A Demo Party On A ChipThe demoscene has provided our community with its artistic outlet since the first computers which could handle graphics, and has stayed at the forefront of technology all the way. For all that though, there’s a frontier it hasn’t yet entirely conquered, which exists in the realm of silicon. To address this cones the ever awesome Tiny Tapeoput, who are bringing their ASIC-for-the-masses scheme to the world of demos with an ASIC demo competition.
With a closing date of 6th of September, all accepted entrants get a free Tiny Tapeout tile for their entry. Entries are limited to two tiles or less. with VGA and audio outputs via a specified PMOD pinout. There are a variety of categories including the expected best sound and best graphics, but among them we’re most interested by the mixed signal one that includes analogue circuitry.
Tiny Tapeout has been a particularly exciting project over the last couple of years, truly breaking new ground for the hardware hacker world. Since they’ve just recently been able to start doing some analog design on the chips, we’re excited to see what people come up with for this competition, and we hope it will provide significant advancement to the art. In the best tradition of the demo scene, they’ve even made an intro for the competition, which you can see below the break.
Want to know what all the fuss is about? Start here!

Thanks [Inne] for the tip!

ADDAC System announce Pressure to CV module Drawing its inspiration from breath controllers, the ADDAC310 Pressure to CV module offers an interesting new way to play modular gear.

Signing Story with Rockers CursiveDate Signed: March 25, 2024

Label: Run for Cover

Type of Music: Rock

Management: Paul Clegg - Cursive

Booking: Eric Dimenstein - Ground Control

Legal: Matthew Kaplan

Publicity: Amanda Pitts, Christina Cambria - Chromatic PR

Web: cursivearmy.com

Try this (Signing) Story on for size:  Two college kids from Omaha enroll in a business class requiring them to complete a commercially minded project before the semester ends. The longtime friends, engineer Mike Mogis and friend Justin Oberst, are so pleased with the results of the project that they decide to continue with it outside academia. In its first year in operation, 1993, Saddle Creek Records (originally called Lumberjack) unveiled its first release: the self-titled solo debut by the then-unknown, 13-year-old younger brother of Justin: Conor Oberst.

As Cursive bassist Matt Maginn told New Noise in an interview in mid-June, Saddle Creek “started as a collective, and then after a while, it became sole ownership for one person (co-founder and now President Robb Nansel), and we lost some of our love for (the label). We still love Saddle Creek—past, employees, all that stuff—but once everyone realized there really wasn't a collective anymore, they just all gave up and walked away.”

Turns out Cursive’s Plan B for how to release their next album didn’t pan out either, as 15 Passenger went into the ether.

“The label gave us enthusiasm again, and that spiraled into, “Let’s use (Run for Cover) to put out our own record, since we have this outlet now,” Maginn recalled. “We just didn’t have enough time to dedicate to our on label.”

Thus, for their 10th album overall and first in five years, Cursive didn’t opt to release Devourer through 15 Passenger or Saddle Creek, but rather Run for Cover Records. Incidentally, a 17-year-old founded that Boston-based label in 2004 at college. Sound familiar? 

Of course, the similarities between Saddle Creek and Run for Cover weren’t the only reasons Cursive opted to release Devourer, due September 13. Cursive had many suitors, according to Maginn, not to mention that one of the band’s trusted friends put the two parties in touch in February.

“Between their roster, friendliness toward artists, and creativity—and the easy hangs we had over Zoom—it seemed like the right move,” he said of Cursive signing to Run for Cover. “They have great digital marketing strategies and are fan-friendly too.”

Under the terms of the deal, Cursive maintain ownership of their music and also have a 50/50 profit split with their new home. Run for Cover also repaid Cursive what they spent from their own personal savings to make Devourer.

“We’ve been a DIY band our whole lives, and (Run for Cover) understands that and is cool with whatever we deliver to them,” Maginn concluded. “That label is doing it right.”The post Signing Story with Rockers Cursive first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

Bitcoin wobbles as Trump delivers pro-crypto conference speechThe 45th president of the United States caused some minor ripples throughout the cryptocurrency market with his speech at Bitcoin 2024.

