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Telephone Hold music sounds really bad. Mostly because it’s mapping complex instruments to a human throat. Many phone lines these days use CELP, Code-Excited Linear Prediction algorithms. Music breaks down in weird ways when you turn a piano into…speech.

LaurieWired

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133,445 Aufrufe • vor 3 Monaten •via X (Twitter)

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When you spend enough time in bomb shelters, you learn to get creative with how you pass the time. Some people scroll their phones. Some bring snacks. And some… bring instruments. Turns out even a bomb shelter can turn into a live music venue when Israelis decide it’s time for a jam session. 🎶 🎥 EliApterRazimor Chorolê daniel_ring

When you spend enough time in bomb shelters, you learn to get creative with how you pass the time. Some people scroll their phones. Some bring snacks. And some… bring instruments. Turns out even a bomb shelter can turn into a live music venue when Israelis decide it’s time for a jam session. 🎶 🎥 EliApterRazimor Chorolê daniel_ring

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There’s just about ~10 days left to make a submission to one of my favorite programming contests: The International Obfuscated C Code Contest! Highly encourage you to take a peek and enter, it really brings out some of the best programmers (and compiler wizards).

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SonnyBoy🇺🇸

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SilencedSirs◼️

76,507 Aufrufe • vor 7 Monaten

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👤when you think of felix, there are many different charms, but his voice… the voice 🐥ah, my voice… 👤unexpected-charm voice felix, you don’t really do that these days, do you? 🐥ah, when i was a rookie i used to make intros a lot, but as i kept doing it, it started to feel a bit embarrassing haha 👤well, it’s because felix is in his late 20s now, right? it’s a bit different compared to your early 20s

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Baboon's thoughts as music? As you already know, ELVIS has a BCI implant. This 400-channel device allows not only the reception but also the transmission of neural activity data. Although this data is complex, it can be interpreted in various ways. In this experiment, an algorithm converts baboon’s EEG into a MIDI signal that can be used with any virtual instrument - in this case, Ableton along with a simple instrument featuring an arpeggiator effect. The selected brain activity file is converted into a set of MIDI signals that activate specific notes. With adjustable quantization and harmony settings, it’s possible to create beautiful melodies. This setup allows the use of virtual instruments to express the thoughts and feelings of ELVIS in sound. So, the question is: does ELVIS need a record label?

ELVIS APE

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Unknown to many of you, before Mansa Plus, I was (feels weird saying I was, I still I’m) a musician. @raysmanifests was my music manager! We gave it our all! But guess what, it didn’t work out! Put in a lot of money, recording music, making videos, pushing the songs, but the result was next to zero. On my music YouTube Channel I have under 1400 subscribers! @willyskihumba has had his days as a musician and a Dj, but I will let him tell his story! To an outsider, that looks like failure, and for sure it is failure! However, it was that experience that we used to build Mansa Plus, or rather prepped us to handle what was coming. When we were busy begging people to subscribe and watch our content, it didn’t feel weird because we had been doing it throughout our music days. When we tried to work with certain people and they shut doors on us, we were in familiar territory. When we went months without pay but showed up everyday, that was the norm in our music days! When some people made fun of me and my accent, come on, we were already used to it! And when it came down to work, I was already used to being in front of the camera… I guess as Jay says, it’s not failure it’s a lesson. I’m very proud of what we are doing in this space, and I’m even more proud of every moment that has read us here! It really is in the journey and who you journey with. Luckily, I get to do this with two good friends who are super humans when it comes to their jobs! To all my friends, family and people that I don’t even know who watch our content, and buy our services, know that I’m super grateful. Thank you for making this moment possible! #MansaPlus to the World

