disposition2

They still have it, and just sent it out

I commend Tidal for at least trying.

I wish Youtube Music would offer some relief from the flood of AI music on their platform. My frustrations with YTM are exacerbated by the fact that it has the absolute minimum in functionality when it comes to browsing or searching.

I don't understand the user hostile nature of so many services these days when it comes to content discovery. We all know the data is there, but making it available for the user to actually browse or god forbid a modicum of search filters is like some forbidden fruit.

You could also easily opt out with the single entity that shipped that information.

Maybe many moons ago, when newspapers had an abundance of reporters, and relatively low crime / competing issues otherwise?

But I'm not sure I can recall, even in a local paper or a local TV news broadcast, seeing articles / segments about a random individual having their car broken in to or being robbed.

Edit: I take that back, I have seen reports of robberies (specifically armed robberies) in local news, but not so much car break ins.

At the same time I see young people frustrated when their cars get broken into or when they get robbed and criminals are not held accountable. My take on this is that legacy media refuses to address these issues or plays them down and at the same time they amplify concerns about AI probably because AI is supplanting the reach and their rhetoric and reducing their ad share.

Maybe it’s just the legacy media I consume, but petty crime is rarely if ever reported (television, newspaper, radio, etc) in my experience.

And I’m not sure how you would expect media institutions to address petty crime. I guess they could ask local leaders and local law enforcement about it.?

Users like the author

He’s a pretty interesting fella, I imagine his work influenced a lot of people over the years

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

shouldn't have to leak my residential address to private businesses to register to vote

If the 'SAVE America Act' passes, you're going to be open to leaking a heck of a lot more than that, and it'll all go in to a national database.

This wasn’t my experience, if anything, they often didn’t have stock in the store and told us to go online to buy the item.

And 800+ stores doesn’t seem like over saturation, it looks like there are more BestBuy and Hobby Lobby stores than that and they both sell stuff that most folks would feel equally comfortable buying online. Where, as you rightly stated, buying fabric online is a non starter for most folks.

My experience was similar to the author, bare shelves and 1 or 2 folks around to help customers…it honestly felt more like purposeful neglect on the part of the owners.

Probably an unpopular opinion on this forum where everyone is considering can something be done vs should something be done, but it sounds like theft to me.

But I am also very anti-AI in the artistic space, because if it weren’t for humans freely providing so much artistic content, we wouldn’t have this outcome. And I believe the only end result will be less humans openly sharing knowledge, because some heavily money backed entities will just steal all the art and put it behind a paywall or advertisement.

As much as I appreciate the easy search (because actual useful search has become nonexistent since AI) and the ability to ask AI to find some metadata from a large data payload, I also dislike AI, because it has effectively broken the open internet and the willingness for humans to be open to freely sharing knowledge.

Something I’ve noticed about technology companies, and it’s bled into just about every facet of the US these days, is the consideration of if an action *can* be executed upon vs *should* an action be executed upon.

It’s very unfortunate and a short sighted way to operate.

I’m not saying it is historically accurate, but I would encourage anyone who didn’t experience interactions with law enforcement pre-9/11 (in the US) to watch early seasons of Law & Order.

It is pretty informative, even in the dramatic context of the show, to see police interactions and the respect for / erosion of individual rights when you view the seasons before 9/11/2001 and after 9/11/2001.

I think maybe OP was using the traditional definition of the word, and hopefully not trying to imply we have Treblinka’s across the US.

But there is some cause for concern regarding the detention centers and the lack of oversight.

For example, even Congress members have to provide 7 days of notice if they wish to visit a center [1]. So, the only real oversight is from the executive. And these centers are often ran by private companies somewhat notorious for bad conditions and lawsuits related to bad conditions / civil rights violations.

Here’s a story about where we’re holding families and children:

https://www.mprnews.org/episode/2026/01/27/inside-the-dilley...

1. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ice-facilities-homeland-securit...

For Windows & Mac, you can do foobar2000.

For MacOS, you can use Vox, https://vox.rocks/mac-music-player

I personally use MPD (or something like moodeAudio), and then use clients to listen on various platforms.

Any time I see an article about music streaming, I pour one out for Rdio.

It had all the benefits of streaming and the properties that one would expect from library ownership. When I compare the 'features' offered by all the streaming services (I've encountered thus far), things have regressed drastically.

A few of the benefits I recall (from memory) that Rdio had:

- when setting a radio station and when you 'downvoted' an artist or a song, it only effected that particular station. So, if you wanted a 70's metal radio station, downvoting Metallica wouldn't affect your general 'metal' radio station or your 80s Metal Radio station.

- You could search by numerous parameters, including Label. So if you were looking for classical albums by Deutsche Grammophon, you could actually find those albums or songs.

These are just a couple of things I can recall from memory. I think it's also important to point out (this is based on memory and vibes), that the Rdio algorithm actually respected the user's wishes and didn't try to force things you might not want. Said algorithm was bought by Pandora (IIRC) and based on my experience with Pandora (and past experience with Rdio)...Pandora seems to have thrown it in the trash.

Compare all of these awesome UX experiences vs YouTube Music...where you can't even filter out AI trash from New Releases.

Suffice to say, Rdio was the crest of the wave for music streaming / discovery and everything since has been a regression. But you do get a bit more control if you go down the path of owning your library.

Not sure if you missed it in the article, but the author acknowledges buying from Bandcamp in the article

Buy music on Bandcamp or download it from Soundcloud, stick it in the Music app, and you're off!

