Optimizing Your Linux Shell ExperienceAre you familiar with huffman encoding? That’s where you pick shorter codes for more frequent letters. Morse code is the same way. Shorter characters are the ones you are most likely to use. [Matheus Richard] had the same idea for optimizing your workflow in the Linux shell. The idea is to measure what commands you use the most and make them shorter.

If you use zsh, it is easy to find out what commands you are using the most. If you use bash, [Matheus] helpfully offers a command to give you a similar result (the original post limits the list to the last entry which we are sure is a typo):
history | awk '{CMD[$2]++;count++;}END { for (a in CMD)print CMD[a] " " CMD[a]/count*100 "% " a;}' | grep -v "./" | column -c3 -s " " -t | sort -nr | nl | head -n10
Once you know the commands you use the most, you can use your shell’s aliasing or scripts to shorten them up. For example, in [Matheus’] case, git was a very common command. This led to aliases:
alias gc="git commit --verbose"
alias gp="git push"
alias gprom="git pull --rebase origin main"
Not only does this save typing, but you lessen your chance for typos (git comit, for example). Another idea is to alias your common errors, for example setting an alias for git as gti.
Small things, but definitely time savers. Be sure to read the rest of the post, as there are a number of other optimization ideas. [Matheus] definitely has a thing for zsh, but there are many other shells out there. Some of them are even evolving towards more modern programming languages.

Erica Synths launch the Megarack S Erica Synths' latest Eurorack enclosure offers a packed-down version of their flagship Megacase. 

The Bendix G-15 Runs 75,000 Lines of CodeThere’s a Blue Bendix in Texas, and thanks to [Usagi Electric] it’s the oldest operating computer in North America.  The Bendix G-15, a vacuum tube computer originally released in 1956, is now booting, and running code from paper tape. [David, aka Usagi] received the G-15 about a year ago from The System Source museum. The goal was to get the computer running so museum patrons could interact with a real tube computer. We’ve been following along since the project began.
[Usagi’s] latest G-15 video covers the last few problems on the road to running code. The biggest hurdle was the fact that the system wasn’t responding properly to the GO button on the typewriter. [Usagi] was able to isolate the issue down to a flip flop and then to a particular signal on an AND gate — the RC signal. The gate appeared to be bad, but swapping the entire circuit card multiple times had no effect. Something else had to be going on.

After hours of troubleshooting and a bit of hair-pulling, [Usagi] changed a diode circuit card downstream of the suspect card. This miraculously fixed the problem. It turned out the diode card had a tiny solder bridge since it was built in the 1950’s. This bridge put a heavy load on a buffer, causing grid leakage. For those of us who aren’t old [TubeTimers], grid leakage is a tiny current from the grid of a tube into the drive circuitry. Leakage is present on all triodes, and tube testers would often misdiagnose good tubes as bad for this reason.
Once the bridge and a few other problems were fixed, the machine sprang to life, not with a roar, but with a solid thunk as it slammed the incredibly wide typewriter carriage into a nearby shelf.  If you do nothing else this year, watch the video from the 20-minute mark. You get to see the pure joy a hacker gets when their project starts to work.
The Bendix was executing DIAPER — Diagnostic Program for Easy Repair. DIAPER runs a series of tests on the machine and rings a bell every time a test passes. Not a little bell in the typewriter, but a big 120 V beast hiding inside the computer itself. Ding, fries are done indeed!
[Usagi] did have some help this time around — thanks to a tip from [Avery] he contacted HP Agilent Keysight to inquire about a basic scope. Apparently, they know his videos and are huge fans of the Bendix because they sent him a really nice 4-channel digital oscilloscope. It definitely helped push the Bendix over the finish line! We love seeing companies give back to the community this way — and hope to see more in the future.
Now, this isn’t the last Bendix G-15 video from [Usagi]. There are several more tapes to run a full DIAPER test. The typewriter itself needs quite a lot of work before it will accept keystrokes, and we’re sure [Usagi] has a few more surprises up his sleeves.
You can still find a few tube computer projects floating around. You can even replace your 555 with some.

