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There are plenty of highly effective charities.

Maybe but the ones in my city(who take city money) have literally nothing to show for.

Yessir, it's slop.

It's a well-written essay, imo. Good pacing, interesting turns of phrase, and it conveys an anxiety that they're clearly feeling.

It's ok if you didn't like it, but you don't have to be mean about it.


> shows your listening rankings by hours, minutes instead of just scrobble count

I've wanted to build something like this for a long time, cool (and unsurprising, really) to see it's already done!

Swans is my number 30 by scrobbles but 4 by playtime, which makes total sense.


If you're a Spotify user, you can get even more precise data by downloading your listening data. The website I linked gets data from MusicBrainz and tries to fill in the gaps with an average, but even then it gets some things wrong.

E.g. Fishmans - Long Season is a 40 minute song, but the website's considers it as divided into 4-5 parts. And you don't have to listen to the full song to get a scrobble.

In the Spotify data you get the exact number of seconds you listened to it. And it is surprisingly complete and easy to use too. With LLMs I bet you can load it into pandas and construct queries for any insight you want in seconds.


Just this weekend I generated a really detailed breakdown from my Spotify dump, it's unfortunate they hide so much of the interesting stuff in a dump that takes a week+ to get access to: https://6fce3ff2.spotifyguy94-dashboard.pages.dev

The advertising profile was especially interesting since a) I don't think the brands expected anyone outside of their marketing teams to see some of these names b) I've had premium for most of the time I've used Spotify, but they're still putting in full effort on generating an ad profile in case that ever changes


Very interested to know how you built this; I'd like to see similar data for my own dump even though I quit Spotify some time ago.


Nice tip, but I use YouTube Music. I just downloaded my listening history, looks like they don't include listening duration, alas.


Fuckkkk yes to Fishmans long season!!!


Be sure to explicitly ask for critiques or alternatives. In my experience the machine is really susceptible to a sort of anchoring effect.


I've noticed that too, once you get an initial implementation it seems to always find a way to argue for keeping that approach in the name of simplicity

Like "Let's stick with what we have, its simple and it works." or "That seems overkill, let's not over complicate things"


I've got to the point where sometimes I frame my question as if I disagree with it, just to allow the AI to "agree" with me and actually critique it.

"My team mate wants to X, but I feel like that might be a bad idea. What could go wrong?", etc.


In this vein, I have a system level memory for Claude to push back and give me direct feedback when possible. So far a success as it helps cut through the sycophancy.


Did you never have to write a research paper?


ITT: an allegory is read literally

Consumer goods have dropped in price, which is good for offsetting inequality. I think the allegory still holds in some other areas (off the top of my head: healthcare spending and renting versus owning your primary residence).

That said, income inequality is probably the much bigger source of unfairness these days.


Great story, but how are you going to say all that but not link to the recording?


It's still technically illegal. And I wouldn't be surprised if there's a tacit Don't Ask, Don't Tell understanding in the community between artists and recorders. Even when individual recorders are known by the community and artists, keeping the pretense of anonymity might be important to preserving and protecting the scene.


It's really up to the artists. Many are surprisingly cool with it, though there are a few notable exceptions (i.e. Prince). Sounds like the artist in this particlar case gave their blessing.

Many bands (like GD and Phish) specifically note in their rider that venues must allow and provide space for tapers to bring their rigs in.

A sibling comment in this thread pointed out my project Relisten[0], which now has over 4,000 bands who have given explicit permission for people to tape, record, and share their concerts non-commercially. We've been operating our FOSS platform for 12 years, and most of the audio is hosted by Archive.org. I can't tell you how many bands have begged us to add them to our platform.

[0] https://relisten.net (https://github.com/RelistenNet)

(The 4,000 number will be coming to web soon - it's available today on our mobile apps)


Prince had intense business instincts, not just for becoming a vertically integrated multi-instrumental composer manager, bandleader and of course prodigious artist. Its rumored that to ruin the market demand for his bootleggers, Prince started his own sockpuppet bootleg label, that eventually released over four hundred CDs of content. Concerts, studio alternate cuts, and of course After-Shows. That label is curiously named Sabotage.

