nope. I know every tune thars played. i wonder if the fact I haveit on 12hrs or more a day playing specific playlist means it has more to work with so srerves up less ai slop? i would notice instantly if it did
There's no way you are sitting concentrating on each track in a 12 hour session. Spotify could be serving you up Frank Sidebottom sings Sinatra after a couple of hours and it'd go right over your head.
A whistleblower from Facebook revealed that when a teenage girl takes a photo on her forward facing camera, and then deletes it WITHOUT even posting it to any platform, Facebook knows, due to camera and storage permissions.
The assumption that they then make is that the girl is not happy with her appearance and starts feeding her with content and adverts related to beauty. Beyond sickening.
Amazon must be the worst example.
Prime used to be genuinely brilliant and useful. It was like being back in the glory days of CRC, except the delivery was practically guaranteed rather than a fingers crossed 90% chance it'd make it the next day. I'd ordered brake pads mid ride on a trip and they were delivered ready for the next day!
These days, despite the proliferation of Amazon warehouses, it seems like anything I search for is drop shipped from China. And if it's being drop shipped from China then I know I can get it cheaper on Ali-Express.
I'd cancel it but I pay for the 'entertainment' streaming subs, she's paid for the sports ones as she's the football fan and I'd feel a little guilt that she'd end up picking it up anyway.
Was using the free version of Deezer without adverts for years, not anymore though!
Any particular reason? I'm trialling for free at the moment but will need to decide whether to sign up for an annual subscription in January 🤔
Amazon is the pits, I've just had my annual trauma of buying something from them after getting gift card from work for Xmas - both things I bought would have been cheaper elsewhere too.
There's no way you are sitting concentrating on each track in a 12 hour session. Spotify could be serving you up Frank Sidebottom sings Sinatra after a couple of hours and it'd go right over your head.
totally wrong. I would know within seconds if there was a cover in there. Music is in the aspie part of my brain.
I do love it when folk try to tell me what I think and do.
There's no way you are sitting concentrating on each track in a 12 hour session. Spotify could be serving you up Frank Sidebottom sings Sinatra after a couple of hours and it'd go right over your head.
totally wrong. I would know within seconds if there was a cover in there. Music is in the aspie part of my brain.
I do love it when folk try to tell me what I think and do.
Doubt that very much especially with modern A.I. music generation, and if you still think otherwise then there is any number of music distribution services/record companies/DAW companies etc who would gladly offer you whatever you ask for so they could learn from your knowledge
Doubt all you want. Pretty much every song I have ever heard is in my brain permanently. Anything new registers within seconds. Aspie / Squirrel brain
I also meant would the fact spotify has a very large database of music I have played make it less likely to do this?
There's a bit of further enshittification of Strava detailed here.
To be honest, I don't have a problem with this one, while it's crap to take away something which was free, it's hardly a core bit of functionality.
Doubt all you want. Pretty much every song I have ever heard is in my brain permanently. Anything new registers within seconds. Aspie / Squirrel brain
Ah OK, that's well outside my frame of experience. Apologies.
I can't imagine that anyone is really that interested in those year in... summaries that are proliferating in all sorts of areas, (my bank sent me one!) that it would persuade them into a paid subscription.
Whether you get AI generated music on Spotify depends entirely on your listening habits and how you use it. If you search for say: Led Zep IV, that's what you'll get. Similarly lots of the old Decca classical recordings are pretty accurate reproductions. If you click on the "Sad Songs for a Rainy Day" or "lo-fi study" playlists you're going to get a lot of generated content.
I'd imagine TJ is more of the former and less of the latter.
There's a bit of further enshittification of Strava detailed here.
To be honest, I don't have a problem with this one, while it's crap to take away something which was free, it's hardly a core bit of functionality.
I don’t think it’s helped them much as there’s usually a few of those Strava end of year things floating around on social media from as soon as they’re available. This year I’ve not seen a single one.
These days, despite the proliferation of Amazon warehouses, it seems like anything I search for is drop shipped from China. And if it's being drop shipped from China then I know I can get it cheaper on Ali-Express.