Unknown to many of you, before Mansa Plus, I was (feels weird saying I was, I still I’m) a musician. @raysmanifests was my music manager! We gave it our all! But guess what, it didn’t work out! Put in a lot of money, recording music, making videos, pushing the songs, but the result was next to zero. On my music YouTube Channel I have under 1400 subscribers! @willyskihumba has had his days as a musician and a Dj, but I will let him tell his story! To an outsider, that looks like failure, and for sure it is failure! However, it was that experience that we used to build Mansa Plus, or rather prepped us to handle what was coming. When we were busy begging people to subscribe and watch our content, it didn’t feel weird because we had been doing it throughout our music days. When we tried to work with certain people and they shut doors on us, we were in familiar territory. When we went months without pay but showed up everyday, that was the norm in our music days! When some people made fun of me and my accent, come on, we were already used to it! And when it came down to work, I was already used to being in front of the camera… I guess as Jay says, it’s not failure it’s a lesson. I’m very proud of what we are doing in this space, and I’m even more proud of every moment that has read us here! It really is in the journey and who you journey with. Luckily, I get to do this with two good friends who are super humans when it comes to their jobs! To all my friends, family and people that I don’t even know who watch our content, and buy our services, know that I’m super grateful. Thank you for making this moment possible! #MansaPlus to the World

Mak Mansa

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how txt is turning into a group of 5 choi soobins ⭐️ 🐰 taehyun said “even trivial things are really fun and make me happy these days and even if something bad happens, i don’t get angry” 🐰 that’s right, all of txt is turning into confucius and mencius (philosophers) 🐰 nobody gets angry or mad at anything 🧸 because getting angry might get the feeling out of your system in the moment but it always makes you feel bad in the long run 🐰 i don’t have the energy to express it even when i’m angry so i always just quietly listen 🐰 whenever we’d hear bad news, i’d be quiet and still but the 4 of them would always be like “oh!! why!!” up until last year 🧸 that’s right that’s right 🐰 but these days, if we get bad news, all 5 of us just stay still and quiet 🐰 it’s not that we’re all quiet because we’re in a bad mood but it’s more like a “hmm okay~” 🧸 “that can happen~” 🐰 we’re turning into 5 choi soobins recently 🧸 things are really fun these days 🐰 that’s right

how txt is turning into a group of 5 choi soobins ⭐️ 🐰 taehyun said “even trivial things are really fun and make me happy these days and even if something bad happens, i don’t get angry” 🐰 that’s right, all of txt is turning into confucius and mencius (philosophers) 🐰 nobody gets angry or mad at anything 🧸 because getting angry might get the feeling out of your system in the moment but it always makes you feel bad in the long run 🐰 i don’t have the energy to express it even when i’m angry so i always just quietly listen 🐰 whenever we’d hear bad news, i’d be quiet and still but the 4 of them would always be like “oh!! why!!” up until last year 🧸 that’s right that’s right 🐰 but these days, if we get bad news, all 5 of us just stay still and quiet 🐰 it’s not that we’re all quiet because we’re in a bad mood but it’s more like a “hmm okay~” 🧸 “that can happen~” 🐰 we’re turning into 5 choi soobins recently 🧸 things are really fun these days 🐰 that’s right

💬

87,573 Aufrufe • vor 1 Jahr

what happens when a Russian Hacker walks into a cafeteria?

what happens when a Russian Hacker walks into a cafeteria?

LaurieWired

69,536 Aufrufe • vor 1 Jahr

It’s been a strange and rough week on the international stage, locally with criminal doxxing - and I’ve had my own bumps. I like to sit in the dark and listen to music when I want to calm down and realize whatever is going on - things will be ok. This is the complete slow section of Beethoven’s 8th Piano Sonata. Everyone familiar with classical era music will know it already. People who don’t listen to this music probably have heard it on TV or excerpts in a film. It’s a good movement to teach someone ‘Rondo form’ because it’s so easy to follow. You will hear the main theme right up front for over a minute - and then two more times. In between you will hear two departing episodes that exist to make the movement more interesting. But this is very easy to follow, is beautiful - and it’s a courtesy of a great composer to his audience. And if you’ve had a rough day or week - it will hit the spot.

