Skip to main content

Thursday 8th July 2021

Here's some of what you missed at The Thirsty Robot:

Technical Musings

Technology Topic - Open Source Privacy...

Discussion started with the hot topic of Audacity, specifically the changes that will be made to the privacy policy in the forthcoming 3.0.3 version, as well as giving it a PG-13 rating. The general opinion was that it would be forked, and the Muse Group's acquired version would be consigned to obscurity. 

Here's some of the media coverage:




A little bit of research shows a media feeding frenzy which seems to have been triggered by bad timing from the Muse Group, then more bad timing, then GDPR, then the US child protection legislation (As in you now have to declare if your YouTube video upload was 'Made for children' or not...), and then the media attention kicked in. All in all, a perfect 'media' storm that has probably generated millions of clicks. 

To get a more balanced picture, then one approach is to go to the affected industry. Audacity is a very popular free audio editor, and so the music business would be the obvious place to look. One of the most respected and knowledgeable sources (so much so that a major manufacturer doesn't like them very much) is CDM. Here's what CDM said on this topic:


(The typo in the title might seem to indicate that this was written at speed, but the article itself seems to be solid, thoroughly-researched journalism.)

Why do lots of people use Audacity? Because it is free, simple, and does most audio editing tasks pretty well. The user interface is showing its age, but who isn't? If you want to compare it with the state-of-the-art in audio editing, then you could look at DSP-Quattro (macOS only, but there are also professional audio editors on the Windows platform: Wavepad, ProTools... and Linux: Ardour...). This is all professional-level software, so you might well find a lot of the terminology unfamiliar. 

Of course, there are lots of web-sites that attempt to compare software, and these often produce laughably misinformed results. In this case, looking for alternatives to Audacity gets you lots of results which are Digital Audio Workstations (multi-track audio recorders), most of which have very limited audio editing capabilities. Other notable mis-matches include DJ software, and music notation. Audacity is not a DAW, nor is it DJ software, and it is no good at music notation - it is an audio editor.

There was also discussion about IRC and other 'pre'- and 'non'- internet communications methods, and the way that they seem to be acquired just to get their user bases. Microsoft acquiring MineCraft is often used as an example of a company buying a user base with users as young as possible, with the obvious thinking that these users will grow up using that company's products, and will continue to do so as they get older... 


Minecraft:



Technology Topic - Types of Pub

There are two types of pub: real and virtual. The Thirsty Robot is a virtual pub, held online. But discussion turned to the third type (of two!): imaginary pubs, as seen in books, movies, etc. So, here are several examples of pubs, and all you have to do is decide which of the three types they are, and why...
 
Name Real Virtual Imaginary
The Thirsty Robot
The Thomas Wolsey
The Broken Drum
The Prancing Pony
The World's End

Answers at the end...

Discussion also included 'Lost Words: Beyond The Page', which has various connections with game developers in Suffolk, as well as other connections. Which led us to names, and why 'Lost Words' is an interesting choice. It turns out that there are lots of people who have thought that 'Lost Words' is a good name, and some of them are authors. When you have several different projects with similar names, by different authors, then it can cause confusion...

Isaac Asimov is almost famous/known for re-using the same names for characters (Mike, for instance), although he also changed spellings (e.g. Hari Seldon.)

For commercial names (companies, products, services, etc.) this can be a major problem...

https://thisstartupdoesnotexist.com/


Somehow this turned sideways into a discussion on Kevin Bacon numbers, and the superset of those: EBS numbers. Some attendees even knew their own EBS numbers. 


Things You Might Wish You Hadn't Brought With You...

In a change to the usual 'Unsplash' source of pictures for this blog, we present a contribution from an attendee!

Gary the Giraffe appears courtesy of SP

Apparently, Gary is a big fan of this artist...


Media - Things To Read On Your Own





Media - Recommended Movies and TV


[ Major Grom: Plague Doctor ] - Currently streaming on Netflix in the UK

[ The Tomorrow War ] - Currently streaming on Amazon Prime in the UK


[ The Politician ] - Currently streaming on Netflix in the UK

As always, our advice is NOT to watch trailers or learn anything about a movie/film before watching it.

