Today I decided to pull the plug on Robonhood Gold. I joined the Gold last year to take advantage of the 3% match of Roth IRA, which is $240 for $8,000 worth of IRA. But in last few years, I am increasingly tired of their gimmicky, including but not limited to the expansion to Cryptos (remember they did the countdown around the new year, and give away Dogecoin and bitcoin), and now I started to appreciate what Charlie Munger said about them (a casino).
Full disclosure: I participated in one of the countdown and received 18.67 units of Dogecoin, worth $3.40 today, down $2.55 from the day I received it (I think it was 12/31/2024). Personally I am with Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger re: cryptos, and I think they are poos.
I will probably pull out my money when there is no fees associated with the withdrawal. Also note I am a very early customer of Robinhood back in year 2015 when they were brand new, and I do appreciate their zero transaction fee revolution to the brokerage industry. But it seems now they are the bad guys: which is not uncommon – somewhat reminds me of this blog post, and this video: I recall Mearsheimer commented the youth will be corrupted when they rose to the power.
Or drug pandemic. Now I am a strong believer of “ultimately it’s an America’s own problem”. Not Mexico’s problem, not China’s problem, not Colombia’s problem, neither Afghanistan’s problem either.
I understand no US president will ever admit this fact. But fact is fact. The demand of drugs in the USA created all the supply in Mexico, drug cartel and so on. If you lived in the US for a while, you will understand the drug problem is wide spread, because the drugs are widely available. In addition to the fentanyl which is in the news a lot in recent years. The opioid crisis in the USA is a epidemic in last 26 years. And personally I think this is more than a medical problem or medicine problem, it’s rather a society problem. Think about this: if someone tries to smuggle those kinds of drugs in Singapore or in China, he or she will likely be prosecuted and possibly punished quite harshly. In the USA, not only people get away from those kinds of crazy stuff, the new laws are passed to make the lighter drugs (I don’t know a better word other than lighter), such as marijuana. I just could not grasp why law makers would go that direction. I do understand some views or rationale of the libertarians.
If you never been to the USA, I think the Netflix series Ozark is a good intro of US drug problems.
I recall back in Nov 2016, when DT was elected (over HRC), I did have this fear. Of course, now the fear is even more intense considering the recent development.
Blame others is always easier
But it doesn’t fix the problem. I wrote below on 01-31-2025
This is also a problem of “blame others instead of self-examine or self-reflect”. In a way it’s similar to the victim mentality. Both are not helpful. Here is another example of victim mentality: which was mostly made to get voters or get voter turnout in political campaign. It (anti-Christian bias in the USA) doesn’t have many teeth. Quote here: Critics see the task force initiative as unnecessary and pandering to Trump’s base. But some Christian supporters said it is overdue, claiming the Biden administration had discriminated against them through actions and inactions.
I don’t know how long this web page will exist – both are US government web pages: but it seems the new admin is purging a lot of web pages in the government websites.
(CDC) Drug Overdose Deaths in the United States, 2003–2023
Btw, the American drug problem is a symptom of the society’s problems: it’s definitely not only on Mexico’s Cartel or the supply of raw material from China. If the Americans don’t take Fentanyl, the drug trade from Mexico will be cut in half. But it’s much easier to blame on others, and the new president started to apply additional tariffs because of this.
Music playlist is quite common nowadays. For me personally I was a bit late to the party. I did use playlist on my iPhone Apple Music app, and on my YT: both desktop and iPhone. But recently since I started to participate the group exercise class at the J, I realized playlist and music in general is a big deal. I believe the Yoga teachers at the J has a playlist too.
An example or case study
清新女声何璟昕：薄荷糖般的味道甜入我心 (QQ Music QQ音乐 ) Note: you will likely need to log in to see the content. For me I use my WeChat login (SSO) for many China-based website/apps. You can read more about Ayen 何璟昕 here
I created a few Playlists for Ayen 何璟昕 on YT and YT Music – this one specially for original songs – Ayen阿昕原创+新歌. Note I have the premium subscription for YT and it allows me to listen to the YT Music in the background, in addition to some other features such as skipping ads in a video.
