> The current research advances sodium as a viable alternative for batteries, a vital step to combat the rarity and environmental damage of lithium. It's one of many steps ahead.
Curious what some of the many steps ahead are. Seems like these articles about battery breakthroughs WRT non-lithium chemistries come out frequently, but nothing ever seems to come to fruition, and lithium still dominates. Just want to know why all these breakthroughs never make it to industrial scale.
> Experts recommend using UUIDv7 only for internal keys and exposing a separate, truly random UUIDv4 as an external identifier.
So then what's the point? How I always did things in the past was use an auto increment big int as the internal primary key, and then use a separate random UUID for the external facing key. I think this recommendation from "experts" is pretty dumb because you get very little benefit using UUIDV7 (beyond some portability improvements) if you're still using a separate internal key.
While I wouldn't use UUIDV7 as a secure token like I would UUIDV4, I don't see anything wrong with using UUIDV7 as externally exposed object keys - you're still going to need permissions checks anyway.
I asked a similar question, and yeah it seems like this is entirely for distributed systems, even then only some of them. Your basic single DB Postgres should just have a serial PK.
You’re not wrong, of course. It’s a natural consequence of the eschewing of DBAs, and the increasingly powerful compute available - even if someone did notice that the slowdown was due to the PK choice, they can often “fix” that by paying more money.
There are already lots and lots of treatments for localized tumors in the liver - radiofrequency oblation, cryo oblation, microwaves, etc. These kinds of articles often tout new treatments as a bold new thing, but they don't really change the state of medicine, and it's not like they would be a replacement for chemo, for example. I'd be very curious how histotripsy compares to these other localized tumor treatments.
> You care so little you spent time to claim you don't care twice in a row.
I've seen this style of argument before and I think it's a non sequitur and total BS. The fact that he may care about feeling his opinion is being misrepresented is totally different from what his original "we don't care" statement referred to.
Are you sure though? I don’t have an opinion on this specific case, but I have been in situations where someone claims to have no interest at all in a topic and then doesn’t stop talking about it.
Excuse me? Quant finance doesn't claim to be devising grand theories about how the world operates (is more akin to engineering). And when it does, any delineation from economics is moot.
What's quintessential quant finance? Black-Scholes and no-arbitrage pricing. Don't you agree it's much more of a tool than a theory of how the world works.
> What's quintessential quant finance? Black-Scholes and no-arbitrage pricing
This is a bad model to pick to exemplify physics envy given it’s based on thermodynamic dispersion.
The term “physics envy” broadly applies to all social sciences lacking a mathematical basis. It’s a criticism of using math where it doesn’t belong. That hasn’t really fit (until very recently) with economics. It’s been a classic complaint about quantitative finance’s loftier visions of universality.
> This is a bad model to pick to exemplify physics envy given it’s based on thermodynamic dispersion.
Using a model derived from physics is not having physics envy.
> The term “physics envy” broadly applies to all social sciences lacking a mathematical basis
No, physics envy is about thinking you can have the same prediction power as physics using simple mathematical tools just because some branch of physics do (while not understanding physics at the same time, because all of physics definitely doesn't work like that).
> It’s a criticism of using math where it doesn’t belong. That hasn’t really fit (until very recently) with economics
Well, if you consider Ricardo to be recent, maybe…
Agreed. I think most people would agree the outcome here is profoundly unjust: this woman had her house destroyed with no compensation, and as a result police have no incentive to not go ballistic when a more constrained approach would suffice.
People can only be fucked over so much before they start to consider that the whole system is corrupt, including the courts. The only reason this hasn't been decided the other way is that it affects relatively few individuals, so it's not a rallying cry for most people.
1. Saying "hey, you can just not list on Spotify" is naive. Unless you're a major artist, you don't have the market power to convince people not to use Spotify. Essentially every labor movement is about pooling the collective power of individuals to fight larger entrenched market owners, and that's what this boycott is about.
2. To me the main issue is not the payout percentage, but how it's divvied up. I believe this is still the case, but payouts are divvied up by averaging across all plays. But the total plays are dominated by large artists. A better deal for smaller artists is to allocate each individual subscriber's revenue based on what that subscriber listens to. For example, if I love Obscure Artist A, and 90% of my songs are Obscure Artist A, then Obscure Artist A should get 90% of my $15 or whatever subscription fee (minus Spotify's cut). But instead, Spotify says "Obscure Artist A only had .000001% of total plays, so they only get .000001% of total revenue" - it ends up being a better payout for the big names but a worse deal for all the smaller artists.
