all_summer_beauty's recent activity
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Comment on Joey Valance & Brae - Punk Tactics (2022) in ~music
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Comment on Musk | Official teaser trailer in ~movies
all_summer_beauty Link/meta Can you add some tags to this for the people who rely on that feature to avoid things that stress them out? I don't use that functionality, but I know many people do, and honestly it would.../meta
Can you add some tags to this for the people who rely on that feature to avoid things that stress them out? I don't use that functionality, but I know many people do, and honestly it would have been nice to be able to check the tags to confirm that this is exactly what I suspected it was so I knew not to engage.Edit: Thanks!
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Comment on [Poem] Things Artificial Intelligence Can’t Do - Aaron Belz in ~books
all_summer_beauty LinkThis is interesting. It's certainly evocative, but I'm unsure what to make of the stated connection to AI's capabilities. Is it sarcastic? Longing to be unfeeling like an AI? It's certainly not at...This is interesting. It's certainly evocative, but I'm unsure what to make of the stated connection to AI's capabilities. Is it sarcastic? Longing to be unfeeling like an AI? It's certainly not at all what I expected when clicking on the title.
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Comment on Small talk, ice breakers, lines in ~talk
all_summer_beauty Link ParentAh that's right, I remember the "source available" thing. It didn't bother me so I forgot about it, apologies!Ah that's right, I remember the "source available" thing. It didn't bother me so I forgot about it, apologies!
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Comment on Small talk, ice breakers, lines in ~talk
all_summer_beauty Link ParentFUTO keyboard checks all the boxes for me. Lots of nice settings, has good swipe typing, and you can even tune the text prediction/autocorrect strength.FUTO keyboard checks all the boxes for me. Lots of nice settings, has good swipe typing, and you can even tune the text prediction/autocorrect strength.
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Comment on What are your "how on earth did I not learn this sooner" tech moments? in ~tech
all_summer_beauty Link ParentOh awesome, thank you! I know there's a lot of commands for interacting with man pages but I have yet to dig into them. These are ones that are immediately useful and I see myself using all the time!Oh awesome, thank you! I know there's a lot of commands for interacting with man pages but I have yet to dig into them. These are ones that are immediately useful and I see myself using all the time!
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Comment on What are your "how on earth did I not learn this sooner" tech moments? in ~tech
all_summer_beauty Link ParentIncredible, amazing, I love it, thank you so much for sharing!tldrIncredible, amazing, I love it, thank you so much for sharing!
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Comment on What are your "how on earth did I not learn this sooner" tech moments? in ~tech
all_summer_beauty Link ParentGood to know! I've only really used Mint and test driven a couple other Debian-based distros, so this is news to me.Good to know! I've only really used Mint and test driven a couple other Debian-based distros, so this is news to me.
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Comment on What are your "how on earth did I not learn this sooner" tech moments? in ~tech
all_summer_beauty Link ParentOh wow! I knew about double- or triple-clicking to select whole units, but I didn't know you can drag out of that. Thanks!Oh wow! I knew about double- or triple-clicking to select whole units, but I didn't know you can drag out of that. Thanks!
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Comment on What are your "how on earth did I not learn this sooner" tech moments? in ~tech
all_summer_beauty Link ParentI really do appreciate that this is one of the few(?) things that seems to be largely consistent across all three major operating systems. It's so fundamental to how I navigate a computer that it...I really do appreciate that this is one of the few(?) things that seems to be largely consistent across all three major operating systems. It's so fundamental to how I navigate a computer that it throws me off if I can't use it for whatever reason.
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What are your "how on earth did I not learn this sooner" tech moments?
I'm thinking of this in a "pitfalls of being self-taught" context, but I'm sure there's plenty of other places these moments happen. Feel free to also interpret the title as "How did I not know...
I'm thinking of this in a "pitfalls of being self-taught" context, but I'm sure there's plenty of other places these moments happen. Feel free to also interpret the title as "How did I not know that?", "How did I miss that?", "Why did no one tell me that?" and the like!
