Can the creator economy stay afloat in a flood of AI slop?On the latest episode of Equity, we debated what’s next for the creator economy, and whether there will be any room for the next generation of creators to stand out.

SEC allows broker-dealers to take 2% 'haircut' on stablecoinsStaff said the US regulator would "not object" to broker-dealers counting stablecoin holdings toward their net capital requirements.

Meshtastic Does More Than Simple CommunicationMeshtastic has been experiencing a bit of a renaissance lately, as the off-grid, long-range radio text messaging protocol gains a ton of new users. It’s been used to create mesh networks in cities, during disasters and protests, in small groups while hiking or camping, and for search and rescue operations. Although it’s connected plenty of people together in all of these ways, [GreatScott!] wanted to put it to work connecting some computing resources instead. He has a garden shed that’s too far for WiFi, so Meshtastic was used to connect it instead.
This isn’t a project to bring broadband Internet out to the shed, though; Meshtastic is much too slow for that. All he really wanted to do here was to implement a basic alarm system that would let him know if someone had broken in. The actual alarm triggering mechanism is an LED emitter-detector pair installed in two bars, one of which sends a 12V signal out if the infrared beam from the other is broken. They’re connected to a Heltec ESP32 LoRa module which is set up to publish messages out on the Meshtastic communications channel. A second module is connected to the WiFi at the house which is communicates with his Home Assistant server.
Integrating Meshtastic devices into Home Assistant can be pretty straightforward thanks to the various integrations already available, but there is some configuration to get these specific modules working as an alarm. One of the pins on the remote module had to be set up to watch the light bar, and although sending the alarm message out when this triggered worked well, the received signal never passed through to Home Assistant until [GreatScott!] switched to using the RadioLib library an an MQTT integration instead. But with perhaps more configuration than he planned for out of the way, [GreatScott!]’s alarm is up and running. Meshtastic projects often balloon into more than we had originally planned though, in more ways than one. You can follow along as our own [Tom Nardi] attempts to connect all of New Jersey with this new protocol.

Bass Big Muff Pi 2 from Electro-Harmonix Electro-Harmonix say that they recognised that their reintroduced Dual Op-Amp Big Muff 2 pedal would be hit with bass players, so set about developing a new purpose-built version. 

Sender Spike qb (Kyubi) Multimode DistortionKyubi is a multimode distortion with nine distortion modes sandwiched between a pre and a post EQ section, each consisting of a low shelf and a high shelf. Available distortion modes include soft clip, hard clip, linear fold, sine fold, full rectifier, half rectifier, asymmetrical waveshaper with tube screamer like transfer curve, another flavour of asymmetric waveshaper, and a bit crush effect. For more info and download visit the developer's blog. Read More

Sam Altman would like remind you that humans use a lot of energy, too"It also takes a lot of energy to train a human."

Miranda’s Unlikely Ocean Has Us Asking If There’s Life Clinging On Around UranusIf you’re interested in extraterrestrial life, these past few years have given an embarrassment of places to look, even in our own solar system. Mars has been an obvious choice since before the Space Age; in the orbit of Jupiter, Europa’s oceans have been of interest since Voyager’s day; the geysers of Enceladus give Saturn two moons of interest, if you count the possibility of a methane-based chemistry on Titan. Even faraway Neptune’s giant moon Triton probably has an ocean layer deep inside. Now the planet Uranus is getting in on the act, offering its moon Miranda for consideration in a kinda-recent study in the Planetary Science Journal.