Whether the rumor is true or not, I can't confirm. What I can tell you is it's an amazing soundboard quality collection of his work product that I'm still not all the way through exploring after it briefly circulated among fans for a brief moment shortly after his death.

1. http://tonio.lagoule.free.fr/prince_BootsCats_Sab.htm


> though there are a few notable exceptions (i.e. Prince)

There was an episode of "What's Happening" when Rerun gets in trouble for bootlegging a Doobie Brothers concert, does anyone remember? It aired when I was a kid and now I somehow still feel guilty when I listen to bootlegs.


"Doobie or Not Doobie (Part 2)", S2E17: https://youtu.be/XFlGY3hC4LM


Yup, just remembered around ’99 I bumped into “Rerun” in full costume dancin’ for a small crowd in the parking lot of a Sugar Hill Gang concert in Santa Monica. Didn’t carry a camera in those days, as they weren’t allowed inside anyway. :-P

All I have left is a very fuzzy memory.


Well. Just wanted to say how much I appreciate Relisten. I listen almost every day.


I needed to get back to work, sorry about that. ;)

Here you go:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXBEsPy1SSo


Sick, I'll check it. Thanks for delivering!


Wow this is a great set. I haven't listened to much Underworld, but I will now. Thanks again!


Based on the story there's a good chance it'll be one of these recordings: https://relisten.net/grateful-dead


I don’t think the Grateful Dead would be referred to as a “live electronic dance band.”

Assuming it’s a band most have heard of I was leaning toward Daft Punk, but maybe the Prodigy?


> The lead singer caught my eye and gave me a wide grin

Daft Punk doesn't have a singer and unless it was a very early show they wouldn't have seen them smile. Most big beat shows wouldn't have a dedicated vocalist. I'd guess Underworld or Prodigy, but lean toward Underworld.


Daft Punk didn't have helmets in the 90s, did they?


Correct, seems like my memory failed me on that one.


Ah, missed that bit entirely, was going mostly on the story of being front and centre and being smiled at - it's an apocryphal story for TGD.

Now I"m thinking, the mention of digital formats doesn't make much sense either ^_^;


Thats what came to mind. Daft Punk, the Alive 2007 recording


Alive 2007 is a bit late to be the 90s though


Underworld, 1998, live at The Mayan.


Probably not because GD is not electric music. Also, there is/was a big taper scene there. This sounds like there was no recording going on.


seek your soul and you will find the recordings


Or the band?


> precise alignment with me personally, or even with my own business

Seems like a strawman, I don't think anyone means this when talking about alignment.

More general goals, like avoiding paperclip maximization, are broadly applicable to humanity.


If you've built an agent that can act even vaguely close to a paperclip maximizer, you've already solved 99.999% or more of the alignment problem. The hard part of alignment so far is getting the AI to do something useful in pursuit of the right goal, and not just waste energy. We still have no idea how to do this with any effectiveness: even modern "RL from verified feedback" systems are effectively toys, the equivalent of playing video games, not really of doing something useful in the real world.


Huh? Modern RLVR systems are toys that can’t do anything useful in the real world?

We must be living in completely different worlds. Claude and other agents have completely upended work for me and every single other software engineer I know.


Nice piece.

Right now the skills you describe are definitely relevant. At work I'm regularly reviewing smelly changes, both from my own agents and others'. I'm wonder if this smell will always be present or if it will go away entirely, leaving the smell detector skills irrelevant.


Hey thanks! I do wonder that. I think that even if specifically for code smell the things would be subtler, for other forms of AI driven averageness (especially in areas where we can't RLVR the models to perfection) it might still be present. But yeah I wonder how those thoughts will age (and how we'll update our priors accordingly).


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