Lordy. I'm getting pilloried in the comments here. Look, I never said anything about Apple earbuds being good; they're obviously crap. I was talking about the DAC and the pre-amp, which, when paired with a good set of headphones, sounds rather decent. Not as decent as a proper high-end setup, of course. But surprisingly good for a sub-$1000 device that you carry around in your pocket.
I'm too lazy to look up any references, but at least two audiophile magazines (I think Stereo Review was one) have done blind comparisons of Apple products with a variety of outboard DAC's. Both of them commented on how much better Apple performed than they would have expected. Don't trust the audiophile magazines? That's OK, I don't trust them entirely either, because they are so clearly biased towards their high-end advertising clients (including out-and-out charlatans like Monster)... but the thing is, Apple doesn't advertise in these kinds of magazines. Unless Apple slipped them an outright bribe, their opinion about these products ought to be pretty objective.
The fact is, anyway, that if you are a manufacturer who is willing to spend $75-100 on a good audio chip, you can get something very decent-sounding, especially these days. Which brings me back to the topic of the article. One of the many, many problems with losing the headphone jack is that the phone manufacturer no longer has to provide these things. You're now at the mercy of whatever device sits at the other end of your lightning cable. Or you can use that stupid lightning-to-1/8" dongle (I've already lost mine). The dongle contains both DAC and preamp, and I somehow doubt that it does a good job, due to both cost issues and miniaturization issues.
If you valued high quality audio you would not be listening to music on a smartphone.
You might be surprised. I don't know how good the Samsung phones sound, but I know there are a lot of audiophiles who have good things to say about the Apple products. The iPods in particular were well liked, especially the older models with the Wolfson DAC chip.
Sorry about that asterisk-- I was trying to include a citation, but for some reason this caused Slashdot to scramble my post into an unreadable mess. Here's the citation: https://www.nytimes.com/intera...
It's a fair question, but there is one important difference between deaths-from-alcohol and deaths-from-opiates: The latter figure has absolutely exploded in the past 17 years, going from 10,000/year in 1990 to 59-65,000 in 2016.* Alcohol-related deaths have also been rising, but at a much more modest pace (37% since 2002, according to one source).
So it would appear that something big is happening that is specifically affecting opiate-related deaths, and if we can identify what that is, we might be able to prevent a lot of them.
Perhaps your outlook changes in your 80s and 90s because there is no point in dreading something which is inevitable. If medical science changes to the point where people can live to 150+ with good quality of life (a very big if), then I would expect most 90-year-olds would want to hang on to life as much as I do.
That's assuming, of course, that your original premise is correct. That's a hard thing for me to know, because I'm not old enough yet.
Towards the end of his life, Churchill wrote a little book called "Painting as a Pastime", which is all about his favorite hobby of painting. In the introductory remarks he makes the same point as the author of this article, but in a somewhat more charming and less pretentious manner. I would also point out that he didn't require a doctorate in sociology in order to arrive at this insight.
Yes, thanks, I understand that their lab is not in outer space. The best man-made vacuums still contain about 1000 atoms per cubic centimeter(*). So my question stands-- how can they be sure their laser didn't hit a stray hydrogen atom?
(disclaimer: I'm not a physicist.) I think the idea is they get the atom to flouresce? The atom absorbs a photon of light, which if it came from a laser we know the exact wavelength of, then emits a lower-energy photon at a longer wavelength, which we can then measure. The difference in energy gets absorbed by the electron (or positron) as it moves to a higher-energy orbital. (Or do you say anti-orbital?)
What I wonder about is, if the anti-hydrogen atom reacts exactly the same way as a hydrogen atom... how can they be sure they didn't accidentally hit a stray hydrogen atom, instead of the antihydrogen atom they were aiming for? I understand they are shooting into a vacuum chamber, but even the vacuum of space has hydrogen atoms floating around in it.
Dell laptops will not charge unless you use the special Dell-manufactured power supply. On my last Dell laptop (an XPS 13 with the flippy screen), I had *three* of the fucking Dell power supplies stop working on me. Never again! It's too bad, because it was a good laptop otherwise.
Yeah... How many cokeheads in withdrawl have you had to deal with?
Lots. It's part of my job.
It's real fun when they keep screaming at you in a paranoid delusion.
That's not how a coke addict in withdrawal behaves. I'm wondering now if *you've* ever seen one.
How many people have you tried to take care of who are having a bad trip on LSD?
Not that many, because LSD isn't a commonly used drug in Chicago, as far as I know. It's out there, but I would suppose it represents less than 0.01% of the drug use in this town. How many have *you* taken care of?
