I would guess that most folks would consider a bunch of problem prompts with no reference solutions to be not so useful. How would you check your understanding? How would you know if you were writing go code which would be frowned upon by industry veterans?
And on top of that, putting these in AGENTS.md makes no sense whatsoever. You’ll simply waste tokens and confuse the hell out of your agents. I wonder if gp assumed this is another repo of design patterns without reading anything there at all. Pasting a bunch of design patterns into AGENTS.md may not be the brightest idea either but at least that isn’t absurd.
I think it has more to do with the fact that when you offer zero salary for moderators, you have to take what you can get, and it ain't good. I don't really see a connection to the voting mechanic.
It's also disconnected incentives. SO users get numbers to go up by taking moderation actions so of course they do that. Also you literally get banned from reviewing questions if you don't flag enough of them to be closed. These are incentives put in place by the SO company intentionally.
It's not like only slimy people get to use moderator tools like on Reddit, since you need a lot of reputation points you get by having questions and answers voted up. It's more like (1) you select people who write surface-level-good answers since that's what's upvoted, and they moderate with a similar attitude and (2) once you have access to moderator tools you're forced to conform with (1) or your access is revoked, and (3) the company is completely incompetent and doesn't give a shit about any of this.
Why do you think it makes a difference if they are paid or not? Or more to the point: what are you saying? That people have different standards when paid? That lack of remuneration justifies poor effort? Isn’t that a very transactional view of human interaction? Are we that transactional? Do we want this?
We’re talking about how communities can become toxic. How we humans sometimes create an environment that is at odds with our intentions. Or at least what we outwardly claim to be our intentions.
I think it is a bit sad when people feel they have to be compensated to not let a community deteriorate.
> That people have different standards when paid? That lack of remuneration justifies poor effort? Isn’t that a very transactional view of human interaction? Are we that transactional?
The answer to all of these questions is yes, for the most part. Volunteers are much harder to wrangle than employees and it's much easier for drama and disagreements to flare when there are zero consequences other than losing an unpaid position, particularly if anonymity is in the mix.
Volunteers can be great but on average they're going to be far harder to manage and far more fickle than employees.
Then you have a much darker view of humanity than I have. What you seem to suggest is that because building a community on volunteers is hard it is not worth doing.
What makes a community worthwhile is its ability to resolve differences productively. I think that if you replace individual responsibility with transactionality you have neither community nor long term viability or scalability.
Then again, we live in times when transactional thinking seems to dominate discourse.
It's because I was involved with a large volunteer-based project that was a literal 24/7/365 operation for several years (dozens of volunteers at any given time and tens of thousands of concurrent users) and can speak first hand as to the differences.
I didn't say it's not worth doing but it will bring challenges that wouldn't exist with employees. Paying people adds a strong motivator to keep toxic behaviour at bay.
Your experiences will heavily depend on the type of project you're running but regardless, you can't hold volunteers, especially online, to the same expectations or standards as employees. The amount of time and effort they can invest will wax and wane and there's nothing you can do about it. Anonymity and lack of repercussions will eventually lead to drama or power struggles when a volunteer steps out of line in a way that they wouldn't in paid employment. There is no fix that'll stop occasional turbulence, it's just the way it is. Not all of your volunteers will be there for the greater good of your community.
Again, that is absolutely not to say that it can't be worth the effort but if you go into it eyes open, you'll have a much better time and be able to do a better job at heading off problems.
I've seen other people express similar opinions to yours and it wasn't until they experienced being in the driver's seat that they understood how difficult it is.
> but it is really hard to make a good sounding cassette
It is unfortunate that cassettes are the lowest fidelity consumer medium (of modern times). But there is some room to optimize within that space. If you are curious:
The cassettes available today are Type I, Type II ("high bias") and Type IV ("metal"), each being higher fidelity than the last, but not all portable players supported these types of tape.
Dolby B/C noise reduction could improve the dynamic range of tapes a bit, but again not all portable players supported this.
The ultimate was "dbx", which dramatically improved noise reduction and dynamic range ("tape hiss" was essentially inaudible), but now you're in the territory of needing dedicated rack-mount equipment to record and play your tapes.
My dad was a bit of an audio buff, so I got to experience these things as a kid.
Edit: according to gemini AI:
* Type I had a dynamic range of about 50bB (roughly 8 bits)
* High quality tape with Dolby B, C and dbx yielded roughly 65, 75, and 85dB SNR (about 11, 12.5, and 14 bits)
So you could get pretty close to CD quality, but not quite.
