tomc1985

This existed, it was called XUL, and it was glorious

If there is one tech that we need to bring back from the dead, it is XUL

(XUL is the GUI toolkit powering Firefox, or at least was until they ripped almost all of it out and replaced it with "modern" (gag) HTML+CSS UI)

I wonder if it can be integrated with iPlug2, since that is derived from Cockos' WDL framework (which iPlug2 is based upon)

Given that the code for both lives in the same github account, I am hoping for 'Yes'

Does nobody tell them that they are being ridiculous?

Where you live, sure. But I can drive just a couple hours north of San Francisco and lose all cellular connectivity, entirely. In fact I am doing just that tonight and my friend and I have made contingency plans for meeting up at a festival going on in the mountains off the 101, where we expect to have no cell service.

I really wish people would set aside their "well it's always worked for me, surely it must work for everyone" attitude, because it is tragically and obnoxiously false.

I've always labelled those notes in parenthesis in the Album field, like your final example. I do wish it had a separate field.

The biggest pain point I have with ID3 tags is how compilations are handled, particularly when that compo is a DJ mix with individual tracks. I prefer to not have these pop up in searches unless I specifically want to listen to the whole album, so I've taken to setting the genre to "Mixed / Drum & Bass", for example. (I usually queue up music by the genre tag.) I also like to separate tracks with vocals vs purely instrumental, so those guys get "/ Vocal" appended.

iMusic on iPhone handles both cases poorly. It is sad that they are letting that app essentially rot.

I wish there was a better way.

Funny, I was just browsing the spec and came across the POPM field. Out of all honesty that idea seems INSANE. Storing e-mail addresses? A list of them? Were they crazy?

Just... why?

Laptops and IDEs are fine. How does anyone possibly want to do anything without multiple screens anyway?

Clubhouse etc has made me even more suspicious of anyone who uses the term "thought leader" in any serious capacity

My point is that the scale of pretty much everything we do is minuscule compared to carbon emissions. And, short of being more specific on what 'human activities' are in question, the negative tradeoffs are going to have to be far worse, in order to be a worse alternative than our current course of spewing CO2.

You think that was weird, witness how America came together immediately after 9/11

I don't think we will ever see power generation via renewables (one industry) approach the scale of anything near carbon emissions (all industry)

You could do some very basic napkin math multiplying the air displacement per turbine (or whatever metric you choose) and multiplying by every turbine that exists, and I'd bet that number would be nowhere near total air displacement from natural causes.

Human CO2 emissions matter precisely because the math has exceeded change from natural causes. And this happens because literally everyone is doing it. IF we cover the planet in wind turbines the same way we cover it with waste C02 then maybe you might have a case.

Not to say renewables aren't without their issues. There are likely a whole host of second- and third-order issues there that have yet to be discovered, let alone resolved. But we would need adoption on a scale far beyond what has been proposed to combat global warming to approach that.

The ending of the pancakes episode is still one of my favorite moments of 90s TV ever

Yeah but I don't care about 99.9% of that, and a lot of that other 0.1% isn't even on Spotify.

You could say the same thing about an all-you-can-eat buffet. You won't end up eating the whole restaurant, and if you do they'll kick you out.

"Basically every song ever recorded" is a red herring to strip you of ownership of your media.

To say nothing of all the playlists I've made that have holes blown in them like swiss cheese because the streaming rights got revoked. What if Spotify turns the way of Netflix?

Empathy/sympathy are important factors here. As a fellow weirdo I do not see my weirdness as an excuse for being unable to 'walk a mile in their shoes'. There are lots of people around us constantly transmitting their emotional status, I see no reason to not pay attention to that.

That sounds disastrous. "Whatever the ticket says" is often ambiguous, poorly-written, or just plain wrong (in terms that the request is documented incorrectly and the requestor is not actually asking for what they want). Sometimes someone with technical inclinations gets too smart and thinks the solution is X when it is really Y.

In my personal experience, it is much easier to clear this up going to the requestor itself, rather than asking a PM to clear it up. I ask them high-level questions like, "so, what is it that you really want here?" to try and suss out what the actual deliverable is.

But I agree that if you have too many projects on your plate this is untenable. But then devs having too many projects on their plate is a pretty poor situation and is indicative of bad management.

It was, for a time. Much better times than now, that's for sure.

My god everything about this eventuality just sounds absolutely awful. Just more and more recycling of the same meme-tastic trash (which isn't that far off from the current state of pop music), writ even more large and just plain worse.

