Neat! Looks like a pretty straightforward way to develop.
I'm a little too enamored with web components to give it more consideration/testing, but it looks like it could be great for blue sky/green field projects.
The tear gas was the only one that had me guessing. Knew the video was real, but wasn't sure it wasn't doctored just at the end with the throw. Overall, it read more real than fake, I was just sure they were going to try to "gotcha" me.
Just a quick compatibility issue: for some reason, my midi board triggers a key input both when I press it down, and when I let it go. I'm assuming that it might just be something wrong with my board, but I did want to let you know in case there might be some nuance you haven't considered with respect to the midi commands. I know my first crack at it didn't distinguish between note-on and note-off commands, for instance.
I can add a bit of information to what might be behind this bug.
In MIDI, there are NOTE_ON and NOTE_OFF events, for when you press and release each key. The NOTE_ON has pitch and velocity parameters. The NOTE_OFF just has pitch parameter (maybe it has velocity as well I can't quite remember, it's off the point). So if you push middle C, it might look like this:
NOTE_ON 60 (middle C) 98 (velocity),
NOTE_OFF 60
Some keyboards never send NOTE_OFF events, instead they send NOTE_ON with velocity 0. On these keyboards, pressing middle C looks like this:
NOTE_ON 60 98,
NOTE_ON 60 0
Both are valid MIDI streams, and all stream processors should react appropriately to both. This app likely does not correctly map zero velocity NOTE_ON events to NOTE_OFF with the same pitch.
Sweet! Thanks for the follow up. I hope it's a straightforward fix!
Aside from that, nice work on the app! Looking forward to giving it another try.
ETA: a shameless plug, but since you may have an interest in this kind of thing - I built and published a free, online midi piano (and drum kit) available for anyone to use. It's pretty bare-bones and doesn't really explain itself, but in case you ever want to use it, check out https://midi-speaker.com/
works with midi input as well as keyboard and touch/mouse input. it only has the two sampled instruments, but it's great for a groove in a pinch!
Okay I think it's fixed - I'm testing for NOTE_ON with velocity of 0. Let me now if that solves it for you. I simulated a test of it because my midi controller just sends the regular NOTE_ON/NOTE_OFF messages!
Tried out your site - super clean interface. I noticed you are using the Salamander Grand Piano samples. For some weird reason I thought that those samples were pretty huge (50+ MB) but it loaded up pretty quick so great job!
Working as expected. Thanks for the fix! Now that I'm actually able to use it, it's pretty great. It's a really great experience, exploring to fill out the notes. I do get that rogue-like itch for immediacy, when I make a simple mistake, but it feels like having to wait gives a nice buffer. I also really like how configurable it is. That's something that is often overlooked.
Also, thanks for checking out the site! Yeah, I compressed the files down to .mp3, myself, and then only used a single velocity, so that they were around 2MB in total. They sound terrible, in comparison, but good enough for phone speakers and non-recordable jamming. You can find the same-sized, better-sounding .opus versions in all velocities on the repo's base-functionality branch, if you're interested in those samples.
Posting this here, hoping desperately for someone to give me an example proving I'm wrong:
It's insane to me that there isn't a simple, GUI-based app that provides this utility in a clean, straightforward way. Basically just "dropbox, but let me set the destination to another drive on my PC/network/VPN (or a 'repo', for 'advanced' users)".
Just a plain interface that shows me my files and allows me to say "I want this folder to be backed up to here, here, and here". I can do that manually for every folder I want backed up, but other users may opt to backup a whole drive or whatever, depending on need.
Seems like a slam dunk. Frustrating that I don't know enough about the footguns with backups (duplications, cpu limiting, etc) to just write the app myself, but I have been looking at what the eframe and rustic libraries can do together. Feels imminently do-able by someone who has a lot of experience with backups. But maybe it's even passable do-able by someone who just knows what he wants.
For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software.
