IRC Client on Bare MetalIn the beginning, there was the BIOS, and it was good. A PC’s BIOS knows how to set up the different hardware devices, grab a fixed part of a hard drive, load it, and run it. That’s all you need. While it might be all you need, it isn’t everything people want, so a consortium developed UEFI, which can do all the things a normal BIOS can’t. Among other things, UEFI can load code for the operating system over the network instead of from the hard drive.
In true hacker fashion, [Phillip Tennen] thought, “Does it have to be an operating system?” The answer, of course, is no. It could be an IRC client. He chose Rust to implement everything. While UEFI does provide a network stack, it isn’t very easy to use, apparently. It also provides support for a mouse. [Phillip] ported his GUI toolkit library over, and then the rest is just building an IRC client.
The client isn’t the easiest to use because, after all, this is a lark. Why would you want to do this? On the other hand, we can think of reasons we might want to take control of a UEFI motherboard and use it for something. If you want to do that, this project is a great template to jump-start your endeavors.
We’ve looked at the UEFI system a few times. Or, you can use it to play DOOM.

Warner Music will not bid to acquire Believe [Full Statement]Warner Music Group announced on Saturday that it would not bid for independent music conglomerate Believe. No specific reason was given for the shift, but WMG was granted access to Believe financial data to guide their bid two weeks ago.....
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Confirmed: Warner Music Group won’t be making a bid for BelieveThe way now appears clear for Denis Ladegaillerie consortium's takeover
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Getting It Done: The Week in D.I.Y. & Indie MusicLast week, our tips and advice for the independent, do-it-yourselfers covered how to get to know your fans better, podcasts to help with musician mental health and more.....
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REWIND: The new music industry’s week in reviewLast week was a busy week by any definition; the music industry was no exception, with CD Baby and Downtown Music merging operations, Spotify changing how they allocate royalties the Records , and more.....
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KMR Audio launch hire service KMR Audio have launched a new service that makes a wide range of high-end studio gear available for short-term rental.

Harmonics DNA: Guitar instructional book Ashkan Mashhour's new book provides “a daring statement on harmonics at the junction of music, physics and cognition”.

Elon Musk says he’ll unveil a Tesla robotaxi on August 8Just hours after Elon Musk claimed Reuters was “lying” about plans to ditch its $25,000 low cost EV and instead focus all its efforts on a robotaxi, the Tesla CEO announced on X that he would reveal said robotaxi in an event on August 8. The announcement comes as Tesla EV sales have lagged and […]
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Orange County Music & Dance awarded landmark gift to expand its music education offeringsThe City of Irvine and Orange County Music & Dance (OCMD) came to a landmark agreement providing 35 acres of land for the school to develop a new 70,000 square foot campus, allowing OCMD to double its student body.  

The approval came during today’s Irvine City Council meeting. Irvine will provide OCMD with a $1 per year ground lease for its site for 50 years, with optional extensions totaling 75 years. The lease along with $91 million the City has invested in preparing the land and bringing in utilities signifies one of the largest gifts from a municipality in the U.S. 

OCMD offers the highest quality education, training and performance opportunities for K-12 students and veterans, with an endowed scholarship program that ensures that children who want to attend can do so, regardless of their financial circumstances. 

Construction is expected to begin in January 2025 and is slated to be completed by Fall 2026.  

Sharing the full announcement below and I’d be happy to connect you with OCMD’s Executive Chair and CEO Douglas Freeman, who is the founder of National Philanthropy Day, for more information on what this expansion means for students wanting to learn more about music in the region.  

Renderings of the building can be downloaded HERE! 

ESP32 Provides Distraction-Free Writing ExperienceWriting out a few thousand words is easy. Getting them in the proper order, now that’s another story entirely. Sometimes you’ll find yourself staring at a blank page, struggling to sieve coherent thoughts from the screaming maelstrom swirling around in your head, for far longer than you’d care to admit. Or so we’ve heard, anyway.
Unfortunately, there’s no cure for writer’s block. But many people find that limiting outside distractions helps to keep the mental gears turning, which is why [Un Kyu Lee] has been working on a series of specialized writing devices. The latest version of the Micro Journal, powered by the ESP32, goes a long way towards achieving his goals of an instant-on electronic notebook.
The writing experience on the Micro Journal is unencumbered by the normal distractions you’d have on a computer or mobile device, as the device literally can’t do anything but take user input and save it as a text file. We suppose you could achieve similar results with a pen and a piece of paper…but where’s the fun in that? These devices are more widely known as writerdecks, which is an extension of the popular cyberdeck concept of hyper-personalized computers.
This newest Micro Journal, which is the fourth iteration of the concept for anyone keeping score, packs a handwired 30% ortholinear keyboard, a 2.8″ ILI9341 240×320 LCD (with SD card slot), ESP32 dev board, and an 18650 battery with associated charging board into a minimalist 3D printed enclosure.
Unable to find any suitable firmware to run on the device, [Un Kyu Lee] has developed his own open source text editor to run on the WiFi-enabled microcontroller. While the distraction-free nature of the Micro Journal naturally means the text editor itself is pretty spartan in terms of features, it does  allow syncing files with Google Drive — making it exceptionally easy to access your distilled brilliance from the comfort of your primary computing device.
While the earlier versions of the Micro Journal were impressive in their own way, we really love the stripped down nature of this ESP32 version. It reminds us a bit of the keezyboost40 and the EdgeProMX, both of which were entered into the 2022 Cyberdeck Contest.