The inspiration for this post is that I am over a year and a half into my Linux journey, which has involved a solid amount of tinkering and eagerly getting familiar with the command line, and I just now realized that you can do
man <literally any command>to quickly get to the manual for it. And also thatwhatisexists. For the last 18+ months, I've been just doing<command> --helpor<command> <subcommand> --helpand searching the internet to supplement that. I knew that man pages exist, but I guess for some reason it didn't occur to me that there would be a way to access them that easily.I love learning things on my own and building understanding by doing, just picking a direction and running with it, but... man. I often wonder how many little things that "everyone knows" I've missed through sheer random chance. And then there's things like my man pages revelation that I can't believe I didn't piece together on my own, considering all the other crazy stuff I've figured out. Oh well lol. I suppose it's good when the humbling reminders of my own capacity for ignorance arrive via something low-stakes like this than via something that could wreck my system!
Anyone else have similar stories to share?
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Comment on Meta agrees to heavy restrictions on teen users in major lawsuit settlement in ~tech
all_summer_beauty LinkSo, assuming they comply, this means age verification for everyone on Facebook and Instagram, right?So, assuming they comply, this means age verification for everyone on Facebook and Instagram, right?
Meta agreed to come up with an age assurance standard that is subject to independent testing, and must have a false positive rate no higher than 10 percent for users aged 16 to 17, and 3 percent for users aged 13 to 15.
Users who say they’re over 18 but don’t complete the age assurance test within two weeks will have restrictions on their accounts
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Comment on An AI researcher writes about his crisis of faith in ~tech
all_summer_beauty LinkI find the author's other post on "complimentary intelligence", linked toward the end, fascinating:I find the author's other post on "complimentary intelligence", linked toward the end, fascinating:
In the following, I will try sketch a way of thinking about human intelligence and human nature through emphasizing its difference from the various methods and systems we call artificial intelligence. This is rooted in my strong belief that talking about a single-dimensional “intelligence” that one can have more or less of, and the obvious extension to asking whether humans or machines are “more intelligent”, is actively harmful for understanding both human and machine intelligence. What matters is the qualitative difference. Between humans and machines, but also between different approaches to AI. We can even think of the different approaches in a geometric framework, with the implication that any type of intelligence must have a direction as well as a magnitude. This perspective, which I call Complementary Intelligence, also suggests a positive research program, that seeks to find the types of intelligence that we do not currently have but that could be interesting to humans, rather than simply imitating human intelligence.
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Comment on CYCLE - Soundscapes, Impressionism, and Process Art in ~creative
all_summer_beauty LinkThank you for sharing! I hope to have energy to engage with this more fully in the future, sorry that I don't have more to contribute at the moment. Interested to read what comes next.Thank you for sharing! I hope to have energy to engage with this more fully in the future, sorry that I don't have more to contribute at the moment. Interested to read what comes next.
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Comment on Spotify is to label AI artists and exclude them from algorithm recommendations as part of a crackdown on fake performers in ~music
all_summer_beauty Link ParentGot it, I wondered if that was it. Thanks!Got it, I wondered if that was it. Thanks!
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Comment on Spotify is to label AI artists and exclude them from algorithm recommendations as part of a crackdown on fake performers in ~music
all_summer_beauty Link/offtopic /meta Any idea why this topic, when appearing in the feed, just displays OP's username instead of the link source? I've seen this behavior before but never been able to figure out what's.../offtopic /meta
Any idea why this topic, when appearing in the feed, just displays OP's username instead of the link source? I've seen this behavior before but never been able to figure out what's causing it. -
Comment on Is it time to include pronouns? in ~tildes
all_summer_beauty LinkI'm totally open to it since I know it's very important to some, as long as there's an option to leave it blank or disabled. I personally don't usually explicitly identify here for the sake of...I'm totally open to it since I know it's very important to some, as long as there's an option to leave it blank or disabled. I personally don't usually explicitly identify here for the sake of privacy, but I also don't mind if people gain an impression of me as a certain gender over time. Whichever conclusion they come to is fine and even interesting to me, so I wouldn't want to be forced to declare it to be a specific one. And using "they/them" as a placeholder doesn't feel appropriate since that can be much more complex than simply "undefined".
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Comment on <deleted topic> in ~tildes
all_summer_beauty LinkI'm not super comfortable with the idea, for reasons others have explained, but I do see value in at least exploring possible implementations of similar concepts. My only suggestion at the moment...I'm not super comfortable with the idea, for reasons others have explained, but I do see value in at least exploring possible implementations of similar concepts.
