mastodon - Link to source

I did a quick unscientific comparison. AI generated drums and bass for a snippet of a cover version versus me hobbling through those parts with software instruments, playing from memory of hearing it recently.

I invested a similar amount of time in total to reach the second verse of the song. With the generative engine, I only started paying attention to time spent *after* figuring out enough of the horrible UI accessibility to be able to get anything done with it, so although that will inevitably cloud my judgment of whether I enjoyed the UX, it shouldn't impact the comparison of musicality/usefulness.

In both cases, the original song was playing for reference with its rhythm section removed. I've turned the original down pretty quiet in these examples, loud enough to be recognisable but hopefully balanced in a way that makes it easy to focus on the differences in drums and bass.

Audio coming up. 1/4

in reply to Scott

mastodon - Link to source

Scott

I played the drums and bass in this version on keys here, using software instruments, so a totally silent recording setup that I could make at 4AM with a sleeping partner in the same room. I'm not much of a keys player and I don't have absolute pitch or a good enough memory to recall parts note for note, hit for hit, this was just a gut instinct jam-along.

Drums were recorded in two passes, I played the kicks snares and toms first, then overdubbed hats and cymbals. In both cases I did some light tweaking of the MIDI to get a few stray velocities and timing gufties straightened out. 3/4


in reply to Chi Kim

mastodon - Link to source

Scott

@chikim There wasn't any mixing. I did a small amount of tweaking of the starting presets in each instrument just so they sounded a bit closer to what I was imagining, nothing drastic enough to make or break whether they'd sound workable though. Then I turned the volume of the original down before I rendered, which wouldn't have been a necessary step at all outside of this comparison context. That's all. Do those choices need democratising? Who for?
@Chi Kim
in reply to Scott

mastodon - Link to source

Chi Kim

As a side note, there’s a guy who generates AI music, uploads it to streaming services as a side gig, and makes a few hundred bucks a month. I wonder what percentage of musicians actually make a few hundred dollars a month from streaming service? AI music has even hit the top of the Billboard charts. I’m not advocating for Suno or anything, just pointing out the sad reality.
in reply to Scott

mastodon - Link to source

Chi Kim

I don't use Suno enough to say for sure. I just generate bunch of stupid songs when my kids ask. lol My guess is they focus more on mass use, where you generate from text prompts, rather than professional workflows where you feed in audio and augment it. Also is this from v4.5-all or v5? Have you looked at the Suno Studio? It looks very interesting workflow. youtube.com/watch?v=qR4BefPvSi…

Suno Studio Tutorial: A Complete Beginner's Guide (2025)

Start creating in Suno Studio here: https://suno.com?utm_source=Social&utm_medium=YTSFReady to master Suno Studio? This is the official, complete beginner's ...
YouTube
in reply to Scott

mastodon - Link to source

Chi Kim

Also, when I said AI is often about democratizing, I meant it in a general sense too. I know you already understand this, and I am generalizing, but Deaf people might use AI to generate speech transcription, blind people might use AI to generate image descriptions or even create a cover art for their albums, and I have even heard of people who cannot afford a lawyer successfully using AI to fight insurance companies. In each case, it lowers the barrier to access.
in reply to Chi Kim

mastodon - Link to source

Scott

@chikim Well sure, I understand what democratizing is and in many cases I'm in favour of it. TBH I can't really say I'm against it in this scenario either. It's more like... I dunno... I'm surprised that even as a barely function keys player and probably less than 5 minutes of tweaking sounds, I could throw together something that's more usable than this thing that some people are paying money for.
@Chi Kim
in reply to Scott

mastodon - Link to source

Michael Johann

Why are you using generative ai when you have focused so much of your time on making reaper accessible and do your own music? Also, now that you have uploaded music that you made to I am guessing suno or udio, now they have your music and can train there ai off of what you made. You basically just gave them free work and they don't have to pay you for your time and they can just steal your music so someone else can make money off of it.
in reply to Michael Johann

mastodon - Link to source

Scott

@michaeljohann_ That wasn't my music, it was a cover of a hugely established band that will have already been scraped for training if that's how they're doing it. This was a quick experiment to see what generative AI provides in this context. As someone who teaches a lot of folks coming into making music for the first time it makes sense for me to be at least broadly informed about what's out there.
@Michael Johann
in reply to Scott

mastodon - Link to source

Michael Johann

Fare enough as a musician I really don't like to see people using there own music for AI for the reasons I mentioned earlier I understand wanting to learn it to educate people about it. I just tell people to stay away from it and spend the time you would to use ai to learn a daw or an instrument. You will get better results and actually learn something rather then typing in prompts to a computer, but maybe I shouldn't be so harsh.

