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Your Phone Has an FM Chip. So Why Can’t You Listen to the Radio?

wired.com

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Re: Your Phone Has an FM Chip. So Why Can’t You Listen to the Radio?

#151

Post by castell »

clarry wrote: post #133
WalterBright wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Grace Digital one. It works, although Apple has ruined me and the user interface on the box is worse than that on a microwave. There's a long list of complaints about it, but there isn't much alternative. The category is wide open for someone to make one where, say, the remote actually works more than some of the time. :-( I don't know why this is such a hard problem.

Which microwave? I have a hard time imagining ways it could be improved over what I have. Put food in, twist a knob to set time, microwave starts.

You probably own an old microwave, lucky you. Newer models usually have a digital interface with have various buttons - that's probably the non-intuitive interface the OP is referring to.

Re: Your Phone Has an FM Chip. So Why Can’t You Listen to the Radio?

#152

Post by TeMPOraL »

frigo_1337 wrote: post #131
echelon wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine a world where all content is loaded over XHRs and the DOM serves only to load Javascript. This is becoming an increasingly prevalent pattern. I really miss the document-oriented web of the late 90's / early 00's.

Honest question: Why? I don't understand why people inherently dislike Javascript (aside from, y'know, creepy ad networks).

Because, besides the creepy ad networks and stuff, it's most often used in a mix of shitty engineering and user-hostile practices.

Let's consider a web document like this article here. Its stated goal is to be read by the visitor and thus deliver him value. So presumably, an article that's easier to read is better than one harder to read. An article that, ceteris paribus, consumes less resources on user end is better than one that consumes more.

Now we have a perfect technology to deliver that article. Plain old HTML. With a little bit of CSS on top. When what you want to send is text communicating a message, you need exactly zero JavaScript to do that successfully[0]. You barely even need much CSS - the default browser styles, raw as they are, are better than most web designers produce, if you care about providing value to the user.

Now if you don't, here starts JavaScript. Look at just what JS on Wired does and find me one line of code that actually serves the user. The JS there tracks you, shows you ads, shows you nagging popups[1], adds social media buttons that are somewhat useful if you want to exchange being tracked everywhere for convenience of not having to CTRL+TAB to that Facebook tab. In general, JS here is a waste of electricity (often in users' phone batteries).

You can run a similar analysis of other websites[2] and rarely if ever you'll find one when JavaScript does anything other than fuck users over more or less subtly. The technology is fine, but everyone[3] is using it for user-hostile purposes, and/or because of bad engineering. Think of all the scroll hijacking, JS rendering article text dynamically on a blog page, etc. Personally I dislike it from the very same reason I dislike crappy code.

--

[0] - Sure, JS can be used to qualitatively enhance the reading experience, to make it more pleasant and efficient. I accept that in principle, but I'll cede the point only when I see anyone other than Bret Victor actually doing it.

[1] - Wired, I appreciate that you wanted to say "thank you" to me for turning off uMatrix for a second, but could you please do not do that with a popup?

[2] - Web apps are a different topic; I don't think anybody is saying you should turn off JavaScript for GMail or Google Docs. But most of the sites on the web are not, and should not behave like web apps.

[3] - Except Bret Victor.

Re: Your Phone Has an FM Chip. So Why Can’t You Listen to the Radio?

#153

Post by kalleboo »

laurent123456 wrote: post #81

I don't get it, why do manufacturers bother adding an FM chip if they never activate it?

It's built-in to the LAN chips - you buy one chip that does WiFi and Bluetooth and it also happens to have FM support because presumably it's easy enough to just toss in there (and there's probably enough demand for the feature among low-end devices)

Re: Your Phone Has an FM Chip. So Why Can’t You Listen to the Radio?

#154

Post by TeMPOraL »

Aaargh20318 wrote: post #149
WalterBright wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose. There's a long chain of things that can go wrong with the intertoobs. My switch could die (it has), the router could die (it has) the cable modem could die (it has), the comcast street equipment on my block could fail (it has) trees could fall on the wires (happens regularly).

I haven't had an outage in years. I've never had a switch or any network equipment die on me either. We also bury our cables here (everything except the high-voltage power distribution network) so there is no risk of trees falling on wires. Seriously, why would you run cables on poles, that seems super fragile to me.

Well, lucky you. For the rest of the world though, Internet isn't a thing to be taken for granted. Sure it works 99% of the time, but it's not like electricity which work 99.999999% of the time, and then you have workarounds like batteries and gas tanks and stuff.

And by "rest of the world" I don't mean third world countries or something. AFAIK Internet infrastructure in the US sucks hard compared to Europe, and here in Europe the reliability of the Internet is still not good enough feel like it's electricity.

Re: Your Phone Has an FM Chip. So Why Can’t You Listen to the Radio?