The trouble with audio-over-Bluetooth is that it introduces latency. So, there go several different use cases. Want to do multitrack recording? Sorry, you can't because the track you are playing along with is reaching your ears 20 ms too late. Want to plug a MIDI keyboard into the phone, so you can use the built-in sounds from Garageband? Want to use any one of the "virtual instrument" apps that you play using the touchscreen (there must be hundreds of these)? Get ready for a 20-ms delay between hitting the key and hearing a sound.
Anyway, the last time I have checked approximately 50% of world's population did not have proper sewer, and approximately 15% do not have running water and electricity. Just a small fraction of interstellar travel project would bring these necessities to the fellow human beings.
"15%" of the world's population doesn't have running water? The number is closer to 50%. If you were *actually* concerned about water issues in the developing world, I suspect you would know that already. (And no... a "small fraction" of a $100 million research budget isn't going to bring indoor plumbing to 3.5 billion people).
I lived one zip code away from a large group of affluent Chicago suburbs for $700 monthly rent in 2010, which would have allowed me to buy 2-3 designer jeans per month for the cost of rent in your area
In Chicago, you can be living "one zip code away from an affluent neighborhood" and still be living in one of the worst f*cking ghettos in the US. (e.g. Austin, Woodlawn...) Rents may be cheap but it's hardly a bargain...
Placebos work, so why shouldn't GPs be allowed to prescribe them?.
This is not an uncommon argument, even among physicians. But there's a simple rebuttal, in my view: Giving a placebo conflicts with the patient's right to be informed.
Patients deserve accurate and unbiased information about the risks and benefits of every medicine they are offered. Indeed, at every clinic I've worked in, the patient signs a form stating "I have been informed about the risks and benefits of this medication" (or words to that effect). If I give a patient a treatment that I know for certain is useless- let's say, a sugar pill that is dummied up to look like a prescription medication-- then I would have to inform the patient that I know the treatment to be useless. It's not OK for me to withhold that information, or to keep secrets from the patient, even if I think it's "for their own good".
(There's one exception to this rule: If the patient is enrolled in a clinical trial, they can be randomly assigned to receive either active treatment or placebo. But that's a special case, with special rules. And even in those cases the patient must be told about the process of randomization and how it works).
It *is* OK to give treatments when the evidence that it works is weak, or dubious, or where we just don't know if it is an effective treatment or not. Sometimes, when the risk of the treatment is minimal, that can be a reasonable thing to do (I'm thinking of, for example, folate supplementation for clinical depression). But you have to be honest with the patient about what you're doing.
People over 45 (like myself) tend to think that learning to operate a computer is an educational experience. It isn't. It was at least mildly educational when we were kids... because the first thing you saw when you hit the "on" switch was a shell for a BASIC interpreter, or something similar. Now the first thing you see are *pictures*, which you point at, like a three-year-old at a candy store.
Even as late as the mid-90s, you would hear a lot of talk about "computer literacy"-- the idea that operating a computer was a core skill, like reading and writing. You don't hear that phrase much any more, "computer literacy". You might as well speak of "microwave literacy" or "Netflix literacy". Yes, there is technically some "learning" involved when you fire up a microwave or Netflix-- you do need to learn which buttons to push-- but it's a tiny area of knowledge which doesn't lead to anything else. And the same is true, I think, of video games.
At the moment, I work with a lot of inner-city teenagers (most of them from seriously dysfunctional homes and communities, most of them "educated" by Chicago Public Schools). ALL of them have computers, tablets, phones. ALL of them can operate their devices like a champion (and most of them love video games). Not one of them, so far, has become a computer programmer.
And definitely tell them that, "your call may be recorded for, wink-wink, quality control purposes on this end as well".
I've used that line a few times with collection agencies, and they *always* say "if you are recording we will terminate the call". Evidently it's OK for them to record, but not for me.
What they've done to the mobile site is far far worse. It now features intrusive banner ads that take up 20% of the screen and WILL NOT GO AWAY. You can't scroll past them, you can't close them. (Also, the disable-ads option is gone). I didn't care that much about the earlier changes, but this is the change that is literally going to drive me away from Slashdot.
What did the newly-created human do that requires an act of redemption?
Logical argument about illogical premises is illogical.
Yes, but at least with human beings, you can argue that we are born with certain flaws. We're genetically predisposed to be aggressive, violent, selfish, and perhaps racist as well. Even the kindest, most moral person ever to walk the earth has presumably had some thoughts and impulses which were not very admirable.
Christians blame it on "original sin", I blame it on genetics, but it's the same idea. And my point was... how do we know that an AI would have the same flaws?
