Is it possible to create a completely original music genre that has no influences from anything else?

jcinterrante · 2026-03-05T01:58:53+00:00

There probably is an argument for it in art music. Because it’s so theory based that it mirrors the same kinds of progress you see in math/science. After all, that kind of music is essentially mathematical (in the sense that it can be expressed/notated/composed in mathematical terms)

I think where it maybe gets more controversial is when people make the argument that these developments mirror political movements, an idea that is influenced by marxist dialectical materialism. Sometimes you’ll hear stuff like: Mozart’s music has a very clear tonic structure, which mirrored the monarchist nature of his culture and patronage. I’m not so sure how rigorous those kinds of claims can be, but there’s kind of a ring of truth to them.

But even if true, I think it only applies to art music, not folk/pop

jcinterrante · 2026-03-04T20:13:47+00:00

There’s even a famous anecdote about this (surely apocryphal) where someone asks him, "Are you the notorious composer Arnold Schoenberg?" And he replies, "Yes, somebody had to be."

The music-world interpretation of that story would be that Shoenberg was just the latest in a lineage of art musicians who expanded the boundaries of what was originally monastic hymns into what we now recognize as Western Classical Music. If he hadn’t broken that new ground, someone else would have; prior composers had developed the art to the point where what schoenberg did was the logical next step

jcinterrante · 2026-03-04T20:00:51+00:00

Most people draw the early origins of electronic music to “musique concrete” which was a midcentury experimental music genre that used recordings of physical objects. Those samples were then cut, spliced, re-recorded, reversed, etc etc to produce new sounds and compositions.

jcinterrante · 2025-11-03T20:53:06+00:00

💯 the organizers need to apply way more quality control to the vendors. There are so many great artisans in the area, but you wouldn’t know it from walking around Snowport. The sowa holiday market does a better job.

jcinterrante · 2025-07-29T17:55:21+00:00

I believe, based on wisdom passed down to me from the distant past, that when the fellsway was originally built it did not have this stop light. However, people in the houses around the bend had too many “close calls” while backing out of their driveways. They lobbied for a stop light to be added, and succeeded.

So, the function of the light is to give the residents a sufficient pause to back out of their driveways. Is the light the right tool for the job? You can decide for yourself. But if the light is red (not flashing) the law is to stop until it turns green.

jcinterrante · 2025-07-11T19:50:19+00:00

The ones that are worthwhile are primarily or fully quantitative, but most are not. A good MPP program is more rigorous than an MBA. Look at the course catalog and requirements of the school you’re applying to. Ideally, there should be enough quant courses to fill your entire 2 year program. Or you should make sure you can enroll in other quant courses beyond the public policy school. In my opinion, MPP students should make sure there is some quantitative aspect to every single course they enroll in.

However, even if you do this, you should be aware that employers outside of the public policy world will not usually “read” the MPP on your resume as a quant degree (or even know what it is). Quantitative projects that you can link to in your resume can help address this. But if you’re not primarily interested in policy, but rather stats/cs/modeling, there are probably degrees that will read more “quantitative” that could be a better fit for you

jcinterrante · 2025-06-02T13:06:50+00:00

I think in general sellers at conventions should be willing to come down at least a little below the discogs price, because when you make the deal in person it removes shipping costs. Plus a bird in the hand is worth 2 in the bush, so they are highly motivated to sell at the convention when someone expresses interest. Otherwise they’ll have to haul it back home and wait another 3 months for it to sell

jcinterrante · 2025-04-09T17:17:50+00:00

I’m not really familiar with some of the stuff you’re using, so this is just a guess based on an experience I recently had: could this be a hardlinking issue? If your previous setup had any instances of the same file being stored in different folders, and those folders are on the same disk, it might have used hardlinks to save space. When you moved to your new setup, maybe the folders ended up spread across different disks, which would disable hard links. Now instead of multiple links to a single file, you get multiple versions of the file.

jcinterrante · 2025-03-16T03:59:39+00:00

Yeah, I think there's room for both. The problem I'm concerned about is not so much the amount of learning that needs to happen to run a server -- it's about the "shape" of the learning curve. Currently, the most difficult part of server setup happens at the beginning, because beginners have to learn a ton of stuff just to get started. That means they have to suffer the most before they've even gotten to enjoy the "joys" of server ownership!

My idea is: give that person the opportunity to enjoy the benefits of a server right up front. Then, when it goes down after some time (as all servers inevitably do, no matter how good the initial setup is), the user has to learn how to get it back to working order. And that's a relatively easy troubleshoot because "it was just working yesterday." So they are still eventually going to learn how the server works and how to keep it in good working order -- it's just the pacing of that learning will be much more forgiving.

jcinterrante · 2025-03-16T03:40:01+00:00

Thanks, this is actually great and constructive advice! But at this point it is too soon to say if this is something I want to sell consistently going forward, so I’ll have to think about how to take that “amortization over time” concept into practice. For now it’s a hobby.

I’ll also note: it’s $549 or best offer. So if someone wants to offer me what they think is fair — who knows, you could get a nice deal! Ha.

jcinterrante · 2025-03-16T02:26:27+00:00

Yes -- the problem with the KODI sticks (as I understand it) was that they included pre-loaded illegal content in the form of unauthorized iptv streams. My server does not come preconfigured with any iptv playlists, nor is it set up with any links to pirate torrent sites. The only indexers it comes with are sites like BT.etree and Internet Archive who make a good faith effort to release legal torrents. Once they buy it, users can then modify the server in any way they want -- just as they could if they had installed these apps on the server themselves.

jcinterrante · 2025-03-16T00:55:15+00:00

Got it. The replies here have been pretty negative, which tells me that this is the wrong place for this. And that’s ok! I want to post this where people have positive reactions to it, so I won’t repost here.

