deathinactthree's recent activity
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Comment on Meta’s AI-powered Ray-Bans are life-enhancing for the blind in ~tech
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Comment on Meta’s AI-powered Ray-Bans are life-enhancing for the blind in ~tech
deathinactthree The motorcycle bit was why I was looking at the Ray-Bans in the first place--at the time I was also shopping for a new motorcycle helmet. When I ride, I always wear sunglasses, and I like to...- Exemplary
The motorcycle bit was why I was looking at the Ray-Bans in the first place--at the time I was also shopping for a new motorcycle helmet. When I ride, I always wear sunglasses, and I like to listen to music but earbuds block out too much surrounding noise. So I was looking at helmets with built-in visors and Bluetooth, and the Ray-Bans. The Ray-Bans were cheaper, plus I could use them elsewhere.
They let me listen to music but also street noise when I'm riding, and I can control music playback with my voice so I don't have to pull over, take off my gloves, and fish my phone out just to skip a track or switch playlists. It also reads out texts to me so people can reach me easily if necessary when I'm on a longer ride. Or I can pull over and make/take a quick call without taking my helmet off. I can also take pictures and even video of what I can see using voice commands--I don't use this much on or off the bike as I'm very conscious of respecting privacy, but it has clear utility.
One thing I wish it did but it doesn't do is have the capability to ask for directions with voice. It can of course play out directions from Google/Apple Maps when you type the location in before riding, but it would be a killer app to be able to be on the bike and ask for directions to the nearest X, ask about detours around traffic or road blockages, or even just tell me what street I'm on. (It would of course also greatly help visually impaired people, viz. the OP.) It seems like an obvious feature, but instead I'm getting updates that make the AI voice sound like John Cena.
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Comment on Meta’s AI-powered Ray-Bans are life-enhancing for the blind in ~tech
deathinactthree I have a pair of these, and I can definitely see the assistive benefits. I specifically got them for two use cases: walking my two large dogs (hands are occupied with leashes) and riding my...I have a pair of these, and I can definitely see the assistive benefits. I specifically got them for two use cases: walking my two large dogs (hands are occupied with leashes) and riding my motorcycle (don't have to take my attention off the road). I was honestly pretty skeptical about the purchase initially and was prepared to return them, but I have found them sufficiently helpful to keep.
I imagine that the "describe what I'm looking at" feature is tremendously useful for visually impaired people. (And the "Be My Eyes" option of course but I don't have any experience of it so can't speak to it.) Also somewhat useful for people with chronic joint pain, for example--I have mild arthritis in my right hand, and the glasses mean I don't have to painfully fumble with my phone to manipulate my playing media or type anything in order to text someone or make a call.
That said, I would definitely echo the concerns around hallucinations and misinformation, it's probably a privacy nightmare as is anything involving Meta, and in the current iteration of the product there are a surprising number of things that it can't do. But I can definitely see a future where better versions of glasses like these are commonly used by visually impaired or otherwise disabled people, particularly because it's what some would probably consider shockingly affordable for a medical device that's assistive to that degree.
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Comment on What were some artists, groups or albums that had an influence on you before you were old enough to choose for yourself? in ~music
deathinactthree My earliest influence came from my grandfather. My mother's tastes were pretty pedestrian 70s fare like Dan Fogelberg, the Eagles, Grand Funk Railroad (her 3 favorite bands) and I really didn't...My earliest influence came from my grandfather. My mother's tastes were pretty pedestrian 70s fare like Dan Fogelberg, the Eagles, Grand Funk Railroad (her 3 favorite bands) and I really didn't care for it at all. My uncle, her younger brother who was not that much older than me as my mother had me young, liked classic rock like Pink Floyd and Van Halen, and I enjoyed it well enough when he tried to get me into it as a kid but I can't say it influenced me much. My grandmother only--and I mean only, this is not a joke--listened to Englebert Humperdink and otherwise seemed to actively hate all music.
