Tag: TechStories

Innovative AI Drum Machine Transforms Vocal Rhythms into Music | March 02 2025, 17:27

Thought of a cool idea. Surprising that no one has done anything like it. Essentially, it’s a drum machine with AI that plays music to the rhythm and accents a person makes into a mic. Plus, you can overlay synthesized sounds, mimicking various instruments with your voice or lips, while the smart AI organically integrates it with the existing sounds, creating something new. So you could sing a rhythm, sing a melody, and have it layered over the rhythm.

Details are hard to whip up on the spot, but imagine millions of people playing with this out of boredom if even the basic version is implemented. You could create an entire store of paid add-ons. It’s possible to make a service that does very high-quality mixing in the cloud and outputs the source file and mp3

for use anywhere. Theoretically, it could be in the form of an app for iPhone.

Imagine TikTok or Instagram buying this and integrating it into their apps.

Rare Pedestrian Signals and the Legacy of Garrett Morgan | March 02 2025, 03:50

In the photo is one of the few pedestrian traffic lights in Guadalajara, a massive city — the second largest in Mexico. I spent half a day hunting it down. These extremely rare exceptions are all pedestrian crossings without those white figures, and often without the “zebra” stripes. The signal for pedestrians to go is the red light for cars. Or maybe “the cars still seem far away”.

Regarding the history of the traffic light, the name of American inventor Garrett Morgan is often mentioned. He patented a traffic light with an original design in 1923. However, he made history because he was the first in the world to specify in his patent, besides the technical design, its purpose: “The purpose of the device is to make the sequence of crossing at an intersection independent of the person sitting in the vehicle.

Politics of Unpredictability: The Impact and Ethics of the Madman Theory | March 01 2025, 17:10

In every corner, following the discussed theme, if we delve into history, the “unpredictability” or demonstrative “irrationality” were indeed often employed as tools by major politicians. On one hand, this could serve as a kind of “shock effect,” giving such a leader an edge in negotiations or governance. On the other hand, this tactic often led to severe consequences for their own country (and the entire world).

For example, U.S. President Richard Nixon tried to convince the leadership of the Soviet Union and North Vietnam that he could “snap” and resort to extreme measures, including the use of nuclear weapons if the conflict was not resolved. It was hoped that the fear of an “inadequate” American president would force the opponents to seek a compromise more quickly. Before Nixon, Dwight Eisenhower adhered to similar tactics, ending the Korean War with such methods.

This political strategy is called the “Madman Theory”. The underlying ideas were articulated as far back as the 15th century by Machiavelli, who noted that in politics, “it is sometimes useful to pretend to be mad”.

Overall, it is useful to indeed be a bit “nuts”. And better even more than a bit. The line between acting like a madman and being one is incredibly thin.

The “Madman Theory” is quite often criticized as an ineffective foreign policy strategy. In particular, it is noted that it can be considered a Russian roulette in international relations, increasing unpredictability and not always prompting the desired behavior from its recipient.

The problem is that the “Madman Theory” is associated not only with Nixon but also with Hitler, Mao Zedong, Kim Jong Il/Jong Un, and basically almost everything. If you look at it, something similar was present with Ivan the Terrible and Stalin. Under both, the country flourished. But there were a lot of corpses.

In business, the “Madman Theory” is primarily associated with Elon Musk (yes, they found each other).

There is also a negotiation technique called “Brinkmanship”. This is when one of the parties pushes events towards an undesirable, often catastrophic outcome for both parties, counting on the last moment that the other side will yield for self-preservation, thereby avoiding the catastrophe and gaining unilateral advantages.

One would like to think that behind all this there is some strategy, which so far shows only its corner. Who knows, such abrupt “turns” in politics might be a deliberate tactic related to techniques from the “madman theory” or “brinkmanship”. First, one side demonstrates unexpected loyalty, lifts restrictions, offers joint projects, and creates an illusion of long-term warming. The other side, sensing a benefit, starts to invest heavily and rely on new opportunities, which increases the “exit costs” from these relationships. Once the connection between the partners becomes close enough (which could happen literally within a month or two) and potential losses from a breakup are too high, the initiator of the “warming” switches to tougher demands, knowing that it is difficult for the partner to refuse: the stakes have already been raised, and the risk of loss has seriously increased.

