exciting new innovations in software engineering, they've managed to come up with something worse than 'just paste this random curl command into your terminal'
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Fun fact: this blog was supposed to be some kind of educational vent where I could post about technologies people interact with in an accessible way. Wonder where the energy for that went (the void where all ADHD ideas go)
modem only receives internet and allows access to it via cable, router is specifically a thing that allows wi-fi (wireless) connection. Most routers use modems that connect to them specifically, and then distribute the internet to everything else.
-sincirely, (partially) a woman who got a job at an ISP
How did we end up in a world where Tumblr is the only site that's figured out that nav menus on the side of the screen are better than the top? Desktop screens are wide. Even before they were wide, the default was to put them on the left, then they got stuck to the top for inexplicable reasons
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I want to write a bit about Discord, because I think for a lot of people, it's a very personal platform and for a long, long time it felt like a safe and comfortable place for friends and communities. At least, that's what it's been for me and I've felt myself lose a certain fondness I've had for it over the last year.
10 years ago, I made a Discord account. It was new, it was cool, and it felt so much nicer to use than Teamspeak or Mumble. It wasn't Skype and it came about at a point of my life where my friends weren't all living in the same city anymore. It was a genuinely good way to connect, share memes, and play games together.
It's just software, but it was software that felt like it connected me to the people I cared about in a way that was friendly. It wasn't algorithmically driven social media, no one had to host a server somewhere or pay for someone else to do it. It was an IM client with a voice channel that didn't feel like its codebase predated Windows XP. In 2017, we got video chat. In 2019, we could stream our games to friends. These were such meaningful improvements to a piece of software that didn't seem to have any competition. It's not like it was perfect, the app was buggy sometimes, mobile features moved slower, but it felt like there was a dedicated development team who were really set on serving the niche they built Discord for. It felt like it was made by people.
Discord kept me in touch with friends throughout university, let us share experiences and I met new people that have become long-lasting friends on their own. Hell, when I got tired of chasing down which Facebook chat was active for homework discussion, Discord was where I built the community that breathed new life into a dying university club. I have history here, I built things that I'm proud of, even if they were never mine under the ToS of the service I was using.
At the end of the day, Discord is just another venture capital project that's finally losing its runway. It's clear they've been desperately trying to monetize the platform over the last couple years. A cosmetic store, gamified advertising, sponsored "quests", honestly I'm shocked I haven't seen a battlepass yet. It stinks of the "look at our revenue streams" diversification that can only come from a company looking to inflate its opening stock value. I'll harp on the ID verification stuff later, but it's really just one of many things that's led me to feel so disappointed.
I'm going to also put down a short list of alternatives here, their goals and development philosophy. Might help you pick out something if you're also looking. I haven't seen a really nice list yet, and I'll probably do a deep dive at some point, because I've spent the last year or so slowly picking up alternative options to keep in my pocket. But atm, this is what I've got:
Steam - Familiar but closed ecosystem
Has an excellent voice chat, but lacks native noise cancellation
Can be brute-forced into a circa 2017 discord clone if you pin group chats to your friends list
Supports text and voice channels, with stickers/gifs
Your friends are all probably here already if you're into PC gaming
Stoat - Fledgling features, but community driven
Has voice and text chat
Can be self-hosted, or hosted on a rented server
A bright future if there's consistent support for the devs
Matrix/Element - Mature, decentralized system for online communication
Supports voice, text and video with screensharing
Encrypted chats by default
Multiple different clients that support Matrix, but generally Element is the fullest featured one
Probably the most direct feature-by-feature alternative, but it has some hurdles in terms of onboarding friendliness
I'd recommend giving all three a try and seeing what you are/aren't willing to compromise on. There's no denying Discord still offers a compelling service for the majority of individuals. It's just been too well funded and too well integrated for so long not to.
I want to write a bit about Discord, because I think for a lot of people, it's a very personal platform and for a long, long time it felt like a safe and comfortable place for friends and communities. At least, that's what it's been for me and I've felt myself lose a certain fondness I've had for it over the last year.
10 years ago, I made a Discord account. It was new, it was cool, and it felt so much nicer to use than Teamspeak or Mumble. It wasn't Skype and it came about at a point of my life where my friends weren't all living in the same city anymore. It was a genuinely good way to connect, share memes, and play games together.
It's just software, but it was software that felt like it connected me to the people I cared about in a way that was friendly. It wasn't algorithmically driven social media, no one had to host a server somewhere or pay for someone else to do it. It was an IM client with a voice channel that didn't feel like its codebase predated Windows XP. In 2017, we got video chat. In 2019, we could stream our games to friends. These were such meaningful improvements to a piece of software that didn't seem to have any competition. It's not like it was perfect, the app was buggy sometimes, mobile features moved slower, but it felt like there was a dedicated development team who were really set on serving the niche they built Discord for. It felt like it was made by people.
