> it took me about 3 minutes to rectify my "for fun" scraper.
Did you mean to say "rectify" as in "fix/adjust"? It sounds like you might have meant "reify" – as in, "create" – but I don't know whether you had the scrapper before that.
You can use Bandcamp Downloader [https://github.com/Otiel/BandcampDownloader] to download the artist's music – including any or all albums and any of the songs – just by entering the addresses of the pages.
Might make getting the audio easier, considering you've already paid.
That app doesn't even do anything special. The link to the mp3 is right in the page source code, which Bandcamp intentionally doesn't obfuscate. They justify this by asserting that if somebody really wants to pirate, they'll do so with or without Bandcamp; ergo, it's better to keep them on-platform.
I also like that this fits in with their general marketing of lossless files - sure, you can download the 128kbps mp3s. Go ahead. They're inferior - just previews.
BC lets users stream every track at least a couple of times before asking you to pay. This 'free plays limit' resets after a few days, so theoretically, you wouldn't have to pay to hear it ever. I like the reminder because I'm more willing to support independent artists, and if I get the prompt for a song I like, why not pay $5-8 or whatever to have it in my collection?
Just wanted to mention that any limitation in listening to a track is set by the artist, not Bandcamp. With an artist profile, you can set the number of times people can listen/stream your music before being prompted to buy (I have such a profile).
We sure as hell can be. Seeing bright minds at work is a special kind of inspiration, and its own mental turn-on for me. People aspiring to do well by their desires and talents – that's quite a picture. But it only happens when effort is put forth to surround ourselves – and others around us – with the kind of attitude we seek to promote.
Imagine punishing a child for not seeing things the way you do, from the height of the years of experience and the education you'd received. Imagine promoting literacy when you're yet to read a book meaningfully. Imagine moving others to start exercising more, while you're raiding the kitchen every couple of hours for another snack or two.
I don't think we're supposed to be intelligent. I think it's in our best interests to be, but I also see the effort to put forth if you seek to improve someone's livelihood. Not against their will, obviously: this much you can't do even if you try really hard – but encouraging them through the natural flow of things, setting an example, or even writing better guides.
Perhaps we don't choose, either. For all I know, we might as well be only semi-autonomous, or have no free will to speak of. Maybe we just are.
Being capable of intelligence and being intelligent are not necessarily the same thing. Humans are social animals first, and logical or rational animals second. Our decisions are influenced heavily by (perceived) social factors and self pride/ego such that office politics and pride often end up overriding objective logic. The Dilbert comic strip is close to a documentary in my observation; only slightly exaggerated.
> Being capable of intelligence and being intelligent are not necessarily the same thing.
My argument was against what I saw as a notion that human beings must always express the intelligence we all undoubtably possess, simply because we do. I don't think that's the case. It's not about using straight logic, either: it's about empathy, and the emotions that influence (or even underline) our decisions, and the bigger picture, and whether being angry right now is worth our time...
I think we all can be like that. I think we're not encouraged enough to act that way.
There are certainly selfish motives to every single one of us – and yet, some of us are superb at overriding those motives for the sake of a better act, some struggle to the point of giving up, and others yet barely even tap into the altruistic motives.
I think it all has to do, in half, with the environment we're in. Generally speaking, fear promotes fear, and empathy promotes empathy. There's about 40 to 60% to do with genetics (the number I've seen was 55%), but that much we can't control.
I'm not to deny your feelings, or claim that my view is somehow superior. It's been my observation, however, that people are generally okay, leaning on a good side. (I think it says something that both Henry Rollins, the punk-rock icon, and /u/kleinbl00, a Reddit veteran, share this view.) It seems to me – and, again, I'm not to stand above anyone on this – that people often undervalue or overlook the good parts about others or humanity in general.
Maybe it's genetically-dictated, the way we look at these things. I've always been an optimist and an idealist, despite whatever I've been through, saw, or felt. It just makes sense to me. I've seen people do some really good things to strangers, and it has always inspired me. Otherwise never clicked with me, though I understand where some of it's coming from, because I, too, felt parts of it at different points of my life.
I used to be terrified of people (mostly because I was mortified at the prospect of disappointing them), which lead to me assuming the worst of those around me. I notice the same with my parents: both deeply dissatisfied with their lives and stuck in a rut, and both aiming low whenever they meet someone. Father is the "that guy who yells at the TV whenever their favorite team loses" sort of a person. Mother assumes deception whenever possible. It never appealed to me, that kind of an outlook, but I engaged with it when I was younger: perhaps because I knew little else; perhaps because I felt exactly as upset.
