Because we all know ASUS doesn't install backdoors by default...

Backdoors in the OS or firmware?

I always use Linux, so I don't care what software it came with. If you're suggesting there are firmware backdoors, I'd like to see your evidence.

There have been known vulnerabilities in ASUS firmware, but I was referring to Armoury Crate which is forcefully pushed on Windows users.

> I'd like to see your evidence.

I think this is a really bad epistemological stance in this case.

A vulnerability (that is presumably fixed after) is a lot different than an intentional backdoor.

> I think this is a really bad epistemological stance in this case.

Why? If one can't point to any evidence, how is it reasonable to suggest that a manufacturer is adding backdoors?

As a user, is anything going to change? I don't want to need to know about whatever this is. Everything already works fine. Are you planning on breaking it?

> Everything already works fine.

No, Archlinux was repeatedly behind with package updates. This even went as far as lagging behind Ubuntu in at least one instance, causing inconvenience and frustration for users which then either had to use other more up-to-date sources for dependencies or package the newer version of dependencies under a different installroot themselves.

This problem is caused by a staff shortage or the average necessary maintanance effort for repo packages. At least one of those 2 causes has to be solved.

> What packages are you talking about?

Maybe Python: https://old.reddit.com/r/archlinux/comments/1azkxnn/whats_ho...

I intentionally hold back major Python versions till I can dedicate a lot of time to get everything rebuild and compatible. A lot of big Python programs (ML, scientific) usually need work to get compatible requiring ~ 1-2 weeks of time to get this all done :)

The fact that you personally haven't encountered an issue, doesn't mean that no issue existed.

Okay, I'm saying don't break it.

No thanks. It works. Don't break it. Thanks.

Nah, you can keep both. Arch and Alpine are the only two distributions where I bother to build proper packages for everything because their package managers make it so easy to do the right thing.

It might be the 20th package manager in existence, which would be a problem, if Debian maintainers did not release a 20th way to build .debs just a year or two ago, mostly (but not really) deprecating the previous 19 ways. No thanks.

Its not "building a new package management system", "alpm" is literally the foundation of the pacman ecosystem. They are improving this so they _can_ catch up on packaging tasks.

I'm the same as the sibling commenter, I don't want to have another deb or rpm distro. The AUR wouldn't exist without pacman&makepkg.

is Allan McRae still in the team? If so, he would break it. But if not I assume that everything will work seamlessly, bar unfortunate situation.

It's definitely not the best we have though. People have created all kinds of metrics which measured things in better ways more relevant to our human goals. It's an entire genre of publication in economics and some of them are very popular. It's a choice to ignore them.

Also, see what djtango said. It's not that simple.

Similarly it’s a choice to ignore all those KPIs that are confounded.

Being pedantic about how we measure progress might create the impression that it’s not about the progress but instead about being right.

Well, being right is better than being wrong, which is what happens when you claim that GDP as a measure of progress is valid. It simply doesn't measure what matter to the majority of humans, which has been argued endlessly already.

It's the best that has been used by a society that didn't later collapse though.

That's hardly a relevant response considering no society have used any of the ones I am speaking about in the way that you mean. The OECD, UN, IMF and others use many of them as secondary metrics though.

I just find the "what have the romans ever done for us?" argument to be scary. It leads very quickly and easily to struggle sessions and the terror.

I'm all for trying things for sure, but it has to be done in very small scale and over significant time scales.

"THERE were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.”

― Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

Sure. And that longer and older terror was the lack of free markets and science. Exactly the thing the kids these days want to remove because "what did the romans ever do for us?".

I don't understand the comments here at all. I played the audio and it sounds absolutely horrible, far worse than computer voices sounded fifteen years ago. Not even the most feeble minded person would mistake that as a human. Am I not hearing the same thing everyone else is hearing? It sounds straight up corrupted to me. Tested in different browsers, no difference.

As I said, some reference voices can lead to bad voice quality. But if it sounds that bad, it’s probably not it. Would love to dig into it if you want

I agree with the comment above. I have not logged into hacker news in _years_ but did so today just to weigh in here. If people are saying that the audio sounds great, then there is definitely something going on with a subset of users where we are only hearing garbled words with a LOT of distortion. This does not sound like natural speech to met at all. It sounds more like a warped cassette tape. And I do not mean to slight your work at all. I am actually incredibly puzzled here to understand why my perception of this is so radically different from others!

Thank you for commenting. I wonder if this could be another situation like "the dress" (2015) or maybe something is wrong with our codecs...

No, nothing wrong with your codecs. It's sounds shitty. But given the small size and speed it's still impressive.

It's like saying .kkrieger looks like a bad game, which it does, but then again .kkrieger is only 96kb or whatever.