Discord kept me in touch with friends throughout university, let us share experiences and I met new people that have become long-lasting friends on their own. Hell, when I got tired of chasing down which Facebook chat was active for homework discussion, Discord was where I built the community that breathed new life into a dying university club. I have history here, I built things that I'm proud of, even if they were never mine under the ToS of the service I was using.
At the end of the day, Discord is just another venture capital project that's finally losing its runway. It's clear they've been desperately trying to monetize the platform over the last couple years. A cosmetic store, gamified advertising, sponsored "quests", honestly I'm shocked I haven't seen a battlepass yet. It stinks of the "look at our revenue streams" diversification that can only come from a company looking to inflate its opening stock value. I'll harp on the ID verification stuff later, but it's really just one of many things that's led me to feel so disappointed.
I'm tired.
I'm tired of buying things, I'm tired of going to stores and looking at shirts and shoes and tech and gadgets. I'm tired of services sold to me by subscription. I'm tired of the rabbit holes; of reviews and articles of buzzwords and nitpicks, of pros and cons when all I need is a mop for my floor. I'm tired of breaking, replacing or throwing away.
I'm tired of Patreon, of Kickstarter and Indiegogo. I'm tired of seeing a dollar sign next to every minor source of entertainment ever made by another person. I'm tired of every hobby sold as a side hustle and I'm tired of feeling like there's no value to my work and my interests unless they contribute to my financial wellbeing.
I want to collaborate, I want to listen and learn. I want access to resources that take time to engage with and I want so desperately to have the time to participate. I'm tired of the way every screen, every poster, every notification and email begs for my time and my attention and takes away from what little I have to give.
I'm tired of AI, of corporate greed, and of social injustice. I'm tired of solutions to problems that don't exist. I'm tired of the way that those with wealth and power seek to squeeze every last drop of energy from the individual to fund services only they get to use.
I'm tired of the reporting and the news and the images and the videos. Surreal has become real and I don't know how to cope because I don't know what to trust. No one is perfect but most people are good, but the bad ones are loud and I'm tired of the noise.
I want to trust that people in charge are responsible, accountable and capable. I want them to be supported by their communities, and in return for them to serve those communities wholly and healthily. I want those who serve only themselves to be punished accordingly.
I want to be excited again for gadgets and gizmos. I want to connect and uplift people through technology, through literacy, and I want the things that I love to be a positive influence for others. But I'm tired, and I can't find the energy to focus on the good within the bad. I'm tired and I can't find anywhere to rest.
I hate how I can remember a billion different nuanced things about networking, programming and the specs of probably any computer I've helped someone build but a conversation I had a week ago may as well never have happened no matter how much I wanted to remember it in the moment.
One of the things that will keep me using Linux forever is that it is the only advanced technology that I feel like I have any real control over and ownership of.
Everything else feels like a subscription service with layers of license keys and TOS, privacy policies, and other various ways to eliminate ownership and control.
Sure, some GPL software is less polished and intuitive, but at least I don't have to worry if I'm even allowed to use it.
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Back in first year of university, I was looking for any kind of distraction from my major and quickly gravitated towards looking for something musical in background. All the courses that actually involved an instrument were locked out unless you belonged to the program, so I ended up picking the "History of Rock and Roll" course. It wasn't really what I was hoping for, but it was pretty divorced from my maths and programming courses so I went for it.
Straight up one of the best courses I've ever taken. I went in expecting a bird course for music students and instead I found a new love for the anthropology and history of rock, rap and underground production during the mid-1900s.
Learning more about how soul, jazz and proto-rap formed a deep influence within the music industry as it plowed into the 50s and 60s was fascinating and I still think about it often. A lot of this led to underground productions that would continue to define music for decades to come, but by far the most interesting element is the gentrification and appropriation of black music for white audiences.
I'm not an expert on this subject, and don't intend to try and sound like any kind of authority. I'm just some white guy who's spent their whole life trying to be less ignorant. The subject matter just struck me and I still think about it often, most recently when I thought to look at the background for some commonly used samples in popular music like James Brown's "Funky Drummer" and the ever-classic "Amen Break".
The textbook for this course still sits on my shelf, and I occasionally revisit it. Also look at the artwork on this thing:
I'd totally encourage anyone who's interested to read it. I'll update this post later with a source for anyone who can't find a copy. The whole book is full of colour and explores so much of the genre's rich history in a remarkably accessible format.
The PSP Go was several years too early. Rad design that looks way sleeker than the DS Lite and DSi, but without the UMDs it was tough to justify. Sony was still riding their Memory Stick Duo and the thing only supported a wireless standard that was a decade old and 5 times slower than what was common at the time. It also had the usb port replaced.