My missus has a habit of ordering stuff like that. I keep telling her to check the delivery dates which always give it away.
TBH I don't buy from Amazon based on price, I buy on availability, choice and quick (free) delivery.
I genuinely do my best not to use Amazon, only for phone cases because otherwise it's reliable. But I just got an Amazon voucher from work and as a customer experience I find the Amazon website and search terrible. I don't actually know why people would use it.
I don’t think it’s helped them much as there’s usually a few of those Strava end of year things floating around on social media from as soon as they’re available. This year I’ve not seen a single one.
That's because it's the 22nd of December. Mine, and I'd guess most others, will be done after the last bit of work on the 31st.
I genuinely do my best not to use Amazon ... as a customer experience I find the Amazon website and search terrible.
Maybe that's just it. I use it frequently and find it completely straightforward and simple.
That's because it's the 22nd of December. Mine, and I'd guess most others, will be done after the last bit of work on the 31st.
That’ll explain it then, I through I’d remembered seeing them before Christmas rather than at the year end.
Any particular reason? I'm trialling for free at the moment but will need to decide whether to sign up for an annual subscription in January
Yes I had been enjoying a loophole of their web player. Which has unfortunately been closed and plays adverts every two songs, similar to how free Spotify has for as long as I can remember.
There are other websites who's services via their dedicated apps are worse than by other means but I'd rather not discuss it on a public forum as the loopholes get squashed when discussed openly on the internet!
Edit: In general terms and for most casual listeners it's good enough. Some obscure stuff and certain artists don't have tracks on there but even some of the obscure stuff the search doesn't find, can be found on compilation albums they do have!
Here’s Warren discussing the A.I involvement in current music production, only 10mins.
I genuinely do my best not to use Amazon, only for phone cases because otherwise it's reliable.
I use it for academic text/research books, and before any smartarse suggests going directly to the bookstore's own website. Some just don't bother, some require you to be part of university before buying them. Some do, but their payment and delivery fulfillment page directs you to amazon anyway, and the reason they do that is 1. why reproduce something (for an additional cost) that you already have to pay for if you're on amazon anyway, and 2. Some amazon contracts don't allow it. The market for these sorts of books is pretty limited already, so it's not like you have much of a choice.
Enshitification in action.
^^ well that youtube clip is depressing
I genuinely do my best not to use Amazon ... as a customer experience I find the Amazon website and search terrible.
Maybe that's just it. I use it frequently and find it completely straightforward and simple.
No, it's not if you are looking for something specific. In fact I think they make it difficult on purpose so that you don't go hunting through cheaper options and instead buy the "featured" ones that come up first by default. I presume these are ones they make most margin on.
Example. Search string "10TB hard drive internal". Sort by cheapest. Filter by "With Prime Delivery". Filter by "6TB and above" to get rid of the random brackets, screws and cables. Filter by "internal". Filter by "SATA interface"
First result: 500gb internal hard drive. (wrong size)
Second result: 1TB external hard drive (wrong size, wrong interface, wrong form factor)
third result: NVME SSD 1TB (wrong interface, wrong type of device, wrong size)
Fourth result: 6TB internal hard drive (wrong size)
Firth result: 5TB external hard drive. (wrong size, wrong interface, wrong form factor)
In fact there is not one correctly matched & filtered item on the first page of results.
No, it's not if you are looking for something specific.
I've just searched Tamiya XF4 (a type of paint) First hit. twice the price I can buy it anywhere else fo'shure, but it finds it?
No, it's not if you are looking for something specific.
I've just searched Tamiya XF4 (a type of paint) First hit. twice the price I can buy it anywhere else fo'shure, but it finds it?
The post I replied to said it was "straightforward and simple". To me that means searching for specific terms gives me items matching those terms, in the order I've selected (cheapest), filtered by the options I've chosen.
I already gave you an example of it not working (for the user's benefit at least); I think they make the filters and "sort by cheapest" option work so badly that users will only ever bother to use the "featured" page which they curate to have the items they make most money on.
