Surprised Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid isn't in there somewhere...
Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science" is not on the list.
Readit Newsmfragin commented on 100 Or so Books that shaped a Century of Science (1999) web.mnstate.edu/schwartz/... · Posted by u/Luc
mfragin commented on Making synthesized sounds more acoustic nathan.ho.name/posts/acou... · Posted by u/beardicus
Missing: in polyphonic instruments, notes affect other notes. For instance, on a piano, a staccato C2 by itself is a totally different beast from a staccato C2 played while the dampers are off other keys, from a haunting reverb from notes in a higher register to deep overtones from notes in a lower register.
Most simulated pianos these days add the extra harmonics when the sustain pedal is pressed, but very few seem to get the harmonics from the dampers being lifted per-key; PianoTeq gets this right.
I got a free piano from a lady that paid 25k for it back in 1980. Mice had lived in it while in storage, but I could tell it was in good shape.
Spent a summer going down the rabbit hole of tuning it myself. I found the Entropy Piano Tuner app to be quite helpful. Took me weeks to get it tuned to where I liked it.
My digital Yamaha doesn't even come close to capturing the resonance you get on a real piano. I find it hard to play digital pianos for anything other than simple melodies.
Entropy website: http://piano-tuner.org/
mfragin commented on Life Is Better Without the Internet theatlantic.com/ideas/arc... · Posted by u/voisin
It's like alcohol. some people tolerate it well, others not so much. For me, the internet makes life better. ymmv
I'm too drunk to comment on that. And I'm online!
Seriously, I feel the same way. As a former teacher, I remember when kids started having smart phones and you'd hear a notification go off in class. Other kids were like, "what was that?" The kid in question only wanted to look down and see what it said.
I soon started joking that the notification was saying, "YOU MATTER!" As if that student was so important that he/she/they could distract a class of 25-30 students.
Kind of like the first time I heard someone talking loudly in a college hallway on their cell phone. I thought it was such a social faux-pax.
Nowadays it's pretty normal for anyone to loudly talk that way to their phone. We only get concerned if there's no phone.
mfragin commented on The More Days You Live, the More Things You Know robkhenderson.com/p/the-m... · Posted by u/paulpauper
To a point, sure. Fluid vs Crystallized.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluid_and_crystallized_intelli...
mfragin commented on Video catches dogs ripping cars to shreds at Houston dealership autoblog.com/2023/11/27/d... · Posted by u/RadixDLT
True story: I adopted a pit bull mix (mostly beagle, I'd guess) and she was a wonderful dog. One day she chased a rabbit (in Conejos county, so yeah, rabbits were pretty common) that ran under our car. It drove her nuts trying to get at it. She left teeth marks all around the right front passenger tire well.
We loved her so much we left it like that. It's a great conversational piece for fellow dog lovers.
Rabbits were so common that once we took our car in to have the oil changed. The guy opened the hood and a rabbit jumped out. He asked us if it was our pet....
For what it's worth, I've been into hardware and software synthesizers for a while and in the many many discussions I've seen around MIDI controllers and keyboards, I can't recall latency ever coming up. As far as I can tell, basically all MIDI hardware is fast enough that musicians don't seem to notice or complain.
Just wait until midi 2.0 catches on! /sarcasm
I once recorded an album and had to deal with latency issues. This was way back using an IBM Aptiva and Magix music software (because it was pretty affordable). I spent so much time trying to figure out why my vocals were behind the beat. Eventually I worked out the correction factor to be 1.002433. So that's what I named the album!
Since then, I'm glad that latency problems are much less of a problem. Nothing worse than a little latency if you have ears like Donald Fagan. :-)
mfragin commented on After 151 years, Popular Science will no longer offer a magazine theverge.com/2023/11/27/2... · Posted by u/sohkamyung
Vinyl records, cassette tapes, and CDs will also be unused in 100 years. Cassettes and VHS will by then be unreadable, just as most floppies are now. Hell, in 100 years, there won’t even be the mp3 codec anymore.
You don’t need to tell me that people deliberately choose dead trees; I am one of them: I collect books and have more than most collectors. Same goes for vinyl.
The writing is on the wall, however. In 100 years it won’t be a thing, just as fountain pens and wax seals aren’t today.
Yes, they will still exist, and yes, people into whatever type of historical reenactment that is will still have them, but there will be no industry around them like there is now.
Yeah I understand your point, but vinyl is kinda sacred.
I mean, of all the things you mentioned, it's by far the most likely to still be usable in the future. Even in a post-apocalyptic world people might figure out how to play vinyl. MP3s? Not a chance.
Full disclosure: I never liked cassettes. Oh, and I made the mistake of choosing Beta over VHS....
This reminds me of https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-19343140
I am totally unqualified to judge this current topic [except for a degree in Biology], but I'm just curious if the "foldiscope" was successful or not.
mfragin commented on My toddler loves planes, so I built her a radar jacobbartlett.substack.co... · Posted by u/jakey_bakey
On the other hand, if you want maximum realism, everything should fade continuously from when it is drawn.
The underlying technology being imitated here is a slowly decaying phosphor.
And this is why I still hang out here, after abandoning nearly everything else.
I love how a discussion like this can occur here and there's no flaming or egos getting hurt. When you post a labor of love like this, it's great to see the reaction on HN.
I spend a lot of time trying to decide what to do with old tech in my volunteer gig. We have old Univac "dumb" terminals and I feel the need to plug them in and see if they still work. I come here for re-charging.
I think emulating old hardware is fascinating. Am I the only one who watches old media just to hopefully get a glimpse of the past?
mfragin commented on A game about staring into the eyes of a stranger stranger.video/... · Posted by u/underanalyzer