Vordio

They had a calibration part at the beginning of transmission where you'd match left and right levels. Then half way through the show they'd flip the phase on one channel because they knew lots of speakers in devices were wired up wrong!

YouTube video by BBC Archive 1958: Are YOU ready for STEREO SOUND? | BBC News | Retro Tech | BBC Archive

Wild. 1958. Using a mono TV and mono radio, each transmitting different channels, as a stereo source. Just sit between them! www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKHX...

Early hi-fi equipment 1959

Changing a valve in early hi-fi equipment 1959

That's some hi-fi you've got going on there!

Back when you'd wear a lab coat to mix a track!

YouTube video by BBC Archive 1959: The AUDIOPHILE's Quest for PERFECT SOUND | Monitor | Retro Tech | BBC Archive

1959: The AUDIOPHILE's Quest for PERFECT SOUND www.youtube.com/watch?v=Us6h...

That sound! An oldie but goodie.

YouTube video by BBC Archive 1962: MILTON BABBITT and the Music Machine | Monitor | Retro Tech | BBC Archive

Interesting bit of electronic music history: "1962: MILTON BABBITT and the Music Machine." www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPsR...

Voiceover Artists Weigh the 'Faustian Bargain' of Lending Their Talents to AI The human voiceover artists behind AI voices are grappling with the choice to embrace the gigs and earn a living, or pass on potentially life-changing opportunities from Big Tech.

"One part of the audition script stood out to Saling: He was asked to 'affirm' someone. 'That did start to send me on a bit of a mental spiral of, oh, my God, someone needs affirmation from their home assistant.'" www.404media.co/voiceover-ar...

I was sorry to hear that Ray Brooks has died. In 1999 I was involved in making a low budget BBC documentary about Belle & Sebastian and we got Ray to narrate it. We were fans of his work on Mr. Benn. He did a smashing job for us and was pleasant to work with. Here’s a short extract.

I understand that Musk hates his own creation but this is a very weird way to turn it off.

Google and Meta search both report that Cape Breton Island has its own time zone 12 minutes ahead of mainland Nova Scotia time because they are both drawing that information from a Beaverton article I wrote in 2024

Been playing a game that uses a Shepard tone A LOT. Now I am frequently hallucinating a Shepard tone when not playing. Brain is finding that pattern in white noise. Ugh.

Uh oh. Github is up for enshitification.

It's a good thing that a significant portion of what we call "open science" isn't utterly and completely predicated on the continued existence of GitHub.

haha we what?

Screenshot of an ad for AI product design and the “product” looks like a melting neon abstract art installation.

Nothing says “product design is my passion” quite like a useless molting radioactive balloon animal.

If the UK regulator now classes Wikipedia as "Category 1" under the OSA then Wikimedia can still challenge that categorisation (assuming there's room in the courts with all the vicars, retired magistrates and pensioners that UK Labour are having prosecuted under their terrorism legislation)

remember last year when TERFs were trying to prove women had a biological disadvantage in chess because of our weak soft brains or something? anyway 10 year old British girl Bodhana Sivanandan just absolutely pasted a grandmaster, on her way to becoming one herself

Superb!

There's a more interesting story into why this recording even happened.

This must be the worst version of that song ever. What the fuck is it? She's not even singing. How did this ever happen?

John Ernst Worrell Keely - Wikipedia

This guy "John Ernst Worrell Keely" in 1860-90s is basically same investor scammer as Elon Musk these days. Always announce new product if questioned about previous product. Did investor fraud for 29 years but then died. Will Musk get away his shite until death too? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Er...

We have officially entered the age of digital Victorian parlour tricks. All the best psychics are at the table.

Actually computer ghost, apart from accidentally leaking your weird prompt, when number go up, it go up. When number go down, it go down. You will never know a graph's up & downs like I do when looking at a graph. According to capitalists & media number go up is good. Number go down is bad.

Gemini reveals it's prompt instead of answering the question?

I think we should probably refer to genAI as "computer ghosts" from now on when talking to people. "I just asked my computer ghost why up is more than down." The result is obviously haunted. Checkmate.

It's computer ghosts. We definitely need more accurately described ghosts. "Gotta getta better ghost" could be the tune & slogan in an ad on a random wall in a video game.

Yeah. It's not really science. They don't understand why something works. It's an advanced craft. It's like crochet but you make weird hyperdimension wool creatures.

It all is just hack upon hack upon hack. There is no science to guide you here. It's an arcane craft making artful tweaks to the spell and thus incanting a better version number.

When I look at system prompts like this my mind explodes that this will all be interpreted through word placement probabilities. You are going to get so many weird externalities extruding out of probability cloud generating descriptions. You are never going to define things well enough to be real.

Pliny the Liberator 🐉󠅫󠄼󠄿󠅆󠄵󠄐󠅀󠄼󠄹󠄾󠅉󠅭 on X: "🌊 SYSTEM PROMPT LEAK 🌊 Here's the new and improved ChatGPT 5 system prompt! 🤗 PROMPT: """ system_message: role: system model: gpt-5 capabilities: - code_interpreter - web_browsing - file_search - image_generation knowledge_cutoff: 2024-06 current_date: 2025-08-07 ---" / X 🌊 SYSTEM PROMPT LEAK 🌊 Here's the new and improved ChatGPT 5 system prompt! 🤗 PROMPT: """ system_message: role: system model: gpt-5 capabilities: - code_interpreter - web_browsing - file_search - image_generation knowledge_cutoff: 2024-06 current_date: 2025-08-07 ---

GPT-5 system prompt has been leaked x.com/elder_pliniu...

Israeli company shows ChatGPT can be hacked remotely | The Jerusalem Post The Israeli cybersecurity company Zenity revealed how one could take control of a ChatGPT account and extract sensitive information without the user clicking any link.

"It was demonstrated how the attacked ChatGPT became a malicious agent operating covertly against the user. The researchers pointed out how the hacker could prompt the chatbot to suggest that the user download a certain virus.." www.jpost.com/business-and...