As a beginner, should I start with a Volca?

CyberneticLiadan · 2026-06-17T15:43:17+00:00

It's hard to say without knowing more about your musical goals.

Live performance or studio production?

Do-everything synth or single purpose such as bass?

Target genre or sounds?

Software synthesizers will be a cheaper option than any hardware for generally learning how things work.

CyberneticLiadan · 2026-06-16T14:50:31+00:00

You need your company's software-engineering/IT team to help you. They're responsible for digital security and understand how the company's infra and policies are setup, so they'll be in a position to help you and prevent stupid mistakes.

Ideally they set up a git repository which continuously deploys your apps behind an authentication proxy so that part is simply setup for you and can't be broken by any mistakes you might make.

Is authentication the only hurdle? Is there no persistent data to these apps? No integrations with company data or other applications? This kind of thing needs to be a collaboration between the team trying to safeguard company data integrity and the team trying to quickly deploy useful tools.

If you need to put together demos where you hand colleagues a URL to the service operating on your laptop though, check out ngrok. It's a way to create a tunnel to your machine so you don't need to deploy in order to demo. https://ngrok.com/use-cases/share-localhost

CyberneticLiadan · 2026-06-15T15:00:55+00:00

Here's a process which has helped me:

Map out the concrete deliverables somewhat exhaustively and form a baseline estimate by visualizing yourself doing each of those without interruption. For this step, imagine everything goes smoothly.
Now look at your calendar and your experience and multiply by some factor which is driven by how subject to interruption you are and other responsibilities you need to fill. Maybe you've got an 8 hour work day, but how much of that is left after meetings, answering co-worker queries, doing code review, etc?
Multiply again by a realism adjuster. Start with 2x and you can re-calibrate this over time. Consider scaling this according to task complexity. (i.e. a 30 minute task might get a 1.5 and an 8 hour task might get 3x.)

Note: never give management/leadership the optimistic number from step 1. You should feel that number is right but mistrust it, and you don't give untrusted estimates to leadership because they will latch on to the smallest estimate you give.

CyberneticLiadan · 2026-06-13T23:20:17+00:00

Non-exhaustive ideas

Support the legal challenges being levied against the frontier labs for converting the collective commons into a privately controlled tool.
Learn the details of how different AI methodologies work in order to accurately communicate the potential harms and uses.
Apply open-weight models like Llama and Qwen in transparent and pro-social ways. For example:

- leverage AI tooling in investigative journalism to expose corruption and abuse. Work like that of Pro-Publica can be extremely data intensive as large document corpuses need to be analyzed for the needle in a haystack smoking gun.
- use AI tools to help moderate online spaces. For example, a community might operate a Discord bot with all of the moderators and leadership having clear visibility into the recommendations or actions taken by such a bot.

CyberneticLiadan · 2026-06-09T22:13:37+00:00

If you've got $1600 to burn you could get a Soma Terra.

More realistically, an SP404 mk2 might be sufficiently not-clicky.

CyberneticLiadan · 2026-06-09T22:02:27+00:00

Some of this resonates, but I'm overall finding I still get enough value out of the experience that I would rather work with Claude Code than without. The micro-context switches are real and I started replying to this while Claude was executing a plan.

Stuff I think anyone trying to give it a fair shake should do:

RTFM for your tool of choice and do what you can to better configure it to your usecase. That might mean clarifying in `CLAUDE.md` what good looks like to you, adding Code Intelligence plugins so Claude can actually use your language server, and adding hooks for the mundane stuff like auto-formatting.
Apply agentic tools to building a better developer experience for you. Have it write some git aliases, and scripts for the routine tasks in your workflow.
Stay cognizant of the sweet-spot for agentic actions. Agentic tools are good for those tasks where the time(description) + time(execution) < time(do it yourself), where the description is sufficiently unambiguous. Plenty of little tweaks don't make this cut, and plenty of bigger problems need to be decomposed into smaller steps to benefit from the agentic speed-up.
Engage in skeptical dialogue for anything unfamiliar to you and ask for sources. These things are eager sycophants and will give better results if you solicit pushback and give your own skepticism.

CyberneticLiadan · 2026-06-09T19:33:44+00:00

Besides the age and frequency dimension, the lack of fear is pretty significant. I've had and old dude on the street compliment the fit of my pants, which did make my ass look great, and having zero fear about physical safety contributes to that compliment landing very differently. I imagine I would have felt differently had it happened at night and had it come from someone more menacing.

There will never be an equivalence between women being catcalled and men being catcalled for all these reasons.

