Japan isn't America. People, all throughout Asia, are a million times more considerate and reasonable, with Japan near the top of this list. There's also far fewer crazy people - be that mentally unwell, people on drugs, or whatever else.
as someone who extensively uses generative AI in my creative process, I personally have not found any reliable tells in my output to distinguish it from traditionally produced music, with the exception of when suno goes off the rails and just generates a 7:59 piece that is just randomly averaging across latent space. but even that sounds less like AI generated slop and more like a plunderphonics adjacent sound collage.
now granted: I don't use AI to write my lyrics (with the exception of pieces framed as involving AI, eg. rap battles against AI), and furthermore beyond that, I also use my own musical productions from the past as audio uploads alongside my lyrics and my prompting strategy, so by definition I'd say my output is inherently going to be exploring sonic space that is not typically explored by most users, and as such if I am using my own output as the mechanism by which I'm evaluating this argument, then naturally it's probably going to be understandable as to why I find it so difficult to distinguish between AI and organic human effort.
but either way. I've had people express some level of intrigue at the level of variation and such present in my output artifacts, which to me suggests that this might be a relevant dimension within which to evaluate this specific character or quality of music as machine generated or human generated...
just some (admittedly not super well structured) thoughts it occurred to me to share.
thank you for your thoughts as disheveled and unorganized as they may be ;)
can you tell me more about what "genres" you work in primarily? for example , when you prompt suno , what are the typical keywords you use to describe the atmosphere, rhythm, key/mood ? as chart-toppers typically fall into a narrow band of genre types.
On the second question, you make the mistake of framing it as a completely personal choice. But we are formed by our environment. I had no chance growing up in the 00s. Everyone had jeans and hoodies, maybe a sweater. I did not pay attention. I carried that into my 20s and only in my 30s have I started to care about my clothes and weight, which I regret so, so much I want to die almost.
I blame everyone. My parents are and where preppy but they made the mistake of thinking I would pick it up through osmosis somehow. But getting things handed to you or seeing, you dont learn tools, what things are called. I really have had to study and try on things, I remember I saw well dressed people in our capitol and HM models for inspo. 4chan fa board has helped a lot too but now overrun with zoomers but there are good threads.
I am too paranoid to post myself openly online, I have no instagram nor an active facebook so I will not post some imgur of myself here. But for work I tend to go with business casual chinos, OCBD and boots or loafers. You must understand, everyone is casual here and wears jeans at most.
Same with books and quality movies. It really is a struggle to find quality, but the internet does help. Like finding xfiles. Our state does upload good old movies to sort though the modern slop.
I _really_ think you have an interesting tool, but the workflow loop isn't fully there.
Please let me revise or remix a suggested node. I find them extremely engaging, and I can envision ways of sort of "spinning off" even further than it's suggestions. Think Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies.
To me, this is hinting at really interesting creative processes that feel much more humane than how most LLMs work today.
The Oblique Strategies comparison is exactly the vibe I was going for—generative constraints that open up possibilities rather than closing them down. Node editing is the top priority right now. You're right that the loop isn't complete without it.
these two posts (the parent and then the OP) seem equally empty?
by level of compute spend, it might look like:
- ask an LLM in the same query/thread to write code AND tests (not good)
- ask the LLM in different threads (meh)
- ask the LLM in a separate thread to critique said tests (too brittle, testing guidelines, testing implementation and not out behavior, etc). fix those. (decent)
- ask the LLM to spawn multiple agents to review the code and tests. Fix those. Spawn agents to critique again. Fix again.
- Do the same as above, but spawn agents from different families (so Claude calls Gemini and Codex).
—-
these are usually set up as /slash commands like /tests or /review so you aren’t doing this manually. since this can take some time, people might work on multiple features at once.
I value the author's optimism, but this list activates a deep fear in me. It feels like a such an American point of view to think a techno-ideal is defined simply by buying a different set of consumer electronics, many of which are just as throwaway as the ones before.
I know we can't get away from buying things--even a self-hosted homelab needs parts, and I'm not rejecting capitalism. But it feels like capitalism culture is so strong that it goes through everything people think like thread through a needle, everything they do is stitched with its color.
This makes me sad for the future my children will inherit. I want them to be excited by what comes next, the way I was excited by the N64 or the early web. But those things were exciting because they were _new frontiers_ and new stories, not because they were products.