Things changed for the better once I started engaging with more people. ("The better" being "a more positive outlook towards myself and others".) When I started seeing more and more of what people are, things gradually became clearer: people are... well, people: exciting, interesting, diverse, deep (even the ones that act shallowly), and mostly trying to do good by themselves, those they love, and the world at large – even if they don't know how to do it well.
And it's not like I don't see the bad side. Some things infuriate me; some make me sad; some – a little more lonely. Even the people I admire are not ideal and have done things I don't appreciate. When I was a teen, seeing such a thing in an idol of mine meant losing all respect for the person, as if one flaw devalued their whole being. Now, when I'm older (24), I'm starting to see more clearly that people are not black-and-white, morally, emotionally, intellectually, culturally, or in any other way. We differ – and if someone stands out with the values that resonate with my own, that's... a treasure in itself.
I see the bad side – but it doesn't overshadow the rest of it. Maybe it's because I see my own darkness with a certain clarity, and its presence in my life changes the way I see others. (What is light without darkness, right?) Sure, there are some despicable people in the world, guided by the perverse-yet-so-natural desire for power and control, in however many ways it presents itself. (Greed, arrogance, promoted ignorance, seeding mistrust and fear...) Sure, they do things that make many's stomachs turn – and that's just things we know of. Hell, even the "good people" you can think of are probably battling the same darkness, and maybe it's sheer luck – of their childhood conditioning or genetics – that keeps them from a less-moral path. (Jordan Peterson spoke a lot on that, and there are quite a few public figures that talk about similar experiences. For one, listen to Chuck Palahniuk on the Joe Rogan podcast: he talks about being outright evil, and maybe he has a reason to believe that.)
But... it doesn't detract from the good things I see around me. It's similar to what got me through my existential crisis a while ago. I was stuck in a loop, thinking that since there's no "basic", universal reason for anything, that life is not worth living. Then I figured: I may not appreciate living, but I sure don't want to die (and I've weighed my options for some time there), so I might as well live more consciously, you know? For me, the same idea applies to the good in people: sure, there's a lot of bad things to look at here, but all looking at it does for me is make me more depressed, and I have ambitions that need fulfilling, so I might as well look for the stuff that makes me want to keep going and do better.
Again: I'm not saying your, or any other person's, view isn't valid. I thought mine was worth expressing for the same reason yours is: because it may resonate with others, and maybe even shed some light on how they feel.
I think there's a lot of meaningfully-good things in the world because we made them so, from the depths of our nature and from the basic passions that guide us everywhere. Looking at them makes my own passions ignite. In simple terms, that's what that is.
> In theory, formal language instruction is precisely the right way to learn a new language.
Surely that's not true: otherwise, children wouldn't have learned their native tongue(s) the way they famously do.
Not sure what kind of theory the author's been immersing themselves with. When I was studying for a language tutor, along my linguistics program, the context was put forth as the most important part of learning anything, let alone a language.
> I studied French in elementary school — supposedly the “ideal” age to learn a new language, according to some people — and somehow continued to get As and Bs while retaining almost no ability to speak the language at all.
Perhaps they haven't because language acquisition, like most any mental skill¹, requires an interest to maintain, let alone improve. My suspicion is this is also why people dislike maths so much: because it's a tenuous process that requires considerate effort to develop. Without a passion for it – often gained either through a natural aptitude or an inspirational teacher – it might be difficult, in those two fields, or in any other of similar requirements, to obtain and retain the skills necessary.
¹ I have a sneaking suspicion – and might well be wrong – that, in physical skills, muscle memory or related mechanisms may affect retention. There've been studies suggesting that writing things down helps memorization, which is a rather "muscle" activity. Perhaps the latter is related to the former?
It's also not how most of us learn the much simpler computer languages, I can pick up a language much quicker by playing with it rather than learning it formally.
Its maximum size is excessive unless you aim to support 4K: 5472×3648. It weighs 4.9MB. A lot!
I then went to Squoosh.app, which allows one to optimize images in various ways. The default option – MozJPEG at 75% quality – reduced image size by more than a half, down to 2.24MB, with no apparent loss of quality even at the high zoom. Illustration: https://i.imgur.com/2bkHrot.jpg
Do you really need to serve a 4K+ image, though? I reduced the image to 1920×1280, using the same app, with the same compression settings. 184kB! Illustration: https://i.imgur.com/52MctSN.jpg
At 33% zoom (which is necessary for a reasonable comparison, since Squoosh stretches the smaller image for comparison), the compressed image looks very good. It lacks the noise the original had, and looks more glossy. There are also advanced settings that one could tinker with, perhaps to a better compression with equal losses.
