corry

Well shoot, I snap-to-grid because while I make music that I love[1], my actual playing skills and timekeeping are poor -- I'm always a bit fast, hitting notes before the beat, even with a click track -- and without either automatic quantification or at least the ability to edit the timing to be more reasonable in post, my tracks would be worse.

Where in the binary between "you're a real musician who uses human feel/timing to create art" OR "you're a hopeless commercial grifter chasing perfection" do I fall?

[1] I hope all musicians feel this way

For many people, it's not just Bluetooth - it's streaming itself and the lower bit-rate.

i.e. Moving from wired headphones on a CD player in 2005 to AirPods (or knock-offs) and 96 kbps Spotify streams in 2026 is hurting you on 2 fronts.

But then again - the convenience of having vast amounts of music at your fingertips and complete freedom to move around, carry your headphones in your pocket, etc - I think most of us would still make that tradeoff most of the time.

LLMs are (broadly-speaking) poorly-positioned to give you a strong verdict on plausibility of a frontier topic. That said - ChatGPT was exactly right in its response to OP!

"Very deep", "border-line impractical" "in a research-sense" is the perfect summary of this article itself! :)

This is one of my favourites from PG, not least because it's a bit antithetical to what I perceive as a growing trend among smart, ambitious people (for whom children might represent friction, inconvenience, etc)... as well as folks for whom COL is making the question irrelevant due to practical concerns.

Actually, it's really striking that even in America -- the developed country with the #1 highest birthrate -- still falls below the replacement rate. What is it that's inversely correlated between growing wealth and having children? Especially since it was likely to opposite for most of human history? (i.e. large families were a sign of wealth and power).

PS - I can't resist offering my own experience as a parent - what a treasure to have discovered that I'm capable of such love, and to get to watch this love transform me into a better person than who I was before. This kind of love demands everything of you, but through it you discover a truer and stronger version of yourself too.

Nice points! You reminded me that, actually, contrary to my hand-wringing, the IG algorithm is excellent (for me) when it comes to recommending music - and it's often artists with very few monthly listeners on Spotify.

Why is IG so much better than Spotify itself's algo? Or YouTube's? Or... etc? No idea. And also - it's always paid ads from these artists that get me.

So on the one hand, <insert my original point>; but on the other, as much as technology is perhaps driving the brand hollowness, it's also allow for more long-tail discovery precisely because it makes powerful marketing/advertising channels accessible to that girl making beats in her bedroom - so long as she has a bit of $ to deploy. It still may not be profitable for her (because: Spotify) but I also try to support these artists with merch buys, physical buys, etc.

Classic PG essay in a lot of ways, but I was expecting (a) the entire watch discussion to be 1/10th of its length, and (b) lead DIRECTLY into a social commentary around how every area -- politics, software dev, music creation & distribution etc -- are now firmly in their terminal brand ages.

A political admin lies directly to your face daily - well, the base doesn't care because they've bought into the brand. The Truth and principles are irrelevant.

A talented musician is making innovative, fresh music - but hasn't yet learned the ability to market herself on IG/TikTok - well, she won't reach an audience because she can't compete in a brand game dominated by marketers and AI-driven beat-makers. The music is irrelevant.

Creating software used to be a very human thing - empathetic understanding of the user's problems, a dash of inspiration and good taste, and you get some cool stuff and possibly a valuable company; but now, if all that's automated, what is it? The craft is irrelevant.

Hmmmm. Perhaps his essay wasn't dark enough.

I mean...

1) This is 'trust me bro' with more details

2) 'After processing' is wide enough to drive a truck through. What if processing takes a year? What if processing is defined as something involving recurring checks?

3) You have no contract with Persona or even LinkedIn beyond the fact that you agreed to LinkedIn's TOS (but didn't even read).

4) The company that acquires or takes-private Persona might have a very different of how it handles this.

5) What does verifying do for you, the user? I understand its value to LinkedIn and their ability to sell your attention to advertisers, but what do YOU gain?

"how incredibly good their google workspace suite of tools is" - is that a common sentiment on HN?

To me, Google Sheets is 10% of Excel on desktop (Mac), Slides are 5% of PowerPoint on desktop (Mac), and the integration between the two (copying and pasting linked charts from Excel to Powerpoint with formatting) makes it a completely non-starter to consider the Google alternatives as primary drivers.

I'm probably a power-user of both, granted, but I took for granted Sheets/Slides are still just toys compared to the real stuff, so curious if I'm missing something.

What a timeless banger, you fill in the blanks on this part:

'Over and over I have found myself asking: "What kind of people worship here? Who is their God? Where were their voices when the lips of __________ <American political leader> dripped with words of interposition and nullification? Where were they when __________ <American political leader> gave a clarion call for defiance and hatred?"'

A bit of nuance: yes, Carney said that but he didn't just offer up the opinion unprompted - it was in response to a direct press question about if China or the US is a more predictable partner right now.

And even then, he didn't lead with "China is!" but wandered his way into offering the assessment.

The context makes his comment on this seem less nakedly provocative (not that it'll matter either way - the headline will be the headline, and the Trump admin will use it however they see fit as usual).

Some of this analysis seems a bit lazy for the Economist.

Apple is in the "AI-related companies in the SP500" group? Microsoft too? Tesla too? Amazon too? But... if these companies' AI efforts fail, 95%+ of their revenues would be unaffected. So big stretch to paint them with that brush.

Nvidia, OK that one is obvious. Meta, Alphabet, OK.

But MOST of the companies listed in that chart are only "AI companies" in the sense that EVERY tech company building peripheral AI into their products is an AI company.

Case in point: if Apple stock goes 'on sale' as part of an AI-bubble sell-off, are you really deciding whether or not to buy based on their AI-ness?

Tales as old as time, especially in tech: rich monopolistic incumbents not seeing the writing on the wall of a new paradigm shift; seemingly invincible execs brazenly displaying their (incorrect) hot-takes; and the inevitable enshittification of the new paradigm as it turns from revolutionary movement to ruling-class incentives.

Ah, I see now that I read too quickly - the "open demo environment" was clearly referencing the idea that the vendor (Filevine) would have a live demo, NOT that each client wanted an open playground demo account that is linked to a subset of their data (which would be utterly insane).