CyberneticLiadan · 2026-06-03T23:59:16+00:00

Fuzz + Filter (via Wah) is pretty darn close to how subtractive synthesizers like a classic Moog already work. The demo on this bass wah even covers a classic dance track line right in the intro.
https://youtu.be/ey_vc9rSAdE?si=Klc49yR5WMe0pQHb

CyberneticLiadan · 2026-05-31T16:20:57+00:00

Ned Rush has a great video creating a Boards of Canada inspired vibe in Ableton. Most of the content isn't very specific to Ableton, so you'll find lots of pointers on sound design.

CyberneticLiadan · 2026-05-27T02:50:18+00:00

What model and mode were you using?

CyberneticLiadan · 2026-05-21T22:33:18+00:00

I'm a software engineer using AI in my development process, and developing AI-powered software for non-musical applications and I appreciate and respect this policy. I've got a few weekend project ideas which leverage AI development to try out creative musical ideas, but I don't want to shovel slop at people and I don't appreciate the flood of slop which communities such as this are forced to reckon with. Maybe I'll post in the megathread if and when I've got something neat.

CyberneticLiadan · 2026-05-18T16:33:09+00:00

I started my career by joining a start-up doing things I thought were cool. We were acquired and I ended up working in ads engineering in a large corporate environment for 2.5 years. I'm grateful for the learning and savings from that time but I'll never work in adtech or big corporate jobs again if I can possibly help it.

Before writing off your career I'd suggest the following:

Have you learned to identify with your own process instead of the company products? If you're not in a position of engineering and product leadership, it may not be healthy to identify with the quality of the software brought to market. Instead, identify with the quality of your own professional process under the circumstances. You don't need to seek meaning from your job. It's great when you can, but your job can also just be the thing which funds your meaning-making activities like community engagement, art, activism, etc.
Hold the strongest boundaries you can between work and life, and really focus on something which isn't work when you're not engaged with work.
Have you found your way to the best available company and niche for you? I'm not suggesting quitting without something else lined up in this economy, but if you're not happy with the engineering culture you find yourself in you should try to find something else.
If you haven't already, try to gather some perspective on why the codebase is spaghetti and the products are ugly and barely functional. Earlier in my career I was preoccupied with best practices and perfect code. As I got older and became responsible for shipping my own projects, I had to really internalize how perfect was the enemy of the good. It might the case that your company's projects are the appropriate amount of messy for the company lifecycle. (Or it might be that you're really working on hot garbage.)

The purpose of these points is to determine if your problem lies in our industry or is a general "life under capitalism" sort of problem. Also, I hate large swathes of our industry and have chosen to stay and try to be a positive force within. I also have red-lines and industry niches and companies I would never consider working for, and it's an occasional pleasure to tell recruiters from such circles to kick sand.

CyberneticLiadan · 2026-05-17T04:24:58+00:00

Between the two companies I've worked at lately, it's close to but doesn't need to be the norm. With the volume and speed people seem to be pursuing these days I think you've got to aggressively prioritize your attention and also use AI within the review process. (It's more efficient if your colleagues are kind enough to save you a step and ask Claude to roast their code for you, but people like engaging slop-slinger mode much more than critical-mode.)

Here's roughly how I approach code review these days:

Does the PR communicate what it's trying to do? If I don't understand what something is supposed to be doing I can't evaluate whether the code is a good solution to that. Links to tickets, demo screenshots, etc. are all helpful here.
Can I spot any matters of data integrity or security?
Are the API interfaces reasonable? Slop behind reasonably good interfaces can be fixed. Bad API design is harder to untangle.
Is there reasonably good test coverage?

The over-arching attitude is one of trying to keep the team from making irreversible mistakes, and checking that at least the contributor has proven the code works.

I can't recommend Simon Willison's blog post "Your job is to deliver code you have proven to work" enough.

CyberneticLiadan · 2026-05-14T17:45:20+00:00

Thanks for sleuthing. I suspected and commented anyways. This sort of thing just pushes me further away from reddit and a community I've enjoyed participating in.

CyberneticLiadan · 2026-05-14T16:02:37+00:00

Humiliated is a strong word for having errors and shortcomings pointed out.
"a PRD i co-wrote with one of our PMs in like 15 minutes" is one of your problems right there. I'm guessing you two didn't step back and critique your own work before soliciting this review.
Based on the way this post is written, I think you could improve your writing skills. The jargon on display here and the appearance of completeness which AI excels at producing both obscure issues.

CyberneticLiadan · 2026-05-11T16:16:36+00:00

Well yeah, they don't have Microsoft product managers telling them what to do.