Not sure if it’s like that, but in general, it’s also not out of the question. We will observe, it seems, for us there remains only observation

Trump Mistakes Ukraine for Russia in Diplomatic Blunder | February 28 2025, 01:25

“…A flustered Trump realizes that all this time he had been confusing Russia and Ukraine”

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The new presidential administration encountered a rare public relations slip-up when a flustered President Donald Trump realized that he had been confusing Russia with Ukraine all this time.

The error was eventually detected by a White House aide who started asking questions after the president publicly stated that Ukraine was responsible for starting the war.

After further investigation, the aide privately informed Trump that he had mixed up the two countries.

“It’s the other way around, as far as I understand,” Trump told reporters at an impromptu press conference in the Oval Office. “The country that started the war, invading another country, apparently was Russia. Honestly, they are easy to confuse. They are right next to each other. And the cold winters. Very cold. I always thought that this little guy Zelensky was from Russia. He sounds Russian.”

One administration insider said that Trump’s realization of the mix-up could potentially change the whole outlook for peace negotiations. “It’s kind of a substantial difference,” the source said. “He took such a tough stance on Ukraine because he thought they had started the war, when it was Russia who invaded. We had to pull out a big map and show him that Russia is actually big and Ukraine is small. All is well, he’s got it all figured out now.”

At the time of publication, Trump proposed a newly revised peace plan in which the United States would simply annex both Ukraine and Russia as new territories.

BabylonBee well done

Detecting ChatGPT Use in Job Interviews | February 27 2025, 03:46

Job interview. Tell me, how can you tell when the person on the other end is sitting with ChatGPT? And I don’t know, maybe a friend types up the questions, he sees the answers and tries to use them on the fly without really understanding them. I can’t say for sure that this was the case with the dude I recently interviewed, but it looked very similar.

During the process, I figured out that you can partly combat this by asking questions that don’t have a simple answer, and through rapid-fire questions which ChatGPT can quickly respond to, but if the person isn’t familiar with the topic, a quick LLM response won’t really help them, and there’s no time to read a long response. Meaning, ChatGPT will still answer correctly, but to use ChatGPT’s response, the person needs to carefully read through the whole block of text in the answer. And conversely, you shouldn’t ask questions that ChatGPT can immediately answer.

But generally, it’s quite a task to come up with such questions.

For example, instead of asking “How does SOAP differ from REST”, it’s better to ask “for which task might REST API not be the best choice”. ChatGPT starts giving a smart, bulleted answer, which you can’t simply read off the screen without understanding it.

But I’m really curious, what have HR departments come up with to combat tips from LLMs? After all, you could quite well train an LLM to display something you are generally familiar with, but recalling it yourself would take longer and with mistakes.

At the end of the interview, I requested a Live Coding – shuffle the array, where I planned to change the task setting after receiving the first version of the code. Well, you get it, there wasn’t even a first version beyond the shuffle() method header.

Kira Kuzmenko

Financial Service Frustrations: Navigating Modern Security Hurdles | February 24 2025, 12:44

It seems like financial companies are competing to see which one can “reinvent the wheel” first and in the most unconventional way. I needed to change something in my Fidelity account, where I handle my pension contributions. I log in, but the 2FA fails because, for some reason, they have my number incorrectly listed, so I can’t receive the SMS to log in. Okay, these things happen. But then they ask me to enter a code that the operator will give me if I call phone number XXX. So I call.

