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“In April 2024, Spotify implemented a new scheme: songs with less than 1k streams per year would no longer receive royalties.

The data for 2025 was just released via Luminate, and 88% of songs have been demonetized.

Read it again: 88% of songs on Spotify have been demonetized.”

musically.com/2026/01/15/5-1tn…


5.1tn annual music streams… but 120.5m tracks had 10 or fewer

Music-biz number-cruncher Luminate has published its year-end report for 2025, with plenty of stats for the industry to chew over.
Stuart Dredge (Music Ally)

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An accidentally discovered workaround that probably shouldn't even be mentioned as an actual one but got me through an hour-long webinar recording today: when an ad comes up on Youtube and your video is a part of a playlist, navigating to the next video skips it and loads the next one. As a result, if you skip to the next video when it's time to skip the ad and then return back to your video, the playback resumes. This obviously works also with remote controls on headphones.

Peter Vágner reshared this.

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The future of software development is Gemini adding and removing the "status/needs-triage" tag from an issue on GitHub 5,000 times.

Gemini is made by Google, a company once famous for incredibly high quality software engineering.

github.com/google-gemini/gemin…


allow exit and quit commands without leading slash (/)

What would you like to be added? This is feature request - someone can point it as bug as well but I will not. Ask / Request 👉🏽 Implement exit and quit as standard commands with a simple confirmati...
pm-bhatt (GitHub)

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#Chromium embedders: imagine full extensions support, on your lightweight //content-only product. No more complex rebasings or //chrome hacks! Just clean APIs without chrome::Profile. Shin, from @igalia , has been working on this.

From an #Android prototype to a demo in the @WolvicXR browser, landing upstream in //extensions. A path to real extensions on TVs, cars, and custom #browsers. Read more in her new blog post! ✍ blogs.igalia.com/mshin/2026/01…

Our Journey to support Extensions for embedders – Shin’s blog

blogs.igalia.com
#android #chromium #browsers @Igalia @Wolvic
in reply to André Polykanine

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Adam MacLeod

Yeah, escalators cause me trepidation too. I mean, I am fully capable of using them safely, but I always, every single time, hesitate for at least one second while I really consider, before stepping on one. The moving mechanisms are simply too close to the passengers to provide enough reasonable barrier between safety and danger. Elevators are certainly safer modes of inter-floor transport, as the passenger car is fully separated from any mechanism. That is not to say that elevators do not fail either, but I would tend to think they have a less tarnished safety record than escalators on the whole.

mastodon - Link to source

God bless people who do stuff like getting in touch with the US patent office and putting the source code for the 1998 furby on archive.org

archive.org/details/furby-sour…


Furby 1998 source code : David Hampton, Wayne Schulz : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

The source code of the firmware used in the 1998 Furby.The patent wrapper containing it was obtained and scanned by Sean Riddle (seanriddle.com).
Internet Archive

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some of these graphs are truly helpful to us, some of them I think show "interesting stuff" that we can extract from an old well maintained source code written in C even though that data might not really help us.

Then there is a subset of graphs that are mostly silly and they are there simply because I'm obsessed with graphs.

Just 6 graphs left to the big 100. Isn't that what all projects aim for?

Updated daily here:
curl.se/dashboard.html

curl - Project status dashboard

curl.se
This entry was edited (1 day ago)

mastodon - Link to source

Oh goody, a LinkedIn connection request with a message!

Let’s break this down:

> …vc backed…
Focused on quarterly profits / RoI instead of outcomes.

> …invite-only…
NDAs and other gag agreements.

> …openAI browser…
Chromium that begs authors for ARIA to parse content.

> …seeing promising results…
Which aren’t genuine results.

> …goal is 100% WCAG testing…
Ah, snake oil.

> …with high capture rates.
Sales targets, not WCAG coverage.

#accessibility #a11y #WCAG

Hey Adrian, We're a new vc backed accessibility company automating the testing process using invite-only openAI browser technology, and are seeing promising results. Our goal is 100% WCAG testing with high capture rates. Would love to tell you more if this sounds interesting!
#a11y #Accessibility #wcag
in reply to Adrian Roselli, pH0

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Adrian Roselli, pH0

They responded. So I responded:

Because WCAG cannot be automated to 100%:
karlgroves.com/web-accessibili…

Automated tools have demonstrated that for years:
adrianroselli.com/2023/01/comp…

Every time someone claims higher, it's been a lie:
adrianroselli.com/2025/03/be-w…

Or otherwise based on bad math:
adrianroselli.com/2022/07/what…

Another vendor was fined by the FTC for claiming full coverage:
adrianroselli.com/2025/01/ftc-…

[…]

Hey Adrian - sorry if it came off aggressive. I'm not vc backed to make profits, it just lets me bring the technology to the world quicker - I am not going for sales targets, but genuine wcag coverage + usability testing. I'm particularly interested as to your thoughts why 100% wcag testing would be snake oil? Why do you think its not possible? Keen to get your perspective.