I appreciate the recc, but it misses the mark I think? Time machine is only on a single OS, and is designed as more of a "keep my whole system safe" backup rather than a "back these things up" backup.
I can understand why people might want to backup entire drives, or to backup OS content minimally, but my use-case is to just pick a few folders and only have those backed up. Not to an external drive, but to internal ones and network ones.
That's the tool I'm looking for. While Time Machine can exclude everything but the folders to backup, it doesn't seem to be able to back them up with different cadences or rules about content limits or whatever else. It's all or nothing. I'm just not sure it provides what I'm looking for.
I think it might! Definitely checks enough boxes for me to try out, anyway.
The UI is a little cumbersome for me, personally, but it does seem at least straightforward enough for me to understand what the intentions are.
ETA: Welp, that didn't last long. A service running in the background that exposes an "insecure" url for a browser to then open as the only means for GUI interaction with the app is not a great recommendation for everyday users. It looks like it has all the features, but I'm looking for a user experience. CLIs provide the features. I'd like an app, not a service running a webserver. Shudder the thought of just shoving the front end in an electron app, but even that would be better than this for casual users.
You could create an app that has a tray status icon, that launches a tauri app connected to the same web service (assuming it's only listening on localhost, it's fine).
Not a great regulatory move, in my opinion. But I really wish ad companies would implement this rule across the board. If you can't sell me on your ad in 5 seconds, it's unlikely you can sell me on your product in 15 or 30 seconds. And if your product is of any interest to me whatsoever, I'm happy to continue watching the ad. I sit through movie trailers and tech ads all the time, even with an option to skip. But I have no use for seeing the entire Dawn dish soap's aw-shucks, faux-folksy ad play out. In five seconds, you can remind me that dawn exists, fulfilling the main purpose of the ad, and I can get on with the content I'm actually interested in.
> But I really wish ad companies would implement this rule across the board.
I genuinely don’t know how you could get your wish without regulation. You can’t expect all players in the ad game to follow self enforced rules if there’s any possibility that not following a self-imposed rule (“all ads must have a skip button”) will bring a competitive advantage. As soon as one player decides to take that advantage, all will. Back to square one.
Takes like this amaze me. It's like they've suddenly forgotten what the entire advertisement industry is like. Ads are designed to take advantage, manipulate, and even trick. Then this person comes along and suggests the industry should do the right thing.
In what world would that ever be a possibility? It's like asking a dictator nicely that they relinquish some of their power!
Both YouTube and Twitch have increased the amount of ads they serve over the last 5 years, not decreased. So, I’m not even sure if the “competition” between those two makes ads better for anyone. Imo, the objective of competition in adspace is “who can target better to increase click rate”, not “who can make the experience better for the user”.
Even the technofeudalist lords have to deal with reality: they add more enforced ad time, I reduce Youtube usage. Disney+ puts long unskippable repeated ads, I watch what I want then unsuscribe. They're supposed to play a long-term game, but they're too greedy, and humanity can live without Youtube or Disney+.
You're free to pay for youtube and not see ads. I personally don't know how people use it without paying. It's no different from a streaming service like Apple TV and it's clear Youtube wants to go that direction, but people treat it like it should be entirely free or lightly ad supported only.
Netflix as a streaming provider was paid from the get go and only provides professionally made content. It's closer to the way we normally buy things or something like an internet subscription.
For youtube, different people are going to have different reactions to their business model.
There are very real people who major in economics in college and come in with their economic opinions they'd like to confirm, and just argue with the professors.
"Economics" as we talk about it is basically a farce. It's more vulnerable to confirmation bias than any other social science.
LOL, it's because they started with "regulations bad" and then went the usual technocrat/libertarian move of let the markets decide. And then rehashed the exact same arguments in favor of regulation.
Think the best argument against it is that it makes advertising less valuable, which in turn limits the how many "paid for with advertising" services will be available and how good those services will be.