If the only future we can envision is a curated list of retro-gadgets and subscriptions, we have lost the plot.
> It feels like a such an American point of view to think a techno-ideal is defined simply by buying a different set of consumer electronics, many of which are just as throwaway as the ones before
This author is European, even if posting from the US.
There are classes of items that are throwaway, but bring other kinds of value (like all of the soldering kits I used to buy, that were basically garbage once assembled but were very educational and steered my career in a certain direction).
There are classes of items that increase the volume of e-waste over time. Dedicated purpose driven devices (like e-readers). And there's a compelling alternative: Apple makes very good stuff. You can buy a Mac and an iPhone and keep them for up to a decade (with a battery replacement in-between). You can use that iPhone to many things (like reading books). But I think the real costs of that consolidation aren't worth it, and that anyone growing up in that environment won't be curious or inspired about tech the way I was.
And there are items that are throwaway because they're cheap and won't last. These I usually avoid. The ASUS, I'm finding out, was questionable, though purchased with good intentions - Macbook like solid aluminum chassis, etc. But the Leica (actually 2nd hand), Apple stuff, even the Ray Bans are all pretty durable.
I actually see a lot more "throwaway" tech, and culture around it in Asia than I do in the US. Things are pretty conservative over here for the majority of people.
> the way I was excited by the N64 or the early web.
This is part of the reason I've been buying old, physical games. It brings some clarity and focus that I frankly find difficult scrolling through an endless digital library. Something about the mere act of inserting a CD or cartridge subconsciously silences distractions and feels like a real commitment rather than a passive activity.
It may be more of a callback to the past than the future, but I think there's a reasonable chance the future will look similar, with a wave of new products that seek to do similar things and evoke the same reactions. Time will tell.
> If the only future we can envision is a curated list of retro-gadgets and subscriptions, we have lost the plot.
Hate subscriptions. Left Adobe because of them. Will leave 1Password when they finally end my one-and-done 1Password 7 purchase. Don't use Microsoft Live for my Xbox. Spent years manually copying iPhone photos weekly to avoid the Apple storage subscription (this one I've admitted defeat on). The only subscription product on that list is an Oura Ring, for which I'm grandfathered into a non-subscription plan; would give it up otherwise.
If the predicted AI-driven downward pressure on per seat pricing plays out in SaaS, there's reason to believe consumer subscriptions would likely be under pressure as well.
A shame that kid was slept on. Allegedly (according to discord) he abandoned this because so many artists reached out to have him do this style of mv, instead of wanting to collaborate on music.
I love HN because everyone is so different outside of the core purpose of the site. Sometimes people reference art, or a book or something, that I'd never would think to exist.
Llainwire was my top artist listens throughout 2023, so it’s always funny to bump into reactions that feel totally different from my world/my peers.
This is sooo sick. I’m a total hip hop unc and haven’t caught up for a decade and a half now and I think the music is great as well. Pairs perfectly with the visuals. Hope this guy makes it, a creative one of one.
His stuff is already on repeat. Thanks for the recc, love this site.
the cheap house thing has nothing to do with if you’re foreign and everything to do with a bank not wanting to lend money for something there’s no market for.
you can easily buy these homes with cash. i know because i have a ton of friends that have done exactly this.
if you want a cheap house in a good market like tokyo, osaka or fukoaka, then you can do so through a bank via the normal routes
I just read the book last week. What you said is not true in any useful sense. “Germans were acutely aware…” tries to reduce an entire population and years into one statement. Reality has much more color.
For the germans interviewed in the book, it seems to be true that many had read or heard about the camps or other atrocities, but (1) not the “final solution” which was not in the press and (2) there seems to be heavy desensitization from 1933-1955 when the book was written.
Aside from the tailor that had started the fire at the synagogue, the other 9 interviewees had not directly witnessed atrocities being committed, and instead focused on their personal hardships during the war.
Even though they may have been literate, the people in Mayer’s book were ignorant of the specific realities. Perhaps willfully ignorant, yes, but the nazi regime really did not give any opportunities otherwise.
—
not an expert, just reporting my notes from the book.
i highly recommend all americans read it, its not a long book. it feels eerily familiar, even though many circumstances are drastically different.
Mein Kampf was published 1924 and distributed broadly.
There was not much hidden, the goal of making a big war in the east to conquer new land for the Aryans was there in big letters in the open.
His views towards jews likewise.
