#$%^# ALSA!!!!!

Surely there are other poor souls wondering why their speakers quit working on the HP Mini running ubuntu jaunty. To alleviate your suffering I offer you, THE SOLUTION:

alsamixer

Press tab to go to the "Capture" view.

Turn on CAPTURE, DAC0, and IMPORT0. Turn up the volume on each.

Viola! This probably works on plenty of other intel-hda laptops as well.

That was far more difficult to solve than it should have been.