For your example: it could be that they have no alternatives to what you searched for, it could be that they have a high margin on that item, etc.
Another example: often when you read the reviews, it will be for a completely different item. Apparently what sellers do is list a popular item and when it has a lot of 5 star reviews, swap it for a different product. It is clearly misleading for users, and would be trivial for Amazon to remove all the reviews or mark them as "this review was for a different product" when a seller changes the product listing significantly. I presume Amazon have left this because more "stars" on an item results in more sales, even if it's clearly falsified.
I use it for academic text/research books, and before any smartarse suggests going directly to the bookstore's own website. Some just don't bother, some require you to be part of university before buying them. Some do, but their payment and delivery fulfillment page directs you to amazon anyway, and the reason they do that is 1. why reproduce something (for an additional cost) that you already have to pay for if you're on amazon anyway, and 2. Some amazon contracts don't allow it. The market for these sorts of books is pretty limited already, so it's not like you have much of a choice.
Enshitification in action.
lots of these kinds of specialist books that are only easlily purchased from amazon are knock offs too 😂
Maybe that's just it. I use it frequently and find it completely straightforward and simple.
It's acceptable if it's something highly specific with no options, e.g the paint mentioned above, or you have a part number, although even then it seems to try and be clever. Put in the part number for shimano brake olives and it starts showing you Chinese cable outer because presumably enough people have searched for brake hose/barb/tube/outer that it 'knows' they're sort-of linked.
Years ago there was a behind the scenes video that explained why the amazon product page layout is so awful and filled with random tables of part numbers, product data, pictures, text, etc rather than the usual nicely formatted website you'd expect for shopping. It's so you spend less time there. They want you to come to Amazon, type in Shimano B05S (brake pads), click on the first link (because that's the one that pays them the highest), and buy it. It's deliberately supposed to be hard for you to browse so that you funnel yourself to the checkout ASAP before you check any other sites!
The only site that seems worse is Ali-Express, and I'm sure they just modelled it on Amazon, but made it worse so that whilst browsing for the cheapest Garmin mount it throws in a load of other results to try and get you to spend more.
Just unearthed this essay. This process doesn't just apply to the ether or individuals, governments are also victims https://www.noemamag.com/freeing-ourselves-from-the-clutches-of-big-tech/
why the amazon product page layout is so awful and filled with random tables of part numbers, product data, pictures, text, etc rather than the usual nicely formatted website you'd expect for shopping. It's so you spend less time there. They want you to come to Amazon, type in Shimano B05S (brake pads), click on the first link (because that's the one that pays them the highest), and buy it. It's deliberately supposed to be hard for you to browse so that you funnel yourself to the checkout ASAP before you check any other sites!
IANAE, and I suppose Amazon has crunched the numbers and is going with what works, but I'd have thought this approach would lead to as many people quickly giving up and going somewhere else as it would people clicking and buying the first thing that comes up.
And why wouldn't they want you to spend as much time as possible looking at other stuff rather than buying the one thing and leaving?
And why wouldn't they want you to spend as much time as possible looking at other stuff rather than buying the one thing and leaving?
Because people get overwhelmed very quickly. So much info, so many pics, pop-ups, adverts etc, coupled with the fact that many people now have a very short attention span, often measured in seconds and the descriptions are quite vague.
By offering infinite free delivery and also making it very easy to buy (1-click) even if you order 27 different items in 27 different purchases, it doesn't matter that you're only there for a few seconds. Some follow up emails ("because you bought X, you might be interested in Y..."), a special offer voucher code etc will have people back there almost immediately, another single purchase before they get overwhelmed again with the sheer amount of tat on there.
IANAE, and I suppose Amazon has crunched the numbers and is going with what works, but I'd have thought this approach would lead to as many people quickly giving up and going somewhere else as it would people clicking and buying the first thing that comes up.
theres two things going on here - one is that vendors are paying to put search results in front of you - so time spent searching is in effect time consuming paid for content.
