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rmxt commented on I spent my career in tech, but wasn’t prepared for its effect on my kids   washingtonpost.com/news/p... · Posted by u/ALee
rayiner · 9 years ago
It's a level-headed article. Parenting, like almost nothing else, turns normal, intelligent, educated people into nutters. A rational, evidence-based conversation about screen time, breastfeeding, pregnancy, birth, education, and diet is increasingly impossible to have, especially with millennial parents.

I just got my four year old an iPhone (with a data plan, because she realized she didn't have wifi in the car). It's great! She can text me emojis and Digital Touch messages, and Facetime me at work whenever she wants. It's fine: https://www.theguardian.com/science/head-quarters/2017/jan/0....

rmxt · 9 years ago
If your takeaway from your link was that "it's fine" and not "that further research is necessary"... you are going one step further than the article.

I can understand why people don't want screen time when their kids are toddlers -- you only get to raise your kids once. If the jury is out on whether or not "screentime" is bad, some parents err on the side of caution. Regardless, kids are malleable enough that any "familiarity gap" that the "iPhone user from age 2" has over the "iPhone user from age 6" has will likely be near zero within a few months at that age.

What benefits have you found your child to have derived from relatively early smartphone use beyond being able to have access to their parents at any time during the day?

My personal take is that, as with all things, moderation is key.

rmxt commented on Did the Intercept bungle the NSA leak?   washingtonpost.com/blogs/... · Posted by u/utternerd
vultour · 9 years ago
He never said he was fit for a top secret clearance. Her Twitter profile should've been an instant disqualification from any sort of security clearance.
rmxt · 9 years ago
Nor did I say that the poster here was fit or unfit. I speculated about what two extreme opinion holders would say to one another.

My point was that polarizing the discourse and reducing the other side to "just came out of the psych ward" does absolutely nothing to further reasonable arguments.

rmxt commented on Did the Intercept bungle the NSA leak?   washingtonpost.com/blogs/... · Posted by u/utternerd
rmxt · 9 years ago
Says the person linking to "informationliberation dot com". Pot, meet kettle.

Sure her twitter profile is highly politically charged and should likely have made her unfit for clearance, but citing that as evidence that she should be institutionalized is ridiculous. She'd likely say the same about you given your proclivity for "informationliberation". Where does that leave us for discourse?

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rmxt commented on Get started making music   learningmusic.ableton.com... · Posted by u/bbgm
TheOtherHobbes · 9 years ago
It's pretty easy to get the grid idea, but when you start trying to do anything more complicated Ableton turns out to be a mess, with many limitations and arbitrary weirdnesses.

E.g. you can't send MIDI sysex out of Live (except to the Push 2 controller). That kills it for all kinds of hardware automation and advanced synth programming.

Live has no concept of a mono track, so it wastes a lot of DSP resources processing effects and mixes in stereo for no reason.

There's no simple hybrid clip arranger mode, which is something most other DAWs can do.

MIDI clip files come with an audio preview. The clips aren't associated with any drum sounds. So you hear the preview, think "I like that...", load it, and then you have to spend half an hour picking the right drum sounds for it.

And so on. I've really tried to like working with Live, but there are just too many design decisions that make no sense for it be to anything other than frustrating.

rmxt · 9 years ago
What does "hybrid clip" mean? Audio + MIDI in the same track? Live's arrangement view + session view in the same screen?
rmxt commented on Get started making music   learningmusic.ableton.com... · Posted by u/bbgm
whiddershins · 9 years ago
Yes! So many examples of why.

What if I want the sound of rustling leaves to come and go across the course of a song?

What if I wanted my piece to happen over a drone tone similar in function to a tamboura or a constantly feeding back electric guitar?

What if I wanted to have another sort of loop and while playing it back, experiment with different tempos against it to see what sounds right?

And a zillion other things.

rmxt · 9 years ago
You can turn off auto-warp on audio tracks by default globally, and you can disable warp on a per clip basis as you go.

In your specific case... disable warping on your ambient track, line it up against your warped/synced "another sort of loop" in arrangement view, and then change the master tempo of the track until you find out what you want in terms of different tempos. (This is off the top of my head, and without the program in front of me. Apologies if it's vague.)

Live can definitely function as a "dumb" multitrack recorder that lets you do those things -- but, by default it has all the tempo/beat/quantize options turned on.

I saw your edited post above... I think people are reacting negatively to your criticisms because they're a bit harsh, and, I personally think it's shooting the messenger (Live). You can do the things you want to do in Live... but by default out of the box, it's not what's it designed for. Live lowers the barrier entry to making sound... the people/users cranking out 4-4 120bpm tracks likely wouldn't be making anything had there not been Live. If you don't want to call that sound art or music, that's on you. To many people, that's still music, and music they might not have created otherwise.

