What the actual fuck. It's not April Fools Day, right? This is real?! Fuck you, SpaceX. Maybe this will help regulators realize how fucking shortsighted companies' plans in orbit are?
Surely the FCC won't rubber-stamp-approve this one??... ONE MILLION STARLINKS FUUUUCCCKKKKKK
After a very long time I've returned to Mastodon. If anyone remembers me, that is. I've recently got a lot of spam followers for some reason, so I thought why not to log in actually and see what's happening.
Gibt es eine ernstzunehmende Alternative zu »Vimeo«?
Ich bin derzeit bestrebt, mich von einigen Firmen und derer Apps etwas freizumachen, respektive möchte ich gerne meine Daten immer mehr auf europäische, bestenfalls deutsche und schweizer Server legen.
Nun möchte ich gerne Videos meiner Bands »Bellybutton & The Knockwells" und »DramaGold« (ca. 20 GB), die bislang bei Vimeo liegen, eben von Vimeo wegziehen lassen.
I'm fed up of standard answers such as "received, we'll pass it on" when I report accessibility issues to @Tutanota - I switched to paid subscription after they quickly enough resolved a captcha issue, but now it is at least since summer that I do not even manage to read e-mails from my web browser. And on TUTA web page they publicly declare they respect anti-discrimination values.
I am blind, I am an accessibility advocate, no one has the right to silence me any how.
I am not saying this is something intentional or malicious, I am looking at the result. The real life result of what maybe is an unwanted effect of even a single component update. As inaccessibility is fought through money, if within 3 months I'm not getting an effective concrete response, I'd ask for all my 36€ back till the last cent. No time to do this yet, I want to trust them once more.
Pre-checks This is not a feature request. Existing functionality does not work as intended, not missing functionality. I will request features via discussions, reddit or support I've searched and d...
That's why I hate this anti-GAFAM hysteria. they preach great values, but most of them don't care about accessibility, so anti-discrimination and "solution for all, free and blah blah" is only on paper. #Accessibility
@menelion But it's not escaping in silence that we solve the problem. If we just say "it's not for us" and continue using big tech without even looking around, we will continue to be monopoly's hostages. And with this anti-diversity open advocacy by multi-billionaires, there's a very high risk to be cut off forever. So, we have to use both technologies, taking advantage of current empowerment we have now, to make them more aware as possible. These are mostly small communities and if they don't know we exist as blind people, they will never get back to our needs.
@menelion that's why our duty is to push, to make noise, because we are customers like others. Yes, the problem comes from 25 years of accessibility existence with little learning spaces. Or campaigns made just of empathy with no real life concrete effectiveness. We can't say everything is lost if we do not even fight.
Hi Elena. We're sorry this has been your experience. At Tuta we do respect anti-discrimination values, and we try to welcome everyone to use our services. Our teams are trying to improve all aspects - including accessibility issues, so we can assure you this is something we are aware of. Sometimes things do take a bit longer as we're still a growing team. We hope you can understand.
If you seriously respect anti-discrimination values, why did you introduce such an accessibility regression without warning? Why isn't there a dedicated accessibility team where to talk and join for continuous human testing? Please, don't try to cuddle me with words, when facts say the opposite.
> See this > take out phone > while taking the picture, another person stops next to us, does the same thing > We all look at each other: "FOSDEM?" and laugh 😂
If in the EU. Try WERO and tell your bank how to make it better if you truly care about an alternative to PayPal and the Visa/Master duopoly. Don’t expect the perfect solution. Understand that alternatives are never better or perfect from the get-go but that we need to tell them through using them how to become better and better.
Fun ways to spend a Saturday afternoon. Just decommissioned four AirTags and swapped them out for the next generation. Still have a few to go. It’s cool that the Apple Store is doing same-day delivery here now.
The John Zone is on! Again! I know. I know. Stop crying. To listen, simply direct your media player of choice to listen.hkcradio.com:8000/hkc.m…, ask your Google smart speaker to play HKC Radio on TuneIn, or say to Alexa "ask MyTuner Radio to play HKC Radio."
