HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

weatherlight

6,148 karma · joined May 1, 2013

[ my public key: https://keybase.io/proletariat; my proof: https://keybase.io/proletariat/sigs/Uv4J7-JLh3FUzOh12m1RmZDS2BCXWC6yuMbNXnlg1nM ]
submissionscomments
weatherlight··on The King in Yellow
https://open.spotify.com/track/5gAKMlDrJZaDBrFlwVpWk7?si=e93...

^ That "should" work. links to a track though, not the artist.

weatherlight··on The King in Yellow
"The Repairer of Reputations", is such a weird story. I love that fact that it takes place in 1920's NYC, 30 years in the future from when it was written (1985).

It's not quite science fiction, though. The descriptions of New York aren't dark or dreary, like one would expect from a short story that usually firmly placed in the horror/weird fiction category. There's these hints that something is not quite right, though. like the presence of these "Government Lethal Chambers" in Washington Square Park where, I guess one could kill them selves publicly. It's hinted at, but not really addressed further. it's these little details that color the story and make it uncomfortable. It seems tht United States that has embraced authoritarianism, and society social structure is heavily enforced by a militarized government.

EDIT: Written in 1895 not 1985!

weatherlight··on The King in Yellow
I love this book. I have a a music project thats based on the themes around this particular book, and the metafiction inside the stories in this book. (90's Warp Records influence Braindance/IDM)

https://open.spotify.com/artist/45ZZhnjk2a243ivXUijsIX

weatherlight··on How to Run DeepSeek R1 671B Locally on a $2000 EPYC Server
That's still pretty slow, considering there's that "thinking" phase.
weatherlight··on Building a Medieval Castle from Scratch
So awesome, I wonder what the cost (modern cost) of this is?
weatherlight··on Glimmer: DSL Framework for Ruby GUI and More
That's one hell of a introduction

    Glimmer started out as a GUI Library and grew into a full-fledged DSL         
    Framework with support for multiple GUI DSLs. Glimmer's namesake is         
    referring to the Glimmer of Ruby in Graphical User Interfaces (contrary to             
    popular myth perpetrated by Charles Nutter, Glimmer has nothing to do with             
    the ill-fated Whitney Houston movie, which does not in fact share the same             
    name)
weatherlight··on Learning Synths
I'd still do the first tutorial above, so you can understand how to use VCV Rack, but here is a small tutorial (10 minutes.) That will help you understand what's going on under the hood of your favorite FM synths. He doesn't do this in the video, but I would attach the output to the oscilloscope module to get an intuition for why certain parameters affect the specific harmonics that give FM its characteristic sound.

Your FM synth at home is 100x more time complicated than this patch you build but if you grok what's going on here, you should have a better idea of what going on in your other FM synths.

https://youtu.be/gzWFunWNTjQ?si=veuGdCTc1gETntO3

weatherlight··on Learning Synths
Not every one has a 303, Maybe they want to take that cheap Behringer mono synth and do acid on that?

one could argue what made it great was that it only has 5 parameters that affects it's sound and it's sequencer, (and it was a total flop financially for Roland and could bought 2nd hand for like 50 bucks in Detroit. and dance music is better for it!)

and as per the subtractive synth that change music the most...I'm going to go with Moog or mini-Moog, without them there's no 303, 101, Juno, Jupiter, etc.

I love me some good acid-house though, and much rather have a 303 then a mini-moog. :)

weatherlight··on Learning Synths
The first two-thirds of this tutorial seems to be focused on breaking down the components of a standard subtractive synthesizer (essentially the synthesis process itself). However, it doesn’t really delve into how these components are interconnected or how they operate as a cohesive system. The latter part of the tutorial is more aligned with what you're referring to. That said, the knowledge gained here isn’t universally applicable to all synthesizers, it's only applicable to Subtractive Synths. If the tutorial took just one additional step, it could provide a more complete foundation, but as it stands, it leaves you wanting more (or worse, not know you need to know more). For a more versatile pointed approach, I suggested using something like VCV Rack, because Its modular interface allows you to import only the modules you need to explore or explain a specific synthesis method. This hands-on method enables you to experiment and internalize the concepts, which can then be applied to the synthesizers you have on hand.

