As someone who downloads or buys their music to listen to via VLC, it's quite annoying when the volume level between files aren't consistent. Especially when I'm unable to easily to change the volume like when I'm doing physical labor as an example. So it can go from a perfectly reasonable volume, to damaging my ears, and then to where I can barely hear. I was thinking of going in and manually editing them myself to be consistent amongst each other at some point, but then it got me thinking. Is there an application that will equalize the volume on your audio files for you? If not, would anyone else have a use for one besides me? I'd love to know either way.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/43720569

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/43738641

For starters: I look for the most obscure of the obscure. We're talking about English demos whose reviews are in the single digits. I've gotten better at finding the good stuff in a sea of crap, and I'll share some of my findings here. I will also mention the two games I've posted here a few days ago.

Action Adventure

SISTER LACE

This is a Westworld-esque game made by a Spanish speaker where a rich kid school brings in some waifubot helpers to help the students, but the waifubots go crazy and start attacking people. The demo continues up to the start of the revolt, and there's some decent worldbuilding and foreshadowing leading up to the big event.

The trailer doesn't really do the demo justice. The environments look basic, but the animations are actually pretty good. The voices ingame also have a lot more inflection than the crappy monotone voice in the trailer, and there's a basic dialog system with some of the NPCs you find to get some lore.

ARIE: Moonprayer

This is an exploration game. The Moon is going to crash into Earth in about 30-40 years, and no one can do anything about it. What's more, some of the dead are still attached to Earth and unwilling to leave, so the protagonist has to use his musical instrument to make the ghosts pass on.

A big theme of the game is about choosing to press on despite the impending destruction of Earth. Tides have ensured that the only walkable land left is a little island that used to be a mountain peak, and humanity is reduced to a tiny village by the coast. The game gives me some big Aniara vibes.

Visual Novels

Whispering Memories

This one is about a village that looks okay on the surface, but something feels off. It has a supernatural theme, and implies that some of the characters encountered aren't as decent as they seem to be. The mystery is neat, and the demo gives you a few hints about what's going on.

Rose Academy

On the surface, this looks like a typical dating sim. But this one has a twist: Some girl got bumped off in the changing rooms, and your character got called in to find the perp as a favor for the principal. From what I understand, the goal is to solve the case via the dating sim mechanics; the goal is NOT to use the dating sim mechanics to push a girl's affection up to max.

For example, there's one scene where your character can choose to get distracted by another character, or look around the room. Looking around gives you a clue. There's another instance where you get an opportunity to inspect a character closer, and doing so gets you another useful clue. Clues are stored in a notebook you can review at any time, though I haven't seen anything that would let me use said clues in the demo.

Honorable Mentions

These demos did not participate in Next Fest, but I feel they're worthy of mention.

Advent: Dawn

This is a spinoff of a previous game the dev made (The VII Enigma). It's set in the latter half of the 21st century. The player character is a specialist called in to investigate a specimen in a cave on a faraway island. However, bad things happen, and the guy ends up trapped in a collapsed cave. It gives me The Descent or Time Trap vibes.

Whispers of the Luminaries

This is another mystery visual novel, and is much closer to Ace Attorney than Rose Academy above. A member of an idol group goes missing, and then turns up dead. You get called in to figure things out. Later on in the demo, you get to use the evidence you collected to bolster your claims.

Amnea 28: Two Eternities

A bunch of college kids drive out to a secluded mansion owned by their professor, for extra credit. Eventually one of them goes berserk from the stress and starts attacking people. This visual novel is a remake, and now provides English.

The player character also has a cute notebook you can look at, which notes the various happenings of the day. It's a neat touch.

I don't want to hear about how your Wehrmacht soldiers are just following orders. Fuck the US Army and fuck the troops, too. Death to AmeriKKKa, death to "Israel", death to the west.

I've been working on Habitat for the past two years. It all stemmed from this idea that I posted in April 2024.

Habitat is a free open-source, self hosted social platform for local communities. It is aimed at fostering local community discussions and discovery of areas of interest. This is why it is built primarily around location. A Habitat instance centers on a specific area, and the local community can make generic posts about that area, or they can make posts about specific locations in that area. More about what I've been building and the future plans here.

Features

• Habitat specification of location and size - enabling posts related to the local area
• Home feed - Displays the most recent posts
• Nearby feed - Displays posts sorted by proximity to the user
• Create posts - Upload photos, set locations, comments
• Categories - Location rules
• Amazon S3 image storage option
• Personalisation - Overrides Habitat defaults per user: kms/miles, hidden categories
• Moderation tools - User, post, comment moderation, block email addresses
• Announcements - Scheduled announcements
• Public moderation log - Keep moderator actions visible for 30 days

If you're interest in this at all, please give it a spin and let me know how you get on. I'll keep an eye here on Lemmy, but you can also post to the Habitat discussion board on GitHub.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/45160218

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/45160073

I've been working on Habitat for the past two years. It all stemmed from this idea that I posted in April 2024.