How big are TTS models like this usually?

.kkrieger looks like an amazing game for the mid-90s. It's incomprehensible that it's only 96kb.

Here is an overview: https://www.inferless.com/learn/comparing-different-text-to-...

Also keep in mind the processing time. The ^ article above used a NVIDIA L4 with 24-GB VRAM. Sopro claims 7.5 second processing time on CPU for 30 seconds of audio!

If you want to get real good quality TTS, you should check out elevenlabs.io

Different tools for different goals.

I mean I'm talking about the mp4. How could people possibly be worried about scammers after listening to that?

I didn’t specially cherry pick those examples. You can try it anyway for yourself. But thanks for the feedback anyway

No shade on you. It's definitely impressive. I just didn't understand people's reactions.

It sounds like someone using an electrolarynx to me.

I thought it was RFK

spasmodic dysphonia as a service.

Yes, if this selected piece is the best that was available to be used as a showcase, it's immediately off putting in distortion and mangling of pronunciation.

same here, tried few different voices including my kids and my own, the generated audio is not similar at all, it's not even a proper voice

Thank you, I was scrolling and scrolling in utter disbelief. It sounds absolutely dreadful. Would drive me nuts to listen to for more than a minute.

This didn't work in Firefox.

Loads fine in Firefox / Android 146.0.1

And Fedora 43

146.0.1 on Arch Linux here. Disabled uBlock Origin; no difference. I don't have any other relevant extensions. DoH disabled. No difference in private window.

In what way does it not work? Anything relevant in the console?

This is what I get in the console for a working map, running Firefox 148.0a1:

   Download the React DevTools for a better development experience: https://reactjs.org/link/react-devtools react-dom.development.js:29905:19
   cdn.tailwindcss.com should not be used in production. To use Tailwind CSS in production, install it as a PostCSS plugin or use the Tailwind CLI: https://tailwindcss.com/docs/installation cdn.tailwindcss.com:64:1711
   You are using the in-browser Babel transformer. Be sure to precompile your scripts for production - https://babeljs.io/docs/setup/ babel.min.js:3:3121456
   Partitioned cookie or storage access was provided to “<URL>” because it is loaded in the third-party context and dynamic state partitioning is enabled. 2
   Cookie “__cf_bm” will soon be rejected because it is foreign and does not have the “Partitioned“ attribute. settings
   Source map error: Error: NetworkError when attempting to fetch resource.
   Resource URL: https://unpkg.com/@babel/standalone/babel.min.js
   Source Map URL: babel.min.js.map

The map is just grey. The controls are there though.

cdn.tailwindcss.com should not be used in production. To use Tailwind CSS in production, install it as a PostCSS plugin or use the Tailwind CLI: https://tailwindcss.com/docs/installation cdn.tailwindcss.com:64:1711 You are using the in-browser Babel transformer. Be sure to precompile your scripts for production - https://babeljs.io/docs/setup/ babel.min.js:3:3121456 Source map error: Error: NetworkError when attempting to fetch resource. Resource URL: https://unpkg.com/@babel/standalone/babel.min.js Source Map URL: babel.min.js.map

Try to shift-reload the page once or twice, I've seen it pop up grey on a first load and appear on a second load.

It eventually started working on its own. I changed nothing.

The site is hosted on a Github property so maybe it is just the 'normal' fluctuations of that site which causes these grey-outs. Microsoft has turned what used to be a rather quick and usable site into an undercooled jar of pink unicorn-infested molasses, alas.

Running 146.0.1 on macOS in private window with no extensions. No map.

Never seen it before today...

I'm not even going to finish the article. I never want to see these kinds of icons again. You win. Good news is, I'm not seeing a lot of these in GNOME and Gtk+ apps, so I'm already okay. There's only a couple in Firefox. Actually, good luck even locating the menus in GNOME. They keep moving and becoming fewer and fewer with every generation.

What did Afghanistan have to do with Israel?

Nothing, I wasn't including Afghanistan in "Mid East"

That's a little like saying "North America" and then clarifying you didn't mean the united states.

Nobody considers Afghanistan part of the Middle East

I bet 95% of the US does.

No it is like saying North American and clarifying that you did not mean Colombia.

I was appearently wrong here.

I wish more people understood this.

The worst part is the people who make these decisions understand it and they do it anyway because the proliferation will occur in someone else’s term.

> After the Iraq war we(US allies that were dragged into this war by a bunch of lies) felt like this was very bad, but it was a blunder of one administration and the trust in the US as a whole was going to be restored.

I don't understand how people can be this naive. It's the only thing the US has ever done for the entirety of it's existence! How did you miss that?