Need Many Thin Parts? Try Multi-material Stack PrintingAdmittedly it’s a bit of a niche application, but if you need lots of flat 3D printed objects, one way to go about it is to print them in a stack and separate them somehow. An old(er) solution is to use a non-extruding “ironing” step between each layer, which makes them easier to pull apart. But another trick is to use the fact that PLA and PETG don’t stick well to each other to your advantage. And thus is born multi-material stack printing. (Video, embedded below the break.)
[Jonathan] wants to print out multiples of his fun Multiboard mounting system backplates, and these are the ideal candidate for stack printing: they’re thin, but otherwise take up the entire build plate. As you’d expect, the main trick is to print thin layers of PETG between the PLA plate layers that you do want. He demonstrates that you can then simply pull them apart.
There are some tricks, though. First is to make two pillars in addition to the plates, which apparently convinces the slicer to not flatten all the layers together. (We don’t really understand why, honestly, but we don’t use Bambu slicer for multi-materials.) The other trick that we expect to be more widely applicable, is that [Jonathan] extrudes the PETG interlayers a little thicker than normally. Because the PETG overflows the lower PLA layer, it physically locks on even though it chemically doesn’t. This probably requires some experimentation.
As multi-material printers get cheaper, we’ve seen a lot more innovative uses for them popping up. And we wouldn’t be so stoked about the topic if there weren’t a variety of hacker projects to make it possible. Most recently, the impressive system from [Armored_Turtle] has caught our eye. Who knows what kind of crazy applications we’ll see in the future? Are you doing multi-material yet?

Autonomous delivery startup Nuro is gearing up for a comebackThe California Department of Motor Vehicles this week granted Nuro approval to test its third-generation R3 autonomous delivery vehicle in four Bay Area cities, giving the AV startup a positive boost after facing some setbacks and financial struggles. The approval gives Nuro the ability to test its driverless delivery vehicle in Mountain View, Palo Alto, […]
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A History of Internet OutagesWe heard a story that after the recent hurricane, a man noted that while the house was sweltering hot because the power was still out, his kids were more anxious for the internet to come back online. The Internet is practically a basic necessity for most people, but as you may have noticed with the recent CrowdStrike debacle, the Internet isn’t always reliable. Granted, the problem in that case wasn’t the Internet per se, but a problem with many critical hosts that provide services. [Thomas Germain] from the BBC took the opportunity to recall some of the more bizarre reasons we’ve had massive Internet outages in the past.
While teens after a hurricane might miss social media, global outages can be serious business. With 8.5 million computers dead, 911 services went down, medical surgeries were canceled, and — of course — around 46,000 flights were canceled in a single day. We have short memories for these outages, but as [Thomas] points out, this was far from the first massive outage, and many of them have very strange backstories.

How strange? Well, apparently, all of Armenia’s Internet depends on a single fiber optic cable. A 75-year-old woman in Georgia (the country, not the US state) sliced it with a spade while hunting for copper and took down the entire country. A few years later, a tractor in South Africa took out the Internet all across Zimbabwe. If those aren’t strange enough, sharks like to bite undersea cables, as you can see in the video below.
As the Internet becomes more entrenched in necessary services, we are surprised that there are not more requirements for dissimilar redundancy like those on a spacecraft or nuclear power plant. Even preventing third parties from pushing updates directly into production servers might have helped in this case. High-end data centers often have multiple network access points with different carriers. They also have generators or other means to deal with power outages. None of this helps, of course, if you depend on a group of servers that all get the same software updates and the update goes bad.
We don’t know why sharks hate undersea cables. We love them. If you want more specifics on the CrowdStrike event, our [Jonathan Bennett] has been following it for you.

