn gateway". I didn't get a full night's sleep last night...
SoleilAbsolu··on All of human cooking compressed into 2 megabytes
I was gonna post the same, as a lifelong cook (and eater!) Samin Nosrat's book/show was essential for giving me the confidence to improvise in the kitchen while retaining authenticity to regional cuisines.
SoleilAbsolu··on Native Instruments Is Bought Out
Hopefully this is good news...NI has been pretty moribund as a creative DSP force after the original owners sold...yes there are Massive X and Abysynth 6 but they've all but pulled the plug on Reaktor (modular audio DSP platform which founders used to prototype almost all their products).

TBH if InMusic can't share a clear roadmap for cutting 2+ decades of tech debt and tiny aliased fonts all over the place I don't hold much hope. I've had good luck with lower-end Akai and Numark gear. Recently Reason Studios (originally created by Propellerheads) is on the upswing since being bought by LANDR a few months ago so I am hopeful that iconic music brands can get into the right hands.

SoleilAbsolu··on The map that keeps Burning Man honest
Hmm, group mindset...or moop grindset? Either way great work to leave no trace!
SoleilAbsolu··on EEVblog: The 555 Timer is 55 years old [video]
I still have the Forrest Mims III Radio Shack "555 Engineer's Mini-Notebook" somewhere in my basement. And rumor has it that Sammy Hagar can't drive 555 because his car just isn't fast enough!
SoleilAbsolu··on Don't Stop Me from Pasting Passwords
Thanks for "Helping us understand" via Columbo's timeless wisdom. ;-)

I'm in charge of IT for a 120 person org, anything that's a barrier to copying and pasting passwords just encourages simple password re-use, and the dreaded "laptop festooned with password Post-Its".

SoleilAbsolu··on Fully Featured Audio DSP Firmware for the Raspberry Pi Pico
Looking through the GitHub and the AudioScienceReview link - this appears to be specifically about firmware features. You'd need to ensure that hardware inputs on device have input impedance of at least 250Kohms, probably closer to 1Megohm to prevent loading and signal loss if plugging guitar right in. I'd also assume (didn't see confirmation) that I/O is at line level, which is significantly higher than instrument (passive guitar) level, but this device can clearly add/adjust gain along the way. If you use active pickups with a built-in preamp like EMGs, it would probably work just fine.
SoleilAbsolu··on Orinoco: Young Generation Garbage Collection
Makes me think of Enya's Orinoco Flow...Sail Away, Sail Away, Sail Away!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTrk4X9ACtw

SoleilAbsolu··on Used La Marzocco machines are coveted by cafe owners and collectors
We have a double-boiler Profitec, but I imagine the Go is just as good for its price point. My wife is an espresso fiend, and with this machine it's the first time in our decades together that we can truly make cafe-quality espresso at home. Probably goes without saying, but: be sure to invest in a high-quality burr grinder, makes as big a diff as the espresso machine itself.
SoleilAbsolu··on The PowerShell-Haters Handbook
Also - regarding linked article's statement "PowerShell joins MSI files as another type that cannot be run as an administrator" - I have always just started a PowerShell/Terminal app as administrator which has more or less the same effect, though of course everything in that session is run with elevated permissions.
SoleilAbsolu··on Musicians are manufacturing sold-out shows
Did he ever book shows as Chris Gaines (his alt-rock alter ego) in that timeframe?
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