Tried to extract my own glottal pulse to make the synth sound more human. Learned my voice is too gentle for radio. Sadness fills my soul. That's probably why I didn't stick with radio shows. I recorded sustained vowels and used IAIF (Iterative Adaptive Inverse Filtering) to extract my glottal waveform - the raw "buzz" before your throat shapes it into vowels. What I expected: Rich, characterful human excitation to replace the mathematical model. What I got: A softer, breathier sound than pure math! 😅 The mathematical LF model with sharpness cranked to 10 actually produces MORE harmonics than my actual voice does. That "chest resonant radio announcer" sound? That's aggressive glottal snap that not everyone has.
I have a reasonably good voice for that sort of junk, used to do voiceover/imaging professionally. Just for sake of curiosity, what needs to be captured for input?
@BorrisInABox Oh cool! For the extraction I recorded 5 sounds: "ahh" sustained at normal pitch (~5 sec) 2. "ahh" sustained at low pitch (~5 sec) 3. "ahh" sustained at high pitch (~5 sec) 4. "shhh" sustained fricative (~5 sec) 5. "th" sustained unvoiced (~3 sec) The "ahh" vowels are for glottal pulse extraction at different F0s. The "sh" and "th" are for noise/frication characteristics. Recording tips: • Condenser or dynamic mic (I used a Blue Snowball, AT2005 was too noisy) • Peaks around -5 to -8 dB (NOT quiet - my first attempt at -30 dB was useless) • Steady volume, no vibrato • Quiet room • 44100 Hz, mono The key is getting a clean, loud, boring sustained vowel - no expression, just pure steady tone. The more monotone the better for extraction!
@x0 @BorrisInABox Don't think so. It messes with the waveform shape (the thing we're trying to capture!) 1. We detect F0 (fundamental frequency) from the recording 2. Find individual glottal periods (pitch peak to pitch peak) 3. Resample each period to a common length 4. Average them together So natural pitch drift is fine - the averaging smooths it out. Recorded at ~85 Hz but wobbled between 82-88? Doesn't matter, we're extracting the shape not the pitch.
Lol what would be totally amusing is if you used not at all glottal pulses for the waveforms, like the input to wavetable synths. Like I've got one from a washing machine that sounds like a screaming metallic monster, and it would be epic to have that as a direct vocal source, more direct than a mere vocoder.
@x0 @BorrisInABox Lol! The wild thing is... it would technically work? The formant filters don't care what you feed them. They just shape whatever harmonic-rich input they get. So we could get: WASHING MACHINE DEMON → formant filters → "h̷̰͝e̵̢͠l̷̨͘l̷͚̚o̵̱͝" The formants would still try to impose vowel shapes on the chaos. It would be cursed. :D
@BorrisInABox It would sound fantastic for certain kinds of production effects, though. Although it can't give you fricatives. Pretty sure that already exists though, there are some formant plug-ins, like sonivox vocalizer. But I think they only do three formants.
@x0 Oh boy. Now I want to try shaping some bad noises I made with a big metal fan about twenty years ago with formant filters. I could probably make a few single-cycle wave forms exist.
I got A.Liv on the Surge discord to kindly work with my source material and the results are now called Exocat's Metalodon in the 3rd-party wavetables folder of Surge's factory data.
@BorrisInABox This is the raw source material, which I later trimmed and did some noise reduction on, and then A.Liv carefully turned it into something that was a consistent period to be turned into wavetables, I think at 2048 samples per frame.
@Scott @BorrisInABox Yup, as soon as I heard that I thought of some Skrillex shit and had to get it put into a synth. It was recorded in 2019, and in 2022 it finally happened. This is the demo that A.Liv made with it, everything except the supersaw and drums are the resulting tables.
@Scott @BorrisInABox Now feed that into a vocoder and have this gigantic radio voice going "search and destroy" and then a killer dubstep drop, it would be perfect.
@BorrisInABox SO if you actually wanted to do that for whatever reason, I can send you the wavetables which are already fixed length single-cycle waveforms, unless you already have surge.