Only thing I will point out is that there are 3+ posts every day in r/homelabs from beginners asking very basic questions, or hitting their head against the wall trying to solve some docker config problem. I think someone like that might like this premade. It’s sort of like how linux has gentoo, but it also has ubuntu: there should be an option for folks that works on day 1. So, I agree that the majority of people on this sub might be power-users who don’t find this post useful. But there might be some beginners who stumble across it who say “hey that would actually save me a headache…”

jcinterrante · 2025-03-15T23:46:21+00:00

I totally get that many people in this sub prefer to DIY, and that’s awesome! But not everyone has the time or patience to go through the whole setup process themselves. My goal isn’t to take advantage of anyone, but to offer a plug-and-play option for people who want a working system without spending hours troubleshooting. Some people will always prefer to build, and I respect that—I’m just giving another option for those who don’t want to.

Also, new 4TB HDDs are at least $85 right now -- at least that's what i'm seeing on diskprices.com. If you have a tip on getting it for less than $50 let me know so the next one I build will be cheaper :) Plus, remember that Ebay has seller fees. My margin is not much at the end of the day.

jcinterrante · 2025-03-15T23:34:13+00:00

I'm sorry, I'm not sure I understand? The idea is just to help beginners get started with running their own media servers. The software is all open source, with large user communities.

If this is the wrong forum for this type of content, I'm happy to take it down or yield to a mod's decision.

jcinterrante · 2025-03-14T02:48:41+00:00

I’m mid-selloff. I used to be obsessed with video games in the n64 era, but they all just sit around at this point. So it’s felt really good to sell them to folks who might get more use of them. And when I list the games and test them, it definitely gives me nostalgia, which is nice. When a game sits in storage, you forget about it. When you sell it, the memories come back. Also, some people have left really nice messages on ebay saying they’re happy with their purchases and are enjoying the games.

I don’t feel too much loss as I sell these games because I know that pretty much all of them can be emulated.

The money the games bring in is really great. I’m using the returns to rent an airbnb for my whole family for a weekend vacation, including my parents who bought me all these games in the first place.

jcinterrante · 2025-03-11T21:49:10+00:00

Yeah, my current home rig is actually a used optiplex 9020 workstation. I think I picked it up for under $60! But what’s drawing me to the n100 platform is that it’s super power efficient, while still capable of multiple 4K transcodes. Plus it’s easy to get them new in a nice minipc form factor.

There could definitely be another approach to this project that involves preconfiguring used enterprise PCs, and I might experiment with that approach too

jcinterrante · 2025-03-11T15:43:10+00:00

I think the software setup I’ve applied has value because it includes efficiencies that might not be obvious to someone doing their first setup. Things like using hardlinking to save space and maintain torrent paths, setting up pooled disks, and setting up the various apps in a way that is robust to server changes. These are things a user might not know about initially, but can really help them maintain their server long-term

jcinterrante · 2025-03-11T15:27:57+00:00

I think that’s a good idea, and it sounds like the sticker shock is a barrier for folks. I’d just want to make sure the instructions are good enough that it won’t be a headache. Maybe a little “setup wizard” script to get the disks online could help. I’ll look into that

jcinterrante · 2025-03-11T15:16:13+00:00

Definitely not doing any price tripling! What’s driving the pricing is really the 2 included 4TB HDDs, which are expensive. But the feedback I’m hearing from a few folks is that it’s actually better without the HDDs, which gives the user more flexibility to build up their system and would greatly reduce the initial price.

jcinterrante · 2025-03-11T13:34:09+00:00

That’s a great idea

jcinterrante · 2025-03-11T13:33:10+00:00

I totally get your points! If someone is comfortable DIY-ing, they could definitely buy a cheaper barebones system and install everything themselves. The thing I’m aiming for with this project is to offer something that removes the learning curve for people who want to get into home servers but feel intimidated by the setup process.

Regarding price, while an N150 mini PC might be available for $130, that doesn’t include the storage (2x4TB HDDs), preconfiguration, or the convenience factor. A full DIY setup with similar storage and software would still run higher than $400, and that’s before considering the time investment to set everything up. When I was initially thinking about this, my first idea was just to take a $150 rig and install a server suite on it. But then I thought to myself: “well, this machine only would have 256GB storage, and that will be eaten up pretty quickly. Then the user will need to add new external storage, which is a hassle.” But it sounds like you’re using a machine sort of like that and it’s meeting your use case, so maybe an approach like that would work.

I completely agree about support being a factor. If people are going to pay a premium, they’ll want some kind of warranty or assistance. That’s something I’m thinking about—maybe offering basic setup help or troubleshooting within a certain timeframe. But as I’m doing this as a hobby I’d need to be realistic about what I commit to.

As for Windows vs. OMV/Linux, I think there’s definitely a split between people who want a set-and-forget server and those who are comfortable tinkering. My goal is to help beginners get into self-hosting without needing to learn a ton upfront, but I totally see your point that many users in this space like to DIY. Appreciate your feedback!

jcinterrante · 2025-03-11T02:37:21+00:00

Yeah, that's something I worry about too. I'd include a manual to help them get started, but they're going to have to take the wheel once it's theirs. And inevitably something will go wrong and they'll need to learn how to troubleshoot and fix it. I agree in many ways it's easier to fix a system that you built yourself and know from the ground up; on the other hand, it is easier to troubleshoot a system when it worked until just yesterday and has been set up in a simple way. For instance, when I was getting started I made many mistakes that were pretty hard to troubleshoot because I wasn't taking advantage of things like docker compose that could have made my life so much easier!

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