Sadly missed: 


Technology You May Be Using Soon... (or Not)


There are a lot of misconceptions about quantum computers (much as with cryptocurrencies...). Quantum computers basically side-step all of the usual limitations of ordinary step-by-step computers. Ask a quantum computer what all the possible hands of cards in the game of Bridge are, and it simply outputs all of them, simultaneously. It doesn't produce a list, one by one, instead it makes them all available, at the same time. Whatever time it takes to calculate one hand of cards, that's the time it takes it to produce ALL of them. This kind of changes things...



The Answers


The answers to the Pub Quiz. (Note that the answers may not be immediately useful, and further research may be required...)  

Name Real Virtual Imaginary
The Thirsty Robot Virtual: Online
The Thomas Wolsey Real: In Ipswich
The Broken Drum Imaginary: Discworld
The Prancing Pony Imaginary: Lord Of The Rings
The World's End Imaginary: The Cornetto Trilogy


---

A lot of discussion happens at The Thirsty Robot. This blog is an edited, biased summary of just a small fraction of the conversation, links/URLs and references that were mentioned. It is an imperfect record and is definitely not complete - for that you should visit The Thirsty Robot!

---

The next online meeting at The Thirsty Robot is on Thursday 22nd July 2021 at 7:30pm BST.





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Thursday 24th June 2021

 Here's some of what you missed at The Thirsty Robot: Technical Musings Technology Topic - Nostalgia & Alternative Universes Maybe it was the recent Summer Solstice, or the change of weather from 'too hot' to 'unsettled', or the leak of Windows 11 , but The Thirsty Robot attendees were in a nostalgic mood. Microsoft's 'Bob' user interface was mentioned, because it is one of those fascinating 'roads almost travelled' that is probably dominant in an alternative universe - but not this one. The idea of making a computer a 'simple to use' device is an old idea, but there are few good implementations...  So, Bob was the classic 'use simple, familiar metaphors' approach. In this case, the inside of a house, where rooms were devoted to various tasks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob   This was back in 1995, and so high resolution, lots of colours and many other 2020's 'standards' just didn't exist then. To ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Thursday 25th February 2021

Here's some of what you missed in the discussion at 'The Thirsty Robot': Technical Musings: Eye Tracking:  So what are you looking at on the screen? We discussed the subject of 'Eye Tracking' and wondered if you could do it with the cameras built into laptops nowadays. Eye tracking can be achieved in a number of ways, but the main usual method uses Infra-Red light to illuminate the eye, and then track the reflection from the cornea (the front part of the eye). Other techniques include tracking the retina (the back) of the eye. Some methods require wearing a special pair of glasses... Eye tracking started out as a technique used by UI researchers to see what people looked at in user interfaces, but over time has been used in a number of other applications, including using it to enable disabled people to control things by moving where their eyes are looking (the senses of fighter aircraft pilots are used in many ways as well...).  Good explanation... Wikipedia Eye Tra...
Post a Comment
Read more

Thursday 14th May 2021

Here's some of what you missed at The Thirsty Robot: Technical Musings Technology Topic - The 5 Stages of Hacking Discussion turned immediately to Security this time. The fifth stage of Hacking was mentioned, in the context of digital forensics. Hang on, you might be thinking, the fifth stage of Hacking isn't Forensics! Photo of one of the 5 Stages by  Antoine Julien  on  Unsplash Let's refresh our memories about those 5 stages first. No, not that sort of stage! - Reconnaissance - Scanning - Gaining Access - Maintaining Access - Cover(ing) Tracks Now, if you are talking about Ethical Hacking, then that fifth stage is often changed - to Forensics. And some people insist on calling it 'digital forensics', to differentiate it from dusting for fingerprints, looking at blood splatter patterns and all those other 'Witless Silence' tropes. (The long-used incorrect spoonerism of a famous BBC crime drama was first given a mass audience in the 1999 Easter Special epi...
Post a Comment
Read more