It’s been a strange and rough week on the international stage, locally with criminal doxxing - and I’ve had my own bumps. I like to sit in the dark and listen to music when I want to calm down and realize whatever is going on - things will be ok. This is the complete slow section of Beethoven’s 8th Piano Sonata. Everyone familiar with classical era music will know it already. People who don’t listen to this music probably have heard it on TV or excerpts in a film. It’s a good movement to teach someone ‘Rondo form’ because it’s so easy to follow. You will hear the main theme right up front for over a minute - and then two more times. In between you will hear two departing episodes that exist to make the movement more interesting. But this is very easy to follow, is beautiful - and it’s a courtesy of a great composer to his audience. And if you’ve had a rough day or week - it will hit the spot.

FischerKing

91,256 Aufrufe • vor 3 Monaten

This C code is disgusting. But also really, really clever. This contest (IOCCC) has been breaking minds since 1984. Time to find out: - Can gov-grade tools defeat unreadable code? - Hiding Salmon in Unicode is not very effective - Why did I just get Rickrolled?

This C code is disgusting. But also really, really clever. This contest (IOCCC) has been breaking minds since 1984. Time to find out: - Can gov-grade tools defeat unreadable code? - Hiding Salmon in Unicode is not very effective - Why did I just get Rickrolled?

LaurieWired

38,411 Aufrufe • vor 10 Monaten

The Ghost in the Machine: How Player Pianos Sparked Protests, and What They Reveal About Our AI Future In the early 1900s, the player piano was a sensation. These self-playing instruments used perforated paper rolls fed through pneumatic mechanisms to reproduce complex piano performances automatically. By the 1910s to mid-1920s, they outsold ordinary pianos in many markets, filling American parlors, saloons, and theaters with ragtime, marches, and classical pieces. Great artists like Sergei Rachmaninoff and Ignace Paderewski cut rolls, preserving their interpretations for generations. It was automation that brought “live” music into every home, without the need for lessons or live performers. Yet this marvel triggered intense resistance. Composers and musicians saw it as an existential threat. In his fiery 1906 essay “The Menace of Mechanical Music,” bandleader and composer John Philip Sousa warned that player pianos and phonographs would “substitute machinery for the human soul.” He predicted the death of amateur music-making: children would stop learning instruments, families would stop gathering around the piano, and music would lose its emotional depth. Sousa testified before Congress, helping drive the 1909 Copyright Act, which created compulsory licensing so composers could earn royalties from mechanical reproductions, a landmark victory born from protest. As “talkies” and radio displaced theater orchestras in the late 1920s, the American Federation of Musicians (AFM) launched the Music Defense League in 1930. Funded by a tax on members, the union spent hundreds of thousands of dollars (millions in today’s dollars) on a national advertising blitz. Dramatic newspaper ads depicted sinister robots replacing human musicians, with slogans like “Is Art to Have a Tyrant?” and warnings that “canned music” would destroy jobs and degrade culture. The campaign targeted not just records but all mechanical music, including player pianos in public spaces. While there were no Luddite-style riots smashing machines (player pianos were mostly expensive home devices), the opposition was fierce: boycotts, lobbying, lawsuits, and cultural shaming of anyone who chose “the robot” over living performers. The protests did not kill the player piano. Record sales, radio, and the Great Depression did that by the early 1930s. But the episode left a lasting legacy: new copyright rules, heightened awareness of technology’s impact on artists, and a template for how workers respond to automation. We are living through the same story with AI and robotics. Generative models now compose music, write screenplays, generate art, and even perform. Musicians, writers, and visual artists are protesting in eerily familiar ways: lawsuits over unlicensed training data (the modern equivalent of the player-piano royalty fight), demands for “human-made” labels, strikes by Hollywood writers and actors, and public campaigns against “AI slop.” Fears echo Sousa’s exactly: loss of soul, authenticity, jobs, and human connection. “The robot is coming” ads of 1930 could run unchanged today, just swap “canned music” for “AI-generated content.” History’s lesson is nuanced. The player piano did not end music; it briefly coexisted with live performance before giving way to richer ecosystems. Rolls by legends now serve as priceless archives. Protests forced legal compromises that protected creators while allowing innovation. Yet real displacement happened. Thousands of theater musicians lost steady work, and the cultural shift toward passive consumption was real. Today’s AI moment carries higher stakes: it threatens not just one profession but broad swaths of cognitive and creative labor. Robots and AI could augment surgeons, drivers, teachers, and artists, or render many obsolete. The player-piano saga shows that raw Luddism rarely wins, We cannot stop technological progress, The music plays on. The question is: who, or what, plays it?

