milchek

Then there’s muting with the palm or fret hand to assist with arpeggios etc.

I usually tell friends with kids looking to get them into music; start your kids on piano. Stringed instruments like guitar or violin unfortunately introduce an additional aspect of difficulty that turns off a lot of young students who just want to start making music.

For people on osx looking for a no fuss open source pure whisper based local transcription to any input field in the OS you should also try OpenSuperWhisper (can easily be installed with brew)

Perhaps OP meant that the military industrial complex will always ensure wars happen?

Incentives are there to make money from weaponry and defense contracts. Further incentives are there to take land or resources, or to simply destabilize competing nations. To stop all of this requires a pretty fundamental shift in a human machine that is still hardwired for survival.

This is the way that I’ve been writing for years, mainly because I was too lazy to use the key or shortcut for em dash. But also because in school no one ever made a big deal about the length of the dash when writing - or I just wasn’t paying enough attention.

You could grab some sample or instrument packs that will help you approximate the sound you are after more quickly.

Baby Audio has a pretty nice VST instrument and 90s preset pack that might have the sound you are looking for - have a listen here https://static1.squarespace.com/static/561e2985e4b08862a3496...

On a side note - if you are looking for people to help out I’d love to have a crack, also looking to learn.

First off, congrats on the funding and the progress so far!

I’ve seen a a couple of start ups pitching similar ideas lately - platforms that use AI personas or agents to simulate focus groups, either for testing products or collecting user insights. I can see the appeal in scaling audience feedback, reducing costs, reaching demographics that are traditionally hard to access.

That said, this is one of the areas of AI that gives me the most concern. I work at a company building AI tools for creative professionals, so I'm regularly exposed to the ethical and sustainability concerns in this space. But with AI personas specifically, there is something a little more troubling to me.

One recent pitch really stuck with me, in this case, the startup was proposing to use AI personas for focus groups on products and casually mentioned local government consultation. That's where I think this starts to veer into troubling territory. The idea of a local council using synthetic personas instead of talking directly to residents about policy decisions is alarming. It may be faster, cheaper, or even easier to implement but it fundamentally misunderstands what real feedback looks like.

LLMs don't live in communities. They don't vote, experience public services, or have lived context. No matter how well calibrated or "representative" the personas are claimed to be, they are ultimately a reflection of training data and assumptions - not the messy, multimodal, contradictory, emotional reality of human beings. And yet, decisions based on these synthetic signals could end up shaping products, experiences, or even policies that affect real people.

We're entering an era where human behaviour is being abstracted and compressed into models, and then treated as if it's a reliable proxy for actual human insight. That's a level of abstraction I'm deeply uncomfortable with and it's not a signal I think I would ever trust, regardless of how well it's marketed.

Would be curious to know what your approach is to convince others that may also be skeptical or not want to see this kind of tech being abused for the reasons listed above?

As it should, diamonds were made artificially scarce and controlled by monopoly:

“The major investors in the diamond mines realized that they had no alternative but to merge their interests into a single entity that would be powerful enough to control production and perpetuate the illusion of scarcity of diamonds. The instrument they created, in 1888, was called De Beers Consolidated Mines, Ltd., incorporated in South Africa…” From the classic 80s article “Have you ever tried to sell a diamond” - https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/02/have-yo...

I suppose different trials do it in various ways, for hers there was a placebo group that was given a strong antihistamine. Participants in the trial were allowed to opt in for the real dosing day once the trial concluded. I suppose this was to entice people to join, as otherwise it was basically 50/50 if you would get the trial treatment you were looking for. Post trial dosing was obviously omitted from the results.

There was a placebo group that were given basically a very strong antihistamine which induced some drowsiness.

This particular trial, however, allowed participants who were in the placebo group to later opt in for the real dosing - obviously with those results omitted from the trial.

Correct, screening was pretty thorough and there were a lot of sessions with therapists, blood tests, etc before they made the decision to allow her into the trial.

I haven’t yet. It’s not easy to find the place or time to do so. The trial was great because everything was meticulously organised, such as the dose and - I guess - quality? I’d be worried about sourcing myself and messing something up there.

Yes, exactly - I should’ve added that she head a specific guided soundtrack as well, which the facilitators said was integral to optimal treatment, at least for this particular trial.

Anecdotal, but about a year ago my wife participated in a psilocybin trial at a university here who were looking at patients with severe anxiety. It was her last hope after trying therapy, various supplements, as well as dietary and lifestyle changes, etc

It has been life changing for her, but one thing she tells people now is that what also helped was that it was facilitated with a trained therapist there during the session for guidance to make sure she didn’t “get stuck in a loop.” There was also many sessions pre dosing day to optimize the result.

She would highly recommend the treatment and hopes it becomes mainstream soon.

Anecdotally, my experience has been that the longer a conversation goes on in Cursor about a new feature or code change, the worse the output gets.

The best results seem to be from clear, explicit instructions and plan up front for a discrete change or feature, with the relevant files to edit dragged into the context prompt.

I think the reason for that is maybe you’re comparing to traditional products that are deterministic or have specific features that add value?

If my phone keeps crashing or if the browser is slow or clunky then yes, it’s not on me, it’s the phone, but an LLM is a lot more open ended in what it can do. Unlike the phone example above where I expect it to work from a simple input (turning it on) or action (open browser, punch in a url), what an LLM does is more complex and nuanced.

Even the same prompt from different users might result in different output - so there is more onus on the user to craft the right input.

Perhaps that’s why AI is exempt for now.

