Psychoacoustics: The World's Loudest Lisp Program

May 2, 2024 1:34 PM

The only thing that can be improved under self-evacuation is the flow of information towards people in emergency. This leaves us with eyesight and hearing to work with. Visual aids are greatly more flexible and easy to work with. However their huge drawback is their usefulness expires quickly once the smoke sets in. 2500 dense Lisp programming words from Eugene Zaikonnikov via lobste.rs, whence this YouTube ad.
posted by cgc373 (11 comments total)

It's refreshing to see purpose-built audiospatial safety solutions display a comparable level of thoughtfulness and craft as what we've come to associate with the industrial and food-grade glycine production of Donghua Jinlong.
posted by cortex at 2:26 PM on May 2 [1 favorite]

I came here only to say that my father's first suggestion upon learning that his kids had taken up art instead of engineering was that 'psycho acoustic models' was a good band name. He had just come from a pre-MP3 era meeting. I used a lot of early MS fonts playing with our potential logo. Guess my age and win a prize. #relateablemefistories
posted by es_de_bah at 2:30 PM on May 2 [1 favorite]

That video explained things a lot better than the article, maybe it's just me.

I'd also like to know what kind of hardware they implemented. Because I wouldn't have chosen Linux for a hard real-time system, and Yocto is for masochists. But maybe all the LISP makes up for it.
posted by JoeZydeco at 2:32 PM on May 2 [2 favorites]

Problem is you forget to close one parentheses, and the whole tunnel comes crashing down.
posted by signal at 2:35 PM on May 2 [1 favorite]

Warms my heart to see there are still serious lisp programmers out there. I was all-in on functional paradigms until python swallowed everything.
posted by simra at 3:49 PM on May 2

I remember having to write a ton of code in lisp when I was studying AI in the 90s. I do not miss it. Lisp is javascript for old people. That would have been a hot take when I initially had it, but it has since had time to cool to the temperature of cosmic background radiation.

fite me greybeards
posted by phooky at 6:11 PM on May 2 [3 favorites]

Because I wouldn't have chosen Linux for a hard real-time system, and Yocto is for masochists

The article defines it as soft realtime, which makes sense, timing on this is critical, but not thatcritical.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 6:34 PM on May 2 [1 favorite]

Perhaps. The line just caught my eye:

"Remember that sound has to be timed accounting for propagation distances between the nodes, and 10 millisecond jitter gives you over 3 meters deviation"
posted by JoeZydeco at 7:03 PM on May 2

es_de_bah
Late 50s? Psycho acoustic entered my lexicon in the late 90s when I was in my late 20s, when I first became aware of mp3's. So you're a bit older 🤔
posted by BrStekker at 12:21 AM on May 3 [1 favorite]

phooky: Lisp is javascript for old people.
I've failed to land a joke at Jamie Zawinski's blog because he asserts that JS is a Lisp.

I enjoyed reading this, thank you for sharing.
posted by k3ninho at 1:27 AM on May 3

es_de_bah
Late 50s?

Excellent. I know this ES DE BAH and his age...

If we peg your late 90s comment as 1999
and 2024 as +25 years
aka a generation
and we're gifted the information that ES DE BAH is 30 years younger than the father mentioned in the original comment
and we know that the mp3s were outmoded by cloudbased music enabled by iStuff in the 2010s

...well, I think it means...I'm not really sure. Maybe people with similar lived experiences regardless of age prefer similar things?

Shit, where are my notes...
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 7:17 PM on May 3