Web Accessibility Testing: What Can be Tested and How - Karl Groves

The Short Version Read this if you’re disinclined to read the entire list of specific WCAG Success Criterion and look at how each can be tested.
Karl Groves (karlgroves.com)

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I made a custom Firefox icon you can actually use as the app icon now! Also I did a little interview with the folks over at Mozilla about it, check it out :)

blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/mo…


Meet the artist behind Firefox’s new community-created app icon 

Ruud is known for the charming, joyful characters in his comic series heyheymomo, and he brings that same energy to this design. He originally created the artwork as a quick five-minute doodle for fun.
Jenifer Boscacci (The Mozilla Blog)

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I haven't been around here much today because I've had problems with my email account. I had to change the password, which I managed to do through my email provider's iOS app, which is reasonably accessible: I can read emails there, but not as easily as on the computer. Unfortunately, after changing the password, Thunderbird, my default Windows app for email, won't accept my new password. If anyone has any idea what I should do, please let me know.

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Kiinnostava uusi avaus:

Äänel on tekeillä oleva kirjailijoiden omistama äänikirja-alusta, jossa on äänikirjoja, jotka eivät ole tarjolla muualla, jossa lukijat ostavat kirjan eivätkä kuunteluaikaa ja joka tarjoaa tekijöille asianmukaisen ja oikeasuhtaisen korvauksen työstään, kuten uusi tekijänoikeuslaki vaatii.

Seuraan tätä suurella kiinnostuksella! Toivottavasti se myös kirittää muita äänikirja-alustoja kohtelemaan kirjailijoita paremmin.

glitchsoc - Link to source

"#JBILibrary—the nearly century-old organization dedicated to ensuring that people who are #blind, have #lowvision, or have #print #disabilities can fully participate in #Jewish life—is inviting individuals, families, teens and community groups to get involved in its new #Volunteer Ambassador Program designed to expand access to Jewish #learning and #culture."

jns.org/wire/jbi-library-calls…

#blind #culture #jewish #volunteer #learning #lowvision #disabilities #jbilibrary #print

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run('fr',['bonjour','vin','bon','un','sans','peur','bleu'])
run('it',['grande','primo','grazie','uomo','uovo','quasi','ieri','caro','gnocchi'])
run('de',['ich','Bach','rot','Götter','fühlen','über'])
run('es',['caza','ayer','pero','perro'])
run('es-la',['caza','ayer','pero','perro'])
run('pt-br',['filho','um'])
run('pl',['ryba'])
run('hu',['kártya'])

mastodon - Link to source

A thought that popped into my head when I woke up at 4 am and couldn’t get back to sleep…

Imagine that AI/LLM tools were being marketed to workers as a way to do the same work more quickly and work fewer hours without telling their employers.

“Use ChatGPT to write your TPS reports, go home at lunchtime. Spend more time with your kids!” “Use Claude to write your code, turn 60-hour weeks into four-day weekends!” “Collect two paychecks by using AI! You can hold two jobs without the boss knowing the difference!”

Imagine if AI/LLM tools were not shareholder catnip, but a grassroots movement of tooling that workers were sharing with each other to work less. Same quality of output, but instead of being pushed top-down, being adopted to empower people to work less and “cheat” employers.

Imagine if unions were arguing for the right of workers to use LLMs as labor saving devices, instead of trying to protect members from their damage.

CEOs would be screaming bloody murder. There’d be an overnight industry in AI-detection tools and immediate bans on AI in the workplace. Instead of Microsoft CoPilot 365, Satya would be out promoting Microsoft SlopGuard - add ons that detect LLM tools running on Windows and prevent AI scrapers from harvesting your company’s valuable content for training.

The media would be running horror stories about the terrible trend of workers getting the same pay for working less, and the awful quality of LLM output. Maybe they’d still call them “hallucinations,” but it’d be in the terrified tone of 80s anti-drug PSAs.