It probably has more value now as a portable handheld emulator than it did as a PSP. That said, I think the Vita or an Xperia Play might be a better option for that too.
I wish I didn't feel so disillusioned with the tech industry. I grew up in this rapidly developing world of personal computing and have watched things go from fun to sour as creative innovation became innovation to kill creativity. I love computers, I love software and programming. I love the sciences and theory. But while I was chasing that interest in school I found myself subjected to the types of people who did not share that love and instead only saw the value in startup culture, crypto and AI. In the 6-7 years of my time in and out of post-secondary education I watched things go from "We could make a really powerful web platform with a user accessible API" to "What if crypto" to "What if machine learning but instead of medical science we apply it to the humanities?" Because if it isn't marketable then it isn't worth it.
I love how this looks but I get the distinct impression it felt terrible to use.
To its credit, this thing is almost palm sized, so you could probably 2-hand the keyboard effectively qnd support the back when tapping with the stylus, but it still seems like it's more form than function.
I am pretty in love with that UI though, and the reversible camera is amazing. I think I might need one of these.
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The objective of this post has changed a bit since I posted Part 1 about 2 months ago. While I was originally concerned with the moral/ethical issues that plague Spotify, moving away from it has proven a more difficult task than anticipated.
Previously, I went over why Spotify has taken a turn for the worse, and how streaming/digital music royalties work. These posts were a part of a longer task of actually moving my roughly 6000 track library of saved music away from Spotify and to another platform that better aligned with practices that reward artists for their work and aim to connect them with listeners. This time, I want to talk a bit about what alternatives exist and what sets them apart.
Fair warning, this is going to feel a bit like reading that giant blurb about the baker's struggles with childhood trauma before you actually get to a recipe. But, I'm hoping that my experiences might help someone else make a decision as well.
First, I need to acknowledge that for all of Spotify's flaws, I cannot deny that they are still the best in the space for accessibility. You can publish on Spotify from anywhere, with almost no barrier to entry, and anyone can listen without paying a thing from any platform they choose. I think this strength, though eroding, is still present and the overall experience still makes for strong competition against others.
This has become especially apparent even when using services from members of the industry that have held a firm grasp on digital music sales/streaming for about as long as it's been possible. But, let's get on with the alternatives that exist and their general strengths.
This is a short-list. You can refer to Wikipedia if you want to get overwhelmed. I'm also focused on English-first services because that's what's relevant to me. These services may not be suitable for content published in countries outside of Canada/USA.
How to Choose
In order to qualify for consideration I had some basic criteria:
Pays artists a fair wage per thousand streams (I consider $10 USD the minimum for this)
Accessible between devices and platforms
Minimal use of AI (AI is not a replacement for curated recommendation algorithms)
Ease of migration (Provides a tool or third-party service to import Spotify library)
These requirements may not seem like much but the first two really narrow down the search. I also had some nice-to-haves such as:
Lossless/HQ Audio
Lyrics
Qualifying Options
That more or less left me with the following options:
Apple Music
Qobuz
Tidal
Oh...well that's not much is it. Hm. And what's a Qobuz?? We'll come back to that. Technically Amazon music also qualified for the list too, as it barely breaks the $/stream threshold but I have plenty of other moral qualms with Amazon to want to pay them for...anything really. Especially not a service I plan to use long-term.
Apple Music
Easily the biggest competitor, it feels natural that Apple would have a robust streaming platform with a massive library. They're responsible for the mass demand for MP3 players and in the wake of Napster's demise they capitalized on the demand for easy access to digital music through iTunes. So why in the hell does Apple Music suck so fucking bad?
On paper this service should be excellent. I'm actually using it right now, listening to Madde's "Non-Photo Blue" while I write this. It's got:
A massive library
Well received tools for transferring playlists
Integrates with existing iTunes media
Has similar discovery tools
Supports lossless playback
Synced lyrics
But right away I learned only iOS users get the privilege of easily migrating their music. An app called "Playlisty" is available for a one-time $4 purchase. To the app's credit, it does a great job and there were only about 300 songs that didn't make it over. Unfortunately this app isn't available for Android, nor as a web-based service. It almost certainly could be, but if the devs asked themselves "Who would bother if they're not already an Apple user?", they were probably right to do so.
The Android app is decent, but the web player is abysmal. The native app for Windows sucks, so you pretty much have to use iTunes, except be sure to uninstall Apple Music or Apple TV first otherwise you're not going to be able to use the music features of iTunes. Why? Because Apple says so. Even then, you need to make sure iTunes is set to "Direct Sound" for its output otherwise any kind of lossless playback skips like a DiscMan out for a jog.