mastodon - Link to source

Keine Lust auf das neue Jahr und alles? Dann ist vielleicht der Nope-Fuchs der richtige Begleiter 🦊. Ihr könnt ihn bei Supergeek adoptieren✨.

supergeek.de/de/designer/fuchs…

#FuchskindWerbung

Screenshot aus de Supergeek Shop: der Nopefuchs auf einem roten T-Shirt.
Screenshot aus de Supergeek Shop: der Nopefuchs auf einer weißen Tasse

Die besten Nerd T-Shirts kaufen im Shop von Supergeek.de

Die besten T-Shirts für Nerds, Geeks & Gamer! ✓ Hochwertigste Shirts ✓ Haltbarster Druck ✓ Portofrei ab 100€. ♥ Supergeek.de
www.supergeek.de
#fuchskindwerbung

mastodon - Link to source

RE: wetdry.world/@micr0/1158046481…

NO NO NO

#WarAgainstAltbot

"the vision stuff"

#blind

Micr0byte (@micr0@wetdry.world)

**altbot v2.5 is out!** fixed non-english support! switched to a two model setup: gemma3:1b handles translations while qwen3-vl does the image processing stuff. gemma3:1b is surprisingly good at translations for such a tiny model?? now running 23.
Micr0byte (Wet-Dry World)
#blind #waragainstaltbot
in reply to Nelson Lopez

mastodon - Link to source

#BlindAltBot

I am blind. Seeing people who think I'm not worth the effort fill my timeline with AltBot generated AI stuff that isn't even accurate in lots of cases.

Human alt text is always better, because it doesn´t focus on ocular seeing. Seeing people think, and AltBot was designed around that notion, that blind people must compensate for missing "eye-seeing", but that's not the case. I am interested in the meaning of an image to you, its maker or publisher.

Again, human alt text is better, also because it strengthens reciprocity between seeing and blind people. AltBot doesn't but it makes seeing people believe they have done their bit for accessibility. In actuality, the reverse is often true.

!!!!!!!!!

in reply to Keri Svendsen

mastodon - Link to source

Andre Louis

@sapphireangel @Scott My place is positively utopian based on everything previously.
I live in a Cul De Sac, we tend to hear trains every few minutes but they're not obnoxious, got our own back garden which is bigger than a postage stamp which, considering it's London has to be some kind of miracle, a real piano which I can play whenever and no neighbours complain.
The downstairs toilet door handle needs changing but that's about it. lol
@Scott @Keri Svendsen
in reply to Andre Louis

mastodon - Link to source

Tom Grant the tincel

@FreakyFwoof @sapphireangel @Scott haha Knightly the piano, gotta love the sound of that thing. Here it's nice and quiet in Banesberie Close Banbury as it's mainly elderly that live here, the back garden's nice and straight and big, kept neat and tidy by Edward my carer and sometimes a gardener to help. No crack dens here. Nice and quiet.
@Scott @Andre Louis @Keri Svendsen
in reply to Keri Svendsen

mastodon - Link to source

Andrew Hodgson

@sapphireangel @TomGrant91 @FreakyFwoof @Scott My flat is slightly noisy with traffic but am used to it now. Fairly hot especially in the summer but has a balcony and access to a well maintained shared outdoors space with children playing. Family want me to move to a larger place but right now don't think that's happening in London as I'm about a minute walk from the tube.
@Scott @Tom Grant the tincel @Andre Louis @Keri Svendsen
in reply to Andrew Hodgson

mastodon - Link to source

Andre Louis

@andrew I haven't forgotten about going for that curry as well. I think we've found the cheapest place in London but with the very best food around. Went there in December with my mother in-law and sister in-law, along with Jake. For four people, three of us paid £38 each.
Definitely not a bad run.
Food was excellent, everybody came away very happy.
@Andrew Hodgson

mastodon - Link to source

The most interesting finding from using EVs in winter is not that they consume more energy (which they do), but that charging is really slow if you don't have battery preheating. Yesterday, I arrived at a 240 kW charger with 33% SoC, the outside temperature was 0°C, and the charging power was only 35 kW (the maximum charging power of the car is 118 kW). With this charging power, it would take 40 minutes to charge to 80% SoC. We don't mind too much because we primarily use the car as a city car and do 95% of our charging at home, but if you want to have an EV as your only car and drive long distances with it even in winter, definitely get one that has battery preheating.

