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collias commented on How Kentucky bourbon went from boom to bust   bbc.com/news/articles/ckg... · Posted by u/bookofjoe
charcircuit · 13 days ago
I think more and more kinds of alcoholic beverages will go bust as people wake up to them being poison and that they could just drink water instead.
collias · 13 days ago
But water doesn't make me as happy.
collias commented on Lyria 2   deepmind.google/technolog... · Posted by u/georgehill
vunderba · 3 months ago
From the landing page:

> Artists can use text prompts to shape the music, while controlling the key, BPM, and other characteristics.

Sigh.

All I want is the ability to take an existing piece of music that I've already written, and then use a sort of "auto-accompaniment Band in a Box style" to add additional complementary instruments. Being able to analyze a purely melodic piece and generate possible percussive layers would be a lot of fun.

collias · 3 months ago
Logic Pro does this. Even GarageBand (free if you have an Apple device) has pretty decent AI drummers.
collias commented on DeepMind releases Lyria 2 music generation model   deepmind.google/discover/... · Posted by u/velcrobeg
collias · 4 months ago
I find this to be profoundly depressing.

I've just recently re-discovered the joy of writing my own songs, and playing them with (actual) instruments. It's something I get immense pleasure from, and for once, I'm actually getting some earned traction. In another life, I may have been a musician, and it's something I fantasize about regularly.

With all these AI-generated music tools, the world is about to be flooded with a ton of low-effort, low-quality music. It's going to to absolutely drown out anyone trying to make music honestly, and kill budding musicians in their crib.

I suppose this is the same existential crisis that other professions/skills are also going through now. The feeling of a loss of purpose, or a loss of a fantasy in learning a new skill and switching careers, is pretty devastating.

collias commented on TikTok tells staff impacted by wildfires to use sick hours if they can't work   techcrunch.com/2025/01/09... · Posted by u/sylvainkalache
cscurmudgeon · 7 months ago
Is there any data, not anecdotes, that H1B drags wages or working conditions down?

US Tech has the highest salaries world.

collias · 7 months ago
Econ 101. If an employer can pay someone less to do the same job, they will.

https://www.epi.org/press/a-majority-of-migrant-workers-empl...

collias commented on ChatGPT has caused a drop in demand for online digital freelancers   techradar.com/pro/chatgpt... · Posted by u/olalonde
mensetmanusman · a year ago
Just remember, most of us are simply increasing the ROI of our millionaire/billionaire class overlords while we make modest gains in the ever shrinking middle class.

Had technology induced productivity gains been distributed as they were proportionally in the 60s, the average wage in the US would be 6 figures.

collias commented on Making Apple Progressive Blur on the Web   devslovecoffee.com/blog/m... · Posted by u/devslovecoffee
38 · a year ago
> Throughout the years, apple consistently delivers great design. They seem to always define (or at least popularize) a new trend, which then storms the world and everyone copies it

To the loss of everyone. This is the same company that introduced disappearing scrollbars, just one of many dumb design decisions.

What modern design seems to forget, is that at the end of the day, people actually want to USE the interface, not just look at it.

collias · a year ago
Why not both?
collias commented on Losing my son   fortressofdoors.com/i-los... · Posted by u/lukeplato
larsiusprime · 2 years ago
I have to say I'm really humbled to suddenly see this on the front page. Today was a particularly hard day; I won't go into details but taking care of a permanently disabled invalid involves a lot of ups and downs and some fairly messy manual labor to keep them comfortable and in good shape.

I love you all. Hug your kids if you have em.

EDIT: The above blog post here was one of three things I wrote in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy to try to process my feelings and exorcise my dark thoughts. I have two more which you can find below:

The Ballad of St. Halvor (a poem): https://www.fortressofdoors.com/st-halvor/

Four Magic Words (short story, somewhat dark): https://www.fortressofdoors.com/four-magic-words/

collias · 2 years ago
Stunningly beautiful write up, Lars. You have an amazing gift.

God bless you and your family.

collias commented on Woman with rectifier and electric car (1912)   nyheritage.contentdm.oclc... · Posted by u/1970-01-01
wredue · 2 years ago
Climate change predictions look to have “began” around 10 years after the first patent for gas vehicles, but predate mass production by a decade.

There probably wasn’t widespread knowledge at the time of mass production.

Then ~70 years ago, vehicle and oil giants absolutely knew what was happening and got the wheels spinning on a massive propaganda machine that continues to thrive today.

collias · 2 years ago
To be fair, I'm not sure choosing electric over gasoline cars at that time would have much effect on our current climate situation, assuming equal timelines for renewable tech.

All those cars would have needed electricity from somewhere, and at the time, gasoline and coal were pretty cheap ways to generate it.

collias commented on Spike mRNA vaccine sequences circulate in blood up to 28 days after vaccination   onlinelibrary.wiley.com/d... · Posted by u/gjsman-1000
wolfium3 · 3 years ago
Isn't that a good thing though? I.e. promote the production of more training material for the immune system for longer?

(Please correct me in the thread if my understanding is incorrect)

collias · 3 years ago
The more worrying thing here is the "circulate" part. Meaning that the lipid packages containing the mRNA sequences are traveling throughout the body, instead of staying at the injection site.
collias commented on Silent crisis of soaring excess deaths in Britain is only tip of the iceberg   uk.news.yahoo.com/silent-... · Posted by u/danboarder
jboggan · 3 years ago
There is a theory that the mRNA sequences could have been reverse transcribed into the DNA of various organs, including liver cells.

https://www.mdpi.com/1467-3045/44/3/73/htm is a in vitro (but not in vivo) demonstration of one element of this theory.

collias · 3 years ago
To add to this, there has been evidence that the spike proteins created by the mRNA sequences stay around in the body longer than expected. CDC has now implicitly admitted this.

CDC snapshot July 22: https://web.archive.org/web/20220722141942/https://www.cdc.g...

CDC snapshot July 23: https://web.archive.org/web/20220723161304/https://www.cdc.g...

Notice the change to the "Facts About mRNA COVID-19 Vaccines" section.

u/collias

KarmaCake day537April 25, 2013View Original