computers-R-stupid

Disc storage for 2.5 megabyte hard drive in the Xerox Alto computer of the '70s (the one Steve Jobs "borrowed" his ideas from). From Ken Shirriff's blog. Kind of amazing that Memorex had enough of a market to fabricate these discs.

Someone asked Mark Zuckerberg if he was a reptilian during a worldwide Facebook streaming Q&A whatever. All signs point to yes but he denied it.

Update: Also, be sure to check out this photo of Zuckerberg's laptop, showing tape over the webcam and audio port (he wants your picture but you can't have his), and his lordship out jogging with his five-person security team (hat tip mbm).

A couple of this blog's hobbies are tracking (i) the deliquescence of language* into grey goo and (ii) the demise of the open internet. The post below, from the Instagram Developer blog satisfies both interests! The main point, shrouded in hype about improvements, is that Instagram is terminating RSS feeds for its content. Shoot me an email if I'm wrong. Particularly juicy examples of English "crapification" (Yves Smith's term) are in boldface.

When we launched our first Instagram API in 2011, we were a very small team and knew we wouldn’t be able to build all the features our community might want. Today we are announcing several platform changes to improve people’s control over their content and set up a more sustainable environment built around authentic experiences on the platform.

Simplified platform policy

We’ve updated our Platform Policy to explicitly list the use cases we will support moving forward. These include apps and services that:

--Help individuals share their own content with 3rd party apps, such as apps that let you print your photos and import an Instagram photo as a profile picture.
--Help brands and advertisers understand and manage their audience, develop their content strategy, and get digital rights to media. Established apps in this space may apply for our newly announced Instagram Partner Program.
--Help broadcasters and publishers discover content, get digital rights to media, and share media using web embeds.

You can read the full terms here [link removed].

New review process and sandbox

We will begin reviewing new and existing apps before granting full API access starting December 3, 2015. Existing apps have until June 1, 2016 to submit and be approved.

We are also launching Sandbox Mode, which will let you privately build and test your apps using Instagram’s APIs as your app is being reviewed.

More control for the community

We’ve heard from the community that it can be unclear where their content is being shared and viewed [this means RSS readers, I think --tm], so today we are deprecating the /users/self/feed and /media/popular API endpoints for new apps. Existing apps will have until the end of the review period before access to the endpoints is terminated.

Our goal is to provide a focused set of terms and processes that give clarity to the use cases we will support going forward. While this may require changes from many of you, we believe these changes will help maintain control for the community and provide a clear roadmap for developers.

*See, e.g., list of banal phrases from reader m.po, with many additions since it last appeared; see also Jules Laplace's documentation of the horrors of Google and Googlespeak.

Not so long ago the suits fought downloading, even though it was the will of the people. Then they embraced it, after they figured out how to "monetize" it. Now they want to abandon it because the herd, I mean, the people, have embraced the streaming model, supposedly. The various means of delivery are discussed in this blog post from Bandcamp, which still uses the download model to market the work of individual and/or indie artists.

In light of a recent report that Apple will soon abandon music downloads (later denied, but undoubtedly containing a certain amount of inevitability), we thought we’d take a moment to update you on the state of Bandcamp’s business and our plans for the future.

Bandcamp grew by 35% last year. Fans pay artists $4.3 million dollars every month using the site, and they buy about 25,000 records a day, which works out to about one every 4 seconds (you can see a real-time feed of those purchases on our desktop home page). Nearly 6 million fans have bought music through Bandcamp (half of whom are younger than 30), and hundreds of thousands of artists have sold music on Bandcamp. Digital album sales on Bandcamp grew 14% in 2015 while dropping 3% industry-wide, track sales grew 11% while dropping 13% industry-wide, vinyl was up 40%, cassettes 49%… even CD sales grew 10% (down 11% industry-wide). Most importantly of all, Bandcamp has been profitable (in the now-quaint revenues-exceed-expenses sense) since 2012.

Subscription-based music streaming,* on the other hand, has yet to prove itself to be a viable model, even after hundreds of millions of investment dollars raised and spent. For our part, we are committed to offering an alternative that we know works. As long as there are fans who care about the welfare of their favorite artists and want to help them keep making music, we will continue to provide that direct connection. And as long as there are fans who want to own, not rent, their music, that is a service we will continue to provide, and that is a model whose benefits we will continue to champion. We have been here since 2008 and we mean to be here in 2028. Thank you!

*Bandcamp is not a download store, and we very much embrace the convenience of streaming. When you buy music on Bandcamp, whether that’s in digital or physical form (30% of sales on Bandcamp are for vinyl and other merchandise), you not only get the pleasure of knowing you’re supporting the artist in a direct and transparent way, you also get instant, unlimited streaming of that music via our free apps for Android and iOS, as well as an optional, high-quality download. Your purchase is about direct support, ownership and access, whether that access takes the form of a stream, download, or both. So please consider joining us in never using “streaming” as shorthand for “subscription-based music.” The former is an inevitable technological shift, the latter is an unproven business model.

This is a bit incoherent -- 70% of Bandcamp's sales are from downloads, yet it is not a "download store." As for the viability of streaming, it made sense to rent movies back in the day because VHS cassettes and DVDs deteriorate and most people don't watch films over and over, they way they might consume a favorite song or LP. Renting songs is part of the so-called cloud model, which assumes you want to be on corporate sites all day accessing "your" music.