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schwartzworld

Re:AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale on Thursday May 21, 2026 @10:27AM (#48223229)
Let this sink in: I wanted to open source a package at work at needed approval from legal and other teams to make sure I wasn't leaking anything proprietary. The same executives that worried about proprietary, copyrighted code being leaked 10 years ago are now mandating using the plagiarism machine.

The whole AI bubble is The Emperor's New Clothes, and it feels liek more people are finally admitting it.

Re:How can I keep from singing? on Wednesday April 15, 2026 @08:59PM (#47787420)
> who could “do music”... were born, I felt, gifted in a way that I was not

Maybe it's true for some people but I generally think it isn't. The secret to being able to play an instrument is studying or practicing a little every day for 20 years. Some people get there faster but unless you have mobility issues, most people can learn enough of an instrument to have fun.

It's funny to think how much effort was put into preventing bootlegging, when now everything is being recorded all the time.

The few bands that didn't care or even encouraged it reaped the benefits. I was a huge Ween fan in the 90s and bootlegged a show of theirs myself. Camera and recording devices were allowed and the result was a tremendous amount of live content available online. For some bands this might not matter, but they rarely played the same set list twice and often played songs differently from show to show. In the early internet days, there was more ween content online than you could ever hope to listen to.

Aren't the stakes a little different with an iPhone that you have for picture taking and entertainment vs the systems that manage your trajectory and life support?

The fact that a handful of devices hasn't failed is hardly proof that they can't. Hell, I've driven thousands of times and never actually NEEDED my seatbelt.

Re:How to Get Better at Guitar on Wednesday April 08, 2026 @05:09AM (#47687431)
> Most people won't be able to keep at it

I always tell people the secret to learning guitar fast is to practice for a minimum of 5 minutes a every day for 20 years. It's simultaneously a gross oversimplification while also literally being the only way to do it.

Re:How to Get Better at Guitar on Wednesday April 08, 2026 @05:07AM (#47687419)
In some genres there are an infinite number. Most of the music regular people listen to is diatonic though and uses either power chords or triads, and then there are not that many options.
Or a MagicJack
If you don't have probable cause and you don't have a warrant, it's not an arrest and you aren't law enforcement. You're subbing in some words yourself.
Re:I don't know if my job will still exist in ten years on Sunday March 08, 2026 @09:14AM (#47297076)
I agree that the software industry should expect a major upheaval. Developers won’t be replaced by LLMs, but it’s extremely likely that software as a product will become less valuable. You can already vibe code solutions you would’ve otherwise had to pay for. As tools come out that take advantage of this, it’s going to just get easier to spin the app you want up instead of paying for someone else’s. Which is pretty cool if you aren’t already a software developer.
Re:Jimi Hendrix was a systems engineer on Monday March 02, 2026 @06:40AM (#47216704)
> I NEVER said that the guitar is the best acoustic instrument.

Me neither? This thread was about expressiveness. I asked the OP why they think guitar is more expressive than anything else and you responded with information about how pickups interact with amps.

Re:Jimi Hendrix was a systems engineer on Friday February 27, 2026 @09:46AM (#47181076)
So the difference in expression is in the oscillator type?

Are we using the same definition of "expressive"? I play synth, guitar and trumpet, and the trumpet is by far the most expressive of the three, both musically and physically. You have basically all the same options for expression that you do with a human voice (vibrato, dynamics, glissando, etc) plus the expressive techniques offered by the instrument mechanics (for example: half-valving, trills, lip slurs, using a plunger as a LPF).

Sure you need a microphone or contact mic, but again that's just your source of your oscillator. After that, sound design is just sound design. I'm not saying everybody should play electric trumpet, but it's just absurd to make blanket statements like "electric guitar is the most expressive electronic instrument".

Re:Jimi Hendrix was a systems engineer on Thursday February 26, 2026 @10:31AM (#47167435)
> have a fundamental problem with human expression.

How up to date is this opinion of yours? Expression on guitar is pretty intuitive, but modern electronic instrument manufacturers have been working on this problem and created modes of expression that definitely solve this problem.

For example, EWIs allow you to use breath control for expression with many of the same techniques available on actual wind instruments. Also many synths now have features like polyphonic aftertouch, pitch/mod wheels, which allow you to add expression to a note while it is playing. Apps and hardware exist which allow you to use novel methods of capturing motion or other forms of expression. And most modern synths/midi controllers allow you to decide what parameters are affected.

> Then on top of all that it is so incredibly physical

That's an affectation. I can stand on my tiptoes and close my eyes when bending up a note on the synth the same as I can on the guitar. Neither affects the sound, and both are a conscious decision to project an appearance of "I'm really shredding"

> With an electric guitar you get the physicality and dynamism of an acoustic instrument with the complex timbres and extended technique possibilities of an electric/electronic instrument.

