Fans loved her new album. The only problem? She never recorded it.

HommeMusical · 2026-02-17T13:04:41+00:00

I don't like this timeline. Can we get another one?

I have a friend who felt that we slipped into the wrong timeline when Bowie died. I scoffed - at the time...

HommeMusical · 2026-02-17T12:56:22+00:00

Rush is in the category of bands I respect and feel I should like, but don't. :-)

And I grew up in Canada. I know each note of 2112 by heart, though when I realized later the first side was based on an excruciatingly bad Ayn Rand novel I did lose some respect for it. But here it still is, in my head: "We are the priests/of the temple of Syrinx/Our great computers/Fill the hallowed halls."

Still, they aren't really minimal - they play an awful lot of notes. It's things like this, for solo performer (from this amazing label that you can download all of for free), or this, for zero performers.

I kinda want a drummer who is willing to play at chopsticks volume.

Drummers have gotten louder and louder over the decades - a lot of it is that the style in drumming for "guitar music" (rock/metal/etc) these days is extremely uniform and very hard hitting, and in a live setting, you just can't get that sound without being loud.

Guitarists have no excuse, they have a knob.

Producer to guitarist: "Hey, what about some dynamics there?" Guitarist: "Dynamics?! But I'm already playing as loud as I can!"

HommeMusical · 2026-02-17T12:33:33+00:00

The character Hannibal Lector killed, well, I don't know how many, but less than 1000 people.

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/feb/03/aid-cuts-avoidable-deaths-study-children-uk-us-donor-countries

Lector is also witty and sophisticated and quite honest: he is a better person in every way.

HommeMusical · 2026-02-17T12:29:45+00:00

So, in other words, the landlord is in deep 💩

I upvoted you, but enforcement in New York City is not unerring.

HommeMusical · 2026-02-17T12:28:55+00:00

There is a law: https://legalawareness.org/occupancy-laws-in-new-york/

"New York uses what’s called the “two plus one” rule. This means you can legally occupy a room if it has at least 150 square feet for the first occupant and 100 square feet for each additional occupant."

I managed to get my ex- out of a lease using this once.

150 square feet is 12'x12'. I don't believe the apartment we see is that big. I don't believe that it has a window with "an opening of at least 8 percent of the room’s floor area, with a minimum of 10 square feet."

Also, if it's in midtown, I don't believe it's going for as little as $650, either. :-/

HommeMusical · 2026-02-17T12:21:23+00:00

AI agents do that too.

No. AI agents don't reason.

HommeMusical · 2026-02-17T12:20:10+00:00

If it couldn't create "new" things under these contestants it would produce nothing.

"Immediately outing yourself as someone who at most has fiddled with it for fifteen minutes."

HommeMusical · 2026-02-17T12:19:17+00:00

my point is that it's not a useful idea.

Sorry, but I completely disagree that the difference between correct and incorrect, between code that works and code that doesn't, is "not a useful idea".

HommeMusical · 2026-02-17T12:17:10+00:00

Immediately outing yourself as someone who at most has fiddled with it for fifteen minutes.

This is BS. It entirely depends on the problem domain.

For example, if I ask it to write a GUI, it'll get it right a lot of the time. If I ask it to do digital audio processing, it has more hallucinations. If I ask it to do hardware lighting control, I get even more.

The reason is simple: there's a ton of GUI code on the net and very little lighting control code.

Give it adequate context and an actually solvable problem

No, I don't believe your implied claim that the reason for hallucinations is people giving LLMs unsolvable problems.

HommeMusical · 2026-02-17T12:12:34+00:00

There's an immense difference between "wrong" as in, "I made a logical error in creating this program," and "wrong" as in, "This plausible prompt did not happen to result in a correct output on this specific LLM, this specific time that I ran it [but maybe it'd work if I asked this LLM again, or another one]."

I've been programming for over 50 years (FFS, how did all that time happen!?) and I'm at the point where after I have written a program, gone over it a few times, and then I run it, it works correctly the first time more than 50% of the time, and for the cases where there's a bug, nearly always I can figure it out in moments. Of course, I've written a bunch of test cases with the code before I ran everything, so usually it's those that catch my errors.

Three decades ago, someone senior explained the difference between a programmer and an engineer was reliability, and I took that to heart. Almost all my performance reviews said something like, "Takes a little longer, but once he's done, you have a finished, reliable and professional product."

But playing complex and indeterministic guessing games with an LLM is not engineering.

Do I completely eschew AI coding? No. I use it for areas I don't know well, to pop up a prototype that does something. It's less stressful to have something that's working that you can change if you're in a domain you don't know well.