Is it a big deal? Perhaps – especially when you look to present the image as-is, with minimal losses between conversion from RAW to, say, PNG. For most websites, though? I reckon it's not going to be a problem: it's the sense of the image that matters, not the details.
And if you regularly serve 1MB+ images, maybe there's some sort of an indicator or tag that you could apply that will tell the browser: "Hey, look, I know you want to save bandwidth, but it's kinda my schtick to show really good images, so let me through, yeah?"
We're right at the point where people are starting to actively support 4K in web apps. Sure, not many web apps actually need it, but the ones that actually do (like photo browsers) definitely need it if they want to keep up with relevant trends over the next five years or so.
My solution was to use an extension – Make Medium Readable Again – that, as of its features, removes the intro fullscreen ad. It's available for Chrome and Firefox, as far as I'm aware.
I understand there are browser plugins available but when reading text content requires installing extra software to improve the experience my solution is just to go read content somewhere else.
That's fair. My experience with Medium has so far ranged from neutral to highly-positive, with a lot of articles on cutting-edge web design technology or methodology.
If you don't wanna read it, that's fine. I'm just saying that if you do, there's a way.
I’ve been using reader mode for months and love it. I set it to auto open all links in reader mode and now hardly ever look at the styles version. It’s amazing how much more readable websites become with the extension. I’m also a UX designer, hows that for irony.
Is there still a concern about the profit? I'm assuming you're working for a for-profit company, where one of the goals – if not the goal, ultimately – is to make cash. (I don't mean to insinuate any sharply-materialistic outlook on your company: I sincerely don't know how a company thinks about money.)
That will always be a concern, even for a nonprofit. You need to keep the lights on, and people need to be paid. However, the trouble with VC funding is the expectation of scale. A VC won't be happy with a small organization that makes enough to pay its employees and sustain a small amount of growth. Unfortunately, that business requires large successes. So the founders and the investors can easily have very different goals.
VC funding is required if you want to build something massive, but isn't a great idea if the founders just want to build a sustainable but small business.
Companies like MailChimp and Atlassian are great examples of bootstrapped companies that became very successful. There are more.
Money is great to have at any stage of a company, and bootstrapped companies prefer to trade stability and time for the freedom of not having money (and those who only focus on it) control decisions.
You can build a great company with and without investment, but you can fail with either just as well.
And with VCs you have someone breathing down your neck to either grow fast or die fast. With bootstrap, you don’t have that pressure (and instead have the fuck we don’t have money to fund faster growth problem)
Not GP, but in a similar position. No, no concern whatsoever. The owners are not greedy which makes all the difference in the world. Not that the profit is low - it is probably much higher this way, when the whole company pulls toward the goals. I have never worked in an environment with so low amount of office politics.
With the way things look right now for high-tech (or any software development) companies the margins are quite high. But of course, if you are a VC who invests in hundreds of businesses, and expect only a few of them to fly, then those few must fly pretty high to make it worth your while. Which means that being just very profitable is not enough - you need to be extremely profitable. And that comes with compromises (mostly for the workers at such startups).
Platform quality is long term money, platform monetization is short term money.
With VCs who only care that the growth curve is exponential, they go for short term money every time, because yeah you might crash the company, but you've got a 5% chance of becoming a big evil corp.
Yes, exactly this. You have to choose the hand that feeds.
If you start a platform around paying customers you make it one way, if you start it around getting as many users as you can and then monetize the popularity, then you are selling your users, and that's another way entirely.
It's about having a massive exit, the sooner the better. It's absolutely short-term thinking, with an upper bound around 10 years. Less for smaller investors. Nobody cares what happens after the exit.
When you hear "heavy" as used to describe something, you automatically assume it to mean negative. "Half is heavy" has a more negative connotative meaning than "Twice as light", even though they have the same denotative meaning. In other words, they effectively mean the same thing, but represent that thing differently.
I also suspect it has to do with the positive/negative framing. Ideally, you want to leave a positive impression on your audience. If you're talking about scientific discoveries – especially something as cool as a material that's comparable to titanium in terms of strength, yet is much lighter – I reckon you want your audience to feel excited and inspired. In this case, using positive framing is reasonable and conducive to the goal.
I'm not sure how appropriate it is for a popular-science publication to refer to framing when talking about new discoveries, and am not offering support for or against such usage in this context. The decision to put the phrase in such a way, however, may well be an informed choice that makes sense from the perspective of the goal of such a publication.
Did you mean to say "rectify" as in "fix/adjust"? It sounds like you might have meant "reify" – as in, "create" – but I don't know whether you had the scrapper before that.