This is priceless! Republican Denver Riggleman deliberately takes a selfie in front of the now famous poster in Nuuk, Greenland, that says yes to NATO, no to the pedo, with a picture of Epstein and Trump.
I love it!
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What are your pain points, folks? Stuff that you hate doing or dealing with, or problems you can't find a good solution to? Stuff that other people might be frustrated with, too.
I'm looking for a way to make myself valuable to other people, as a way to both help people and also earn an income to feed my family in the process.
One thing I can do *really well* is create reliable software to automate rote tasks, generate financial/statistical/other reports, or calculate difficult solutions. Think it can't be done without LLMs? I might surprise you!
Throw me a bone!
Please boost for reach!
#PainPoints
#WishList
#Automation
#Reporting
#ProblemSolving
#FediHire
#GetFediBHired
#FediJob
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I can go into more detail about why all the options are bad if you want. But this is the sort of problem that eats years of your life, requires advanced mathematics (digital signal processing at a minimum), and advanced linguistics, on top of being a good systems-level programmer.
Aaron reshared this.
@fastfinge I just so happen to be an (unemployed) machine learning researcher by trade, with advanced mathematics, linguistics, and programming skills. Maybe not systems-level programming, but I could probably find someone who does that and work with them.
Given that the first two responses I've gotten were both about accessibility, there might be more of a market for this than you think, and also, it might make a good way to demo my skills even if it isn't paid work.
@fastfinge Reading your linked article article and this reply, I get the sneaking suspicion that HDC (hyperdimensional computing) or other one- or few-shot learning methods that are designed to factor the model into independent components that can be quickly recomposed in new ways might be appropriate. The idea would be to, as you suggest, learn the values for these components using machine learning, but also the mapping between them and the sounds produced, so that each becomes separately tunable on the fly.
HDC has the added advantage that it is great for working with "fuzzy", human-interpretable rule representations, is typically extremely efficient compared to neural nets, and even meshes well with neural nets and gradient descent-based optimization.
Do you happen to have data of any sort that could be used for training?
When it comes to open-source speech data, LJSpeech is the best we have, though far from perfect: keithito.com/LJ-Speech-Dataset/
And here's a link to GnuSpeech, the only open-source fully articulatory text to speech system I'm aware of: github.com/mym-br/gnuspeech_sa?tab=readme-ov-file
I'm afraid I don't have any particular data of my own.
GitHub - mym-br/gnuspeech_sa: Articulatory speech synthesizer
Articulatory speech synthesizer. Contribute to mym-br/gnuspeech_sa development by creating an account on GitHub.GitHub
Aaron reshared this.
@fastfinge Awesome!
What you (and others who are interested) could do to help me right off the bat:
1. Make a list of the common issues, bugs, and failure modes you see in existing systems. Split hairs where you can on this, so I know exactly what issues to design around.
2. Make a list of the features you want, and include info about how important they are to you. Pay special attention to things that distinguish a good screen reader TTS from tools designed for sighted people.
You've already given me a lot of material on both of these, which is super helpful. I just want to make sure I'm getting a complete understanding so we are not surprised by a finished product that was subtly misaligned to your needs.
eloquence_64/eloquence.py at master · fastfinge/eloquence_64
Eloquence synthesizer NVDA add-on compatible with 64-bit versions of NVDA - fastfinge/eloquence_64GitHub
nvda/source/synthDrivers/espeak.py at master · nvaccess/nvda
NVDA, the free and open source Screen Reader for Microsoft Windows - nvaccess/nvdaGitHub
@fastfinge Looking for the source, I found this:
It looks like both DECtalk and DECtalkMini are being actively maintained, with commits as recent as 1 to 2 months ago. I was hoping the copyright for the "mini" version would be unencumbered, but no such luck. It would have to be a re-implementation from scratch using this code as a guide. That's a lot easier than implementing a new system out of nothing, though.
I also have no idea about any associated IP or patents, though. Wouldn't whoever does it need to be able to prove they never saw the original code, just its outputs? Otherwise you're still infringing, aren't you? In this regard, it's probably actually a bad thing that the dectalk sourcecode is so widely available.
And most of the commits seem to be about just getting it to compile on modern systems with modern toolchains. I dread to think how unsafe closed-source C code written in 1998 is.
But eloquence gets the closest, gnuspeech second, espeak third, dectalk fourth, and every AI system I've tried a distant last.
gnuspeech_sa/the_chaos.txt at master · mym-br/gnuspeech_sa
Articulatory speech synthesizer. Contribute to mym-br/gnuspeech_sa development by creating an account on GitHub.GitHub
Aaron reshared this.
@fastfinge (context: both Aaron and I are USAians)
It doesn't help that:
1. it's 150 or so years old, so a few pronunciations have changed a bit
2. the pronunciations and spellings (and hence some of the apparent mismatches) are UK English, not US English.