Especially in a developing country where consumers ability to pay for such things is going to be limited, that will presumably deprive some margin of the population of media/services that are currently ad supported.
I am fine with advertising becoming less valuable. I fully appreciate there is a lot of media I take for granted due to advertising. Yet, ever since I was a small child the goal of advertising was to influence consumer behavior more than selling products or brand identity, which is extremely toxic. Once consumer gullibility wears off the dollars poured into advertising always find a way into political lobbying and policy influence campaigns, which is really just more of the same.
Heh, advertizing, individually has become less valuable because there are so many ads everywhere on every surface to the point that people mentally adblock half their day away.
Why would I an advertiser pay $1 to show an advert to someone that doesn’t have $1 to spend on my product.
If they do have a dollar to spend then why wouldn’t they spend it on what they wanted to watch in the first place rather than spend it with me, the advertiser.
Many advertisers may avoid advertising or lower their ad budgets. This means the tech platform makes less revenue. This means the platform and the video creator both make less revenue. This means less videos get created.
All of these happen at the population level.
I hate ads, but regulations that are for things that aren't public health (including mental health), anti-monopolization, etc. are probably bad for innovation and growth.
You have to balance regulation and over-regulation.
I would argue that limiting the amount of unrequested product evangelism shoved into users' eyeballs is a valuable public and mental health initiative. I wish we could have seen the alternate reality where ad-revenue was not the most lucrative business model for the internet.
Regulation is always too slow and too stupid. By doing this, you'll chase the ads into embedding themselves into the content itself. And that's just the start. Creators are already doing this, and now we're seeing tooling emerge to support it. Wait until the platforms get in on the game.
I say this as a proponent of antitrust regulation against tech giants and a privacy advocate against tracking, storing, and correlating user activity.
Everything needs to be kept in balance. Regulation is a blunt instrument and is better used to punish active rule breaking rather than trying to predict how markets should work.
Break up Google. Don't tell content marketplaces how to run ads. They know their customers far better than old politicians do.
If ads become onerous, alternatives emerge. Different channels, platforms, ad blocking. It's a healthier ecosystem that doesn't grow ossified with decades old legalese. Regulations that actively stymie the creation of new competition.
Now every new video and social startup in Vietnam has to check a bunch of boxes.
IMO regulation never was or is going to force this shift: it's already happening in unregulated ad markets, and is going to keep evolving in that direction because it's simply more effective/lucrative than ads done other ways.
> Break up Google. Don't tell content marketplaces how to run ads.
I'm all for breaking up megacorps, but there's no way a government like Vietnam can effectively accomplish that. The entire regulatory weight of the EU (90% of the non-US first-world consumer base) can't break up Google, so inflicting a series of wristslaps that hurt Google more than any small startup is the best way.
I'm no expert on the region, but I can't imagine a small video/social startup in Vietnam will be hurt more than Google by being forced to show a skip button after 5s on their ads — and generally speaking ads as a business model generally doesn't work all that well or mean much for small startups (<1M MAU), their survival and scalability hinges more on VC money and product-market fit than ad arbitrage.
Are you seriously trying to argue the world is better off without YouTube?
I derive incredible value from YouTube. It wasn't always great, but it is recently full of extremely good educational content, tech talks, independent journalism, how-tos, independent film and animation, and so much more.
I'd wager that you use and benefit from a lot of services that are paid for via advertising. Even public transit is subsidized by advertising.
The regulation was about unskippable ads, not ads in general.
I agree with the op and I don't agree that we are better off without YouTube. It's not hard at all to understand the op, so I'm not sure why you misread them and jumped to conclusions that all ads are parasitic and asked if we're better off without YouTube. Was that rage bate or did you really think the op was talking about all ads?
In London public transport accounts for about 10% of the ticket price. For 20p I’m bombarded with flashing moving images as I travel around. It’s sickening and shouldn’t be allowed in public spaces.