My grandfather was no expert on or great lover of music himself, but he did enjoy a few genres of music and listened to them often when he was carting us around or working in the yard or drinking coffee on a Sunday morning. His favorite was trad/outlaw country, from Woody Guthrie to Merle Haggard, which I didn't much like as a kid but realized later in life that it did influence my taste in acoustic-based music a lot--i.e., "three chords and the truth".
What I plugged into sooner were torch songs, classic vocal jazz, and the blues. Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Nat King Cole, John Lee Hooker, BB King, etc. Even later as an teenage edgelord 90s grunge kid listening to Dinosaur Jr. and Alice in Chains and NIN, you would still find in the tape collection I carried in my backpack with me everywhere I went copies of Holiday's Solitude, Ella and Louis, and King of the Delta Blues Singers. Or the Sleepless in Seattle soundtrack. Here 30 years later, I listen to a lot of very different genres to the point that I'd say I don't think I have a specific favorite (I'm lying, it's darkwave), but if I'm cooking or doing housework/yardwork it's always vocal jazz or classic Delta blues.
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Comment on Reddit will lock some content behind a paywall this year, CEO says in ~tech
deathinactthree Honestly, no--assuming you avoid the default subs and /r/all and /r/popular. You still see bots sometimes in the smaller niche-interest or city-based subs like the kind that I subscribe to but...Honestly, no--assuming you avoid the default subs and /r/all and /r/popular. You still see bots sometimes in the smaller niche-interest or city-based subs like the kind that I subscribe to but there's not much incentive for bot activity there because there's not enough traffic to meaningfully farm for a purpose. It does also depend on the quality of the sub's current mod team, which can vary greatly.
I don't see ads on Reddit at all because I use uBlock Origin as well as Reddit Enhancement Suite, which lets you flip the new, crappier site layout to the old link aggregation style among other useful features. I would find Reddit unusable without them both.
As is, using browser plugins and sticking to a small list of niche but active subreddits, it's good enough for me to justify visiting regularly. It's not so good that I would pay even a small amount of money to continue having access to it, however.
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Comment on Coffee futures in New York jump 6% to new record amid 'panic buying' in ~food
deathinactthree I typically recommend a Hottop electric drum roaster. I think it's the best option on the market for the price for a home roaster before you start dropping serious money on commercial-grade...I typically recommend a Hottop electric drum roaster. I think it's the best option on the market for the price for a home roaster before you start dropping serious money on commercial-grade equipment. In my opinion, the $1400 basic model is completely fine--the "plus" version at $1800 pretty much only gets you 50g more batch capacity, a prettier LCD screen, and the ability to connect it to your PC and use Artisan (FOSS coffee roasting software).
That's a bit of personal preference however. Here's my two cents on Artisan, and some roasters consider it a spicy take: Artisan is great at doing what it does and you may find a lot of value in using it for your roasts, but I don't--I never "roast to a time and a temperature" by programming it ahead of time into a machine, because each roast to me is different and may require changing variables around ambient temperature, bean moisture levels, volatility in the drum metal temperature, etc. that have to be accounted for. If you're using Artisan to record and analyze roasts instead of program them, it's terrific for that, but I'm old school and I prefer to keep a paper journal to record the conditions of each roast with a specific shorthand I developed in Ye Olden Days before roasting software existed. (It's nothing fancy, just easy for me to use.)
Sub-$1000, your Fresh Roast is, on balance, already probably the best option. Avoid Behmor and Gene Cafe. The Kaldi drum roaster is ~$600 and can get you good results if you have enough roasting experience to account for its shortcomings but I really can't recommend it--it requires gas, has zero smoke suppression and can only be used outdoors, has no PID, and requires a lot of maintenance.
Above the Hottop's price point, if money's no object but you don't want to go all the way to commercial, the Aillio Bullet is what I would personally use if I ever got back into home roasting again.
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Comment on Tildes feels like the last bastion of the Information Superhighway in ~tildes
deathinactthree For sure--it was clacky but not too clacky, ha ha. A very comfortable keyboard to use.For sure--it was clacky but not too clacky, ha ha. A very comfortable keyboard to use.