There was a study that looked at the economics of this [1]: user centric (UCPS) vs market centric (MCPS) payment system. In short: UCPS would transfer some revenue from the top artists to the middle rump of popular artists, but the small and obscure artists would not be affected much since they hardly make much in the first place.
My take on this: of course the top artists should not be taking a disproportionate cut at the expense of the less popular artists, a UCPS is not a panacea but it would be an improvement.
Thanks so much for linking this, I think it's a great study.
And I agree, I don't think it would be a panacea. But I think it would be a lot fairer, and would help a large selection of artists in that middle tier. For the most obscure artists, while the study says it has a "low impact" on them, they actually had the highest percentage increase, but since their royalties are already so low the euro amount increase was in the single digit euros. And again, that seems fair to me - if hardly anyone is listening to you, you're not going to be getting a big payout.
I think the real issue that needs to be solved for this is how you will convince big artists to sign while giving up some revenue to less popular artists ... because you absolutely need them.
That revenue model makes no sense. How would paying an artist on the relative user plays make any sense? So basically there is no direct relationship with number of plays and revenue? You need to abstract that part out. Artists should be paid some amount per stream.
Is there a market that actually uses a system like that? It just seems convoluted. It sounds like just some idea someone made up to back into paying some artists more in favor of others. And I'm not even sure it would have the desired effects. I'm sure Swift is on a lot more playlists that Spotify pushes than Obscure Artist.
It makes sense because each user is paying. I would like the my personal payment to Spotify to be split between the musicians I listen to, and none of it to go to Taylor Swift.
Yes, it wouldn't be a direct relationship between number of plays and payout. It would instead be a direct relationship between user payment and payout.
>Is there a market that actually uses a system like that?
Yes, physical media.
Number of streams shouldn't necessarily be directly related to payout anyway. If you purchase a CD the artist gets that payment once, and you can listen to it as many times as you like.
I don't understand the argument about paying all artists a fixed amount per stream when customers aren't paying a fixed amount per stream in an unlimited subscription model. If I listen to artists X, Y and Z, it makes a lot more sense to me that the only people who get paid from my subscription money are artists X, Y and Z. As opposed to the situation we have now, where, as a sibling comment points out, if I never listen to Taylor Swift the largest portion of my subscription fee still goes to her.
> For example, if I love Obscure Artist A, and 90% of my songs are Obscure Artist A, then Obscure Artist A should get 90% of my $15 or whatever subscription fee (minus Spotify's cut). But instead, Spotify says "Obscure Artist A only had .000001% of total plays, so they only get .000001% of total revenue" - it ends up being a better payout for the big names but a worse deal for all the smaller artists.
Why would the former pay obscure artists more? Are non-paying users more likely to listen to mainstream artists? Or do fans of obscure artists just play fewer songs each? Is ad revenue shared in the same proportions, but just lower per user? Is revenue really shared on the basis of plays, rather then playing time? If so, and if obscure artists make longer songs, does that contribute to their lack of revenue?
I don't want the obscure artists to get more ― or less, for that matter. I want the artists I listen to to get my money, obscure or not. That's a simple transaction and has worked forever. If I buy a CD from artist X, I know I won't be supporting artist Y with my money, just X. If I then want to listen to Y, I can support them as well. But in any case Z won't be getting any of my money because they make noises I don't consider music.
Money is fungible. Where “your” money went means nothing, just what the final payout the artist got at the end of the month.
It doesn’t seem obvious that smaller artists have audiences who stream music less than listeners to Taylor swift. Because that’s the only way the current system might rip people off.
> If I buy a CD from artist X, I know I won't be supporting artist Y with my money, just X.
That's not entirely true, since by buying X's CD you're also giving money to the label/publisher of that CD, who may be allocating that money to Y if Y is also one of their artists. However, overall I agree that the buy-a-CD model makes it more clear where your money is going.
It seems like if anything the current model would end up paying obscure artists more? (If you assume that people who listen to obscure music tend to listen to more music overall, which would be my guess.)
On a very very large average, and assuming that Spotify pays out now in precise proportion to the total plays (just as you wrote - if 0.1% of plays, then 0.1% of payouts), then changing to your proposed system would literally change nothing. Average number of plays in total versus average number of users listening to an artist would be exactly the same statistically, starting from several tens of thousands of users, and Spotify has millions of them.
> then changing to your proposed system would literally change nothing.
That's simply wrong. Another commenter posted a study that looked at exactly this question, https://legrandnetwork.blogspot.com/2021/02/user-centric-mod... . It's not an enormous change, but on Spotify the top 10 artists would have their income reduced 12.5%, to be redistributed to lower tier artists.
