tallies · HackerTrans

I just listened for the first time, and yeah, it's well presented for a general audience, but I was completely unable to believe that they thought that the steps they took in their search made logical sense. It's like the reality TV version of a lost media search. You don't need experts to find a lost pop song, you just need the internet!

tallies

3 anni fadiscuss

You're right, it was 10 days, not quite weeks. It's not important but here are some of the miscommunications and apologies:

November 18: "The cloud server which hosts one of our database, db141, experienced a disk issue. As a result, a small number of wikis hosted on db141 are unavailable. [...] While cloud14 has been reinstalled, we will have to send the affected disks to professional data recovery. The earliest ETA for having wikis restored is potentially early next week. [...] Our number #1 goal is to restore the data on the disks affected so that wikis are restored versus using a backup which could be various days old"

November 24: An update to the situation was embedded in an unnecessary meeting on Discord: "Our Miraheze Meeting is starting now! Join us while we talk about everything Miraheze, such as recent policy proposals and we'll be providing an update on the db141 issue We'll answer any questions you have and will listen to any comments or concerns."

November 28: "I understand the frustration, and we have not yet given up hope on data recovery, so you can still wait if that is your choice. But I also don't want to give people any false hope. It is not looking super great for data recovery. I won't completely rule it out yet, and I can't say anything definitively. Venues will be opened shortly for requesting that wikis be recreated from scratch (with images at least still intact) if that is your wish [...] in the recent Miraheze Meeting it has been brought up that our communication has been less than ideal, and some feel some questions have been dodged and/or ignored. I have gone back and looked at our responses to some questions, and I can see how this could be assumed [...] I would like to clear one thing up now. Something that seems to keep being brought up is that we sent the drives to a data recovery service. This was not true [...] Owen currently has the drives and has for a few days. They are not at a data recovery service. This was due to some internal miscommunication within SRE, and is something that is being addressed [...] Once again we apologise for this miscommunication and we are working to resolve our internal communication problems [...] Indeed, over the last few days, it would appear that information was not properly being relayed within our own team which led to some breakdowns in communication. Clearly, different members had different insights and views on certain topics. This has led to a strain in communications and we are working to rectify that."

I don't think it was ever explained how the data was recovered.

tallies

3 anni fadiscuss

My impression from reading their Discord server yesterday is this:

- Volunteers from Miraheze planned to create a paid wiki hosting service to supplement Miraheze called WikiForge

- Several of those volunteers left Miraheze to start a free wiki host called WikiTide

- The remaining volunteers were burnt out already and decided to call it quits

- There are some talks of handing off Miraheze to another group of volunteers

FWIW I had a horrible experience using Miraheze last year:

- September: I created my wiki

- November: Miraheze had an error with a drive and over 25% of their wikis were lost. It took them weeks to admit the extent of this error and that they had no plans to use a professional recovery service

- Early December: I recreated my wiki and rewrote it (250+ articles)

- Late December: Miraheze recovered the back-ups they thought they had lost and said they would merge the new and old versions of recreated wikis. Somehow, due to 'someone unplugging a hard drive', they lost all of the content I'd written since November.

I've since learned my lesson about making local back ups, but come on. It was clear there had been tons of technical and communication problems for a long time.

tallies

3 anni fadiscuss

I don't know. When OP describes their community of "furry queer hackers," I can't help but notice that the link to the autism spectrum goes overlooked. While it's very good to find one's people, it's dangerous to define yourself by these kinds of online personas. Autistic people tend to be drawn to and identify with cartoons, animals, and exaggerated displays of emotion — from deficits in the subtler forms of empathy or theory of mind, I don't know. Combine this sometimes highly visible trait with their (our) tendency to obsess and dominate online conversations and it's not hard to see why outsiders are uninterested in paying a visit to the deeper end of autistic-coded fandom where furries, anime fans, and children's media obsessives collect. I'm cishet autistic but I knew a lot of "furry queer hacker" types online when I was a teenager. I think that autistic people are uniquely vulnerable to over-identification with their online disguises; replacing human connections with pseudonymous communities that don't ask too much of them. I'm not telling OP to touch grass or whatever, because I don't know OP, but maybe this will resonate with someone.

tallies

3 anni fadiscuss

The article asks two different questions, one about the decline of the instrumental hit and one about the decline of the instrumentalist, and doesn't go far to answer either.

