“Since 1994” sort of says it all? This old school HTML Gem (think Craigslist) lists book sales. Book sales are an important resource if you like to read and also don’t like buying books at sticker price. You can often find old stuff you never would have seen shelved, as long as you’re willing to look past hundreds of copies of thrillers and mystery novels.
Adorable. I can’t decide where I want to put some of these on my site but rest assured I will find somewhere eventually!
Wild to hear that software instrument institution Native Instruments is doing so poorly. Massive and Kontakakt were staples. I never used their stuff though, too rich for my blood.
People of a certain age (such as myself) remember the heyday of keyboard phones. The typing experience was actually quite nice compared to a touchscreen, but it used up a lot of real estate which is now used to watch theatrical films on the train. An well. The most beloved of these keyboard-equipped phones was the blackberry. This keyboard has, improbably, made a comehack hooked up to small PCs and such, and it’s the hot new trend for custom made raspberry pi based mobile computers and other ‘cyberdecks.’
3d-printed replacement Lego monorail tracks. Shame there doesn’t appear to be a motor unit which would he required for a complete replacement system. Considering the price of old monorail parts it’s good that this exists.
I’d love to see something like this scaled down to N gauge… rail modeling seems firmly rooted in reality.
This is an example of the perverse incentives that poison the use of prediction markets (ie gambling) as a tool to actually predict the future; the future can be changed. Expect much more of this if these sites continue to move lots of money.
Well, I thought it was interesting.
Music
It’s been a wild ride for music this past two months. Lots of good stuff.
It’s drill’n bass, what you gonna do? I really appreciate that someone is still out there making tracks that push the envelope in the direction of early Drill’n’Bass like Hangable Auto Bulb. Fun stuff in here.
I did not particularly care for Tron Ares. Lee did a good job and the less said about Leto the better, but except as a special effects piece it just didn’t have much going on. I had rewatched Tron Legacy in anticipation and sort of realize why Legacy wasn’t super successful: the movie doesn’t convince you that the main character changes over the course of the film. Ares has more or less the same problem, but with fewer cool special effects shots.
But who gives a damn, we got three Nine Inch Nails records out of the deal! Not just the standard Trent & Ross soundtrack treatment, no, this seems to have inspired the band to reach new heights and my favorite of the new releases is Nine Inch Noize. The remixes of The Warning and Came Back Haunted absolutely rock! I don’t care about the crowd noise discourse. It’s whatever!
K4 Fairlands (squarepusher.bandcamp.com)
kammerkonzert is a difficult album to approach. I know I sometimes say “it was hard to make, it should be hard to listen to” but I don’t vibe with Square’s Jazz influence a lot of the time. But oh boy this track, this seems like he’s taken the impulses behind some of the tracks I didn’t like as much from Damogen Furies et al and honed them into something exciting and new. I was floored by this one. It’s some sort of Black MIDI drum workout orchestra monstrosity… just give it a listen!
This one’s been on heavy rotation. I especially like the first track and especially the remix of it at the end. Just some good chill IDM stuff.
AI Crisis
This is a salient example of AI devouring its users. This was, you may recall, the Ars Technica author who got in trouble including fabricated quotes in an article.
A piece on what it feels like to be evangelized to, well written.
youraislopbores.me
Interactive art-request game.
“I don’t know exactly what the system was doing, or why. I only know that somewhere in those seconds, we ended up colliding with a wall.”
This is sort of required reading for AI watchers. While it may not exactly be surprising for dedicated industry watchers it’s a professional journalism outfit so it’s not mere scuttlebutt like you’ll see on blogs. Altman’s reaction to this piece makes it sound like a hatchet job but it’s actually fairly gentle for what it is. I think the shots it takes against people who believe in Skynet maybe went over the heads of some readers!
Merchant’s on point in this article. In his response to the above New Yorker article, Altman blames the authors, essentially, for violence directed towards him. In this piece, Merchant argues persuasively that it’s the fear/hype marketing strategy taken by AI companies that’s actively driving people off the deep end. I’m inclined to agree. If you tell an entire world that you’re going to take their jobs, occasionally you’re going to run into the same sort of folks who respond to getting fired by flying off the handle.
Following on the heels of the New Yorker article, this one delves into the ways that Altman is profiting from OpenAI via what appears to be self-dealing. It also details how this is possible; nobody is left to stop such behavior. I’m probably going to link this in my The Smartest Guys In The Room review.
