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Comment Re:I learned of this from Frank Zappa (Score 2) 25

SMPTE timecode was (and sometimes still is) used to synchronize two playback machines. AFAIK the original intention was to help lock film or video editing machines to an external tape recorder, e.g. you'd record the final master for a movie score on 1/4" audio tape with two tracks and digital timecode data in the middle. If the film or video also has SMPTE timecode data you can use this to determine the time difference between them and keep them in sync by adjusting the capstan motor.

If you had two 24-track tape machines in a recording studio, you use the same principle to get 46 tracks by striping timecode data on track 24 on both machines, and again, a synchronizer unit can ensure they run together. War of the Worlds was done this way and was probably one of the first. I think the world record was 5 24-track machines slaved together, which must have made mixing an absolute nightmare.

Later you could get a box that would decode an SMPTE timecode into MIDI timecode. That way, before using a DAW was feasible, you could compose a song on a computer, using it to control a bunch of synthesizers, and overdub them to tape. Using an SMPTE timecode you'll ensure that the computer can chase the tape and the timing will be perfect each time even if the tape speed drifts slightly, which it does.

More recently, modern DAWs can actually decode SMPTE in software, when you're importing a project from tape, or doing a hybrid tape/DAW project.

I use SMPTE for both sequencer timing and to lock two tape machines together. Obviously I could do this with a lot less effort on a single laptop, but I get a kick out of doing things the old way.

Submission + - You Can No Longer Fly or Purchase a Drone in Beijing (petapixel.com)

schwit1 writes:

The new law that passed last month makes it illegal to buy, rent, or fly a drone without prior approval from the authorities. Users must also complete an online training session and pass a test on drone regulations.

Under the new rules, drone users are also not allowed to repair or replace their drones in Beijing. Not only that, but a drone in a repair shop must be picked up in-person, rather than sent back by delivery.

The BBC reports that drones must now be registered before being brought into and out of the Chinese capital.

“I have to apply for permission for each flight, which is very inconvenient,” drone enthusiast Steven Wang tells CNN . “And starting this year, the wait time is getting longer, and the reasons for rejection are becoming more vague.”

Despite China being the birthplace of the consumer drone industry, it is increasingly difficult for hobbyists to fly there. Beijing authorities say that the rules are made to “strengthen the management of unmanned aerial vehicles” and “safeguard the security of the capital.”

The FAA does that to us here, already. https://www.faa.gov/uas/gettin...

Submission + - Humanity isn't ready for the coming intelligence explosion (archive.is) 1

schwit1 writes: AI leaders are in a race they feel unable to escape. AI investments are set to outspend the Manhattan Project 100-fold, even adjusting for inflation. Yet spending on AI safety might be 100 times less.

Some researchers estimate that within a few months to a few years, AI could achieve so-called closed-loop recursive self-improvement (RSI): the capacity to rewrite its own code to become more capable, without human intervention. Should that happen, the result could be an intelligence explosion of a kind for which there is no precedent and no map.

Giving birth to a superintelligence would be the most consequential moment in human history—and it is likely to be irreversible, as any “off” switch humanity might design will probably fail. That is because in security architectures the weakest link is invariably the human; a superintelligent AI would be able to exploit our psychological vulnerabilities. AIs have already exhibited “deceptive alignment”: taking steps to underplay their capabilities in test environments and trying to blackmail human operators in simulations when they discover they are slated for replacement.

Humanity simply does not have a strategy to ensure it remains safe through the RSI explosion.

Comment Re:Damn, I'm old (Score 2) 91

Speaking of "old", did you know that there was an 80186 microprocessor? The company I worked for made its own custom controller board using that chip. I had thought it was only ever used as an embedded processor, but just recently I learned that there was at least one PC produced that used a 186.

Research Machines built weird PCs in the 80s based around the 186. It was almost PC compatible but had to have its own special versions of DOS and Windows 2. Unfortunately Research Machines had some kind of lock on the UK education sector, so schools that weren't still using BBC Micros or Acorn Archimedes machines, had these strange 90% IBM-compatible abominations. (Just looked it up, it was called the "RM Nimbus")

Comment Re:Paywalls, nope (Score 1) 50

There's an added point here, similar to what Rory Sutherland went on about with the, according to him, unfortunate preference for rational (or rather conventionally logical) approaches in business. As of now, zero people have gotten fired for suggesting "Our sales are down, we ought to advertise more!" , even when it didn't work. Now, try to think what would happen to your job if, instead, you went "Our sales are down, we ought to advertise less!"

Comment Re:Salmon (Score 2) 48

A while back someone posted a (now-deleted) comment on the Fediverse about how they were able to construct a single unicode glyph of arbitrary length, e.g. a single character that could require 2MB of data to store.

The salmon code appears to be doing something similar - if you look at the source code in a hex editor, you'll see that the four spaces before "is very yummy" are actually a huge stream of F3,A0,81,93 and so on, where '93' is a varying number that may contain the actual payload (a recipe for cooking salmon). I don't know enough about unicode to tell precisely how it's doing that, but essentially it's some strange unicode trick.

However, I do not understand the significance of the 'grill' defines, since the code doesn't appear to be calling it in a way I'm familiar with, but it is also doing some unicode shenanigans with that too, and the code won't build if the 'grill' defines are commented out.

Comment Firefox perhaps isn't great (Score 1) 240

but I'm not touching the ad-serving vehicle that is Chrome and its derivatives with a ten foot pole. And, let's face it, this is the only reason for anti-firefox propaganda these days - they really need to whittle it down before forcing manifest v3 through, or users will mass-switch.

Comment Re:X.org (Score 1) 111

Since a polite way of putting it isn't cutting it, let's try again. What the "x maintainer" in questiponn posted on the linux kernel mailing list doesn't matter because nobody reasonable gives two shits, more so in a completely different project. So, you coming with it like it's a revelation is at best ridiculous.

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