Getting It Done: The Week in D.I.Y & Indie Music NewsIn this week’s indie music news, our tips and advice for independent, do-it-yourselfers covered album release tips from Jack White, Spotify Countdown pages, a YouTube subscriber hack, and more. D.I.Y. Continue reading
The post Getting It Done: The Week in D.I.Y & Indie Music News appeared first on Hypebot.

REWIND: The new music industry week in reviewKeep up with the latest talk of the town with the new music industry week in review. With middle-class musicians rising, a new report that shows good things for indie. Continue reading
The post REWIND: The new music industry week in review appeared first on Hypebot.

The Crow Hill Company reveal Concussion Drums The latest addition to The Crow Hill Company’s growing product range promises to deliver everything you need to create award-winning action score drums in a single plug-in.

Product Profile: Donner HUSH-I Pro Electric Acoustic GuitarDonner just released their new HUSH-I Pro electric acoustic guitar. The HUSH-I Pro is meant to be a more professional version of Donner’s previously released HUSH travel guitar.

I’ve been aware of headless guitars throughout my career, but never felt the inclination to play one. Having now spent some time with the HUSH-I Pro electric acoustic guitar, once you get used to the reverse engineering on the guitar, i.e. the tuners at the bottom and strung-through design with strings routed through the top of the guitar, it’s surprisingly easy to play, albeit the lack of a headstock affecting the guitar’s overall balance takes a bit of getting used to.

So, who is this guitar for and not for? I’ll start with who it’s not for. If you are a player who wants a regular acoustic guitar that you can hear in the room you’re playing in, you have no sound limitations, i.e. no family members or neighbors you’re concerned about disturbing, you want to record your guitar using a microphone, then this may not be for you. On the other hand, if you are looking for a lightweight travel guitar or a unique gig-ready solution this could just fit the bill. 

The overall build quality of the HUSH-I Pro electric acoustic guitar has been upgraded over the previous Donner HUSH electric acoustic guitar. Crafted from mahogany, The HUSH-I Pro is available in natural wood and white finishes, paired with laurel and maple fingerboards and medium stainless-steel frets. The design is compact, lightweight and easy to carry and store with a total weight of just under four pounds.

A new upgraded zinc alloy ergonomic quick-release stand is a welcome improvement over previous versions which required an Allen wrench and screws to install. The HUSH-I Pro electric acoustic guitar features a rechargeable lithium battery with USB-C fast charging design, and Bluetooth audio inputs add to the guitar’s flexibility.

Stored in its custom designed case, the HUSH-I Pro is about six inches wide and less than a yard long and will easily fit in an airline storage bin. Featuring a detachable neck-through mahogany solid-body with a satin finish, stainless-steel frets and a dual-action truss rod design, the guitar’s symmetrical neck is comfortable and easy to play, and the on-board USB-C charging port means you can charge the guitar virtually anywhere. 

Donner’s new HUSH-I Pro Electric Acoustic Guitar has 18 onboard factory preset tones, 20 onboard user accessible IR (Impulse Response) algorithms, eight acoustic guitar tone simulations and a versatile 5-band EQ adjustment module (the previous version had a 2-band EQ).

Donner’s advanced R & D team independently developed the new audio algorithm platform for the guitar, which features a new, upgraded H1 chip, and which supports more professional and complex sound algorithms, along with high-definition audio sampling rates. Unlike the previous version, the HUSH-I Pro Electric Acoustic Guitar features multiple onboard effects, including Overdrive, Compressor, Boost, Bypass, Modulation (Chorus, Phaser, Tremolo, Flanger, Auto Wah), Delay (Analog, Echo, Dual, Tremolo, LoFi), and Reverb (Room, Hall, Spring, Cloud, Shimmer). The guitar’s electronics include switchable Dynamic Air Boost and Tone Boost, upgraded tone-shaping capability and a new global volume control knob.

The 18 factory presets are user editable, and you can overwrite and then save the stock factory settings. The sample rate is 24-bit 44,100 Hz. There are no user slots to save your edited patches and as far as I can tell no provision to backup the factory sound bank. That said, the onboard selection of effects and IRs should be more than sufficient for most players to craft some highly useable tones. Multiple effects per patch can be selected and there is also an onboard tuner. The onboard screen, while a bit on the small side, is reasonable high-res and easy to see in most lighting conditions.

