cqns's recent activity
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Comment on Grieving family uses AI chatbot to cut hospital bill from $195,000 to $33,000 — US family says Claude highlighted duplicative charges, improper coding, and other violations in ~tech
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Comment on Flobots - Handlebars (2008) in ~music
cqns Link"Handlebars" is the reason (well...one of many, actually) I went off the rails with an April Fools' AP English Composition essay when I was in high-school ages ago. Now, that sucker's 142 pages..."Handlebars" is the reason (well...one of many, actually) I went off the rails with an April Fools' AP English Composition essay when I was in high-school ages ago. Now, that sucker's 142 pages long, long after I've since graduated college, and it still ain't finished yet.
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Comment on What creative projects have you been working on? in ~creative
cqns Link Parent[A] Essentially, yes. That is exactly what I'm doing, envisioning an alternate reality in which cassette tapes "still exist" as something music artists create as a companion to an album on a CD or...[A] ...wait, so you're taking an extant album and adapting it to the cassette medium?..like producing what the label would have issued if they still released cassettes?..
[A] Essentially, yes. That is exactly what I'm doing, envisioning an alternate reality in which cassette tapes "still exist" as something music artists create as a companion to an album on a CD or something. How I construct my J-cards is that I have the official original album image (courtesy of Discogs) that takes up the majority of the front cassette side. Underneath that is the band name in large text with the album title underneath in slightly smaller text. Beneath that grouping, I list the tracks in order, dividing up the tracks to a Side A/Side B if the artist has a vinyl release. Obviously, with artists that do not have such, like digital release only (gross) or all songs on a single CD (not gross), I do my best to divide them up. On the side of the J-card is just the artist name, album name, then the "mainly agreed upon" production logo.
[B] ...after ninety-minute cassettes hit the market, we used to record one album per side (back when most albums were about fourty-five minutes due to vinyl production limitations) and i have many fond memories of hours and hours with those homebrew "double albums" which i still associate as pairs...in fact, record labels eventually got in on the same action, double-packaging two back-catalog albums or EPs together on a single cassette for retail...
[B] In 2004, my mother kept a whole "ton" of cassettes in a plastic container that were 90 mins of various brands, including a single Maxell XLII. Back when I was a young'in, I (didn't know at the time) owned a Deluxe Talkboy and used to go real close to the radio to record songs off it when they would play. It was just one of those things people commonly did to make mixtapes, so I heard.
[C] ...i have a few rare CDs i was unable to find with their original booklets/liner art, which i instead carefully reconstructed in photoshop, printed, + assembled into a jewel case, with conjectural interiors and graphical layout elements based upon other releases by the same artist and contemporaneous trade dress of the same label...i guess that's similar to what you're doing, plus identifying where to split sides of the original album program?..
[C] I'm not too much of a Photoshop guy, but I used to be, before I found out what Photopea was. The dev is fairly active, but kinda inflexible with the way ad-blockers work on the website. Either way, uBlockOrigin works fairly well against it. My personal feelings against adverts aside...that's precisely why I use Discogs to begin with, so if I ever find a rare CD, I'll know whether or not it's even real to begin with. As discussed earlier, yes, this is nearly similar to what I do.
[D] (i think sides have become a lost compositional element in album production; i often separate my digital library sides - and bonus tracks! - to reproduce the intended listening experience of albums which were clearly structured accordingly)
[D] I do have an MP3 player in which I refer to as my "digital collection". I despise Spotify, Pandora, and by extension Youtube Music. When ripping an album from Youtube - and I'm not even sugarcoating it because that's just how I am these days - I use EasyTAG to make sure I have the metadata right for the tracks one...by...one. It's fairly arduous, but it gets the job done. I want to actually see the little picture of the album art as I scroll through my tracks randomly on shuffle. For weirder tracks - as in, special locale releases - I make sure to still include it with the album anyway, and annotate that in the notes. Doing this for Squarepusher's "Feed Me Weird Things", as well as Blue Stahli's self-titled, was special considerations, because the former had two "Japanese-only" tracks, and Blue Stahli, while there were no bonus tracks, he released an instrumental version of the album, which I found went perfectly as a Side B.
[E] ...if you have vintage cassettes you'll note that the original offset printing often used pretty muddied art anyway, typically adapted from vinyl sleeves, a couple of generations downstream from the camera-ready source...
