FL 11 was an amazing piece of software - that’s the version that really kicked it into the big leagues.

You should check out the newest version - the download manager is much better since FL Studio 20, and they’ve got a bunch of new packages and plugins. The Flex plugin is one of the best traditional instrument synths I’ve ever worked with (think it came in on v 17 or 18).

Even the new version has excellent performance on my 10 year old desktop - you’ll love it when you get a chance to upgrade.

If you’re into music production, FL Studio has a lifetime license that’s stood the test of time, and has kept up with or exceeded the capabilities of packages like Reason, Ableton, and Logic. It was the first to really embrace an open VST plugin interface, and has so many options that even after 25 years I haven’t yet explored them all. It also comes with a ton of free instruments you can download (basically free DLC).

I picked up a lifetime license for $99 in 2001 when it was Fruity Loops 2.0. Used it for 10 years as it evolved and was amazed that it was keeping up with the big boys. That encouraged me to drop another $80 to upgrade to the producer edition to start making professional level tracks - and I was not disappointed.

The best part? The base license is still just $99. Producer edition is still $179.

EDIT: side note - the demo is actually the full software package, so you can try it out for free. The license just unlocks the capacity to save projects with the plugins that are covered by your licensing.

In the US, so as of 1/20/25, sadly yes.

Project manager’s response:

That’s just people with a bit of picante. Goes well with fava beans and a nice Chianti, I hear.

Common Dreams has been publishing for over 20 years, and is considered a generally reliable source of left-leaning news. It has a better rep than HuffPo or Breitbart, and it started in roughly the same era.

At the rate things are going, the kid’s gonna need to be born off-planet.

He’s actually making a political statement, imho, though. He’s attempting to prevent China’s inevitable attempt to replace him with one of their own.

Well, Digg back then was better than Reddit is now, so I guess that’s something.

Looks like it was a practice run. It’s relatively easy to take out webservers with a standard DDOS attack. This is considerably more sophisticated, and I think they were testing it on gaming networks in prep for a larger attack on financial and/or government IT infrastructure.

Someone’s been munching Elon’s Special K for breakfast. New marketing tagline just dropped tho:

Brave browser, because you’d have to be brave to use a browser built by a Nazi

Well, Reddit’s approach towards AI and auto-mod has already killed most of the interesting discussion on that site. It’s one of the reason I moved to the Fediverse.

At the same time, I was around in the Fediverse during the CSAM attacks, and I’ve run online discussion sites and forums, so I’m well aware of the challenges of moderation, especially given the wave of AI chat-bots and spam constantly attempting to infiltrate open discussion sites.

And I’ve worked with AI a great deal (go check out Jan - open source, runs on local machine if you’re interested), and there’s no chance in hell it’s anywhere near ready to take on the role of moderator.

See, Reddit’s biggest strength is its biggest weakness = the army of unpaid mods that have committed untold numbers of hours towards improving the site’s content. What Reddit found out during the API debacle was that because the mods weren’t paid, Reddit had no recourse to control them aside from “firing” them. The net result was a massive loss of editorial talent, and the site’s content quality plunged as a result.

Because although the role of a mod is different in that they can’t (or shouldn’t) edit user content, they are still gatekeepers the way junior editors would be in a print publishing organization.

But here’s the thing - there’s a reason you pay editors. Because they ensure the content of the organization is of high caliber, which is why advertisers want to pay you to run their ads.

Reddit thinks it can skip this step. Instead of doing the obvious thing = pay the mods to be professionals - they think that they can solve the problem with AI much more cheaply. But AI won’t do anything to encourage people to post.

What encourages people to post is that other people will see and comment, that real humans will engage with their content. All it takes is the automod telling you a few times that your comment was banned for X inexplicable reason and you stop wanting to post. After all, why waste your time creating unpaid content for a machine to reject it?

If Reddit goes the way of AI moderation, they’ll need to start paying their content creators. If they want to use unpaid content from an open discussion forum, they need to start paying their moderators.

But here’s the thing. Reddit CAN’T pay. They’ve been surfing off of VC investment for two decades and have NEVER turned a profit, because despite their dominance of the space, they kept trying to monetize it without paying people for contributing to it… and honestly, they’ve done a piss poor job at every point in their development since “New Reddit” came online.

This is why they sold your data to Google for AI. And its why their content has gone to crap, and why you’re all reading this on the Fediverse.

Counterpoint - if you must rely on AI, you have to constantly exercise your critical thinking skills to parse through all its bullshit, or AI will eventually Darwin your ass when it tells you that bleach and ammonia make a lemon cleanser to die for.