radley

I am not exactly sure what is the timing of this for. Why now?

It's simply a clever way to satisfy the current administration's ambitions. Nothing had to change, just the semantics.

Most streaming audio already share the same peak volume. The problem is compression. You can compress the hell out of audio, make it sound extremely loud, and it will still have the same peak volume as uncompressed audio.

those factors affect all the audio similarly... Output volumes can be calculated using standard curves... TV broadcasters have had to figure all this out years ago.

Sorry, but all of that is obtuse. The fact that some digital audio can be perceived as much louder than others –– yet it's all limited to the same digital range –– proves they aren't similar at all.

There is no such thing as a standard curve for compression. Source levels vary almost infinitely. Accurately separating and reducing sound after the fact, without turning the whole thing to mud, is considered to be an impossible technical challenge.

Next, TV broadcasters worked on a predetermined schedule with predetermined advertising. This gave them time to inspect and approve ads in advance.

Streaming ads are generally served just in time from third-party services to the streaming host. FFMPEG gets the output from the stream host, but the host has to combine content together from multiple sources (entertainment + multiple ad servers) into that single stream. Currently, sound-level is completely at the whim of each ad server, as well as each ad producer. Meanwhile, the final output is at the whim of the streaming host: 24-hour-news streaming sites probably have different audio standards than Apple TV+.

Ultimately, AI could potentially be used to solve it, since it can generate / make-up new sounds as part of reverse-compression. But it would still have to be done in advance by the third-party ad servers.

Smart ski googles have had this for a while.

When you click "I'm not a robot" it sends the following instructions:

To verify your request, follow the instructions below Use the keyboard in this order:

1 Press ⌘ Command HOLD + Space TAP 2 Press Terminal + Enter 3 Press ⌘ HOLD + V TAP 4 Press Enter TAP

Very curious how you avoid supporting multiple browsers. Apple, Google, and Microsoft each require users on their platforms to use their native browsers for secure connections.

And if your company has any web presence or apps, you usually can't cherry pick which browsers your customers can use. That means some portion of your company will need access to other browsers for QA purposes.

99% of security experts I know use ad blockers.

But if they all use Chrome, wouldn't those be really weak ad blockers?

My org (or rather, the org they pay to run their IT) blocked browser plugins with a security justification.

Same here, but only on Chrome. Firefox works fine.

You submit useful diffs in areas that having nothing to do with your team, but not at the cost of finishing your official tasks.

You write up what you learned in an interesting, useful and persuasive way.

Very curious (and appreciative) that some company cultures allow this. I haven't had such experience (although I work in a parallel role). It's usually just grinding out tickets.

Your source shows 1.36 billion people using the internet in 2007. In English, when we say "in the billions" it means more than a billion.

The tech and the implementation was awful, and all credit goes to people who still managed to shine through it.

Sorry, that's simply not true. The tech was ahead of its time. The implementation was intuitive. Only developers and Steve Jobs hated it, because Flash made it way too easy for anyone to make something fun.

The editor was a scripted timeline, similar to a video or animation timeline. It was fantastic for creatives, but counterintuitive for programmers, so most devs hated it.

No mobile OS could have run it solidly and without sucking batteries like no tomorrow.

By the time mobile could run Flash, it was too late. Between Apple & Adobe, it had no shot of making the transition. But before that, Flash was pretty amazing.

People hated flash. Even non techies.

Billions of people enjoyed using Flash for games, video, music, and animated entertainment.

It will, just not in the U.S. Probably in private resorts in Albania, Saudi Arabia, etc.

At the very least, this is needed for iPadOS and macOS, since both have resizable windows.

I'm currently working on a responsive app in Swift and had to develop my own responsive layout system. SwiftUI simply isn't up to the task, except for one very specific, generic layout.

I've heard it as "once you think you're 90% done, you're really halfway done."

Tangential: it's always made me wonder about teams that believe "80% effort" is optimal.

I learned about the Pacific Handy Cutter from my local grocer. It's cheap and excellent. It has a dull edge for 95% of tape cutting needs, and a safety guide for when you need to use the blade. Admittedly, it's not useful for slicing up / cutting down boxes.

This model is right handed, but they make a lefty too.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HXLNCMM

I live in California, cancelled about five years ago, and they forced me to talk to a person who demanded a reason for my cancellation, and then argued with me about wanting to cancel.

That was 5 years ago. California's "click-to-cancel" law was amended in 2024, effective July 1, 2025.

Re-licensing music is a two-fold challenge. Sometimes it's much more efficient to use substitute music, instead of negotiating for new rights.

First, licensing arrangements for "all marketing channels" only account for the channels that exist at the time. When a new market channel opens up, such as streaming, music labels will require new licensing terms for that channel. If they don't, they might not get paid. (TV & movie studios are just as ruthless as music labels).

Second, in turn, the labels often have to get new permission from artists for the new channel. Tracking down all artists can be a challenge and require resources that they can't recoup.

When can I download my movie onto my Linux laptop and play it through an HDMI cable?

Probably because the Linux market is too small to support an iTunes for Linux.

By my understanding, the Linux market prefers free, open source, community effort. So essentially the real question is: why aren't you making movies yourself and sharing them free with your Linux peers?

IF you tell your doc, they can adjust their interpretation of the test.

Edit: see comment below (i.e. better to stop taking creatine at least a week before a test).

Are you using a Studio Monitor? Lock screen videos are incompatible with Settings > Displays > Refresh rate > Adaptive. You have to use a fixed frame rate (60 or 120 Hz).

I'm pretty sure enshittification applies to other methods. Adding ads to smart devices after purchase is a very common example.

If you only need to manage online passwords, only use Firefox, and aren't using an iOS device, then it's probably fine. But most people may also need to use native apps, other browsers, and iOS devices.

A cafeteria worker in some suburban admin office likely has no inside information they are going to trade on.

Until they do...

Same game, different approaches:

Sometimes you just want to button-mash through, rushing about carefree.

Other times, you want to go entirely stealth, wandering around, trying to find the best path, wasting an hour or more on a level you could have button-mashed in 5 minutes.

Both are fine.

No. Please, no. For the love of everything no.

But it'll happen. ChatGPT for sure.

If you stood on the street corner and asked every passerby what they would change about their phone, I think you would be there all day before someone said "I wish I could replace the battery".

But what if you asked the right question, "what is the biggest problem with your phone?"

Most would answer, "the battery dies too soon. It doesn't last all day like it used to."

Or perhaps "to compel someone to act against their will or to break through resistance."

But knowing this administration, "an energy field created by all living things that surrounds, penetrates, and binds the galaxy together."