tumult (u/tumult) - Readit News

tumult commented on Many lung cancers are now in nonsmokers nytimes.com/2025/07/22/we... · Posted by u/alexcos

Waterluvian · 2 months ago

Given the average level of radon in the air outdoors is 10% of that, being outdoors is 20 chest x-rays per year, eh? That’s almost a cigarette per day being outdoors!

https://www.epa.gov/radon/what-epas-action-level-radon-and-w...

The EPA doesn’t make such creative claims. But the sites that do will also conveniently sell you stuff.

https://radonbegone.com/what-does-your-radon-number-mean/

https://www.nationalradondefense.com/radon-information/radon...

tumult · 2 months ago

The indoor level of radon isn't going to be lower than outdoors. Indoors is either the same or higher than outdoors. Your level of exposure to radon will not go up by going outside. That's your background exposure level, and is already baked into the calculation of how much an effect an elevated exposure to radon in your home will have on you. Radon is a serious thing to consider, especially if your home has a basement. Radon mitigation is not a scam conspiracy.

tumult commented on Self-hosting your own media considered harmful according to YouTube jeffgeerling.com/blog/202... · Posted by u/DavideNL

hardwaresofton · 3 months ago

> In that case, I was happy to see my appeal granted within an hour of the strike being placed on the channel. (Nevermind the fact the video had been live for over two years at that point, with nary a problem!)

Looks like some L-(5|6|whateverthefuck) just got the task to go through YT's backlog and cut down on the mention/promotion of alternative video platforms/self-hosted video serving software.

Quick appeal grant of course, because it was more about sending a message and making people who want to talk about that kind of software think twice before the next video.

> But until that time, YouTube's AdSense revenue and vast reach is a kind of 'golden handcuff.' > > The handcuff has been a bit tarnished of late, however, with Google recently adding AI summaries to videos—which seems to indicate maybe Gemini is slurping up my content and using it in their AI models?

Balanced take towards the end (after the above quote), but yep, the writing is on the wall.

I really wonder where the internet goes in this age. The contract between third party content hosters and creators is getting squeezed, and the whole "you're the product" thing is being laid bare more and more.

Is it a given that at some point creators will stop posting their contents to platforms like YouTube? Is it even possible at this point given that YouTube garners so many eyeballs and is just so easy? Does a challenger somehow unseat YouTube because programming and underlying libraries (ffmpeg et al) becomes so easy to use that spinning up a YouTube competitor goes down to basically zero?

Seems like there needs to be a new paradigm for anyone to have a choice other than youtube. Maybe AI will enable this -- maybe "does jeff have any new videos" -> a video gets played on a screen in your house and it's NOT hosted on YouTube, but no one knows and no one cares?

tumult · 3 months ago

> Quick appeal grant of course, because it was more about sending a message and making people who want to talk about that kind of software think twice before the next video.

That was talking about a previous video, not the one that is the main subject of this blog post. For the video that is the subject of this blog post, which is just about running your own software to watch media you legally own, the appeal was apparently denied.

tumult commented on Compressed music might be harmful to the ears economist.com/science-and... · Posted by u/doener

lupusreal · 4 months ago

Unless I understand compression all wrong, isn't the point to make the quiet parts loud? So in one case you have a song peaking at 102dB and in the other case virtually the entire song is that loud.

It's already known that hearing damage is cumulative, longer exposure to loudness is bad, so it seems like a common sense result in line with all existing research.

tumult · 4 months ago

The pre-compressed and compressed versions were loudness matched to be the same overall loudness, according to the description. My guess is that they set the compressor to actually make the waveform spikier, without fully understanding what’s going on. Just a guess, though. I can’t check to find out.

tumult commented on Compressed music might be harmful to the ears economist.com/science-and... · Posted by u/doener

yobbo · 4 months ago

The compression effect in music amounts to increasing the amount of energy/loudness in the sound within the limits of the playback device to avoid "clipping".

Put very simply, it increases the amplitude of the input sound. Its parameters are controlled by internal timers, external triggers, timers and signals ("side-chaining"). For example; lowering the bass ("ducking") during the critical milliseconds of the kick-drum so that the volume of both can stay maximised while their sum stays within maximum amplitude.

On voice-over, in radio and podcasts it makes voices sound even and "boomy/strong".

Originally probably necessary way to make recordings listenable in cars and noisy environments with lower spec speakers.

Nowadays producers use it to "sound louder" and thus make stronger impressions.

tumult · 4 months ago

Lookhead limiting is more commonly used to sound louder, not compression. Compression is usually done for flavor. It’s not that great at making things louder, because traditional compression actually exaggerated the spikes in amplitude at the start of percussive sounds, which pop and dance music has a lot of, requiring additional work to tame. Modern drum processing usually uses a combination of compression (sometimes with upwards compression), lookahead limiting, and saturation.

tumult commented on Compressed music might be harmful to the ears economist.com/science-and... · Posted by u/doener

perching_aix · 4 months ago

Put briefly, researchers blasted guinea pigs with 102 decibels of music for 4 hours. They found that while both the compressed and non-compressed test tracks caused temporary damage, the compressed variant made the damage longer lasting, suggesting that there's more to ear damage than just the loudness.

From this, what I would take away is not necessarily that compression on its own is harmful but that... there's almost certainly more to ear damage than just the loudness, and compression is one way this can exhibit through. So I'd say the title and angle of the article is a bit misleading.

Naturally, when I say compression I mean it in the audio effect sense, as they do in the article.

tumult · 4 months ago

It’s possible their compression settings were actually exaggerating the peaks instead of compressing them, and then they did nothing to control those peaks afterwards. This is a really common thing that can happen with a superficial use of compressors. Especially if you did averaged loudness-matching of the compressed signal with the uncompressed signal. It ends up being spikier than before compression. I would entirely believe a waveform with those added spikes would be more damaging than a controlled waveform that had been saturated or limited after compression. I don’t have access to the original publication, so I can’t check and find out.

tumult commented on UnitedHealth's Effort to Deny Coverage for a Patient's Care (2023) propublica.org/article/un... · Posted by u/latexr

threemux · 9 months ago

I guess you and I have different definitions of vastly. Even 68% people who say they are in "fair" or "poor" health say they're satisfied:

https://www.kff.org/private-insurance/poll-finding/kff-surve...

There's nothing misleading about the KFF data, which has been going for quite some time now. If you recall (I know it seems like a lifetime ago), Obama got in trouble for lying that people could keep their plan if they liked it. If so many hated their plan, why did he pay such a heavy political price? Why would he even have to lie in the first place?

tumult · 9 months ago

68% is horrible

tumult commented on How I Got a Digital Nomad Visa for Japan tokyodev.com/articles/how... · Posted by u/pwim

csomar · 10 months ago

> I cannot think of any circumstances where someone would be demanding to see your passport and then accept a photo of your passport instead.

Unless you are involved with a particular interaction, they just want to check your visa status. A passport photo/stamp will do if their system is digitized. Arresting someone (except for the US where the police likes to arrest people) is a major hassle.

tumult · 10 months ago

I am a resident of Japan. This is extremely bad advice. Do not follow this advice.

To csomar: you are willingly spreading harmful advice. Stop it. Stop making people reply to clean up your mess.

tumult commented on Microsoft confirms that Windows 11 Recall AI is not optional tomshardware.com/software... · Posted by u/belter

ziddoap · a year ago

It can be disabled. It says so in the first paragraph.

tumult · a year ago

I see this is your first rodeo.