Jorge Garcia

Jorge Garcia

@jorgegarciamartin.com

Background in games development, professional audio, broadcast, R&D and music. Previously SWE/programmer & audio folk at EA, Zynga, MercurySteam, Activision, Codemasters, Music Tribe and more. Now: Co-Founder & CEO of @afectivo.es Based in Madrid, Spain.

475 followers371 following822 posts

Jorge Garcia
@jorgegarciamartin.com

Been eyeing SMCs for a project lately, it seems there are way more options compared to a decade ago. Still have some fond memories from when the first Raspberry Pi came out. Now Orange Pi seems to have killer specs. Arduino ecosystem has grown. Dreaming what I could do with 4GB of RAM these days💡

Jorge Garcia
@jorgegarciamartin.com

Had the pleasure to give a talk to more than 300 students at my alma mater The Polytechnic University of Madrid (UPM) yesterday. I shared some of my past work and learnings. It was great to chat with them and see them curious about audio and video games - got some really good questions!

Jorge Garcia reposted

The Guardian
@theguardian.com

‘Pure arrogance’: anger in Finland as Google illegally fells 250,000 trees for datacentre

theguardian.com‘Pure arrogance’: anger in Finland as Google illegally fells 250,000 trees for datacentreCompany ordered to stop work at two sites in country, which has found itself at forefront of tech firms’ latest push Behind a wire fence lies a vast gaping wound of earth. Before Google’s arrival a few months ago, an estimated quarter of a million trees occupied the 330 hectares (815 acres) of forest near the town of Muhos in rural northern Finland. Now they are all gone. After the tech company illegally stripped the entire area to build a datacentre – taking even the top soil with it – all that remains is a vast expanse of mud indented with the trail marks of machinery, puddles and mounds of earth, roots and branches. Residents say that brown water flowing off the site is going into a stream that feeds the Oulujoki River. Continue reading...
Jorge Garcia
@jorgegarciamartin.com

My thoughts today go to former colleagues and friends at Bioware and Full Circle that have been laid off. Some of the best people in the industry. All the best to those affected and hoping they land on their feet again soon!

Jorge Garcia
@jorgegarciamartin.com

The latest and most expensive frontier AI models remind me to those expensive synths and gear some people bought in the late 90s-00s (they felt very expensive to me at the time, I couldn't afford any of them) like the Access Virus TI synths, CreamWare soundcards etc.

Jorge Garcia
@jorgegarciamartin.com

Some very talented people used them to make great and innovative music at the time, while others just made boring and irrelevant records. I think any expensive gear or software won't make you a better artist or developer if you don't have good judgement and taste. Agree some are fun toys though.

Jorge Garcia
@jorgegarciamartin.com

Our dog took a wicker basket we have at home to store plastic bags and half-destroyed them a while ago. I've kept putting the bags inside of the broken basket for him to discover and destroy again later. Not going to buy a new basket or find new bags, gonna be his toy for a long while hopefully 🤞

Jorge Garcia
@jorgegarciamartin.com

@jasongorman.bsky.social would love to hear your thoughts and experiences with clients on this topic bsky.app/profile/jorg...

Jorge Garcia@jorgegarciamartin.com

I've observed lately what I'm calling the "AI coding Dunning-Kruger" effect. The idea of replacing commercial libraries/middleware with AI-generated code to avoid licensing costs. Thinking that a coding robot can create a better and cheaper or near zero cost replacement of a software dependency.

Jorge Garcia
@jorgegarciamartin.com

I've observed lately what I'm calling the "AI coding Dunning-Kruger" effect. The idea of replacing commercial libraries/middleware with AI-generated code to avoid licensing costs. Thinking that a coding robot can create a better and cheaper or near zero cost replacement of a software dependency.

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Jorge Garcia
@jorgegarciamartin.com

You'd now need to maintain it and fix it yourself (with your coding robot?), you would miss any updates and new features from the developer, could introduce new bugs in the "re-coding" process, would need to generate/write and maintain docs and tests yourself too...

Jorge Garcia
@jorgegarciamartin.com

I've observed lately what I'm calling the "AI coding Dunning-Kruger" effect. The idea of replacing commercial libraries/middleware with AI-generated code to avoid licensing costs. Thinking that a coding robot can create a better and cheaper or near zero cost replacement of a software dependency.