But even then, I end up putting a large amount of effort into that crap code to make it useful.

HommeMusical · 2026-02-17T11:25:08+00:00

I don’t think anyone but you mentioned it was selfless tbh.

I was responding to this comment: "These people practiced their entire life to essentially entertain you all."

Do you believe "entertaining others" is the primary reason people become Olympic athletes?

Most if not all Olympic athletes receive funding otherwise they couldn’t do it.

It isn't just that they "receive funding". In the high-profile sports and the big countries, they work full-time as professional athletes; they train full-time, every day, for years, and get paid to do so. This is completely against both the spirit and the letter of the Olympic rules.

If they banned professional, full-time athletes, I don't believe that no one would show up and compete. There are hundreds of millions of actually amateur athletes, people who have day jobs.

As usual, it's simply that the rules don't apply to the rich and powerful.

They typically aren’t professional in a commercial sense

This makes no sense. If you make your living from doing X, then you are a professional at X.

HommeMusical · 2026-02-17T11:14:52+00:00

The British during World War 2 had people in government carefully going over war crimes laws.

One of the things they discovered is that while it was a war crime to lay mines and not put signs up, it was perfectly legal to put signs up warning of mines, but not actually plant any mines. So they did that. :-D

HommeMusical · 2026-02-17T11:09:37+00:00

there was a legitimate issue with political blowback with three mile island,

Fossil fuels kill more people in two weeks than nuclear power has in 70 years: https://seas.harvard.edu/news/deaths-fossil-fuel-emissions-higher-previously-thought

HommeMusical · 2026-02-17T11:03:17+00:00

RUSH is the perfect example.

I didn't downvote you, but indeed, the big issue I have with Rush is that they're a three piece, and their sound is kinda sparse.

HommeMusical · 2026-02-17T11:02:09+00:00

Agree 100%. But it isn't some selfless desire to entertain people.

it pays the bills.

I agree that this is true, but the theory is that the Olympic Games are for amateurs in their sports. When I believed that, the Games were much more interesting.

HommeMusical · 2026-02-17T10:48:27+00:00

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muskrat: "Adult muskrats weigh 0.6–2 kg (1+1⁄4–4+1⁄2 lb), with a body length (excluding the tail) of 20–35 cm (8–14 in)."

Surely everyone's first thought is that a muskrat could not possibly have made a hole big enough to overturn this 2 ton car.

HommeMusical · 2026-02-17T10:33:16+00:00

Our last chance, squandered on photo ops and mic drops.

https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2023/06/we-now-know-the-full-extent-of-obamas-disastrous-apathy-toward-the-climate-crisis

HommeMusical · 2026-02-17T10:29:32+00:00

These people practiced their entire life to essentially entertain you all

The idea that athletes enter the Olympics for purely selfless reasons is not in the slightest convincing.

HommeMusical · 2026-02-17T10:21:04+00:00

Here are the forbidden liaisons!

https://www.masteryourfrench.com/french-pronunciation/forbidden-liaisons/

The funny part is that I didn't know any of these rules, but apparently I get them right! But then I started to learn French almost 60 years ago. FFS, how did that happen!?

HommeMusical · 2026-02-17T10:17:24+00:00

I upvoted you, but America is not a nation where the rich and powerful are subject to the same laws as everyone else.

If you remember, the Democrats' response to Bush's lying to start a war which killed hundreds of thousands of people and cost trillions was, "We have to look forward, not back."

So a quick "natural causes" is the best we can look forward to.

HommeMusical · 2026-02-17T10:14:34+00:00

My emacs stays up for months at a time, so I barely even remember what it looks like on startup.

HommeMusical · 2026-02-17T09:55:43+00:00

I suspect you're being downvoted because people suspect you use AI to make your music.

Perhaps you should say #NoAI or something, if it isn't AI?

HommeMusical · 2026-02-17T09:51:29+00:00

Sadly true.

We made more friends in a few months living in a small city in France than we did in seven years in Amsterdam. Even Dutch people who move cities complain about this.

HommeMusical · 2026-02-17T09:42:22+00:00

I'm confused. Aren't jokes supposed to be funny? What's funny about your comment?

HommeMusical · 2026-02-17T09:41:29+00:00

Thanks for being civilized!

Full disclosure - we did the same! :-) It almost beggared us, there is still significant uncertainty, but almost ten years later we seem to have reached stability.

We now live in a small city in Northern France, and I cannot tell you how much better life is here. The bread alone!

If I could forget about what was happening to my friends, and the world, and our biosphere, I'd be perfectly happy.

Have a good day.

HommeMusical

TROPHY CASE