rainbowmverse

>> "I've been wishing for scripting in DAWs for a long time, and having a synthesizer that supports writing code to modify waveforms or change how parameters link would be awesome (if this exists, someone please tell me). Projects like Sonic Pi, though, seem to take this past the point of usability."

Reaper has a scripting language. It even comes with a few synths written in it, complete with source.

I want a DAW with the flexibility of Reaper and the UX of Ableton.

You should go to a library some time.

I would like to see a library drone delivery program. I can already order a book from almost any library in the state and have it delivered to the local one. Having a drone take it the rest of the way is the next logical step. That would also help with accessibility for people who can't get to the library.

A whole lot of people in here are discovering their tax dollars collectively fund a wonderland of knowledge, tools, and access they had no idea about. It's great.

Go to your local library today.

Almost everyone in Georgia has and uses a PINES card, and they're very happy about it.[1] The library here in Winder just re-opened after renovating to add and expand a bunch of non-book services and make room for all the people who go to it.

You know nothing about libraries. Go to one.

[1] https://www.georgialibraries.org/lib/statistics/

A newspaper interviewed a local librarian. The interviewer pointed out a lot of people use the free wifi from the parking lot after hours, and asked if that was a problem.

"That's the whole point."

I wouldn't mind if AP-using projects like Mastodon also let you subscribe to RSS feeds. That way RSS could keep doing what it's good at while AP handles everything else.

It will be some time before the ActivityPub ecosystem is ready for the enterprise. I was putting it out there for companies that don't need that level of integration or have people who can build it.

I've seen a few companies with their own Mastodon (or compatible software) instances. They can post local-only for internal stuff or just not connect it to the fediverse at all. MIT even has its own.

Most feed readers these days will go and fetch the RSS link from the header if you copy a URL in. It's not great for promoting RSS, but it's not enough friction to stop me from using it.

9/10 times someone complains about politics, they're complaining about those uppity minorities trying to get into their castle. There is a kind of toxic politics that forms in excess order, but in my experience it's rarely what people mean.

Maybe I'm wrong about you. Chaos!

I'll add this experience to order when I find order useful.

Politics are revealed, not created. The revelation usually comes when someone unlike the people already there tries to join without hiding all that makes them different, and all the local assumptions fall apart. The people you perceive as "creating" politics likely understand and thrive in chaos and failure better than you do because they were born into it and didn't have a choice in the matter.

When I find out about some identity I haven't heard about, I just say "cool" and move the heck on. My world is not turned upside down if someone shows up with neon green hair, three boyfriends, and six headmates because I live in a world where that kind of thing happens.

The thing is, so do you.

It's the "I'd buy that on a t-shirt" problem. People who say it don't usually mean it, and the few who do aren't worth the trouble of making it available.

It's obvious to anyone without a vested interest in Facebook growing forever.

However, much of capitalist society is built on the assumption that growth will never end. Things start falling apart when that assumption inevitably proves wrong.

I need reading mode and mobile uBlock Origin to use the web. This is something Chrome will never have because it threatens their advertising business.

I read a really good take once that I can't find anymore, but the gist was: sometimes a company knows about a poor decision or a bug, and just leaves it in because it gives them a competitive edge.

You might be interested in my new weekly electronic music podcast: https://www.patreon.com/digitalscofflaw/posts?tag=Fox%20Popu...

It's all original. I create songs with lots of variations for myself in Ableton to help me focus, then hit record and let it run for ~20 minutes. People seem to like the results.

It's the difference between restorative justice and retributive justice. This is the former, and seems better for the public good.

I want them to know they'll lose everything they gained if they're caught. I don't want them coming up with ever more clever and socially destructive ways to avoid being caught because of harsh penalties.

They link a zip file with all the tables in one spreadsheet. Here's a copy and paste:

MFG Model Drive Size Drive Count Drive Days Drive Failures Annualized Failure Rate

HGST HMS5C4040ALE640 4TB 4,773 441,707 5 0.41%

HGST HMS5C4040BLE640 4TB 15,051 1,384,015 10 0.26%

HGST HDS5C4040ALE630 4TB 78 7,791 1 4.68%

HGST HUH728080ALE600 8TB 1,044 95,056 3 1.15%

Seagate ST4000DM000 4TB 27,476 2,645,254 134 1.85%

Seagate ST6000DX000 6TB 1,832 168,450 4 0.87%

Seagate ST8000DM002 8TB 9,886 899,939 25 1.01%

Seagate ST8000NM0055 8TB 14,393 1,309,622 24 0.67%

Seagate ST10000NM0086 10TB 1,220 111,020 0 0.00%

Seagate ST12000NM0007 12TB 21,580 1,816,181 57 1.15%

Toshiba MD04ABA400V 4TB 146 13,286 0 0.00%

Toshiba MD04ABA500V 5TB 45 4,095 0 0.00%

WDC WD30EFRX 3TB 180 16,380 0 0.00%

WDC WD40EFRX 4TB 46 4,173 0 0.00%

WDC WD60EFRX 6TB 434 39,722 3 2.76%

		Totals: 	98,184	8,956,691	266	1.08%

Those fines usually exist for a reason. Just because you can pay your way out of consequences for the negative externalities doesn't mean it's good for anyone but your shareholders.

