Technology

Why is the Spotify player such a piece of shit?

shallow focus photo of an old radio

Spotify is a pretty decent service. For free, you can listen to practically anything that’s ever been released commercially (sadly, no RVIVR, but that’s on them because they’re UP THE PUNX), as long as you’re willing to listen to some ads once in a while. And I’m not against listening to ads once in a while. The problem is, for a tech company with so much data, they use it horribly. Or they don’t use it at all. You’ll be listening to a sweet Biber partita, and get thrown a massively loud advertisement for ADVANCED AUTO PARTS. Listening to...

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No more printed Oxford English Dictionary?

dictionary text in bokeh effect

Sad news for bibliophiles: The Oxford English Dictionary as we know it may never be printed (in full) again. Nigel Portwood, the CEO of the Oxford University Press, told the Sunday Times (behind a pay-wall, damn you Murdoch), via the Telegraph: “The print dictionary market is just disappearing, it is falling away by tens of per cent a year,” Nigel Portwood, the chief executive of OUP, told the Sunday Times. Asked if he thought the third edition would be printed, he said: “I don’t think so.” The current printed dictionary, the second edition, which was released in...

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SEC Employees Fiddle With Themselves As Wall St. Burns

close up photo of ledger s list

An internal audit of SEC employee computer use has uncovered some staggering details about exactly what employees and contractors were doing with their time and their laptops. The results: “During the past five years, the SEC OIG (Office of Inspector General) substantiated that 33 SEC employees and or contractors violated Commission rules and policies, as well as the government-wide Standards of Ethical Conduct, by viewing pornographic, sexually explicit or sexually suggestive images using government computer resources and official time,” said a summary of the investigation by the inspector general’s office. The aerial view presented in the above...

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The Court may be just a little technologically-challenged

Motorola Pager 'Minicall'

When President Obama decides on a new Supreme Court associate justice, it may be worthwhile for the “technology president” to consider the future justice’s basic understanding of technology, a skill set that seems be notably absent on the Court. Seems during oral arguments Monday in the case City of Ontario v. Quon, a case that considers city workers’ expectation of privacy in personal text messages sent on devices provided by the city, the Court had some—ahem—issues grasping the practical aspects of the case: The first sign was about midway through the argument, when Chief Justice John G....

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