True.
3,481 karma · joined March 13, 2011
It’s not only that a lot of good music is not on streaming: music also get removed. I have a smart playlist that gets automatically populated with songs in my library that are not available (evidently pulled from Apple Music), and it is growing with tunes that I like and that are sometimes impossible to find elsewhere. If I had the foresight to get actual copies, I could still listen to them.
Another possibility is maybe they reduced their limits from 3 to 2 hours of audio around the same time. I don’t know if it happened before or after my experience, did not read their blogs or press releases, only made sure I was well under whatever limits were currently listed on their pricing & plans page (I was probably under 2 hours as well, but as this point can’t be bothered to check). Perhaps that transition was chaotic and for some time their left hand did not know what the right hand is doing.
They also do advertisement (promoted tracks and audio ads) but this is irrelevant to my point, what I described applies regardless, including the fact that heavy users of the unlimited plan and free users definitely receive subsidies, both from light users and from ad revenue of the platform.
> You pay, you get service. You don't pay, you don't get service
The definition of the service you receive and how good it is includes what happens when you decide to off-ramp from receiving it. Changing your service plan is your indication that you want to change service, what happens after that is how they handle it. There is no stipulation whatsoever that things stop being available to you immediately.
In fact, in case of SoundCloud, they themselves prove this, because they did not delete data but instead continued to keep data for free, which means providing you a service that you presumably stopped paying for. The silly move of them was to do that and not allow you to download it, and then emailing the victim urging them to pay to access this data, which makes it 100% a dark pattern and means they are effectively blackmailing customers with proven ability and willingness to pay.
If I remember right, Apple (an American company) handles it better and gives you a month to download excess data if you downgrade, but sure, “dark patterns”.
> There is no need for a grace period when you knowingly and voluntarily make the decision to terminate a file storage service.
If you terminate your use of a file storage service, you would expect your personal data to be deleted. However, no one terminated their use of a service, somebody apparently downgraded their payment plan (temporarily or not).
If it is an actual necessity—a service chose to market an unlimited plan to attract more users, and then realized they are losing money on storage and traffic so much that they would unapologetically burn bridges with existing users who showed themselves as willing to pay (who maybe needed to downgrade temporarily for whatever reason) with the above move—and yet their strategy is apparently to keep offering that plan (in hopes to turn things around with more light users joining?), I would question whether that service has serious issues with even medium term planning.
Recently I decided to evaluate it for serious use and start posting there again, only until their new uploader told me I need to switch to a paid plan, even though I triple-checked I was well within free limits and under my old now unused username I uploaded a lot more (mostly of experimental things I am not that proud of anymore).
It looks like their microservices architecture is in chaos and some system overrides the limits outlined in the docs with stricter ones. How can I be sure they respect the new limits once I do pay, instead of upselling me the next plan in line?
Adding to that things like the general jankiness or the never-ending spam from “get more fake listeners for $$$” accounts (which seem to be in an obvious symbiosis with the platform, boosting the numbers for optics), the last year’s ambiguous change in ToS allowing them to train ML systems on your work, it was enough for me to drop it. Thankfully, it was a trial run and I did not publish any pending releases.
If you still publish on SoundCloud, and you do original music (as opposed to publishing, say, DJ sets, where dealing with IP is problematic), ask yourself whether it is timr to grow up and do proper publishing!
It may or may not have advised what to do (to climb/descent/etc.) because that is turned off below 1000ft, and they were approximately at that altitude at the time.
Unless it is out of sync by tens of seconds, however, it is clear that they were handed off to departures and were neither responding nor even listening to tower.
Edited after I rewatched the video:
1. Tower handed them off to departures.
2. They said bye and stopped listening to tower.
3. ITA veered left.
4. Tower noticed it and warned them, hoping they are still listening.
5. They were evidently not listening to tower anymore, and did not contact departures yet, when they noticed traffic themselves.
6. They greeted departures saying they see traffic, and veered left.
Later at 2:45 American said tower didn’t give them a heads-up. The fact that departures asked them about it could mean that departures thought they were still listening to tower.
Pretty sure the pilots have a second radio and could be listening to both departures and tower during handoff, but it’s unclear whether that’s routine. If they did it, they would have heard tower’s original warning.
> I believe their avoidance maneuver was a climb change.
According to the chart in the video, AA veered to the left. This maneuver started around 1:51 in the video, which is at least 10 seconds after tower warned them of traffic and instructed to stop the climb for the first time around 1:38.
I don’t know if they stopped the climb around 1:38. If we know for sure that they stopped the climb around 1:38 when tower told them so, then there is a good chance they were indeed still listening to tower and heard the traffic warning. If that’s the case, maybe they thought that stopping the climb 10 seconds earlier was insufficient (and tower was wrong about it).
On ATC side, maybe departures could have been more proactive and warn AA of traffic together with tower. On AA side, maybe they could have been listening to tower for a while as they are tuning in to departures (there were 10–20 seconds where AA was not listening to tower anymore and did not come in on departures yet). Seems hard to blame either of them in particular.
Original comment as is:
If the video is to be believed, the tower did tell American right away (at 1:36 in the video, way before any visible corrections by either plane were made) that there is traffic and to stop the climb. It’s unclear whether American paid attention to tower, because seconds later they came in on another frequency saying they have traffic in sight. When asked afterwards whether tower gave them a heads-up they denied it.
Of course, ITA paid even less attention, considering how they were the original cause of this all and how for 30 seconds they ignored ATC’s request to turn right immediately (issued at about the same time that AA was warned about traffic).
This doesn’t contradict that what AA did was proactive and possibly life-saving, but I have a suspicion that the initial deviation by ITA could have been benign if both crews paid their full attention to comms: what if ITA started to turn 270 immediately as they are told to (while continuing to climb up from 1500), and American simply stopped their climb at 1500? I am not 100% confident.
