goldcd

Maybe not a loss from adverts as you book - but knowing when somebody is going to arrive in a city is worth an f'in fortune to hotels looking to shift unsold rooms.

I do quite like their "subscribe and save" system though. Sign up for the costco-sized packs of stuff you get through, and guess how often you want to receive it. Then once a month it tells you to check - and you see what they're planning on shipping, and can skip stuff you've got and pull forward stuff you're running out of.

Always thought it would be quite nifty if you could make a site like this for third-party services. I might see my 2 audible credits on there, and decide I've got enough, or need more. Or maybe apple could offer a free month - so I might pause my netflix. Could even combine stuff (free $10 Dominos credit added for each month of Netflix after month 12 etc).

Whole current system of every service having their own UI, is just a pain. Worked out paying for stuff works better then you can just stick it all on the same card - so why not manage it all from one place as well?

Sorry - I wasn't clear. I don't mean they're listening for notes. They're just analyzing the wave-form/fingerprint/whatever-you-want-to-call-it that's being generated at a moment, and then one form the next moment, then the next.

One of these might match random points in many songs, but a far smaller subset of these will have the same three in the same sequence.

They do (and I said so) - but I couldn't think of an easy way to write that in a post here.

I think all (so simple) you have to do is parse all the tracks ever made, and say generate a sequence of snapshots of what the tune sounds like and the delta. e.g. if it was notes (for simplicity) E,D,C,D,E,E,E,D,D,D,E,E,E is the start of "Mary had a little Lamb" Millions of tracks contain the note E. Many hundreds of thousands probably have the note D next - and as you work through the sequence, you're pruning down that list until you who what it is. Bit that makes my mind hurt though, is the data-structure you put those sequences into to make it quickly searchable. Users can start recording at any point in the song - so you can't just prune a tree down from a known starting point. There's going be be background nose - so you need some way of "when you have no choice left", I presume sticking wild-cards into the previous decisions, to see if you end up back on a known track.

Yeah - I think it's magic as well.

Other thoughts: I used it back in the UK when it launched, and the first track I ever used it on dialling (2580 - the numbers down the middle of your keypad) was also a French track (MC Solaar – La Vie Est Belle)

I always felt they missed a trick, just identifying music (and then trying to sell you stuff). Surely they could have used the same tech to seamlessly mix all music together. (i.e. take the sequences within tracks they find hard to differentiate, and then use these points to allow two tracks to be mixed together). What's the minimum number of tracks it would say take to seamlessly mix from Megadeth to Mozart?

I think Subhankar has a good future ahead of him writing copy and press releases for startups.

I don't really think that's what the article was getting at. (although I'm not quite sure what it was trying to do)

I think codecs are where I have most of my remaining BT annoyances. AptX is great (but there's also AptX HD, AptX.. is it variable? etc) - and exactly which AptX is supported varies by the Qualcomm chip in your phone and the device you're connecting it to. Or you can go with Sony's LDAC. Works great on my Pixel, once I've turned on "quality" in the Sony App, then turned on the LDAC opton that gives in my bluetooth settings (and optionally can go into the dev menu each time I connect, to adjust the bitrate).

I do like bluetooth - but working out what features will work with which devices is a PITA. It always falls back to something functional, but fallback masks a lot of improvements that could be made. Although maybe that's the right approach. It works, and if you're somebody who likes to fiddle, you can.

I slightly disagree - I don't think Visa et al should be forced to do anything.

I think the problem is external to Visa, where a once capitalist money accumulating machine, is having internal debates on what Furry depictions are allowed.

I feel the unnoticed casualty of the "Culture Wars", that neither side seems to care about, is that harmless stuff should just be left alone.

We don't have to have a view on everything.

I'm just bemused by the world I find around me.

We seem to have completely lost our grasp on differentiating "real things" and "made up things"

That idiom might be useful - until you stray near lawyers.

I'm also slightly confused.

If they were scraping the information/pictures off the supermarket sites, then I'd have expected the cease and desist to come from the supermarkets.

Given that the letter came from "a company" then I presume they were taking their information from an aggregator - and seems entirely fair that you should "pay the aggregator" (as there's clearly a company out there doing something similar to what they're doing - but they were taking their data).

If this company was just a data-hose, then I'd have thought you could monetize your consumer-focussed product, simply by flogging anonymized data from your users back to the supermarkets. "Customer X, dropped product Y from their weekly basket (or swapped supermarket), when you raised the price of Z (or other supermarket dropped it)"

I'm somewhat bemused, but also quite proud that Fred Dibnah has appeared here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Dibnah

I'm British but was completely unaware of the early stuff he appeared in, but the late 90s, early 2000s stuff crept into the public consciousness.

Our equivalent of OSHA is "Health and Safety" and Fred held a dim view. Fortunately his legacy is continued by "British scaffolders" - a famous sub-group within construction, who you can still see to this day getting utterly shit-faced in a pub on cider over lunch, before returning to site.

Not sure if this division of construction labour exists elsewhere. If you pay a builder to so anything in the UK, they'll subcontract any erection of scaffolding to separate company, with a noticeably more cavalier attitude towards potential death and injury. Then your primary contractor will do the job, and the scaffolders will return to remove the infrastructure.

It's very much a US-centric thing.

Rest of the world is bemused by the stories of bullied US teenagers who don't have 'the right' bubble colour on their SMS-ish app. Elsewhere we've all been using whatsapp/telegram/signal etc for years and we're never going back.

I think maybe the worst decision Apple made was not trying to push out their service (with maybe a few limitations to upsell the hardware) - although I guess blackberry tried to do that and it didn't work out.