Most tutorial videos are 5-10 minutes long, and completely reproducible and it's very clear the signal flow from one part to the next.

weatherlight··on Learning Synths
Again, the OPs post is an introduction to synthesis. Good luck finding those “sounds.”
weatherlight··on Learning Synths
I really hate to be that guy but… the terms “East Coast” and “West Coast” synthesis are pretty mainstream within the synth community, especially among those who follow the history and styles of modular synthesis. These distinctions were popularized as a way to categorize the approaches of pioneers like Bob Moog, I’m sure you’ve heard of him. (East Coast) and Don Buchla (West Coast).

East Coast synthesis, often associated with subtractive synthesis, emphasizes traditional keyboard performance, harmonic richness, and filters to shape sound. Meanwhile, West Coast synthesis (credited to Buchla) leans more experimental, focusing on waveshaping, FM synthesis, and unconventional control interfaces.

The terms themselves have been around for decades and have become shorthand to describe these philosophies of synthesis design and architecture of synths. You might not hear them as much outside modular or academic circles, but they’re far from obscure.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Buchla

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Moog

weatherlight··on Learning Synths
I’m sorry :( I get it. It’s how I feel about DAWs.
weatherlight··on Learning Synths
My friend, with the app above you can take 6 VCOs, have them modulate each other and understand how the FM(phase) synthesis on a DX7 works. Instead of guessing. Explore why certain ratios produce bell like tones etc.

One of may favorite digital synths is the TX-81z. 4op FM. One of the first digital synths where the operators weren’t restricted to sine waves. (DX7 had 6op FM)

If you just look at the specs. And even play with the values you won’t understand why one synth could obtain sounds the other couldn’t.

That “source” is usually the synthesis method.(usually the complicated part outside of anything that’s not a traditional VCO)

If you have a filter, the resonance imparts a particular sound as well.

Digitone is 4op fm as the source then that’s funneled through a pretty standard east coast architecture.

weatherlight··on Learning Synths
The original post is about synthesis and learning about synthesis. Not music theory or how to program an acid patch. Those are separate skills.
weatherlight··on Learning Synths
I disagree... those "tedious fundamentals" is how all synths work, irregardless of synthesis type.

Watch the video. It's 15 minutes. I wish I could learn assembly in 15 minutes! You build the synth one module and one connection at a time all connected to an oscilloscope.

If I gave someone a SH-101 with no context, and let them noodle around with it and then asked them, to explain the architecture, they wouldn't be able to.

Sure, they may make some cool noises buy they wouldn't understand, what is what, why is hooked up to what and how that might differ on some other fixed architecture synth.

weatherlight··on Learning Synths
Hold up, I'm going to send a email to every synth company that sells synths with filters and explain to them that they aren't selling synthesizers but transformers. I'm positive that it will be received well!
weatherlight··on Learning Synths
If you want to understand (Subtractive) synthesis. The best way is to get copy of VCV rack and follow a few tutorials. If you patch one subtractive mono synth voice once, you understand 80% of all subtractive synth architecture moving forward.

https://vcvrack.com (open source and wonderful)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V35OhojjqDs <- your first tutorial

Happy patching :)

There's a bunch of other really interesting types of synthesis and you can explore them using the above software

    - Frequency/phase modulation synthesis
    - Vector synthesis
    - physical modeling/Karplus strong
    - Additive synthesis
    - Eastcoast (subtractive)
    - Westcoast (waveshaping/LP gates)
weatherlight··on There is no such thing as a global method in Ruby
its a take for sure, but it feels like it goes a bit off-topic. The OP article is about the idea that Ruby doesn’t really have global methods since methods in Kernel are scoped within each object. Arguing that only network-accessible variables are truly global posits more philosophical than practical, thus lacking utility for this context. Especially when some langs do indeed, in fact have global methods/state that's accessible from anywhere.
weatherlight··on NixOS is a good server OS, except when it isn't
That's not true. The language needs to be declarative. if you use your favorite lang and develop a DSL around those APIS, that DSL would be declarative.. also the language itself, isn't that complicated.... it's really quite minimal. It has its roots in ML. I honestly think people expect everything to look like javascript or C++ and it's a shame honestly.
weatherlight··on Achieving optical transparency in live animals with absorbing molecules
“Incredible Discovery Makes Skin Invisible By Using Yellow Dye”