EDIT: Just saw your other post here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14300672) with some more specific criticisms. I feel your pain. You obviously already know how to do the thing I'm mentioning above, and are referring to more complicated scenarios. Thanks for sharing.

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rmxt commented on Get started making music   learningmusic.ableton.com... · Posted by u/bbgm
whiddershins · 9 years ago
Ableton Live is my main daw. I use it every day, generally for hours, and for a wide variety of purposes.

The most depressing thing about ableton is made obvious in two seconds of messing with that tutorial. A complete disregard for music in the sense of pushing boundaries of time, or doing things that are not tied to any sort of grid, and the sense of music as an emotive form.

So many aspects of music are very annoying or borderline impossible to do in ableton. Yet in all these years, and with so many installations, they just never addressed those issues. Instead they vaguely pretend as if music that would require features they don't have is radically experimental. Which might become true if so many people learn music only through using their software.

Seriously, Ableton. Stop pretending making music is clicking on and off in little boxes. It's embarrassing.

--

Edited to take out the "art" part and put in a couple of more specific criticisms.

rmxt · 9 years ago
Hate to be a pedant... but I'm not sure any one person gets to define what "music in the art sense" even is.

Yes, Ableton is rigid. Yes, Ableton favors certain musical styles over others. Yes, Ableton, here and in their design of Live, may just be giving lip service to anything beyond rigid song structure, tempo and dynamic changes, etc. Yes, Ableton loves their little boxes.

But, I find it hard to believe that Ableton has a "complete disregard for music in the art sense." If "art" inherently means "unquantifiability" or pure "aesthetics", then sure, session view Live might not be your best bet. Regardless, arrangement view is basically the same as Pro Tools as far as I can tell/remember from what I've used of Pro Tools.

What is Live missing for you?

rmxt commented on Why Chinatown Produce Is Cheap (2016)   saveur.com/chinatown-prod... · Posted by u/bilifuduo
Indy_Dh · 9 years ago
> "and no sales tax ofcourse wink wink"

Actually in CA, many groceries are not subject to sales tax, just FYI. I'm not sure where the distinction is drawn, but it seems like the less processed the food the less likely it will be taxed.

rmxt · 9 years ago
Not sure why this is downvoted. California, like many other jurisdictions, seems to make a distinction between groceries/"raw" foods, and "prepared foods" when it comes to sales taxes. Unprepared foods are generally exempt from sales tax, while store-prepared foods are not exempt. E.g. an unsliced bagel in NY is untaxed, but a sliced bagel can/must be taxed. Fruit and vegetables likely fall into the untaxed category.

From Wikipedia: In grocery stores, unprepared food items are not taxed but vitamins and all other items are. Ready-to-eat hot foods, whether sold by supermarkets or other vendors, are taxed. Restaurant bills are taxed. As an exception, hot beverages and bakery items are tax-exempt if and only if they are for take-out and are not sold with any other hot food. If consumed on the seller's premises, such items are taxed like restaurant meals. All other food is exempt from sales tax.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sales_and_use_taxes_in_Califor...

rmxt commented on Man Fined $500 for Crime of Writing 'I Am an Engineer' in an Email to the Gov't   motherboard.vice.com/en_u... · Posted by u/runesoerensen
echion · 9 years ago
He clearly would. Just doing the things is deemed "engineering", even if he called it "monading".
rmxt · 9 years ago
Using the title "engineer" in conjunction with "submitting the critique and calculations [...] to members of the public for consideration and modification [...] of traffic signals", I believe, is the critical part here.

If he had merely submitted the "critique and calculations" for "consideration" as a concerned citizen, he would have not gotten a fine. Simply put, he called himself an engineer and suggested that public infrastructure be changed. In Oregon, when you're not licensed by the state, you can't use the title "Engineer", and you definitely don't want to use it while trying to suggest modifications to public infrastructure.

I'm not equating the two in terms of "I believe both situations are completely just"... but doing what he did is akin to a thief walking himself into the police station. The purpose of the Board of Engineers in most states is not to decide what is "good engineering practice" and what is "bad engineering practice", it's to regulate licensure and set the bar for who is qualified to be an "Engineer" in the eyes of the state. He mis-navigated the American system, for better or worse, and paid a fine that is meant to dissuade people from doing things like this:

http://laist.com/2016/01/30/fake_civil_engineers_may_have_bu...

u/rmxt

KarmaCake day1139April 15, 2013View Original