#EV #electricVehicles #emobility #electricCars

#electriccars #ev #ElectricVehicles #emobility
in reply to Thomas

mastodon - Link to source

Jiří Eischmann

@tpheine yes, it is still limiting, my brother-in-law drives to customers spread across the whole country and time is of essence. He says he still cannot afford an EV because of this, so he has a diesel Škoda Superb. I think this will be pretty much solved with the 800V architecture which is slowly getting into this segment. A good example of this is the new BMW iX3. Its drive range is over 500km even in winter, the maximum charging rate is 400 kW and can charge for 350km in 10 minutes. Once EVs with such parameters are more widespread, most of the opposition will disappear. It's already a completely different world than my 3-year-old Audi with 35kW charging in winter. 🙂
@Thomas

mastodon - Link to source
Ten paciencia cuando se confunde.
No la apresures cuando tarda en recordar.
No le quites valor a sus palabras cuando repite una historia que ya conoces.
Porque antes que nada…
sigue siendo tu madre.
La misma que respondió tus preguntas una y otra vez sin cansancio.
La que secó tus lágrimas, incluso cuando no había motivo.
La que veló tu sueño cuando el cuerpo te ardía de fiebre
y el mundo parecía demasiado grande para ti.
Hoy sus pasos son más lentos,
su memoria a veces se dispersa
y su cuerpo se fatiga con facilidad.
Pero su amor no ha cambiado.
Ese amor sigue firme, atento, completo… como siempre lo fue.
Hazla sentir importante.
Hazle saber que su presencia cuenta,
que su risa sigue teniendo lugar
y que su vida no es una carga, sino un regalo.
Abrázala sin prisa.
Escúchala aunque repita.
Quédate un poco más.
Porque llegará un día en que ese lugar quedará vacío,
y darías cualquier cosa
por escucharla contar su historia
una vez más.
Ama hoy.
Cuida hoy.
Porque el amor que se posterga mañana pesa más de lo que imaginas. 🤍

mastodon - Link to source

The greatest piece of advice I was ever given was this: when you stop work for the day, never stop at a 'clean' break point; stop in the middle of something you can finish easily.

That way the next morning you're not confronted with a a dauntingly blank page or an empty function to write, but a half-finished one you can get back into without difficulty.

I can't remember who gave me that advice, but I've stuck to it dogmatically whenever I can.

This entry was edited (3 days ago)

mastodon - Link to source

I was recently reminded of this.

A couple decades ago, I wrote a short paper that described how the basic approaches of cryptography and computer security lead to an efficient and practical privilege escalation attack against master-keyed mechanical locks, which I published in IEEE Security and Privacy (a nerdy computing technical journal).

mattblaze.org/papers/mk.pdf

TL;dr: Master-keyed locks have fundamental, exploitable weaknesses.

But I wasn't ready for what happened next.

1/

This entry was edited (4 days ago)
in reply to Matt Blaze

mastodon - Link to source

Matt Blaze

It occurs to me that people outside the security field might find it odd that we openly publish stuff like this. Why help people who might use the knowledge to do bad things?

There are a number of reasons. The first is that only through open discussion are we able to identify and fix problems. Another, which is what motivated my work, is educational: you can't learn to defend systems unless you understand how they are attacked.

mastodon - Link to source

MORE USPS FUCKERY

The USPS just changed the meaning of a postmark. Under the old rules, when you dropped the mail off at the post office was the postmark date.

Now, the postmark is the date your mail was first processed by an automated center.

If you drop your mail off Monday but it doesn't get processed until Wednesday, Wednesday is the new postmark date.

