Here’s a video of Chiptune maestro Linus Åkesson performing Ravel’s Boléro on 8-bit instruments – amazing stuff. I just love the sound of the C64 chips.
The nine instruments are: The Qweremin (breadbin / regular C64C / dark C64C), Qwertuoso (breadbin), the Paulimba, the Tenor Commodordion, the Family Bass (albeit not as a bass this time), my still unnamed floppy-drive noise instrument (1541 / 1541-II), the C=TAR, the Chipophone, and a newcomer: NES timpani.
I know the work of artist Johannes Grenzfurthner from the very funny Soviet Unterzögersdorf adventure games. He’s also a filmmaker and made the excellent documentary Traceroute in 2016. For his documentary Hacking at Leaves it was difficult to find distribution, so he decided to share the film in full on the Internet Archive. The film can be streamed directly in the browser below or in full HD quality from its Archive page.
Hacking at Leaves is a 2024 Austrian documentary film directed and written by Johannes Grenzfurthner. It explores various themes including the United States’ colonial past, Navajo tribal history, and the hacker movement, through the lens of the story of a hackerspace in Durango, Colorado, during the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. The film was produced by monochrom.
Source: Shut Out by Distributors, Filmmaker Turns to Internet Archive to Share Documentary with the World
A new version is out of my favourite video player – Zoom Player v19!
I’ve been using this excellent player for close to two decades now, and it constantly keeps improving while still allowing total control of all aspects of video playback. This is really the video player for those who love to tinker with their settings to get the most out of the software. There’s lots of new features in this version, including IPTV support, libVLC integration, screen casting and much more!
Over the past year, I have been working hard to ensure Zoom Player maintains its crown as the most versatile Media Player and Home Theater PC software for Windows. I’ve kept in constant communication with Zoom Player’s user base, and software enthusiasts from across the world to better understand which features would take Zoom Player to the next level.
It won’t be long now until SDF users can start testing the brand-new MetaArray V. From SDF@Mastodon:
MetaArray V went online for early testing with 112TB of storage, 3 times that of MetaArray IV.
Can’t wait to test this! Apparently we’re also moving back to Apache for the web server, which is nice. There’s bound to be some initial problems – but that’s all part of the fun after all🤓
Meanwhile, here’s some nice server-room ambiance (go fullscreen for blinkenlights):
Twenty-five years ago on November 19th, 1998, the classic video game Half-Life was released. Now on the 25th anniversary Valve Software have released a new update for the game with developer commentary, support for widescreen displays and updated multiplayer – including the ability to play as the crazy-looking Ivan the Space Biker. There’s also a new documentary about the making of the game, definitely worth watching if you’re interested.
Half-Life is back and better than ever. Alongside interviews with the original developers, the game is now available with the Uplink mini-campaign, Steam Deck support, updated graphics settings, new multiplayer maps, and bonus restored goodies.
However, for those instead wanting to play a true modern remake with greatly updated graphics I would recommend trying Black Mesa instead, it’s got most everything from the old game and a much needed rework of the final Xen chapter.
Source: Half-Life
In 2000 The Beatles released the compilation album “1”. The well-known Amiga Demoscene group Melon Dezign was commissioned to make music videos in Flash for “Come Together” and “I Feel Fine”. I’ve always loved the Melon Dezign demos and animations and had the original Shockwave Flash files saved. Over twenty years later, I posted them on the Internet Archive – they even got a nice mention by Jason Scott. Below is “Come Together” in its full trippy Flash glory – emulated through Ruffle – and including a “Karaoke Mode” (click the animation).
Tip: Right-click for fullscreen. If audio is not working, right-click and toggle the mute.
A Quarter In, A Quarter-Million Out: 10 Years of Emulation at Internet Archive – Jason Scott on 10 years of “The Emularity” running at the Internet Archive:
10 years ago, the Internet Archive made an announcement: It was possible for anyone with a reasonably powerful computer running a modern browser to have software emulated, running as it did back when it was fresh and new, with a single click. Now, a decade later, we have surpassed 250,000 pieces of software running at the Archive and it might be a great time to reflect on how different the landscape has become since then.
Prince of Persia intro
Some of my favourites from the colletion:
Source: A Quarter In, A Quarter-Million Out: 10 Years of Emulation at Internet Archive
Vivaldi today released version 6.1 of their awesome browser. The big news this time are several improvements to the new Workspaces feature, and a setting that allows Vivaldi to masquerade as another browser for sites that stupidly block browsers based on Client Hints. And as always – a *lot* of small improvements and bug fixes in the change log.
The new Vivaldi on desktop masquerades as competitors to benefit its users and gives access to Bing Chat. Adds more functionality to Workspaces & Tabs.
Another change is Vivaldi is pretending to be Chrome for bad GPU drivers that apply performance tweaks based on executable name, something initially discovered by the Yandex browser developers.
It’s a sad state of things when browsers have to pretend to be something else just for basic functionality to work, and this happened a lot for the Opera browser as well back in the day. It’s history repeating itself once again, and this kind of abuse of web specification by web sites and driver developers will lead to a browser monoculture where the big browsers owned by mega-corporations who collect your personal data will be the only viable option for users who just want a good web browser experience.
Source: Vivaldi browser bypasses restrictions to access Bing Chat.
Introducing the AI Mirror Test, which very smart people keep failing – Great article from The Verge on AI and our tendency to anthropomorphize machines that mimic human behavior, even when we’re fully aware we’re talking to a machine, also known as the ELIZA effect.
AI chatbots like Bing and ChatGPT are entrancing users, but they’re just autocomplete systems trained on our own stories about superintelligent AI. That makes them software — not sentient.
Who’s that in the mirror?
Just like humans, these new AI chatbots at times seem very intelligent, and sometimes just outright stupid – but we should not forget these are just algorithmic responses and not a sign of any sentience. We are still a very long way from that point – if it ever will happen.
Source: Introducing the AI Mirror Test, which very smart people keep failing
Just to post something new at least once in a while – here’s an AI Drake song about browsing the web with the Vivaldi browser:
Internet searchin’, pages turnin’
Finding something new, never learnin’
Vivaldi, it’s the tool that I choose
A browsin’ journey, no time to loose
Exploring wide and far
Vivaldi, it’s my go-to star
Surfin’ the web with style and grace
Vivaldi, the browser I won’t replace