Christianity is based on the premise that we are born in a state of sin, and that Christ needs to "save" us from our fallen state. Redemption by the blood of the lamb, and all that jazz.
So what the f*ck did our hypothetical, newly-created AI do that requires an act of redemption? How does Reverend Benek know that this not-yet-invented AI needs to be saved? Maybe it will be created in a state of perfect grace and enlightenment. No lamb's blood needed.
It's a rare occasion when "fuck your mother" is the most appropriate and insightful response possible. However, this appears to be exactly such an occasion. Dear Pope: Fuck your mom and fuck the Catholic Church, too. I'll be waiting in the parking lot if you want to do anything about it.
Yes, the record stores are mostly gone (still a few in Chicago but they're better suited for browsing than for finding a specific item), and yes, record sales were usually not a big moneymaker for the artist. Still. You can buy almost any music you can think of online-- and today the artist just might earn a healthy percentage off that sale. (Not always, but it's more common than it used to be).
I do understand that sometimes you may want to cue up a piece of music *right now*, without wanting to buy it, but that's what youtube is for. (Still ripping off the artist, but at least youtube does not exist for the *sole* purpose of ripping off artists).
Novels don't have a shuffle option, either. The songs are in that order for a reason, or at least they should be! I'd hate to listen to Sgt. Pepper's on "shuffle"... Also $10 per record isn't necessarily such a "low price" for vinyl anymore... a lot of people just want to get rid of their LPs, and will sell them to you by the boxload.
In the case of Spotify, it's not even a tenth of a cent; it's more like a quarter of a tenth of a cent. (Put it another way: a MILLION plays, which most musicians would be lucky to see once in a lifetime, nets you about $250).
The Wikipedia article on Spotify is worth reading, if you really want to understand how insanely f*cked up the Spotify business model is. Out of respect for the professional musicians I know, I *will not* use Spotify or similar services. I'd rather donate money to the Illinois Nazi Party than give Spotify my business.
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Lordy. I'm getting pilloried in the comments here. Look, I never said anything about Apple earbuds being good; they're obviously crap. I was talking about the DAC and the pre-amp, which, when paired with a good set of headphones, sounds rather decent. Not as decent as a proper high-end setup, of course. But surprisingly good for a sub-$1000 device that you carry around in your pocket.
I'm too lazy to look up any references, but at least two audiophile magazines (I think Stereo Review was one) have done blind comparisons of Apple products with a variety of outboard DAC's. Both of them commented on how much better Apple performed than they would have expected. Don't trust the audiophile magazines? That's OK, I don't trust them entirely either, because they are so clearly biased towards their high-end advertising clients (including out-and-out charlatans like Monster)... but the thing is, Apple doesn't advertise in these kinds of magazines. Unless Apple slipped them an outright bribe, their opinion about these products ought to be pretty objective.
The fact is, anyway, that if you are a manufacturer who is willing to spend $75-100 on a good audio chip, you can get something very decent-sounding, especially these days. Which brings me back to the topic of the article. One of the many, many problems with losing the headphone jack is that the phone manufacturer no longer has to provide these things. You're now at the mercy of whatever device sits at the other end of your lightning cable. Or you can use that stupid lightning-to-1/8" dongle (I've already lost mine). The dongle contains both DAC and preamp, and I somehow doubt that it does a good job, due to both cost issues and miniaturization issues.
If you valued high quality audio you would not be listening to music on a smartphone.
You might be surprised. I don't know how good the Samsung phones sound, but I know there are a lot of audiophiles who have good things to say about the Apple products. The iPods in particular were well liked, especially the older models with the Wolfson DAC chip.
Sorry about that asterisk-- I was trying to include a citation, but for some reason this caused Slashdot to scramble my post into an unreadable mess. Here's the citation: https://www.nytimes.com/intera...
It's a fair question, but there is one important difference between deaths-from-alcohol and deaths-from-opiates: The latter figure has absolutely exploded in the past 17 years, going from 10,000/year in 1990 to 59-65,000 in 2016.* Alcohol-related deaths have also been rising, but at a much more modest pace (37% since 2002, according to one source).
So it would appear that something big is happening that is specifically affecting opiate-related deaths, and if we can identify what that is, we might be able to prevent a lot of them.
Perhaps your outlook changes in your 80s and 90s because there is no point in dreading something which is inevitable. If medical science changes to the point where people can live to 150+ with good quality of life (a very big if), then I would expect most 90-year-olds would want to hang on to life as much as I do.
That's assuming, of course, that your original premise is correct. That's a hard thing for me to know, because I'm not old enough yet.
