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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 7th, 2023

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  • I don’t think that’s true at all.

    I realize the geometry predicts some optimal spot for viewing the curve but that just is a mathematical ideal not a real world necessity. If it was then everyone who has ever watched a flat screen would be like “omg I feel like I’m too close because I’m not watching from infinity.” I have a 35” monitor with 1800R and it is very pleasant in a normal desktop setting. I looked into 1000R screens since I like to sit fairly close and the curve felt so extreme that it was a major distraction no matter which distance I sat at.

    I guess I’m saying that the curvature is very much a personal preference thing and if people can tolerate a flat screen they can also tolerate a curve that isn’t meeting some mathematical ideal.



  • I loved and used Pandora for a long time. It was really good at recommending songs. I quit when they started playing ads in my feed despite paying for an ad free experience. These were like voice ads for concerts or similar from artists. I contacted customer support and the response was basically “we don’t think those are ads, they are ‘special messages’ from the artists so they aren’t going to stop.”

    The problem is that I mostly use music streaming as background at work. Having a 30 second clip of some guy’s voice saying “Hey I’m Bobby from the Bobbles and we are excited to be touring in your area next month! Come check out our show for a Bobbling-Good-Time!” is very disruptive in the same way an ad for anything else is. They were clear that they weren’t going to stop so I walked away.


  • It also has an absolutely terrible algorithm for recommending music in my experience. I’ve tried Apple Music several times over the past few years as I’m heavily invested in the Apple ecosystem. My experience never changes. I put in a random artist like Green Day or Hans Zimmer or Gregory Alan Isakov and within 4-5 songs the station is playing hip hop or rap. No matter what genre I start with the stream always turns into hip hop or rap and it’s mostly nobody artists that aren’t good. I have some songs in those genres in my library but the majority are not. (Also if I’m starting a station with an orchestral film score it stands to reason I probably want to hear more film scores not rap.)