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Comment on Coffee futures in New York jump 6% to new record amid 'panic buying' in ~food
deathinactthree I had one of those FreshRoasts for a while. I'm also a former professional coffee roaster of many years so I'm used to roasting on commercial equipment doing 12-24kg at a time. Compared to that, I...I had one of those FreshRoasts for a while. I'm also a former professional coffee roaster of many years so I'm used to roasting on commercial equipment doing 12-24kg at a time. Compared to that, I found it difficult to keep any serious level of control over the roast in the FR, although the fan and temp curve settings you described are pretty much identical to my own after playing around with it, and got me the best results.
Another thing that got me better (or more consistent anyway) results is limiting which beans I used. It seems to do the best with relatively soft beans with an uncomplicated taste profile. Brazilian Cerrado, Columbian Supremo, Guatemalan Antigua, etc., and that's kind of a benefit as those coffees tend to be less expensive. Soft Indonesian coffees with high humic acid development like Sumatra Mandheling and Celebes Kalossi also tend to do well but those tend to be significantly more expensive for not significantly better results. I did have a couple of Yirgacheffes come out decently well but you tend to lose the more sensitive notes from the malic acids as they tend to burn out too early.
Hard Bean and Strictly Hard Bean varietals tend to struggle in it because they accelerate too much heat in the crack for the fan of the FR to keep up so they tend to get scorching and pocking easily. Likewise anything known for more complex flavors like a Harrar or one of the better, higher-grown Sumatras tend to quickly lose the more subtle taste notes that make them cost more money, ha ha.
I'm sort of rambling here but will echo that given all that, it's still just plain kind of fun to roast your own coffee at home! Coffee is an interesting subject (I'm biased, I know) and a fun hobby. Also yes, anyone you live with will plot your demise within the first week.
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Comment on The American physicians are healing themselves with Ozempic in ~health
deathinactthree Not that it made a difference getting to my current weight, but I did often order things like salads with grilled chicken or rice plates with beef and vegetables, etc. If I order a burger I never...Not that it made a difference getting to my current weight, but I did often order things like salads with grilled chicken or rice plates with beef and vegetables, etc. If I order a burger I never get sides. I actually never eat fast food; I live in a city rife with great local restaurants so I was usually getting Asian or Indian food, or from a favored place near me that does great burgers and salads.
It was less about the quality of the food and more about the volume, really. I likely would not have gained any weight or had any adverse effects on my health if I'd just eaten normal serving sizes of the food I was ordering. But for example, there's a local family-owned Thai place near me I often ordered pad see ew with beef and broccoli several times a week. One order of that is enough to feed two or three people and I'd eat all of it in a sitting, easily 2000+ calories. The grilled chicken salads I was also getting a couple nights a week were easily enough for two people and covered in their house-made blue cheese dressing (so good!), so there's no way it was less than 1500 calories I'm guessing.
Again, I'm doing better about it--getting takeout less often, ordering smaller dishes and saving some as leftovers, etc. It's just a habit I need to finish getting out of.
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Comment on What are some traditional internet forums that you still use? in ~tech
deathinactthree I registered in 2005 (holy shit, it's been 20 years), and I'm kind of surprised that it's still a pretty good forum. I expected it to be fully cooked after everything went down a few years ago...I registered in 2005 (holy shit, it's been 20 years), and I'm kind of surprised that it's still a pretty good forum. I expected it to be fully cooked after everything went down a few years ago with Lowtax but it seemed to come out the other side of it as a better place, and I've found myself frequenting it again recently after nearly a decade of generally avoiding it due to the various dramas and severe dropoff in activity after the Helldump2k diaspora sent a lot of the posting superstars to Weird Twitter and Lowtax lost his mind.
But Jeffrey (of YOSPOS, who I believe is the mod that bought it) seems to have a good handle on it as the current owner. The activity is a fraction of what it used to be in the aughts, but it's generally been higher quality and less noise. I really enjoyed my time there during the 6-ish or so years I was much more active and it's nice to see it's come back around to being a good forum again.
