Spotify streams all music at 160kbps OGG for free users by default, so that’s what this archive is dumped at - the original Spotify content, no transcode. The only difference is they re-encoded all the songs with a ‘popularity’ of zero at a lower bitrate, because that saved an enormous amount of data for all the AI crap pumped into Spotify that nobody listens to.

Side note - it would probably not be possible to do a dump as a paid used (as they would notice a user account is being abused, and ban it), but paid accounts go up to 320kbps OGG and some content is also available lossless (as FLAC).

Anyway, 99%+ of people can’t consistently tell the difference between a 160kbps OGG and lossless, because of limitations in either their equipment, training, ears, or a combination thereof. This has been blind tested many times and the audiophiles that ‘swear they can tell’ are always proven wrong, they then usually blame the equipment or test. There’s tests you can run yourself too, eg here: https://abx.digitalfeed.net/list.html

For sure. IKEA is a great place to start (or stay), as it’s a cheap ecosystem and their app/implementation doesnt require permanent internet access - functions fine during an internet outrage, and quite privacy-respecting.

HomeAssistant is not anywhere near as hard to set up as it used to be. If you have an old mini-PC retired from work sitting around there are HA images for PCs now, and it’s pretty simple to set up to use your IKEA hub (or whatever you have already), while adding a huge swath of optional features.

I agree it’s still not something your average Joe will set up, but the continual lowering of barriers will get more people into running a self-hosted local config is a great thing for privacy and expanding the hobby.

The real issue with smart home adoption has been proprietary formats all vying for dominance and fragmenting the market. I don’t think AI has changed much.

Matter (and Thread) are a huge change to the SmartHome landscape because they’re open protocols and have well-documented standards - and they’ve finally begun appearing in big manufacturer’s line-ups such as IKEA.

Once their availability spreads I suspect a lot more people will get into running their own local (eg HomeAssistant) smart home because they won’t have to do the ‘ok do I need z-wave or ZigBee or HomeKit or IFTTT or Hue or Tuya or… you know what, fuck this’. It’ll all be the same protocol and communications and config & debug will be much easier.

Nah you can turn the phone off once the video has started. I only know this because my kids have regularly failed to charge the ‘phone that we only use for Chromecast to the tv’ and it sometimes dies while they’re watching something. Keeps playing until the end.

You need the phone for any controls issued to the Chromecast like volume, subs, pause, seek, etc… But you don’t strictly need it once the video has started playing, presuming you’re not using any control commands.

The same reality where GPT5’s launch a couple months back was a massive failure with users and showed a lot of regression to less reliable output than GPT4? Or perhaps the reality where most corporations that have used AI found no benefit and have given up reported this year?

LLMs are good tools for some uses, but those uses are quite limited and niche. They are however a square peg being crammed into the round hole of ‘AGI’ by Altman etc while they put their hands out for another $10bil - or, more accurately while they make a trade swap deal with MS or Nvidia or any of the other AI orobouros trade partners that hype up the bubble for self-benefit.