She did quite a bit of 翻唱 (cover, or acoustic cover) in last few years. I like them all. Some of songs are new to me because I left mainland China in summer/fall 1997. Below a “mixes” of 翻唱 cover songs I listened on 04-08-2025 early morning – “Mixes are playlists YouTube makes for you” per YT. I think the link above may expire after certain time. Btw, I think “mixes” or the YT generated list is a good way to explore what’s out there, because YT will recommend new songs. So in other words, this kind of playlist has some discovery functions. Update 04-20-2025 Btw, I realized this is a dynamic list. Update 04-28-2025: I started to appreciate the computers (and the AI) may have an edge or advantage to create playlist, based on the listening history. The recommendation algorithm may be similar to the social media posts suggestion.
【Mr. 森林】Acoustic guitar cover | Ayen 何璟昕 (Oct 16, 2020, this is YT upload date, same below) Hint: this one has about one minute of funny behind the scenes 花絮/彩蛋 videos in the end – made me realize that it’s not easy to learn a new song and so on. Obviously, it depends on the song itself too. Also, I think many people would appreciate some of the light hearted carefree nature in the behind the scenes 花絮/彩蛋 too.
Some of my older readers may know I have an iPod Nano 7th generation. Right now I just sync all my iTunes songs that I like from Mac to the iPod. Thinking creating playlist next (from Mac, then sync to the iPod Nano).
Usage of playlist
I think there are at least two use cases for me. One is the background music during work. Another one is background music for sleep. I used to listen to the radio (more specifically NPR or over the night it’s more likely BBC World News), but listening to news has its downside, because sometimes the news can be depressing, and other times news would keep me awake. I prefer some calming music over news. A secondary factor is using iPod nano as radio drains battery more quickly.
More on YT Playlist
I found playlist is integrated with YouTube Studio (I create YT video there too). I have 203 playlists: I think I need to clean up some. Also the link above is only available to me (because I am the owner of my YT Studio account).
Yes, people can make money curating music playlists. Platforms like Playlist Push and others offer curators payment for reviewing music and maintaining active playlists. Pay varies, with some curators earning $1.50 to $15 per song reviewed, depending on their playlist’s listenership.
Btw, I just noticed two of my YT Music playlists have more than 1,000 views.
Originally written on Feb 15, 2005 (this a bit more than 20 years ago 🙂
Monday is not my favorite day. When I first started to working (on Oct. 2000), I was still taking 2 evening classes in my university. And one class (Computer Graphics using Java) was hold on Monday evening. At that time I was fairly new to programming, and I usually spent the whole weekend on the homework and then went to work on Monday.
Monday morning was our team (group) meeting, my boss is a good guy, but he is a bit abusive, and he always tried to pick on someone or some projects on his Monday staff meeting. When I first started, I happened to be on a project he paid a lot attention because it was a new product and had tight release schedule everything. So that’s another reason I hated Monday. I remember one morning he said another developer (Mr. M. in his 50s) and I wrote some shxx code and Mr. M. argued that we were not writing shxx code.
These days things are better because I no longer take Monday evening classes (when I took classes in community college later on, I tried to avoid Monday evening classes). So I did have my regular weekend. And I no longer have the Monday morning group meeting. I left the group, my former boss actually left the company (I missed him actually because under he bad temper he has a good heart and cares his people. Much better than some guys who smiles at you but stabs you in the back when chances arise (my Computer Graphics professor, he gave me the only “C” I have in my 3 years’ course work at Rolla). But I still don’t like Monday in particular because my brain does not work well that day, and now I have one on one with my current boss. He is a decent guy, but he also asks tough questions (he knows the stuff).