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Comment on The American physicians are healing themselves with Ozempic in ~health
deathinactthree If all food tasting like ash only recently started, within last 2-4 weeks or so, regardless of when he started the med, especially if the reduced appetite has only been further decreasing since...If all food tasting like ash only recently started, within last 2-4 weeks or so, regardless of when he started the med, especially if the reduced appetite has only been further decreasing since around the same time, I would have him get it checked out asap. Despite losing most of my sense of taste and smell to COVID in 2020, there was only one period since then where all food actually did taste like ash and I had absolutely no appetite whatsoever and difficulty forcing myself to eat. And that was in 2021 where I learned I had a gastric bleed from some specific medication I was taking for something else.
I'm not trying to hit a panic button here but I'd recommend at least quickly ruling it out. Wegovy as I understand it doesn't cause stomach bleeding on its own but long periods of high stress certainly can. IANAD, but as someone who came uncomfortably close to full exsanguination because I put off asking my doc about it for too long, it's really not something you want to take a "wait and see" stance on.
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Comment on The American physicians are healing themselves with Ozempic in ~health
deathinactthree Two things happened almost simultaneously: I injured my shoulder in late 2023 at a martial arts tournament which completely halted my exercise regimen. In January of 2024 I was promoted to Vice...Two things happened almost simultaneously: I injured my shoulder in late 2023 at a martial arts tournament which completely halted my exercise regimen. In January of 2024 I was promoted to Vice President at my job, reporting to a new President who was frankly so bad at their job that they in short order either fired or caused to resign over half of my department, so I was suddenly working 14-hour days to make up the difference.
I had to eat on the run because I had no time to cook for myself or manage my diet, and that turned into stress-eating for comfort in the evenings because I was exhausted and miserable. For all of 2024, I had no time for hobbies or exercise, but I did have time to go pick up a 2500-calorie order of Thai food and eat it in front of the TV in the hour between walking away from my computer and going to bed, which counted as my only recreation.
I was able to leave that job for a much better one in mid-December 2024, and since then I've mostly completed rehab on my shoulder (which I'd put off because I had no time for physical therapy appointments), so I'm getting back into exercising and making my own meals. Although it's notably reduced, I'm still eating too much restaurant food, now more out of sheer habit than anything else if I'm being honest. So weight loss has been slow, but it's at least going the right direction. Not as fast as I'd prefer, knowing that I was in literal fighting shape 18 months ago, hence debating the Ozempic question.
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Comment on The American physicians are healing themselves with Ozempic in ~health
deathinactthree Interesting. I imagine that's part of what makes it easier to eat less, but I'm wondering if that's normal. In my case I'm not entirely sure how much it would impact me--I got COVID early on, in...The biggest thing I am noticing and that he complains about is that food doesn't taste good. He has complained about foods he normally likes tasting like ash, or just not really being enjoyable.
Interesting. I imagine that's part of what makes it easier to eat less, but I'm wondering if that's normal.
In my case I'm not entirely sure how much it would impact me--I got COVID early on, in February of 2020 right before the US lockdowns started, and it entirely killed my palate like it did to a lot of people, but for me it seems to be permanent. Years later, even now I still have almost zero sense of smell, and very little of taste. It's recovered a little bit and I can taste a few certain things again, other flavors I can taste again but they're completely twisted....anything vanilla tastes like drinking bottled cheap perfume now for example, pickles taste like eating geraniums for some odd reason. A lot of flavors I still can't detect at all. The volume I was eating at last year was completely stress-eating, and limited entirely to meals containing the few ingredients I could taste but I wasn't eating for flavor.
Point being that a few months of losing what little sense of taste I do have I'm guessing would be "annoying but tolerable". But it does raise the question of if I would go back to my current eating habits as soon as I had any taste at all again--for example, I remember right around this time last year I was able to start tasting sweet things more fully again, and I spent a month kickstarting this current weight absolutely housing tubs of ice cream as a result. Tubs, not pints. Not a position I'd want to find myself again, which bears me thinking about.
