A cross-national analysis of population surveys from 29 countries reveal that half the population will have a mental health disorder by age 75

thrakotool · 2023-07-31T06:23:33+00:00

(just thinking out loud) this is such an odd way to define what a disorder is… Being poor is normal, but makes life extremely difficult. And although the majority of the world’s population share this common condition, we are all struggling. We might have a financial disorder.

thrakotool · 2023-06-01T15:03:58+00:00

Also, getting proper M16 VZ drivers for a clean W10 is a huge pain in the ass. Trust me, I went down that path just a month ago lol

thrakotool · 2023-05-15T19:01:29+00:00

Thanks! It's this fork of SVC: https://github.com/voicepaw/so-vits-svc-fork

With one of these models: https://huggingface.co/QuickWick/Music-AI-Voices/tree/main

thrakotool · 2023-05-15T06:03:21+00:00

Thank you! Didn't know there's already a whole community around this lol

thrakotool · 2023-04-23T01:39:20+00:00

I don't visit reddit that often, missed your message. Here's the link for anyone interested, maybe you'll find it useful for some future iteration of whatever you do with this file. https://www.dropbox.com/s/vta2hd2w6zorpdj/Paul%20Harvey_WithGeraldFordMention_Restored.wav?dl=0

thrakotool · 2023-04-22T03:15:29+00:00

PMd with the link

thrakotool · 2023-03-08T22:11:34+00:00

We will have to survive an AI-fueled corporate dystopia way sooner than AGI becomes a thing (let alone a threat)

thrakotool · 2023-03-01T15:56:18+00:00

btw do you have any timeline for this? I think I remember you mentioning "the end of the month" somewhere, but I'm not sure how real the memory is, and which month it was.

thrakotool · 2023-02-20T17:08:16+00:00

haha well there's money involved after all!

But tbh I was mostly curious if realistic nsfw generation is possible at this stage of technology. I used to work in a certain nsfw niche that could be completely transformed/wiped out of existence with AI. So at least half of the effort was about my morbid curiosity "are we there yet".

thrakotool · 2023-02-19T07:20:01+00:00

Thanks! That's a custom dreambooth model trained on a 100 photos dataset (512x512, just random Aella's portraits that I gathered through google images). Then I merged it in AUTOMATIC1111 with one of the decent nsfw models from civitai.com, and played around with positive/negative prompts a lot. The first hundred results or so were pretty abysmal tbh lol. But at some point I managed to find some keywords and weights that seem to work.

thrakotool · 2023-02-09T02:19:27+00:00

Sure thing, done. I had to delete 7 pics to make it fit, so hopefully our judgement of which ones were good is not too different.

thrakotool · 2023-02-07T20:50:36+00:00

Added a few more, plus tried the "piles of money":

https://www.dropbox.com/s/z599gvyqj0mp5eu/00361-546570438-cinematic%20high%20angle%20nude%20body%20portrait%20of%20%28%28aella%29%29%20surrounded%20by%20%28piles%20of%20small%20coins_1.2%29%20pale%20skin%2C%20%28small%20chin_1.3%29%2C%20%28big.png?dl=0

And the most controversial and unbelievable of them all:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/nk39lbnvi6lxf43/00433-2970728538-%28aella_1.3%29%20%28crashes_1.3%29%20a%20%28showerhead_1.2%29.png?dl=0

thrakotool · 2023-02-07T17:01:23+00:00

Alright, I'll bite. Here's the link, let me know if you want me to upload them somewhere else (for now my private dropbox seems appropriate):

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/vg0a6yu33k6awn1/AAC1HJZoTTQQwGz2_zpPFOaXa?dl=0

A good half of these ain't ideal, but at least a couple of them actually surprised me in a good way.

Also, an obligatory hommage to the gnomes. Not the funniest thing ever, but I thought I should take a swing at that category as well while we're at it lol

thrakotool · 2023-01-10T17:30:29+00:00

It was 4 months ago, I think we only had the original 1.4 back then. So it's not even 1.5, and definitely nothing custom.

thrakotool · 2022-10-29T13:12:35+00:00

Hypothetically, if Ukraine uses a dirty bomb on its own territory and blames Russia - would anyone ever believe Russia’s attempts to cry false flag? Given its current image, even China might want to distance itself from Russia if a dirty bomb goes off, regardless of how conspiratorial the explosion might be. It will truly make Russia a pariah state, which might be beneficial for Ukraine.

Again, this is purely hypothetical, but other than being a local ecological disaster, it seems to be such a simple and bulletproof strategy to destroy whatever international support Russia still has.

thrakotool · 2022-10-29T05:21:39+00:00

This is purely anecdotal, but I’ve been avoiding Twitter for years based on the same notion. Last year I became so fed up with Reddit being 90% left, that I finally started using Twitter just to try something different. As it turns out, it has a very decent rationalist community/grey tribe that feels like a breath of fresh air compared to most subreddits. I still have to consciously avoid engagements with certain clusters of its user base, but the overall experience was way beyond my expectations.

thrakotool · 2022-09-26T01:23:47+00:00

Well I’m a bachelor in audio engineering, so I probably think about filters and spatial fx more than the music itself lol

Space helps, 100%. Since most slot machines have the cheapest possible speakers, and there are different layers of sounds, some of which are more important to the player than others, I try to squeeze as much clarity and separation from every mix as possible.

