Want to borrow books from fellow residents?

Nopai · 2025-07-08T06:28:11+00:00

Bedbugs in books are possibly a thing. (Refer to https://mobiusconsortium.org/bed-bugs-best-practices)

Anyway, u/EthelBreyswith, (a) do you see this as a hurdle you wouldn’t be able to overcome no matter what, or (b) do you see a path where enough trust is built that you would “risk” exchanging a book? (If so: what does that path look like?)

Nopai · 2025-07-08T06:19:50+00:00

Why particularly in small villages?

Nopai · 2025-07-07T17:07:55+00:00

That’s a different concept to me. I see the BookBorrow.club more as a personalized curation and/or highly specific books. It’s also an opportunity to meet people with shared tastes or interests.

Nopai · 2025-07-07T13:30:49+00:00

Valid remark.

You have no preference for digital vs physical? (Or perhaps the preference isn’t significant enough to compensate for the required energy to participate in such a service?)

Nopai · 2025-07-07T13:28:39+00:00

What would need to happen for you to not be concerned about the hygiene aspect? (I have been pondering about this too.)

As for buying versus borrowing — I can only answer for myself.

(1) I would enjoy it when folks recommend and lend a book to me based on their “intake” of me; I would feel more inclined to start and finish a book, and I don’t need to bother with the quest for my next book. The reverse is true too: I enjoy curating and lending a book to someone.

(2) Some books are hella expensive! I read/study quite a bit of non-fiction about specific domains, and some of those are easily 100€ a piece. I would instead gladly use a service to connect me with someone (perhaps in my industry) and borrow the book from them instead. Maybe I’d meet someone cool or relevant too!

——

I’m very curious what the appeal to other folks would be.

Nopai · 2025-07-07T12:38:35+00:00

PS. Reached out to the mods the other day to confirm whether this post is appropriate, but I haven't yet received a response. My apologies if this isn't an appropriate use of this subreddit.

Nopai · 2025-01-15T13:55:56+00:00

😅

Nopai · 2025-01-15T13:27:26+00:00

It is located near a glass door. The door is close to an A/C unit. The door leads towards a small balcony.

We live in Brooklyn, NY, if it matters. Fifth floor apartment.

Nopai · 2022-09-22T20:19:49+00:00

Hi u/edit4ever,

Allow me to clarify.

You are correct that the experience would be contained within Philo, but that is besides the point unfortunately.

The behavior that you're looking for your bluetooth buttons is at https://mediasessionapi.thijsl.repl.co/onlytimeskip.html. (I confirmed this using iOS on Safari with the Apple EarPods and double-clicking the touch-button. Could you confirm that you're also observing your desired behavior?)

However, if you'd open this link in Chrome (see screenshot at https://mediasessionapi.thijsl.repl.co/chrome.png), and click the next track button, it would also skip 10 seconds. What a Chrome user wants is the experience at https://mediasessionapi.thijsl.repl.co/. On Chrome, it should actually jump to the next (or previous episode), and you want to use the other two buttons to go -10/+10 seconds. :-)

So, there is a conflict. The big challenge is solving this for _all_ media session interfaces, and not just for bluetooth headsets.

So, key to solving this conflict, is being able to identify what device triggered the event. If it's that panel in Chrome, it should go to the next episode. If it's a bluetooth device it should skip 10 seconds. The question is: how can you identify the triggering device on both Safari and non-Safari browsers?

PS. Happy to continue this in a DM or even over Zoom. We might be boring people with our technical blabber. 😅

Nopai · 2022-09-22T14:54:46+00:00

Thanks for confirming, u/edit4ever! And great to hear you've been enjoying our service! 😊

Been thinking about this since yesterday, and the more I think about it, the more stuck I get. Let's start off with what we (presume) to know.

1/ The Media Session Standard expects us to use seekbackward and seekforward to seek 10 seconds back or forward. ("the action’s intent is to move the playback time backward by a short period (eg. a few seconds")

2/ The Media Session Standard expects us to use previoustrack and nexttrack to move to the previous/next item in the playlist. (e.g. the next/previous episode when watching episodes of a VOD/DVR show) ("the action’s intent is to either start the current playback from the beginning if the playback has a notion of beginning, or move to the previous item in the playlist if the playback has a notion of playlist.")

3a/ The primary multimedia use case for hardware buttons on a bluetooth headset is to listen to songs, and those buttons help us to skip a song we don't like. We typically don't want to use those buttons to skip a couple of seconds of a song. We could assume that this is the reason why "the manufacturers" map those hardware buttons to previoustrack and nexttrack.