It's generally an old metric of web searches to deliver the result someone wants quickly - now the aim is to keep people on your site for a long as possible. Google used to post its search results with a stat telling you how many results it had found and how quickly it had found it, and used an algorithm to put the most commonly successful results first - the most commonly successful ones of course being the routes other searchers had left the site via quickest - a bad result was one where someone clicked on the link and came back, a good result was one where the link was clicked and then there was no return to the google - and the algorithm would move that latter outcome up the rankings. Now google's metric for success is to try and extend the amount of time your are on googles pages as much as possible - they're happy to tell themselves that more time on the site reflects their users enjoying the experience of using the site more - that they are happily hanging around rather than frustratedly having their time (and often their employers money) wasted
The other is - Amazon just has some utterly shit ideas. As a seller of goods it seems to have some pretty weird delusions about the though process customers have when buying things that seem to based on a basic lack of vision and sometime some quite magical thinking. They just happen to have sufficient underlying resources not to sink themselves when they pour money and resource into awful ideas. They've got some core assets that do work really well - particular in relation to delivery - and that just seems to provide the buffer they need to get away with some pretty bad decisions and a poor experiences for their users.
Remember their weird amazon buttons - the business case for them was outrageously flawed. The idea of them was you could used them to re-order something you used all the time - bog roll, detergent etc and didn't need to make any reasoned comparison over becuase you alway bough the same thing. So you put the button where ever that stuff was kept and pressed it when you could see you were running low. But the problem with the model was these were all low value commodities - the only way to economically run the scheme was if a button user re-ordered bog roll was to send them absolutely loads of bog roll - which was both more than they had room to store and also meant it would a year or so before the button was any use again
Alexa has been a big loss for Amazon. its popular in the sense lots have people have bought and use them, but its a failure in the sense that they are sold below cost price in the hope that people would spend money through them - people generally tend to use it as a sort of background musak radio station. But amazon actually believed people would use it to do their shopping
One of their adverts for it featured people preparing for a party / christmas and someone saying "Oh Alexa - buy gift wrap" and Alexa politely and efficiently complying with the request and christmas is saved.
OK - yeah? I want to buy something I consider attractive as part of a gift for someone I care about - oh and of course I want to do that with out seeing it or comparing it to any other options.
Genius
And as you can see - we've all revolutionised the way we shop. My local shoe shop has turned off all the lights and blacked out the windows - I now if I want shoes I just shout "pair of shoes in size 13 please" through the letterbox. And its win win - I now look like Captain Flashheart from he ankles down and the shoe shop keeper now has his own space ship.
And why wouldn't they want you to spend as much time as possible looking at other stuff rather than buying the one thing and leaving?
if I decide I need some widget/gadget/dogit/whatever then I’ll have a search for it, check Amazon, check google, check DuckDuckGo, check aliexpress..
after all that I usually decide I can’t be arsed searching then usually buy from aliexpress and bypass the Amazon drop shipping altogether
Can anyone suggest a good weather app now that the Met Office has truly and completely enshittified their app?
Can anyone suggest a good weather app now that the Met Office has truly and completely enshittified their app?
Came here to say the same
after all that I usually decide I can’t be arsed searching then usually buy from aliexpress and bypass the Amazon drop shipping altogether
Ftfy!
Can anyone suggest a good weather app now that the Met Office has truly and completely enshittified their app?
You can try:
- XC Weather
- YR
- Windy
I use XC for a non sophisticated but generally fairly reliable forecast. Gives you an hourly for about 3 days and 3 hourly out to seven days. Quick and easy big picture stuff. Adverts top and bottom (often for Temu type offerings).
YR is Norwegian, I think, and have used that before. Different style of UI.
Windy is a more sophisticated model. I'm sure if you understand weather better than me at a meteorological level it would be notably better.
Example. Search string "10TB hard drive internal". Sort by cheapest. Filter by "With Prime Delivery". Filter by "6TB and above" to get rid of the random brackets, screws and cables. Filter by "internal". Filter by "SATA interface"
...
In fact there is not one correctly matched & filtered item on the first page of results.
