My high school chemistry teacher claimed that tea and coffee each have different isomers of caffeine and people may be sensitive to one both or none. This was pre internet and some quick googling seems to debunk this claim in that caffeine has no isomers. Though the same searching seems to indicate that there is a likelihood other compounds mitigate or exacerbate its effects.
I ski a lot and wear headphones for music and to take any emergency calls. I use siri to ask “What time is it?” 50:50 whether or not it works. This has been my experience for as long as siri has existed and I have kept up to date on hw and sw. I only stick with it because pulling the phone out in the cold is even more annoying than having to repeat the long press and myself. Don’t get me started on a question that simple needing an internet connection… because I’m excluding that error case.
Watching a typical multi family house go up down the street in Boston and the wooden framing is definitely still all nailed together. This is very typical in the US Northeast. No need for connectors when you have nails and nail guns. Where I see elements made off site it’s typically manufactured joists which would be far more expensive as single pieces of wood.
I believe the post you're replying to is referring to roof trusses (and perhaps floor trusses) which are generally built off-site at a truss plant, but then attached onsite (usually with nails, but sometimes lag bolts or screws are needed).
It's not nails that make metal framing connectors not required, it's that modern platform framing doesn't typically need much of them due to design, except for trusses (mending plates) and rafters (metal ties). Nails are used to secure the framing but aren't generally used to provide a structural connection.
To me the really gross bit is the dishonesty around the slop. Same track with multiple different names appearing under multiple different artist names is egregious. Classic corporate disregard for customers.
That's the tricky loophole. My understanding of this situation is that there are indeed different artists that are taking the time to comppose a track.
But they instead treat this process as an assembly line instead of an artistic pursuit. They give a template, so every song is going to sound similar, only giving a few freedoms to each artist.
Templating is almost second nature in tech, but in something like art it feels like there's this ethereal barrier being breached. It's like making a song then paying 10 other people to remix it. But worse because at least remixes disclose the template.
Spotify has automated 'next song' and playlist creation. Those are (or used to be) valuable for finding new music, and for getting out of a rut. But now spotify isn't selecting what goes into the playlist based on their best guess of what people would like. Instead they put songs there based on what earns them money.
Does this have to be actively enabled by the user? I never really had this "next song" thing play for me, nor I ever looked at any playlists Spotify generated (I always presumed they would be bad).
Then again, if people are using these features and they are fine with the results, I fail to see the issue.
Yes, though I think smart shuffle might be a default mode for playlists.
People who enable these functions will expect spotify to pick the best guess of what music they would enjoy. Not what music costs spotify the least to play.
If this is only a little bit worse, people will likely not notice. But they will miss out on new music. Certainly this is how I normal find new music.
I might have disabled this functionality many years ago. I don't really remember ever having this smart shuffle thing where Spotify would add their own suggestions to my playlist.
You see, I don't like Spotify. I don't trust any of those huge platforms, I expect them to actively work against my interests. I always disable or avoid anything they want to suggest me, and view it with suspicion, if now outright contempt.
>I don't really remember ever having this smart shuffle thing where Spotify would add their own suggestions to my playlist.
I thought that was always the default behavior unless you paid or something? You find a song you wanna listen to, and then Spotify just spits out a playlist for you, in a Pandora esque radio way where you don't have control over the susequent songs played.
I liked Pandora back in the day, but there was something offputting about how Spotify implemented this. So I never really bothered and made my own playlists.
Payola scandal said that the mere fact the platform schemes to prioritize on-platform cheap dreck under multiple names says they are watering down product in a cheating fashion. Adulterated saffron got you burned on a pile of your own fake saffron in parts of medieval Europe. Such a concept as fraudulent activity exists and will not disappear with mere hand wavery.
It's unfair in that allowing multiple instances of the same song will almost surely lead to that song receiving more plays than it otherwise would due to how recommendation algorithms work.
I don't think this is the most egregious act of dishonesty in the article, though. I think Spotify deliberately seeding this music into its playlists is a worse abuse of its position as owner of the marketplace.
