Interesting wildcard ideas in the article, but I don't think we can understand how the brain works using computing concepts. For a nice discussion on DNA being the "blueprint" of life I recommend Philip Ball's "How life works".
I'm a customer of Ente since more than a year ago. I transferred my 30K photos from Google Photos without a problem. Very happy with this product. While some functionalities where missing at the beginning (powerful editor, sharing, collaborating, search) the Mobile and desktop apps have improved a lot, and continue to do so. Today, I do not miss Google Photos.
"Computing is still young, and platforms are changing quickly. Modern browser extensions and smartphone platforms have only been around for about a decade. These platforms will evolve, and there will be new platforms after them, and we will get to collectively decide how open they will be."
I really like this final comment. As a non expert in computing, I also often think about how young is this field, and I fantasize about how it will evolve, hopefully towards a more accessible and open ecosistem.
> we will get to collectively decide how open they will be.
The author is way more optimistic than me here. I'd love if that were the case, but with the way the wind is blowing, I doubt that it'll be a collective decision between users and the big tech companies running today's computing platforms. If anything, it'll come through regulation.
It's highly unlikely that e.g. iOS or Android will suddenly and out of their own initiative open up their APIs in a way that would allow building anything like "reading mode"/distraction removers, ad blockers, data extraction allowing mashups between different apps etc.
Google's main customers aren't Android users, but app developers who run in-app ads and sell in-app purchases; the same is to a large extent also true for Apple (although DMA-like changes might shake up things a bit, and their reasoning for not introducing such apps will likely be security and platform integrity, not ads).
Based on technological advances and an increased need for renewable intermediates in different application fields, BASF and Corbion Purac have been working on the development of biobased succinic acid since 2009.
I'm curious about the real reason they are not able to prioritize the 5th most voted idea. Seems easy to do, and it would convert Spotify into a home music system.
While I don't know much about computers I suspect its because they are not sure they could stop some users from using this to share the account outside their home.
Otherwise, I can not think of any other reason.
It sounds like they want the same streaming music to play out of multiple devices in the same place at once. This is a very difficult synchronization problem, especially within a heterogenous device space. The user experience if they fail to really nail it would be very poor, and the potential benefit is not that big.
I'm not clear on the question being asked. I currently am signed in with my Spotify account on Alexa, my phone and my tablet. I can stream the same music from all four Alexa devices in the house, and also concurrently on my phone and tablet. I don't normally want all these devices playing (at home I just need the Alexa devices to be playing), and I actually have more issues where music is playing from more devices than I want.
My Alexa devices are scattered about the house, so I'm not interested in stereo separation in a single room - maybe they are talking about the timing required for that.
I would definitely say it's the latency issue. If the speakers are within earshot of each other, the timing differences is likely to make it a bad experience more often than not. If you really want this feature, get a house-speaker system that supports it and have Spotify stream to that _one_.
I a bunch of Denon devices from smart speakers to a soundbar to two home theater receivers and many of them support HEOS which can do whole home streaming.
It sucks that you have to control it with a mobile app (I did write a PC app using Tk but that is not much better than a mobile app!). Also I have had a lot of devices fail either completely or partially (WiFi just went on my 7.1 receiver the other day, the same receiver is relegated to a (awesome) stereo because the HDMI port). The 5.1 receiver was a decontented ‘pandemic special’ with no HEOS.
But that said, the whole home audio is great and works with my jellyfin and Amazon Music and TuneIn and presumably spotify.
I wonder if it would be possible to make unsolicited advertisement illegal. Something difficult to imagine in the world we live in, but I believe it could be possible:
- no ads in the public space
- magazines and newspapers with 2 versions: with ads (lower price) and without ads (higher price)
- TV and radio: special channels only for ads
- internet: banners are blank and marked as Ad, you can only see them if you click on them.
Wishful thinking?
'no ads in the public space' seems to me like one of those well-intentioned ideas that sounds good but has a lot of edge cases. What about if I am a plumber and I have my business logo on the side of my truck. Is that advertising? What if I have a sign in front of my shop? If someone really likes skittles and they mention that (unpaid) on a TV show is that advertising? What if skittles sends me some free skittles after, is it retroactively advertising now? What if I have a negative experience with one provider that ends up driving business to a different provider when I relay it. Is that advertising?
It seems like instead of starting from an overly broad position the best thing to do would be to start specifically. We could start by moving content online back into being protocol-based instead of walled gardens. Let me subscribe or not subscribe to whatever content I want without being beholden to a platform.
And if you did want to write it in close to one line, it wouldn't be particularly difficult either.
Simply outlaw _selling_ (or giving away) of ad space in public.
You want to put your own logo on your storefront, side of vehicle, brochure, public bus, charging station? Sure. You want to sell that space to the highest bidder to place their own ad? Nope.
This would eliminate 99% of billboards, bus stop ads, etc without creating any ambiguity as to whether a business is allowed to identify itself in public.
One caveat might be that it would be desirable to carve out an allowance for e.g. "10% of sales go to Charity X".
Good news! I now am a landlord whose sole property for lease is land upon which a sign can be placed. I also offer an unrelated sign building service and my friend offers a sign painting service!
If we assume advertising is ROI positive, wouldn't this quickly become a world where only the biggest companies could advertise? Apple has a large retail footprint and could buy the physical billboard footprint; my local tax accountant cannot.
The length of a law doesn’t reduce its murkiness - in fact it makes it more pronounced. That is why (in the common law systems) there is so much discussing and re-discussing of topics that plenty of other cases already covered, using new approach angles. If you make laws longer and more complex, you only make them serve more those that have the budget to explore all branches of the decision tree.
I mean, sure. Corruption exists. But the that's another issue entirely. Your comment doesn't add to the question of the GP - "does the existence of edge cases make implementing a law extremely difficult?" The answer is no. You could probably outline all the exceptions and applications of such a law in a few pages.
Most of these questions have easy answers in the implementations already out there:
* Set a maximum size on a sign. You can have a sign in front of your shop or on your car as long as it isn't larger than a well-defined square footage.
* If no one paid to have skittles mentioned, it's not advertising.
* Accepting and giving gifts in professional contexts is already known to be fraught, an anti-advertising law wouldn't significantly alter that.
* If the competitor paid you to share the negative experience or paid for the airtime/venue in which your shared it, it's advertising, otherwise it's not.
The Amazon Kindle does a version of this. They offer a more expensive ad-free version and a cheaper one that displays ads on the lock screen. I have already chosen twice to pay more for the ad-free model, and I'm glad to have been given the choice.
This is unlikely to happen in most cities, as avertising is embedded in our culture now. Can you imagine what NYC and Times Square would look like with no ads? (Turns out much better[1] IMO, but I'm not sure everyone would agree.)
Rather, I think the only way to make this happen is to move adblockers to the real world. The user would wear AR goggles that would hide any detected ads. I'll be using that the second AR becomes accessible for everyday outdoor use. An audio adblocker would be great as well.
