Interview with Dan Ingalls here where he talks about inventing BitBlt
www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102738237/
Readit Newslalalandland commented on 50th Anniversary of BitBLT mastodon.sdf.org/@fvzappa... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti
Lowercase E is unusual in the text. Is it a special teletype font?
Latest estimates I recall are that humans and our livestock together comprise over 90% of the total mass of land animals globally. All wild animals together are less than 10%.
The mental picture of a wild Earth on which humans live is now outdated. The Earth has become a human place, with essentially some open-air zoos containing the few wild animals we have chosen to not kill.
Insects comprise a total weight to about 1 billion tons.(1)
Which is roughly the same as the weight of all people and farm animals on Earth combined.
(1) https://www.jpost.com/environment-and-climate-change/article...
lalalandland commented on Stanley Jordan creates music with Solar System [video] youtube.com/watch?v=yfeTB... · Posted by u/lalalandland
Wow! Thanks for posting this.
Stanley Jordan is one of my favorite guitarists. I had no idea about his his ties to computer music, but according to Wikipedia he worked with Paul Lansky at Princeton. This in turn led me to stumble upon this two-part podcast hosted at Princeton Engineering featuring Jordan:
https://engineering.princeton.edu/news/2024/03/19/episode-1-...
This is part of a larger series called "Composers and Computers" -- https://engineering.princeton.edu/series/composers-computers...
The video I posted is an excerpt for this over 2 hour video.(1)
It is an amazing view into the mindset of a musical genius. He is extremely good at explaining how he thinks and how he explores the world of music.
There is some audio issue with the video, but it is worth watching.
lalalandland commented on Stanley Jordan creates music with Solar System [video] youtube.com/watch?v=yfeTB... · Posted by u/lalalandland
Musician Stanley Jordan program solar system in APL and Python with visuals in Blender to make a musical calendar
lalalandland commented on Giant catapult sends satellites into space spinlaunch.com/... · Posted by u/jv22222
I don't see how this will work. You need to launch through the entire atmosphere and still end up with orbital velocity. The only acceleration happens at the beginning so you must launch at speeds much higher than orbital speeds. Which in turn means heating will be insanely high as your highest speed is going to be at the highest drag. The satellite will heat up a lot more than one simply re-entering. Meaning a totally different design or a bulky fairing. Because sats aren't made to withstand that kind of heat. Also yes the forces will be extreme. They seem to be going for the fairing, but how does that reenter then?
I just don't see this happening tbh.
Besides, with spacex and reusability launch capacity is already more available and cheap enough than humanity needs.
Insane g-force in the spin up.
Reminds me of Gerald Bull who wanted to launch a satellite using a huge artillery piece.
lalalandland commented on In the belly of the MrBeast kevinmunger.substack.com/... · Posted by u/stafford_beer
For people confused like me on what intensification means, it means maximizing the amount of attention and interaction that occurs. On Youtube this would be the metrics that drive engagement, including views, likes, comments, shares, and watch time. The issue is that the content focuses on driving engagement at the expense of communicating ideas with coherence and depth, for example by sensationalizing or oversimplifying a complex issue (especially for things like political discourse focused on sound bites and emotional appeals, or with virtue signaling and outrage culture). I think the above commentor is right, in my opinion, intensification shapes our world into being very reactionary, with only a superficial understanding of issues, and platforms like Youtube Shorts and Tiktok take this to its furthest possible level.
The creators publication frequency is also an important factor. If you don't put out content at least once per week you fall off the recommended and lose a lot of views. Once your content is shallow, simple and without reflection, you are trapped in a hamster wheel of click bait vapidness.
lalalandland commented on Ghost artists on Spotify harpers.org/archive/2025/... · Posted by u/greenie_beans
One of the producers in the article describes making the music as “brain-numbing” and “pretty much completely joyless.” The process is described as “...I just write out charts while lying on my back on the couch,” he explained. “And then once we have a critical mass, they organize a session and we play them. And it’s usually just like, one take, one take, one take, one take. You knock out like fifteen in an hour or two.”
He's not a fake musician by any means. But I think he'd accept the work he creates for this being described as fake 'art' specifically. There's no thought, meaning, or passion injected into it. It's a conveyor belt. It's based on analytics. It's soulless.
So its an office job? I know people who makes this exact music described in the article and it's part of their daily work to earn a living as music producers. Other musicians play weddings for example. It's not fake. But you don't put your serious artist name on a track like for a chill muzak stream. Music is a product that fills many categories and I salute the ones that can find ways to earn a living doing with their passion. Some of the time you do a routine and other time you follow your dream
Quite a while ago, books became a taste that needs to be patiently acquired. Someone starting to read today is more likely to develop the taste by gradually easing into books that demand more and more. Say maybe Huxley -> Camus -> Wilde -> Dostoevsky.
Now that short clips are here, the same has happened to films. The uninitiated need to sit through Scorsese, Hitchcock, Wilder, Kubrick, Altman before attempting Fellini, Antonioni, Tarkovsky, Ozu, Resnais.
And by the way, someone who is naturally inclined to love films (or books) won't be affected, even today. Am I wrong? The way they are described here, I would crush these film students.
I usually prefer films over TV series because I find just these tropes tiring. I find TV series have quite inefficient story telling and spend most of its time trying to get me hooked to watch the next episode.