Trying to make real and good use of AI generative models are cracks in the magic.

On handling downloaded songs and offline playback, my personal (but informed) opinion is that there is:

• some licensing reasons for it to be more complicated than strictly necessary
• lack of interest of supporting an app feature that doesn’t drive numbers immediately up (sure, I agree that a better offline experience would improve the product and help user retention, but it isn’t easy/quick to measure its impact), and
• lack of ownership with many teams having to support a functionality (keep the app working offline) within all the various app features they own.

So, just as a dog with multiple owners, it goes neglected and starves.

I’d say that they’re “cooking the books” as in: making it look like they’re in better shape than they are by cutting costs, but causing irreparable damage to themselves that will manifest in the long run.

I’ve survived 3 layoffs at Spotify last year alone. Once I started working there It didn’t take long to be proud and feel happy about it. Now, although people still find it cool when I tell them and I still do the same job (no workload increase), I know it is just like any other greedy corpo and I feel compelled to care less and less.

https://c.im/@matdevdug/111828583287417134

I haven’t used it, but it is on my bookmarks for when Feedly stops working for me: https://github.com/FreshRSS/FreshRSS

“cheat”, “lie”, “cover up”… Assigning human behavior to Stochastic Parrots again, aren’t we Jimmy?

This is the best summary I could come up with:

When your phone becomes unusable and unrepairable, buy a Fairphone.

No fees when users choose to pay via Spotify (which had been the case and only option since the beginning, until User Choice Billing was implemented).

If users choose to pay with Google Play Billing, Google keeps 4%.

Even so, what I find hypocritical is that Spotify got this deal and seemingly agreed to keep it under wraps, without advocating for it to be extended to all other music streaming services in the platform.

Because… having a deal with the platform holder that gives it unfair advantage over the competition is exactly what they accuse Apple of doing with iOS.

Sauce: https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/20/23969690/google-spotify-android-billing-commission-secret-deal

Interesting… I have an OG Shield, also in the Netherlands, but have seen no ads (that being said, companies A/B test and do gradual rollout of this kind of BS).

But I also kept my Android Home in the version without ads by disabling Play Store updates and instead manually going over all apps (except Home!) every month or so (or when I have an issue with any app I use).

I feel confident that I’ll be able to hack my way around this new form of ads.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

For apps that don’t disallow regular backups (like WhatsApp does), Lineage OS and Calyx support Seedvault, which is a 1:1 alternative to Google Drive, except it saves the backup as an encrypted file.

sigh

For me, the most important bit was the basis of the claim that YouTube would be breaching privacy, and this is it (completely missing from the “summary”):

“AdBlock detection scripts are spyware — there is no other way to describe them and as such it is not acceptable to deploy them without consent,” Hanff tells The Verge. “I consider any deployment of technology which can be used to spy on my devices is both unethical and illegal in most situations.”