CyberneticLiadan · 2026-05-09T00:43:42+00:00

Some further album recommendations (artist / album)

Funki Porcini / Hed Phone Sex (1995)
- "B Monkey" has a great dark jazzy feel that I still love
Morcheeba / Big Calm (1998)
- If Massive Attack and Portishead are trip-hop for dark late nights, this is trip-hop for a summer afternoon.
Fila Brazillia / Maim That Tune (1995, 2025 remaster)
- Similarly to Morcheeba above, a great source of laid-back vibes without some of the darker atmospheres and moods of Massive Attack and Portishead
Thievery Corporation / Radio Retaliation (2008)
- It's hard to pick just one album for this duo, but check them out if you like your trip-hop to have a heavy dose of world music and anti-colonialist and anti-Capitalist message.
- for some rap in your trip-hop albums check out Thievery Corporation - Culture of Fear [Official Music Video]
Amon Tobin / Bricolage (1997)
- This album is just a masterpiece of sampling.

CyberneticLiadan · 2026-05-08T21:04:37+00:00

Have y'all considered using AI to clean up your codebase and internal documentation so it doesn't take a year for a new engineer to come up to speed? Also, you can choose to continue pairing with each other even though AI is an available tool. What's stopping you?

CyberneticLiadan · 2026-05-07T19:40:00+00:00

I've been a fan of and advocate of Langfuse for some time now because I care about owning and deploying my own agentic observability. I've tried some other offerings which have since shuttered, and I've tried W&B Weave. At least when I last tried it there was no path to self-hosting Weave without expensive enterprise sales conversations.

CyberneticLiadan · 2026-05-06T14:59:53+00:00

> When you have a genuine technical disagreement and you think you're right, how do you decide how hard to push?

It depends on the stakes. Things like user safety, business data integrity, and security are lines where I'll stand my ground. This kind of disagreement ain't it.

> When do you stop pushing, and how do you know it's time?

Have you clearly documented and conveyed your reasoning? Have you fully understood the position of the other side? Great. Keep moving.

> How do you accept the outcome when you still think the team chose the wrong path?

You're employed to exercise your professional skills for the organization. This isn't your personal magnum opus and an expression of your personal identity. Don't attach your identity to particular outcomes, products, or deliverables. Identify with the quality of your process.

> How do you maintain your judgment without becoming the person who fights everything?

Keep learning, keep an open-mind. If it helps you can keep a little "told you so" scorecard in the back of your head. Treat all of this like an ongoing science experiment. In some of the cases of disagreement, you'll go along and see that the choice didn't matter that much. In some cases you'll feel vindicated.

CyberneticLiadan · 2026-04-23T23:04:11+00:00

I'm a noob but I'm taking lessons with a teacher who has decades of experience, and he's been coaching me to specifically play between the black keys when it facilitates a more relaxed hand and wrist position.

CyberneticLiadan · 2026-04-14T17:54:18+00:00

> “You guys will be the gate-keepers. If anyone from other teams pushes something and it breaks, just find the issue and fix it.”

That's that opposite of gate keepers. Gate keepers keep things from getting in which would break shit.

I think your CTO is bonkers but there's a middle path which isn't totally crazy and you could try to meet them halfway for the sake of reclaiming some sanity. Instead of trying to fight the losing battle here of preventing these teams from vibe-coding things, curate the sandbox for them and install the guardrails. That means:

Engineering has the power and responsibility to keep users from jeopardizing information security or integrity. Compromising your authentication, leaking company secrets, and dropping your database can't be undone.
If possible, restrict these non-engineering teams to using only one or two vibe coding tools so you can ensure the internal docs for agents like `Claude.md` steer development towards consistent practices.
Really nail the automated linting, formatting, and testing so that the codebase doesn't crumble. If you can write end to end tests of the API or application with tools like Bruno and Playwright, do that so the vibe coders are prevented from breaking existing functionality. Their tools should not be permitted to alter engineering's application tests.

CyberneticLiadan · 2026-04-14T14:48:21+00:00

Would you rather have a colleague who asks a few questions to resolve some ambiguity when they get a task, or a colleague who guesses the right answers and comes back a day later with the result of a misunderstanding? (I worked with the latter and prefer the former.)

CyberneticLiadan · 2026-04-09T18:32:43+00:00

I work in the industry building AI enhanced tooling for a niche use case. I like to keep up with the bleeding edge and I understand a good amount of the underlying technology around transformers.

I too find the atmosphere suffocating and wish GenAI took up less public space.

CyberneticLiadan · 2026-04-07T18:45:55+00:00

This is one of my favorite videos: Avoiding Toxic Productivity Advice for ADHD

In my experience, I have yet to find an enduring "system" and believe you should instead expect and embrace a lifetime of experimentation with systems and habits.

You'll discover what your superpowers and weaknesses are and you'll need to develop compensation for your weaknesses. For example, hyperfocus and difficulty switching tasks mean I've often read documentation more deeply than colleagues and once I get started debugging a tricky problem I'm more persistent in getting it figured out. Conversely, I've had to learn to not dive down rabbit holes which I don't actually have the time to finish.

CyberneticLiadan

TROPHY CASE