Perifrantic makes an interesting point in anticipation of critics that will chime in to assert “this will never be the original Commodore.” In his defense, the retro tech enthusiast says “what if we got 47 trademarks from 1982, or original Commodore engineers back, original executives, assistants, ROMs, Amiga? I mean, at some point, it does start to become the real Commodore, right?”

An interesting thought. I’m sure like many here, the C64 was what sparked my interests in gaming, computing, and technology. It even went a bit beyond that to influencing my tastes around music, design and aesthetics, and is probably one of the major reasons I’m working in digital today. Keen to see what they do for the nostalgia.

A colleague recently introduced this to me via https://x.com/bantg/status/1933967436459503662 and I was instantly blown away.

After diving in and reading through the docs (the workshop intro is a great way to get started) I can say I am really impressed.

What I like about strudel is the concept of cycles and how they work. Combine that with note numbers rather than names and it’s actually a pretty interesting way to compose melodies and jam out song ideas.

There is support for randomization like Euclidean patterns so you can really play around and tinker with it until you stumble on something you like.

Switch Angel has a really nice video showing their workflow here: https://youtu.be/sefJz9biLCY?si=QRb6g8qZ48qlfLtT

Thanks for the share. I used to be part of a Polish folk dancing ensemble here in Australia and we would perform this dance. As a teen I have to admit I was sometimes embarrassed to dress up and perform since in Australia people didn’t really know the traditions or history.

Recently, though, I took my daughter to a class for the exact same group who is still performing and has a much larger cohort of young proud Polish Australians - am really impressed another generation is embracing their heritage this way.

It’s an interesting idea. Reminds me a little of some parts of Christopher Langans CTMU theory in that everything serves to simply further develop intelligence in the universe.

Ha! Thanks for reminding me of "real ultimate power" - for those unaware of the reference https://www.realultimatepower.net/

Classic.

Not here to argue your point, just to note that McDonalds fries are not as natural as people think, ie. most people assume they’re just potatoes fried in some oil.

“French Fries Ingredients: Potatoes, Vegetable Oil (canola Oil, Corn Oil, Soybean Oil, Hydrogenated Soybean Oil, Natural Beef Flavor [wheat And Milk Derivatives]), Dextrose, Sodium Acid Pyrophosphate (maintain Color), Salt. natural Beef Flavor Contains Hydrolyzed Wheat And Hydrolyzed Milk As Starting Ingredients. Contains: Wheat, Milk.”

Source: https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/product/small-french-frie...

Your last quote also reminds me this may be true for everything else, especially our diets.

Technology has leapfrogged nature and our consumption patterns have not caught up to modern abundance. Scott Galloway recently mentioned this in his OMR speech and speculated that GLP1 drugs (which actually help addiction) will assist in bringing our biological impulses more inline with current reality.

> Observers of contemporary culture coined the term "McBoatfacing," defined as "making the critical mistake of letting the internet decide things."

A good example of "The most entertaining outcome is the most likely."

“The computer is rumored to be one of the largest and most advanced data centers in the world. It could take up several hundred acres of land, and require up to 5 gigawatts of power”

Multivac!

I’m not that familiar with current supercomputers and datacenter footprints - but this sounds like it would be a lot bigger than existing setups?

Was it really that pronounced? On paper it’s 3.3s vs 2secs 0-100 right?

> Regardless of the reason why you're giving up caffeine, you're best off gradually reducing your consumption vs. going cold turkey, according to the Cleveland Clinic.

This method never worked for me. I've stopped drinking coffee a few times in my life for a various reasons and cold turkey was the most effective method. Yes, there were headaches for a couple of days, but after that I felt great. I suppose it could've also just been that my attempt at gradual reduction wasn't steep enough.

On my reason for quitting coffee, t's exactly as the article states, we shouldn't become reliant on something, and for me, I could tell I was getting reliant on coffee due to the fact that if I ever missed my routine cup I would crash pretty badly.

> Chord it in, air beated fenn. Aurous to the Pan, mimic and bold. As it steep, chunns at the bun. Keive the dells, the stars to run. No wane, all gleam, in big das brund. Sky high, stout in the hale. Woods to fetch, flied in the low.

I think all that talk of music pushed Chaz into some kind of trance and it just started jamming!

I don’t think this is limited to software engineers.

I feel like change is happening more rapidly, and there is more being created than ever before.

That makes it difficult for anyone to go deep on anything. We are spread thin across vast landscape of languages, tools, and platforms - with new ones being added every day.

On a similar note, I sometimes think about what it takes to be a movie or music “buff” these days.

I was born in the 80s. Being a movie or music buff back then meant gaining deep knowledge in a much smaller catalogue of work.

Thanks to advancement in audio production technology and access to affordable software for home studio producers (plus the rise of streaming and sharing platforms), the catalogue of music in the world exploded. The same applies for TV and movies. As a kid, it was possible for me to listen to pretty much the majority of my favorite genre (metal) available to me and be a “buff” with deep knowledge of that genre.

If I was a kid today that would be much harder, I might have to stick to certain sub genres or focus on only the most successful artists.

To come back on topic, I used to have deep knowledge of a certain type of software - Flash actionscript. Who remembers that?

These days I just get by with what I need to get the job done.

For those interested in learning more about DOOM, the book "Masters of Doom" is an entertaining recollection of how id Software started and how John Romero and John Carmack started their careers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masters_of_Doom

Damn, this is awesome work. Grew up with the C64, always wondered as a kid what these 'scene' intros to tapes my dad bought at swap meets were, of course later learning about the talented individuals in the demo scene.

Nice to have this part of the culture and history preserved and presented in such a way.

Barbarian will always be my all time favourite C64 soundtrack: https://deepsid.chordian.net/?file=/$Best%20of%20Games%20198...