My only suggestion at the moment is that, if something like this is in fact appropriate, maybe it could function like this:
- Label the comment "disputed"
- This prompts you to write a sourced correction
- Your correction is posted as a normal reply
- A small "Disputed" (or perhaps "See suggested corrections...") icon appears on the target comment
- Clicking/tapping the icon displays links to all suggested corrections below
This seems like a gentler interruption of the thread presentation, since it still requires new viewers to go down to your correction (and then potentially vote for it to more organically increase its visibility), rather than hijacking the sort order to force them to see it. It also seems like less work to develop than a whole separate viewer for "community notes", since it utilizes the existing comment threading structure.
It also might be good to limit the number of times a formal correction can be posted? Perhaps even to just a single time. That could keep the refutation organized, as well as contained to prevent it feeling like a dogpile if it really catches on. Though I suppose you can still effect a dogpile by simply replying as normal without utilizing the feature.
And maybe only top-level comments could be disputed? Idk, just spitballing at this point.
To some extent, though, this still feels to me like an unnecessary formalization of dissent when "just post a corrective reply" is an available course of action. I guess my experience of this issue's severity differs from yours.
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Comment on The Don Hertzfeldt Collection is now on Dropout in ~tv
all_summer_beauty Link Parent(Pretty sure @moonwalker is referring to the Android TV smart TV OS app here rather than the Android mobile app) CC @DefinitelyNotAFae <3(Pretty sure @moonwalker is referring to the Android TV smart TV OS app here rather than the Android mobile app)
CC @DefinitelyNotAFae <3
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Comment on Is music just sound? A creative technologist's perspective on AI-generated music. in ~music
all_summer_beauty (edited )LinkAn essay in which the author, someone deeply invested in both music and technology, explores why AI music bothers him; he does this first by examining the status quo, then by attempting to...- Exemplary
An essay in which the author, someone deeply invested in both music and technology, explores why AI music bothers him; he does this first by examining the status quo, then by attempting to steelman the pro-AI argument, and finally by explaining why he feels that argument is still insufficient.
There's a quiz near the beginning that A/B-tests you to see if you can distinguish which of two music clips is AI-generated and which is "human-generated". My degrees are in music, so I expected to do decently well, which I did (4 out of 5), but it was still tricky, even having encountered plenty of this stuff before.
Selected quotes and thoughts
The steelman:
I want to make the strongest possible case I can for the other side. The technology is genuinely remarkable on a technical level, and music has survived every disruption people said would kill it. Why should this be any different? (...)
History shows an interplay between technology and art. It's true that technology does disrupt and displace, but it also creates new opportunities and new forms of expression. (...)
These disruptions have never been painless. (...) The interplay between technology and music is a constant tension, sometimes breaking barriers, and sometimes creating new ones. Good music has always found a way to survive.
Mikey Shulman, the CEO of Suno, describes their goal as "first and foremost giving everybody the joys of creating music". It's hard to dismiss that vision in isolation.
(...) The desire to make music is real and widespread. The barrier, for many people, is the difficulty of the craft. For some populations, such as those with disabilities, that barrier is even higher.
A tool that helps professionals work faster, amateurs create more easily, and enables people who might never otherwise make music is undeniably powerful. Just like photography ended up expanding the visual arts, new technology can expand music.
On why people make music:
"It's not really enjoyable to make music now... it takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of practice, you need to get really good at an instrument or really good at a piece of production software. I think the majority of people don't enjoy the majority of time they spend making music." - Mikey Shulman, CEO of Suno, January 2025
But that's not how making music works, at least not in my experience. The idea doesn't really exist in isolation before the process, just waiting to be expressed by a series of vague text prompts. You find it by playing, by making mistakes, by following something unexpected.
A tool that jumps straight to the output short-circuits all of that. The output arrives before any discovery can happen. This treats creativity as a productivity or "content creation" problem, where getting to the output as easily as possible is the goal.
This reminds me of the conversation around creation vs. maintenance. People want to be the ones who make things, not the ones doing the unglamorous work of making sure those things keep running day after week after month after year. The quote from Schulman seems, to me, to further clarify what the sentiment at work actually is - some people want to be the ones who have made things. Neither the first nor last step of the process (creation -> production -> maintenance) are valued by people who think as Schulman describes, yet all three are critical.