#155

Post by guard-of-terra »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #4
siddboots wrote: post #2

What's going on with Wired? This page has an autoplay video ad below the article text and an anti-AdBlock full-screen subscription nagger that pops up a few seconds after page load.

Part of their war on adblockers. In the past the adblocker nag has popped after you scroll down, well an autoplay video will get you scrolling to find out where it is and blam they pop the adblocker. Of course none of that happens if you hit 'reader view' in Firefox, nice easy to read article. Its one of the reasons I've stopped reading Fortune and Wired web articles.

Wrong answer. I don't have an adblocker, yet I have too got an auto-play video with very loud sound.

Re: Your Phone Has an FM Chip. So Why Can’t You Listen to the Radio?

#156

Post by briandear »

Xylakant wrote: post #48
ch4ck wrote: post #20

In my country one has to pay to the regime for using/owning "radio/tv receiver". That's why I am happy to have more devices without unblocked analog FM. It means for me more choice without having to pay for the brainwashing/propaganda.

if you're referring to Germany, you're obliged to pay anyways - whether you own a device or not (it's per household/company since a while). It doesn't matter how many devices you own though. And you're not paying "the regime", you're paying an independent institution. It's not a tax by design though it may feel like one. The government never gets to touch the money. Now, there's a ton of things that are wrong with ou…

So an "independent institution" gets to use the power of government rifles to force you to pay tribute for a product you might never use. If it's independent, then why is the government working as their collection agency? How independent is it really? If your collections infrastructure can get cut off by the government at any time, where's the incentive to stay truly independent? I would offer that most organizations won't bite the hand that feeds them.

>> It's not a tax by design though it may feel like one.

If I'm forced to pay money to the government for a public "good," it's either a tax or extortion -- there's no other way to define it.

It doesn't matter if the cause is "worthy" or not -- it's a tax. Why not let the people that consume the product pay for the product? Imagine if the government forced everyone to buy a Spotify subscription. It's the same exact thing.

Re: Your Phone Has an FM Chip. So Why Can’t You Listen to the Radio?

#157

Post by kalleboo »

drdaeman wrote: post #118
Xylakant wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you're referring to Germany, you're obliged to pay anyways - whether you own a device or not (it's per household/company since a while). It doesn't matter how many devices you own though. And you're not paying "the regime", you're paying an independent institution. It's not a tax by design though it may feel like one. The government never gets to touch the money. Now, there's a ton of things that are wrong with ou…

Here's the problem with this tax (or however it's called): you're basically paying for some third party actions that you have no control over. Someone emits some electromagnetic radiation that you may or may not care about, but for some odd reason you have to pay for that. That feels... wrong. Can't remember any other tax-like charges where one has to pay for something artificial that they could be completely unrelat…

If you remove the abstractions down to "someone emits some electromagnetic radiation" then yeah it makes no sense. Just like saying "someone out there is mixing hydrocarbons with rocks and dumping it on the ground that you may or may not care about".

Most people would rather discuss it in terms of "funding an independent source of media" and "building road infrastructure to move goods and services".

Re: Your Phone Has an FM Chip. So Why Can’t You Listen to the Radio?

#158

Post by kalleboo »

expertentipp wrote: post #123
laurent123456 wrote: post #81

I don't get it, why do manufacturers bother adding an FM chip if they never activate it?

Each European country has a national broadcaster and collects radio/TV license fee (some are less strict about it than the others). I wouldn't be surprised if national broadcasters or fee collectors were pushing for presence of this chip in mobiles so no one can use the excuse "I don't have radio/TV so why should I pay the license?".

Many of them already achieve the same result by saying "you can receive our online streams so pay up", I don't think underfunded public broadcasters in Europe are busy bribing chipset manufacturers to add features their customers don't want

Re: Your Phone Has an FM Chip. So Why Can’t You Listen to the Radio?

#159

Post by vetinari »

vertex-four wrote: post #99
OJFord wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See https://play.google.com/store/search?q=fm%20radio&c=apps

All of those apps are not actually FM radio apps - Android does not have a standard API for accessing FM radio. The apps you linked are actually just misleadingly named Internet radio players that only play from stations that also broadcast over FM. Any phone which has FM radio will only be able to access it through an app distributed with the phone. Apparently Sony-Ericsson have some phones which have such a thing?…

Sony-Ericsson doesn't make phones since 2012... Sony does, and their models do have the FM tuner.

Re: Your Phone Has an FM Chip. So Why Can’t You Listen to the Radio?

#160

Post by kalleboo »

detaro wrote: post #91
Eutow wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, having to pay for a license to listen to radio? Where?

Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Poland, Sweden, ... Even more countries have similar rules for TV. Generally to support public stations.

In Sweden you only pay for TV ownership, not FM radio
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