> … kids are trained for many years for specific Olympic sports (and nothing else) based on their rough physical attributes. This shotgun approach …

Looks a lot more targeted than “shotgun.” Not quite laser-focused, but certainly tighter than a wide-cast net.

These are Designed. The target audience has tremendous disposable income, and Taste (subjectively, of course.)

No one is buying this for economy’s sake.

> Your first job should be learning how what you want to focus on works.

Then what was the purpose of sitting for a degree?

There is theory to learn and it is important, but it is all for naught if you don’t understand how what you are protecting works. You need both for an entry level position - there is a reason those positions pay as well as they do.

Literally, “simulated intelligence” at best.

But for marketing, “artificial intelligence” is fine. And better than LLMs being called “AI”

I think in some people's minds, the concept of sentience and intelligence are intertwined, and there are at least some people (myself included) who do not think they're the same. There is a strong (but surprisingly not universal) consensus that LLMs are not sentient, so if you insist that sentience/intelligence are the same thing, then LLMs don't qualify as AI either. If you think the two concepts are separable, then they're intelligent but not sentient. The devil is of course in the definitions.

> Reproducible would be great

Wouldn’t it be great? I’m still waiting for reproducibility from LLMs.

Can you reproduce irreproducibility?

Give me a question which the LLM answers vastly differently on runs.

I keep hearing how it's dumb and wrong but no one ever shares the chat or prompt

Yes. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48420769

Try this with ChatGPT or GROK or Claude

How many days of the week contain the letter d?

The answer I get with ChatGPT, and Grok is 3 and 6 with Claude.

I just used ChatGPT only, twice. Web interface in a Firefox private window, and in a Chrome incognito window. I asked them both the identical question "How many names of the days of the week contain the letter D?"

In Firefox I got 6. In Chrome I got 7. LLMs are not even self-consistent.

I have the screenshots if anyone cares.

> … By zeroing the allocation …

How does that prevent reading past the end of the buffer? Or change how bytes outside the buffer are used? Are these arrays of pointers so that the “null ptr deref” comment makes sense?

Or am I the bozo and don’t know what’s happening here?

It doesn’t. It’s just that dereferencing a zeroed pointer reliably crashes the program (unless you specifically do funky things with mmap) but dereferencing garbage memory as a pointer could do a lot more insidious damage.

My point is that the developer's comment doesn't make sense. Zeroing the allocated memory doesn't change anything about overrunning the buffer.

edit: removed unnecessary examples

Haven't looked at the code, but the allocated memory could be larger than necessary to make "off-by-one" or "off-by-a-few" errors less deadly. Then zeroing it out makes it even less so. Defense in depth.

Or it's an allocation for an arena? The zeroing might help trigger 0 derefs earlier if the overrun happens for the object that are then allocated in the arena (and not by allocating more objects than the arena can provide)

This doesn't prevent overrunning the buffer -- it means that when you do overrun the buffer, it does less damage

The code is part of a function called expand item list. It looks like it over allocates memory and uses a bump pointer for internal allocation, only expanding the allocation when necessary. Thus OOB writes to the list would hit the allocated memory.

You’re not a bozo but it is helpful to read the code.

It matters. Do you want digital bits? You can have all the bits you want, and so can the entire population of the city.

Do you want physical cash? Well, of the bank is printing its own, they can hand out whatever they can print.

If you expect fiat currency (e.g. USD) or precious metals, then withdrawals are all limited by what the bank has on-hand, or can get quickly. Assuming this is what you’re asking about, it would be a “run” on the bank, they’d close up shop for the day, and it would affect the faith the population has in the monetary supply.

I mean, you’re not required to answer. Nor to have the ringer on. Nor to have the phone active …

I don't know how intentional this was, but it Just Works on macOS. It builds and runs, with UI. I have an OP-1 field attached and it takes the MIDI notes and synthesizes sound. I can't imagine why it wouldn't Just Work with a DAW sending MIDI as well - no need for external hardware, at least on Mac!

Yeah that's by design, and kind of a nifty byproduct. The demo tune on the landing page was actually generated by the DSP engine running on macOS. For me, it's mostly a development aid but you can use it that way if you wanted.

Just wasn't part of the motivation. I wasn't looking for another standalone macOS app or VST. Wanted something tactile (controller I already have muscle memory with) and a touchscreen UI.

I certainly don't mean to minimize the work - you've done a fabulous job! I went off to find the hardware to assemble and the prices are kinda nuts... It's awesome having the option to run it on something I already have.

Oh man, the prices of these components have skyrocketed since I began this project. It has been depressing to watch.

What are the chances this would run on CM4 instead?

It should run ok on a CM4, but with some limitations.

Less DSP headroom; swatcoder's optimization suggestions in this thread become more important. Simultaneous 4-part polyphony might push things. You'd probably want at least a 4GB board.

Also, the brumectl installer will not attempt to set up the USB audio/MIDI bridge (Meridian) on a CM4. That auto-configures only on a CM5 for now.

Would be a pretty light lift to get that working if you are interested.