OpenAI’s GPT-5 reportedly falling short of expectationsOpenAI’s efforts to develop its next major model, GPT-5, are running behind schedule, with results that don’t yet justify the enormous costs, according to a new report in The Wall Street Journal. This echoes an earlier report in The Information suggesting that OpenAI is looking to new strategies as GPT-5 might not represent as big […]
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Custom Firmware For Even Cheaper Bluetooth ThermometersReaders may recall when we first covered the $5 Xiaomi LYWSD03MMC temperature and humidity sensor back in 2020. Prolific hacker [Aaron Christophel] wrote a custom firmware for the affordable gadget that was so capable and well implemented that it kicked off a whole new community.
It’s recently been brought to our attention that the Xiaomi thermometer has become so popular that clones have started popping up. Often sold under the Tuya brand, these versions look very similar to Xiaomi’s offering but can be had for as little as $1 each from the usual Chinese importers. Even better, they’ve got their very own open-source custom firmware.
The firmware comes from [pvvx], who also helms the most active fork of [Aaron]’s original firmware for the Xiaomi thermometer. Doing a bit of spot-checking between the repositories, it’s not immediately clear that any meaningful code is shared between the two projects. However, once installed, they offer similar capabilities to the user, such as integration with Home Assistant. Perhaps the most significant difference between the two projects is that, at least for the initial flash, you need to hook the Tuya units up to your computer with a USB serial adapter. Considering that one of the highlights of the Xiaomi custom firmware was its exceptionally easy wireless installation, this is a considerable step backward.
Below is a video from a few months back that [Maker’s Fun Duck] put together, where he takes apart one of these clones and shows the installation process for the custom firmware. Our overall impression is that it’s probably worth the few extra dollars to get the original Xiaomi hardware, although the display on the clone seems much brighter. In any event, we’re always happy to see the community coming up with free and open-source firmware for an otherwise locked-down gadget.

Thanks to [ThoriumBR] for the tip.

DIY & Independent Musician News Last WeekLast week in DIY & independent musician news, our indie readers tuned into topics like a new affordable SoundCloud subscription, Holiday selfcare, starting a band, the importance of metadata, and more...
The post DIY & Independent Musician News Last Week appeared first on Hypebot.

Last week’s top Music Business NewsA busy week by any definition and music business news was no exception, with moves to reform concert ticketing in turmoil, UMG buying indie powerhouses Downtown and CD Baby, TikTok's end in the U.S approaching, and more...
The post Last week’s top Music Business News appeared first on Hypebot.

Sonible introduce prime:vocal Available as a plug-in or standalone application, prime:vocal has been developed to make less-than-ideal vocals sound as though they were recorded professionally in a well-treated studio.

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Lack of proper indexing is throttling DApp speeds — Pangea CEOUsers typically leave an application that does not respond within three seconds, and Web3 apps can have load times of up to 20 seconds.

After causing outrage on the first day of Y Combinator, AI code editor PearAI lands $1M seedOn the first day of Y Combinator the founders of PearAI got “cancelled." They used the hate to launch a new product, raise $1 million.
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Making a Mechanical Watch From Scratch Is Fine WorkThere are plenty of hard jobs out there, like founding your country’s nuclear program, or changing the timing chain on a BMW diesel. Making your own mechanical watch from scratch falls under that umbrella, too. And yet, [John Raffaelli] did just that, and prevailed!
That’s a lot of work.
Only a handful of components were purchased—[John] grabbed jewels, sapphire crystals, the strap, and the hairspring and mainspring off the shelf. Everything else, he made himself, using a fine touch, a sharp eye, and some deft work on his machine tools. If you’ve never worked at this scale before, it’s astounding to see—[John] steps through how he produced tiny pinions and balance wheels that exist at sub-fingertip scale. Even just assembling something this tiny would be a challenge, but [John] was able to craft it all from scratch and put it together into a functioning timepiece when he was done.
The final piece doesn’t just look great—we’re told it keeps good time as well. People like [John] don’t come along every day, though we do have one similar story in our deep archives from well over a decade ago. If you’re cooking up your own bespoke time pieces in your home workshop, don’t hesitate to drop your story on the tipsline!

