mPony

it changes things if you’ve ever wanted to become a new anchor

pour one out for the kids in the back.

yes, I use the headphone jack on my phone.

I can’t abide the idea of paying extra money for a separate device to plug in headphones to use a phone. That’s like forcing people to buy a straw to drink their coffee because they’re not allowed to drink it from a cup anymore.

well, as far as “proprietary vs free” software needs, there are very few free vocal tuning (“Auto-tune”) VSTs out there. It turns out fixing vocals is pretty important to all kinds of production, it’s not just for turning vocalists into robotic auditory paste.

Tuners are just super useful tools to begin with. The math behind recognizing pitch is, evidently, rather tricky. (I have more than one guitar tuner that will take about a half-second to decide that my E string is tuned a little bit low.) So the first step would be writing a pitch detector and getting it to work on a guitar, and a bass guitar, and then a voice.

Once you’ve got an algorithm for pitch detection working, then you’d need to get it to respond VERY quickly (which would take some next-level cleverness to do.) After that you’d have it analyze an input signal to graph what frequency the signal is at, and then choose which notes those frequencies correspond to. Those notes could probably be stored as MIDI data. By this point you’ve already achieved a “sing your own MIDI notes” VST, which I’ve already seen people asking for.

Lastly you’d need editable parameters for each note (or group of notes) to describe how to adjust the pitch from the detected frequency to the desired frequency. One parameter is how quickly it changes the note (which gives that characteristic “robotic” feel that is just pervasive in pop music these days.)

I think this could be a fantastically useful plug-in; it’d certainly be nice to have a useful free alternative for people who can’t afford hundreds of dollars of software.

this season on Black Mirror, we re-write the first episode of Torchwood (the one where they briefly reanimate dead people to ask them how they died)

I guess it’s the Always-On DRM that’s the issue. Best get rid of that entirely, or force developers to disclose IN LARGE PRINT if a game has it, like they did with parental warning stickers in the late 1980’s. And I mean FORCE, as in “you can’t be on Steam/whatever because you have unnecessary DRM”

I can still play World Of Goo any time I damn well choose because I paid for it and I own it and the developers were probably not inherently evil humans.

did 1983 predict the rise of “catalog shopping”? because I sure didn’t :)

The Peripheral has entered the chat

@frog (just making sure you get a notification of this reply - some servers aren’t great at that)

beg pardon for upcoming language where I try to tell you what to think, it comes from a positive place.

friend, don’t ever let the attitudes of others make you feel like you’re “lesser.”

Let me tell you about one of the most wonderfully boring things I’ve ever seen. One of the most powerful displays of belonging was at my first Pride parade, oh wow this was ages ago. I didn’t notice the name of the group, I’m sure they had a banner, but it just looked like a bunch of regular people walking in the middle of a parade. All I could think at the time was “where is the colourful clothing? why are they not dancing? Where is the outrage? where is the joy?” I didn’t see anything that would make me judge them as being worthy of being in a pride parade. Fuck just writing it makes me realize how stupid I was :) Spoiler: They were in the pride parade because they were all queer. Pick a letter, that was them. And they all looked totally normal, and they didn’t dance and sing and turn themselves about. Because that was the kind of queer they were.

if you’re “too old” you still matter. If you’re “too boring” you still matter. You are not unworthy.

Paperclips should hold pieces of paper together. Everything else is Out Of Spec

now imagine robo-Ted-Cruz telling you everything you want to hear, even using some of the words you’ve typed in online discussions.

I get to have delightful discussions with my family members when I have these same concerns. All before breakfast.

Seconded. Just wait for the first story of “I had a conversation with [politician name] on the phone yesterday. They knew everything about me, and we talked about all these things I’m interested in.” or “[Politician name] called me yesterday and said these horrible things about my relatives and mentioned them all by name. I’m never voting for them again!” Welcome to the wild west, yet again.

“That’ll be one billion quid, please.”

Okay, maybe there are thousands of people out there who just like watching Vtube streams, with cash to burn, in this day and age. Or, maybe someone’s using livestream donations to launder money.

Does either one make more sense? I think both are true, and the latter is far more probable.

Have you read the fiction they come up with? It’s not good.

well, why would people who use Fediverse options talk about using those options on non-Fediverse platforms? Other than the occasional “hey I use Mastodon and it’s great.” Not the kind of thing you’d talk about all the time.

YouRubes

I guess anti-fascists must be bad for business, or something.

no being a kiwi is an alternative to being fucking boring :)