Opposite of "sensation seeking" would be "sensation avoiding". Wouldn't it? Perhaps "sensation-indifferent". Or maybe "numbness seeking".
When did "sensation seeking" become a symptom of a mental disorder?
Towards the end of his life, Churchill wrote a little book called "Painting as a Pastime", which is all about his favorite hobby of painting. In the introductory remarks he makes the same point as the author of this article, but in a somewhat more charming and less pretentious manner. I would also point out that he didn't require a doctorate in sociology in order to arrive at this insight.
That `ring' from the Death Star explosion has always bothered me. To this day I keep thinking they should have made that a spherical blast effect.
Fairly certain the ring was not there in the original release. (I'm 100% sure someone here will correct me if I'm mistaken).
Yes, thanks, I understand that their lab is not in outer space. The best man-made vacuums still contain about 1000 atoms per cubic centimeter(*). So my question stands-- how can they be sure their laser didn't hit a stray hydrogen atom?
(*)Interesting link here on the subject of ultra-high vacuums: http://physics.stackexchange.c...
(disclaimer: I'm not a physicist.) I think the idea is they get the atom to flouresce? The atom absorbs a photon of light, which if it came from a laser we know the exact wavelength of, then emits a lower-energy photon at a longer wavelength, which we can then measure. The difference in energy gets absorbed by the electron (or positron) as it moves to a higher-energy orbital. (Or do you say anti-orbital?)
What I wonder about is, if the anti-hydrogen atom reacts exactly the same way as a hydrogen atom... how can they be sure they didn't accidentally hit a stray hydrogen atom, instead of the antihydrogen atom they were aiming for? I understand they are shooting into a vacuum chamber, but even the vacuum of space has hydrogen atoms floating around in it.
Dell laptops will not charge unless you use the special Dell-manufactured power supply. On my last Dell laptop (an XPS 13 with the flippy screen), I had *three* of the fucking Dell power supplies stop working on me. Never again! It's too bad, because it was a good laptop otherwise.
Yeah... How many cokeheads in withdrawl have you had to deal with?
Lots. It's part of my job.
It's real fun when they keep screaming at you in a paranoid delusion.
That's not how a coke addict in withdrawal behaves. I'm wondering now if *you've* ever seen one.
How many people have you tried to take care of who are having a bad trip on LSD?
Not that many, because LSD isn't a commonly used drug in Chicago, as far as I know. It's out there, but I would suppose it represents less than 0.01% of the drug use in this town. How many have *you* taken care of?
The trouble with audio-over-Bluetooth is that it introduces latency. So, there go several different use cases. Want to do multitrack recording? Sorry, you can't because the track you are playing along with is reaching your ears 20 ms too late. Want to plug a MIDI keyboard into the phone, so you can use the built-in sounds from Garageband? Want to use any one of the "virtual instrument" apps that you play using the touchscreen (there must be hundreds of these)? Get ready for a 20-ms delay between hitting the key and hearing a sound.
Anyway, the last time I have checked approximately 50% of world's population did not have proper sewer, and approximately 15% do not have running water and electricity. Just a small fraction of interstellar travel project would bring these necessities to the fellow human beings.
"15%" of the world's population doesn't have running water? The number is closer to 50%. If you were *actually* concerned about water issues in the developing world, I suspect you would know that already. (And no... a "small fraction" of a $100 million research budget isn't going to bring indoor plumbing to 3.5 billion people).
I lived one zip code away from a large group of affluent Chicago suburbs for $700 monthly rent in 2010, which would have allowed me to buy 2-3 designer jeans per month for the cost of rent in your area
In Chicago, you can be living "one zip code away from an affluent neighborhood" and still be living in one of the worst f*cking ghettos in the US. (e.g. Austin, Woodlawn...) Rents may be cheap but it's hardly a bargain...
Placebos work, so why shouldn't GPs be allowed to prescribe them? .
This is not an uncommon argument, even among physicians. But there's a simple rebuttal, in my view: Giving a placebo conflicts with the patient's right to be informed.
Patients deserve accurate and unbiased information about the risks and benefits of every medicine they are offered. Indeed, at every clinic I've worked in, the patient signs a form stating "I have been informed about the risks and benefits of this medication" (or words to that effect). If I give a patient a treatment that I know for certain is useless- let's say, a sugar pill that is dummied up to look like a prescription medication-- then I would have to inform the patient that I know the treatment to be useless. It's not OK for me to withhold that information, or to keep secrets from the patient, even if I think it's "for their own good".