Building a Diet Coke Button[mars91] had an interesting problem to solve—his girlfriend often requested Diet Coke, but yelling for one across the apartment was frustrating and impractical. A dedicated Diet Coke button seemed like the perfect solution, so that’s precisely what he built.
The Diet Coke Button is a relatively simple device. A small silver push-button activates an Adafruit Feather M0 to send out a signal via its RFM95 LoRa radio. That signal is picked up by the receiver device, which runs on an ESP32. It’s got an RFM95 LoRa module, which receives signals from the button and sounds an alarm to indicate the request for a Diet Coke. The ESP32 also hosts a basic website which allows Diet Coke requests to be submitted via the web, as well as general submissions of a textual nature. The latter are displayed on a small OLED display. If you’re feeling bold, you can even set up the ESP32 to be accessible from the outside Internet, with [mars91] explaining how to do so using a Cloudflare tunnel for your own protection.
The only problem is that delivering the Diet Coke is still something you have to do by hand. Perhaps a future upgrade would involve some kind of small apartment-spanning railway for the delivery of ice-cold cans to designated stations.
It’s a unique project, and one that recalls us of an interesting talk about a different type of call button.

Here’s how to remake Paul McCartney’s Wonderful Christmastime with plugins and emulationsIt’s that time of year again – and we bet you must have heard Paul McCartney‘s Wonderful Christmastime at least a handful of times so far in the run-up to Christmas. He’s even been performing it recently on his current UK tour.

READ MORE: How 100s of hours of McCartney audio was edited into a podcast

For the music nerds among us, however, the often-polarising festive hit offers a smorgasbord of synth-based creativity. This is the basis of Reverb Machine’s Instrumental Synth Remake, which is impressively close to the original song.
The main synth heard in the 1979 hit is the Yamaha CS-80, a large, famously expensive synth famous for its use in Vangelis’ Blade Runner soundtrack. It sounds especially unique thanks to polyphonic aftertouch, a 2-pole filter, a ribbon controller and more esoteric features.
Reverb Machine recreated the sound using Arturia’s emulation, the CS-80 V, using LFO modulation to the filter to achieve the rhythmic effect heard in the track.

Elsewhere, an emulation of the Sequential Prophet-5 is used for the strings heard in the background of McCartney’s track, and what seems to be a Gibson Les Paul taking on guitar duties.
Reverb Machine went deep into the tutorial and published an article demonstrating how to remake it yourself. You can also download Reverb Machine’s Ableton Live project for the tutorial and get the presets used.
 
If you’re looking for other emulations of the Yamaha CS-80, especially in the January sales, Softube recently unveiled the Model 77 Dual Layer Synth, a virtual instrument that “perfectly captures” the sound of the iconic Japanese synth. Cherry Audio also has an iteration, the GX-80, which emulates not only the CS-80 but also the Yamaha GX-1.
Otherwise, you can pick up a bona fide hardware Yamaha CS-80. Currently, there’s one available with a $65,385 price drop on Reverb.com…But you’ll still need $52,308. That might be a little too big for a Christmas stocking…
Read more music production news. 
The post Here’s how to remake Paul McCartney’s Wonderful Christmastime with plugins and emulations appeared first on MusicTech.

Check out this instrumental synth remake of Paul McCartney’s Wonderful ChristmastimeIt’s that time of year again – and we bet you must have heard Paul McCartney‘s Wonderful Christmastime at least a handful of times so far in the run up to Christmas. He’s even been performing it recently on his current UK tour.

READ MORE: How 100s of hours of McCartney audio was edited into a podcast

For the music nerds among us however, the often-polarising festive hit offers a smorgasbord of synth-based creativity. This is the basis of Reverb Machine’s Instrumental Synth Remix.
The main one heard in the 1979 hit is the Yamaha CS-80, a large, famously expensice synth famous for its use in Vangelis’ Blade Runner soundtrack. It sounds especially unique because it has a 2-pole filter as opposed to the more common 3-pole filter.
Reverb Machine recreated the sound by starting with one of the CS-80’s presets and adding LFO modulation to the filter to achieve the rhythmic effect heard in the track.

Meanwhile, the synth patch was recreated using Arturia CS-80 V4, a software emulation of the original instrument.
Reverb Machine even published an article demonstrating how they made it work.
If you’re looking for a modern version of the Yamaha CS-80, especially in the January sales, Softube recently unveiled the Model 77 Dual Layer Synth, a virtual instrument that “perfectly captures” the sound of the iconic Japanese synth.
Softube says it has “component modelled and accurately articulated every detail of the circuits” of the three instruments.” The sound, interaction, and performance remain as close to the hardware units as possible, accompanied by an interface that’s been redesigned for an improved and modern workflow.
The post Check out this instrumental synth remake of Paul McCartney’s Wonderful Christmastime appeared first on MusicTech.