Published work, shop talk, and stray thoughts.
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Would you pay $4,000 to solve your streaming movie problems? (FastCo)
Kaleidescape’s hi-fi streaming platform has survived against all odds for more than two decades.
Let’s say you were spending tens of thousands of dollars to build yourself a fancy home theater. How would you go about actually watching movies in it?
– https://www.fastcompany.com/91302903/would-you-pay-4000-to-solve-your-streaming-movie-problems?partner=rss&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=rss+fastcompany&utm_content=rss
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The decline of popular music in one chart (via the always-great Can’t Get Much Higher newsletter – https://www.cantgetmuchhigher.com/p/why-did-we-stop-using-saxophones )
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Use this trick to watch March Madness while you work (FastCo)
Google’s picture-in-picture Chrome extension is perfect for responsible procrastination.
If you’re trying to keep an eye on March Madness but you still need to get some actual work done, Google’s Picture-in-Picture Extension feels like a secret weapon.
– https://www.fastcompany.com/91303171/use-this-trick-to-watch-march-madness-while-you-work?partner=rss&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=rss+fastcompany&utm_content=rss
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The eyewear giant behind the Meta smart glasses has big ambitions for intelligent eyewear (FastCo)
EssilorLuxottica has already sold more than 2 million pairs of its Ray-Ban Meta glasses. Now it’s expanding into hearing-aid eyewear.
EssilorLuxottica is No. 8 on the list of the World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies of 2025. Explore the full list of companies that are reshaping industries and culture.
“Eyewear has to first look beautiful,” says Francesco Milleri, chairman and CEO of the eyewear and eyecare giant EssilorLuxottica, owner of Ray-Ban, Oakley, Persol, and more. “It’s a way you express your personality.” It’s this mantra that finally brought augmented reality mainstream, in the form of the sleek Ray-Ban Meta glasses, which launched in late 2023 and come in three frames, including the classic Wayfarer.
– https://www.fastcompany.com/91270766/essilorluxottica-most-innovative-companies-2025?partner=rss&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=rss+fastcompany&utm_content=rss
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The most innovative companies in consumer electronics for 2025 (FastCo)
Why EssilorLuxottica, Bose, Apple, Sony Electronics, and Oura are among Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies in consumer electronics for 2025.
While smartphones are still the indisputable center of our digital lives, this year’s most innovative consumer electronics companies aim to improve life beyond the touchscreen.
A lot of that involves advancement in wearable computing. EssilorLuxottica, for instance, has come up with a winning formula for smart glasses in both the Meta Ray-Bans and its Nuance Audio hearing aids, which pack just enough technology to avoid looking uncool. Apple is approaching things from the opposite direction, using its Vision Pro to show what mixed reality can look like when no expense is spared.
– https://www.fastcompany.com/91269253/consumer-electronics-most-innovative-companies-2025?partner=rss&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=rss+fastcompany&utm_content=rss
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RAB Thoughts
Mike Axisa is a CBS Sports baseball writer who previously ran a Yankees blog called River Avenue Blues. It shut down in 2019, but he’s been running a roughly-twice-per-week blog/newsletter via Patreon that I recently started reading, and it’s full of deep analysis and granular insights, like this:
Thursday’s game was not televised, but the Statcast data again suggests there’s something going on with Max Fried’s changeup. I mentioned it following his first spring start. About 2 mph less velocity (velocity on everything else is right in line with last year) and more horizontal movement. Matt Blake said they had some ideas to “tighten the screws” on Fried’s pitches, and it seems like they found a way to deaden his changeup.
It’s hard to find written Yankees coverage that isn’t just blog churn or surface-level news reporting. RAB Thoughts costs $3/mo and is worth it.
(Yankee baseball is pretty far afield from the geeky stuff I write about here, but it’s been a balm for me over the past year and I can’t wait for the regular season to get here.)
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“This Is Not The Song I Wrote” is really clever musically
In this new tune by Vulfpeck, Joey Dosik sings his best impression of a Michael McDonald type whose music gets ripped off by a young Instagram star. Verse and chorus alternate between obvious yacht rock and a cheery turn-of-century pop anthem hook sung by an intentionally-obnoxious Jacob Jeffries.
The lyrics and performance are hilarious in that oddly specific Vulfpeck kind of way, but on repeated listening I’ve noticed some pretty clever ideas in the musical composition:
- Both the verse/pre-chorus and chorus follow a 1-6-4-5 chord progression, but in G# minor for the verse (i-VI-iv-v) and in the relative major of B for the chorus (I-vi-IV-V).
- The bassline in both the verse and the chorus follow nearly the same rhythmic pattern. Listen to Joe Dart’s playing and you will hear it.
- There’s a little rhythmic pattern (two eighth notes starting on the downbeat, followed by two sixteenth notes) that repeats in both Joey’s pre-chorus and Jacob’s chorus. You can hear it when Joey sings “going viral” or “his attorney,” and when Jacob sings “everybody” or “move that body.”
- Combined, the bass and vocal patterns form a pretty consistent overall rhythm that links Joey’s and Jacob’s segments, even though the switch from minor to relative major makes them sound quite different.
- At the end of the last bridge when Joey sings “endless chains of emails” and “we worked out the details,” he’s using the same melody from the pre-chorus, but the G# minor chord progression has been replaced with the B major sequence from the chorus.
All this reinforces the idea that Joey and Jacob are two sides of the same musical coin, just writing the best songs they can to pay the bills. It’s a reality that Joey embraces both musically and lyrically by the final chorus. (“It’s an incredible hook, man.”)
(I also posted a version of this on Reddit.)
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Advisorator: The best ad blocker gets banished
New Advisorator: What to do when uBlock Origin stops working.
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The best ad blocker gets banished (Advisorator)
Before long, you won’t be able to use the best ad blocker with Google Chrome anymore.
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I tried out a bunch of the AI assistants. Here’s what you need to know about each one (FastCo)
A jargon-free guide to ChatGPT, Claude, DeepSeek, and the rest.
Does it feel to you like there are way too many AI assistants to keep track of?
– https://www.fastcompany.com/91293260/which-ai-assistant-should-you-use?partner=rss&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=rss+fastcompany&utm_content=rss
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Bandcamp Friday. Clarity of Cal. You know what to do.
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DirecTV’s cable news problem, new Disney-Hulu deal (Cord Cutter Weekly)
DirecTV is trying to break up the pay TV bundle this year with cheaper, genre-based packages, but one genre in particular stands in the way.
The post DirecTV’s cable news problem, new Disney-Hulu deal appeared first on Cord Cutter Weekly.