That can apply to any instrument once you "electrify" it. What makes a guitar more expressive than a cello or trumpet with a pickup/mic running through effect processing? I play guitar, keys and trumpet, and while I agree that a casio keyboard has limited expression options, your opinion doesn't sound researched.

Re:Jimi Hendrix was a systems engineer on Thursday February 26, 2026 @10:21AM (#47167266)
But you have to plug cables into both sides... Also you set your pedals up before you actually start playing.
Re:Web development is fun again on Sunday January 04, 2026 @09:40PM (#46494750)
What about the boring parts of fun hobby projects?
Re:Parental Controls Aren't for Parents on Friday January 02, 2026 @04:28PM (#46469589)
You can. The same devices that run Spotify will happily play your mp3 collection.
Re:LLMs are bullshitters. But that doesn't mean they're not useful on Wednesday November 19, 2025 @01:05PM (#45982714)
They are literally called "Large Language Model". Everybody prefers the term AI because it's easier to pretend they actually know things, but that's not what they are designed to do.
Many libraries offer 3d printing for the cost of filament.
Do share. I have similar aspirations
Re:Alive Internet Theory on Sunday November 09, 2025 @02:09PM (#45868199)
Hosting a website might be easier now. Services like netlify make it pretty simple
That’s one example. For me, I think I mostly used it to have conversations that would extend past the number of quarters I was carrying.
Re:ChatGPT's Atlas: The Browser That's Anti-Web on Wednesday October 29, 2025 @08:54AM (#45746217)
Have you actually played these games? I put in some hours on Hitchhikers Guide, and It was anything but natural. Maybe once you get far enough in the game and learn the language that is effective it gets easier, but I never got there. You wake up in the dark and have to figure out how to even turn on the light. Then you have to do a series of actions in very specific order before you can get out of your bedroom.

Figuring it all out is part of the fun, but outside the context of a game it would be maddening.

As for Eliza, she mostly just repeats back the last thing you said as a question. “My dog has fleas.” “How does your dog having fleas make you feel?”

Re:ChatGPT's Atlas: The Browser That's Anti-Web on Wednesday October 29, 2025 @08:25AM (#45745913)
Well, you could always focus on the ridiculous environmental impact of llms. I read once that asking ChatGPT used 250x as much energy as just googling. But now google incorporated llms into search so…

I grew up on the banks of the Hudson River, polluted by corporations dumping their refuse into it while reaping profits. Anthropic/openai/etc are doing the same thing.

Re:I Managed to Grow Countable Yeast Colonies on Friday October 24, 2025 @11:55AM (#45695908)
Why would it be mold if the OP was culturing bakers yeast?
Re:Common yeast can survive Martian conditions on Wednesday October 22, 2025 @07:40PM (#45676548)
The best time to start terraforming a planet is 500 years ago. The second best time is now.
Re:Forth: The programming language that writes itself on Monday October 20, 2025 @09:15AM (#45643528)
Lots of saws have safety features to keep fingers from being removed. It happens all the time.
Re:Forth: The programming language that writes itself on Monday October 20, 2025 @09:12AM (#45643506)
I spent a few months playing with forth after seeing a talk on it at Boston Code Camp. I struggled to find a practical application (I do web dev), but it had a lasting effect on my style of programming. Something about the way you factor a forth program changed me. Now I mainly do functional-flavored typescript, and while forth is NOT an FP language, there is a lot that carries over.

In Forth, the language rewards you for keeping your words focused and applying the single responsibility principal. It’s very easy to write a lot of small words that do one thing and then compose your program out of them. It’s painful to not do this.

There is no state outside the stack. If you call a word it pulls values off the stack and deposits values back on the stack. Having no other mechanism for transferring data requires you to basically create data pipelines that start to look like spoken language.

Re:M5 MacBook Pro on Thursday October 16, 2025 @12:16AM (#45601411)
Download iterm2 and see for yourself
Re:Ireland Is Making Basic Income for Artists Program Permanent on Wednesday October 15, 2025 @01:26PM (#45595817)
A big part of why UBI isn't really viewed as a great option by actual socialists. I'd rather see us literally just give people food, housing and medicine without money being involved, but for some reason that's a tough sell to most people.
Re:Ireland Is Making Basic Income for Artists Program Permanent on Wednesday October 15, 2025 @01:24PM (#45595793)
We spend $850B on defense, and nobody ever asks where the money to do it comes from. It's only once you start talking about feeding people that everybody is concerned with the economics.
Re:Ireland Is Making Basic Income for Artists Program Permanent on Wednesday October 15, 2025 @01:16PM (#45595695)
> It's that they oppose throwing grandma to the street when she can't come up with the property tax to pay some lunch-co megacorp to give the kids lunches.

Jesus, talk about a strawman

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