@x0 @BorrisInABox lol! Can't even explain what it did, but it definitely introduces a metallic quality unlike any I've heard in speech synthesis before. Not even as tube-like as when I tried mine was, but boy is it bad. That grindyness really shows through.
@x0 @BorrisInABox lol this thing is a trip to use. It's, just... So gritty, so metallic, nothin' quite like it. So I'm keeping it at eurpod.com/synths/speechPlayer… - though clear proof that with the right matching glottal source it can sound less tubey and more natural, just gotta find the right radio announcer-type glottal source :D
@x0 @BorrisInABox could give it a try for you and give you a speechplayer.dll for it. Would be nuts. Would sound broken. Never for production. But I have a version of the speechplayer with glottal table support, so I just use librosa to extract what I need and hand you a speechplayer.dll lol
@BorrisInABox Or it's like what softvoice did, all the different sources. Wait a minute! Is that the problem you're having with a female source? Do you need a real female glottal pulse to start from?
@x0 @BorrisInABox sadly female I realized would require Formant frequency tuning for the phonemes. Right now if we just put a female glottal shape over that, at best it would just sound aliased on top of the deeper, male-characteristic voice. theoretically... a female voice with a sharper glottal closure would actually give us MORE harmonics to work with, not fewer! Would be genuinely interesting to compare though - extract a female glottal pulse and see if the shape is meaningfully different.
@BorrisInABox Small add-on for the voice recording set: raw audio only, please — no noise suppression, auto gain, compressor/limiter, or EQ. The boring part matters here: keep the vowel steady with no vibrato, because I’m aligning and averaging glottal cycles and pitch wobble makes the final source less crisp. If you can, include ~10 seconds of room tone (silence) in a file, so I can calibrate noise and hum. And when you record “th”, make it the “think” version (/θ/). Optional but very helpful: a sustained “zzzz” (/z/) and “vvvv” (/v/) so I can capture voicing + turbulence together for better “edge” control later. Hope this helps too. LOL if this works out your voice would be forever partially captured into a synth. LOL.
@BorrisInABox Excellent! These are CLEAN recordings! Look at those noise floors! down to -55.9 dB on ah_normal.wav! And the F0 stability is fantastic (±1.5 Hz on the normal pitch). Key observations: Recording F0 Notes ah_normal.wav 119.4 Hz (±1.5) Best candidate - great level, super stable, lowest noise floor ah_normal_take2.wav 115.7 Hz (±1.5) Also excellent, slightly higher noise floor ah_lower.wav 89.8 Hz (±8.5) More pitch variation - less stable ah_lower_take2.wav 90.6 Hz (±1.7) Much more stable than take1! ah_higher.wav 215.3 Hz (±3.1) Good for testing F0 invariance ah_higher_take2.wav 224.5 Hz (±3.2) Hottest levels (-2.6 dB peak) I'll use ah_normal.wav as the primary source — it has the best combination of: • Stable F0 (±1.5 Hz) • Good level (-11.9 dB peak, plenty of headroom) • Lowest noise floor (-55.9 dB) • Nice male radio voice F0 (~120 Hz) Huge thanks for this. We'll see how it goes.
@BorrisInABox nah, I really appreciate your effort put into this, it's not easy, I know, especially to keep sustained pitches. So I totally get it! But all we honestly needed is a few good samples, and those were definitely in there with all the tries :D
@BorrisInABox so here's the big difference. Existing: my voice drops from 1.0 to ~0.09 in ~28 samples, but then oscillates Your pulse is cleaner, single clear cycle without the multi-peak oscillations. This should give more predictable harmonic structure.
@mcourcel yep. This gave me some real good insight into what Espeak did to fuck up SpeechPlayer, mainly changing its glottal source a lot. Hahahaha good lesson-learning!
Apple made $117.8bn in total profit (not revenue, of course) over the past four quarters, which is an average of $323 million per day. So when they loudly donate $1m to a charity or a disaster relief fund, they're giving 0.3% of their profits for that single day.
