@auriali

Hello from the Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 FE

this aged like fine wine, relistened to mr. morale and the big steppers the other day and yeah it’s still such a good album, deeply reflective and a wonderful listen front to back.

just gonna say it, but I think in a lot of ways iOS is a poor UX experience. some reasons:

1. back button isn't consistent & is annoying to reach, it's at the top of the screen a lot, making it hard to reach one handed. sometimes the button is somewhere else depending on the app you're using.

2. for some reason safari settings are shoved into system settings, so you have to dig through to find it to configure basic things like extensions

3. you can't turn Bluetooth off via control centre, you need to go into settings to do that too

I could go on if it thought about it more, but yeah. I've used iOS a good amount for years as I have owned 2 iPads and having used android phones for a long time as well I just find I have to go through more hoops to do things on iOS than android.

and today's award for most evil corporate decision goes to: Sony!

LEMMiNO just dropped another video (pls go watch it), and it’s yet another banger with some of the best video production of any YouTube documentary channel on the platform. He researches, writes and edits all of his videos on his own. Makes his own music for them, coded his own (really cool) website, designs all of his unique and distinctive thumbnails, and does this all without a single sponsored segment, being fully funded by ads and Patreon.

His growth from rage comics to becoming (one of the few) good 10 top channels and now finally becoming a documentary channel that goes toe to toe with documentaries produced by huge companies with big teams is amazing to see. His MH370 video is amazing and makes Netflix’s documentary series look amateur, it’s horrible and overly long, while LEMMiNO’s is informative and visually interesting too. Also, gotta shout out his Jack the Ripper video, masterpiece imo.

Hello, I am here to madly scream about tech again!

So, Arc for Windows has now officially launched. You can get it on their website. When I first got access via a waitlist, the browser was indicated as a beta, you were warned of bugs. I ignored the shortcomings at the time (like when I spoke about it on TNC) because it wasn’t done, they were constantly changing things, which is what I expect from an early beta. But now that it’s out for anyone, and it isn’t called a beta, I think it’s fair to judge it like any other browser on Windows. Forget all the gimmicks and hype, here are some of the issues I have with the current build:

1. It takes a significant amount of time to open.

2. It sometimes renders websites weirdly until you scroll.

3. Extension support is finicky and all open in separate windows.

4. 99% of settings are not accessible from the dropdown, instead you need to type in the full settings URL.

5. Passkey support doesn’t work if you use a password manager to store passkeys.

6. The dark theme isn’t really that dark.

7. Crashes if you move tabs around too much.

8. Scrollbars are huge.

9. Importing from other browsers barely works.

10. And more…

I gave The Browser Company the benefit of the doubt, but releasing a beta as a stable browser is dumb, it doesn’t do basic things well, and its nicer features are missing. It feels like Windows is an afterthought, they don’t show a screenshot of it on their site, only the macOS version. It feels they made it to tick a box.

Here are some pics of my mums old iPhone 3G. For even more nostalgia, these pictures were taken on my LG G3, which was my first Android phone, hence the potato quality. Truly retro.

my variation is insane man yells about design, branding, technology, music, the value of art, radiohead or serious post that's way too long for its own good. there's no in-between.

Google is so good at branding bro, their payment service originally called Google Wallet was rebranded to Android Pay when Apple Pay launched, then was rebranded again to Google Pay, and then was rebranded once again back to Google Wallet, but this time Google Wallet only refers to the app that you use to store bank and other payment/loyalty cards while the service/payment method that actually allows you to spend money via contactless on your phone and online with Google is still called Google Pay (also sometimes styled as GPay). Also don’t forget that in some markets like the US have a different Google Pay logo which is again different from the other Google Pay, also the US Google Pay is usually referred to as GPay. There was also Google Pay Send, which is technically the actual ancestor to the original Google Wallet, as it was only a service to send and receive money rather than a full on payment method like Google Pay is. Makes sense, right?

I've seen a lot of Taylor Swift fans who seem more invested in the streaming numbers and chart placements rather than the music itself. At this point I feel like I've engaged more with this new album than some fans and I didn't even like the record all that much. Just a reminder, the value of art is not determined by numbers, but by the value individuals get from it.

crazy how Spotify is putting the price of premium up yet again (11.99 now) when they are the only major music streaming service other than YouTube to not provide any sort of high resolution audio option, no Dolby Atmos, no spacial audio, and they are one of the worst in terms of what they pay artists. meanwhile they add stuff like video courses that no one wants and you have to pay for individually per course on top of premium as some sort of knock-off skillshare

doesn’t beat the time that guy leaked secret pentagon documents on a minecraft discord server and another one called “thug shaker central” which led to this amazing dramatic shot for a news programme in the uk

Flashback to when I installed the leaked early build of Windows 11 onto a virtual machine when it still had the old Windows 10 settings app, desktop icons, and more unfinished parts vs Windows 11 on my current machine right now.

Saw this remix of The National Anthem by Radiohead for the Napoleon film trailer. As the expert on Kid A, I need to complain about why this is a bad remix. Long post incoming, likely will be boring to most, but I said I’d post whatever I want, so yeah. If you wanna hear the remix, you can find it here: https://youtu.be/YUISPYzz90k and you can hear the original here: https://youtu.be/NfQD1QiQ9o4

The remix doesn’t understand what makes the track work. The whole idea of the original is repetition, the song is chaotic, with eerie radio samples and other sounds hanging around, later on, a brass section bursts into the track, drowning out the rest of the track with an organised assortment of jazzy chaos. However, throughout the whole song, the iconic, heavy bassline loops, no matter how wild the music gets, the bassline is there, even the drums drop out here and there, allowing the chaos to swallow the song whole, but the bassline never falters. The remix ignores this, the bassline is barely there, the horns are gone, the chaos is gone. The whole point of the organised chaos is to fit with the lyrics, Thom Yorke’s voice is filtered to sound nervous, he sings “Everyone is so near” and “Everyone has got the fear”, showing a sense of anxiety, partly to do with Yorke’s fears about how big Radiohead got after OK Computer, like packing arenas. The film’s subject just don’t fit the song, they have nothing in common. It feels like it was added because it’s called The National Anthem.