Your assumptions seems to be that there is a limit to what is knowable.
Picture a spotlight shining down on an infinite field.
The surface which is lit up by the spotlight represents our collective knowledge about reality, and the further up you move the spotlight, the more of the field you will light up, and thus know about.
Except, how much is it left to know about outside of circle that the spotlight lights up?
With that said, I think it's pointless to speak about God in the realm of science, because there is no way of scientifically proving that he's real or not. In the realm of science, we have to abide by the rules thus set, and how we define what is knowable. The rules are quite good, and they have served us well thus far, so there is no need to question it's validity or usefulness outside of strictly philosophical limits. And under those rules, God is not knowable. Thus you may believe in God, the Universe or only in the things you can scientifically prove; it matters not, because you still exist and perceive. Hopefully!
I think it's safe to say that Google has had a prominent position, and that they have indeed abused that position to gain an unfair market advantage over other companies due to ad placement and strategic cooperations. I'm sure Google will remain the top search engine despite this anti-trust case though, at least if they can keep up with the competition.
The market is changing. Many people now prefer not to even use search if they can help it, because it's got so messed up.
They now have to compete against ChatGPT and they are late in the game. To make things worse, their reputation suffered a great deal with techies who despise their whole image and are actively trying to "degoogle" their lives. This may well be the beginning of a slow downturn since these people have an influence on the tech choices made by more "normal" users.
What if it doesn't even matter if they can keep a dominant position of their search engine?
These antitrust cases appear to be just a sign of a much larger pile of trouble ahead for Google.
It's just a logical consequence of search being convoluted with ads and content you aren't interested in (SEO). If your search query resembles anything close to a question, ChatGPT will outperform the plain old search results w.r.t. the time users have to invest to get to an answer or solution.
It's something I have experienced myself and observed in my surroundings, including many comments on HN that point to the same direction.
The quarterly earnings statement says something about, well, earnings. And earnings need not be directly linked to search traffic since Google has several revenue streams, also from other products and from selling data "wholesale." It is thus difficult to correlate earnings directly to search traffic.
As for the actual search traffic to Google, I can only refer to my own personal experience. I have certainly changed my habits after AI became mainstream, and as a consequence I now google a lot less. These days I will often hit up ChatGPT (or other AI services) instead of using Google, despite the "opinion" of ChatGPT perhaps being a little less accurate.
Again, doesn't say anything about traffic, just revenue.
Traffic would be interesting, because it's not that impacted by other factors such as inflation, recessions etc.
It's also important to note that search revenue is not positively impacted by organic searches, which I'd guess would be the majority of what ChatGPT replaces currently.
at least if they can keep up with the competition.
yeah like duck duck crap which after 12+ years and endless marketing is still a niche and still not that good as a search engine? The closest thing to competition is Meta, but that is social networking.
Even Chat GPT is not a threat to the mobile ads dominance of Google. Google ads are everywhere, Bing-Chat integration is just limited to search, and this is assuming people use it, which if Microsoft's failed 20 year foray into search is any indication, is not exactly promising.
Got Tinnitus from working as a concert photographer. It's not so bad. I've learned to live with it. But yeah... It's permanent. So, to not make it worse, I've bought protection that I carry with me when I go to loud clubs or concerts. I use it religiously. Highly recommended! Especially if you work in a bar or club, or in some capacity at concerts. Do it now, because Tinnitus doesn't go away. Some of them are very discrete, but if you like making a splash there are ones that look quite stylish as well.
Original comment was talking about Hyperacusis, and it sounds like for them it's way worse than Tinnitus, causing them physical pain just going outside for a walk. I have Tinnitus also and going outside is actually soothing for my ears, as the ambient noise of nature masks the ringing a bit.
Tinnitus does interfere with my ability to concentrate from time to time, though. Not great for a job where concentration is required most of the time.
Is there any particular type or brand of earplugs you recommend, that are comfortable enough to wear for multiple hours and don't make the music sound too muffled (while still reducing the volume to safe levels)?
If you can see an audiologist, they should be able to get you custom molded ear plugs. You can buy filters for different sound levels, so that you can reduce the volume and still be able to hear enough to enjoy music at a concert etc. If they're well made, you can probably wear them for a few hours without too much discomfort.
They're more expensive than something that is off the shelf, but being able to choose the appropriate filter for the venue you're in is really helpful. Also, the filters should give cut down the volume more evenly across the spectrum. If you get cheaper ear plugs, loud music may not be as enjoyable because certain frequencies may be more aggressively filtered than others.
I'm quite happy with mine. I can play with a loud band and still be able to hear enough of my own amp and everyone else to be able to play along, but my ears aren't ringing at the end of the evening.
To add to this, expect to pay around $200 or so for custom earplugs, plus the cost of the audiologist exam. If you live close to a company that makes these, you may be able to visit them for an in-person exam at a bundled price.
While obviously this isn’t cheap, it’s well worth paying for if you’re a musician or you go to concerts frequently.
I got mine from Sensaphonics, they’re in Chicago. They also make in-ear monitors for professional musicians using the same molding process.
I've been wearing BTE (behind the ear) hearing aids since I was a kid. So I have the custom molded ear plugs (with hole for tubing) like you mention. I enjoy that they're a magical always-ready pair of earplugs.
But recently trying to use some actual ear plugs to help sleep at a noisy location... I thought they weren't helping, and then I learned from my wife that I wasn't using them correctly. It seems the trick was getting them further in the ear (I think further in than my ear molds go), and voila, more of a difference; better than turning off my hearing aids. I've also noticed the difference recently, using ear plugs when using power tools in the garage (dremel, jigsaw).