I never get a taxi in New York thanks to the adverts. Sadly the general population thinks their time and attention is worthless and accept adverts. People actually watch commercial tv, which steals 20 minutes of your time every hour to brainwash you.
> Many advertisers may avoid advertising or lower their ad budgets. This means the tech platform makes less revenue. This means the platform and the video creator both make less revenue. This means less videos get created.
Too many people think removing ads means they'll still continue to get content for free, they just won't have to watch ads.
At best, it's as you said, the platform and creator make less money (Youtube gives 55% of ad revenue to the creator). This would naturally lead to less content eventually.
At worst, video content becomes unsustainable without a subscription.
Until the content is utterly captivating and speaks to your soul in a way even your closest friends and partners can't, we haven't hit peak content.
You know that one movie you see every decade or so that you can't get out of your head? The one that left you flabbergasted, that you've watched at least half a dozen times, and that you frequently and fondly remember? It touched your mind and soul and fit your tastes like a glove.
THAT is peak content, and until we are swimming in it, we're not there yet. Most of what we have today is utterly disposable and ephemeral - transient dopamine activation instead of philosophically world shattering indelible experiences.
Why would you ever expect or even want us to be 'swimming' in such emotionally activating content? The reality is that people will just get desensitized and there will be the same proportion of dreck and the same discoverability problems as ever. Your argument is dopamine junkie logic, sitting around waiting for a dealer to bring you something stronger instead of putting effort into searching out or making things that satisfy you.
I am unsure what you are trying to say here. But if you mean to refer to "market distortion", I cannot see how that can be happening.
The reason is that these rules are supposed to be applicable universally to every company in the same way. And as such, they do not create any market distortion in one way or the other. Because everyone has to play by the same rules. Those are as fair market conditions as one can get, in my opinion.
> some might not bother
Why should that be a problem? If someone does not like the regulation in a particular jurisdiction, it is fine. No one is forcing them to operate there.
The main point is the following: If they want to operate, they have to play by the local rules. Just like everyone else.
Ad skipping should be handled at the platform level and not left to individual advertisers to control. Regulations like this make such an outcome more likely.
Mobile ads in the US are heinous. Each one has a different mechanism for skipping, the skip buttons are micro sized and impossible to tap, some of them don't even work.
Standardization should have been up to the platforms selling ads, but they haven't done it. It's past time for local authorities to step in and protect consumers from predatory behavior.
Markets are not a natural phenomenon and are themselves the result of complex social arrangements, involving coercion. So, the market is the result of "distortions" before and after various regulatory measures.
Simply put, fuck the "market" (aka: uber-rich people). The market should serve us humans, not the other way around.
Ive heard this garbage excuse since Reagan took a wrecking ball to regulations. Not making effective regulations is ALSO a market distorting thing, that encourages the absolute worst behaviors. And now with Citizens United, its $1 = 1 vote.
Just a hip-shot, not a considered position. When I hear "regulation", I think "threat". Either of violence (any physical touch), or financial garnishment. So, to me, ads that last longer than five seconds do not rise to the level of threatening anyone.
But assuming that they did, the situation seems like one where there could be any number or ways of following the letter or the law, while flouting the spirit of it. I don't dare imagine the creative ways these people will come up with to make entertainment even worse than it already is. So for areas that seem to require miles and miles of caveats and very specific rule-making, my gut reaction is that the regulatory path isn't the right one until we can break down the scope into something that simple regulations can accommodate without loophole. Put more simply: if it seems like people will just find ways around the problem, my assumption is just that we're not targeting the right problem yet and we need to break it down further, if regulation is the right solution at all.
But that is pretty assumptive, so - again - it's just a first feeling. Doesn't pass my vibe check.
I personally like descriptive regulation over prescriptive regulation.
Instead of prescribing exactly what you should do, describe the outcomes you want, and let case law fill in the rest of the owl. That's the only way to prevent violations like this.