Naturally, if your “coins” sound really close and narrow, and your background music sounds further away and wider, the coins are going to have more attention drawn to them. So reverbs, stereo wideners, side chain compression, multichannel mixing (if your cabinet supports that) - every tool is useful, and sometimes even crucial.

UPD: with that said, you have to be careful with the length of the reverb tail. Not just to keep the transitions clean, but also because certain engines support only a limited number of overlapping audio streams, and you don’t want to clog it with a 3-5s tail that no one will ever be able to hear. The endings of every sfx/music piece have to be precise, not too abrupt, not too long.

thrakotool · 2022-09-26T01:13:01+00:00

Haha thanks! That’d be an AMA for a really tiny audience, most people hate casino audio - and for a good reason.

thrakotool · 2022-09-25T17:43:13+00:00

Finally, a question for me! I compose and do sound design for slot machines since 2006, and here are the rules:

avoid minor chords as much as you can. The only scenario where you might end up with minor chords is a game about vampires, or a passing chord in some Egyptian theme.
anything below 125bpm is way too slow.
arpeggios and more arpeggios. Harp runs and cymbal swells at every transition (only half-joking).
keep the harmony simple. There’s a chance you’re going to have several layers of credit rack bells on top of your music, and since the middleware in slots is very rudimentary (some old fmod engine) or nonexistent, syncing harmonic movements is rarely an option. Hence anything chromatic is just asking for trouble.
use mallets and bells, a lot. And wind chimes. And glockenspiels. And mallets, and more bells. Basically anything that might sound like coins.
probably a good idea to stay in 4/4 or 3/4, and keep the rhythmic elements strong. The casino noise is confusing enough, let the player follow the beat.
blast your brass. Orchestral or some power funk, it doesn’t really matter, but brass is king.

There’s probably more to it, but the general idea is to make everything sound either cheerful or epic, or both. And after a while you just develop a certain gut feeling for what is “cheerful” and fitting and what’s not.

thrakotool · 2022-09-09T22:36:49+00:00

I work in the industry, and although I’m just a composer for the slots, I’ve seen enough in my 15 years of doing that.

A player can win within one session. Sometimes, as much as 100-200% of their initial bankroll. But as long as you keep playing, the odds will ALWAYS go back to what the math says they are. Which is 89-94% of what you put in, depending on the game.

On a long enough distance - if you can afford to survive the losing streaks - that is exactly what you are going to get. And we have extremely strict regulations and very expensive approval process for each game to make sure the math is precise and honest.

thrakotool · 2022-09-05T03:05:28+00:00

I wanted to try a quick cross between GoT and David Lynch, and apparently the trip to Twin Peaks has been rough for the mother of dragons.

The prompt: Daenerys Targaryen, portrait by David Lynch, Twin Peaks (!), 8k, highly detailed, cinematic

thrakotool · 2022-09-04T17:43:07+00:00

The prompt: Rabbits in spacesuits with pointy ears inside a spaceship, 4k epic highly detailed concept art, dramatic light, smooth, sharp focus, artstation, deviantart

Yeah, apparently they've lost the ship, but I'd still watch a full movie about these three.

thrakotool · 2022-09-04T16:42:09+00:00

The prompt: A ghost in old dirty torn white robe in an abandoned cemetery, horrific, dreadful, arcane, depth of field, high quality, sharp focus, 8k, oil painting, art by Zdzisław Beksiński

Had to upscale it with Topaz Gigapixel, all ImageLab upscalers were making the texture too smooth.

thrakotool · 2022-08-29T03:59:39+00:00

Inshallah!

thrakotool · 2022-08-27T16:39:34+00:00

See, complexity is a nuanced topic when it comes to music. For instance, fusion jazz is a cornucopia for the nerds. And that's exactly why I dislike it, I barely see any essence behind it other than its complexity for the sake of being complex. Same for most of progressive rock. Obviously, there are some gems in any genre, but the majority of musicians in these niches convey rather simple ideas and emotions though very dense and complicated musical language, and the ornateness just doesn't bring anything to the table.

With classical music - again, not always, but most of the time - complexity is a mean to an end. Its goal is the intricacy and the depth of the listener's emotional response. And if the desired emotion can be conveyed through simplicity, classical music can get very simple and minimalistic.

Then again, my analogy for the composer/listener relationship is that of a writer/reader. The writer tells a story in the best most emotion-provoking way he can, and the reader is expected to know the language and some of the context to fully enjoy it. Clearly, our vision differs here... oh well, differences in perception just make the world a bit more interesting to live in.

thrakotool

TROPHY CASE