[a good visual illustration that you really should click through to see]
Responding to comparisons to previous revolutions in technology and the arts:
Advocates will sometimes compare AI music's effect on music to photography's effect on visual art as a way to suggest that resistance to new technology is just fear of change. But photography created something new and announced itself as such. Shulman has said it "doesn't make sense to have an AI world and a non-AI world of music". The goal is indistinguishability, not a new medium. And unlike photography, which built its own identity from scratch, AI music was trained on the entire corpus of human music without consent and now competes directly with the people it learned from. There's no reason to think that new technology will always yield the same positive outcomes as it has in the past. [emphasis added]
There's a clear difference in scale when we compare AI music generation to historic technological disruptions in music. Drum machines and samplers didn't autonomously generate 7 million songs a day and distribute them to streaming platforms with most of us being unaware.
On "everyone should be able to do everything" and the value of being a listener/observer:
Being a listener, a viewer, or a reader is its own complete relationship with art, not just a consolation prize for people who never learned the craft. The hunger AI music claims to satisfy might just be misdescribed. It's rarely "I need to be able to immediately generate my own version of this". More often it's "I want more of this feeling", and for that, human-made music already has an answer.
On creative atrophy:
Over time, it may accelerate our deskilling and make creative work feel more like playing a slot machine, prompting and regenerating until something sounds right.
This made me think of my experiences using city map generators for my D&D worlds. It's cool to have a fascinating product at the end, which I can then build on top of to expand the setting, but to be perfectly honest, the time spent rerolling the generators dozens of times (and then afterward deciding which result is least inaccurate) mostly just sucks. A much better arrangement would be having a tool that allowed me as much control as I'm able to exercise with my modest skills and then filled in the remaining blanks. I'd get to actually somewhat realize my vision and express myself, but not have to devote dozens or hundreds of hours of my limited time to developing a skill that isn't high on my list of priorities. Flipping a few toggles (or, as in the case of Suno, writing a couple sentences) and hitting "generate" isn't going to do that for me.
AI music generation as Suno sells it is more like asking someone else to put a puzzle together for you entirely. If you have to "learn" the song after it's already made, something else created it.
On hyper-personalization and its effects on culture:
(...) "taste tautology", a feedback loop where recommendation algorithms reinforce prior preferences so strongly that listeners find themselves trapped in an endless loop of the same artists and the same sounds. UNESCO's 2025 report on AI and culture warned that these systems risk fostering monocultures, filtering out minority voices and experimental sounds that don't immediately match a user's prior data.
All of these generative systems have (to varying degrees) the characteristic that their outputs trend toward the average and smooth out all the wrinkles and blemishes that give things texture and resonance. It feels fitting that one of the peripheral systems in their environment (recommendation algorithms) does the same thing. "Average" will never work for enough people (especially if that average is not even the true average; see the recent "Women should be able to open jars" thread). Disregarding personal preferences/needs is damaging when it causes someone to trip on an inconsiderately-sized stair, and it is also damaging when it flattens and sterilizes culture.
I find this vision of music as a disposable commodity rather dystopian. Music has always been one of the primary ways humans synchronize with each other, be it through oral tradition, shared playlists, or the moment at a show when a room full of strangers feels like a collective. When everyone's feed is perfectly individualized, there is a potential cultural loss that's difficult to measure.
I wouldn't want to go back to a world where new music was reserved for the privileged or the especially curious. But an overcorrection into having no shared culture isn't a good outcome either. The goal should be more people finding more music, not everyone disappearing into their own perfectly optimized bubble managed by billion dollar companies.
In closing:
There is a version of music that is oriented around how sound makes you feel, and that it doesn't matter where the sound comes from. That is a valid relationship to music, and AI-generated music will likely be transformational there.
But there will always be a version of music that is more strongly tied to artistry and human expression. People want to know that the feelings behind the music come from another human's story and lived experience. In the same way that paintings aren't just colors and poetry isn't just words, I think the output of music is just an artifact of process that is irreducibly human.
My hope is that the current moment pushes us towards that version of music.
I stumbled upon this a few years ago and I love it so much haha. I get a pretty strong "yeah, we're two kinda nerdy white guys rapping in a dorm room and that's a bit silly" vibe. "I am the king and you're just a pawn / Who's got the high ground now, Obi-Wan?" killed me the first time I heard it. Plus, Jurassic Park and Finding Nemo references? So goofy.