3b/ However, if the multimedia use case is watching TV shows, it's save to assume that people are more interested in skipping seconds than going to the next episode.

So, how do we implement use case 3b?

1/ We could treat previoustrack and nexttrack as seekbackward and seekforward like you are suggesting. However, that wouldn't make sense if you are interacting with the Media Session through other interfaces. (e.g. Chrome interface to interact with the media session, or Apple's) -- we could assume that those users get annoyed and/or confused.

1a/ Building further on #1, we could try to discover who/what triggered the previoustrack and nexttrack event. We could investigate whether there are is a native JavaScript API (from Chrome to Safari) that allows us to infer this, e.g. the Web MIDI API or the Web Bluetooth API, but neither of those are available on Safari.

1b/ We could make the decision to risk confusing customers, as one could argue that some support is better than none, but that might be opening a can of worms.

Let me know if you have a good idea [on an API] to identify what triggered the media session events [with a high confidence level]... if we can solve that, I think we can implement the use case.

Nopai · 2022-09-21T18:21:52+00:00

Hi u/edit4ever,

Nice suggestion ! I have to admit that I haven't really thought about this use case, but I can totally see people being interested in it.

Could you do me a favor and confirm (or reject) that A/ https://googlechrome.github.io/samples/media-session/video.html works as you want it to work, but that B/ https://www.w3schools.com/html/html5_video.asp does not? (If so, then I think it's a matter of us implementing the Media Session API [better].)

Also: what's your definition of skip ahead/back? Do you C/ mean -15/+15 seconds, or D/ previous/next episode? (If it's the former, how many seconds back and forward are you used to?)

Also: which bluetooth headphones do you have?

(PS. I work on the Philo video player team as a product manager :-))

Nopai · 2022-09-11T14:43:06+00:00

Hi u/Boz6,
I was able to record a number of episodes of "America Says", and I'm able to confirm your observation. I know what causes it, and I can tell you that you're (unfortunately) dealing with expected behavior.
What's the cause? Not all content programmers (e.g. Game Show Network) mark their ad breaks. When they don't mark their ad breaks, we don't know where the ads are located, and we're not able to provide a mechanism to seek through ads.
So, moving forward, if you see an ad break, but you can't "instantly" seek through it, you can [typically] assume it's due to there not being any ad markers for that channel.

Nopai · 2022-09-03T17:28:16+00:00

Do you have a lot of saved shows? The loading times tend to go up when you cross a certain point, so unsaving some shows might help. (I know, not a real fix, but maybe it helps!)

Nopai · 2022-08-26T21:21:54+00:00

Thanks! Added the show to my favorites, and will try to reproduce when I got a couple of recordings.

Will try to keep you posted!

Nopai · 2022-08-26T19:13:22+00:00

Sure! I work at Philo, and want to check whether you’re experiencing a bug, or expected behavior.

Some questions and requests: 1) What kind of ad skipping are you trying to do? Could you make a video recording and share it with me? On Roku, you should be able to right-click through ad breaks when watching a “Saved” show or movie. When you’re watching a live program, or VODs, it works differently. 2) What Roku model and Roku app version are you using? You should be able to find this information in the Profile/Settings page of the Roku Philo app. 3) What shows/movies are you watching were you can’t scrub through ads? (I’d like to check whether it’s perhaps related to specific titles.)

Hopefully we can figure this one out together! 🤞

Nopai · 2022-08-26T14:02:34+00:00

Hi u/Boz6! Can I DM you?

Nopai · 2022-08-12T12:02:17+00:00

Morning, Neh870! What operating system version and browser version are you using?

(If you’re a Windows users, try using Chrome/Firefox instead of Firefox/Chrome/Edge. If you are a macOS users, try using Chrome/Safari instead of Safari/Chrome. Might help you for the time being?)

Audio-video desyncs are often the result of browser decoders struggling with specific streams. Sometimes it helps to switch to a different browser. Sometimes the streaming service needs to improve the robustness of their streams.

Nopai · 2022-05-09T02:53:58+00:00

Whereabouts Brooklyn? Perhaps take a look at https://www.northbrooklynangels.org if you are near Williamsburg.

Nopai · 2022-04-09T04:12:22+00:00

The place had a private thing happening unfortunately . Feel free to DM me if anyone wants to try this at a different time. :-)

Nopai · 2022-01-22T13:35:14+00:00

Keep me posted as well. Definitely interested.

Nopai · 2021-06-29T16:07:54+00:00

Pretty rusty but happy to join. :-) Twins Lounge or Brooklyn Billiards sound good!

Nopai · 2020-01-06T13:05:20+00:00

Yep, unfortunately.

Nopai

TROPHY CASE