Grok-

As of early 2026, Spotify (SPOT) is experiencing strong financial performance with record user growth, significant profitability, and a high valuation. In Q4 2025, revenue hit â4.53 billion (7% Y/Y increase) with 751 million monthly active users (MAUs) and 290 million premium subscribers. The company reported operating income of â701M and improved gross margins.
Spotify
Spotify
  +1

Music used to be expensive to buy. You could listen to the radio for free. But only with the radio was playing, and you have ads. To hear something different I had to stand in the music store wearing their headset to listen to samples.

Today is so much more awesome than it ever used to be when it comes to listening to music. It's comparatively cheap and you can find almost everything. Then listen to it almost anywhere.

Today, I can listen to everything for free with ads. And I mean everything. Most of the worlds recorded songs. Even subscription services cost less per month than one CD.

That is stupifyingly amazing to people who lived before.

Well, it may be free, and you may think it's exploitation free. I just spent 10 minutes trying to listen to a song. Any song. There must be two other people using their database, cuz it doesn't return anymore after my third search.. I found songs with no downlink and listen button. A note says certain songs are available for download, identifiable by special icon. Never found a song without icon. Didn't find a way to search for those.

Very perfect example of what it means can mean something to be free.

I'll take 5 seconds over on spotify, and see what the oldest Woody Guthrie song -they- have is. Oh I'm already listening to it.

I seem to recall big companies hiring and paying engineers to ride the bench 3 or 4 years ago.

Mostly it's by design. They have an operating life of 5 - 7 years depending on generation and orbit. The Gen1s or in the shorter side of that, and the lower orbits have more drag and come down sooner. More than 1300 have been deorbitted.

I think it's very inequitable that Elon musk is able to unilaterally either grant or not grant free internet to people. If he's not willing to activate free internet for the Ukrainian to operate star link in Russian zones, violating Federal law, then he shouldn't be allowed to give these guys for the internet either.

Back in 2022 and 2023 there were a lot of stories about all of the tech company overhiring and how they were beginning to lay people off the extra people they hired that they didn't enough work for. These gloom and Doom AI stories never seem to mention that.

I recall reading about people that were getting full-time paychecks but didn't have any work to do and didn't need to report in at all for months.

Now it's interesting, productivity is increasing. We have AI, but we also have gotten rid of all those extra people, the new hires. Maybe having a few years of experience makes you more productive? How about not hiring extra staff, that end up sitting on the bench?

I assume the state and also farmers poison hogs on purpose. It's not happening by accident.

Wild hogs are a terrible menace to farming, they reproduce at a high rate, and they will destroy crops, and compete for grain with farm animals.

20% less hours getting the same work done.

I assume by "caught" you mean he self reported it.. The report I read.said the government was aware of it already.

Give them an inch they take a mile.

Behold, not very voracious...

There is a fair bit of "targeting" going on right here amongst ourselves IMHO.

So if the hormone is in the blood pregnant people and non-pregnant people ( meaning everyone else) why not just say 'people.'. I interpreted use of the phrase 'non-pregnant people' in this context to mean non-pregnant biological woman.

At least we there are things about 'pregnant people' we don't need to guess about, like a uterus and a vagina, probably ovaries. 'Non-pregnant people' is somewhat less informative. Did that person have a uterus and ovaries? Was this study so woke that they included people without ovaries in the non-pregnant group?