So I'm curious if the fitted ones are all equivalent to properly inserted earplugs or not. It's also possible the hole for tubing is the culprit of my observations.
Just another anecdote that might be interesting: audiologists have been doing molded ear plugs since at least the 90s. I remember the posters of cool colorful "swim plugs" back then.
...re-reading: I see now your mention of using various filters. I'll have to read up on that too.
From using regular ear plugs, my experience is that you really need to get them in there quite far. Also, I find that the disposable ones are really basically single use. After they've compressed and expanded I find they don't seem to work as well on subsequent uses. So, taking them out and putting them back in is something I would try to minimize. Maybe they've improved in the meantime?
The molded plugs to me do feel a lot like a properly inserted ear plug and with the filters in, there should be no gaps. It should be a very snug fit. I've got 10db, 17db and 26db filters. The 17db filters are the sweet spot for me, but it's nice to have options.
With (high power) hearing aids, it's reasonably easy to know if you have a gap in the mold: I'll get a feedback loop (annoying noise, naturally) if one is loose or a poor fit. Interestingly, for the past few molds (a 4-6 year life per pair these days) the left ear definitely has more of a problem with feedback loops when my jaw is opened wide (i.e. eating) - the shape evidently varies more with this movement than the right ear does.
From what I hear a lot of audio techs wear Alpine MusicSafe Pros, so if anything wearing ear plugs will make the music sound better since you're matching what you're hearing to what the audio tech is hearing.
I got myself a pair and if nothing else they are decently comfortable to wear.
I got Loops on Amazon based on someone's recommendation and they work pretty well for me. They're cheap enough to try once and see if they work for you.
Sorry if it sounds rude, but have you used the web on the desktop in the past 10 years? Anything under 1000px-wide windows and sometimes 1200px-wide ones gets you the “mobile menu” on most websites. It’s a consequence of Bootstrap and other fixed-breakpoint frameworks. Overflow menus like what you see on GitHub repositories are the minority.
And for an example that does it better, legacy.reactjs.org :)
When I saw it I wondered how they managed to drop the ball so hard and how much they paid for it. All they needed is to expand and slightly restructure the docs, but apparently someone sold them a complete redesign that just made the whole docs way less usable (a11y aside, can't speak for that).
Part of this is the ever increasing amount of tags and elements in HTML files. Instead of being a document markup, it's a page markup, and it's difficult to discern where one stops and the other begins, although the W3C has tried with the addition of article and section elements. But then I suppose the raw HTML code was never meant to be read by other than devs in the first place, so there's that.
There was that small window of niceness, where the html diminished in size. Now it's just all pseudo inline styles painted by class names with lashings of scripts. Always surprised when you peek under pretty much a bereft page of nothing and it's a whole heap of code.
I'm one of those annoying people that just uses reader mode anyway - not that it always works. Because I get fed up of zooming in and out, inflating text size etc etc.
EVE Online has the nickname "Spreadsheets in Space" for a reason, though. There are many aspects of the game where you don't need a spreadsheet, so you're not forced to play this part of the game. However, if you want to do anything serious within research, production or sales, then spreadsheets quickly become your friends. And API calls and scripting.
I just wanted to add how much farther that the "Spreadsheets" analogy goes with a few examples:
There are actually custom ERP and management resources that have been developed by the eve community like the Alliance Auth project and a large group has even a issued a cryptocurrency to automatically manage in-game payouts for certain types of ship losses.
There are the requisite and copious discord, irc, and xmpp integrations, but there are also automated mapping projects, and large scale data analysis projects.
There are projects which seek to analyze ship losses for intelligence and counter intelligence purposes. There are background checks, escrow services, automatic billing service for eg logistics (trucking services) and in fact there have been several functional _casinos_.
The excel plugin looks to add a lot of additional capability to the spreadsheets, since now you can integrate all of this information into whatever analytics you would like to create with excel, which is of course quite powerful.
The "old UI circa 2010" is like the second refresh, and the game already had the reputation back in 2007 when I started playing. It refers to the big business players, who actually play the game like they're real life companies.
I was guessing at the date, because I started shortly after launch when I was a wee lad. The way I remember it is the joke was because of the way every window had rows and boxes, with data inside. I don't actually recall people using actual excel spreadsheets for much other than enjoying the meme because a lot of the things we use excel for in industry now did not exist yet at the time. (Maybe comparing ship stats before the compare tool got better?)
I'm not so much arguing with you as presenting how I remember it. We could both be right, or one or the other, it's not important... I'm just an old scordite miner getting ready to retire, so out of the generosity in my heart, anybody who sends me some ISK today, I'll go ahead and double it - no strings attached. It's time to get out of the game anyway.
Picture a spotlight shining down on an infinite field.
The surface which is lit up by the spotlight represents our collective knowledge about reality, and the further up you move the spotlight, the more of the field you will light up, and thus know about.
Except, how much is it left to know about outside of circle that the spotlight lights up?
With that said, I think it's pointless to speak about God in the realm of science, because there is no way of scientifically proving that he's real or not. In the realm of science, we have to abide by the rules thus set, and how we define what is knowable. The rules are quite good, and they have served us well thus far, so there is no need to question it's validity or usefulness outside of strictly philosophical limits. And under those rules, God is not knowable. Thus you may believe in God, the Universe or only in the things you can scientifically prove; it matters not, because you still exist and perceive. Hopefully!