dapangzi (u/dapangzi)

dapangzi commented on Show HN: I launched a MIDI controller and IG banned me 48 hours later · Posted by u/harmonyresearch

harmonyresearch · 5 days ago

Thanks for checking it out!

RE:engineering: You're spot on, on the engineering side it's dead simple. Simple, reliable, serviceable were all part of the goal.

RE:pricing: Other devices in this category are expensive and several have built-in synth engines and audio cards. This build uses mostly off the shelf components in an effort to keep the price down.

Instagram said I 'violated community guidelines'. Not sure how, I posted a photo of the controller and two videos of it in action. I think my error was following too many people too quickly, maybe lots of external traffic from reddit hurt too?

dapangzi · 4 days ago

That really stinks, sorry you had to experience that.

I feel like it's the nature of these social media companies anymore. They use automated enforcement and the appeals process is impossible. :/

Will keep an eye out, this is very cool.

dapangzi commented on Show HN: I launched a MIDI controller and IG banned me 48 hours later · Posted by u/harmonyresearch

dapangzi · 5 days ago

Checked the project out, while basic from an engineering perspective, does feel like it meets a niche, and how's that a crime?

I'm inclined to buy once I see others test it (I hate being a beta tester, no offense intended).

$250 for this is *stupid* cheap, given your competitors' *stupid* prices.

Feels like a lot of info is missing here, you getting banned from Instagram.

What was the nature of the post?

edit: Also, have you considered a spring-loaded x-y controller or touchpad x-y controller? I find these indispensable.

dapangzi commented on Cannabis usage in older adults linked to larger brain, better cognitive function medicalxpress.com/news/20... · Posted by u/PaulHoule

lo_zamoyski · 5 days ago

There is a reason for this distinction. Alcohol in moderation is relaxing and can be enjoyable to the senses. Most drugs, and at the doses that make them appealing for recreational use, impair the exercise and function of reason and the sense faculties that inform it. (Drunkenness is bad for the same reason.) Given how central and essential to humanity reason is, that's an incredibly important distinction.

dapangzi · 5 days ago

Logic does not follow to me.

Plenty of drugs, used in moderation, are also relaxing and can be enjoyable to the senses.

Alcohol, caffeine, nicotine, and marijuana products ARE drugs, not sure why people insist on making the distinction.

dapangzi commented on Google terminated my YouTube channel even thought I made no videos or used it · Posted by u/paulpauper

dapangzi · 5 days ago

My advice is to walk away, use the alternatives like FreeTube, Invidious, etc.

They don't work quite as well in my experience, but you don't have Daddy Google breathing down your neck.

Google doesn't care about you and will never scale their customer service solutions to address this issue, they won't even help people who lost access to their email accounts in any meaningful way.

dapangzi commented on Google terminated my YouTube channel even thought I made no videos or used it · Posted by u/paulpauper

KomoD · 6 days ago

> or use youtube without the channel?

log out

dapangzi · 5 days ago

I will say they have made it increasingly difficult to do that.

Behind VPN? "Log in to confirm you're not a bot."

Someone says the f-word or talks about a no-no topic? (oh no!) "Age restricted video, log in to prove your age."

I find the second one especially hilarious, given that I see borderline porn in the shorts section when I'm not logged in with no browser data for it to drum content up from, and that same screen displays to kids when they pull up YouTube.

"For the children" is always a lie, but it's so funny when it's that obvious.

All that said, I don't quite trust it for some reason, but I've been sandboxing FreeTube and using that, seems to work well generally.

dapangzi commented on Ask HN: Who is firing? (February 2026) · Posted by u/chalmovsky

dapangzi · 7 days ago

It is probably easier to ask who isn't.

dapangzi commented on We (As a Society) Peaked in the 90s chris.pagecord.com/we-as-... · Posted by u/stog

ChrisArchitect · 8 days ago

They didn't mean digital music production, they meant digital downloads/streaming of finished music products. As in later in the early 2000s and beyond iPods and mp3 players and then streaming changed everything as far as accessibility.

dapangzi · 7 days ago

That's the trouble isn't it? If we can't even agree on the meaning.