Jorge Garcia
@jorgegarciamartin.com

While I can see the appeal of this practice, I can only feel bad about it while raising all my alarms. It may make economical sense in the short term, but I think it can also cause huge trouble and increase project risk especially if what you are looking to replace is well-known and well-supported.

Jorge Garcia
@jorgegarciamartin.com

Of course, replacing dependencies would need to be evaluated in case by case basis. For proven, complex and battle tested middleware, does it make sense to have an AI replacement for saving just a few thousand dollars a year to your company in licenses?

Jorge Garcia
@jorgegarciamartin.com

Why I posted this msg yesterday: I got inspired by the announcement of yet another proprietary AI model that does automatic sound design for video We seem to have a surplus of those recently, and in this particular case they unfortunately don't disclose what data was used to train the model either

Jorge Garcia@jorgegarciamartin.com

I think it's not enough to have conservatory + tech education under your belt if you want to build successful creative tools. Empowering artists is very hard if you've never tried to make a living out of content creation e.g., audio/music yourself. For starters, ask them how they feel lately.

Jorge Garcia
@jorgegarciamartin.com

I think it's not enough to have conservatory + tech education under your belt if you want to build successful creative tools. Empowering artists is very hard if you've never tried to make a living out of content creation e.g., audio/music yourself. For starters, ask them how they feel lately.

Jorge Garcia
@jorgegarciamartin.com

Here's a couple of senior software engineer quotes from this study: "Now, pull requests are getting bigger and harder to review. It is honestly becoming more anxiety inducing to even open the pull request and begin the review.” "If you speed up coding, the bottleneck shifts somewhere else."

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Jorge Garcia
@jorgegarciamartin.com

Technical reflection from working with our clients as @afectivo.es recently: I think it has become easier to create huge amounts of complex code for simple features, especially if we aren't careful and rush. Pascal said: "I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead".

Jorge Garcia
@jorgegarciamartin.com

What would you prefer? Large amounts of code to do something simple, while taking longer to understand, validate, review, test, and to reason to... or just a little code that does what is needed and not more?

Jorge Garcia
@jorgegarciamartin.com

This situation can easily snowball too: once your coding robot needs to make further changes, it also needs to load or grep more code into their context. Doesn't look very sustainable in the long term, though of course it can give the illusion of moving very fast shipping lots of features.

Jorge Garcia
@jorgegarciamartin.com

Another reason to celebrate today is the release from our friends at Hook Music. We've been working with the talented team at Hook on some real-time audio magic. "It's the world’s first social-media platform built for music that pays the artist and the fan." www.linkedin.com/feed/update/...

linkedin.comWe've raised $16M from Khosla Ventures, Edgar Bronfman Jr & Daniel L.'s Waverley Capital and Steve Cohen's Point72 Ventures to stop a massive scam happening in the music industry. You...We've raised $16M from Khosla Ventures, Edgar Bronfman Jr & Daniel L.'s Waverley Capital and Steve Cohen's Point72 Ventures to stop a massive scam happening in the music industry. Your favorite AI co...
Jorge Garcia
@jorgegarciamartin.com

Last Saturday evening-night my wife an I wanted to listen to some CDs from my collection. The only device I have that was able to play them (commercial ones, the CD-Rs were mostly unplayable) was my old Macbook Pro from 2008. I still need to find a second hand CD player for our living room.

Jorge Garcia
@jorgegarciamartin.com

Many thanks to all the people who have supported the album! 🙏 All the sales have now been donated to Red Cross and I've also matched the same amount. As a follow up, I've also made a new track to be released just in a few days on September 11th. yorch.bandcamp.com/album/tempor...

yorch.bandcamp.comTemporality, by Yorch2 track album
Jorge Garcia@jorgegarciamartin.com

All sales up until August 31st will be donated to Red Cross. yorch.bandcamp.com/album/beauti... Don't miss the list of artistic inspirations and references in the description. Especially this one youtu.be/z0PJnc8BFTk?...

yorch.bandcamp.comBeautiful Constraints, by Yorch10 track album