Music made together may one day heal mankind. – from “We Gather Here Together” (YT)
For music streaming nowadays I mainly use YouTube Music, because I have YouTube Premium subscription. It’s not perfect, but YT Music has a decent collection, and functionality.
YouTube and YouTube Music
When I was listening to Ayen 何璟昕 music both via YT and YT Music, as I switch between them as I was trying to conserve some data usage (partially because I lost power and Wi-Fi a few days ago). I noticed that YT Music is sometimes automatically generated by YouTube (Google), for example this channel. More on YouTube automation here.
Also, I realized there are two ways we can avoid using cell phone data.
1) Listen to music on YT Music: if we download the video via Wi-Fi in advance, and listen to it in the Download mode, not the library mode. The playlist in Download mode can play continuously, or you can actually loop the playlist if you like;
2) Watch videos on YT, if we download the video via Wi-Fi in advance. If we start playing from the last downloaded video, it will continue to the next, and so on.
If we are watching the video from the library mode, it will use data on YT Music.
YT Music Sync from Library to Download: there is a sync icon button in the downloaded playlist, press it and a popup will show up, ask you to confirm, you say yes, and it will apply the update.
Some More Tips for YT and YT Music
Loop in YT: I just found out we can loop a single song on YouTube too (move mouse over the video, right mouse click, and you see an option of “Loop”. Also, sometimes YT has the “transcript” function (I think it depends on how the creator set it up), and you can follow along with the lyrics for a song (or words/captions for a video). Note the looping works both on Desktop and in the iOS app.
YT Music: you can loop a song or loop a playlist. The icon is at the bottom right when you play a song. If you just want to loop a song, tap twice and make sure you have a number “1” inside that loop.
A bug in YT Music (italics for emphasis):
I learned this lesson the hard way a few times. I found that, “saving to playlist” in YT Music website will mess up my playlist pretty badly. Now if I can stay away from doing that. By “messing up” I mean a lot of duplicates or songs that I don’t intend to add got added when I did the “save” 🙂
Also, I found recently, for many songs, we can jump directly from YT to YT Music by press a “play icon button” inside YT (when applicable).
Sometimes we need to get to the comments and edit. Below is the link getting to the comments.
Someday I hope I can become a product manager for YT Music and I noticed a subtle bug: in the YT music occasionally the cover page (the image and the song name) is wrong. The music or the song is still correct. The video is correct too.
YT: note the YT music image and song name don’t match the song in YT
Music industry
The landscape of digital music is overly fragmented, in my opinion. For example, in China it appears QQ音乐 and 网易云音乐 (Ayen何璟昕 on 网易云音乐) are popular. In the west Spotify and Apple Music are two largest platforms. Personally, I used mostly YT and YT Music as I have YT Premium Sub. Then there are the social media platforms: which are also fragmented, obviously.
Keep in mind in last 10 years or so, the music industry has experienced seismic shift – music is increasingly being streamed online, instead of the good old days of CD, or singles sales. I think it may have something impact on Ayen 何璟昕‘s journey becoming a musician/song writer/singer. She does have one advantage: her undergraduate major is digital media – and we can see some of her work in the MV (music video) she created.
I still remember the days at Best Buy there are racks and racks of CDs on display, it was probably 15 or 20 years ago. Both our 2012 Toyota Camry and 2012 Toyota Sienna still had CD player build in – both has bluetooth and USB too, so it can be connected to smartphone.
This reminds me at St. Louis Children’s Choirs, they check the copyrights of the music or the song they are singing, and pay the author a royalty or something like that. I don’t know if they use companies such as Swank Motion Pictures or some other company. Btw, our old daughter sung at St. Louis Children’s Choirs from 1st grade to 7th grade, and we have many wonderful memories.
I recall many years ago, probably in year 2004, I heard a lot of controversy of copyrights issues at YouTube too. That’s when YouTube was bought by Google.
