Why do audiophools keep blathering on about MP3s? The world has moved on, we have significantly better audio formats now. Spotify uses Ogg Vorbis, Apple Music uses AAC. Both are vastly superior to MP3.
But some of us actually listen to music as a primary activity, rather than just having it on as party music or background noise. For that kind of listening, streaming quality just doesn't cut it.
Please provide credible proof that you can double blind ABX 320kbps Ogg Vorbis (as used by Spotify) from a lossless original.
Flac files play as gapless, and mp3 files don't
LAME (the de facto standard MP3 encoder) has been able to create gapless MP3s since basically forever. Yes, it's a hack, but it works.
MP3 is an obsolete format, though. Ogg Vorbis, AAC and Opus provide much better quality at similar bitrates, and they all support gapless playback natively.
It isnâ(TM)t necessary to go to such extremes. £1000 worth of hifi can clearly show the difference between CD and for example Vinyl if you have the ears to hear it.
Well yes, but only because LPs have horrible bad dynamic range and frequency response compared to CDs, so of course you can hear a difference. Because the LP will be shittier, and have a lot more noise.
There are problems though. To begin with, those with cloth ears donâ(TM)t like the idea that someone else might have better hearing than them so decry the whole idea as âemperors new clothesâ(TM)
Please provide credible double blind tests that show this supposedly superior hearing that some audiophiles supposedly possess.
(And no, the infamous meta-analysis doesn't count. Don't even go there)
Audio is a very subjective area where the ability to point at a graph or set of figures isnâ(TM)t always helpful.
There is only one credible way to gauge absolute sound quality, as perceived through the human hearing apparatus and human brain, and that is double blind testing.
And while itâ(TM)s a "lossless" format, itâ(TM)s also got a limit in terms of audio fidelity. Audiophiles already prefer other mediums which allow for a much greater depth of sound, and there are digital formats which are not DRM encumbered.
Nonsense. Please show a credible test that shows people being able to reliably tell CD-quality audio from "hi-res" based on the same master.
How else will I get my music in a DRM free, lossless format?
Buy it on Bandcamp, or similar sites. They provide FLAC and ALAC on the lossless side, as well as MP3, AAC and Ogg Vorbis (and possibly soon Opus) on the lossy side.
They won't have the huge popular artists, but from the genres I listen to (mostly metal), there are a lot of albums available, also from bigger bands.
There is plenty to focus your attention on, such as your speed, the flow of the road, traffic from side streets or on-ramps, signs for your destination, traffic notifications on the radio, potholes.
It's a general problem today that people (no, not just millenials) get bored way too quickly and require constant stimulation, otherwise their minds wander. Put down the phone and actually look at the world around you.
As far as I can tell, you can expect at least 500TB of writes to any decent SSD you buy today, which is way beyond what the drive lifetime counter in SMART tells you. Some of them soldier on for much longer than that.
I've been using a Samsung 840 Evo (yes, the shitty ones that needed firmware patches to not eat themselves over time) as my system drive sinec 2013, and it just keeps on trucking. I have a swap partition on it, I haven't bothered moving the/var partition to a HDD to save on writes, I actually haven't done anything to reduce writes at all, other than putting 16GB of RAM in my machine, to reduce swapping.
It's currently at 2% on the wear counter, which I think is set to consider the drive "worn out" at 100TB of writes, or something similarly low.
I have been buying exclusively HGST hard drives for a while now, because they're not actually that much more expensive, and as BackBlaze's numbers show, they're by far the most reliable.
For SSDs, I guess Samsung is still king, if we ignore the debacle with the 840 Evo and stick to the Pro versions.
MS is partially responsible for the debacle that is UEFI and (at least for a while) making it really shitty and annoying to put a non-MS OS on your newly purchased PC.
Not to mention the raft of new Windows-based "faux Chromebooks", which have all kinds of shitty hardware with absolutely no driver documentation.
once of the very first things I do is disable Cortana. Not for privacy concerns, but because it still feels way too weird to talk to a computer...
Going through the "reset this computer" process to wipe a PC back to basics is really goddamn odd, since Cortana keeps speaking to you in a way too friendly and familiar manner. Not goddammit, you're not my friend, you're an OS and you should shut the hell up, I don't want my PC to talk to me or to be "friendly" with me. It's creepy as fuck.
The biggest reason is probably that Windows 7 is a really good, solid OS (especially post-SP1), and Win10 doesn't really offer anything new or revolutionary, at least not on the surface. The subscription licensing model is the biggest new change, and that's not really something that sells a new Windows version, nothing compared to going from Win3.11 to Win95 or Win98 to Win2000/XP, where serious and major improvements happened.
There is a lot of good stuff under the hood, like the changes to font rendering (no longer a kernel driver!), but nothing to really wow people. The new interface changes are "meh" at best, and the new flat interface looks worse than Aero, especially on devices that don't have high-DPI displays. The zooming effects on fonts when you click around the newly designed parts (like the fancy new control panel) looks like shit on a normal-DPI display.