The GOP being mum about the razing (with zero outside review) of a building built during the administration of Teddy Roosevelt…to build a ballroom that only one man wishes for…is probably one of the more apropos events regarding our current affairs.

Just want to point out this is someone (in leadership) from the FDA, not the FCC.

Prasad, a former hematologist-oncologist at the University of California San Francisco, is now *head of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER), which makes him the chief vaccine regulator in the US.*

This will probably be a unpopular, wet blanket opinion...

But anytime I hear of Grok or xAI, the only thing I can think about is how it's hoovering up water from the Memphis municipal water supply and running natural gas turbines to power all for a chat bot.

Looks like they are bringing even more natural gas turbines online...great!

https://netswire.usatoday.com/story/money/business/developme...

Thanks and apologies, I searched for the article link prior to posting but didn’t look for articles from other sources and didn’t see anything in the first few pages on the site

The actual complaint (PDF)

https://whistleblower.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/08-26-2...

From the article (emphasis is mine):

According to Borges' complaint, on June 10, days after the Supreme Court ruling, a former DOGE employee at the SSA named John Solly requested that the agency make a copy of its Numerical Identification System (NUMIDENT) database to a private cloud that would be located within the SSA's Amazon Web Services — Agency Cloud Infrastructure.

*The NUMIDENT database is the master file for all information submitted in applications for Social Security cards. The database includes applicant names, place and date of birth, citizenship, race and ethnicity, and parents' names — along with the Social Security numbers.*

I can see the value in actual AI. But it seems like in many instances how it is being utilized or applied is more related to terrible search functionality. Even for the web, it seems like we’re using AI to provide more refined search results, rather than just fixing search capabilities.

Maybe it’s just easier to throw ‘AI’ (heavy compute of data) at a search problem, rather than addressing the crux of the problem…people not being provided with the tools to query information. And maybe that’s the answer but it seems like an expensive solution.

That said, I’m not an expert and could be completely off base.

I’ll be curious to see if they ever provide a reason for the reduced functionality. From an outsider’s prospective, it seems like they just want to make it harder for citizens to be able to comment

Or based off of this comment, maybe they are just looking to limit API usage and ensure only that only institutions that align with the current administration’s wishes (i.e. Heritage Foundation) have API access.

As of Friday, the POST method will no longer be allowed for all users *with the exception of approved use cases by federal agencies*

If the motivation is the latter, I wonder if there would be any legal recourse for other institutions that have had previous access revoked?

It’s a bit frustrating how difficult (near impossible) it can be to not buy plastic products. I try to avoid it as much as possible but more often than not, the only option (other than not being a consumer) is to purchase a product contained in plastic.

I’ll use the simple example of dental floss. When I was younger, you could purchase dental floss in a small circular metal container. Today, almost every option of dental floss available for purchase is in an often oversized / non-recyclable plastic container with non-recyclable plastic packaging.

This actually prompted me to once again go on the hunt for that little metal container of dental floss from my youth, and I actually found an option! A US company called Poh sells dental floss in metal container. Just thought I’d share, for anyone else that is dumbfounded when they have to buy more plastic wrapped plastic products to practice good dental hygiene.

Based on the text of the legislation passed by the Senate, it looks like the ~$1 billion was for 2026 & 2027 fiscal years.

(20) (A) Amounts made available for “Corporation for Public Broadcasting” for fiscal year 2026 by Public Law 118–47 are rescinded.

(B) Amounts made available for “Corporation for Public Broadcasting” for fiscal year 2027 by Public Law 119–4 are rescinded.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/4/te...

Maybe it’ll help the folks that are probably at higher risk of cancer due to the natural gas turbines powering the AI facility in Memphis.

- https://apnews.com/article/memphis-xai-elon-musk-pollution-n...

- https://tennesseelookout.com/2025/07/07/a-billionaire-an-ai-... (this is an opinion article but also has some useful context)

Noem is the head of DHS.

The (acting) head of FEMA, David Richardson [1], hasn’t visited the disaster area and apparently hasn’t made any public appearances for months [2].

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Richardson_(government_o...

2. https://www.politico.com/news/2025/07/10/fema-leader-texas-f...

On a purely topical level, it was also neat to revisit the last three decades of news and politics and pop culture more or less in reverse.

It’s a fictional drama but it’s really interesting to watch ‘Law & Order’ episodes from the 90s and throughout the years.

You can kind of witness the erosion of civil liberties over the seasons and as someone who experienced it in real life, it’s pretty wild to see (at least in a fictional universe) how the police state (this is probably a misnomer, but I fail to find the proper wording in this moment) is enabled to supersede civil liberties in the interests of ‘security’ and law enforcement.

Worse than unaddressed, purposely preventing data collection / publication that would allow us to better assess the effects of climate change.

In alignment with evolving priorities, statutory mandates, and staffing changes, NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) will no longer be updating the Billion Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters product.

https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/billions/

Thanks for sharing, I’ve always enjoyed the Smithsonian magazine and its articles, hope to visit some day.

I’m hoping all the RIFs, reductions / eradication of IMLS, etc. don’t reduce the gains in & sharing of knowledge from these institutions, but if I am being honest it kind of feels like it’s purposeful destruction.

So I’ll enjoy it while we have it.

Fair point, I haven’t had either experience in a very long time but I recall having a more empathetic and eye opening experience long ago.

To your point, maybe it’s a good argument to not have billionaires that are seemingly ignorant of the normality we normals face on a day to day basis, be an influence on policy that they lack the ability to fully contemplate.

Such individuals might just consider policy based on data points that aren’t reflective of how their policy changes might affect everyday folks.