Can anyone just make a simple program that will use one of these better TTS engines. I just want a a dialog box, a big button that says "Generate text" and you paste in the content you want converted to receive an MP3 file. Fully compiled binaries for Linux, Windows, and Mac, please?
I have previously shared this little known, but factual, event on Hacker News. It is simply a Wikipedia article--the 1977 Russian Flu (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1977_Russian_flu). This is not my statement, note this well dang, and read or argue with the editors of Wikipedia if you want (not me), but the following statement stands firm:
"Genetic analysis and several unusual characteristics of the 1977 Russian flu have prompted many researchers to say that the virus was released to the public through a laboratory accident, or resulted from a live-vaccine trial escape"
> Reanalysis of the H1N1 sequences excluding isolates with unrealistic sampling dates indicates that the 1977 re-emergent lineage was circulating for approximately one year before detection, making it difficult to determine the geographic source of reintroduction. We suggest that a new method is needed to account for viral isolates with unrealistic sampling dates.
Read carefully, "...have prompted many researchers..." To change the text, one would need to change the minds of all of the many researchers, and have them administer retractions. Argue over what happened in that year, I guess, but the fact remains that the genetic clock of viral mutation does not stop unless a virus is kept in storage. Also, was the year of mutational change accrued from 1976 to 1977 or from 1918 to 1919? Either way, no question, the virus that caused the 1977 Russian flu spent time in a lab.
Exactly. The paper linked in the grandparent is questioning the exact date of reintroduction, not whether reintroduction occurred. The usual guess seems to be
> the result of vaccine trials in the Far East involving the challenge of several thousand military recruits with live H1N1 virus (C.M. Chu, personal communication)
That part is genuinely uncertain though, and probably unanswerable. Historical surveillance was weak, and those who do have information may not wish to implicitly confess to hundreds of thousands of deaths.
No one is seriously questioning that it spent ~20 years in a lab freezer. There was some speculation about virus frozen in the Arctic or such; but since that's never been observed to happen any other time, and multiple labs were known to be working with frozen and thawed virus, I think that's pretty abandoned.
Tangentially, risks like that are why I'm really frustrated-with/exasperated-by certain mRNA-vaccine scaremongers: Ones who act as if older techniques were already fine and sufficient.
It can both be the case that old methods have risks and new methods have greater risks, eg, underestimating mRNA distribution in the body, leading to mRNA replication in heart tissue, and higher than expect dangerous side-effects.
In general, people prefer understood risks to new risks because the system is better adapted to them — both biologically and politically.
The Surgeon General's report on social media and youth mental health [0] cited 3 studies showing 1) that limiting social media to 30 minutes per day among college students for 3 weeks significantly reduced loneliness and depression [1], 2) deactivating Facebook before the 2018 midterm elections increased subjective wellbeing and reduced political polarization,[2] and 3) that 10,904 14-year-olds in the UK Millennium Cohort Study experienced an increase in depressive symptoms in association with greater daily social media use, with a stronger association for girls than boys (depressive symptoms in adolescents using social media for 3 to <5 h versus 1-3 hours daily were elevated 21% in boys and 26% in girls; with 5 or more hours of use versus 1-3 hours of use daily, depressive symptom scores were elevated 35% in boys and 50% in girls) [3].
Fully 57% of high school aged girls--(more than half!)--experienced feelings of persistent sadness or hopelessness in 2021, up from 36% in 2011 [4]. Over the same timeframe, average time spent using social media each day among teens doubled from about 1.5 hours to more than 3 hours [5]. Admittedly, this is not a straightforward association as mental health screening practices changed in the United States during this period.
The actions of some with a vested financial interest in continued growth of social media have purposely chosen not to protect youth mental health. According to CBS, Mark Zuckerberg, "personally and repeatedly thwarted initiatives meant to improve the well-being of teens on Facebook and Instagram...[overruling] Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri and President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg, who had asked Zuckerberg to do more to protect the more than 30 million teens who use Instagram in the United States" [6]. And now developed countries with robust regulation systems are starting to do something. If all of this is happening and there is "not enough evidence" all one has to do is look back at similar statements by the tobacco and asbestos industries to muddle, obfuscate, and confuse to continue extraction of profits as long as possible. If you are working for social media companies in these efforts, at least try a new tactic to continue extraction of wealth at the expense of public health! It has become too obvious at this point.
Do you mind if I ask what format you've settled on? Having a system evolve over multiple generations means you must have pruned out all the bad ways to do it.
I've got this vision of a Neal Stephenson story which will never be written about a family in the 22nd century that has kept all their personal contacts in Git for over 100 years ...
Grandpa was an early adopter of computers due to his work in cryptography, which started even before WWII. He wrote his files mostly in WordStar, and a few other formats that are still readable. Most of these are on a drive and on 5.25 and 3.5 inch floppy disks. Dad uses KEDIT, and now Notepad++, probably because KEDIT was popular in Princeton at the time. I think John McPhee still uses KEDIT. I use plain text files and HTML.
The Surgeon General's report [0] cited 3 studies showing 1) that limiting social media to 30 minutes per day among college students for 3 weeks significantly reduced loneliness and depression [1], 2) deactivating Facebook before the 2018 midterm elections increased subjective wellbeing and polarization,[2] and 3) that 10,904 14 year olds in the UK Millennium Cohort Study experienced an increase in depressive symptoms in association with greater daily social media use, with a stronger association for girls than boys (depressive symptoms in adolescents using social media for 3 to <5 h versus 1-3 hours daily were elevated 21% in boys and 26% in girls; with 5 or more hours of use versus 1-3 hours of use daily, depressive symptom scores were elevated 35% in boys and 50% in girls) [3].
Fully 57% of high school aged girls--(more than half!)--experienced feelings of persistent sadness or hopelessness in 2021, up from 36% in 2011 [4]. Over the same timeframe, average time spent using social media each day among teens doubled from about 1.5 hours to more than 3 hours [5].
I am not waiting for a randomized controlled study. There are serious harmful effects of the environment our kids are growing up in today, and part of that is a growth in social media. Let us not forget that Mark Zuckerberg, "personally and repeatedly thwarted initiatives meant to improve the well-being of teens on Facebook and Instagram...[overruling] Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri and President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg, who had asked Zuckerberg to do more to protect the more than 30 million teens who use Instagram in the United States." [6] Not enough evidence? In the words of Bob Dylan, "you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows."
Yep. His efforts were completely counterproductive and worthless. Right analysis but entirely wrong and stupid prescription. I read several of his books out of tackling of infamous works like Mein Kampf and Das Kapital. I couldn't bring myself to read Henry Ford's books, however.
100% agree on that. I think he did have some good arguments that were lost in his manifesto, but as they say a broken clock is wrong twice.
Its a shame he used such violent and extream means, I think some of his points, not most of them, but some of them were interesting when I self reflect on how I depend on society and how technology is basically become a part of human evolution.
That said I can't condone what he did or how he used violence to further his own agenda.
Is it really any different from what we see these days with protesters? They don’t care at all when they block highways and bridges and tunnels. Lots of people get impacted - including those needing to get to hospitals or loved ones. What about when protestors use physical force and violence to destroy businesses and property. In my opinion, all of it is terrorism based on the definition, but we just stopped using those labels.
The lack of integrity and human values of the person is orthogonal to the issue but the issue is forevermore tainted and set back with such an infamous association. Antihero in not a good way, a ruinous villain who did infinitely more harm and zero good. Whatever the issue, the means to the end matter.
