Johz's recent activity

  1. Comment on Modern Christmas carol renditions that aren't mediocre CCM? in ~music

    Johz
    Link Parent
    Ah yeah, sorry, I realised afterwards that that probably wasn't a very clear abbreviation unless you were familiar with the genre.

    Ah yeah, sorry, I realised afterwards that that probably wasn't a very clear abbreviation unless you were familiar with the genre.

  2. Comment on Modern Christmas carol renditions that aren't mediocre CCM? in ~music

    Johz
    Link Parent
    Looking into folk music is a great idea, you're right that there's a good amount of overlap and those are some great recommendations. And that O Holy Night is fantastic — just a completely...

    Looking into folk music is a great idea, you're right that there's a good amount of overlap and those are some great recommendations. And that O Holy Night is fantastic — just a completely different approach to the carol than you'd usually hear, but it works so well.

    1 vote

  3. Comment on Modern Christmas carol renditions that aren't mediocre CCM? in ~music

    Johz
    Link Parent
    Not really, I want to hear something different. But a lot of the stuff out there seems to come from the Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) scene, which has this really bland ultra-commercial...

    Not really, I want to hear something different. But a lot of the stuff out there seems to come from the Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) scene, which has this really bland ultra-commercial quality to it that makes everything it touches turn incredibly trite and dull. It's like listening to that cover of Hallelujah by Pentatonix, but if that was literally their entire range and everything they ever did sounded mostly like their cover of a song that someone else sang better.

    2 votes

  4. Modern Christmas carol renditions that aren't mediocre CCM?

    ~music Ask (recommendations)
    'Tis the season, and it's nice to sit down and listen to some traditional Christmas carols in a cozy candle-lit room with plenty of biscuits. And sometimes it's nice to hear more modern takes on...

    'Tis the season, and it's nice to sit down and listen to some traditional Christmas carols in a cozy candle-lit room with plenty of biscuits. And sometimes it's nice to hear more modern takes on these ancient (and not so ancient) classics.

    Unfortunately, whenever I look for this sort of thing, what I usually find is really bland CCM — some woman breathily singing "O Come All Ye Faithful" so slowly I can feel my life draining from me with every beat, a completely unnecessary modern bridge replete with painful key change, and so on. I know this stuff can be done right — Annie Lennox's Christmas album is a great example of taking classic carols and setting them to new music in such a way that it can completely change how you hear them. But finding more stuff in that vein is surprisingly hard.

    So does anyone here have any suggestions or ideas for modern takes on classic carols that actually try and do something interesting?

    21 votes

  5. Comment on Looking for a non-smart watch recommendation in ~tech

    Johz
    Link
    I will always recommend the concept of hybrid smart watches. These typically have much longer battery lives than conventional smart watches (~month typically), do the time thing really well...

    I will always recommend the concept of hybrid smart watches. These typically have much longer battery lives than conventional smart watches (~month typically), do the time thing really well (because it's just a normal clock face), and are usually a lot simpler in terms of functionality. It's the perfect combination where you'll get steps counts and the time, but it remains simple and looks elegant - it looks just like a real watch because it is just a real watch.

    Unfortunately, hybrid smart watches never really took off, so there's not really many companies to recommend. I have a Withings watch, and it's okay. It usually undercounts the step count, but you can mentally adjust for that and set lower goals and it's fine. The watch face gets quite scratched, but it's still readable. There's an app that's okay, and you can configure notifications if you want them, or set up alarms. It's fine, but it's not necessarily great. There used to be Fossil, but they've just given up on their hybrid line, so those are out. Garmin do a line of hybrid watches that are better if you're interested in sports tracking, but they also look like Garmin watches. Then there are a handful of small boutique companies that are typically more expensive and look nicer, but are typically more limited.

    I'll probably get the latest Withings watch when this one breaks, if the company is still making them. But it's not necessarily a great market for these kinds of watches right now, which is a shame because they're great and really underrated.

    TL; DR - if I convince enough people to buy the current range of okay hybrid watches, maybe they'll finally start making some good ones.

    8 votes

  6. Comment on Part of me wishes it wasn't true but: AI coding is legit in ~tech

    Johz
    Link Parent
    I agree that a lot of companies selling AI are overselling their capabilities. But that's always been true of people trying to sell you things. If you'd listened to MongoDB selling their database...

    I agree that a lot of companies selling AI are overselling their capabilities. But that's always been true of people trying to sell you things. If you'd listened to MongoDB selling their database software when they first started out, you'd be amazed that anyone would use anything else at all, because it could apparently do everything you wanted, and bring about world peace as a side-hustle. Obviously that was just sales nonsense, but it doesn't necessarily mean that MongoDB can't be useful for specific use-cases.

    I agree that claims that AI can generate an entire PR for you are mostly puffery, but I also don't think there's many people who seriously believe that, at least not without clear caveats about the nature and quality of those PRs.