What I’m trying to say in my sleep-deprived state is that you shouldn’t ignore the intent and ill effects of these tools. If they were good for you, shareholders would hate them.

You should understand that they’re anti-worker and anti-human. TPTB would be fighting them tooth and nail if their benefits were reversed. It doesn’t matter how good they get, or how interesting they are: the ultimate purpose of the industry behind them is to create less demand for labor and aggregate more wealth in fewer hands.

Unless you happen to be in a very very small club of ultra-wealthy tech bros, they’re not for you, they’re against you. #AI #LLMs #claude #chatgpt

#AI #chatgpt #LLMs #Claude

mastodon - Link to source
There was a small snafu with the Git repository of GTK which required rewriting the history of the main development branch to drop a large file that was committed by mistake; if you have a local clone, you may need to force an update. Nothing else should have changed, and the latest commit is: gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/c…

Merge branch 'svg-gradient-interpolation' into 'main' (fa499873) · Commits · GNOME / gtk · GitLab

gsk: Add straight gradient interpolation See merge request GNOME/gtk!9357
GitLab

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Matrix... The modern IRC replacement. Working on phone, app, web browser...

Today greeted me with "your key store is not synchronized" (loose translation from Polish) which means BLABLABLAH to me.

And the only option is to continue with erasing whole history, reverifying all clients and contacts.

At same time FluffyChat on Android works fine, does not complain about anything.

WTH?

Message from Matrix in web browser "Twój magazyn kluczy nie jest zsynchronizowany." "You have to reset your cryptographic identify in order to ensure access to your message history" And "continue with reset" button.

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Fun fact: I routed Claude Code to a local model and captured its system prompt. It is about 16K tokens long, compared with 6.5K tokens for Codex and 5.5K tokens for Gemini CLI. Some of the length is due to tool call descriptions, but I didn't have any additional MCP. No wonder why you can't effectively use local models with it unless you have a crazy machine that can run a bigger model capable of following lengthy instructions and handle very big context window. #LLM #AI gist.githubusercontent.com/chi…
#AI #llm

mastodon - Link to source

Wellp, the Qwen2.5 LLM model has been useful in increasing the productivity rate of my annoying legacy PHP code refactoring and modernization project by at least 100%. Why 100%? Because before I started using the model, I was doing nothing on the project, LOL.

Don't worry, I'm not being radicalized. AI in its LLM format is everything that I've always gone on and griped about here, and elsewhere. It has no situational awareness or context. It is not intelligent. It halucinates. It will lie to your face, with a smile on its own.
So it has wasted my time with all of this. But all of that aside, it has been able to provide very accurate one-liners or very short code blocks. I purposefully keep any examples for ingestion short and to the point. I always ask for output that is concise, accurate, and to the point. However, I've been treating it like a robot, not a human. I don't waste frivilous words that pander to feelings. Just straight to the point. I am trying to optomize my words for tokens used in prompt analysis, but also having to be as absolutely as specific as possible, as to not waste tokens on having it do useless work.
So I'm trying to optomize for a tool, not an intelligence, personality, or chat buddy.
Its just like a real big knowledge pool, and a crude understanding engine. Instead of looking it up across thirty manuals, or sections of manual, then pieceing it together in your own head, the computer is doing all that in seconds. Sure, there's a comprehension barrier, a language barrier, now and again, but that's why you the human are still needed in the loop. So stead of fighting it, I'm trying to use it. Its pretty neat that way. Just don't trust it, ever. And anyone giving this thing a fair chance will very quicly come to realize that. Humans are still needed, and this thing will not permanently kill any jobs that won't be replaced in some other field, very quickly. Its just not that good or smart. Its a glorified tape recorder that can find and stitch humanity's knowledge together quite quickly, with just enough errors to make it useless without the human behind the keyboard looking after it. But that's what we want, eh? If it got any better than this, then it probably will well and truly wipe out jobs.

mastodon - Link to source
Ik kan gewoon niet meer - net gehoord dat een van de allergrootste verwerkers van privégegevens binnen de Nederlandse overheid druk bezig is met zijn totale migratie naar Microsoft Azure. En de mensen die het tegen zouden kunnen houden worden buitengesloten & hebben het opgegeven. Stukje: berthub.eu/articles/posts/nee-…
Logo van de Sociale Verzekeringsbank, SVB. Drie letters gevangen in gedeeltelijke krommes. "Voor het leven" is hun motto.

