I cancelled Spotify when they started pushing podcasts in my music app, with no way to turn it off.

Why pay for a service that actively pushes you towards stuff you don’t want? Especially if there’s alternatives that cost the same and … don’t do that.

It might be just because I’m relatively middle of the road bisexual, but I always liked the idea that most people aren’t quite on the extreme ends of the Kinsey scale, but like, a tiny bit bi at least.

I am definitely thankful for having a family that was very open about everything, and didn’t mind either way, though I do feel that the years spent not wanting to engage with the thought partially came down to pressure from peers, as anything other than heterosexuality seemed to be seen as alien back then. From what I hear from my brother, that actually changed a lot compared to when I was in school, and things are a lot more accepting now.

I thought I was straight for about 17 years, thinking that also being attracted to men was just something everyone experienced.

Wasn’t euronews bought up by one of Orbans buddies?

I want to buy the whole of Switzerland.

At the moment, LLMs just aren’t very good at writing anything that is interesting. I experimented with it a bit for shits and giggles, and tried out several different local Models and online Services.

I’m not saying that it’s impossible it’ll improve, but for me as someone who enjoys writing, having your writing done by a tool just misses the point. I like to write because it allows me to express myself, and off loading parts of that process to a tool makes it less personal, less me.

I won’t judge anyone with a different opinion, but for me, part of the enjoyment of reading also comes from seeing how the author and their experiences colour their writing, which usage of such a tool, in a way, also diminishes. At the moment, I just can’t see an avenue to the prevalence of LLMs making creative writing better.

That’s why I stopped using it. They require a phone number, phone numbers require kyc with an ID around here, and there’s just too much illegal shit on there.

It’s of course possible to get a more pseudonymous experience, but honestly, what they offer isn’t worth the hastle.

Is the VR streaming in the Local net (PC to Headset)? Just run the WiFi router without plugging it into the wall. Connect only the pc and the headset.

Also, appart from that, to use more wired devices, maybe use an unmanaged switch. Don’t think that does anything forbidden here.

Three. One lost, one broken, one in my drawer.

Thinking about making it four, three doesn’t work with some outfits.

It’s been a while since I regularly used a car, but I remember the automatics my father had having some sort of logic that shifted up when driving at a constant speed, than back down when wanting to accelerate.

Now those where fancy pants Systems (I think they called them 7G-Tronic), but this was also over 10 years ago, and such logic doesn’t strike me as overly complicated, so I’m surprised there’s current cars with static shift speeds.

I get called like once or twice a week, and it’s usually something time sensitive or important. Always found people just flat out refusing to answer the phone crazy.

If I remember correctly, the app was originally built by an Australian public broadcaster and then sold to WordPress Matt, so yeah.

Oh, yeah, wait, I am using AntennaPod too. The subscription stuff was actually the reason I switched from Pocket Casts. Mixed up the names. I’d claim old age, but I’m not that old yet, really.

Many modern podcast solutions seem to be injecting ads into the audio file they serve, to varying degrees of success.

I listen to several ad supported English language podcasts, and most of them seem to have difficulties with Pocket Casts AntennaPod, or some other part of my setup. The only ones that do get ads placed are the ones that use Spotify Megaphone for their backend.

There is a paid version of pocket casts?

Yeah, that’s a bit of a hike, probably would throw my plans for the week.

That does sound fun. How far from Berlin are you, in rough terms? Can I walk over, or is it more of a cycling distance?

Also, to touch on the other questions in the post, I have an Apple Music Subscription, but do have about 50 GB of flac files of my favourite music mirrored to most of my devices, in case I’m holed up somewhere without Internet access.

I have a switch emulator on my pc. Ones for other consoles too. Don’t see much added value in a physical console, since I need a reasonably powerful PC for work anyway.