With that out of the way, I still have my problem of Linux playback. I'm only able to use the web version of Apple Music here, and Apple hasn't put any time into making lossless audio work, so one of its strongest features falls off a cliff. The web app also lags like hell on first play, and none of the available applications support casting. As a bonus, there's no synced playback, so you're not going to be able to pause from your phone if you have something playing on a computer or TV that isn't a Mac or AirPlay enabled. Spotify put a lot of time into making things seamless in a way that feels like it should be Apple's bread and butter but instead they've taken the 8 years of development time Apple Music has had to improve and not thought to address this.
Did I mention the Apple Music app for my TV also isn't available in Canada but I had to go through the trouble of downloading it and signing in twice before it wanted to tell me that? What an absolute mess. AirPlay works fine though.
Okay, so maybe Apple Music isn't for me.
Qobuz
Pronounced "Ko-buzz", this is a French streaming app you probably haven't heard of. It's also a pretty massive music store offering DRM-free, lossless quality music through what feels like nearly every label under the sun. Their library might not be as big, but they're certainly a compelling option if it works even slightly better than Apple Music.
Qobuz has a few selling points:
Averages $18 per 1000 streams
Uses Soundiiz to facilitate the transfer of playlists for free
Lossless audio works in-browser
Easy to access "Buy" option next to every album/track
Request system for missing music
No lyrics
Immediately, there are some downsides. Soundiiz only caught about 4/5 of my music library. On the upside, they provide an export of the whole transfer and you can pretty easily figure out what didn't match. It also got a bit confused about some tracks and seems to have substituted in tracks I never had saved. This hasn't been a major issue though.
Qobuz playback is snappy, it sounds good and there's no reliance on an app to handle DRM. Similar to Apple Music though, there's no real way to cast to my TV without an iOS device to provide AirPlay options, as Roku doesn't support Google Cast. It also doesn't support synced playback between the web player and local devices, but it does seem to know when you're using it on another device so I have to think that's in the pipeline. For now though, unless you're casting, there's no way to pause from another device.
I will say that Qobuz at least feels like the people developing are people who love music, and want to share it with others. This platform doesn't have a free tier, it's entirely driven by subscriptions and as a result maybe there just isn't that same kind of monetization culture that relies on ads. It also features some more unique features like the ability to explore entire catalogues from labels, solving a long-standing issue I've had with Spotify and trying to listen to Monstercat releases.
Overall, this has been a pretty pleasant experience and has had the least friction. Things I can and can't do are clearly communicated, and the open ability to report music that isn't available is something I'll certainly exercise. There is a lack of discovery tools outside of basic "Here's songs for people who have never heard music before" type exploration playlists.
Tidal
Tidal's an odd one. It's been around for more than a decade, but has seen some pretty slow growth. Originally an "Audiophile" grade streaming service, it was a small library and far more expensive, facing scrutiny for some rocky decisions. Now, prices have come down and they seem to be leveraging label partnerships to market to DJs and pop-heads.
I actually had some help from a friend for this one. I had more or less already ruled this one out for myself since it couldn't capture even half of my music library, but Tidal's always generally had a greater focus on pop/r&b, which aren't my typical listening categories. The following is his experience.
Tidal's selling points:
HiRes/FLAC audio (Lossless)
Average $12 per 1000 streams
Partnered with TuneMyMusic for playlist transfer
And that's about it.
My friend's library is about 1200 songs, most fitting into the library of music Tidal offers, so there weren't many missed tracks. There was some fiddling about, because apparently TuneMyMusic does also like to add duplicates when it's unsure about song versions. It may also add entire albums if the song name matches an album name. A clean and re-import did seem to fix this though. Overall, it seems like a similar experience to Qobuz, with lossless available in app or browser.
TL;DR: I think I've settled on Qobuz. While it missed a good chunk of my library, it'd be hard to match everything. A lot of it was also content self-published, or isn't available regionally anymore either. Sometimes it is Spotify exclusive, but it's usually available on Bandcamp too if I was interested in buying it. It has enough features and is broadly compatible enough with all the things I use. My TV is the only shortfall, but I was due to get a receiver for that anyways.
you ever suddenly start going insane about some completely innocuous shit
ok so these little radial loading animations right. you know these
theyre called throbbers or whatever. it sounds like some penis shit but thats besides the point. its charming right? each blip on it lights up in order so it gives the appearance of a shape going around. its fun! it gets the feeling of loading across in a fun way
but NOWADAYS people keep using THESE ones
sorry its not perfectly looping i stole this from mtg arena cause thats the one that got me so annoyed. but like you see the difference right. theres no individual notches lighting up in sequence to make a cool effect. its just a png that they set to rotate and thats it. and that SUCKS right? its trying to capture the same feeling but in a lazy and way less charming way. its dumb. look at it. no swag at all. yall get me????? i cant be the only one annoyed by this trend
yousharknotpass
prguitarman
izzy806
theartofmadeline
snowghoul
titsay
vaporwave
discoholicmusic
areudirty
ellievsbear
