Bits

Many things can be done by tools that write for you, but they won’t help you learn to think or understand a problem with deep fluency. And you need deep fluency to solve hard problems. https://fs.blog/why-write/

#ai #LLaMA there are a ton of very real ways in which this technology can be used for harm.
Just a few:
* Generating spam
* Automated romance scams
* Trolling and hate speech
* Fake news and disinformation
* Automated radicalization (I worry about this one a lot)
https://simonwillison.net/2023/Mar/11/llama/

“Time and Clocks Are Children’s Things and Hold No Sway Over Me in the Realm of the Shadow Fortress” https://archive.ph/olYD4

Fatalism becomes the handmaiden of inevitability, and inevitability becomes the justification for acceleration. #ai https://archive.ph/1vE5F

a five-week one-credit “mini-course” on scraping data from the web. The course is intended for researchers in the social sciences and humanities with computational instincts but limited or no prior programming experience. https://github.com/CU-ITSS/Web-Data-Scraping-S2023

Sound & Music

A beautiful cover from Elisapie youtu.be/g7BSjmxg9DY

A simple online tool to generate free synthesized kick drum/bass drum sounds. https://muted.io/kick/

This is small web, consent driven, artist populated, non-commercial mechanism, attribution promoting, community #radio for the #fediverse https://radiofreefedi.net/

an upcoming open-source hardware sampler inspired by childhood devices such as the Casio SK-1 https://chompiclub.com/

Daisy is an embedded platform for music. It features everything you need for creating high fidelity audio hardware devices. Just plug in a USB cable and start making sound! Programming the Daisy is a breeze with support for a number of languages including C++, Arduino, and Max/MSP Gen~. https://www.electro-smith.com

St. Patrick’s Day 2023

Creating #gifs for the channels between channels .. she used a Goldbeam portable CRT, soldered the tuning potentiometer to the ESP32, and set up 10 different GIFs to act as “channels” with space in between. https://hackaday.com/2023/03/17/creating-gifs-for-the-channels-between-channels/

Politics & Economics

“Seeds are the new antiques.” https://archive.ph/65Lur

Remember that those choices are not inevitable. The decision to make #housing the primary driver of intergenerational wealth transfer is both recent and very, very stupid ..” #svb https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/15/mon-dieu-les-guillotines/#ceci-nes-pas-une-bailout

With our #union we will have a voice in our working conditions and the power to hold #bandcamp accountable to the independent artists and labels who use it—most of whom are workers just like us, and for whom #bandcamp provides vital income to help sustain their creative projects. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PGyTD7qYPeOQ0FwOXtN8ymCvYBiQfMHl/view?usp=sharing

Bits

A helpful look at some self-hosted #foss #saas alternatives https://tedium.co/2023/03/04/self-hosted-saas-app-alternatives/

“It’s unclear where the scammers got his voice, although Perkin has posted YouTube videos talking about his snowmobiling hobby. The family has filed a police report with Canada’s federal authorities, Perkin said, but that hasn’t brought the cash back.” https://archive.ph/P6GJP

“a series is made of dedicated games that let visitors freely roam Ancient Greece, Ancient Egypt and the Viking Age to learn more about their history and daily life. Students, teachers, non-gamers, and players can discover these eras at their own pace, or embark on guided tours and stories curated by historians and experts.” #videogames https://www.ubisoft.com/en-us/game/assassins-creed/discovery-tour

“Of course, authorship right may be the least of our worries.” #coding #ai https://hackaday.com/2023/03/08/will-a-i-steal-all-the-code-and-take-all-the-jobs/

“What they were using, instead, was cutting-edge #AI backed by PhDs in literature.” https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-44/essays/human_fallback/

An open source tape echo effect for guitars/vocals built from a cheap portable cassette player and 3D printed parts. https://hackaday.io/project/181052-janky-tape-echo

Sound & Music

The magic of Eurorack and ChatGPT #synth https://medium.com/@gbraakman/the-magic-of-eurorack-and-chatgtp-8e8144a6a1d5

“Imagine, now, a world in which we can reconcile our conception of art so that the artists that we adore aren’t outlaws for making the music we love.” #hiphop #copyright https://slate.com/culture/2023/03/de-la-soul-streaming-legalize-sampling-rap.html

Am I gonna lose myself again?
Am I gonna lose myself again?
I quite like the person that I am
Am I gonna lose myself again?
https://juliajacklin.bandcamp.com/track/i-was-neon

Politics & Economics

..places with the highest drug addiction rates, highest severe mental illness rates, highest poverty rates, most generous welfare benefits, and the nicest weather don’t have the most homelessness. Places with the highest housing costs do. #housing https://archive.ph/iSael

“The primary reason for our stalled progress on poverty reduction has to do with the fact that we have not confronted the unrelenting exploitation of the poor in the labor, housing and financial markets.” https://archive.ph/UupBG