Asa
@3fz.org
130 followers 230 following 570 posts
👁️‍🗨️ software engineer, application developer, biotechnologist a focus on technology, energy policy, and economics
Posts Media Videos Starter Packs
Reposted by Asa
s20n.dev
My favourite music player @mtoc.app now has lyrics support and many more new features!

AND most importantly, mtoc is libre software (GPL-3.0). Get it on flathub:
flathub.org/en/apps/org....
screenshot of mtoc music player showing synced lyrics
3fz.org
Asa @3fz.org · 12h
sweet! time to switch to firefox
3fz.org
Asa @3fz.org · 1d
A lot of problems can arise from "what if you delete the thing you're accessing before you're done with it". Minimizing exposure to this problem while maintaining good cache efficiency can be a tricky balance
3fz.org
Asa @3fz.org · 1d
Wow, thanks Claude. AGI achieved, C++ memory safety solved 🎉
Why This Works

  The sequence is now crash-proof:
3fz.org
Asa @3fz.org · 1d
another known issue: if you add or remove tracks from the library with the watcher enabled and then play from the "All Songs" playlist, this can cause the player to attempt to access nonexistent tracks and crash. A fix is on the way in the next patch.
3fz.org
Asa @3fz.org · 1d
known issue: newly added lyrics picked up by the scanner will break the binding to the currentTrackLyrics in the MedaPlayer class when the view refreshes after you play the track with new lyrics, causing lyrics to become stuck on the wrong track. Restarting the app fixes this. A patch is coming soon
Reposted by Asa
phillipisola.bsky.social
Over the past year, my lab has been working on fleshing out theory + applications of the Platonic Representation Hypothesis.

Today I want to share two new works on this topic:

Eliciting higher alignment: arxiv.org/abs/2510.02425
Unpaired learning of unified reps: arxiv.org/abs/2510.08492

1/9
3fz.org
Asa @3fz.org · 1d
No kidding… photovoltaics and lithium batteries are getting dirt cheap. We should be entering and era of cheap, abundant renewable energy. The fact that we aren’t is not a demand problem.
Reposted by Asa
mtoc.app
Out today: mtoc 2.3. This update adds support for displaying lyrics, and a new file watcher enabling automatic library updates.
mtoc 2.3 promotional banner featuring a screenshot of the app showing the main window with library and lyrics displayed, "Get it on Flathub" badge, and the following text:

New in 2.3

Lyrics: embedded and external, synced lyrics with line highlighting and click-to-seek

File Watcher: fast, automatic library updates when adding and removing files from your music directory

New Settings Options: minimize to tray, single-click to play tracks
3fz.org
Asa @3fz.org · 2d
rooting for you 🫡
3fz.org
Asa @3fz.org · 2d
I like to give no context and just ask for descriptive alt text, feels less colored by my own bias in a way… then try again with more detail if something was wrong
3fz.org
Asa @3fz.org · 3d
Had to leave when the tide came in
3fz.org
Asa @3fz.org · 3d
I’m out here at one of my favorite storm chasing spots on the south shore of the great salt lake and the wind is so strong you can barely stand up
A moody coastal scene showing a wide expanse of wet tidal flats under heavy gray storm clouds. The beach stretches into the distance with shallow pools of water reflecting the overcast sky. Dark rocks and debris are scattered across the sandy surface. A mountain or island formation is barely visible through the mist on the horizon. The atmosphere is somber and atmospheric, with muted tones of gray, brown, and blue throughout.
3fz.org
Asa @3fz.org · 3d
Another unforgettable moment was seeing the aurora from this location in May ‘24
Aurora borealis displaying vibrant purple and magenta curtains across the night sky, transitioning to green and yellow hues near the horizon. The northern lights illuminate a coastal landscape with a tidal flat or beach in the foreground, where shallow water reflects the colorful display. Dark mountain silhouettes appear on the horizon beneath the aurora, with distant town lights visible along the shoreline. Stars dot the deep purple sky above the luminous atmospheric phenomenon.
3fz.org
Asa @3fz.org · 3d
I’m out here at one of my favorite storm chasing spots on the south shore of the great salt lake and the wind is so strong you can barely stand up
A moody coastal scene showing a wide expanse of wet tidal flats under heavy gray storm clouds. The beach stretches into the distance with shallow pools of water reflecting the overcast sky. Dark rocks and debris are scattered across the sandy surface. A mountain or island formation is barely visible through the mist on the horizon. The atmosphere is somber and atmospheric, with muted tones of gray, brown, and blue throughout.
3fz.org
Asa @3fz.org · 3d
With the exception of the most annoying Bluesky users, most people whose curiosity piqued quickly got the value of AI. My dad was a smartphone holdout until 2019, but an early adopter of ChatGPT and Gemini. It's a very user-friendly extension of the technologies adopted over the last 3 decades.
3fz.org
Asa @3fz.org · 4d
The window management is clumsy and awkward, always requiring an excessive amount of taps and swipes with strange actions that you have to memorize to accomplish a worse version of what you can do on a laptop, while coexisting with the normal iOS-style windowing. Not a fan.
3fz.org
Asa @3fz.org · 4d
Apple clearly wants iPad OS to become the touchscreen Mac with window management features. They're putting the cart before the horse here: the files app is still a weirdly abstracted and sandboxed thing that doesn't show you progress bars when you copy files, or let you properly eject a USB drive.
3fz.org
Asa @3fz.org · 4d
It's due to Chromium's implementation of the Wayland color management protocol, all downstream browsers are affected. There's a workaround with a flag to disable the feature. github.com/brave/brave-...
3fz.org
Asa @3fz.org · 4d
Yeah, but I will say there's basically no benefit to the $200 tier over the $100 tier anymore since the release of 4.5 Sonnet, until they release 4.5 Opus anyway.
3fz.org
Asa @3fz.org · 4d
The hard part of developing a music app is when you're vibing w/ the music but need to interrupt it to restart the application several times
3fz.org
Asa @3fz.org · 6d
Word is graduate school applications and competitiveness are up, with many bachelor's degree holders looking for a way to ride out the ice-cold job market.
3fz.org
Asa @3fz.org · 6d
ugh—after an update my Chrome is displaying washed-out black levels. Changing my monitor to HDR fixes it (but looks terrible, it's an LCD without local dimming), disabling hardware acceleration fixes it (but I need this), changing color profiles (system or in chrome) doesn't help.
3fz.org
Asa @3fz.org · 7d
What's your dream job in the AI ecosystem of the future?