Phonautograph

Over on Logicuser.de (I’ve been there for more than 20 year…) bitzone posted the audio recordings of Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville, a french inventor of the Phonautograph. The raw recordings are in the video below.

This stimulated my imagination a little bit, so I had to grab the audio and played around with it a little bit to come up with this little piece.

Those recordings let you hear things that are happening more in your head than in the actual recording. So I’m not going to spoil it and write any of the things that I’m hearing in those snippets. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did creating it.

Phonautograph     

 

 

The front page of today’s LA Times featured the headline, “Workers lead the resistance as AI risk emerges.”

The online edition uses the title, “Column: Your boss wants AI to replace you. The writers’ strike shows how to fight back”

From the article…

A big reason that the AI hype machine has been in overdrive, issuing apocalyptic claims about its vast power, is that the companies selling the tools want to make it all feel inevitable — to feel like the future — and have you believe that resisting it is both futile and stupid. Conveniently, most of these discussions eschew questions such as: Whose future? Whose future does AI really serve?
The answer to that is “Big Tech” and, to a lesser degree, “your boss.”
Matt Nicholas, a 30-year-old writer and WGA member, who was all too aware exactly how AI was going to be used by the film and television industry — not to replace writers, but to undermine them.
Too many executives in too many industries, such as entertainment, tech and journalism, recognize generative AI for what it is: an opportunity to wield leverage over already precarious workforces. There’s going to be a long, hard struggle, but it’s one worth fighting.
I liked this post on VI-Control by user JJP so much, I wanted to archive it here.

Opt out of agreements allowing AI to use your music to build more tracks for a production music library

I don’t have music in any of these libraries, so this is not about Envato specifically, it applies to all of them.

I would suggest to opt-out even though I am very well aware that of course it will not stop these type. of companies (or any for that matter) from implementing AI-driven content and catalogs.

But we don’t have to make it too easy for them.

“Composers/musicians using the website @AudioJungle by @envato to sell royalty free music – Envato have ‘updated’ – their T&C’s to **now have AI train on your items that you have authored and uploaded** You are opted in AUTOMATICALLY. Additionally, your items will now be licensed “in perpetuity” becuase an AI cannot ‘forget’ what it has learned. There is no mention of any profit share for authors from AI works derived from authors’ compositions. If you don’t want your items to be trained by AI, you need to remove them from the marketplace by June 1st. There is (currently) no opt-out available. While I appreciate AI is inevitable and some people will be embracing this, the immediacy with which @envato has gone about it while seemingly going against some of their core values is striking. I can’t believe they didn’t give authors a choice, and have only given 20 days notice to find an alternative. For those who might be dependent on income from the site, it puts them in a massive quandary, especially with the lack of time to find an alternate solution. It’s frankly shameful behavior. I’ve had an author account there since 2009 – which I will now remove. It kept me afloat during my early years in the industry. I also reviewed items on the site. This policy change and sudden implementation is disgraceful, and I’m now sorry to have been associated with @audiojungle and @envato in any way.”

Mars in 8K

As much as I appreciate the technical achievement of how we are able to create these images and this footage I have to say:

I love our planet brimming with life everywhere. And I just cannot understand why we destroy it the way we do. We only have this one. There is no other feasible alternative planet for the foreseeable future. Probably even further than that.