I mean, the article is likely correct, but only if the current distribution of royalties in Spotify isn't proportional to the play count (which was presumed in the top comment). And it is totally believable that Spotify adjusts them to entice bigger names to the platform.
But if the distribution would have been equal, then there will ne zero difference with the user based distribution. Because it would be the exact same number counted differently.
User A listens to artists 1, 2, 3 in a 50%, 25%, 25% proportion on a 15$ sub (same below)
User B listens to artists 1, 2, 4
User C listens to artists 4, 5, 6
So by current system, artist 1 has 4 plays, 2 has 2 plays, 4 has 3 plays, 3 and 5 and 6 have 1 play. So 1 gets 15$, 2 gets 7.5$, 4 gets 11.25$, and 3,5,6 all get 3.75$
If we recalculate to the per user scheme, then from user A, 1 gets 7.5$, 2,3 get 3.75$. From B, 1 gets 7.5$, 2,4 get 3.75$. And from C, 4 gets 7.5$, 5, get 3.75$. Sum it up and we get 1 get 15$, 2 gets 7.5$, 4 gets 11.25$, 3,5,6 get 3.75$.
It's very basic arithmetic, from shuffling numbers and then summing them up differently, the total won't change.
So what needs to be changed is a skew artificially made towards big names, that is the real root cause.
You should really double check your "very basic arithmetic", because it's wrong. If a user listens to fewer total songs than the average Spotify user, then the artists they listen to will get a larger payout under a per-user model compared to an aggregated model, and the study I linked shows that this results in the top 10 artists earning ~12% less, which causes a larger distribution to smaller artists.
user-centric (pay for what people listen to) is explicitly not proportional to play count. that's why your arithmetic does not work.
to make it simple
-----
userA: 999 plays of artist A: pays 5$
userB: 1 play of artist B: pays 5$
pool-centric: A gets 9.99$, B gets 0.01$
user-centric: A gets 5$, B gets 5$
-----
bonus: in spotify system artists under a certain threshold get 0$. which gives guaranteed distortions even if you suggest ideal conditions for the pool/user thing up there to not matter (independence and large numbers).
extra bonus: spotify also dilute the pool by running mass music production sweat shops aaaaand by running more and more AI music for which they run the money back to themselves.
in practice small artists lose money on spotify, and a significant section of spotify artists would earn more selling a few cds a year on bandcamp than on their spotify ever.
I just want to understand this a bit more clearly.
So I have never even opened Swift’s page on Spotify — let alone played a song (if there are fans here, please don’t come after me). I pay for Spotify. So did you mean to say the largest portion of my monthly fee goes to Taylor Swift?
No, you pay Spotify, and then Spotify pays artists per stream they received. “Your” money goes in to a pool at Spotify where it can’t really be traced further.
If you listen to more music than the average listener, those artists get paid out more than what you put in, and if you listen to less, they get less. But on average it all levels out anyway.
Unless people who listen to a particular artist on average stream less music entirely. Which doesn’t seem to be the case.
It doesn’t though. There is no transaction between you and Taylor Swift.
If you listened to less music than the average person then some of your fee went to the people who listened to more music, and the other way round if you listened to more music. Which is going to average out in the end anyway, while massively simplifying the accounting. Spotify can also tell artists exactly how much they are getting paid rather than having to wait for the end of the billing period to work it out. Only to come to roughly the same amount anyway.
There is no tracing routes with a pooled fund. Only inputs and outputs. And the outputs would seem to be pretty much identical in the pooled system vs individual pools per user.
In the same way that your small time artist is getting some of Taylor swift fans money. In the end the artists still get paid the same under either system.
The money you pay doesn't have an identity attached to it so Spotify has to just pool the money and pay out. But if it helps, you can think of it the way you stated, zero of your money goes to Taylor Swift. It works out that way.
So someone needs to make a substack for music basically. That's what we are talking about here. Question is, do people think a certain artist or song is important enough to pay $5/month to individually? My sense is no, but perhaps...
It is. And it’s also the fairest platform for musicians pay-wise. Though Epic apparently acquired Bandcamp[1] recently (presumably to stuff its IP catalogue for Fortnite Festival, so who knows how long that will be true for.
> Though Epic apparently acquired Bandcamp[1] recently
The article you linked is about Epic selling Bandcamp, which happened relatively quickly after they acquired it. I guess they didn't find any use for it in the end.
>Question is, do people think a certain artist or song is important enough to pay $5/month to individually? My sense is no, but perhaps...
