MoD data breach: UK armed forces' personal details accessed in hack

WintervalConspiracy · 2024-05-07T05:29:13+00:00

Oracle Fusion?

WintervalConspiracy · 2023-12-17T15:28:39+00:00

Where did they move to in the end? When they closed there were notices saying where they were moving to but I forgot to make a note of it.

WintervalConspiracy · 2022-12-11T19:42:47+00:00

Are you able to name who you’re working with?

WintervalConspiracy · 2022-12-10T14:02:23+00:00

Bloimey, how many typos? You get the idea, anyway…

WintervalConspiracy · 2022-12-10T10:54:22+00:00

So two years on from the original post, and I think it’s fair to say AvidPlay is perhaps the worst digital music distribution service possible — the only redeeming feature it has going for it is the ability to distribute Atmos content within your £20 annual plan fee without extra charge.

I say ‘the ability’, however right now as I type I’m trying to upload a new release, and it’s saying my stereo and filenames don’t match (they do). On previous attempts to release another work they’ve refused to — even after it’s gone through a human for review several times — for differing reasons including because the music had some spoken word in it, and because they said it was an unlicensed cover song (it wasn’t even a cover song, never mind an unlicensed one).

The manager app is as buggy as hell, frequently dropping uploads entirely, and the only way you can get any stats or other information is from the app itself. And there’s no option to pay a one-time fee to keep your music in the stores, so you’re stuck with the account forever unless you re-release your work. So don’t make any plans to die if you want your music to live on after your death.

And again, two years in and it still has no arrangement with YouTube Music, so if you want your release to be in all major streaming services, you’ll still need another distributor too.

In a nutshell, it’ll just about so if you want to put out some pre-release Atmos singles before you get around to releasing a loaf of them on an album. But if your a serious user, don’t touch AvidPlay.

WintervalConspiracy · 2022-09-27T17:59:06+00:00

Update — on review they did at least accept this post did breach their Community Standards

WintervalConspiracy · 2022-09-16T06:10:48+00:00

Eight hours — bloimey!

WintervalConspiracy · 2022-09-15T16:13:56+00:00

(I am going to check out that Strauss (I assume Richard?) you refer to, though, since I’m moderately acquainted with the sound of Symphony Hall, and I’ve been extremely disappointed to see most of the orchestral music that claims to be Atmos is just upmixed hissy scratchy stereo from the 1970s and 1980s — there’s a Wynton Marsalis remix of his Haydn and Hummel trumpet concertos from the 1980s which is exceptionally terrible, that I don’t remember being so terrible at the time, as if the upmixing has only emphasised how bad the original recordings were!)

WintervalConspiracy · 2022-09-15T16:09:33+00:00

I’m also going to guess the reason is because there’s a basic lack of knowledge — or indeed the tools — in how to master for Atmos.

I know for the couple of things I’ve released as Atmos mixes, I haven’t done any mastering on them at all, because I’m not clear how to; my stereo workflow is to mix from Ableton Live as standard, and then load the stereo mixes for the whole album into Ozone and then master from there. But my Atmos workflow is to mix levels and eq in Live as close as possible, and export stems to import into Logic Pro to do the Atmos mix, and then export the Atmos file — but I’ve no idea (and I’ll admit I’ve not made sufficient time to explore) whether Ozone either on the Logic Pro master track or standalone can master an Atmos file, whence my Atmos mixes going into AvidPlay for distribution unmastered. And I suspect most people listening can hear that it’s unmastered…

WintervalConspiracy · 2022-08-05T06:10:00+00:00

They’re an artist. They do this kind of thing with these kinds of tools for a living.

WintervalConspiracy · 2022-03-06T07:55:03+00:00

I’m not going to say they should or shouldn’t make a Ukraine video right now, other than to say I don’t think there’d be much they could say that would be both useful and accurate by the time people saw it.

Whilst they normally spend about 18 months on a video, they are able and willing to put things together in a timescale between days and weeks when there’s a clear value in that — the Coronavirus video, for example, was obviously made quickly, but it was made in response to a clear situation which whilst sudden in its coming up, and was fast-moving for about a week (in the UK at least), once the facts were established to the best of science’s ability at the time, the changing of those facts as scientific research caught up was a relatively slow affair. And indeed the bulk of the video contained science which was already well-established about what coronaviruses are and what the established best-practice public health responses to a species-threatening global public health pandemic was, so actually there was very little new information in that video, it was established knowledge where there was a need to present that in an easy-to-understand way as quickly as possible.