The Ghost in the Machine: How Player Pianos Sparked Protests, and What They Reveal About Our AI Future In the early 1900s, the player piano was a sensation. These self-playing instruments used perforated paper rolls fed through pneumatic mechanisms to reproduce complex piano performances automatically. By the 1910s to mid-1920s, they outsold ordinary pianos in many markets, filling American parlors, saloons, and theaters with ragtime, marches, and classical pieces. Great artists like Sergei Rachmaninoff and Ignace Paderewski cut rolls, preserving their interpretations for generations. It was automation that brought “live” music into every home, without the need for lessons or live performers. Yet this marvel triggered intense resistance. Composers and musicians saw it as an existential threat. In his fiery 1906 essay “The Menace of Mechanical Music,” bandleader and composer John Philip Sousa warned that player pianos and phonographs would “substitute machinery for the human soul.” He predicted the death of amateur music-making: children would stop learning instruments, families would stop gathering around the piano, and music would lose its emotional depth. Sousa testified before Congress, helping drive the 1909 Copyright Act, which created compulsory licensing so composers could earn royalties from mechanical reproductions, a landmark victory born from protest. As “talkies” and radio displaced theater orchestras in the late 1920s, the American Federation of Musicians (AFM) launched the Music Defense League in 1930. Funded by a tax on members, the union spent hundreds of thousands of dollars (millions in today’s dollars) on a national advertising blitz. Dramatic newspaper ads depicted sinister robots replacing human musicians, with slogans like “Is Art to Have a Tyrant?” and warnings that “canned music” would destroy jobs and degrade culture. The campaign targeted not just records but all mechanical music, including player pianos in public spaces. While there were no Luddite-style riots smashing machines (player pianos were mostly expensive home devices), the opposition was fierce: boycotts, lobbying, lawsuits, and cultural shaming of anyone who chose “the robot” over living performers. The protests did not kill the player piano. Record sales, radio, and the Great Depression did that by the early 1930s. But the episode left a lasting legacy: new copyright rules, heightened awareness of technology’s impact on artists, and a template for how workers respond to automation. We are living through the same story with AI and robotics. Generative models now compose music, write screenplays, generate art, and even perform. Musicians, writers, and visual artists are protesting in eerily familiar ways: lawsuits over unlicensed training data (the modern equivalent of the player-piano royalty fight), demands for “human-made” labels, strikes by Hollywood writers and actors, and public campaigns against “AI slop.” Fears echo Sousa’s exactly: loss of soul, authenticity, jobs, and human connection. “The robot is coming” ads of 1930 could run unchanged today, just swap “canned music” for “AI-generated content.” History’s lesson is nuanced. The player piano did not end music; it briefly coexisted with live performance before giving way to richer ecosystems. Rolls by legends now serve as priceless archives. Protests forced legal compromises that protected creators while allowing innovation. Yet real displacement happened. Thousands of theater musicians lost steady work, and the cultural shift toward passive consumption was real. Today’s AI moment carries higher stakes: it threatens not just one profession but broad swaths of cognitive and creative labor. Robots and AI could augment surgeons, drivers, teachers, and artists, or render many obsolete. The player-piano saga shows that raw Luddism rarely wins, We cannot stop technological progress, The music plays on. The question is: who, or what, plays it?

Brian Roemmele

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