Why play a music CD? No ads, no privacy terrors, no algorithms • Hacker News Board

Re: Why play a music CD? No ads, no privacy terrors, no algorithms

#241

Post by fjsolwmv » Fri, May 17, 2019, 1:48 PM UTC

Crinus wrote: post #150

tty2300 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its quite incredible how long this was working for. Autorun was a dream for malware.

It was also incredibly convenient - put game CD in drive, game launcher appears with INSTALL / PLAY (depending on the status). Also it was neat to give a DVD with some sliceshow/photos/videos/etc to your grandparents/aunt/uncle/etc who didn't knew much about computers and tell them "just put the disk in the drive and it'll do the rest". But as usual, one rotten apple spoils the entire barrel.

The way it works today is just as simple. The OS automatic asks permission to run the program.

Re: Why play a music CD? No ads, no privacy terrors, no algorithms

#242

Post by izzydata » Fri, May 17, 2019, 1:50 PM UTC

kstenerud wrote: post #206

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know it was not your intention but your comment reminds me of the infamous HN comment on why dropbox is useless and would never be successful.[1] :)) "For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in…

Actually, I'm rather shocked that there isn't an all-in-one solution like what I've cobbled together. It's not like there's any super secret magic involved; you'd just need a nice user interface on top of it all. There are even music streaming servers that you can deploy on a VPS (or locally) pretty easily. Pop in a little rsync script to move your converted lossy files to the streamer and you're set. It's just that…

I'm pretty sure there are Synology applications that also do what Plex does and with a nice phone app.

Re: Why play a music CD? No ads, no privacy terrors, no algorithms

#243

Post by izzydata » Fri, May 17, 2019, 1:53 PM UTC

I've reverted back to using a standalone mp3 player. I got one of the newest Sony Walkmans and threw a large SD card in there. Something about it just feels right.

Re: Why play a music CD? No ads, no privacy terrors, no algorithms

#244

Post by windexh8er » Fri, May 17, 2019, 1:53 PM UTC

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #196

kstenerud wrote: post #189

I've got all my music ripped to FLAC, sitting on my file server, a little N40L microserver with 8tb mirrored storage (my music takes about 300gb total). On the server, I've got a script that uses ffmpeg to convert from flac to whatever format I want (currently aac and mp3, which my player devices support). The script also applies replaygain to keep the volume consistent. I run the script once and it processes the who…

I know it was not your intention but your comment reminds me of the infamous HN comment on why dropbox is useless and would never be successful.[1] :)) "For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in…

> I know it was not your intention but your comment reminds me of the infamous HN comment on why dropbox is useless and would never be successful.[1] :))

Except the context of the argument is different. OP is doing this for convenience and privacy reasons along with the availability and no-cost argument. While it's a slight point to make it is an important one these days. With the Dropbox argument the old HN comment was making the point without the context of privacy, security or even availability of which we all have to consider today. We know service providers have removed or deleted purchases by users. Some providers remove content and make it paid for during adventageous times of the year (e.g. holidays) and, well, privacy doesn't need much expansion here. We also know vendors can lock you into hardware ecosystems through file formats. Finally if we all stop DIYing our media/files/etc the options will turn into expert level oniy. So the continuation of this being a thing keeps the open side of the conversation right side up. Lest we all end up boiled frogs.

Re: Why play a music CD? No ads, no privacy terrors, no algorithms

#245

Post by shaan7 » Fri, May 17, 2019, 1:55 PM UTC

fjsolwmv wrote: post #236

fibers wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i mean...you can load a good chunk of your library on an 400gb sd card and play it on your phone. it seems more battery efficient than constantly streaming music from an online account even when the cache expires consistently

People who spend thousands of dollars on music tend to be people who buy expensive phones that don't allow SD cards. But 128GB phones have enough storage for most music collections

> expensive phones that don't allow SD cards Oh 21st century, what have you done.

Re: Why play a music CD? No ads, no privacy terrors, no algorithms

#246

Post by m-i-l » Fri, May 17, 2019, 1:56 PM UTC

b15h0p wrote: post #193

On a tangent: Does anyone here have a good solution for self-operated music playback for kids? Suitable for age 2+? Moving away from physical media has made selecting their own music much more abstract and difficult to manage for kids. I am aware of the Toniebox (in germany) which operates with NFC-figurines (i guess) which are pretty expensive.

