> It has been pointed out to us that since we have our servers in the US, we are under US jurisdiction. We do not believe this to be the case. We do not have a legal presence in the US, no company incorporated in the US, no staff in the US, and no one in the US with login access to any servers located in the US. Even if a US court were to serve us with a court order, subpoena or other instruction to hand over user data, Australian communications and privacy law explicitly forbids us from doing so.
https://listenbrainz.org/ is an open source scrobbler, with the advantage that it leverages the musicbrainz database and connects listens to artist and track IDs instead of names, avoiding duplicate confusion. You can keep last.fm and submit to both of you like.
> Not sure how much difference this makes over the long run
I tune in all fourths as well. For me it has made a huge difference since I made the jump some years ago. Putting voicings, patterns, etc., into muscular memory is faster and a lot less work. For my purposes, it makes the instrument more intuitive with a better ear-hand connection. Even very advanced players trip on the G-B strings oddity (with things like playing a fast, angular melody on different string sets, without preparation, for example).
Actually most if not all of those verb endings are used colloquially (the most important exception would be the second person plural, which is only used in some regions of Portugal).
> most of the post IIWW ("classical") music that was composed in Europe is so unconnected to - not just wider audience - but what I'd call a physical aspect of music: pulse and resonance
On the contrary, pulse and resonance are two of the most intensively explored themes on post WW2 music!
Just two examples from the top of my head (among uncountable others...):
I didn't try Corman Lisp (I will), but it should be noted that sbcl works just fine in windows, despite a warning it used to carry about it being unstable. The difficulty of developing in windows, in my experience, has more to do with external things like ssl or sqlite, that may not be present in the system or may not be installed in the way that's expected by a lisp library, which wasn't as tested under windows.
Despite the title, I don't think the article is about algebra "making you smarter", but more whether you can learn it successfully and if by pursuing such an endeavor you can hamper age-induced cognitive decline.
> In my opinion -- this is only my opinion -- immersion by living in a country is overrated as a technique. It helps for sure, but it really isn't necessary. The elements above are what are needed -- without these, even immersion is ineffective. I've met Irish guys living in Barcelona who couldn't speak any of the local languages. I've first hand experience living in several places where I never learned the local language because there was always a way around it.
Immersion works when there's no other way around it. In particular for native english speakers, you'd have to be in a situation where either most people you interact with don't know enough english for communication to be effective, or (and this is very rare in my limited experience) you would have to make an effort to stop using your native language altogether, even when locals address you in it. It also helps when there aren't any family/friends/compatriots around so you can't really "cheat" and you won't be able to function on a daily basis unless you learn and practice the local language.