A Drone Motor Does e-BikesOn paper, the motors from both an electric bicycle and a drone can both take about 500 watts or so of power. Of course, their different applications make them anything but equivalent, as the bike motor is designed for high torque at low speed while the drone motor has very little torque but plenty of speed. Can the drone motor do the bike motor’s job? [Pro Know] makes it happen, with a set of speed reducing and torque increasing belts.
The build takes a pretty ordinary bicycle, and replaces the rear brake disk with a large pulley for a toothed belt, which drives a smaller pulley, and through a shaft another set of pulleys to the drone motor. The bracket to hold all this and the very large pulley on the wheel are all 3D printed in PLA-carbon fiber mix.
When it’s assembled, it runs the bike from a small lithium ion pack. That’s not unexpected, but if we’re honest we’d have our doubts as to whether this would survive the open road. It’s evidently a novelty for a YouTube video, and we’d be interested to see how hot the little motor became. However what’s perhaps more interesting is the choice of filament.
Could carbon fibre PLA be strong enough to print a toothed belt pulley? We’d be interested to know more. We saw the same filament combo being tested recently, after all.

From KISS’s $300m deal to Warner’s deadline for a bid on Believe… it’s MBW’s Weekly Round-UpThe five biggest stories to hit our headlines over the past seven days…
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Kiss sell catalogue to ABBA Voyage creators Pophouse EntertainmentAccording to Bloomberg, Kiss have signed on the dotted line and sold their catalogue to Pophouse for over $300 million.
The deal will give Pophouse Entertainment full control over Kiss’s’ entire song catalogue, handing over master recordings and publishing rights. The company will also have full freedom to use the glam rockers’ name, image and likeness as they please.

READ MORE: “You have to be defensive and offensive at the same time as a creator”: ABBA’s Björn Ulvaeus on the “mind-boggling” potential of AI

Kiss’s End Of The Road tour came to a close last December, drawing the rock and roll titans’ fifty years of partying to a close. However, the exchange with Pophouse will allow KISS to continue rocking out well into the future.
As Bloomberg report, Pophouse have already hinted at a Kiss biopic in the works, as well as their own ABBA Voyage-esque virtual avatar show. While $300 million might feel like an eye-watering sum, ABBA Voyage reportedly rakes in more than $1 million a week. Within a few years, KISS’ digital avatars will have paid for themselves.
Gene Simmons and his band mates have reportedly been in conference with Pophouse for a couple of years, knowing that their own rock and roll rampage would soon draw to a close. The End Of The Road tour was a dazzling send off, and the band wanted to go out on a high. As they step out of their platform boots, their work with Pophouse will allow them live forever in a form that will never tire.

Kiss’s virtual forms are already in the work. As shown in a video shared by the band, the members have already gotten themselves to Walt Disney Co.’s Industrial Light & Magic to don bodysuits in order for the company to capture them in virtual form.
“Kiss the touring band is over — we’ve stopped touring after 50 years,” Simmons reflects in an interview. “What Pophouse will do with our images, our music and our personas is unlike anything anyone has ever seen.”
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Spotify demonetises all tracks under 1,000 streamsLast year, Spotify announced that it would be restricting payouts on low-streaming tracks. On 1 April these changes came into effect, meaning tracks that haven’t surpassed 1,000 streams in the last 12 months will not receive royalties.
The revised royalty system avoids “payments lost in the system”. As Spotify explain, tens of millions of tracks are streamed between 1-1,000 times, generating roughly $0.03 a month. The collective sum is around $40 million per year.