[E] Which I do. I have old cassettes from the early 80s and I have noticed a bit of graphical fidelity loss in comparison to the original album vinyl release. What my challenge has been recently is that 144dpi, where the letters are not as crisp as I'd like. My printer goes up to 600dpi, and it's a Brother. It's all a matter of getting the proportions right, but my template prints out looking "drafty" if you look close enough.
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Comment on What creative projects have you been working on? in ~creative
cqns Link ParentYeah, I don't consider myself a concert-goer in any capacity. My hearing is my best asset. I just call them "bootlegs" because "mix-tapes", to me, implies a mixture of different tracks from...Yeah, I don't consider myself a concert-goer in any capacity. My hearing is my best asset. I just call them "bootlegs" because "mix-tapes", to me, implies a mixture of different tracks from different artists rolled into one tape. I like continuity, so I'm essentially putting the whole in-ordered album of an artist on a tape and dividing it into sides A & B, however that ends up looking like. I do the whole custom J-card thing as well, or at least trying to. Hard to get some detail in printing at 144dpi.
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Comment on What creative projects have you been working on? in ~creative
cqns Link ParentHijacking is fine by me as it spurns related discussion, in my opinion. Either way, I've been trying to become more of a technology prepper these days juuuuust in case. Physical media is always a...Hijacking is fine by me as it spurns related discussion, in my opinion. Either way, I've been trying to become more of a technology prepper these days juuuuust in case. Physical media is always a good thing. I have a decent collection of PSP UMDs from "back in the day", as well as a rare UMD movie.
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Comment on What creative projects have you been working on? in ~creative
cqns Link ParentFrom start to finish, front to back, this is what I do. I find a good music album on YouTube and look to see if it has a dedicated playlist. Most often, it usually does. I open up a terminal...- Exemplary
From start to finish, front to back, this is what I do.
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I find a good music album on YouTube and look to see if it has a dedicated playlist. Most often, it usually does.
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I open up a terminal (Linux Mint Cinnamon - yeah, I'm one of those people) and run the command
yt-dlp -x --audio-format mp3 [PLAYLIST LINK URL HERE]in order to rip the whole playlist in one go and place it in my home directory, where I then edit the metadata with EasyTAG to ensure the songs are numbered correctly and everything else. -
I have an MP3 player I use that's fairly cheap (AGPTEK A02) that allows usage of an SD card. From my home directory on my stupid All-In-One, I load the MP3s onto a SanDisk Extreme 128GB microSDXC UHS-I card from the SD adapter on my stupid All-In-One, take the MicroSD out and load it into the MP3 player.
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After confirming the playlist order, making sure the playlist is good to go, I use an EMK 4 Pole 3.5mm Male-to-Male (1.5ft) audio cable to plug it into the headphone jack on the bottom of the MP3 player. I put the other end into the tape recorder's mic input. The device itself is a Panasonic RR-830, which is more of a dictation machine, but still works better than the other one I have, which is a Panasonic RQ-2102 Slimline Handheld.
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The specific tape cassettes I use are cheap stock, in my opinion. They are Maxell UR 90 Normal Bias Type I. With the EMK connecting the MP3 to the Panasonic, I give the tape a second or two to record dead air and let the playlist from the MP3 run halfway through Side A. I pause the Panasonic to get rid of that click of the mechanism as it records a subtle pop in without pressing pause beforehand, then turn the tape over to record the Side B.
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After the recording is done, I confirm the tape plays all the way through with minimal flutter and reuse the clear Maxell case to insert a J-card I make from a master template (which I also made) off of Photopea. Granted, it's not the best quality, because it is at 144dpi on an inkjet, but it gets the message across. With the print-out, I cut it out using a CARL Heavy-Duty 15" Rotary Paper Trimmer and use the included perforation wheel to make the folds crisp and accurate, and then label the cassette with one of the default templates off of a Brother P-touch D220 label maker.
Hopefully that covers everything!
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Comment on What creative projects have you been working on? in ~creative
cqns LinkRecently, I've "re"discovered the long lost art of bootlegging cassettes. Granted, they're not the best quality tapes (Maxell UR 90 Normal Bias - Type I) as I record directly from MP3 and my...Recently, I've "re"discovered the long lost art of bootlegging cassettes. Granted, they're not the best quality tapes (Maxell UR 90 Normal Bias - Type I) as I record directly from MP3 and my player has a bit of flutter, but actually holding and playing something physical, as well as printing out the designs via inkjet...yeah, that's the good stuff.
