New AI technology promises to-

Hmm, where have I heard this before…

It’s almost like it’s a requirement for every landscaping company to use the most noisy, ear destroying, gas-powered leaf blower that they can buy that can be heard from 2 city blocks over.

The perfect powerhouse chip to handle the iPad’s cut-down OS and half-baked apps because Apple refuses to take the iPad’s software seriously.

They will if there is enough demand for 'em.

Petition to rename this man to “Ted Faro”

I was just talking to my dad about this the other day and I told him that it was only a matter of time before the US government goes after Chinese EV’s at the request of the US auto lobby.

I didn’t think it would be this soon, though. Hurray for more garbage EV’s for $50,000+

Sure, although keep in mind this will vary by region due to licensing issues.

Deezer is probably Spotify’s best direct competitor. They are priced equally (depending on region) and now offer high-res streaming as default instead of a paid extra. They’ve been expanding with new features such as lyrics, collab playlists, song identification, and they recently improved their recommendation system. They also offer a discount if you buy subs yearly instead of monthly so you can save if you like the platform.

Apple Music is also an option now that Apple has put in some work to make the platform easier to use on non-Apple devices such as the recently added Windows app. It’s not as feature-rich as Deezer but if you don’t use those added features anyway then it is an option. I personally would phrase it as “has less bloat”. If you own any Apple devices already then it will have tighter integration with them.

Tidal is the old favourite of audiophiles and music appreciators. They have been expanding their platform with new features and music and, somewhat recently, have also lowered their prices. High-res streaming is now included in the base sub tier. All of these alternatives pay artists more than Spotify but Tidal has one of the best artist payouts.

Qobuz is similar to Tidal and is a premium platform with a focus on quality. They are a newer service and are still expanding their regions, so I don’t have personal experience with them as they only recently opened up to my country. Their price and feature set looks competitive, though, and their UI does look slick. They also have better artist payouts.

Amazon Music apparently has better payouts for artists but Amazon is a shit company so I’ve never looked into them further. I’ll include YouTube Music here as well which has shitty payouts and is a shitty company.

Please, people, for the love of the gods, stop using Spotify. There are numerous other services that are so much better value for your money and don’t treat artists (as much) like trash.

And that being said, try to support your beloved artists directly as much as you can. Buying digital downloads or physical media will give them more money than a lifetime of streaming ever would. Plus you get to keep the higher-quality music even if the platform or artist goes tits-up.

I’ve been largely unaware of a lot of these things going on with Asus but the other day I was reading up on Armoury Crate, which Asus integrates as a hardware-level rootkit on many of their motherboards. That is absolutely goddamn absurd. Bloatware baked right into the hardware itself? I cannot express how scummy and disrespectful to your customers that is.

I’m very glad I picked no Asus parts for my latest build.

DDG’s classic “Trust me bro” privacy policy.

I don’t dislike DDG and I do use it, but goddamn I’d love to see a public audit of their privacy claims. DDG is closed source and they’ve only ever given Their Word ^TM about their claims. The privacy community puts a lot of faith in DDG despite not being able to test anything it says.