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Comment on The American physicians are healing themselves with Ozempic in ~health
deathinactthree Fair point. I already take other meds I'm dependent on (Lyrica + Relafin for peripheral nerve pain related to my autoimmune disease) so I'm not entirely sure why I'm hung up on one more, ha ha....I already need my asthma inhaler for the rest of my life, and I don't care about that. If I had developed diabetes, I'd be dependent on insulin for the rest of my life, and now it looks like I'll be able to avoid that. Why, then, should I care about this?
Fair point. I already take other meds I'm dependent on (Lyrica + Relafin for peripheral nerve pain related to my autoimmune disease) so I'm not entirely sure why I'm hung up on one more, ha ha.
It's interesting that you find gym recovery easier on it, as that's something I'm currently struggling with a lot, even though my protein and nutrient intake is pretty good overall. Would you say the Wegovy is directly helping with recovery, or that it's more a downstream effect of the other positive results it's giving you?
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Comment on The American physicians are healing themselves with Ozempic in ~health
deathinactthree (edited )Link ParentDefinitely. It's how I gained nearly 50lbs in just a year, from 180->230lbs. It sounds like I'm exaggerating for effect, but I'm not: in 2024 there was only a single-digit number of days that I...A complete restaurant meal — entree, side, drink(s), maybe dessert — can blow past 2000 calories easily. Looking at the Cheesecake Factory's nutritional guide (just because theirs is the most detailed): their Pasta Carbonara with Chicken has 2160 calories. Add in a drink (300 for a cocktail) and a slice of plain cheesecake (830) and you're looking at a meal of 3290 calories. I have been to a Cheesecake Factory and have witnessed people do this.
Definitely. It's how I gained nearly 50lbs in just a year, from 180->230lbs. It sounds like I'm exaggerating for effect, but I'm not: in 2024 there was only a single-digit number of days that I didn't eat at a restaurant or order takeout. Back-calculating from my current BMI, TDEE, and sedentary lifestyle in 2024, I was eating an estimated 3200 calories per day. Double what I was consuming in 2023.
I'm being better about it now but not as better as I would like. I do think there's the Western shame element of agency and self-control playing a factor in hesitating to take "the easy way out" with something like Ozempic. But then again, it's not like I don't take other medications for things I can't control, so I'm likely just being stubborn.
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Comment on Team Fluff wins Puppy Bowl XXI! in ~sports.american_football
deathinactthree Mercury (the Pyr mix that won the Underdog award) stole my heart.Mercury (the Pyr mix that won the Underdog award) stole my heart.
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Comment on The American physicians are healing themselves with Ozempic in ~health
deathinactthree As someone who gained a lot of weight this past year after being fairly physically fit--an injury took me out of the gym for a while during a time that my job also suddenly became intensely...As someone who gained a lot of weight this past year after being fairly physically fit--an injury took me out of the gym for a while during a time that my job also suddenly became intensely stressful and I ended up falling into disordered eating--I'm half-debating taking the shortcut myself.
I'm still hesitant and won't pull the trigger without some long conversations with my doctor. I am back on a steady gym routine although my eating habits haven't improved much, so after 2 months I've only lost about 3 pounds. I'm telling myself that since I'm very familiar with the process and habits of a healthy lifestyle, that maybe taking a semiglutide for a bit can just be a kind of hard reset to get me back to where I was physically 18 months ago without having to spend another year of a slow and tortuous process to get there.
I have at least 30 pounds to lose (30 would be acceptable, 40 would be ideal) so it's not going to happen quickly the old-fashioned way, regardless of how orthodox I get with it. I'm middle-aged so pushing myself too hard in the gym risks the kind of injury that got me here a year ago. Crash diets are almost certainly more dangerous than Ozempic would be.
But I don't know, it just...............feels wrong? I can't really explain it. I'm not hugely worried about side effects or long-term morbidities because these drugs have been thoroughly studied for decades at this point. Certainly I'm cautious that it won't really matter without also resetting my diet, or I'll just be back where I am now as soon as I go off it. But I've also historically been pretty good about my diet before 2024, so maybe it'd be fine? I don't know.