At a minimum, you'll have to envision skipping "r"s after vowels at the ends of words for many of these to make sense. As for the rest, I recognized a few of those from past experience with older UK English (e.g. "clerk" with an "a" sound), but a couple left me scratching my head saying "that's how people actually said or spelled it then and there?"
“ICE cannot be reformed. It cannot be rehabilitated; we must abolish ICE for good. And DHS Secretary Kristi Noem must resign or face impeachment,” Omar said seconds before the attack. - from Aljazeera.
I agree with what she said.
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brainstormscommunity.org
8Petros [cracking the system for living] likes this.
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"On Thursday, Jan 22 a group of about a dozen Vermont community elders entered the atrium of White Cap Office Park in Williston VT, home of ICE’s National Criminal Analysis and Targeting Center.
For the next 3.5 hours, they sat together in silence, pausing every 90 seconds to read the name of someone killed in ICE custody, followed by a loud whistle blast.
Around 3:15 the Williston Police announced they had determined that the protestors were not breaking the law."
facebook.com/molly.grover.9655…
Molly Grover
"On Thursday, Jan 22 at approximately 1pm, a group of about a dozen Vermont community elders with whistles entered the atrium of White Cap Office Park in Williston VT, home of ICE’s National Criminal...www.facebook.com
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GhostOnTheHalfShell
in reply to Randahl Fink • • •It’s also interesting that a republican is doing it.. his Wikipedia page mark him as that most unusual of republican politicians one with a sense of humor and no interest one of the most significant right wing grift of QAnon
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denver_R…
American businessman and politician from Virginia
Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)Dagnabbit, Pascaline! 🌼
in reply to GhostOnTheHalfShell • • •@GhostOnTheHalfShell
And did you both see this?
The article is a gem.
- My relationship with my mom made it through my break with her Mormon Church,” Riggleman wrote in his book. “I wasn’t sure if it could survive the Church of Trump.” -
thehill.com/homenews/house/366…
@randahl
Bauke Kramer 💚🎵😺🌈🚴
in reply to Dagnabbit, Pascaline! 🌼 • • •@pascaline @GhostOnTheHalfShell
His Farewell Address speaks volumes!
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denver_R…
American businessman and politician from Virginia
Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)Randahl Fink
in reply to Bauke Kramer 💚🎵😺🌈🚴 • • •GhostOnTheHalfShell
in reply to Bauke Kramer 💚🎵😺🌈🚴 • • •The farewell address of his is quite remarkable. It says something that he was an intelligence officer.
In this day and age, perhaps at any time, the kind of training that he received and a sampling of the kind of experience he had should be standard education
DressToKILT
in reply to GhostOnTheHalfShell • • •GhostOnTheHalfShell
in reply to DressToKILT • • •I understand your sentiment, the more condemnation, especially from within their own circle the better.
DressToKILT
in reply to GhostOnTheHalfShell • • •Till Kleisli
in reply to Randahl Fink • • •Randahl Fink
in reply to Till Kleisli • • •@kleisli I get this “is it AI” question many times per week. I never share content without checking the source.
In this particular instance, the same poster on this location has been photographed by others already, so it definitely exists. And this particular photo was shared by himself on Bluesky.
So for this to be AI, he would have to be someone wanting to fake being in Greenland, but there is video of him being there on multiple YouTube channels.
This is real.
Till Kleisli
in reply to Randahl Fink • • •And also because we all tend to believe fake news or images faster, when they support our point of view. And I'm trying to be careful with such surprising, positive things.
8Petros [cracking the system for living]
in reply to Randahl Fink • •No wonder he dropped out.
JeniParsons likes this.
Omnivore
in reply to Randahl Fink • • •ALT TEXT:
Former Republican congressman Denver Riggleman, stands smiling next to a snowy road with snow covered hills and buildings in the background. To his left is a building with a poster of trump and epstein. the top of the poster says, "Yes NATO", and the bottom of the poster says, "No pedo".
Randahl Fink
in reply to Omnivore • • •oldmanwinter
in reply to Randahl Fink • • •Robin Barton
in reply to Randahl Fink • • •Randahl Fink
in reply to Robin Barton • • •an interesting bean
in reply to Randahl Fink • • •JustForFun
in reply to Randahl Fink • • •MCID
in reply to Randahl Fink • • •GaudeamusIgitur
in reply to Randahl Fink • • •tkissing
in reply to Randahl Fink • • •AUSER
in reply to Randahl Fink • • •contranym
in reply to Randahl Fink • • •Ken McLeod
in reply to Randahl Fink • • •haui
in reply to Randahl Fink • • •The famous nazi staffed warcrime agency nato.
Guys, just because trump is a pedo and doesnt like nato doesnt mean nato is cool. Reality is not binary.
MegatronicThronBanks
in reply to Randahl Fink • • •