Nee je kan niet meer je overheid en maatschappij verhuizen naar Amerikaanse servers - Bert Hubert's writings

De hele korte versie: het is waanzin om onze maatschappij en overheid over te zetten op Amerikaanse clouds.
Bert Hubert's writings

reshared this

in reply to Jiří Eischmann

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Honza Javorek

Nějak se mi nechce věřit, že kdybychom se odstřihli od USA, tak všechny ty věci, co používáš, budou dál fungovat.

Servery jsou jedna věc, ale šlo mi spíš o to, že těch infrastrukturních věcí různě po cestě, které z USA přebíráme, je milion. A spoustu si ani neuvědomujeme.

Produkt může být ze 100 % v EU, ale vsadím se, že kdybych vypnul Google nebo Apple, tak se zaměstnanci té firmy ani nedostanou do práce a nepřihlásí k e-mailu. To je to, kam jsem původně svým komentářem mířil.

A aby bylo jasno, přijde mi dost hustý, o co se snažíš, a neuvěřitelný, že to zvládáš, ale je to možná asi jako když někdo jiný obdivuje, že nemám auto. Jako jo, nemám ho, ale kdyby někdo auta zrušil, tak se můj svět zhroutí, protože závisí na systému, ve kterém se všechno autama vozí.

This entry was edited (1 day ago)
in reply to Honza Javorek

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Jiří Eischmann

Nemusíme si vykládat, že se lze dnes 100% digitálně odstřihnout od USA. Nejde a není to ani mým cílem. Já mám dva cíle: aby na BigTech v USA bezprostředně nezávisely moje důležité nástroje, které používám, a abych tam neměl důležitá a hlavně osobní data.
Vím třeba, že Signal závisí na AWS, ale je to v mém případě jen jeden ze 4 IM, které používám, nemám s ním spojenou svoji digitální identitu. Mám Netflix, ale to je zbytná věc. Vedle něj mám české OnePlay a mraky obsahu na domácím NASu.
No a pak jsou ty kritické věci jako domény, email, osobní agenda (kontakty, kalendáře, úkoly, hesla...) a soubory, které mám v EU nebo kompletně v selfhostingu na Nextcloudu, jehož provoz není na USA nijak závislý. Ano, Nextcloud má vývojové repozitáře na Githubu, ale to je taková sekundární závislost. Nijak to neohrožuje přístup k mým nástrojům, maximálně by se na pár týdnů zastavil vývoj NC, než by to rozjeli třeba na Codebergu.
Ta závislost má mnoho vrstev od přímé provozní závislosti, kde může člověk o přístup přijít během pár sekund, až po nějaké terciární závislosti, které se projeví až v dlouhém horizontu. Troufám si ale tvrdit, že jsem dnes ve stavu, kdy kdyby USA Evropě zařízly přístup, pojedu zásadně nepostižený dál a ty dlouhodobé dopady by se mezitím vyřešily nebo bychom řešili úplně jiný druh problémů.
in reply to Jiří Eischmann

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Jiří Eischmann

Nebo mobilní telefon: mám dnes Pixel 10 s GrapheneOS. Je to telefon od americké společnosti a GOS je Android, takže jeho dlouhodobý vývoj závisí opět na americké společnosti. Ale nemám tam žádnou bezprostřední závislost. Ten telefon není ani přihlášený ke Google účtu, jw na něm jediná (zbytná) aplikace od Googlu (Android Auto), závisí jen na Google Play. Žádná zahraniční firma k němu nemá root access. Není to úplná nezávislost, ale IMO v rámci možností akceptovatelná. A nejlepší na tom je, že se necítím jako nějaký digitální poustevník, že bych se musel nějak omezovat. Je to o nastavení priorit a pak výběru řešení podle těch priorit.
Pro mě jsou dlouhodobou prioritou soukromí, nezávislost a diverzifikace, původně jsem vůbec neřešil geopolitiku, ale když má člověk nastavené takové priority, tak zjistí, že je najednou velmi dobře připravený i na tu současnou geopolitickou situaci.

mastodon - Link to source

This is yet another train with a captive portal at 10.230.0.1, with that address resolving to exactly nothing. This is one of the major Polish train carriers, the most expensive kind of train to be had, and that issue has been unfixed for at least half a year.

At least it's not Deutsche Bahn I guess.

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