211–220 of 257 posts
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> same happen with physical games And now it’s faster to get them online than to go to the store, even if the game doesn’t have to download itself again for updates.
the stores also have terrible physical stock. getting a game you want by blindly walking into a store is a gamble now.
I always found the MD format super cool. It’s a real shame that, even with BD-like densities, it just can’t compete with a cheap USB stick.
MD was so cool, but the portable players were so fragile, insert the MD the wrong way and you risk ripping the read head out, at least with the Aiwa one i had (and killed that way..)
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MiniDisc would have been an ideal successor to the floppy disk if only Sony had unclenched their fist just a little bit. USB sticks are higher capacity but there's utility in having media you don't have to keep track of; especially in the early 2000s it would have been very handy to give somebody a MiniDisc of data and just say "don't worry too much about getting that back to me, I have a whole box at home". We had r…
Yeah - like many things Sony they went to proprietary and locked down
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Tape now is very niche - it’s for data archival purposes, and often only exists for regulatory reasons. This is why it is ludicrously expensive- it only needs to be cheaper than the next credible commercially available alternative, which only needs to offset the risk of going to jail for malicious malpractice.
The LTO-10 can hold 30 TB of highly compressed data on one cassette, and will last at least 30 years without degradation (probably longer under optimal conditions). This is still useful for many things. It does take almost a full day to fill up a tape, though, so if you're trying to back up a lot of stuff fast you're probably just going back to SSDs. The M-disc is a better option for most use cases-- but if you have…
This is a really interesting read. But it doesn't answer one question I have, which is why can't Sony or Apple or anyone else bring back decent MP3 players? None of this technology is lost, and there are plenty of small-time two bit no name players out there still making them, often in a much smaller, much slicker form factor than than the original digital Walkman or iPod. If I want to buy a new MP3 player, I have to…
I think everybody talking about how you can get an android device that does this missing the point. Android is not very good. These devices are just repurposed cell phone components, basically. The original iPod was an offline device with high quality interfaces and it "just worked." The fact that such a thing can't be found for music - let alone video - speaks volumes.
"Android is not very good" is completely subjective. It does provide access to streaming services and lots of media player options.
The iPod was definitely known for a high quality DAC+amp, but do we know what's inside each older or budget Android device? A lot of components have improved over 20 years, and others haven't. I would also disagree that it "just worked." The cable was proprietary (after Gen 2), iTunes was often buggy and locked down, it didn't support standard FLAC files, you couldn't extract audio officially.
And considering that there are numerous audiophile-focused MP3 players on the market from Sony and FiiO, plus cheap nuggets from no name brands which likely play music just fine... what's being spoken volumes?
I always found the MD format super cool. It’s a real shame that, even with BD-like densities, it just can’t compete with a cheap USB stick.
MiniDisc would have been an ideal successor to the floppy disk if only Sony had unclenched their fist just a little bit. USB sticks are higher capacity but there's utility in having media you don't have to keep track of; especially in the early 2000s it would have been very handy to give somebody a MiniDisc of data and just say "don't worry too much about getting that back to me, I have a whole box at home". We had r…
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Why not a Fiio ? Or any of the other nicer brand DAP
I just stated it above. Because I don't want a touchscreen, I want to eventually replace the battery when it starts going bad, I want a good software experience along with it. Fiio can't even keep their site in order. They have broken links everywhere. Nothing about it makes me think it isn't just another shitty Chinese-made disposable.
Maybe your better off with something like a refurbed iPod
It’s really only economics, there is simply no relevant market for mechanical cassette players that would justify the investment. I don’t think it’s true that the capabilities to make these devices are lost. There are still companies like ALPS that are capable of making the necessary parts. But in the end, the market is too small to justify any investments.
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Unless something changed recently (and things change all the time where LLMs are involved), deepl.com does the best translations. I have a sister who translates professionally; she said it's the only one where she can use the result and make some improvements instead of throwing it away and starting over.
Deepl's professional advantage is not in the translation itself (even though it has always been a notch above the rest), but in the UI. You can literally click any word on the translated text and (a) see a list of alternatives, and (b) pick one and then the following text adapts to your choice. In technical terms it lets you stop the transformer at any token, sample alternatives from the probability distribution at t…