Yes, this can affect taxes, healthcare, and-- not coincidentally, I'm sure-- ELECTIONS.

nstp.org/article/usps-announce…

#USPS #Trump


USPS Announces Changes to the Postmark Date System

The United States Postal Service (USPS) has adopted a final rule (FR Doc.
nstp.org
#Trump #USPS
in reply to Scary Austin VOTED 4 HARRIS!

pleroma - Link to source

feld

but this is how it always was. If you drop your mail off into their possession (big blue drop box) but they don't pick it up until tomorrow and process it at the local post office, the postmark is tomorrow not today ...

Yes they will absolutely use this as a way to sceew with mail in ballots by disrupting processing of those too close to the deadline (understaff, shutdown USPS, etc) and now there will be little chance of successfully challenging it. At this point Trump could legally fire EVERYONE at USPS weeks before the election to screw everyone over too and he probably will.

mastodon - Link to source

The conversation about AI is exhausting, and I'm finding myself more and more talking with my friends about its dangers and downfalls.
I definitely see a new level of awareness and skepticism coming from non-tech people, which is great.

One question that sometimes come up with people wanting to learn how to code is "Is it worth even doing it with all this AI self coding tools?"

Hell yeah! Absolutely! Technical literacy is even more important now than ever!

youtu.be/g5IRn0OzzU4?si=EjUgEw…


Should you learn to code in the age of "AI"?

In a time when the sentence "junior developers will be replaced by AI" is heard multiple times a day, does it make sense learning how to code?Yes, now more t...
YouTube

mastodon - Link to source

U.S. distillers complain Canadian provinces favouring local alcohol

ctvnews.ca/toronto/politics/qu…

LOL. You elected your leader. Complain to him.


Group of U.S. distillers complains LCBO, other provinces favouring local alcohol

A group of U.S. alcohol producers claims Canadian retailers are giving unfair advantage to local spirits, including what it calls “discriminatory” markups in Nova Scotia and other provinces.
The Canadian Press (CTVNews)

mastodon - Link to source
Editional tips and tricks for downloading the cops pack

Sensitive content

This entry was edited (3 days ago)
in reply to Bri🥰

mastodon - Link to source

BobbyJunior

Editional tips and tricks for downloading the cops pack

Sensitive content

@Bri🥰

mastodon - Link to source

Is there a tool that will either

- let me run a script over files in a directory tree in parallel
- re-encode a directory tree of music files in parallel

while being robust about interruptions (don't have to restart if I interrupt it and run it again), etc.

I'd rather not write this even though it would be a good little exercise.

(I need to recompress my music collection, for my car's stereo, and it needs Very Particular metadata.)

in reply to Federico Mena Quintero

mastodon - Link to source

Ben Zanin

I know you have a solution already, but what file format are you targeting? e.g. if your source and target formats are FLAC then metadata-only updates in parallel should be clustered by album because metaflac(1) can take some shortcuts; if it's MP3 specifically then you'll want to group files into batches because id3v2(1) starts slowly; if you actually need to re-encode and not just update metadata then you might need to disclose your core count; etc etc
in reply to Ben Zanin

mastodon - Link to source

Federico Mena Quintero

@gnomon I'll need mp3 and was thinking of batching all tracks in an album, which kinda matches my laptop's number of cores.

I need to experiment a bit with the stereo first; it doesn't pick up the track number field, so if it just sorts an album's tracks in alphabetical order I'll need to tell ffmpeg or whatever to output track numbers as part of the track name.

(everything is in flac; I need mp3 smaller than the bitrate I used initially, or music won't fit in an USB stick)

@Ben Zanin
in reply to Zach Bennoui

gotosocial - Link to source

Robin Kipp

That's really cool, congrats! Just one thing, please please please don't use the Claude-generated code to learn SwiftUI… SwiftUI has gone through several very significant changes since its introduction, so there's a lot of still working but deprecated API in there, and Claude absolutely loves to use the outdated methods. So, if your goal is just to have some great fun with it and quickly build some fun projects for yourself and maybe some friends, this is absolutely, totally fine. But if you actually want to get into Swift and SwiftUI for real, I'd be more than happy to send you a link to an absolutely amazing tutorial series, which will teach you all you need to know from beginner to expert.
⇧