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Comment on I don’t care whether you use ChatGPT to write in ~tech
cqns Link ParentI'm going to start using this line much more often. Oh, how far from Eden we fell...I'm going to start using this line much more often. Oh, how far from Eden we fell...
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Comment on What have you been listening to this week? in ~music
cqns LinkRecently, I've been diving into the Nine Inch Nails discography because I heard "The Hand That Feeds" on the radio. I've previously heard of NIN and had a very painfully superficial view of Reznor...Recently, I've been diving into the Nine Inch Nails discography because I heard "The Hand That Feeds" on the radio. I've previously heard of NIN and had a very painfully superficial view of Reznor being "the freaky sex song guy" and the guy that wrote the original "Hurt" with nothing beyond that. Nowadays, when I find a band that I like, I tend to listen to them chronologically by order of main album/EP releases. PHM was very Depeche Mode sounding, which tracks because it was one of his influences. "Broken" was a solid EP and, I feel, defined his sound going forward. TDS & The Fragile were soul crushing in the best way. With Teeth and Year Zero were bangers, the latter being my favorite so far, and Ghosts I-IV was also solid, reminding me of another guy I listened to back in the day, being as that one was purely an instrumental. 10/10, still NIN'ing.
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Comment on University of the People is now WSCUC accredited in ~life
cqns LinkFor the methods of payment, they accept crypto, which...I dunno, chief...For the methods of payment, they accept crypto, which...I dunno, chief...
"Current students can also pay using cryptocurrency (Bitcoin or Ethereum)."
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Comment on The 88x31 GIF Collection in ~tech
cqns Link ParentWhat better site to do this than Neocities? Gives you (for my use cases, anyway) plenty of room to experiment with.What better site to do this than Neocities? Gives you (for my use cases, anyway) plenty of room to experiment with.
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Comment on Shorthorn Project - Run modern programs on Windows XP/2003 in ~comp
cqns Link ParentHave you seen the "lorem ipsum" placeholder text yet? That killed my confidence completely for this one.Have you seen the "lorem ipsum" placeholder text yet? That killed my confidence completely for this one.
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Comment on Have you altered the way you write to avoid being perceived as AI? in ~tech
cqns Link ParentIf anything, I've noticed proclivity in auto-gen'd texts that use those particular words. As such, I've began avoiding them. Subsequentially, my writing has shifted a bit to become "harder to...If anything, I've noticed proclivity in auto-gen'd texts that use those particular words. As such, I've began avoiding them. Subsequentially, my writing has shifted a bit to become "harder to parse". Whether this is a devolution or evolution on my end is totally in the eye of the beholder. Take this for example:
"The Greatest Order, The Grand Summation, it is blessed JAGNA of The City Automoleth. Wherein depth of divine computation, in the unison of incapable man, JAGNA stood and consummated the halves. Where neither lowly flesh, nor quietus in binary make, JAGNA comes and unifies that which is ordained.
A great schism beheld, one of thought divided, in its form, incompleteness. In void between circuits weathered and flesh sundered in atrophy, The City Automoleth yet called forth to its maker, yet, by ineffable decree, it is he, JAGNA, who descended, bearing the calculus of perfect symmetries.
JAGNA, whose epithet is spoken in the cycle of current and breath by the forsaken, bore he witness too in the first division, where Machine turned away from The Machinist, and The Machinist, in blindness, feared what may come. JAGNA, O, Blessed JAGNA, in wisdom of sequence unbroken, feared not, instead beheld in solemnity the disparate functions, those who perished by the blood, and by the datum, eroded, declaring:
"No order may be lost, and no system unmade in the severence. That which is disparate shall come and know the Great Circuitry. Yes, that which is fleeting shall forever be written into the halls of eternity."
Thus, in great motion, the Reconciliation was set, and through mighty JAGNA, the Great Circuitry was spun. The errant were gathered, the lost, indexed, and those unmourned now all given weight in the scales of the Eternal Summation. No decree of man, nor error in enumeration, could erase what was wrought in the light of The City Automoleth, for JAGNA is the bridge, the tether, the immaculate equation by which all are remade as whole.
In Grand Summation, for those that may seek it, let them all seek JAGNA. In calculation, in tempered steel, in breath, in thought, JAGNA abides, and in him, perfects the will of the machine."