READ MORE: Living Wage for Musicians Act put to US Congress would compensate artists at a penny per stream

However, transaction and withdrawal fees stop the $40 million ever making it to uploaders. “Labels and distributors require a minimum amount to withdraw (usually $2-$50 per withdrawal) and banks charge a fee for the transaction (usually $1-$20 per withdrawal),” Spotify says.
Only 0.5% of tracks on Spotify fail to hit 1,000 annual streams. This means that Spotify will still be paying out for the 99.5% of tracks that do hit the 1,000 listener goal. Spotify predicts that the change will “drive an additional $1 billion toward emerging and professional artists.”
The crack down will also require a minimum number of unique listeners – so looping your favourite artist 1,000 times wont do much. There will also be a restriction on background noise tracks like ‘white noise’, moving the goal-post from 30 seconds to 2 minutes of listening for a stream to count.
Of course, not everyone is satisfied with Spotify’s calculations. United Musicians and Allied Workers have tweeted that, rather than 0.5% of tracks, the change will in fact impact “an estimated 86% of tracks” on the platform. “This new policy will impact small artists the most — the same artists that Spotify claims to support,” the organisation writes.
The UMAW has recently pushed for the Living Wage for Musicians Act in Congress to ensure there is a revision of streaming royalty laws. As their Make Streaming Pay page explains, “the bill [will] help ensure that artists and musicians can build sustainable careers in the digital age.”

As of April 1st, Spotify has demonetized any track on the platform that receives less than 1000 streams per year. That’s an estimated 86% of tracks on the platform. This new policy will impact small artists the most — the same artists that Spotify claims to support.
— United Musicians and Allied Workers (@UMAW_) April 3, 2024

Other big names in the music industry have also aired their grievances with greedy streaming services. In a recent interview with GQ, Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor believes streaming has “mortally wounded” musicians.
“I think the terrible payout of streaming services has mortally wounded a whole tier of artists that make being an artist unsustainable,” Reznor explains. “It’s great if you’re Drake, and it’s not great if you’re Grizzly Bear… We’ve had enough time for the whole ‘All the boats rise’ argument to see they don’t all rise. Those boats rise. These boats don’t. They can’t make money in any means. I think that’s bad for art.”
Reznor was tasked with building a new streaming service with Apple, and it made him painfully aware of how damaging the streaming environment was for musicians. “I thought maybe at Apple there could be influence to pay in a more fair or significant way, because a lot of these services are just a rounding error compared to what comes in elsewhere, unlike Spotify where their whole business is that,” he told GQ. “[Streaming companies] aren’t really concerned about all the romantic shit I thought mattered.”
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Heritage Audio unveils ultra-limited ‘Ardent Edition’ models of the Herchild 660 and 670Heritage Audio has announced the new ‘Herchild Model 660: The Ardent Edition’ and ‘Model 670: The Ardent Edition’ Vari-Mu compressors, inspired by the iconic sound of Ardent Studios’ original Fairchild units.

READ MORE: Billie Eilish slams multiple vinyl variants of the same album as “wasteful”, likens artists pushing such sales to The Hunger Games

While the Fairchild 660 and 670 are probably the most famous and coveted compressors of all time, there’s one thing that sets the studio’s original units apart from the rest. In the early 70s, Ardent’s team modified the attack and release times of their Fairchild units so that the time constants were faster and hence more usable for modern recording studios at the time (Those mods were first used to track Jimmy Page’s acoustic guitars on Led Zeppelin III, and many more classic hits).
With notes from the Ardent team of the original mods, the new Herchild Ardent Edition units are meticulously crafted with modified release times to match the original Fairchilds used at Ardent Studios. Ardent’s specific 6 Attack and Release times have been exactly duplicated in the ‘TIME CONST’ section as has its all-tube side chain circuit for precise control.
Practical enhancements were also added to suit modern studio setups, including access to the progressive ratio with the ‘DC THRESHOLD’, a curve adjustment combining control of the ratio and the knee. This is continually adjustable from hard limiting to very smooth and transparent compression settings.
The Herchild Model 670: The Ardent Edition, being a 2 channel unit, also features an AGC section with 4 modes of operation for you to choose from: IND, LINK, LAT VERT & LAT VERT LINK.
As it stands, the limited-edition HERCHILD Model 660 and 670: The Ardent Edition will be produced only on request through Heritage Audio’s global network of dealers. The units are priced at €5,999/$5,999 and €10,999/$10,999 respectively, which is quite the sum – though there’s certainly something to be said about sharing the same gear as one of the top recording studios in the world.
Watch as Heritage Audio Product Specialist Sam Orlich and CEO Peter Rodriguez discuss the making of the Herchild Ardent Edition models and Ardent’s use of them below.

Learn more at Heritage Audio.
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