You're not trying to understand me. You keep repeating irrelevant or misinformed points.

You go make your thing. I'll keep enjoying the platform I'm on.

You and I are talking about completely different things. I don't care about numbers or prospective adoption of a private company's protocol and platform. I'm talking about what I can do now. What I'm already using it for. What's on the horizon. What's not going to happen. It's popular enough for my needs. It's funded. It's in active development.

No matter how popular your protocol gets, it's still your protocol. I have no interest in it. I can go back to Twitter if I want to have my social connections locked into someone else's platform.

I have been burned by enough companies that play up open source and development ecosystems, then close up when it's no longer convenient. Your own example of Twitter was built on developers making tools for it. Who makes apps for Twitter now but marketing companies? Virtually no one.

While I have no specific affinity for ActivityPub as a protocol, I do like a lot of the software being built on it and enjoy being able to follow people on them from my Mastodon account.

No one's investing or expecting a return on a million dollars in investment with it. It's already a W3C standard. One popular piece of software (which you dismissed) supports it. Other promising attempts like Plume (blogging), Pixelfed (image sharing), and Aardwolf (Facebook-like) are in development. They're already revenue neutral (or better) from the Patreons and Liberapays that provide their funding.

From that perspective, your thing is just another closed-off ecosystem that doesn't talk to any other. Open source is not sufficient when we're talking about social media software. My new social graph is growing, and it's not dependent on someone expecting an ROI.

I understand you started this project before ActivityPub was a thing, and before anyone took federated social media seriously. But that's the hazard with starting early: sometimes something comes along and forces you to change how you think.

You missed the boat, and you don't realize it because you're busy building a yacht that holds smaller yachts. It's a nice yacht, but I like the growing network of party barges I'm on.

It's not too bad as long as you're making something genuinely good. I'm not likely to ever make it big as a musician, but that doesn't mean Ableton or the company behind Reaper are being shady by selling me software.

Some types of company see penalties (or cleanup cost) as a cost of doing business. If they make > $10k to incur $10k in costs, then it works out.

It's a faulty way of seeing things, but businesses like that tend to have a fog around them. They don't see the icebergs coming.

Small towns get worse the further you are from the default. For example, dating here is terrible. All the men are assholes or very deep in the closet.

The women are super religious. Think bible quotes as Tinder profiles. And I don't mean "their bios have a lot about religion in them." I mean that's their whole profile. A bible quote.

And I doubt many gender non-comforming people in my age range are out about it. There is no way I'm taking my queer ass to one of the three dive bars to do it the traditional way.

That's not even getting into the lack of entertainment options. This town is at least close enough to Atlanta and Athens for good internet options and reasonable support for LGBT+ people in government. They had updated marriage licenses ready before the SCOTUS ruling.

If you're a straight, white, cis dude who doesn't mind traveling to the nearest city for anything fun to do, knock yourself out. At least get a hotel paid monthly and spend some real quality time in a prospective small town first. Even if you are super default, I don't see how you could enjoy it if you're remotely intellectually curious.

I'm getting out of here ASAP.

One day it's "[thing] shouldn't be exploitable because [mitigation]", the next it's "welp, [mitigation] has a bug in it and they've exploited [thing]."

>> "What operating system and browser do you use that the video autoplays?"

Latest Firefox and Windows 10.

>> "Where is Mastodon today? What are its stats?"

This is the wrong question before you ask about the goals of the platform and its users. Stats only let you compare it against something it might have no interest in being.

Your dismissal of it and other open source efforts is likely due to a goal mismatch. The fact that you spent so much money on it tells me you're probably aiming at a Twitter competitor.

I don't care about Twitter and its goals. I care about what Mastodon is and what I already do with it. It's self-funding and community supported. There are plenty of people on it, and it's still growing. It seems like someone's making a new thing with ActivityPub every month that I can interact with from my Mastodon account. That's all that matters to me, and seems to be enough for most of the people on it.

Your site has some auto-playing video below the fold and a spinning GIF of a globe from 1995. It's cluttered, noisy, and unclear. There is no point of focus. I can't get as far as figuring out what sets it apart or makes it better because I had to close the page.

Compare this to Mastodon--which you dismissed with all other open source social networks--where the project lead thinks hard and openly about the accessibility and value of virtually every UX change.

There was no shortage of hype peddlers and ignorant people with authority before the internet. All the internet did was wake more people up to this fact and force them to either start thinking critically or turn into cynics.

What changed is the peddlers and powerful fools have bigger audiences now. There's less space for the niche con artist because all the marks are in someone's downline throwing all their money and credit at a lost cause.