Miranda and Uranus, the new hot spot for life-hunters. Photomontage credit NASA.
Even if you’re into astronomy, it may seem like this is coming out of left field. “Miranda, really? What new data could we possibly have on a moon of Neptune nobody’s visited since the 1980s?” Well, none, really. This study relies on reexamining the data collected during the Voyager 2 encounter and trying to make sense of the chaotic, icy world that the space probe revealed.
The faults and other features on Miranda indicated it was geologically active at some point; this study tries to recreate the moon’s history through computer modelling to find that Miranda probably had a ≥100 km thick ocean sometime in the last 100-500 million years, and that while some of it has likely frozen since, tidal heating could very well keep a layer of liquid water within the moon’s interior. Since the moon itself is only 470 km (290 mi) in diameter, a 100km deep ocean layer would actually be a huge proportion of its volume.
The model is a fairly simple one, with the ocean sandwiched between two layers of ice and a rocky core. Image from Caleb Strom et al 2024 Planet. Sci. J. 5 226
Right now, the over-optimistic thinking is that “water means life”, since that’s how it seems to work on Earth. It remains to be seen if Miranda, or indeed any of the icy moons, ever evolved so much as a microbe. Aside from the supposed presence of liquid dihydrogen monoxide, there’s nothing to suggest they have. Finding out is going to take a while: even with boots — er, robots — on the ground, Mars isn’t giving up that secret easily. Still, if we’re able to discover irrefutable evidence for such extraterrestrial life, it will provide an important constraint on one term of The Drake Equation: what fraction of worlds develop life. That by itself won’t tell us “are we alone,” but it will be interesting.
Of course, even if all these worlds are barren now, they might not be for long, once our probes start visiting.
Story via Earth.com
Header image: Miranda, imaged by Voyager 2. Credit NASA/JPL-Caltech

zazz Phase ModulatorPhase Modulator is a VST plugin that functions as a phaser, allowing you to dial in extreme settings. WARNING: At high feedback settings, the plugin may enter a self-resonating state and produce very loud output. Read More

Wavetick Sounds offers 20 FREE sound credits to new members
Wavetick Sounds gives all new members 20 free credits, so you can download 20 sounds just by creating a free account. Signing up on Wavetick is super easy. Just enter your email, create a free account, and you’ll get 20 credits right away. Each credit lets you download one sound, and you can choose from [...]
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Tip Jar: A Tale of Loss, Redemption, and Fulfillment That Is All True and UpliftingWhen I was just back from my first year in college, I was staying in the house in Lexington on Hunt Road, and I was just getting things together and rehearsing and playing at the house. We had a big open basement and I had a great little set-up there with guitars, a turntable, and a collection of records I was trying to practice off of—and lift licks from—Paul Butterfield Blues Band and Al Kooperand Mike Bloomfield solos.

So, guitars were a big thing for me, and I had a Fender acoustic and had just bought a beautiful Fender Stratocaster, white and in perfect condition.

My parents had gone away for the weekend and my younger brother invited all his slacker and stoner friends over to drink beer and hang out. They were a real bunch of thugs and dopers and the party got started and I was downstairs when the police showed up at the front door and created quite a mad dash for the doors and exits. Kids came running down the back stairs for the garage door exits, and I got hit from behind with a table leg and was out like a light.

When I came to, the police were everywhere, quite a few items had been stolen from the house… and when I looked over at my little studio, my beautiful 1971 white Strat was gone. I was heartbroken. How could my brother have friends like this and what in the world had he done to these people?

My younger brother vanished, turns out he didn’t know any of these people, and I spent two days cleaning the place up and trying to track down my Strat and the person who had taken it from me.

I tried for years to ask people for leads—try to find the people who were there that night—but I was met with a dead-end at every turn. It was really sad because, as the years wore on, that 1969 Jimi Hendrix Strat had become pretty valuable. But time moves on and as the decades went by, it became a smaller burr under my saddle, but still a pain in my heart, and I learned to live with the sadness and the disappointments of life and various circumstances beyond my control.

“I am sorry for what I did 40 years ago. Please understand that my few years as a lost teenager do not represent the person I am and try to be. I’ve thought about trying to find you and make amends for many years. I’m glad I finally did.

I wish you well. I’m guessing your music career brings you much happiness and I hope that continues for many more years.”

One afternoon as I was driving west through Dallas, heading to Marfa, when I got a text on my phone—nothing new there, but the message was a bit odd: it said, “are you Eric Sommer? Are you Stevie’s older brother?” That was interesting, so when I got it again the next day, I responded and said, “yes, that’s me… what can I do for you?”

“I am the guy who stole your guitar from your basement 40 years ago. I am in a much better place now, and what I did that night has haunted me for all this time. I would like to try and give you your guitar back and ask forgiveness for what I had done so long ago.”