Abso-fucking-lutely! I pay $3.50 a month to listen to a madman with a mohawk rant about Formula 1. I doubt there's anyone who wouldn't pay their favorite artists $5 a month. On the flip side I would get to listen to three artists and every other artist would lose me as a listener. I don't feel anybody wins in that scenario.
1. She has 2 BAs, one in math and one in mechanical engineering.
2. She was an "Advanced Concepts Engineer at Zodiac Aerospace from 2012 to 2013".
3. She was a product manager at Tesla on the Model X
4. She was VP of product and engineering at Leap Motion.
Going from that fact that she wasn't a deep learning researcher to "her history was entirely non technical up until Open AI" is plain false. And plus, the job of CTO is 90%+ people management, and she appears more than smart enough and experienced enough to evaluate technical decisions of her team.
Jessica Knurick, who IMO posts great content on social media, has a great take on this.
The whole MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) movement is an absolutely brilliant masterstroke by corporate interests. Get people up in arms about pseudoscientific bogeymen like artificial dies. Then claim as a major win how you've gotten big food companies to pinky promise that they'll stop using these dyes in Fruit Loops and sodas in a few years - because of course we'll all be super healthy once we're downing naturally dyed Fruit Loops and soda. Meanwhile, gut environmental regulations that actually do have a measurable positive impact on health, make healthcare even more unaffordable, and kick lots of people off Medicaid so rich people can get a tax break. But hey, at least you'll be the beacon of health since you can now gobble your fries cooked in lard instead of those naughty seed oils.
A minor improvement to your argument here- artificial dyes are legitimately harmful in many cases. There are good reasons why the EU had already banned multiple chemicals that were still allowed in the US, and it's a good thing to update the American standards to the EU ones (which are generally more focused on human health as opposed to corporate profits).
The focus and prioritization is definitely out of line though, and it's particularly absurd in the face of the rolling back of pollution protections and removing access to healthcare.
Basically, it's focusing on a minor problem rather than the major ones. (But the minor problem is a legitimate one, and we should be solving all of them).
Which food dyes are you referring to specifically that are banned in the EU but used in the US? The 5 major food dyes that are actually used in the US (red 40, blue 1, blue 2, yellow 5, yellow 6) are all allowed in the EU, some at higher concentrations. Red 3 was already banned (though with a phaseout period to 2027) in January by the Biden admin. There are lots of things thrown around on social media that there are all these common food dyes used in the US that are banned in the EU, and that's just not accurate.
That said, definitely in agreement about the major point that it's a distraction, and Knurick says many times she's not advocating for food dyes, rather that the bigger issue is the overwhelming prevalence of ultra-processed (i.e. high calorie but devoid of other nutrients and fiber) foods in the US first.
Why is it so popular to "akshually, Ponzi schemes are different!" these days?
Words have meaning in context, and calling something a "Ponzi scheme" these days means any pyramid-like system that only works as long as new investors come to the table, because that new investor money is the sole source of gains for earlier investors. But once you run out of new investors, which is inevitable, the whole thing collapses. What pg described was exactly a Ponzi scheme in that sense, even if it wasn't a deliberate scam. And that's very different from other types of business ventures that eventually fail because of the more "normal" reason that they just don't gain traction.
And you do recognize the context of those words was 15 years ago at this point?
> was exactly a Ponzi scheme in that sense, even if it wasn't a deliberate scam
There are better terms of art to describe the scenario. If we lacked for those words I might grant you this point, but since we don't, I find the description lacking in precision if not completely faulty.
> the more "normal" reason that they just don't gain traction.
Is that actually the "normal reason" most businesses fail? I'm not sure it is.
Agree, people became extremely pedantic with words and it's incorrect to assume they only mean what is described in a dictionary, as if we are in a court.
Language is fluid, and many of words got their very known & popular meanings later, when people used for things that it didn't exactly mean what it was initially intended to, and it got popular.
People are ever less empathetic and sociable, this being the reason for such comments.
People become pedantic when it's the only way to defend themselves and their friends or to argue against someone.
In this case dotcom investing was so stupid that it should have been recognized as stupid at the time, without hindsight.
For someone who lost money, gave bad advice etc. insisting that they didn't fall for a Ponzi scheme means representing themselves as less terrible investors, regardless of facts.
> The power argument isn't particularly compelling either, because it's much more sunny on the Australian mainland.
But the vast majority of Tasmania's power is hydroelectric. Hydro is a much more desirable renewable than solar because it essentially is its own built in battery.
Curious what some of the many steps ahead are. Seems like these articles about battery breakthroughs WRT non-lithium chemistries come out frequently, but nothing ever seems to come to fruition, and lithium still dominates. Just want to know why all these breakthroughs never make it to industrial scale.
reply