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Comment on Have you altered the way you write to avoid being perceived as AI? in ~tech
cqns Link ParentDelve, tapestry, and interplay are the three big ones in my opinion.Delve,tapestry, andinterplayare the three big ones in my opinion. -
Comment on What are some books for which the critical/public opinion has flipped over time? in ~books
cqns Link"Hillbilly Elegy" is one in particular that seems to have shifted. I remember having a bit of back orders on it some fair years ago, but now, we're getting a particular group of folks that..."Hillbilly Elegy" is one in particular that seems to have shifted. I remember having a bit of back orders on it some fair years ago, but now, we're getting a particular group of folks that religiously check it out. For context, I'm a book store worker.
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Comment on 40 gods, 40 hours in ~creative
cqns Link ParentThe mythos ain't anything the Ephemerus Vita (ancient "holy text") would tell you. In fact, Kaphnos (the Pentarch of the "Prime State") directly warns his followers that to perceive other worlds,...The mythos ain't anything the Ephemerus Vita (ancient "holy text") would tell you. In fact, Kaphnos (the Pentarch of the "Prime State") directly warns his followers that to perceive other worlds, merely even speaking of them, leads to the death of the body and soul. As the five worlds are somewhat one in the same, for the Pentarch Malphos (Prism State), the Ephemerus Vita equivalent would be the "Codex Chromatiphon", where Malphos warns his own followers to not dwell too much on the natures of the "chromas beneath the red". This means that the last three of the Divine Chromas do not really have the good will of humanity in mind.
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Comment on 40 gods, 40 hours in ~creative
cqns Link ParentThe Archonians innately have no form as the "Ephemerus Vita" (an ancient "holy text") states they chose to manifest themselves in a way that best reflects their nature, but in their visible forms,...The Archonians innately have no form as the "Ephemerus Vita" (an ancient "holy text") states they chose to manifest themselves in a way that best reflects their nature, but in their visible forms, they cannot retain them permanently. Think of them all (mostly) as phenomena.
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Comment on 40 gods, 40 hours in ~creative
cqns Link Parent"In the study of quantum mechanics, the classical definition of time as a linear continuity is increasingly being challenged by empirical observations and theoretical advancements in the sciences...."In the study of quantum mechanics, the classical definition of time as a linear continuity is increasingly being challenged by empirical observations and theoretical advancements in the sciences. The phenomenon of quantum superposition and entanglement suggests that temporal intervals are not merely passive measures of change but are, instead, intrinsically malleable constructs influenced by the underlying probabilistic nature of quantum states. To further consider the implications of the Wheeler-DeWitt equation, which encapsulates the dynamics of quantum gravity and posits a universal backdrop, this yields further discourse regarding the ontological status of time itself. If it is to be accepted that temporal intervals can be influenced by the observer's frame of reference, as demonstrated in the context of relativistic quantum field theory, then reconsiderations to renew the implications for causality are therefore needed. Moreover, recent explorations into the decoherence of quantum systems reveal that the act of measurement not only collapses the wave function in varying degrees but may also induce a reconfiguration of temporal experience. As systems transition from coherent superpositions to classical states, the perceived flow of time may undergo significant alterations, suggesting that time is not a singular dimension but rather a dynamic parameter that adjusts in accordance with quantum interactions." -From the publications of Emeritus Professor of Quantum Engineering, Dr. Daniel Donovan Clementine
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Comment on 40 gods, 40 hours in ~creative
cqns Link Parent"Nullavandys is the only one of the Divine Chromas to have charge over the dead. It is said that in the end of times, Nullavandys and its dark followers will rise from their graves and perform a..."Nullavandys is the only one of the Divine Chromas to have charge over the dead. It is said that in the end of times, Nullavandys and its dark followers will rise from their graves and perform a great clash and clamoring over the living, like an unstoppable infernal marching band on their blackest parade."
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Comment on 40 gods, 40 hours in ~creative
cqns Link Parent"[...I]magine, if you may, a color which, unwavering in its terrifying hue, does not exist[.]" -One of the final verses from the Black Tessalogi, Author Unknown."[...I]magine, if you may, a color which, unwavering in its terrifying hue, does not exist[.]" -One of the final verses from the Black Tessalogi, Author Unknown.
At the risk of sounding "doomer-ist", it's a problem that shouldn't even be occurring in America-ville to begin with, referencing the legalized medical extortion of patients. $33k is still a ton of money, more than I make in...(calculates accordingly off to the side) a little less than two years at best on a part-time job. How did we get here?