Hacker News: thenomad

New comment by thenomad in "Why are successful professionals still working 70 hours a week?"

thenomad — Sun, 04 Feb 2018 12:33:46 +0000

"No one died regretting time no spent at work"

Citation needed.

Here's one example of a situation where I could very easily see someone regretting not spending more time at work.

As a professional creative, I'm betting there are a fair number of authors, film directors, screenwriters and so on who died regretting they didn't finish their latest work, or didn't spend more time on the thing they really wanted to make. That's work.

New comment by thenomad in "Family fun with deepfakes"

thenomad — Fri, 02 Feb 2018 19:06:02 +0000

It's intent and emotion that I'm really interested in - which to the best of my knowledge, computer generation still isn't good at. (This is for VR games, so high quality voice acting is a priority)

Hence, if I could find a program which could reliably turn one actor's voice into another, I could use their acting ability, but with more characters and less requirement for them to "put on" voices. That's powerful because really good actors are thin on the ground, and also because trying to hold a different voice or accent can limit the quality of the main performance.

New comment by thenomad in "Family fun with deepfakes"

thenomad — Fri, 02 Feb 2018 17:13:44 +0000

Is voice conversion via ML possible yet?

I know we can create vaguely convincing synthesised voices, but I've not run across a program which can take my recorded voice, and convert it to a celebrity, or even shift apparent pitch or gender convincingly.

New comment by thenomad in "3,500 Occult Manuscripts Will Be Digitized and Made Freely Available Online"

thenomad — Fri, 26 Jan 2018 19:09:47 +0000

I suspect I'm one of the few readers here (@cstross being another) for whom this is genuinely important professional information. And it's fantastic.

Sadly no mention of license there, though - kinda vital if one is intending to use some of the imagery in remix works - although given the texts are thoroughly out of copyright I'd assume that's not too big an issue.

New comment by thenomad in "Oculus Start: Technical and Financial Resources for Beginning VR Developers"

thenomad — Fri, 19 Jan 2018 10:54:18 +0000

It's also extremely good for RPGs and MMOs, neither of which are unpopular genres.

We haven't seen a lot of either yet, because both require considerable investment, but the first VR MMO, Orbus, is going very well, and Skyrim VR on PSVR is one of the first VR apps to really sell headsets.

(My own VR RPG also did very well, and convinced me it's a great use of the medium.)

New comment by thenomad in "Who the Hell Uses Onion Juice?"

thenomad — Thu, 18 Jan 2018 12:20:52 +0000

This approximately describes my approach to game development, too. It works exceptionally well there as gamedev is all about crafting a fantasy and an experience.

New comment by thenomad in "Ask HN: What's the best thing(s) you shipped in 2017?"

thenomad — Sun, 31 Dec 2017 10:17:31 +0000

My Dark Souls inspired VR horror/RPG, Left-Hand Path, which exited Early Access last month:

http://store.steampowered.com/app/488760/LeftHand_Path/

It's held at mid-80s positive reviews after that, and numerous people have said it's the scariest thing they've ever experienced in VR. A good start to what I hope will be a long career making VR games.

New comment by thenomad in "Monitoring Home Power Consumption for less than $25"

thenomad — Sat, 30 Dec 2017 11:36:01 +0000

Dumb question - what's CPL?

New comment by thenomad in "Machine Learning 101 slidedeck: 2 years of headbanging, so you don't have to"

thenomad — Thu, 14 Dec 2017 12:32:21 +0000

This is a deeply unfair, unreasonable and arguably abusive comment.

It's entirely reasonable to talk about yourself and your achievements on your resume, and Mr Mayes' site is rather a good example of doing so.

New comment by thenomad in "Ask HN: What software/service helps you be an effective remote developer?"

thenomad — Mon, 11 Dec 2017 10:04:04 +0000

This is good advice, but one question: why is the default assumption here that I'm the only person I ever record?

I'm pretty good at not um-ing too frequently (20 years of public speaking will do that), but I can't exactly require all my guests for podcasts or interviews, for example, first rigorously train themselves for months!

New comment by thenomad in "Ask HN: What software/service helps you be an effective remote developer?"

thenomad — Sun, 10 Dec 2017 15:48:09 +0000

On the subject of "ums" - does anyone know if there's a tool out there to automatically remove ums and uhs from spoken audio?

Seems like it'd be a useful and comparatively doable problem to solve.

New comment by thenomad in "The compelling case for working less"

thenomad — Tue, 05 Dec 2017 12:12:31 +0000

You might find looking into this question interesting.

It's not universal, but a surprising number of the greats in all fields work less, not more.

Are VR eSports going to become a thing?

thenomad — Thu, 16 Nov 2017 14:33:36 +0000

Article URL: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2017/11/are-vr-esports-going-to-become.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15712851

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

From Here to the Holodeck

thenomad — Mon, 13 Nov 2017 13:42:46 +0000

Article URL: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2017/11/from-here-to-the-holodeck.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15686450

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by thenomad in "Show HN: SpeechBoard – Edit Podcasts from the Transcript"

thenomad — Sat, 11 Nov 2017 12:49:45 +0000

I just discovered https://trint.com .

No idea if they're any good, but they're certainly cheaper than Rev.

New comment by thenomad in "Show HN: SpeechBoard – Edit Podcasts from the Transcript"

thenomad — Sat, 11 Nov 2017 12:47:05 +0000

I've said this a few times but happy to say it again: I will very cheerfully pay for a good podcast -> transcript service.

I speed-read. I don't speed-listen. And my lifestyle has zero podcast-compatible travel time. So there's a whole world of great content in a very user-unfriendly format for me currently.

New comment by thenomad in "Burn the Programmer"

thenomad — Sat, 11 Nov 2017 11:55:28 +0000

Goddamn, that really does sound sinister as hell.

New comment by thenomad in "Burn the Programmer"

thenomad — Sat, 11 Nov 2017 11:54:36 +0000

Hah! That's an interesting idea. I might just think about doing that for an April Fools' or similar...

AMA: Hugh Hancock, Founder of Machinima and VR Developer

thenomad — Fri, 10 Nov 2017 19:36:44 +0000

Article URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/7c1y9q/im_hugh_hancock_i_founded_machinima_and_made/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15672326

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by thenomad in "Burn the Programmer"

thenomad — Fri, 10 Nov 2017 19:36:25 +0000

If people enjoyed this post, you might be interested to hear that the author (me) is currently doing an AMA over on Reddit, too -

https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/7c1y9q/im_hugh_hanco...