(There's one exception to this rule: If the patient is enrolled in a clinical trial, they can be randomly assigned to receive either active treatment or placebo. But that's a special case, with special rules. And even in those cases the patient must be told about the process of randomization and how it works).
It *is* OK to give treatments when the evidence that it works is weak, or dubious, or where we just don't know if it is an effective treatment or not. Sometimes, when the risk of the treatment is minimal, that can be a reasonable thing to do (I'm thinking of, for example, folate supplementation for clinical depression). But you have to be honest with the patient about what you're doing.
People over 45 (like myself) tend to think that learning to operate a computer is an educational experience. It isn't. It was at least mildly educational when we were kids... because the first thing you saw when you hit the "on" switch was a shell for a BASIC interpreter, or something similar. Now the first thing you see are *pictures*, which you point at, like a three-year-old at a candy store.
Even as late as the mid-90s, you would hear a lot of talk about "computer literacy"-- the idea that operating a computer was a core skill, like reading and writing. You don't hear that phrase much any more, "computer literacy". You might as well speak of "microwave literacy" or "Netflix literacy". Yes, there is technically some "learning" involved when you fire up a microwave or Netflix-- you do need to learn which buttons to push-- but it's a tiny area of knowledge which doesn't lead to anything else. And the same is true, I think, of video games.
At the moment, I work with a lot of inner-city teenagers (most of them from seriously dysfunctional homes and communities, most of them "educated" by Chicago Public Schools). ALL of them have computers, tablets, phones. ALL of them can operate their devices like a champion (and most of them love video games). Not one of them, so far, has become a computer programmer.
And definitely tell them that, "your call may be recorded for, wink-wink, quality control purposes on this end as well".
I've used that line a few times with collection agencies, and they *always* say "if you are recording we will terminate the call". Evidently it's OK for them to record, but not for me.
What they've done to the mobile site is far far worse. It now features intrusive banner ads that take up 20% of the screen and WILL NOT GO AWAY. You can't scroll past them, you can't close them. (Also, the disable-ads option is gone). I didn't care that much about the earlier changes, but this is the change that is literally going to drive me away from Slashdot.
What did the newly-created human do that requires an act of redemption?
Logical argument about illogical premises is illogical.
Yes, but at least with human beings, you can argue that we are born with certain flaws. We're genetically predisposed to be aggressive, violent, selfish, and perhaps racist as well. Even the kindest, most moral person ever to walk the earth has presumably had some thoughts and impulses which were not very admirable.
Christians blame it on "original sin", I blame it on genetics, but it's the same idea. And my point was... how do we know that an AI would have the same flaws?
Christianity is based on the premise that we are born in a state of sin, and that Christ needs to "save" us from our fallen state. Redemption by the blood of the lamb, and all that jazz.
So what the f*ck did our hypothetical, newly-created AI do that requires an act of redemption? How does Reverend Benek know that this not-yet-invented AI needs to be saved? Maybe it will be created in a state of perfect grace and enlightenment. No lamb's blood needed.
It's a rare occasion when "fuck your mother" is the most appropriate and insightful response possible. However, this appears to be exactly such an occasion. Dear Pope: Fuck your mom and fuck the Catholic Church, too. I'll be waiting in the parking lot if you want to do anything about it.
Yes, the record stores are mostly gone (still a few in Chicago but they're better suited for browsing than for finding a specific item), and yes, record sales were usually not a big moneymaker for the artist. Still. You can buy almost any music you can think of online-- and today the artist just might earn a healthy percentage off that sale. (Not always, but it's more common than it used to be).
I do understand that sometimes you may want to cue up a piece of music *right now*, without wanting to buy it, but that's what youtube is for. (Still ripping off the artist, but at least youtube does not exist for the *sole* purpose of ripping off artists).
Vinyl doesn't have a shuffle option.
Novels don't have a shuffle option, either. The songs are in that order for a reason, or at least they should be! I'd hate to listen to Sgt. Pepper's on "shuffle"... Also $10 per record isn't necessarily such a "low price" for vinyl anymore... a lot of people just want to get rid of their LPs, and will sell them to you by the boxload.
Thank you for the 1/10th of a cent.
Signed,
the bands you like.
In the case of Spotify, it's not even a tenth of a cent; it's more like a quarter of a tenth of a cent. (Put it another way: a MILLION plays, which most musicians would be lucky to see once in a lifetime, nets you about $250).
The Wikipedia article on Spotify is worth reading, if you really want to understand how insanely f*cked up the Spotify business model is. Out of respect for the professional musicians I know, I *will not* use Spotify or similar services. I'd rather donate money to the Illinois Nazi Party than give Spotify my business.