In terms of singers, think I am going to write about Sandy Lam (Lin Yi’lian) and G.E.M. Deng Ziqi next.
It’s hard to make a decent living as a musician
I am not talking about the top dogs, such as Taylor Swift in the USA, or G.E.M. Deng Ziqi in HK. They make money both from music (even from streaming, because of their music are being played quite a bit on streaming platforms), and from live performance.
But most musicians are not that lucky: the two income streams are usually not enough to make decent living. I saw people work on a few other things to make ends meet: teach, write customized music (song, lyrics, collaborate etc.), make/sell instruments. For example, I saw many song writers do customized music. And Ayen何璟昕 does all three. Carlos makes instruments.
(Update 05-03-2025) I confirmed above with a friend who has about 3 millions streaming (a year) on Spotify. He told the gross profit is about $10,000. But he needs to pay record label and recoding studio etc., so basically he has nothing left after that. He also said people like Taylor Swift has billions of streaming for her songs. Also Spotify has better payout ratio for people like Taylor Swift, compared to ordinary creators Joe and Jane. Last but not least, this is not new phenomena: it was like that pre-streaming, and I assume that’s applicable for the days when CD, cassette and vinyl were the main media for distribute the music. So if I could expand it a bit, it’s basically similar to the wealth distribution of the USA: the rich get richer, the poor becomes poorer. (Update 05-16-2025) This reminds me of the similar point Warren Buffett said here on YT Shorts – “a more and more specialized economy”.
(Update 05-09-2025) I looked around a bit more. I found couple places that musicans can sell their products.
(Update 05-12-2025) I found couple music platforms that act between musicians and the YT. For example, I found this one ewway.com at 痴人. And I came across another one Bquate SAC from this song 此生无憾 (国粤对唱版). I like to do a bit more research in the near future.
(Update 05-13-2025) Here is another one 敢开始 submitted by Tencent. In this case, it seems the song was submitted by the publisher to YT Music. You can watch the actual music video here –東風日產勁客《敢開始》Ayen何璟昕 原創歌曲 既有所想，就勇敢開始，不為一個結果 .
I noticed “Auto-generated by YouTube” (link goes to Reddit) in the description. From programming or software integration point of view, I speculate the music platforms have backend integrations with Google/YouTube via API. This is likely accomplished via a batch process.
Last not not least, I found the competition among Chinese songs are so tense, and for example, for 哪吒2主题曲 — 此生无憾. I am aware of 7 versions on YT. And this is only a partial list. One of them is very gimmicky, and obviously I won’t give special attention to the channel or the video. But you can guess which one 🙂
It seems like it, as I noticed it started to drop connections a few times last few days (need to observe more to make sure). I recall my old 1st Gen AirPods does this a lot when it was near the end of its life. AirPods usually has 2 to 3 years of useful life, per refurb.me
I ordered it via Chase Ultimate Rewards on Nov 12, 2022. I spent15,643 Points (that’s $156.43 if we assume 100 points for 1 dollar, and this is after tax).
Assume I started using it right away, which was very likely, as I recall I got a bit tired of my then AirPods Pro gen 1. So basically, I already got 2.5 years of usage out of it.
AirPods I have owned personally
1st Generation AirPods (died and recycled at Apple store West County) – I probably bought it in year 2018. I was stunned by its seamless switching between iPhone and MacBook. I bought it after seeing a friend wearing it and he said it’s good. He didn’t lie 🙂 || I bought a similar one for my wife on Feb 16, 2020, at Amazon. Why are hers still working? Note I worn this thing quite a bit when I was working for the Mastercard, because a lot of times I don’t want to be disturbed (I sit at a corner cubicle), both for legit disturbance (people walking by or talking), or I just want peace. Later on I realized this is a hack I can deploy more because if I put on AirPods (even without listening to anything), sometimes people will assume I was on a call or listening to something, so that they won’t bother me.