It was a haunting message, and I was pretty taken aback. I said that would be fine, I am glad he called, and it showed his true character. I gave him my address and he said he was a lost, messed-up kid, high on drugs that night… and sold it the next day.  He had no idea what happened to it, but he had something that I would like, that was the same brand, and model but a little different year and he will have it re-fretted, set-up, and sent as soon as possible.

The box arrived a few weeks later, along with the letter enclosed here.

“Here’s my American Standard Strat. I think its model year is 1995. I bought it brand new at Ray Hennig’s store in Austin in 1996. I bought it off Ray himself and he regaled me with stories about how Stevie Ray Vaughan used to hang out in his store every day. Check him out on YouTube.”

I’ve spent most of my life on the road believing guitars are vessels. They carry songs, sweat, rooms, and years. But sometimes they also carry memory—unfinished business vibrating quietly inside the wood. That white Strat didn’t just come back as an instrument; it came back as proof that time doesn’t only take things away. Occasionally, if you’re lucky, it gives something back in a different key.

We don’t get many chances to resolve the long echoes of our younger selves. Fewer still arrive unexpectedly, wrapped in cardboard, with an apology inside. When I play that guitar now, I don’t hear the loss anymore. I hear distance traveled—by both of us. And that feels like music doing what it’s always promised to do: turn noise into meaning, and history into something you can finally lay down.The post Tip Jar: A Tale of Loss, Redemption, and Fulfillment That Is All True and Uplifting first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

UJAM introduce Voxcraft Voxcraft takes UJAM’s usual no-fuss design approach, and promises to provide a fast and intuitive way to shape distinctive, production-ready vocal sounds.

New Music Critique: The AntennasContact: antennasrecords@gmail.comWeb: theantennas.netSeeking: Label, Distribution, ManagementStyle: Folk/Roots Rock

There’s an intriguing quality to The Antennas, driven by guitar work that feels fresh and purposeful, especially on “High Noon.” “I’m Alright” flirts with a low-grade angst, but the vocals verge on disinterested, flattening what could be a more compelling turn. There’s a clear ambition here—echoes of a modern-day Tom Petty sensibility—and when the vibes align, this could really click; for now, it feels like a promising signal still searching for its frequency. The charisma is there, but maybe it just needs a little prodding.The post New Music Critique: The Antennas first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

Tokenized real estate projects advance in Dubai and MaldivesA Trump-tied hotel development in the Maldives and the Dubai Land Department announced details on tokenizing their real estate projects this week.

Panoramic Film Camera Made from 3D Printed PartsEven though digital cameras have lowered the barrier of entry to photography dramatically, as well as made it much easier for professionals and amateurs alike to capture stunning images without the burden of developing film, the technology behind them is considerably more complex than their analog counterparts. In fact, an analog film camera (not counting the lens) can be as simple as a lightproof box and a way to activate a shutter. Knowing that, any kind of film camera could be built for any number of applications, like this 3D-printed panoramic camera from [Denis Aminev].
The custom-built camera works by taking a standard roll of 35mm film, which is standardized to take 36 pictures, and exposing a wider section of the film to create a panorama. This reduces the number of pictures on the roll to 19. This is the fifth version of this camera, called the Infidex 176 V, and has everything a standard film camera would have, from an exposure counter, pressure plate for the film, a winder, interchangable lenses, a viewfinder, and a tripod mounting point. It does take a bit of work to assemble, as shown in the video linked below, but the final result is impressive and delivers a custom finished product not easily found or reproducible in off-the-shelf cameras.
The path to creating this camera was interesting as well, as [Denis]’s first custom film camera was a pinhole camera. From there he moved on to disassembling an SLR camera and attempting to reproduce all of its parts with 3D printed ones. With that in hand, he was able to modify this design into this panoramic camera which he likes because it reproduces the feel of widescreen movies. Although this camera reproduces all of the bells and whistles of a high quality analog camera, not all of these features are strictly necessary for taking pictures on film. Have a look at this minimum viable camera as well.

Remember HQ? ‘Quiz Daddy’ Scott Rogowsky is back with TextSavvy, a daily mobile game showThe former HQ host Scott Rogowsky is back with TextSavvy, a live mobile game show that he's building on his own terms.