Donner provides an App (for Mac and Windows) to upgrade the firmware and add new features as they become available. Once plugged into your PC, you can use also the guitar to track directly into your DAW. The onboard Bluetooth audio capability makes it easy to jam with or rehearse to backing tracks. Not sure how many hours of performance time per battery charge you can get, but should be more than sufficient for the average gig. Like I said earlier the guitar can be powered from or kept plugged into any USB-C power source.

Plugging the guitar in, the basic sound you’re presented with sounds consistent with a high-end acoustic electric dreadnaught guitar. In the studio, it’s a great solution for quickly capturing ideas. On stage you can just plug it to the house PA and go, the selection of onboard IRs, tone shaping controls and effects means you should be able to get some reasonably convincing mic’ed guitar tones. Having the onboard user selectable IR’s is a great idea. I can’t think of another acoustic electric guitar currently on the market that has that capability.

Sum it up, the overall fit and finish of the guitar is solid, and the symmetrical neck makes for comfortable playing experience. The fretwork on the guitar is very well done, and the quick release top and bottom frames are a welcome improvement over the previous version. 

Just a few complaints: the screen and control buttons are too close together making them somewhat difficult (for people like me with big hands) to get to. Also, the top frame gets in the way of adjusting the controls on the fly. My biggest niggle is that the guitar’s saddle is, in my opinion, cut too low to the bridge and hence does not have enough room for adjustment. Those comments aside, Donner’s new HUSH-I Pro is a very well-built, versatile and great sounding acoustic electric guitar with a highly unique design and should appeal to a wide range of players. 

Donner’s new HUSH-I Pro Electric Acoustic Guitar is available now and comes with a gig bag, strap, monitoring headphones, cleaning cloth, USB cable, picks and a custom-designed carrying case.

For more details and special promotional launch pricing, check out donnermusic.com.The post Product Profile: Donner HUSH-I Pro Electric Acoustic Guitar first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

No BTC strategic reserve announcement from Sen. Lummis—Bitcoin 2024Senator Lummis recently authored a report highlighting the benefit of the Bitcoin mining industry and denouncing Biden's proposed 30% tax.

Stripe acquires payment processing startup Lemon SqueezyPayments giant Stripe has acquired a four-year-old competitor, Lemon Squeezy, the latter company announced Friday. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. As a self-proclaimed “merchant of record,” Lemon Squeezy calculates and pays global sales tax for digital products, handling legal processing and fees in every country. It primarily serves SaaS and software businesses. In […]
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Apollo leads $700m investment into Sony Music Group partnership. (It’s a kind of magic!)Sources told MBW earlier this month that Apollo had co-funded Sony's takeover of Queen's catalog
Source

Electromagnetic Actuator Mimics MuscleMost electromagnetic actuators are rotating motors, or some variation on the theme, like servos. However, it’s possible to do linear actuation with electomagnetics, too. [Adrian Perez] demonstrates this with Linette, his design of a linear actuator that he was inspired to build by the structure of our own muscles.
The design uses a coil of copper wire in a 3D-printed plastic housing, surrounded by a claw full of strong magnets. When the coil is activated, the magnets are pulled towards the coil. When the coil is not energized, the magnets fall away. [Adrian] demonstrates the actuator under the control of an Arduino, which switches power to the coil to move it up and down.
He also notes that the design is similar solenoids and voice coil style actuators, though unlike most his uses discrete magnets rather than a single monolithic magnet. It’s possible to get more capacity out of the Linette design through stacking. You can parallelize the actuators to get more pulling force, with neighboring coils sharing the same magnets. Alternatively, you can stack them in series to get longer stroke lengths.
[Adrian] hasn’t put the design to a practical application yet, but we could see multiple uses for robotics or small machines. We’ve seen some other neat DIY magnetic actuators before, too. Video after the break.