This is a thread to discuss 2024 releases that have recently arrived on our doorstep, or been announced for the future. Feel free to share albums, singles, EPs or reissues that have caught your eye and interest, or share your thoughts about any new music that you've had the chance to listen to this week.

Discussion Points
Is there anything you've been looking forward to listening to?
Any releases that have surprised you?
Have you listened to any new music recently? What are your thoughts?
What have you enjoyed from these artists in the past? How does their latest work compare?

Links:
Pitchfork - Out This Week
AllMusic - All New Releases
Stereogum - New Music

~~ Feedback on the format welcome

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

Am I the only one?

They've made some serious improvements and I generally enjoy using Firefox but I occasionally run into issues that just shows complete disregard for end users. Assuming, of course, my issues are not isolated.

Every month or so, when Firefox updates, it completely resets itself. This doesn't happen with every update, but Mozilla pushes an update that breaks the functionality of my browser. My browser settings, my userChrome profile, my extensions and their settings, and my bookmarks are all gone. Everything.

I do have sync but that doesn't work properly either. It only syncs some of my settings (which actually makes it harder for me to figure out what's enabled/disabled) and while I do get my bookmarks (none of which have their favicons), the extensions that manage to sync (meaning the ones that were installed from the store) don't sync their settings unless they have cloud support.

I do not understand this. Why do I, as an end user who care about Mozilla's mission, have to deal with this? I'd overlooked many of Firefox's shortcomings in the past, but when the browser works, it works well. I have some issues, but browsers are complicated and running into issues are to be expected. I understand that, but I simply cannot understand how eager they are to break the end user's workflow. Isn't it supposed to be a cardinal sin for every software company, especially the ones trying to survive, to not do this?

I just spent roughly half an hour of my day to get my browser back to its previous state. Adding the times I had had to deal with this issue before, I've spent hours on dealing with Firefox that I shouldn't have. I don't think I have another half an hour to spare for it and I don't want to anymore, but is there even an alternative for Windows that suck less?

(Apologies for the rant, but I needed to vent and perhaps get a discussion going about the current state of browsers.)

I want to learn a new language that I can use for personal projects. But I want to pick the right one for me, given the fact that learning it will be a time investment and I don't have a ton of time for "fun" stuff these days.

I've spent a decent amount of time tinkering around with Rust and my experience has been decent so far, if I'm trying to filter it through the lens of the current Rust craze. It just seems that the code has a somewhat... ugly(?)... aesthetic to it? I'm not willing to cast it aside yet and I think the "ugliness" just comes from me not really recognizing the syntax very well.

I started looking at golang and was immediately interested in the marketing message of it being "a better C". Aside from Hello World, I haven't done anything else with it.

Some random notes/points about my experience and what I'm looking for:

• I am very accomplished with PHP, quite accomplished with C, somewhat accomplished with C++ and Python. Of those, I find Python to be too "free and easy", PHP (Symfony specifically) and C++ to be so OOP-oriented that I just end up writing a bunch of boilerplate, and C is just... C (I'd rather pull out a tooth than have to work with C strings).
• Aside from the obvious pains of C, I think it's the most fun of the bunch. I don't know why I think this, because again, I absolutely hate C strings.
• I appreciate the package management and ecosystem of Rust, from what I've seen. C-with-Cargo would be awesome.
• The older I get, the more I appreciate strong typing.
• I like a language that allows me to systematically and logically organize my code into various modules, directories, etc. This is where PHP/Symfony shines in that there's a place for everything, as opposed to a bunch of .c and .h files all dumped into a folder.
• Ideally, I'd like something that can compile into a binary that doesn't require JVM, etc.

I'm open to suggestions outside of Rust and Go... those are just the ones I've been seeing mentioned the most over the past decade.

I wanted to give an update to something I wrote about a while back, because i have something to show for it and wanted to express some gratitude.

Behold!

I used the eraser tool on the bottom part, we have a business line but we're not open yet. When we are I'll have some more pictures and it'll be included.

That old post was the first time I had committed most of that to writing, and it was really encouraging for folks to take an interest, especially Akir's questions. Being asked and writing out the answers helped me clarify further, what I was intending to do and how I would get there. So, for the folks who read that, I wanted to share an update.

I'm really confident about this endeavor. It makes me anxious to say that but I've come to learn the position we're in just could not be better. Part of getting it started is forming an LLC, so I've gotten some time to talk with folks more professionally connected to the town. From what I gather, we don't actually have much direct competition. That's because the local venues are very high priced, and primarily do weddings. With some of them, it sounds like a case of possibly resting on laurels - one story was of a wedding, $10,000, which did not include things like tables and chairs and the house was not clean. Each venue charges quite a lot, I think because they're renting out most of their own supplies. We don't have to do that - we have enough already to accommodate up to around 150 people, and the space can accommodate up to ~350 if they're hanging out outside. We can do an event like that 10k wedding for around 3k with stuff provided.

No one offers stuff that's smaller scale. At least with all the places I researched, it's just weddings. No one really tries to host things like, say, a dinner for a local business, school groups, smaller parties. The first event we're set to do, is a tea party for around 30 people (it's for a little girl's birthday). I got to speak with someone who owns a local accounting firm, and learned from them what we are planning to do is pretty much an unserved market. Folks want to be able to go someplace nice that isn't a restaurant. The lowest priced venue sits around ~$3500, and that's just the price of being there. Bear in mind, this is Brookhaven, MS - it isn't a wealthy place by any stretch. The venues currently operating seem to be relying on folks finding them online, and catering to those higher end kinds of events (again, it's mostly just weddings. Some of them do bed and breakfast but it's clearly not what their branding is about). We have practically no overhead, no loans, no investors, and our plan targets stuff that isn't available but is in regular demand. We're doing a few small events to get some practical knowledge and in May we'll open officially.

There's a separate story in there, of two independent folks figuring out how to live together. Neither of us is used to having someone around to do things. Changing my environment has meant being more productive and motivated, which has been pretty nice. Grandma rocks, that's really all there is to it. It really feels like having chosen to do something at precisely the right time, at least with respect to making the business work. I can't speak to the more lofty goals and ideals, because I haven't gotten far enough yet for those to really enter the picture. Upcoming: Business cards, a pamphlet, posters. There's opportunities for advertising that are either free or quite cheap. The print shop owner can get an ad out to 10,000 in the local area for around $500, which I think will have to be good because they're the only folks doing a mailer. That's the only consistent issue, things just move more slowly here and choice is extremely limited. I came here from a city of ~1m, so I guess I had gotten pretty used to having about a bajillion choices. On the other hand, it's been very easy to get the beginnings of a professional network going. I grew up in a place like this, so getting along is no big deal, and everybody knows everybody. A good first impression means something; a good conversation travels. Folks have loved the idea thus far, and have been nothing but encouraging. I don't ramble about the long term plan with anyone, ya'll are the only folk who really got that. As I go along I intend to see how that all shakes out, give an account of how it takes shape. I appreciate folks checking it out and responding. Happy to report anything you're interested in.

Anyway, that is it for now. I hope to return with some cool stuff from a big reopening party. I wasn't sure where this should go so I figured ~misc would work.

Have you watched any TV shows recently you want to discuss? Any shows you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.