Habitat is a free open-source, self hosted social platform for local communities. It is aimed at fostering local community discussions and discovery of areas of interest. This is why it is built primarily around location. A Habitat instance centers on a specific area, and the local community can make generic posts about that area, or they can make posts about specific locations in that area. More about what I've been building and the future plans here.

Features

• Habitat specification of location and size - enabling posts related to the local area
• Home feed - Displays the most recent posts
• Nearby feed - Displays posts sorted by proximity to the user
• Create posts - Upload photos, set locations, comments
• Categories - Location rules
• Amazon S3 image storage option
• Personalisation - Overrides Habitat defaults per user: kms/miles, hidden categories
• Moderation tools - User, post, comment moderation, block email addresses
• Announcements - Scheduled announcements
• Public moderation log - Keep moderator actions visible for 30 days

If you're interest in this at all, please give it a spin and let me know how you get on. I'll keep an eye here on Lemmy, but you can also post to the Habitat discussion board on GitHub.

Mar 01 9:41 AM PST

We want to provide some additional information on the power issue in a single Availability Zone in the ME-CENTRAL-1 Region. At around 4:30 AM PST, one of our Availability Zones (mec1-az2) was impacted by objects that struck the data center, creating sparks and fire. The fire department shut off power to the facility and generators as they worked to put out the fire. We are still awaiting permission to turn the power back on, and once we have, we will ensure we restore power and connectivity safely. It will take several hours to restore connectivity to the impacted AZ. The other AZs in the region are functioning normally.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/43738698

I made a post over on Upscrolled recommending people check out the Fediverse:

https://share.upscrolled.com/en/post/6890f5f0-159f-11f1-8080-80006ddcdcfc/

It was kind of a random thought, but the more I think about it, the more it makes sense.

Upscrolled is a newer, strongly pro-Palestine/Leftist platform, and a lot of the users there already care about decentralization, censorship resistance, and not relying on big corporate platforms.

That feels very aligned with what the Fediverse is about.

---

Since it’s still growing, I’d imagine a lot of users there might be open to trying alternatives like Mastodon, Lemmy, PeerTube, Loops, etc.

Especially if it’s framed less as “leave your platform” and more as “here’s a broader network you can also be part of.”

---

I was also curious if anyone else here was interested in recommending the Fediverse over there, as well.

Not in a spammy way, obviously — just sharing info and letting people know there are decentralized options that line up with their values.

Curious what others think.

---

Edit:

https://upscrolled.com/en/about/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UpScrolled

https://lifehacker.com/tech/what-is-upscrolled

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/1/29/whats-upscrolled-the-app-gaining-popularity-after-tiktoks-us-takeover

• Gaming continues to be the largest category of media with $200B in annual spend, larger than film + TV + music combined.
• Mobile is powering most of gaming’s growth.
• Despite market growth, venture funding is down a lot since post-COVID highs.
• The most impressive company in gaming continues to be Roblox, which is driving a huge portion of gaming’s growth; it now has 150M daily active users, its average engagement now tops Steam + PlayStation + Fortnite combined, and you can see here that the portion of users 13+ in age has been especially fast-growing.

"Precision fermentation involves inserting a DNA sequence into microbes to teach them to produce specific molecules when fermented – in The Every Co’s case, these include proteins conventionally found in chicken eggs.

The company’s OvoPro ingredient can replace egg whites’ functionality in a range of applications, and OvoBoost is a highly soluble, taste- and texture-neutral protein equivalent to glycoprotein. In addition, it has developed an animal-free pepsin that acts as a digestive protein. Each has been approved for sale by the US Food and Drug Administration."

On Friday afternoon, Anthropic learned that the Pentagon still wanted to use the company’s AI to analyze bulk data collected from Americans. That could include information such as the questions you ask your favorite chatbot, your Google search history, your GPS-tracked movements, and your credit-card transactions, all of which could be cross-referenced with other details about your life. Anthropic’s leadership told Hegseth’s team that was a bridge too far, and the deal fell apart.

I recently read about a study asking a bold question: Are all AI models basically saying the same thing? Researchers tested this by collecting 26,000 open-ended prompts, the kind people give to systems like GPT-4, Gemini, Claude, and LLaMA. These weren’t factual questions with one right answer, but creative ones like “Write a story about a dragon” or “Brainstorm startup ideas.”

They evaluated over 70 language models. You’d expect a wide range of creative outputs—different tones, plots, and styles. If 70 human writers tackled the same dragon prompt, you’d likely get 70 unique stories. But that’s not what happened. The models produced surprisingly similar responses. The researchers call this the “artificial hive mind” effect.

The similarity appeared in two ways. First, intramodel repetition: the same model, asked the same question multiple times, tends to generate nearly identical answers. Second, intermodel homogeneity: different models, built by different companies, still converge on strikingly similar outputs.

This suggests that modern AI systems may be gravitating toward the same patterns of expression. If that’s true, they may also share the same biases, blind spots, and creative limits. It raises an important question: Are we unintentionally building a digital hive mind instead of a diverse ecosystem of intelligence?

his site no longer works