• 2 Posts
  • 18 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 12th, 2023

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  • Last.fm used to have a Pandora radio aspect to it, but lost the race with YouTube music, Spotify, etc.

    The thing that last.fm had that made them unique is what they call scrobbling. Basically they kept track of what users were listening to and made links between user preferences that you can use to find new music. I mean they used to, and they still do too, but with far far fewer users. Think Spotify’s year in review, but running constantly.

    Honestly, it’s pretty great. I still hop on from time to time, because it’s a great way to find less well known bands. Makes me sad for when it was better used though…



  • It’s science reporting and not immune to headline inflation, but it’s not a lie to say there were measured improvements to patient cognition.

    There’s a developing consensus that electric stimulation has therapeutic potential in restoring brain function (from basal ganglion to transdermal stim). But if you want the full study findings here, I course this article because it looks the DOI address at the bottom.

    Given how few (none) treatments they’re are for TBIs right now, this is pretty exciting stuff to me at least.



  • Basically, this coming election will be decided by the margins because almost everyone who follows politics–at all–knows who they’re voting for already.

    Think about the number of people who follow politics and then understand that those people are already not the demographic that will likely decide the outcome. It’s the people who are surprised they Joe Biden and Donald Trump are on the ballot that matter.

    It isn’t worth trying to pressured persuade either the right or the left. What we need is to activate and engage the non-participating section of the electorate. This is hard, but achievable. It’s people who work multiple jobs and don’t have time for politics that need to know it matters if they vote. Civil rights are not a given and 2024 will be hugely consequential.

    Take your friends with you on election day! Register for vote by mail and bug your friends too! Take about it and don’t leave easy points on the table. Yes the options are terrible. Yes one of them will make the possibility of improving it ever infinitely more difficult.

    The people saying it doesn’t matter do not understand what they stand to lose. It is so so much harder to build something than tear it down and our imperfect institutions will not save us. Politics matters and the luxury of not caring, will lead to co-optation and the loss of rights that are easy to take for granted now.










  • There really was something about the windows phone UI though. If you weren’t around to try it, it’s hard to properly explain how different and fresh the flat pane interface felt compared to iOS and Android. It really was a phenomenal design language compared to the same old thing in the market.

    I honestly believe it they had just sucked it up and subsidized the cost of doubling the ram on those last Nokia devices, it could have been good enough to break through. Microsoft had everything possible to gain from integrating the desktop-to-mobile workflow for business clients. Then they threw it out the window…

    Seriously, I doubt many people here who aren’t used to corporate environments can fully understand how big the market was, that Microsoft gave up, by not spending enough to fill the BlackBerry hole that formed. They had 98% of the solution already developed, and fumbled the ball with a single yard left to go.

    There was room for three players, if one of them actually serviced the business environment; and nobody was better positioned to do so than Microsoft at the time. Excel and PowerPoint that synced from your work machine, to the field, in a zero trust environment… Gah… they were so close.





  • It’s not all one thing or the other. People ascribe these kind of blanket generalizations to US foreign policy frequently but it’s as short-sighted as painting German foreign policy as imperial. Certain US presidents have started wars. Others the Marshall plan, WTO, IMF, the UN, NATO, etc.

    Right now there’s a crisis in the US driven by the same fear of change that drove them into containment during the cold war. That isolationist populism certainly benefits some narratives but it’s no better than the worst elements of China-first economic coercion in the ACS that’s alienated a lot of Philippine fishermen in recent years.

    Fact is the biggest threat to the human race is the dissension these isolationists/populists are selling. No meaningful action on climate, migration, or the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine can occur in that worldview and anyone should be suspicious of politicians who promote them.

    Most US policy has been quite good when non-isolationists have occupied the white house, just like most non-reich based German leadership has strengthened European unity. The Nazis and Trump’s me-first exceptions prove the rule. Education, familiarity, and exposure should be the Rx for the US right now, along with all the countries dealing with the current wave of populist snake oil movements. In the words of a US propaganda film of the same name “don’t be a sucker”.


  • I’m so tired of these woke CEOs and their snowflake whining over misgendering their companies. There’s the name that a company is assigned at birth, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to change the way I’ve always called them (for my whole life and ALL of god-fearing Christian history) because some liberal snowflake CEO one-day wakes up and simply declares, “twitter is now X” ffs.

    The facts of the birth incorporation certificate, DON’T CARE ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS little pissant mUsK… GET OVER IT!

    /s since satire is dead.