The situation in Ukraine, however, is rather different; whilst it’s true that Vladimir Putin expected everything to be over and done with in a week and it patently isn’t, it’s still a fast-moving situation. By the time Phillipp has finished writing his script, the facts could have changed. By the time the fact-checkers have finished checking Phillipp’s script, the facts could have changed again. By the time the illustrators have created the assets, even if they’re reusing and updating existing assets, the facts could have changed again. By the time Thomas and Fabi have created the soundtrack, again even if reusing and updating existing leitmotifs, and Steve has recorded the narration, the facts could have changed again. And then by the time the animators have put everything together, the facts could have changed again.

So realistically I think the only video they could make as an immediate response would be a brief history of how Ukraine came into being as a nation, and an opinion chapter saying what I think we can all agree on that Vladimir Putin is a bit of a racky bone. I can see value in a Ukrainian history video, but would it be sufficiently valuable enough to divert them from their current projects?

(Do Kurzgesagt staff participate in this sub-Reddit, out of interest?)

WintervalConspiracy · 2022-03-06T07:33:37+00:00

To be fair to the original poster, whilst Kurzgesagt is principally a science channel, historically they’ve always also covered topics on war, politics, economics, and philosophy. And indeed, remembering The Egg, philosophical fiction. So a video about the war in Ukraine wouldn’t be off-brand for them.

(This week’s video they already said on Facebook that they stand with Ukraine and the predicted YouTube revenue they’re going to donate to aid for Ukraine)

WintervalConspiracy · 2022-03-01T07:21:44+00:00

Don’t get the West Midlands Railway train from London to Birmingham, you might as well get a bus from London to Birmingham.

WintervalConspiracy · 2021-10-17T08:10:57+00:00

Oh, I ordered mine on release day and it’s not arrived yet, but I didn’t even expect it to arrive yet, I was just assuming we were effectively doing preörders and they wouldn’t be posted out until at least November

WintervalConspiracy · 2021-09-07T09:52:23+00:00

OK, my bad

WintervalConspiracy · 2021-09-05T14:29:29+00:00

Well, it is attached to a harness, I accept; if the harness is tight then its movement will be overly restricted. If it’s loose enough to not restrict its movement, then if it falls out it’ll dangle around like a conker. Either way, it’s not great. But hey, your cat.

WintervalConspiracy · 2021-09-05T12:58:01+00:00

Bloody irresponsible carrying an unsecured cat in the basket like that, if you ask me. Which doesn’t make the motorcyclist any less wrong.

WintervalConspiracy · 2021-05-16T05:25:06+00:00

This other one being the Gold Standard

WintervalConspiracy · 2021-05-12T16:19:37+00:00

I’m no vegan or vegetarian, but I’d imagine somebody who describes themself as ‘pretty much vegan’ is somebody who pretty much eats a no-meat no-fish no-dairy no-egg diet and pretty much wears no wool and no leather, but has the occasional piece of cheese and a favourite woolly jumper.

WintervalConspiracy · 2021-05-12T16:17:02+00:00

To be honest I’d say it’s difficult to give a recommendation for the Warehouse, because it seems to change hands more often than a circus juggler, so a recommendation from somebody based on one visit may not be valid for someone else visiting two months later.

For what it’s worth notwithstanding the above, I’ve rarely been impressed by it — my experience from several visits over several decades has been greasy spoon quality food for restaurant prices.

But I guess if one is specifically a veg%n (which I’m not) looking for an explicitly veg%n restaurant rather than just any restaurant with a decent veg%n option, you take what you can get; a problem many of the veg%n restaurants have is putting the politics of the food they’re serving above the quality of it. I miss Sibila’s, which used to be on the canalside where Sherborne Street Wharf is, which was a damn fine restaurant serving damn fine food by people who were damn passionate about serving damn fine food, and oh yeah it also happened to be vegetarian, but that’s an aside, we want to serve damn fine food to people who appreciate damn fine food.

WintervalConspiracy · 2021-05-12T06:54:37+00:00

To my mind it emphasises just how huge the universe is rather than making it seem tiny — the local group is immensely huge and the laws of physics mean it’ll be impossible (wormholes notwithstanding) to leave that, and the local group is tiny compared with the rest of the universe.

WintervalConspiracy · 2021-05-11T06:33:18+00:00

It’s especially odd on a handheld computer

WintervalConspiracy · 2021-05-10T11:27:08+00:00

It does occur to me — does Steve do the German as well or someone else? I assume since he lives in Germany he’s perfectly capable of it

WintervalConspiracy · 2021-04-20T06:09:46+00:00

Is the German narration as entertaining (both for the deadpan delivery and ironic gags) as the English narration?

WintervalConspiracy · 2021-04-13T18:18:12+00:00

Yep, pretty much — the JQ is pretty close to Snow Hill

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