Thank you for your thoughtful reply. I myself worked for a social media company for some time (although more in IT, not in their core business). The success metrics for this company were exclusively followers, likes and so on. There were no other metrics whatsoever.

I think the so-called KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) are a major problem of our time, because they are often defined incorrectly or misunderstood. All too often, decision-makers seem to think that the pure number of followers, for example, or engagement metrics such as likes would indicate that an account or post is successful. However, this is often not the case when other important metrics are taken into account. In e-commerce, for example, a large number of followers or high engagement figures in themselves mean nothing at all: it is not uncommon for e-commerce companies to invest a lot of money in social media management and for the KPIs of their accounts to rise accordingly - but still not sell anything via this channel (that means that the investment is not worth it, of course, because the costs are disproportionate to the sales generated; the ROI is often not good at all). I think a similar situation can be assumed for many science accounts on Mastodon, for example. Although the number of followers maybe not very high here because there are less active useres, the quality of comments can still be a lot higher. But unfortunately this cannot be quantified, or at least not easily. I therefore think that everyone should first think about what they want to achieve with their social media accounts. It then makes sense to define suitable KPIs instead of being impressed by what can be considered an indicator of success elsewhere and in a completely different context.

Yes, Dali would have been great as the emperor.

But Jodorowsky’s unfinished Dune project still had a significant influence on several major science fiction films and media, despite never being completed:

1. Alien (1979)

• Dan O’Bannon, who worked on Jodorowsky’s Dune, later wrote the Alien script
• H.R. Giger’s designs for Dune inspired his work on the Xenomorph
• The Alien Xenomorph’s design has roots in Giger’s Harkonnen Castle concept for Dune

2. Star Wars (1977)

• George Lucas was reportedly influenced by the Dune storyboards and designs
• Jabba the Hutt’s appearance may have been inspired by Baron Harkonnen’s design

3. Blade Runner (1982)

• Ridley Scott hired Dan O’Bannon and Moebius, who had worked on Jodorowsky’s Dune, to help create the futuristic world

4. Contact (1997)

• The opening space sequence was allegedly inspired by Jodorowsky’s planned opening for Dune

5. The Incal (1980s graphic novel series)

• Jodorowsky and artist Moebius recycled many concepts from their Dune work into this influential comic series

Check out the documentary “Jodorowsky’s Dune” (2013). It explores how the pre-production work and assembled team for this unrealized film went on to influence much of modern science fiction cinema. It’s worth a watch.

Alien because of HR Giger’s iconic art style, among other things. Also Frank Herbert’s Dune, the first planned film adaptation of which Giger also worked on (sometimes considered as the best movie that was never made). In addition to the cultural influence that the book series already had, Dune also more or less spawned the real-time strategy computer game genre (with Westwood Studios’ Dune II).

deleted by creator

You can find a lot of stuff over at hugging face - open source stuff as well. This for example for background removal.

This is presumably not a bad thing, as Google would most likely have benefited the most from this, especially as the so-called “privacy sandbox” that Google had planned as a replacement or server-side tracking are even more difficult to avoid. The “privacy sandbox” in particular would have been more of a competitive advantage for Google because, as the provider of Chrome, they are the only ones who have comprehensive access to aggregated user data that is collected directly via the browser.

Müller (Unternehmensgruppe Theo Müller), an unscrupulous European food company with ties to the radical right. There are plenty of alternatives, including regional ones.

Müller owns numerous prominent brands, especially in Germany and the UK, but also in other countries.

Oh, wow. Thanks for the in-depth explanation - very interesting. I had never really looked into the technical details. Well, I suppose I’m lucky that my reasonably new smartphone still has a 3.5mm audio jack, so I can continue to use my now rather old, but in my opinion still pretty good, headphones. It wasn’t that easy to find a new smartphone with an audio jack, but then it looks like I’ve actually done everything right when it comes to listening to music.

Hi-fi stereo systems with amplifiers, speakers and cables.

I could be wrong, but I think that old stereo systems generally have way better sound quality than Bluetooth systems, soundbars and the like. Physical media such as CDs or even Flac files (etc.) are of course impractical compared to streaming, but the audio quality is much higher.

However, since you can also stream audio without any problems, I would recommend every music fan to buy a used stereo system with high-quality speakers from the 2000s or even from the late 90s - in my opinion, excellent audio quality at a low price.

Pride Puppy. Apparently there’s even a children’s book about this doggo.

This doesn’t seem like an open question to me.

I hope so.

Seriously?!?

I’m not an expert by any means, but I don’t really think so. I think hi-fi audio is one of the few fields in which technical development is stagnating or even lagging behind in terms of sound quality. This is probably mainly due to the fact that the quality of streaming files is much poorer than that of lossless formats on data carriers such as CDs anyway. The same probably applies to wireless solutions. Streaming and wireless audio transmission is of course much more user-friendly, but in terms of audio quality it is probably not a step forward.

My rather ancient audio setup: a Yamaha RX-496RDS stereo receiver with a Vestax PMC 17A Mixer and T+A Triton R130 speakers for 2 (lame ass) Gemini PT 2100 Turntables (through a preamp) and some PC-Audio. Most of this stuff is from the 90s or early 00s. Wasn’t the best setup in the first place but it still works fine to this day and probably even beats some of the contemporary bluetooth thingies.

“Trickle down economics lead to more wealth for all.”

I met a very nice older Scotsman named William Wallace the other day. He told me at our hotel bar that he had a court date the next day for allegedly beating an Englishman with his cane, who had apparently insulted his wife. Not quite sure how he handles questions about his name, but he certainly seems to have some things in common with his famous namesake.

Mozilla Thunderbird?

Yes, pretty much. But unlike Cloudflare DDos Protection and such Google ReCaptcha is mainly used to secure forms of all kinds (e. g. signup, login, contact or frontend posting forms).