I got a Taf Toys "My First MP3 Player" a few years back. Parents could load a USB stick with MP3s on any PC (including Linux), then plug the stick into a secure compartment on the device (requiring a screwdriver for access, like the battery compartment). Children then had buttons for play, stop, next, previous, volume up, volume down. Only minor issues/features were that the maximum volume was pretty low (presumably to make it safe for babies), and it would switch itself off if no buttons were pressed for a short while (again presumably so it would be safe to leave unattended). Was going to post a link, but it seems it is no longer available.

Re: Why play a music CD? No ads, no privacy terrors, no algorithms

#247

Post by gruez » Fri, May 17, 2019, 1:57 PM UTC

reaperducer wrote: post #159

Grimm665 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't trust flash drives for a whole library of hard-to-replace music, they fail all the time and they're hard to recover once they do. Better to use a NAS, external hard drive, or cloud storage you pay for like S3.

Seems like overkill for OP's 64 gigs of music. Just buy two or three flash drives as backups. They're dirt cheap and bog simple.

Signing up for a s3 account is probably less work than going out to buy USB drives. If you factor in redundant copies, it's probably cheaper too.

Re: Why play a music CD? No ads, no privacy terrors, no algorithms

#248

Post by athroway » Fri, May 17, 2019, 1:57 PM UTC

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #196

kstenerud wrote: post #189

I've got all my music ripped to FLAC, sitting on my file server, a little N40L microserver with 8tb mirrored storage (my music takes about 300gb total). On the server, I've got a script that uses ffmpeg to convert from flac to whatever format I want (currently aac and mp3, which my player devices support). The script also applies replaygain to keep the volume consistent. I run the script once and it processes the who…

I know it was not your intention but your comment reminds me of the infamous HN comment on why dropbox is useless and would never be successful.[1] :)) "For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in…

Dropbox has been operating at a loss since its creation and is currently not making a profit, so the jury is still out on whether it is actually successful (or just a VC-subsidized service that got advertised a lot).

Re: Why play a music CD? No ads, no privacy terrors, no algorithms

#249

Post by pbhjpbhj » Fri, May 17, 2019, 1:57 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #93

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #64

Worth noting here that ripping a CD is a copyright infringement, yes even for individuals, here in UK. We had about 2 years when it wasn't. Yes, that means Apple iTunes and the like provide tools for copyright infringement -- far worse than the young adult that got extradited to USA for providing links on a website (which is allowed in UK law) -- and in theory could be sued for contributory infringement.

Also for research purposes?

Fair Dealing is extremely conservative. Could you expand on what you mean, give an example of the research situation and scope?

AIUI the CDP would probably allow you to do format conversion for private study if the matter wasn't available to buy in a format you needed for that study; they'd probably want to see some outputs to show it was study and not entertainment (remember in tort the consideration is balance of probabilities, they don't have to show you infringed just that it was most likely - without research outputs [eg study notes] then the likelihood is you copied for entertainment purposes.

In short, if you're thinking "I can pretend it was for study" then I think you'd find the court is not that naive.

YMMV, this is not legal advice.

Re: Why play a music CD? No ads, no privacy terrors, no algorithms

#250

Post by criddell » Fri, May 17, 2019, 1:57 PM UTC

My daughter got a record player for Christmas last year and it caused me to think about my relationship to music. After she got the record player, I've taken her to the record store a few times and it was like stepping out of a time machine. I loved everything about it (Waterloo Records in Austin is pretty fantastic).

I ended up buying a CD player and pulling my collection out of the attic. I had forgotten how good music from a CD sounds on a big stereo.

These days, I'm mostly listening to entire albums (even when I use a streaming service). I've also started buying CDs again. When I stopped buying CDs, they were usually between $15 and $25. In the past four months I've bought a bunch and haven't paid more than $8.

I know CDs are dying and now that I'm back into it, it kind of makes me sad. It's shocking to me to think the format was defined 40 years ago. The Philips and Sony engineers did a fantastic job.