I just tried this. If you do your search and select "price: low to high" as the result order then you get what you're looking for. All of that other crap just confuses matters as it relies on every product being entered correctly, just like most/every other online shopping site.
Specifically, narrowing your search by "All Prime" breaks your results here, presumably because there aren't any drives with Prime delivery - ie, what you're searching for doesn't exist so it gives you best guess suggestions rather than returning null.
Meh, wasn’t impressed with much of the Xmas treats ,
Foxes selection box biscuits the design of the packaging was a work of art, gone are the days you had a little well of biscuits, now the well has one.
The plastic quality street was both stingy in size and lacking in quality.
I’ll not be bothering with the old Christmas favourites as they are are just a pale shadow of their former selves having been sold off to the bean counting mega corporations and reformulated.
(I used to love the summer days cycling past the Cadburys factory as the smell was amazing, still as soon as they got took over pop went that and it’s a housing estate with plenty of affordable 600-700k houses that has its own moat when it floods 🙂
All the favourite childhood treats are now meh.
I did start watching a few YouTube things and they were pointing out that Heinz baked beans have been reformulated to have more sugar,so if you think your food isn’t quite like it used to be it’s probably because it’s not as maximising profits is now king so reformulating with cheaper ingredients is de rigour.
^ name checks out. 😀
Lol, I wondered whether anyone was thinking enshitification for the new met office app. Hate it now. Graphics too big, way to much scrolling. Being able to zip though the last 6 hours rain radar with a wiggle of the thumb was very useful....where's the rain, is it coming or pushing through, is it getting over the Pennines? Now the time scale bar is awful.
And wtf is the point of the little temperature bar graph ( half way down the page)? Has no scale numbers and adds nothing to the data.
They let the fresh face app programming kids at it, practical useability lost to being pretty.
And relax......
Can anyone suggest a good weather app now that the Met Office has truly and completely enshittified their app
Shadow Weather is good.
The Met Office app has given different forecasts than the website for years (haven't checked for a while though) so I just use the website. (I think I decided ages ago that the website data were updated more often so that was better, but I don't really remember.)
Anyway, finally to my point - the mobile website went GACK a little while back, but with the option to revert to the old design. Obviously I did that. They asked for feedback and I explained that the new design was awful for anyone over the age of 6. Since then, every once in a while there's a banner asking for feedback on the new design / offering to change to it. Every time I write another little message to say "because it's really very bad" just in case the message has any impact...
I imagine that an app redesign and the mobile website redesign went hand in hand. If enough people say "are you out of your minds? This is terrible!" then maybe they'll listen.
Oh and I use the Ventusky app, as well as the Met Office website.
Alexa has been a big loss for Amazon. its popular in the sense lots have people have bought and use them, but its a failure in the sense that they are sold below cost price in the hope that people would spend money through them - people generally tend to use it as a sort of background musak radio station. But amazon actually believed people would use it to do their shopping
One of their adverts for it featured people preparing for a party / christmas and someone saying "Oh Alexa - buy gift wrap" and Alexa politely and efficiently complying with the request and christmas is saved.
OK - yeah? I want to buy something I consider attractive as part of a gift for someone I care about - oh and of course I want to do that with out seeing it or comparing it to any other options.
Genius
This is all spot on. And of course, your "buy gift wrap" option would tie directly into their Suggested products for exactly the same reasons.
I would use Alexa to buy things. But it prompts me with things like "based on your order history it looks like you might need royal canin s o veterinary feline urinary one point five kilograms, to reorder just say 'order royal canin s o veterinary feline urinary one point five kilograms'" Aye right, maybe if it prompted me to alias that as "cat food" first.
For much of the enshittification culprits, the answer is venture capital.
Isn’t that Vampire Capital? Buy successful companies, pile them with dept, suck them dry then sell the desiccated husk for pennies on the dollar, rinse and repeat.
Isn’t that Vampire Capital? Buy successful companies, pile them with dept, suck them dry then sell the desiccated husk for pennies on the dollar, rinse and repeat.