You have to actively accept the recommendations from the algorithm. If the algorithm ia recommending slop, and you are fine with it, actively listening to it, who was harmed?
> I think Spotify deliberately seeding this music into its playlists is a worse abuse of its position as owner of the marketplace.
Nobody is forced to listen to the slop playlists generated by Spotify. Spotify puts them in the front page, but they can be ignored.
If people are listening to those playlists and are satisfied with it, what is the issue?
If the consumption is genuine and not bot activity, I fail to see any wrongdoing on Spotify. If people like listening to slop, who am I to judge?
>If the algorithm ia recommending slop, and you are fine with it, actively listening to it, who was harmed?
Well that's the issue. I don't accept slop but it will sure keep trying to push it to me, no matter how many thumbs down and dislikes I throw at it. I'm still fighting all the stupid crypto recommendations from Youtube despite years of "I'm not interested in this" that I post everytime it comes up. In the end, the only proper fix was to remove my entire history.
Algorithms these days stopped even pretending they appeal to me, they appeal to what advertisers want you to consume.
>Nobody is forced to listen to the slop playlists generated by Spotify.
in the sense that "nobody is forced to use spotify, I suppose". But if spotify is the house and the dealer, spotify listeners have to go under a lot of friction to push back even if they don't like what is being dealt.
Consumers' time is wasted by slop (by listening to it, skipping it, expunging it from playlists, etc.) Musicians are harmed when their material is lost in a sea of slop.
Neither. I have no desire to work for Spotify. Never worked there myself. I do pay for their service. I find it okay, perhaps a little expensive.
You may think I am excusing Spotify, but I am not. At least not really. I am just completely unsurprised that people listen to bottom of the barrel musical slop as background noise and are okay with it.
Spotify was smart that they figured out to give people what they wanted in a way that costs them less.
But people in this thread act as if Spotify is committing a crime, using some very charged language. My approach is from another angle - if users are legitimately listening to crap, and they are alright with the crap they listened to, why are we making a fuss about it?
Spotify is a market. Markets have two sides. You're fixated on one side. Repeating my earlier comment, "I don't think this is the most egregious act of dishonesty in the article, though. I think Spotify deliberately seeding this music into its playlists is a worse abuse of its position as owner of the marketplace."
> if users are legitimately listening to crap, and they are alright with the crap they listened to, why are we making a fuss about it?
Your angle is "enshittification isn't illegal, peopel still buy it. Why complain?"
By deinition, complaints are always brought up by a minority. If we ignored that minority, we wouldn't have acts like GDPR and its offshoots. Nor recent enforcement on making it easy to unsubscribe. We may not even have physical consumer protections, like refund windows or false advertisement".
I have the Cannon 10x30 IS from a long time ago and they are the best binoculars I’d ever tried. I’m pretty shaky so the image stabilizing is game changing. I’m sure the more powerful pairs are incredible and in that case image stabilization is a must. https://www.usa.canon.com/shop/lenses/binoculars
This blew my mind a few years ago when I got some decent binoculars. Depending on their positions you can see all four of the Galilean moons - even from a vantage point in a major city.
I saw them entirely accidentally. I was looking at the moon through bins and checked out The Other Bright Thing nearby and was shocked to see what looks like little dots next to the big one. As Galileo himself would have done, I immediately went on the internet and consulted a sky chart, which confirmed that I was seeing the moons of Jupiter.
I still occasionally drag my friends out to look at the moons on a clear night. It's my favorite bit of practical astronomy to share.
A small centrifuge won't work; you get a strong coriolis effect. A large centrifuge could, but the ISS doesn't have one of those. It would need to be huge to be absolutely sure your data is accurate.
Not sure if they still have the wooden cars on the A (blue) Subte line in Buenos Aires. I lived in Caballito for a little while in 2007 and got a huge kick out of opening the doors early, hopping off the train and sliding on the platform with my crappy slippery shoes.
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