I am a small indie artist. I earn nearly no money from streaming services, but I do from Bandcamp, SoundCloud (though fuck Soundcloud, they also suck), actual LPs and CDs sold, etc.

If someone decides to listen to my music over Spotify, or really any streaming service, they are also “stealing” my music. Because I get no money from that, and listening to my music over those platforms strengthens their monopoly (this mostly applies to Spotify).

I need to publish my music on Spotify et al (fuck you discogs) for discoverability, because they have an evil fucking global monopoly, but the moment anyone finds my music there, I would ask them to listen to it elsewhere.

It will literally benefit me, and indie artist, more, if you bootleg my music instead of listening via streaming services, as this weakens their monopoly. Seriously.

I have a different job, I don’t need to live from my music right now, so the stakes are fairly low for me. But it still sucks to see streaming services ruin independent music like this. I would ask everyone to bootleg music, and then support artists like me through Bandcamp (especially CDs and LPs) and donations (or merch, though I don’t have any), if you appreciate the art.

I don’t expect anyone to immediately buy niche music they don’t know, so bootlegging until you become a fan seems reasonable to me. I’ve discovered many of my favorite albums like that, eventually buying LPs online and donating to the artist; that is far more beneficial to those artists than listening over any streaming service (including the slightly better tidal and Amazon music).

/rant over

Em dashes are considered informal, I have had several professors scold me for using them in academic writing. Like contractions.

I don’t know about breaking spaghetti, but putting them in a too small pot can ruin them. As my mother always used to say, “let the pasta swim! They must swim in the water!!” (Imagine in a strong Italian accent).

If you don’t have enough water the pasta doesn’t release enough starch (or something like that) and gets a bad flavor and texture, not mention not mixing well with a lot of sauces. Always use a bigger pot than you think you need with Italian food.

Edit: I was once at a German relative’s, and I kid you not, she had no pot of any kind. Nothing. So I ended up making spaghetti in a Teflon pan. Did not taste good.

But you’re supposed to cook everything five minutes too long, by which point everything will taste about equally over-done. Welcome to school-cafeteria training!

It was sooo bad 😭😭 not even faithful to the original, let alone even remotely entertaining.

I don’t think this is accurate. The majority of IRL gamers I know are casual people with crappy Minecraft-level pre-builts (hugely overpriced usually; I know someone who spent 1.1k on a 3060 Ti pre-built) or 10 year-old computers built by their neighbors. A lot of casual gamers exist and the steam machine will be very appealing to them as an easy upgrade.

In a way, you’re right. A lot of people will be upgrading potatoes. Or replacing thin air next to their TV’s.

Even I, with a custom built with a 7900 XT running openSUSE TW, am considering this for doing stuff in the living room (or similar, I live in a tiny apartment lol) with friends or just casual-TV gaming and media. I don’t have that right now, and even 900€ sounds appealing for doing that with a Linux-based computer (and gamescope!!!, which I can’t get working on my device) I have full control over, but know will work.

I don’t know of something equivalently priced, but it there is something, please tell me. I think they have a market here. I personally, at least, have been waiting years for something like this to recommend to friends and to an extent to myself.

Research and development is probably very high when you consider Proton, SteamOS, and the semi-custom CPU and GPU. Something between $50 to $100 million would be typical. Silicone is famously expensive in R&D, Proton has continuous costs (and has for quite a while now) that rack up, and SteamOS is literally an operating system. That’s a lot of salaries to pay.

I reckon they’re taking advantage of being private and playing the long game. Very, very long game. They’re not really in danger as long as Steam is successful, but I can’t blame them for wanting a decent gross margin so they can at least cover hardware costs. Especially with memory prices right now, I wouldn’t be surprised at 1000€ here in Germany, though I wouldn’t be happy about it. I would happily buy at 900€ (≈$1040), and be ecstatic at 800€ (≈$920).

You QWERTY people…

/jk

Colemak is great though

Lol, that is a great response. I must warn you though, Hail, Caesar! is not the Coen brothers best movie — well, that’s a high bar. But it does feature some communists politely kidnapping George Clooney and nearly even recruiting him!

When that’s possible, I prefer it. But my office unfortunately uses those stupid air dryers by Dyson. I petitioned TWICE to replace them, and failed both times… *sobs*

Is this somehow an allusion to Hail, Caesar! by the Coen brothers?

LOTR is MEANT to be slower, that’s one of the things that makes the books so good as well!! They take their time. I’m also weird though; one of my favorite movies is 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Pisses me off, especially considering that like 70% of men don’t wash their hands. I’ve become an expert in using my elbow.

Edit: pisses off → pisses me off

I did the tidal ABX test, which I prefer since it’s comparing FLAC, and the difference is almost negligible. I do hear a slight difference >15k, and I can only year up to 18.5k, but on most tracks it’s not noticeable. Also slightly worse transients, but again, only noticable on a few tracks. I also can only hear any of this on HD600s with very, very high volume, which is not how I usually listen to music. I really like this test :)

Lossless is still nice to have though, mostly because I can then rip FLAC files to do good remasters, which is why I happily use tidal (also for a number of other reasons).

Omg for real, we could have the world leading solar industry right now, but Merkel said no…

I can’t believe Habeck didn’t make it, he was the most sympathetic and intelligent candidate we’ve had in the last 15 years. The irony is he had, by far, the best economic plan as well. And somehow we ended up with Merz instead 🤦.

Habeck and his wife translated Ted Hughes for God’s sake! What missed opportunity for Germany.

This ^^^^

They do it for cars on highways, why not for cyclists?

Material only really matters on inclination and for acceleration. The more important part is aerodynamics, but even then we’re not talking more than a few watts. A good hybrid, maybe around 700€, is more than good enough for an amateur level today. Something with Shimano 105, if you can find it, but that’s more about longevity.

When I was in highschool I cycled to school on a 100€ bike every day and when I eventually got a speedometer, I realized I was going about 35 km/h. I was a little crazy though, I would arrive at school late and drenched in sweat almost every day…

If you cycle as a sport it is pretty much the minimum speed. You can easily reach a consistent 40 or 45 km/h in a sprint as well. But this is all on a road bike of course, which makes it considerably easier.

I’m pretty sure I’ve actually said that…

I listen to a lot of basic news stuff like Rachel Maddow and Chris Hayes, not because those are particularly good, but just to feed my addiction to news…

One podcast I genuinely enjoy and find hilarious though, is If Books Could Kill with Michael and Peter. Sometimes I disagree with their takes, but I always find them hilarious. Website: https://www.ifbookspod.com/. 100% recommend :)