To be fair, the main disadvantage of this approach is that law is much harder to understand. You can't just read the law as it is written, you also have to familiarize yourself with all the rulings that tell you how that law should actually be interpreted.
I'm much less concerned about being sold in 15-30 secs as much as the "ads" that are paid promotional programming that runs >30 minutes in the middle of a video that is <30 minutes.
That stuff is so bizarre! I can understand how an advertiser might try to sneak an infomercial onto an ad campaign, and I can understand how it might be attempted on accident. But I can't understand why an ostensible ad platform would ever allow you to upload a 30 min. ad without lots of flags going up and needing some approval.
and here shows just how bad the rot is. I would assume that buying that much "air time" to have your longer content played would come a quite a premium. I would also not be surprised if selling those premiums come with a bonus. There's a reason those paid-programming shows run with no commercials. The cost of airing it paid for all of the ad pods during that block of air time, plus extra for being special snowflake.
If these long content "ads" are flukes, then that also shows the rot of the ad market that this isn't handled as an exception.
> But I really wish ad companies would implement this rule across the board. If you can't sell me on your ad in 5 seconds, it's unlikely you can sell me on your product in 15 or 30 seconds.
When talking about how ads "don't work on you"; it's very important to remember that just like every single other human you're not immune to propaganda.
I did not claim, nor imply, that ads do not work on me. In fact, I alluded to the opposite in my closing line: " In five seconds, you can remind me that dawn exists, fulfilling the main purpose of the ad[...]"
> the main purpose of the ad
I recognize that showing me the name of the product is the most valuable part of an ad, by far. It's entirely about repetition which breeds enough familiarity for trial, and enough personal affirmation if the trial is a positive one.
But, that aside, if I'm looking for a skip button before the 5 seconds is up, I either do not purchase the product (I'm not sold: I don't buy), or I'm already a purchaser of the product and I'm either a fan (Your ad didn't sell me: I was sold, beforehand) or I'm not (I'm not sold: I don't buy it anymore). It wasn't a statement about ads not working on me, it's a statement about a personal, practical response to ads that I am conciously aware of because I'm already looking for a skip button.
I think I was speaking equally to anyone else reading the thread, but also I should have pointed out that the longer you watch an ad, the more familiar you will become with accepting and expecting the product being sold. There's no way to get around the time spent. Just because the first 5 seconds have the largest proportional impact, doesn't mean the last 25s won't also have an impact.
But even if everything I said was incorrect, and you actually are immune, just like you describe... everyone else isn't, and they're being targeted as much as you are.
> Not a great regulatory move, in my opinion.
> But I really wish ad companies would implement this rule across the board.
You don't see how these are conflicting viewpoints? What do you think would compel a company to act in some way that is not in line with its short term financial interests? Sheer luck?
Long term financial interests, mostly. I know the ads run on my network will never, under any circumstance, be allowed to appear without a skip button within 5 seconds. Immediately, if possible. The only conditional is when the skip button appears, not if. And that's divorced from the copy; the component that plays the ad doesn't care what copy is running, it controls the skipability.
If an advertiser does not like those terms and is willing to forgo my users for that position, more power to them. I have every confidence that I will still find advertisers and, in my experience, they will be higher quality advertisers for the demographics of my users. Artists tend to advertise in cheap space that they know other artists will be viewing. You get the idea.
What has me curious is why you see those two as conflicting viewpoints? I didn't need a government to regulate me. Just common sense and care for my users. I'm not going to subject them to noisy or obnoxious ads, nor am I going to subject them to content that may not be suitable for everyone, and so I'm also not going to subject them to overly long ads. It seems, to me, that you have a profound lack of faith in the platforms you use. Which I can understand as a practical realization about the current apex platforms. But I don't know why it would blind you to the possibility of reasonable people acting reasonably.
I see them as conflicting viewpoints because as a general rule companies do not focus on
> Long term financial interests, mostly.