Put another way, if you had $50,000 in annual disposable income (after tax), Apple’s $1m would be like you donating 41 cents… and issuing a press release about it.
URLCheck sits between your apps and web browser and intercepts web searches, stripping out all of the additional tracking, that is, everything that comes after the first question mark: This FOSS app is how I open links without being followed around the web makeuseof.com/foss-app-open-li…
for those who use the zip files I provide for both @SeveraSnape's and @FreakyFwoof's HP fan fic collections, changes on the server that host said zip files mean the speed at witch they are created every day have been significantly sped up, the entire script even with updates was completed in five minutes instead of the snails pace they were created before, so I've adjusted the time they are created to midnight eastern instead of their previous time of 11:00 AM eastern. This will take effect for the next run of the script that creates said zip files since today's run is already complete. If you need either zip file, here are the links. andre harry potter collection: downloads.shaned.net/AndreHarr… Katy's harry potter collection: downloads.shaned.net/HarryPott…
Wait. I thought @SeveraSnape's and @FreakyFwoof's collection is one an the same? I did not know they differed since I believe Katy T is the one who contributes to Andre's collection in the first place.
First Q&A of the year starts in an hour, 3PM Eastern, 8PM UK. Everyone is welcome, come plunder the depths of our brains with questions big and small. Inquiries from newcomers slip through to the front of the queue. TeamTalk and media player details at reaperteacher.com Or if you'd prefer to listen and ask questions in chat on YouTube: youtube.com/live/pKYsrOJu0Kc?f…
Live Q&A about REAPER, OSARA and accessible recording. All are welcome, Folks who are learning the ropes get top priority.Wanna help support us running more ...
@FreakyFwoof Hi, I really like all the songs in the free folder you shared. I especially liked track 180 from the shorts folder; it's really good. I hope you keep making great music. Congratulations!
¿Sabías que he estado creando complementos para NVDA? El último es realmente divertido. Es un compositor Nokia de estilo antiguo que incluso admite archivos .rng de teléfonos Nokia muertos hace mucho tiempo. Compones con tu teclado. Si quieres probarlo, todos mis complementos se encuentran aquí: onj.me/nvda
Wow! That's really interesting, haha, I'll go try it out. And well, I really like your songs; I always check your folder in case there's anything new. I liked the song Fluiditatea and the remix _freakyfwoof_groove_mix_selection created by @ondrosik
Citace z Zkvašeno a toho bych se držel: Svou nádobu prostě naplňte až po okraj a zavřete šroubovacím víčkem. Když bude nedotažené, dostanou se dovnitř spory plísní spolu s nežádoucím kyslíkem. V počátečních dnech můžete jednou za den přebytečný tlak odpustit, přičemž vůbec nevadí, že se nějaký vzduch dovnitř jednorázově dostane, během chvilky se vymění za CO₂. Počítejte s tím, že to bude cintat, ferment stavte do talířku, misky, pekáčku nebo pečícího plechu. Když to bude utažené úplně surově na krev, tak se sice patrně sklenice neroztrhá, ale po otevření vykypí a přeteče. @martin
Жириновского обнаружили в файлах Эпштейна. Имя политика упоминается целых пять раз. Эпштейн называл Жириновского "клоуном-националистом, который любит целовать и трогать мальчиков".
if you happen to have #GooglePlay on some device, please give #ArcaneChat a review so it gets more visibility in the main stream, your sacrifice getting your hands dirty with Google will not be in vain 🎖️
Be Sure to follow skatunenetwork on every platform! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/skatunenetwork/Twitter: https://twitter.com/skatunenetworkTiktok: ht...
Let's learn and grow. New things are cool!Links 'n' stuff down below. Lots of links.First, the "clean version." Please pass that around.https://youtu.be/Zgxb...
Amazing video. Absolute aces all around. Some meandering thoughts:
1- The starting discussion around Midwestern values around frugality and investing wisely kept echoing as a corollary of the Vimes Boots Theory of Socieoeconomic Unfairness that I expected it to get mentioned. I'm assuming you know what that is, but that leads right into my next thought...