I didn't read it that way specifically because of the use of "you", which to me feels like an invocation of the audience or the royal "you" so to speak, to refer to musicians themselves, rather than the concept of digital streaming and distribution.

"Computers helped you make things louder, cleaner, faster...you still needed a band...or a mate that could actually play something..."

Does the streaming/digital industry no longer have a need for a mate that plays drums? I guess you can read it that way.

Maybe I'm the odd one out, but I read it as almost like a lamenting of the emergence of the "one man band" and cheap throwaway music production by the ease of creating digital recordings at home, and even replacing musicians in the broader music industry with digital replacements, which I also kind of disagree with as being necessarily a negative thing. Toro y Moi, Washed Out, etc., would not be possible without such technology, but the metal music production industry itself has largely replaced drummers with drum machines, not streaming and digital distribution companies.

BTW those of us on the internet earlier were downloading mp3s as soon as 1997 or 1998.

dapangzi commented on We (As a Society) Peaked in the 90s chris.pagecord.com/we-as-... · Posted by u/stog

Sharlin · 8 days ago

Tracker music was always a hobbyist thing, with a few exceptions. Not really relevant in the greater music scene.

But digitally produced music was of course a huge thing in the 90s. Countless genres of electronic music – techno, trance, house, whatever have you, all of that made on computers. And of course pop was almost all synth – digital synth – just like today.

dapangzi · 8 days ago

> Tracker music was always a hobbyist thing

I was specifically talking about end-to-end digital music production being used to "clean up" recordings per the article. Not whatever "scene" you are conjuring.

> Computers helped you make things louder, cleaner, faster.

For people with limited resources (i.e. indie musicians without huge budgets), digital multi-track recording was not democratized until the introduction of low-cost hard disk storage at sufficient capacity to allow digital multi-track recording at home, roughly around 2002~2003.

Of course I'm aware of synthesizers, etc. I was an electronic musician myself during this period, and I lived it. I had the gear racks, ADAT machines, etc.

We did not have the resources as independent musicians to use non-linear digital editing software broadly until storage became cheaper.

Again, a lot of that music was typically done with looping and sample hits arranged on a midi sequencer, similar to trackers, but with distributed infrastructure.

Listen to older KMFDM, for example, the looping really stands out due to the limited storage they had when arranging, they would arrange sample hits and loops as I was talking about above.

Musicians with studio backing and infinite money could afford giant digital productions suites and were using crude versions of Pro Tools by the early '90s, am well aware.

dapangzi commented on We (As a Society) Peaked in the 90s chris.pagecord.com/we-as-... · Posted by u/stog

dapangzi · 8 days ago

I was hoping this would be more fleshed out as an article, but the sentiment is understandable.

Want to throw some of my knowledge of digital music, as you called it out specifically.

In the late 90s most digitally arranged music production was relegated to trackers (think Amiga trackers) and sequencing samples and loops, because the storage simply didn't exist.

Then that would be committed to tape, sometimes on a 4-track, sometimes on studio-quality tape, sometimes on ADAT.

Fully digital music production like we have now was out of reach for most people until roughly the early-to-mid 2000s, when you see an explosion of people, even in local music scenes, quantizing drum parts and using virtual instruments (usually VST) that would normally require tens or even hundreds of thousands in hardware.

dapangzi commented on Show HN: I trained a 9M speech model to fix my Mandarin tones simedw.com/2026/01/31/ear... · Posted by u/simedw

simedw · 9 days ago

Thank for the great feedback!

I have just added sandhi support, please let me know if it's working better.

dapangzi · 8 days ago

Still having some issues that match my previous comment, I'll try to follow your blog and give more feedback as you work on it.

Will comment that the shorter phrases (2-4 characters long) were generally accurate at normal speed, but the longer sentences have issues.

Maybe focusing on the accuracy of the smaller phrases and then scaling that might be a good way to go, since those smaller phrases are returning better accuracy.

Again, really think this is a great initiative, want to see how it grows. :)