    2 votes

  7. Comment on Part of me wishes it wasn't true but: AI coding is legit in ~tech

    Johz
    Link Parent
    I think that's a bit like saying "if your compiler is so good at pointing out the errors in my code, why doesn't it just correct them?". AI is not some magical monolithic tool that can do...

    I think that's a bit like saying "if your compiler is so good at pointing out the errors in my code, why doesn't it just correct them?". AI is not some magical monolithic tool that can do everything all at once. Some people might try and claim that, but some people are idiots - it's the same with microservices and NoSQL and serverless and all the rest, in that some people will promise you the world and be completely wrong, but that doesn't make the underlying tool useless.

    In this case, Google specifically trained a model to detect security bugs. I don't believe their system includes a general LLM, at least based on how old the project is. My impression is that it's classical ML stuff with a huge amount of training data. That system cannot fix bugs, but it can make finding them a lot easier. That is a useful task! You can't fix bugs without knowing where they are, and a lot of these old tools have a huge amount of very subtle code that is very difficult to analyse through conventional means.

    Beyond that, I think Google's approach here seems fairly fair. They are not demanding that work be done for them - they're just creating CVEs, which let people know about issues but don't necessarily mean that something needs to be fixed immediately. They're also sponsoring ffmpeg's development, as well as contributing to the project themselves. And the tools they're using here can be used (and I believe have been used) to find more serious issues as well that have been useful and important to fix.

    10 votes

  8. Comment on Humble Bundle: Modern Sci-Fi Classics (Charles Soule, Joseph Fink, Hugh Howey, and Neal Stephenson) in ~books

    Johz
    Link Parent
    As the person who originally complained about the region locking, my complaint was certainly directed towards the publishers, and not in any way at you! I made use of the last bundle you posted,...

    As the person who originally complained about the region locking, my complaint was certainly directed towards the publishers, and not in any way at you! I made use of the last bundle you posted, and I appreciate you posting when new things appear. I am still interested in this one as well, and if I get to a computer and remember in time, I'll have a go at bypassing the restrictions, although it doesn't sound like others have been so successful there.

    I think to me, it's a question of how often this happens. If it's the sort of thing where every so often, they restrict sales to just the US or something, then fair enough. I'm sure sometimes I'll vent about it, but I think it's still cool to know what offers are out there. OTOH, if this is the new HB policy, then it's probably not worth it because plenty of people just won't be able to access the books at all. That said, I don't think that's particularly likely, I think it's just that this publisher is probably more restrictive than the publishers they've worked with for other bundles. So from my perspective, please keep on posting, because I think our opinions about what makes an interesting book bundle are similar enough that I look forward to the next time you post one of these!

    1 vote

  9. Comment on Humble Bundle: Modern Sci-Fi Classics (Charles Soule, Joseph Fink, Hugh Howey, and Neal Stephenson) in ~books

    Johz
    Link Parent
    At least for me, I commented because I find it unusual that this was region-locked - a lot of the bundles have been DRM-free and haven't been region-locked, or at least have been more widely...

    At least for me, I commented because I find it unusual that this was region-locked - a lot of the bundles have been DRM-free and haven't been region-locked, or at least have been more widely accessible. This seems like a much more limited offer, which is a shame, and it sounds like a choice by this publisher to sell the books like this. (Other publishers seem more open to selling ebooks without DRM and region restrictions.)

    That said, I agree that it makes sense to post these still, as long as they're typically widely accessible and it's just a few exceptions that are problematic. OTOH, if they consistently switch to region-locked offers, maybe this isn't the best place to post them - it would be like me posting news in German or offers only accessible in Germany or something. Maybe a regional forum would be a better place for them in the case.

    1 vote

  10. Comment on Humble Bundle: Modern Sci-Fi Classics (Charles Soule, Joseph Fink, Hugh Howey, and Neal Stephenson) in ~books

    Johz
    Link Parent
    I've (Germany) bought the DRM-free bundles before, I also assumed that this is a Kobo thing.

    I've (Germany) bought the DRM-free bundles before, I also assumed that this is a Kobo thing.

    1 vote

  11. Comment on Humble Bundle: Modern Sci-Fi Classics (Charles Soule, Joseph Fink, Hugh Howey, and Neal Stephenson) in ~books

    Johz
    Link
    "Sorry, this promotion is unavailable in your area"... :( No books for the Germans apparently. Is it available in the US?

    "Sorry, this promotion is unavailable in your area"... :( No books for the Germans apparently. Is it available in the US?

    3 votes

  12. Comment on Pluribus S01E01 - “We is Us” in ~tv

    Johz
    Link Parent
    I've not seen that, but I'm getting more of a Mrs Davis kind of vibe, where the main character isn't directly in danger from the hivemind, but both sides are trying to convince the other to give...

    I've not seen that, but I'm getting more of a Mrs Davis kind of vibe, where the main character isn't directly in danger from the hivemind, but both sides are trying to convince the other to give in and join them.