It's great that you as an individual feel otherwise (I do too), but there are larger macro forces at work which compel firms to act the way they do: pursue short term growth at all costs. The counter-balance to this is either a strong regulatory environment, or a hope and prayer that a majority of companies suddenly gain a strong CEO who feels otherwise and is not obligated to satisfy shareholders who don't. Only a few such CEOs come to mind, and they're looking increasingly short for this world.
Well, you can already see my hope and prayer. I don't think it's unlikely to come about as you do; rather I think that in the long run the market will eventually reward the better behavior, as any good capitalist believes. But rest assured that I also want a strong regulatory environment. The only winning long term strategy is to be twice as forgiving as you are punitive. So that means forgive a lot, but still punish when applicable. Given that, I think good laws derived from sound reason, voted on by a free public are a great way to both guide and punish all entities, including corporate ones. I just don't think that this regulation is the kind that is derived from sound reason.
I think there are so many issues with this type of regulation that circumvention will be inevitable and, like with so many other things, lead to a worse outcome overall. I think good regulation will look different altogether, but it's hard for me to imagine what it will look like. My best guess is that it will target different choke points, or target them in different ways. Maybe like... subsidies for content creators that enforce a 5-second limit on ads? It's not something many have control over now, but a platform would instantly become more attractive to content creators if they were allowed to dictate that.
Seems like that would have some sour ramifications as well, but it's just off the top of my head. The point is, I'm not against regulating the hell out of these giant industries, or these industry giants. I'm all for it. I just want it to actually work/make things better.
When it comes up the 10th time though there’s no way I’ll be watching the film it advertises, no matter how much I might have done after the first time.
Yeah. I'm happy to watch ads if I'm interested in the product. Sometimes i even want to rewind to see a part i missed but youtube doesnt let me. No idea why
my big gripe with them is that they aren't part of a "developer" package my operating system offers. I wouldn't, personally, consider any of these utilities "bloatware", if they were just on my machine. They do something useful, even if I rarely need to do those things. But even if we say that those apps would be "bloat" for an OS, I should still be able to open the package manager and get a vendor-supplied package that includes a bunch of utilities like this. Not a third-party "if you know, you know" situation. Windows Development Utilities. Ubuntu devutils. DevToolKit on MacOS. Etc. Included as a toggle on the OS install screen, even.
But like... this is the kind of stuff I want an Operating System to provide. Not just paging and networking and file storage, and so on, but also utilities for me to operate the system specifically the way I want to at any given time. Basic text entry, word processing, and - yes - text manipulation utilities. Color space utilities. Randomizing utilities. Password and cryptographic utilities. All of those with familiar UIs that can be iterated on by the OSes and relied upon by the devs.
Many of those things can be done with commandline utilities which come pre-installed with your OS of choice. But you have to learn about them, it's not a clicky GUI.
I mostly do front-end work, so I get why you would default to CDNs - it's more likely that users ALREADY have that CDN link downloaded and cached on their machine than not. It's absolutely an upgrade for 99.9% of most use cases.
Here, on the other hand, you are trying for peak privacy, though, so the situation reverses. Every single third-party request is a potential attack vector. Contrary to general best practices, you would want to force yourself to include every CDN package unless there was some MASSIVE benefit to excluding them (and disabling the utility that relies on it), like hundreds of MBs of data for a rarely-used utility, or something that you wouldn't want to force on the majority of users.
That aside, I really appreciate this collection! Local first will always be preferred to server apps as far as I'm concerned, so this is fantastic!
> it's more likely that users ALREADY have that CDN link downloaded and cached on their machine than not
This isn’t how it’s worked for years. Browser isolate isolate assets like this to mitigate fingerprinting which renders the whole concept of use-CDN-since-it’ll-be-cached moot.
I'm a little too enamored with web components to give it more consideration/testing, but it looks like it could be great for blue sky/green field projects.
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