That said, I would also agree ATC could have been more proactive, harder on ITA (instead of just telling them to turn again 30 seconds later). Presumably they are strapped for resources right now.
(There could be errors in the above in case the chart and different radio communication tracks in the video are out of sync with each other, which is possible.)
It might be easier to do this for someone else, but it seems narcissistic to assume I of all the patients is so special. If there’s nobody to advocate for me, clearly I’m not!
Let’s say I try it anyway. I tend to be a slow rational thinker in real-time situations, especially under pressure. If I try to advocate for myself and ask questions, I would need to have time to consider the responses (did I even get the information I requested, what are the implications) and maybe do some research in order to make an informed choice as to whether to proceed or not, or whether to ask further questions. However, if I actually request time and have people wait for me, I enter a high-pressure mode in which I can’t think well. The clock is ticking, the stakes are high.
Even if it’s a simple routine case, I am entrusting myself to people who have the power to kill me. If it’s anything beyond routine, killing or harming me may not even be consequential to them (mistakes happen). It is a very particular type of situation.
The natural thing for me to believe is that all of these people are professionals. If I have reasons to supervise them, it automatically implies I believe they are either unprofessional or malicious, in which case I really should not be there in the first place. The arrangement is that I am not supposed to know better than them. If I try to supervise them, that implies I think I do. At worst it would be disrespectful or offensive and would make them hostile on a personal level (which is always at play between humans, regardless of the protocol), at best it would make me look like a crackpot not to be taken seriously anyway. Besides, if I already assume they make mistakes or are unprofessional, their answers can be false anyway.
On the other hand, I am aware that many, many mistakes are made in hospitals daily, so I know they are not such infallible professionals.
As a result, this makes me very reluctant to go to a hospital or a clinic for any reason. It’s probably bad.
Anyone has advice for overcoming this? Maybe training to think quickly and finding ways out in high-stakes situations like this? Tricking yourself into a mode where you feel natural advocating for yourself and act in a way that makes people treat you seriously without being offensive to them (considering the power they have over you)? Learning to not care what people think in a healthy way? (Please don’t suggest LLMs.)
For anything more than basic software-processed output and utility snaps or selfies, this high-end phone loses pretty terribly to an average hybrid consumer camera.
For a mind-boggling near miss account (actually, not even a miss, since one of the crew has died in the aftermath), see https://avherald.com/h?article=4b6eb830. It quotes research estimating that in the US alone the number of air fume events is around 2000 per year, while the number of reported fume events is less than 10. Mental degradation is insidious, because you may not even be aware it is happening in the first place, so if you have arrived safely you have nothing to report. Yet the industry is silent (including FAA, which had no record of the Spirit incident).
It should be straightforward to mandate a subsystem that presents mental challenges to pilots to test their awareness, and that simplifies access (e.g., disables the emergency override timeout that apparently slowed down the entry in the Lufthansa incident) if one pilot is out to pee and the one remaining is not responsive.
I am curious if pilots in Spirit and Lufthansa cases exhibit similar neuro-degenerative damage.
Frankly, I find the justification you provide preposterous and dangerous.
The sad reality is that apparently many customers will find it believable (in the .0001% of cases when they actually read what they are agreeing to).
DJI can just add some mandatory firmware upgrade process that offloads your footage to the mothership, and 99.9999% will agree to everything without reading.
Each episode is chewed up slowly to the lowest common denominator, meaning half of an episode is condescending explanation of trivial matter. The misplaced air of faux mystery, true crime podcast style, does not help. The narrator being occasionally a free speech absolutist and explicitly in favour of money laundering services does not help.
Risky Biz covered Anom in https://risky.biz/RB751/ via a dense if a bit short interview with Joseph Cox, who wrote a book about it, starting around minute 35. Listen to that and respective Darknet Diaries episode to compare. In general Risky Biz offers more balanced, less boring, and up-to-date takes on cybercrime (sans interviews with actual criminals).
I often see a sound engineer with an iPad on music gigs. The form factor allows you to walk around the room and adjust the sound easily to tame resonances and such.
It’s not so good for typing text or programming, but where it makes sense to have a portable slab of screen that works reliably there is probably an app that does it.
I am additionally surprised that captain’s death did not make it mandatory to report.
And that’s an extreme case. How many less extreme ones happen?
In the US alone, there’s research estimating the number of air fume events is around 2000 per year. The number of reported fume events is less than 10.
Mental degradation is insidious. “Just wear an oxygen mas-” what if you forgot about the oxygen mask. You forgot to drop the gear.
Extensive training (to the point of automation) and human resilience is perhaps the main reason fumes do not seem to be causing many incidents, but resilience can be individual and training cannot drill into pilots the correct intuitive response to all possible scenarios. In addition, it’s unknown in what number of incidents where the cause is pilot’s mistake that mistake was in turn caused by partial mental incapacitation (that perhaps not even the pilot was aware of).
In Beijing metro while going from the airport I remember the looping propaganda on LCD screens with caricatures of how the West consists of bad, fat, ugly people who should be hated. It’s been like 10 years since I have been there so I forget the details, but I have some photos from the metro where ads ended up in the shot.
In Shenzhen metro, screens with ads, screens everywhere on eye level. The highlight is when a screen is glitching.
I think whether they also blast audible ads, so that you truly have no escape, depends on the train. In Hong Kong, newer trains do.
People are often misled that because a country is ostensibly in opposition to the west, it is somehow immune to inconveniences and issues we associate with capitalism. All of those places are de facto capitalist, just with higher degrees of corruption and oligarchy, and (despite what propaganda paints) they suffer from all of the same issues, multiplied by lack of care from the authorities.