    Except without sexy Jesus, the Holy Grail, that whole shoe plot, and AI making stage magicians obsolete. That was a weird show.

    1 vote

  13. Comment on Pluribus S01E01 - “We is Us” in ~tv

    Johz
    Link Parent
    Basically humans receive an extraterrestrial transmission, and it turns out to be the recipe for a virus, which inevitably gets synthesised and escapes. The virus turns the entirety of humanity...

    Basically humans receive an extraterrestrial transmission, and it turns out to be the recipe for a virus, which inevitably gets synthesised and escapes. The virus turns the entirety of humanity into a single hivemind, and the main character is one of twelve people who is immune to the virus, and the show, I believe, follows her as she tries to figure out what's going on.

    Right now on Wikipedia, there's only synopses for the first two episodes, which is probably enough to get a mostly spoiler-free idea of what's going on. I watched maybe half of the first episode before my baby woke up (this seems to be how I watch most of my TV right now...), and it seems good, although I keep on thinking the main character looks like Faye Marsay, and it makes me want to watch more stuff with Faye Marsay in it.

    7 votes

  14. Comment on Europeans recognize Zohran Mamdani’s supposedly radical policies as ‘normal’ in ~society

    Johz
    Link Parent
    It's about that here in my European country, and I'd see that as fairly reasonable. That's somewhere between a day's wages for someone on minimum wage, to about half a day's wages for someone on a...

    It's about that here in my European country, and I'd see that as fairly reasonable. That's somewhere between a day's wages for someone on minimum wage, to about half a day's wages for someone on a relatively good/comfortable salary. It's also reduced significantly if you can prove that you had a travel card but you didn't have it with you, say.

    I think the difficulty is always scaling fines well - I'd love to see more fines tied to income, but that's hard for on-the-spot offences like this.

    3 votes

  15. Comment on What the hell are we doing with hierarchical tags? in ~tildes

    Johz
    Link
    I'm intrigued how people actually use these tags. For me, they're mostly just noise that I blend out, and if I needed to do some sort of filtering, I'd probably just filter by group rather than...

    I'm intrigued how people actually use these tags. For me, they're mostly just noise that I blend out, and if I needed to do some sort of filtering, I'd probably just filter by group rather than think about tags. But presumably there are people using them - what sort of tagging structure works best for you guys? Or is this just a write-only feature?

    5 votes

  16. Comment on I watched stand-up in Saudi Arabia in ~society

    Johz
    Link Parent
    She's one of the hosts of the Page 94 podcast, but this is the first time I've come across her work as a columnist. I was surprised by how recognisable her tone is - I didn't see the author...

    She's one of the hosts of the Page 94 podcast, but this is the first time I've come across her work as a columnist. I was surprised by how recognisable her tone is - I didn't see the author originally and partway through was thinking "this sounds a lot like that woman from the Eye".

    The whole podcast has a similar cynical humour, although it's mostly about British political news and the state of the UK media landscape, so the appeal may be somewhat limited!

    4 votes

  18. Comment on Bluesky melts down over Jesse Singal in ~tech

    Johz
    Link Parent
    Sure, that's why I'm saying that an algorithm could do the sorting for you, and figure out which posts from a person you want to see, and which posts you don't, without them having to tag them in...

    Sure, that's why I'm saying that an algorithm could do the sorting for you, and figure out which posts from a person you want to see, and which posts you don't, without them having to tag them in any way.

    4 votes

  19. Comment on Bluesky melts down over Jesse Singal in ~tech

    Johz
    Link Parent
    In theory, if one person is posting on two different topics, you'd expect those posts to be appreciated by different groups in different ways. So for someone with a large enough number of posts...

    In theory, if one person is posting on two different topics, you'd expect those posts to be appreciated by different groups in different ways. So for someone with a large enough number of posts and distinct enough groups of readers, you could automatically divide their posts up based on how many likes they get and who likes them. I assume YouTube does this to a certain extent, because there are certain channels where I only see the half of their output that I'm interested in, and the rest doesn't get shown to me at all.

    But like I say, that's something you can only do with a recommendation algorithm, and part of what I like about the Following feed is that there is no complicated algorithm.

    4 votes

  20. Comment on Bluesky melts down over Jesse Singal in ~tech

    Johz
    Link Parent
    There are multiple feeds and the "Discover" one uses a Twitter-style algorithm, but the "Following" one is just a straight chronological timeline of people you follow. I mainly use that, and then...

    There are multiple feeds and the "Discover" one uses a Twitter-style algorithm, but the "Following" one is just a straight chronological timeline of people you follow. I mainly use that, and then add people to it if I've seen an interesting post from them or prune them out if there's too much noise that I don't want to see. That works very well for me - I get a bit of US politics because it's just painfully difficult to completely shut that out these days, but most of what I see is interesting tech articles with a mix of board game and RPG news.

    There are other third-party feeds that you can subscribe to, each with their own algorithms, but I've not had much success with those.

    3 votes