News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

jamesjolliffe

Re:Polyend releases the Tracker firmware source code on Monday November 02, 2026 @11:25PM (#50348051)
I thought their competitor was M8 tracker, so nice to hear about Synthstrom, thanks! Glad we have a growing space for making things that make music!
Re:Polyend releases the Tracker firmware source code on Monday November 02, 2026 @10:01PM (#50347480)
Very smart move. Open-source your project. Get more nerds invested in your gear and its legacy, and crowd-source feature development.

Well done, Polyend! Godspeed, and looking forward to seeing how this develops.

Re:A Man from the Future: Why Johnny Can't Stop Abstracting on Monday October 26, 2026 @06:57PM (#50252348)
My apologies, I was skimming initially and, from just the headings it appeared to fit that pattern I've seen everywhere lately.

I agree with you that upon closer reading, this hypothetical JVN isn't arguing for a ban, but you could certainly read

> He goes on to say that a ban would have to be worldwide to work

> What safeguard remains? Apparently only day-to-day — or perhaps year-to-year — opportunistic measures, a long sequence of small, correct decisions. [...]

and

> The only safety possible is relative, and it lies in an intelligent exercise of day-to-day judgment.

as an argument for regulation.

And it does feel like a doomer narrative.

> For progress there is no cure. Any attempt to find automatically safe channels for the present explosive variety of progress must lead to frustration.

Also, while we glorify JVN's intellect, let's not forget that all his reasoning resulted in him publicly arguing for the nuclear annihilation of a vast country of people.

Re:A Man from the Future: Why Johnny Can't Stop Abstracting on Monday October 26, 2026 @04:32PM (#50250508)
Article spends the first 95% establishing JVN as a mythologically intelligent person. Then the last paragraph suggesting he would want to ban AI.

So much content out there atm nudging very hard for AI regulation.

Re:AUGUSTOSFACES on Wednesday September 23, 2026 @11:43PM (#49825989)
Does anyone else find these photos really relaxing to look at?
Re:Elektron Machinedrum in the Browser on Monday September 21, 2026 @11:20AM (#49788438)
Also, by god, the step numbers are hard to read if you want to mess around with sequencing your own patterns.

I'm assuming that's just authentic to the UX of the original unit, but since this is such a cool tool to play around with, it might be nice to have the option of a "digital" or "high contrast" theme which optimized UX color choices for legibility.

Also, the synth/emulation sounds great (on my laptop speakers, at least).

Re:Elektron Machinedrum in the Browser on Monday September 21, 2026 @11:11AM (#49788335)
Dude. No way.

Way cool. Yes!

But genuinely, thank you!

Re:I wanna live an NPC life on Wednesday September 02, 2026 @04:57PM (#49542455)
I don't know if I fully agree with this analysis, but I really appreciate the argument for emphasizing these values.
Re:How would you know whether an ancient culture had zero? on Monday August 31, 2026 @04:58AM (#49507294)
Is this the perfect clickbait title for nerd sniping?

One of the best I can recall.

Re:Almost no skill required to cook a steak on Thursday August 06, 2026 @02:33PM (#49200515)
Lol, I'm not sure the author expected to set off an army of nerds arguing how difficult it is to cook a proper steak.

God I, totally unironically, love HN.

Tangential, BUT, here is a grid map of ARDA from a (M)ulti (U)ser (D)ungeon text game from the 90s that you can still play: https://mume.yllemo.com/lib/exe/fetch.php?cache=&media=maps:...

You can literally still connect to this game from your terminal: telnet mume.org 4040 IIRC.

When I was a teenager, a buddy and I printed out giant copies of that map, laminated it, and put it on the wall in front of our computers while we hunted hobbits on our orc characters. Was pretty rad.

Re:Show HN: Brutalist Concrete Laptop Stand (2024) on Tuesday April 07, 2026 @10:27AM (#47675939)
This is so weird. I love it. Thanks for sharing!
Re:Three hundred synths, 3 hardware projects, and one app on Tuesday April 07, 2026 @09:15AM (#47674887)
Good point - again for this, filter cutoff knob position or MIDI CC value percentage of 0/max value # would be mapped to cutoff frequency Hz #.

And yes, envelope times have different transition formulas between points, like linear vs logarithmic, as you stated. But again, having a direct map for of just A,D,S,R ms times would give you a rough approximation of amp env, save you a ton of time, and honestly, just serve as a sanity check sometimes, when trying to recreate similar "classic" subtractive patches between synths.

Re:Three hundred synths, 3 hardware projects, and one app on Tuesday April 07, 2026 @08:24AM (#47674188)
OK, call me too synth nerdy, but have you guys ever longed for a project that allowed you too match stuff like envelope times and between synths?

E.g. (totally made up values in this example) if you want to approximate the amplitude envelope from SH-101 to Bass Station 2, if the attack knob is at 5/10 position on 101, that's 500ms, which means you need to set attack knob to 6/10 on Bass Station 2 to get same attack time?

I hope this gets made one day, but I'm too poor and stupid to make it.

Anyways, this sort of system would make it much easier to create "universal" patches that would work between synths.

Re:Desk for people who work at home with a cat on Friday March 27, 2026 @10:27PM (#47550940)
Rewatched this movie last week. Best movie I've seen in at least a year. Robert Altman is immortal.
Huge admiration and respect for this guy. Jealous of his people skills. Legit, what % of developers on HN do you think are well-rounded enough to pull this off?

Godspeed bro.

Great! Maybe I can finally get a woman to see me naked!
Re:The L in "LLM" Stands for Lying on Thursday March 05, 2026 @10:59AM (#47263224)
I love this comment. Thank you for your provocative first sentence, esoteric historical anecdote, and nuanced take. Goddamn Hacker News rules.
Wow this guy can write. I don’t even agree with his point or pessimism. I just enjoy reading this.
Re:The AI boom is causing shortages everywhere else on Sunday February 08, 2026 @12:40PM (#46936607)
Another serious flaw with the modern American economy is that too much of our money is spent betting on whatever lottery ticket dream we are sold will grant the highest returns. For too long, we have been investing in software companies like Meta hoping for unicorn returns, paying no attention to the fact that many of these companies do little to materially improve the real world we live in, while our communities and infrastructure fall into disrepair. Who wants to invest in a lower-margin construction company, when there is a chance company some tech company X might come up with an addictive imaginary widget on our phone that has a marginal cost of almost nothing after the first one is built.

Now, all this new hardware we're building is powering AI that is only proven to improve the quality of our software, and will likely displace many of the middle class "white collar" jobs we have left. Buckle up boys, we are in for a bumpy ride.

Re:KORG phase8 – Acoustic Synthesizer on Friday January 23, 2026 @10:19PM (#46740741)
Sounds really cool to listen to someone talk _about_ this synth.

Sounds pretty meh listening to the synth itself in any demos I've seen so far.

Still an awesome product and piece of tech art.

Myself, I can't imagine buying this synth for anything other than putting on a shelf to look at and talk about.

Street Fighter 3: 3rd Strike on Fightcade.

App loads instantly unlike most modern games, and if you're in the US, you can quickly find a match. You can challenge anyone in chat room to a quick first-to-3 or first-to-5 which will take 5-10 minutes. It's a great adrenaline rush that totally takes my mind off coding b/c it's so fast paced and PvP. Then back to work.

Easy to get into for beginners, but the mechanics are incredibly deep and people have been mapping the engine out for 20 years, so there is so much to learn if you choose to.