Category Archives: News

Article note: I actually rather like GPM, it's focused and unobtrusive, it's the only such thing I found that did a decent job of commingling local and subscription content, it has good enough library coverage I don't usually bother to pirate lately, and it produces pleasing seed-generated stations. I wouldn't care what they called it if Youtube music weren't an enormously shittier product - but it really is. It (at least last I used it) commingles history with Youtube and contaminates your shit, preferentially plays random video trash from Youtube over just playing songs, has only a very tenuous and crippled concept of local media, and has an offensively non-music-focused UI. I think I'll ditch and take my $10/mo elsewhere, but I'm not really hyped about any of the alternatives.

Enlarge / Please don't hurt our music collections, Google. (credit: Google Play Music)

Google Play Music has been given the death sentence by Google, and today the company has announced a bit more detail about how its execution will be carried out. The main message from today's blog post is "back up your music now," as Google says it will wipe out all Google Music collections in December 2020.

We've known for a while that the shutdown would be sometime in 2020, but for most regions, Google has now narrowed it down to "October." Here's the full timeline:

• Late August—Users will no longer be able to upload or download music through Music Manager. Pre-orders and purchases will be shut down.
• September—Streaming shuts down for users in New Zealand and South Africa.
• October—Global streaming shutdown. The Google Music app and website will cease to be.
• December—Music collections get deleted.

At the time of the streaming shutdown, the app will have been showing shutdown messages for about five months. If a user has somehow missed all of those, two months with no streaming at all will hopefully be enough to get them to research what happened to Google Music.

Article note: I've seen some fairly-compelling arguments that the higher rates in the south are partly due to our AC. We've been making half-jokes for months that one good infected sneeze in the wind-tunnel between OHR and FPAT could take out the whole college.

Article note: Awesome! That little corner of code rot has been an annoyance for retro computing for a while.

Article note: Sloppy keyword recognition spam detection resulting in a 10-day sms ban with no notification. I'm cool with effective, clear spam prevention efforts - the POTS network is nigh-unusable because of the level of spam these days - but this kind of dumb shit that silently breaks low-threshold innocent behavior shouldn't be tolerated. Alternatively, if carriers and platforms keep doing a shitty job with platform management _and_ engaging in invasive behavior with the content they carry, we could trade a little more spam to solve a bunch of other problems and switch to a legal regime that protects blind carriers but makes them liable for anything they parse. Incentivize the fuck out of e2e crypto and non-retention policies.

Article note: Asshole vs. Asshole cases. No one likes a nazi sympathizer, but fuck a whole bunch of arbitration clauses and ToS shenanigans.

Article note: I hope not, Nvidia are such jackasses about licensing, artificial market segmentation, platform lock-in, and community relations that they would be a concerning parent for the IP holder on the dominant architecture of the era.

Article note: These hearings have produced some super-interesting reading. Amazon is exactly as evil as they've always seemed, the way the crushed Quidsi (diapers.com, soap.com) is pretty much the definition of anti-competitive behavior, and on record. (the ArsTechnica article on that one is better) Apple's forcing everyone on iOS into the payment system they get a cut of is some scrip bullshit, and their Right to Repair behavior is so bad even the journalist-enthusiasts didn't bite. Facebook is ... facebook, they're always full of careless tech-bro shit. The weird mixture of inter-FAANG antagonism/special deals with things like video platform interop are fascinating sets of contrast (probably due to warring kingdoms inside the mega corps) and clear signs of collusive monopolists.

Article note: I sprung for a $70 USB-C one with pass-through and higher bandwidth modes and such, but HDMI capture dongles that present as a simple UVC device are fabulous and worth having around. I hadn't seen any as cheap as these, but they look awesome for most things I'd want.

Article note: Seriously. Also, I'm not installing shit on my data-leaking smartphone for your random one-off service, for "authentication" or otherwise. You mining my device is a _much_ bigger threat than my account at webtrash.xyz getting compromised.

Article note: _Everyone_ wants Samsung to kill Bixby, step 1 of setting up a recent Samsung Android device is to turn on adb and do some "adb shell pm uninstall -k --user 0" on all the Bixby components. Google advocating for it is a little anti-trust-y, but I'll take results.

Enlarge / Bixby on the Galaxy S9. (credit: Ron Amadeo)

Reuters and Bloomberg are both independently reporting that Google is pushing Samsung to back away from its duplicate Android ecosystem and promote Google apps instead. A "correspondence" between the two companies was seen by both sites, which saw Google push Samsung to promote the Play Store and Google Assistant over the Galaxy App Store and Samsung's Bixby assistant. Google was apparently willing to open its wallet and pay Samsung to make it happen.

Bloomberg's interpretation of the negotiations is pretty vague, saying the deal "would promote Google's digital assistant and Play Store for apps on [Samsung] devices." The later Reuters report is a lot more specific, saying Samsung is "considering dropping its Bixby virtual assistant and Galaxy Apps Store from its mobile devices." Reuters goes on to say that "Google is dangling more lucrative terms for Samsung than in previous deals if it retreats from its app strategy." Part of Google's immense web of Android protection is sharing ad revenue and Play Store app revenue with phone manufacturers, and offering Samsung a higher share is an easy way to bribe the South Korean company into submission.

Whether Samsung would actually be willing to kill Bixby and the Galaxy App store is up in the air. Samsung has invested piles of money in Bixby since its launch in 2017, but Bixby hasn't been very successful. Samsung acquired the assistant startup Viv Labs, which was founded by the creators of Siri, and put the company to work improving Bixby. But Samsung's voice assistant still can't hang in the same crowd as the Google Assistant, Apple's Siri, and Amazon Alexa.