I'd assumed enshittification was just the end game of private equity profit seeking, i.e. once you've driven down the cost of production by offshoring, AI, lay-offs etc. and once you've driven the price up as high as the market will bear, then all you've got left is stripping out features and generally enshittifying.
I'm seeing this happen, actual investment in product requires technical staff who know their worth and generally command reasonable salaries, but remove features and stop any meaningful development, in favour of marketing and bold new graphics, and you can cut salaries and jobs.
Re: the Met office app, I hated it also so filled out the feedback form.
It might have been my imagination but when I went back in to the app it suddenly seemed much improved, I wonder if they use the feedback form as a sort of 'customisation' process, suddenly my layout is a lot clearer with all the information I want in the top pane.
For anyone who hasn't filled out the feedback form, maybe screenshot your layouts before and after?
I think Amazon is the embodiment of enshittification, I think they think the app design leads to more sales but the ability to search is terrible. If I know exactly what I want I'll usually buy it (after inwardly wincing that my very specific search terms still result in the item I want being halfway down the page) but if I'm not sure what I want I go elsewhere. Amazon will be full of highly paid people trying to justify their existence by tweaking things. They probably have a KPI of increasing the number of searches and achieve that by making the search function shit.
Amazon already has a bad reputation, making it difficult to use for people who do use it will just shorten it's eventually lifespan. Ebay went this way, for private sellers, now theres plenty of other platforms growing quickly.
Isn’t that Vampire Capital? Buy successful companies, pile them with dept, suck them dry then sell the desiccated husk for pennies on the dollar, rinse and repeat.
Thats private equity, not VC.
I have been Beta testing the new MetOffice app for ages - it's a massive unimprovement on the old one. The worst offender is they have ruined the widget.
For the moment I am using something called weawow will check out the other suggestions.
There are 2 x apps called windy - one is paid for the other isn't.
I've gone over to weather24 for the time being, which I've used before in conjunction with the Met Office. I've uninstalled the latter, I'm that pissed off with how they've messed it up.
Oh and I use the Ventusky app, as well as the Met Office website.
Ventusky together with Yr.No
They don't always agree but it gives you a good idea of what's likely.
Isn’t that Vampire Capital? Buy successful companies, pile them with dept, suck them dry then sell the desiccated husk for pennies on the dollar, rinse and repeat.
Thats private equity, not VC.
Its not private equity either, the first bit is true but they don't asset strip, the payday is inflating the turnover and multiples doubling what the bought at. Still not a great model as everything is focused on the sale in 3 years time rather than long term planning for business longevity.
Ventusky together with Yr.No
They don't always agree but it gives you a good idea of what's likely.
One nice thing about Ventusky is that you can see forecasts from a bunch of different models / sources and so get an idea of overall confidence.
Its not private equity either, the first bit is true but they don't asset strip, the payday is inflating the turnover and multiples doubling what the bought at.
I'm glad someone managed to find a way of saying that succinctly. I had two goes yesterday evening, gave up and went out instead.
Interesting article on the guardian about fracking - of the human mind - for our attention: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jan/18/how-can-we-defend-ourselves-from-the-new-plague-of-human-fracking
Video here illustrates the issue nicely.....
That is superb
I have to use a secure gov database for work. Ten years ago to enter some data it took 30 mins. Now the same data upload takes 4 hours, and at the end there are sections that I abandon out of frustration. The data has not changed, but the database is now partitioned off into what seems like endless sections. Progress.
Amazon is useful for Scottish residents saving cash on booze.
1L bottle 41.3 gin Amazon £22.50. In Scotland £26.20 minimum price in the supermarket.
That's not enshittification, that's just putting your local off-license out of business.
Can anyone suggest a good weather app now that the Met Office has truly and completely enshittified their app
WeatherPro? When I first got an iPhone, and Apple set up the App Store, I tried a bunch of different weather apps, including the Met Office one, and it was garbage back then, but I tried WeatherPro and it worked really well, but to get hourly updates you had to subscribe.
I stuck with it until Apple bought Dark Skies and incorporated the best bits into the Weather App, which gives me everything that WeatherPro did, but for free. YMMV 🤷🏼♂️