Antón breaks this down here. https://youtu.be/8CRH-rYNleo

weatherlight··on Ergo: Erlang-inspired event driven actor framework in Go
This can cause GC to become "bursty."

BeamVM languages complete side step this problem all together.

weatherlight··on RISC-V CPU arrives on a tablet starting at $149
Other than it being open source, what are the advantages of RISC-V over ARM?
weatherlight··on Don't write Rust like it's Java (2023)
I feel like when people write Ruby like its Java as opposed to say, smalltalk, a lot of what makes ruby wonderful is lost.
weatherlight··on Don't write Rust like it's Java (2023)
I feel like this axiom is true in general.

Don't write [insert lang here] like it's Java.

I've seen this in Ruby code bases, TS code bases, even Erlang code bases (using gen servers like an OO primative.)

weatherlight··on Unification in Elixir
The full quote.

    The one-sided pattern matching seems to be a     peculiarity of Elixir. The post above discusses an     implementation of full unification without that     restriction. To clarify, unification is not     generally restricted to one-sided matching only.
I'm saying that, except for Erlang, the languages mentioned (Haskell, OCaml, F#, etc.) don't support one-sided pattern matching like Elixir does.

Elixir's pattern matching is more like unification. For example:

    [a, a, b, a] = [1, 1, 2, 1]
This kind of pattern matching, where a variable can appear multiple times on the left-hand side and must match the corresponding parts of the list, can't be done easily in Haskell or OCaml. In those languages, each variable can only appear once on the left side of a pattern match.

the OP is saying that this style of one sided pattern matching is indeed a peculiarity of Elixir (and Erlang)

weatherlight··on Unification in Elixir
I'm saying you can't do the above in the languages mentioned above.
weatherlight··on Unification in Elixir
its not quite the same. you have to write quiet a bit of OCaml or Haskell to do the following.

[foo, [2, 3, bar], baz, 5] = [1,[2,3,4], 5]

If there's a match, the bindings "foo", "bar", "baz" will be bound to the values on the right hand side.

if not an exception will be thrown

(You are right, though, Erlang and Elixir have the same semantics, both being on the BEAM)

weatherlight··on Unification in Elixir
It's not the same.

    > [a, 2, 2, b] = [1, 2, 2, 3]
    [1, 2, 2, 3]
    > a
    1
    > b
    3
    > [foo, 2, bar] = [3,3,3]
    %MatchError{term: [3, 3, 3]}
    > foo
    %CompileError{description: "undefined function foo/0 (there is no such import)", file: "nofile", line: 1}

Ruby does something similar but the variables are bound in the scope of the case block.
weatherlight··on Elixir 1.17 released: set-theoretic types in patterns, durations, OTP 27
Typescript's type system isn't sound. The Set theoretical type system proposed for Elixir is.
weatherlight··on Elixir 1.17 released: set-theoretic types in patterns, durations, OTP 27
Different type system with different goals.

Gleam uses a modified version of the Hindley-Milner Type system. (Which is a rock solid tested type system.)

A Set theoretical type system is more expressive(which suits the dynamic nature or Elixir better.) You can do Union and Intersection Types, and Negation Types, among other things, that you can't do with a HM type system. but it comes at the cost of how fast the program can be typed.

HM types systems have amazing type inference capabilities and do so at O(n). Im not sure what the time complexity of the algorithm they are using to do the type checking for Elixir programs, but I bet it's more expensive than that. (Which is probably why they are rolling out the type system slowly.)

← PreviousPage 2 of 33Next →