But the problem with caps, is that people hit them.

As a hypothetical, imagine a polluting plant poisoning the neighbourhood. You want them to know once their fine gets to $1M it's capped? You've suddenly presented a clear choice to the plant - fix it if it'll cost less than $1M, if it'll cost more keep ignore.

If you're going to fine anybody "per unit of time", you have to keep it open-ended (as otherwise the only people who'll ignore you, are those making more profit per day, than the per day cost)

B - Memory is a 'class of product', DDRx is just the model.

A few people will buy the 2022 Ford-Model-X for a premium at launch, but once they've bought it, Ford are just selling to the people with a 2010 Ford who just want to upgrade to what's in the new catalogue.

I'm sure some of those upgraders will pick up a bargain on that onsold 2020 stock - but Ford aren't devoting resources to keep making those old models.

I'd guess supply outstripping demand - but am open to suggestions from those understanding what the stars are currently doing.

My guess is that this is (as mentioned here in the article) the problem with (somewhat more) reasonable fines per day, snowballing.

If it's not criminal, and all you can do is fine, and no action is taken to prevent the the fine incurring - I'm not really sure what option there is.

Do you cap it? Send in the bailiff's to remove the offending thing at a certain point? Just write it all off, setting a precendent?

I've genuinely no idea.

I was a bit cynical when I started the article, but actually seems to make sense.

I think the TLDR is: "The job you're offering is likely not to be the best job available - so find a target audience where it's the best job available to them"

Is this kosher/halal? - there's an untapped market right there.

How right you are.

Or (at least where I am) I'm seeing ServiceNow appear - It's a e2e process engine, which just happens to also have GUI components that take the place of a traditional CMS.

Indeed.

Even where you might once have thought "I'll add my own site, for the true fans, and take in orders of magnitude more money" - Now you can just add patreon (or an onlyfans) that handles that for you far more efficiently.

Then there are more niche providers like Floatplane (the Linus Tech Tips side-hustle/life-boat), who'll give you more autonomy and a CDN.

LinkTree was when the penny really dropped for me. Pretty much just an API landing page to point you to the other platforms.

Maybe the only next step left, is stuff like https://nametag.org/ - using an NFT to be your presence.

It's all very odd, and as I said above, makes me feel very old.

I think the "private website" space is shrinking - despite what adverts for Wix and Squarespace might infer.

The consumer/blog space of geocities, tripod and the like went to social media. Then we went through a period of "businesses putting up 10 pages for a fixed price" through first of all "a local web guy" then by themselves using Wix/WP/SS etc.

I've just had a bathroom fitted by a guy who functions purely on Instagram for his portfolio and Whatsapp for communication. As I'm old and curmudgeonly I wanted an email address, and when I got it, it's the one that came free with his phone.

Even local restaurants seem to be changing - using aggregators as their primary touch-point. Can't really blame them. They can easily submit their static stuff - opening times, location and menu - and the complex stuff like a booking system, taking deposits, sending calendar reminders is just handled by a single entity who's good at this stuff.

WP seems to occupy this weird middle-ground I don't see as being attractive to anyone. As a light user there are dedicated CMS for your industry - for the hardcore, you hand-build it. WP, paying for packages, and being on the hook when they don't play nice - Who-tf is the target market?

I stand corrected - think my obvious flaw was just judging from what's observed from outside. You're completely right that it's the internal processes that mainly affect your job enjoyment.

Oh, you've just picked another of my personal scabs there.

"We'd like you to use our website, but we don't take it seriously"

You know the companies, they stick up your renewal quote 20% and hope you'll not notice. You go to their web-site, and there's just an "accept" button. You enter 'web-chat and after 30 mins, they'll knock it down to an 18% increase" Then you phone them and after some endless messages around "have you tried using our website" you can eventually escalate it through a few phone operators around the world to 'on-shore-customer-retention", who'll knock it down to an inflationary 3% increase.

Feel all this could easily be replaced by some 30 min online IQ test - I'd still waste the same time, but at least it would cost them less to retain me.

I did I'm trying not to imagine he's on a great contractor rate with HMRC and choosing which French villa to snap up with his next contract from Intuit..

More seriously - and after my knee-jerk has died down, my government actually publishing APIs does seem "pretty-schweet"

That has depressed me.. The optimist hopes that this is just compliance with a well designed API.. the realist saw Intuit on that list..

Oh I agree - it looks like it does for all of those reasons. Even for normal me, when using it, I find I like the design language. e.g. When sorting out my tax, it has sections that clearly explain "Does this apply to you" and if it does and you fill it in, then you get a summary on the "master-list" you eventually submit.

Also the only site where clicking on the "more info" section actually clears up any query I had.

I've no doubt there're endless interactions, a/b testing and all the rest that have enabled them to create something that looks so basic. It's just that's such an unfamiliar pattern to engage with. We all "tut-tut" over "dark design" - but there are very few commercial sites that want you to get in, do your task quickly/accurately - and then leave for a year. e.g. Google prides themselves on you finding what you're looking for quickly - but they want you to come back again.

"Class action lawsuits" are a weirdly American thing as well.

Bit like short-sellers.

Ideally government/state would enforce fair play - but instead it's left to private enterprise (financiers and lawyers) to patrol, for the potentially ridiculous returns that can make for wrong-doing. Makes me think of old "Wanted Posters", just for "Wrongdoers" and the reward being "Ridiculous"

Does also make me wonder how much blackmail goes on, unnoticed. There must be more than a few "reports" that got bought be a company for a large consultancy fee..