So they knew. Maybe largely did not wanted to know. And they did celebrate the victories of the german army as their own. They only stopped celebrating after the victories stopped happening and it was more and more clear that the war will be lost.
In their defense, there is an inexhaustable supply of "take over w my ideology material."
This is a confluence of many conditions. Some long-focused efforts, some architecting and annealing of interests, some individual greed, some long-lasting effects of trauma, and some massive ignorance.
One of the only good points is that the American people are stubbornly allergic to authoritarianism. Yes there are exceptions, but mainly carved out by people trading it for self-interest. Many good surprises like Tucker Carlson's opposition to squashing free speech and the Republican's long-lasting distaste for pedophilia are still out there.
The post above pointing out how we're diff to Nazism is on point. There have been many more authoritarian plays since then. Americans remain conveniently ignorant of them.
Also we're being economically crushed and everyone feels it. Although racism is a powerful tool by this movement, it's actually centered around impoverishing everyone and the dizzying egos of its leaders.
There is no anti-authoritarian party. Are lockdowns not authoritarian? Do mandates to take an experimental vaccine not violate bodily autonomy? How quickly everyone forgets the widescale censorship and lawfare. Snowden had to flee the country and Chelsea Manning was imprisoned during the Obama presidency.
On a more pragmatic level, take the one-party state of California, and the absurd burden of its regulations. These largely prevent the construction of anything new, as seen in the infamous high speed rail project, and the restricted supply of new housing, pricing many young people out of ever owning a home. Perhaps you don't think regulations are authoritarian, yet they're enforced with the power of the state, which wields the monopoly on violence.
One side wants to impose restrictions to avoid loss of life and breakdown of the hospitals. The other wants some people to not exist anymore and are building camps to accomplish that.
" Each
animal mates only with one of its own species. The titmouse cohabits only with the
titmouse, the finch with the finch, the stork with the stork, the field-mouse with the
field-mouse, the house-mouse with the house-mouse, the wolf with the she-wolf, etc."
(from Mein Kampf, Chapter 11)
But if no one would have taken him serious, there would not have been a problem.
But people did take him serious, they seriously believed he was some kind of messias send from god to save his troubled great country.
What I took away from the book was that all these people were very eager to say variants of 'das haben wir nicht gewusst' when at the same time they also describe how the jews were systematically removed from their society and every part of civil society was taken over by the nazi's.
I would add to your statement that almost everyone should read it. It's unnerving to read how 'normal' all these people were in some way and how 'easily' it all happened because the population generally disliked jews.
Based on history books I read (mostly from Richard Evans), they knew. Nazi violence and concentration camps were public knowledge, because the regime needed to generate the fear. Germans prior war were in fact scared a lot.
This particular book is a out what nazi sympatizants and nazi themselves were saying after the war. It is what it is, but there was real motivation to not have own culpability in destruction of Germany in the open. (Which is what they have seen as tradegy, not the holocaust itself all that much)
It's a contentious issue and many historians disagree. However, even many Jews at the time didn't really know what was going on, as evidenced from letters and diaries of the time. Many Jews genuinely thoughts they were Ghettos or concentration camps, which were surely horrible and surely people needless died there, but are far removed from outright extermination camps. So based on that I'm somewhat inclined to believe many didn't really "know" about the extent of the Holocaust.
Of course it's easy to say in hindsight they "knew" or "could have known", but in hindsight everything is easy, right? There were rumours about Jimmy Saville going back to the 70s, but did the British public really "know" what he was up to? Evne Mark Lawson, one of the few people who actually did stop and report a sexual assault (in 2006, see [1]) didn't really know the full extent of things, not really. He may have suspected, but that's not the same.
Another thing is that during the first world war there was a lot of (mostly British) propaganda about atrocities Germans were supposed to have committed, from raped and crucified nuns to Germans killing children for sport to the infamous "German Corpse Factory". This was widely reported and believed during the war, but after the war this all turned out to be a huge load of bollocks. It severely undermined the trust in the media.
There was 21 years between the wars – that's less time than the start of the Iraq war and today. Imagine what your response would be if the US government would say "we found weapons of mass destruction in $country, here as some vague satellite photos as evidence, we have no choice but to invade".
just make the damn building with noise in mind (RC, interior insulation, gapped flooring, etc).
it’s very possible.
(btw I am as country bumpkin as they come, my village has less than 200 people so i understand rural living.)