I'd be interested to see a breakdown of the instrumental hits throughout the decades. Is the decline simply due to classical and jazz going out of fashion? How many are soundtracks? Surely most modern instrumental hits are EDM, yes? This data-driven history could use some more data.

As for the other question, the article's examples of popular instrumentalists were much more famous as bandleaders than as clarinetists or trombonists. Cheap recorded music and digital music production has pushed both the band and the virtuoso performer out of popular culture, replaced by the solo artist and their multi-instrumentalist producer (sometimes the same person). This is true even outside of hip hop. I bet a non trivial amount of pop fans would be able to name Jack Antonoff from his work with Taylor Swift, Lorde, and Lana del Rey.

tallies

4 anni fadiscuss

I agree it's a good anecdote. It clearly still resonates with professional instrumentalists. But popular music has progressed so much since then that 'jazz theory' is unequip to grasp the complexities of modern recorded music. Beato in the video says modern pop music is getting simpler, but he's just using the wrong tools.

tallies

4 anni fadiscuss

There's no one 'music theory perspective'. Why not analyze it on more axes?

- Rhythmic patterns and variation

- Interplay between instruments

- Instrumentation and arrangement

- Structure

- Vocal style

- Lyrics

- Recording and mixing

By these metrics (and the ears of 99% of its listeners) it's a more or less generic 80s adult contemporary song. Yes it has a weird chord progression. Would it be more complex if it couldn't be boiled down to a series of chords?

tallies

4 anni fadiscuss

How complex is a song that can be played on entirely different instruments without re-interpretation?

When I think of complexity I think of unreconcilable elements that force the transposer to make tough decisions ("intentionally putting their own stylistic spin on it").

tallies

4 anni fadiscuss

I find it hilarious that he concludes the Sergio Mendes recording is "the most complex pop song ever" rather than the obvious takeaway that when a song is simple enough, most of the specific notes being played aren't important. You could easily rearrange the song to be easier to play on guitar without losing "the song" (unless you're a music theorist and the ornamentation is "the song")

tallies

4 anni fadiscuss

>The orchestration in Pet Sounds though follows the McCartney/Martin "Yesterday" by the Beatles

Yesterday's orchestration is just acoustic guitar + string quartet

tallies

4 anni fadiscuss

For fun, I tried to see how many of the films on their missing movie list are currently watchable on Youtube or from public trackers

http://missingmovies.org/list-of-missing-movies/

Features, 15/23 available

3 legally viewable:

- 1 to be released on Blu-ray in May 2022: Mississippi Masala (1991)

- 2 more on Apple TV: Gal Young 'Un (1979), Angels and Insects (1995)

11 more available 'online':

- 2 HD rips on public trackers from out-of-print blu-rays: Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985), Titus (1999)

- 3 others have full DVD rips on public trackers: Home of the Brave (1986), I Shot Andy Warhol (1996), The Heartbreak Kid (1972)

- 4 others have SD rips on Youtube: The Savage Eye (1959), Black Girl (1972), Deadhead Miles (1972),

- 4 others have low-res VHS rips: Angelo My Love (1983), Baby Face Nelson (1957), Trial of the Catonsville Nine (1972), Eat the Document (1972)

3 more not yet 'online':

- 2 have OOP DVD releases: True Love (1989), Union City (1980)

- 1 other has an OOP VHS release: Household Saints (1993)

5 others have no home media releases I can find:

- Annihilation of Fish (1999), The Cool World (1963), The Marijuana Affair (1975), Nothing but Common Sense (1972), Lanton Mills (1969)

Documentaries, 3/9 available

0 legally viewable

3 available 'online':

- 1 has an HD rip on a public tracker: The Memory of Justice (1976)

- 2 others have SD rips on Youtube: Angela Davis (1971), My Architect (2003)

4 more not yet 'online':

- 3 have OOP DVD releases: Ali the Fighter (1975), Image before my Eyes (1981), The Weavers (1981)

- 1 has an OOP VHS release: Weapons of the Spirit (1987)

2 others have no home media releases I can find:

- Agee (1980), That Rhythm Those Blues (1988)