2- Building off your statement "I kind of already assumed everyone knew what we were trying to do", plainly stating assumptions is one of the most useful tools for solving problems I have found in the past ten years. My day job is supporting some niche technology infrastructure, and when I get pulled into a problem it's because things are seriously, seriously weird. I've had multiple occasions where I've "walked the stack" out loud, and someone else chimed in to correct some component of pile which led to figuring out what was wrong and how to solve it.
I think there's a more advanced theory of mind issue around understanding and addressing the inherent assumptions other people make. I have no idea how that realization will help make better videos, but I'm excited to see it happen.
2a- While I agree that there's a massive capitalist interest in misleading people, my gut says the bigger challenge is people just... not reexamining assumptions that are years or decades out-of-date. Either because it's cognitively expensive (taking time and mental focus off of day-to-day work, which is also an opportunity capitalist interests are happy to exploit), or because they straight up lack the tools to approach the subject. Maybe that's wrong, and fraud/deception are really the impetus behind wasting time and money on disposable energy.
But I really think the Overestimate Short Term & Underestimate Long Term problem does a lot more heavy lifting in that regard. Humans in survival mode (as so many of us have been for the past 10-40 years) need to focus on the short term, and thinking about the long term is an unaffordable luxury.
3- Tangentially related to cognitive expense/load, I process information better with my eyes than my ears. Showing more of the math when you were running the numbers would have made that easier for me to grasp and process.
Yes, Excel is one of my most-used applications of all time. How did you know?
4- There was a dark, gallows laugh when you talked about the First Amendment rights and the press being declared enemies of the people as Donald Trump is racistly arresting four black journalists. (I'm not laughing because it's funny, I'm laughing because it's an easier emotional outlet than crying)
5- We've lost so much from caring too much about what billionaires and cult leaders say, and caring too little for our own neighbors. I don't know how we solve the big problem. I'll do my part with my skills, like the repair café I'm volunteering at next weekend. We need to build more, better fucking community, damnit.
(sorry for spammy edit/reposting. markdown is being an asshole with list formating)
Today I learned that Google Gemini can understand ASCII maps like in nethacks or other roguelikes: Route to the Stairs From your current position [@], follow these steps: 1. Move East (Right): Move one room over to a cleared room [#]. 2. Move South (Down): Move one room down to another cleared room [#]. 3. Move South (Down) again: This will take you directly to the room containing the stairs [>].
Because sometimes you need a little extra stupid in your life, the John Zone will be on today at 3PM Eastern Time on www.hkcradio.com. To listen, simply direct your media player of choice to listen.hkcradio.com:8000/hkc.m…, ask your Google smart speaker to play HKC Radio on TuneIn, or say to Alexa "ask MyTuner Radio to play HKC Radio."
Idly reflecting a bit this morning, and realizing that one of the key insights that I bring to a consulting engagement is the in-depth observation "you could write a computer program to do this"
A lot of companies looking for expert technical consulting are stuck in a tool analysis paralysis, thrashing around between different open source options or different product offerings, struggling to write extensive "implementation" plans that map whatever the latest hype is onto the correct pile of nouns haphazardly stacked on top of one another. What DevOps tool? What agentic IDE? What cloud orchestrator? What cloud-focused Linux distro?
@matt Right. "write a computer program" in contrast to "stack up a pile of brand identifiers and stickers on the back of a laptop until emergent behavior in their interactions gradually coalesces into a solution"
@matt What many fail to reflect upon is whether the amount of effort to *learn* how to use the existing solution may exceed the amount of effort required to *write* a solution. The assumption is always that learning is free, but coding is expensive.
« Il ne faut pas laisser passer cette idéologie anti flics », s’est ému le ministre de l’Intérieur après ces faits qui se sont déroulés lors d’une fête étudiante.
in their final slide for absolutely no reason other than because foxes are pretty good
i wanna see which networking vendors fedi prefers
Hubert Figuière
in reply to Stefan Arentz • • •