1st Generation AirPods Pro: purchased Nov 25, 2020, on Amazon. Died and trying to sell the case on eBay now). Update 04-13-2025: sold the case on eBay.
2nd Generation AirPods Pro (current in use): bought at Costco U City store in year 2024. (Update 2026-08-17) Costco comes with Apple Care for one year (after the traditional one year Apple warranty). Apple is offering one year Apple Care for $15.00, and I took it – this is the 3rd year for this device.
AirPods 3 (seems about to die): as I said above, I bought it from the Chase Ultimate Rewards Apple store. || Update 04-10-2025: not sure about the “about to die” part, but it sometimes would act weird, basically the sound would be like the cassette player ran out of battery when I listened to a song on iPhone (YT Music). I used AirPods 3 for pairing with Windows Laptop too – while the integration between AirPods and Windows is not as smooth as the Mac, now I realized it has one advantage too. Let me explain, AirPods will switch between Mac and iPhone automatically, so for example, I was listening to music on iPhone, and I sit before the Mac Mini (my desktop), and open a browser and it has some video or audio playing, the AirPods would automatically switch – which was not my intension. This won’t happen (the automatic switching) between iPhone and Windows.
AirPods 4 (my 15-year-old has it): bought from Amazon on Dec 5, 2024.
Last but not least: please make sure turn on “Find My” for your AirPods: if you haven’t done so yet.
PS:
The AirPods are mostly made in Vietnam now. Apple may or may not raise the price of AirPods due to the new tariff (46%).
My generation (so called Gen X in the USA, people born between from 1965 to 1980) was usually told to “work hard” when we grew up – I found this is true both in the China and in the USA. I think in addition to parents, quite a few teachers emphasized this too – for me personally my middle school teacher 周国夫老师 emphasized it quite a bit.
But over the years I realized this is not necessarily true or the best way to handle work. I recall my project lead at Unigraphics Solutions (UGS Corp.) said once on this topic:
Don’t just work hard, work smarter too. The latter is probably more important.
By that time, I was already over 30 years old.
About 20 years ago I recall my golf instructor (or should I call him coach? He is a pro btw) said: hold the club about 70% tight, don’t hold it 100% tight.
Maybe we should apply the same logic to school, study and work too? And investing in equities (stocks) and bonds as well?
My Zhenhai middle school exp: with all the craziness going on, we had some fun time such as the ad-hoc co-ed basketball – I remember it was during my math teacher and counselor Zhou Guofu 周国夫 老师 🙂
Btw, I recall my best teacher – Chen Bing (高一数学老师). I think he made me to appreciate the beauty of math 数学之美，and encouraged me to learn as much as practical, and participate the math competition. Again we don’t just work hard on it – because math competitions have problems outside of the normal textbooks. The most important here is be passionate about harder math problems – “working harder” won’t do much about it, btw.
“We don’t know if we will die from overworking but why take chance” – probably said by Ronald Reagan (per Charlie Munger or Warren Buffett). Update: it seems Edgar Bergen talked about this first – “Hard work never killed anybody, but why take a chance?” — Edgar Bergen (source: reddit).
Last but not least, probably one of the hardest working place I worked
It seems that place is quite transactional(people mostly work for money). But I did gain some experience on production support and operation. Also communicate as precisely as possible. Once again: work smarter is more relevant there. In fact I worked pretty hard, and I was still laid off in early 2019 – and I knew the main reason of layoff – the managers didn’t like me 🙁
Btw, I don’t believe in pleasing everyone helps one’s job security, or pleasing every manager one has. At the same time, that place has a tradition of laying off about 5 to 10% people every year (usually at the beginning of a calendar year). And in early 2019 I was somewhat caught off guard, probably because I was getting somewhat complacent. But that’s okay, as I explained in the “layoffs” blog post: one door closes and another door will open. Also it gives me a new opportunity at a new place. So there is that.