I'd like to think the future is the opposite -- artists/bands managing themselves as disparate entities, forming around small labels or even their own labels, and having someone in charge to bring the resources they need to bear for touring or performance related stuff so that they can focus on their music.

It is weird to me to see people talking like this. Throughout my 10+ year career as an SE, all the way from junior level to senior-plus, customer- and product-mindset thinking has been seemingly mandatory. Like how would I even write the software if I didn't understand what they wanted? What would I even do/what should I even write?

We need to remember at all levels that it is people that use this stuff. Coincidentally, we are also people. So we should all be able to think as them.

It is weird to me to be separated from my stakeholders. I can't say I really like having a PM in between me and them, other than having them sit in meetings instead of me.

Ah yes so let's ruin a good thing so the incompetent have a fair chance? Pah.

What is the point of learning and trying to be intelligent if everything around you gets training wheels put on it? Oh wait, it isn't for our benefit.

Yet another case of losing opportunities under the guise of helping stupid people.

The world needs fewer middlemen

Side question, why are merchant names always so cryptic?

The relationships are generally cultivated over time. I have been active in the local dance music underground for all of my adult life, but in this case familiarity was established after showing up at a couple of desert events and hanging out. Later on, I was invited to a house party with some of the same folks where I was accepted into the "family". During all this I would show up at events with my camera, take really good photos, and then give them away, and that got me noticed and made me the unofficial-official photographer of the group. This was several years ago, and the story has advanced considerably since then.

edit- To answer your question directly, it took a few years to really feel that these guys were more than just party friends. I think the catalyst here was us, as a group, navigating through shared tragedy. The 'family' was already formed when I joined, and it definitely took a while to feel like I was someone more than just a guy in the periphery. Gifting is big in my scene, and if you want to speed up the process that is probably the best way to start -- art, food, whatever you can provide that other people might want or need.

edit2- It just occurred to me that gifting is a great lifehack in general for ingratiating yourself into a new group. The key is that it has to be something they genuinely want. For example, I went to visit a friend of mine in Chile and filled up about half of my luggage with candy, alcohol, and some other things that I knew my friend would appreciate. She was so happy and told all her friends, and in an instant I had a whole group of people to hang out with -- who very specifically told me that they appreciated the gifts -- while I was visiting.

If you're into music, festivals are fantastic for this. I was just at such a festival, in an MDMA-fueled reminiscence of just how lucky my friends and I are to have found each other. Through years of simply showing up, gifting my art, and being open to new people, I now have a tight party crew which has supported each other through some of the darkest shit I have ever experienced in my life. Deaths, overdoses, bad trips, poverty, angry neighbors/property owners, whatever... these guys have my back and I have theirs.

I may be a thirty-something loner and introvert, but these guys are my bass music battle buddies. Highly recommended.

It's good for attracting a partner that's into shibari

So what would you have instead?

A fully participatory democracy where every citizen votes on everything? Or authoritarianism?

One of my parents is a hoarder and has filled up a 2500+sqft house with junk. It is so bad that there are aisles carved through the house so that they can get through it.

My siblings and I have been begging and pleading with them to sort this out for the past 20 years. We have offered to help. But they haven't, as said parent is "throw themselves in front of the car if we try to leave with anything" emotionally attached to this stuff and somehow maintains an inventory of everything, including how they bought it and how it made them feel.

Now they are getting old and infirm and are barely able to afford the house that they are renting, let alone put in the effort to clean it up. My siblings and I are going to be stuck with a quagmire where they only solution is to pay a professional to come over and clean out the house, and that will not be cheap.

Yeah the combat was eh and for some reason it gave me motion sickness.

As someone who has a physical condition that makes speaking sometimes very unpleasant, the last thing I want in my car is a voice-only interface.

Also, cue the skit about the thick scottish-accented guy trying to activate a voice-activated elevator...

Buttons, please. And only buttons.

Metro Exodus is semi open-world, more like "open levels" that you can traverse freely and then never come back to again.

I'm not sure I'd call Far Cry series RPGs. Don't mean that in a bad way (I fuckin love Far Cry), I've always seem them as an FPS with stats (a la No One Lives Forever) in an open world.

I really wanted to like The Outer Worlds, but the writing seemed extremely juvenile; it touches on a lot of heavy themes (LGBTQ romance, corporate power, worker exploitation) extremely hamfistedly and without nuance. I had to put it down as I couldn't stop cringing at the writing...

Now, Outer Wilds on the other hand...

Would highly recommend Kenshi, it is very different from Morrowind, very weird, and very janky, but completely unique in its setting and gameplay. I am eagerly awaiting the sequel, which is in development.