To get to this operator, you need to enter your SSN using the phone keypad, which is a bit of a stretch, but still normal. Usually, they just ask for the last four digits. But that’s not enough. Their robot asks me to enter my password! From the phone keypad! The very one I use on the web. How do I do that — literally pressing the keys ABC, DEF, etc. And my password is long, I at least need to see it in front of me. Okay, I managed to find it (meanwhile the robot tries to hang up because it thinks I’ve frozen). I laboriously entered the password. Clearly, things like case sensitivity aren’t considered, and luckily, my password doesn’t contain special characters that aren’t on a phone keypad — I can’t even imagine how I’d enter them.

It doesn’t go through! Damn, I have to repeat it. Last attempt, it says. Enter it again. I entered it a second time, this time correctly. The robot thanked me and said they are currently off, so goodbye.

In another service, UBS, I’m constantly asked to change not just the password, but also the username. In a third service, you can’t recover a password, you can only call to reset it, and they send the temporary password in plain text via email, and it’s not temporary at all.

Integrating ERP-Based Pricing into E-Commerce Catalogues | February 23 2025, 19:18

I wrote an article on Hybrismart on the topic “Customer-specific pricing”. How to create a good solution when your price calculation is in ERP, but you need to somehow show the actual price in the catalogue that takes into account their group or whatever else.

It’s quite in demand. There’s no adequate solution on the market, you have to do everything yourself, since client requirements vary. But it seems I managed to make it more or less universal. Sharing the details.

Despite the name block containing Hybris, the article is applicable to any online store or B2B system.

https://hybrismart.com/2025/02/23/customer-specific-pricing-and-availability-in-b2b-e-commerce/

Customer-Specific Pricing and Availability in B2B E-Commerce

Musk’s Perspective on Trump’s Presidency and Climate Policy | February 22 2025, 23:07

…On Trump’s first day as president, Musk went to the White House to be part of a roundtable of top CEOs, and he returned two weeks later for a similar session. He concluded that Trump as president was no different than he was as a candidate. The buffoonery was not just an act. “Trump might be one of the world’s best bullshitters ever,” he says. “Like my dad. Bullshitting can sometimes baffle the brain. If you just think of Trump as sort of a con-man performance, then his behavior sort of makes sense.” When the president pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Accord, an international agreement to fight climate change, Musk resigned from the presidential councils.

Travel Troubles and Unexpected Stays: A Tale of Two Airports | February 22 2025, 16:46

In the end, I managed a bingo of two airports where planes had recently crashed. One incident occurred just the day before my planned arrival in Toronto, which, of course, led to my flight being canceled. I found out at the airport. No problem, I worked from there, then returned home, luckily only a 20-minute drive away. I flew out the next day.

But the return trip was more interesting. First, the flight was rescheduled countless times, then they loaded us into the plane, then unloaded us again and told us to come back tomorrow for a second attempt. Amusingly, the border guard’s question about the purpose of your visit to Canada sounded quite ironic upon exiting. No one knows where to wait for the luggage, and what’s even supposed to be on the display board from where I flew? From Toronto to Toronto? But they say not to worry, they’ll collect unclaimed baggage overnight, and it will fly with me tomorrow. Midnight approaches, no Uber can be caught for all the money in the world, the hotel shuttle has been promised every ten minutes for the last hour but finally arrives, and the three of us, including a couple celebrating their 26th wedding anniversary, occupy the last two seats. On the bus, I joke that all that’s left is to find out that the hotel is fully booked. No way, my fellow travelers tell me, you reserved it in front of us (the airline gave a voucher). I pull out my phone, and instead of a ‘thank you for your reservation’, there’s a message saying no rooms are available at Comfort Inn. Well, the hotel was “better than any motel. I try to find the next hotel on the airline’s website in the hotel lobby; there are three options, of which two are about 70 km away, and one is listed but has no availability. While I was calling, another option popped up, Marriot Residence Inn, and that worked out. Nice rooms, two-bedroom suites with a full kitchen, but with a terrible breakfast in the morning. Luckily, the airline’s voucher covered a good lunch at a restaurant the next day.

The next day, the flight was at the same time, and here comes another delay message. Well, this time it was minor, and our Mitsubishi made it to Reagan Airport quite comfortably. They didn’t lose the luggage;)