The measurements you are linking to are showing the level of distortion (HD3 v level) not dynamic range! The Y-axis on the graphs is showing the 3rd harmonic in dB in relation to the mV given in on the x-axis. This has absolutely nothing to do with dynamic range and it is also not the signal-to-noise-ratio. The fundamental frequency in those measurements was at 315 Hz. HD3 refers to Harmonic Distortion at 3rd level.
It's just annoying to post unverifiable numbers without a credible source and expect others to do the hard work of verifying it (or just take you at face value, probably). It has nothing to do with AI except insofar as your own feelings on AI convinced you this is a reasonable method of communication.
Recording with Dolby-B on a Sony consumer level integrated Hi-Fi produced pretty solid sounding cassettes back in the day, given you have used TDK's chrome or metal blanks.
Some gotchas:
- Loudness wars were just beginning.
- Many CDs had some analog stages in its recording/mastering stages, so none of them was sounding "razor sharp" anyway.
Yesterday, I have listened Depeche Mode's Best of album on an Mechen M-30 with a good but not exquisite pair of Philips neck headphones, encoded as FLAC, and it sound superbly enjoyable. While I love vinyl, no, I won't return back to cassette (even though I have a nice deck), thank you.
I just produced an album release on Type I cassette. High quality Type I (ferro oxid) is almost comparable to Type II, but you need the correct bias settings while recording. Practically the 8bits/50db is non-sense. Really. Maybe on a very bad tape deck you have a signal-noise-ratio of 8bit from silence to the first noticeable noise? But the actual music you are playing has much more dynamic range possibilities. Tbh my recordings on tape sound more dynamic then on Spotify.
Do keep in mind 96 dB is only the theoretical dynamic range of the CD medium, 99% of recordings utilize way less. (Besides, you'd be in pain if you cranked up the volume until you had 96dB of range above your hearing threshold, anyway)
CDs also eliminate wow & flutter (which ought to be pretty much inaudible on a decent deck, probably less so on an el cheapo grande walkman), which probably does more for (experienced) audio quality than high dynamic range.
Oh, and better high frequency response, for the young ones. :D
About 5 years ago or so I was able to collect my Dad's C64 collection from my Mom's house, buy some new cables and an official C64 monitor off of eBay, and gift him his old computer back for Christmas.
I can't speak to cassettes, we had only cartridges and floppies. My Dad was a prolific pirate, so cases and cases of floppies. I'd say roughly 3 out of 5 worked, and we were able to boot the old game up. Karateka, 4th and Inches, Hat Trick, Bubble Bobble, Impossible Mission...
I was surprised the C64 worked, honestly. It had been stored for nearly a decade in an old Barn next to decrepit plow/cattle equipment from the early 1900's, not protected from the environment at all, just an old cardboard box literally busting at the seams. At least it wasn't on the ground.
The point about fidelity/quality is moot anyway when most people are listening to overcompressed[1] music on crappy bluetooth speakers and/or in a noisy environment.
It is not necessarily a protocol/technology issue, more a cultural one. Most people are just not looking at quality first and will buy whatever is cheap, loud and has the form factor they want. Music is so compressed nowadays that they don't even hear a difference between crappy and better quality speakers.
> It is unfortunate that cassettes are the lowest fidelity consumer medium
So what? The quality of music and enjoyment of it isn't depending on fidelity. I have Adam A7X monitors I mostly use day-to-day, but when I listen to lo-fi, I change the output to the output of my monitor which are absolutely horrible, but fits the mood better.
>The quality of music and enjoyment of it isn't depending on fidelity
It depends somewhat on personal preference, but also on genre. Classical music often has very high dynamic range, so analog recordings can have obnoxiously loud hiss in the quiet sections. This is probably a big reason why classical music labels were early adopters of digital recording, and why classical recordings often have a SPARS code [0] prominently displayed. Classical music was also much less affected by the loudness war, removing one incentive for buying on vinyl. You rarely see any preference for analog among classical listeners.
This is a satisfying narrative but I feel like you are overestimating the technical competency and/or malice of these companies. The more likely explanation is that they have simply bitten off more complexity than they can chew.
Of the tech companies I've worked for, I can't even imagine how the web team would react if they were instructed to intentionally nerf their website.
This sort of pedantic need for correctness at the cost of clarity seems to also crop up as businesses become increasingly corporate and expand their offerings.
“The best tires” becomes “the best vehicular solutions”