The biggest thing I'm curious about is energy levels--I know that anecdotes are not data, but does your husband feel any difference in his energy levels, does he get tired easily, is his sleeping affected at all? I think maybe my own biggest hesitancy is in wondering if it would limit my appetite so much that I would struggle to eat enough to maintain energy for the 5 workouts per week that I'm currently doing.
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Comment on Why blog if nobody reads it? in ~tech
deathinactthree (edited )LinkI've mentioned in the odd comment here and there that I was debating starting another blog, as someone who wrote a mildly popular Livejournal for years. The reason I haven't yet is because I don't...I've mentioned in the odd comment here and there that I was debating starting another blog, as someone who wrote a mildly popular Livejournal for years. The reason I haven't yet is because I don't quite agree with Andy--I don't disagree that writing for yourself alone has value in the practice of it, I disagree that it's sufficient.
Blogging forces clarity. It makes you structure your thoughts, sharpen your perspective. You stop writing fluff because — let’s be honest — you’re writing for yourself. And if you can’t keep yourself interested, nobody else stands a chance.
Bluntly, if I'm writing for myself, I put less effort into it. I have years of keeping paper journals to prove it, heh. If I'm writing with an imaginary reader in mind, I put more effort into it--I think more about whether the flow of thoughts makes sense, the structure of the arguments, the prosody of the sentences, if the references need explaining, and I think a lot about the rhetorical tone in a way that I simply don't if it's just for me.
Even if no one ends up reading it, I still put the effort in. I'm never looking for a large audience, but I do want the possibility of someone, somewhere stumbling across it and having that work be the best it can be for that person. Which is a bit corny, for sure, and maybe I'm overselling the idea. But the occasions where someone actually has reached out over a post that maybe didn't even get ten readers, back in the days where people still bothered to do that, kept me honest about what and how I was writing.
I agree that writing for yourself is a perfectly fine thing to do, and I appreciate what Andy's going for in the idea of the act of creation itself having intrinsic value to the creator. But what I'm interested in is communication and style, and those are discrete skills, and they don't get better in a vacuum. So I still haven't quite convinced myself that this counts as chopping wood and carrying water. At least, in my opinion. Maybe better to say it's not going to get my wood chopped.
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Comment on Should I self-host my blog? in ~tech
deathinactthree Oh hey, I wasn't familiar with Hetzner but looking at their site--as someone who clicked into this thread because I was also debating self-hosting a blog--the lowest level which would be all I...Oh hey, I wasn't familiar with Hetzner but looking at their site--as someone who clicked into this thread because I was also debating self-hosting a blog--the lowest level which would be all I need is only $2/mo and comes with a domain name. That seems like a pretty good deal and much more painless than trying to self-host. I'm going to take a serious look at this, thanks!
(I recently started an account on WhiteWind because I was interested in a free, basic blogging platform built on ATProto, but honestly I don't think it's mature enough to do work for me yet. This looks like what I can get on with in the meantime.)
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Comment on What books do you recommend for someone looking for positive vibes or casual amusement or escape in ~books
deathinactthree Good pick, it's a really fun fantasy-world heist story that feels like a fast read even though the book's kind of a doorstop, heh. In the same vein of "fast, fun heist stories set in a fantasy...Good pick, it's a really fun fantasy-world heist story that feels like a fast read even though the book's kind of a doorstop, heh.
In the same vein of "fast, fun heist stories set in a fantasy world" I would highly recommend the Rogues of the Republic series by Patrick Weekes.
No, I don't use hearing protection while riding. At 650cc, my bike isn't big enough or loud enough to warrant it, and I'm mostly a city rider anyway (Seattle metro area) so very rarely get the kind of wind noise from going 80mph.
When I had larger touring motorcycles in the past like my 1200cc BMW K-Bike, I was still wearing wired earbuds that functioned as hearing protection--I'd often have them in with no music going. But especially with music, I started to feel like it was blocking out enough ambient noise to be potentially dangerous. But not an issue now.