It's a meh type release. A perfectly usable OS, with a few neat improvements here and there, but nothing big, nothing exciting. Win7 works, it's reliable, it's familiar and people have already paid for it. Why pay for Win10, that doesn't really offer anything compelling.
Sure, as people buy new devices, they'll move to Win10 eventually. But they probably won't really care about it.
Win10 is working fine for me, even on 2011-era HW (Phenom II desktop and i3 Thinkpad X220). Sure, it's a bit crap to have two separate control panels, and I'm not a fan of the forced update policy, nor of the tracking.
But there are a lot of everyday usage improvements that make it worth it. The improved task manager, file copy/move/delete status window, one easy place to enable all "developer options" (Powershell by default, show all hidden/system files, full paths in explorer, those things).
If they could just keep their dirty dick beaters off my usage information (no Microsoft, you don't need to know that stuff about me) and stop secretly installing Candy Crush or whatever, it would be a nice OS.
Linux Mint is my primary OS, but I honestly don't mind using Win10.
Meanwhile that power plant spewing tons of shit into the air to charge your EV (at lower efficiencies than just powering an engine directly from gasoline) is great for the environment.
That is objectively false. Big power plants are very efficient, and they can have much better exhaust filters and scrubbers, because they don't have to be small and light enough to fit on a car.
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Why do audiophools keep blathering on about MP3s? The world has moved on, we have significantly better audio formats now. Spotify uses Ogg Vorbis, Apple Music uses AAC. Both are vastly superior to MP3.
But some of us actually listen to music as a primary activity, rather than just having it on as party music or background noise. For that kind of listening, streaming quality just doesn't cut it.
Please provide credible proof that you can double blind ABX 320kbps Ogg Vorbis (as used by Spotify) from a lossless original.
Flac files play as gapless, and mp3 files don't
LAME (the de facto standard MP3 encoder) has been able to create gapless MP3s since basically forever. Yes, it's a hack, but it works.
MP3 is an obsolete format, though. Ogg Vorbis, AAC and Opus provide much better quality at similar bitrates, and they all support gapless playback natively.
To be more precise, it has nothing to do with the format. It has everything to do with the mastering.
CDs are capable of so much more than LPs.
It isnâ(TM)t necessary to go to such extremes. £1000 worth of hifi can clearly show the difference between CD and for example Vinyl if you have the ears to hear it.
Well yes, but only because LPs have horrible bad dynamic range and frequency response compared to CDs, so of course you can hear a difference. Because the LP will be shittier, and have a lot more noise.
There are problems though. To begin with, those with cloth ears donâ(TM)t like the idea that someone else might have better hearing than them so decry the whole idea as âemperors new clothesâ(TM)
Please provide credible double blind tests that show this supposedly superior hearing that some audiophiles supposedly possess.
(And no, the infamous meta-analysis doesn't count. Don't even go there)
Audio is a very subjective area where the ability to point at a graph or set of figures isnâ(TM)t always helpful.
There is only one credible way to gauge absolute sound quality, as perceived through the human hearing apparatus and human brain, and that is double blind testing.
And while itâ(TM)s a "lossless" format, itâ(TM)s also got a limit in terms of audio fidelity. Audiophiles already prefer other mediums which allow for a much greater depth of sound, and there are digital formats which are not DRM encumbered.
Nonsense. Please show a credible test that shows people being able to reliably tell CD-quality audio from "hi-res" based on the same master.
Audiophiles are delusional fools.
How else will I get my music in a DRM free, lossless format?
Buy it on Bandcamp, or similar sites. They provide FLAC and ALAC on the lossless side, as well as MP3, AAC and Ogg Vorbis (and possibly soon Opus) on the lossy side.
They won't have the huge popular artists, but from the genres I listen to (mostly metal), there are a lot of albums available, also from bigger bands.
Then I guess you just need to pull yourself together, before you inadvertently kill someone.
Then again, the comparison is to Google, who have their spying eyes deeply embedded literally everywhere. It's tough competition.
I have yet to find any shortcomings in DDG, I get relevant results.
If you're looking for results on breaking news, Google is better. But for general knowledge I find DDG better, and less full of crap than the big G.
Nope, that is false. The CEO used to work in that area, but none of that applies to DDG, which is completely separate.
There is plenty to focus your attention on, such as your speed, the flow of the road, traffic from side streets or on-ramps, signs for your destination, traffic notifications on the radio, potholes.
It's a general problem today that people (no, not just millenials) get bored way too quickly and require constant stimulation, otherwise their minds wander. Put down the phone and actually look at the world around you.
As far as I can tell, you can expect at least 500TB of writes to any decent SSD you buy today, which is way beyond what the drive lifetime counter in SMART tells you. Some of them soldier on for much longer than that.
I've been using a Samsung 840 Evo (yes, the shitty ones that needed firmware patches to not eat themselves over time) as my system drive sinec 2013, and it just keeps on trucking. I have a swap partition on it, I haven't bothered moving the /var partition to a HDD to save on writes, I actually haven't done anything to reduce writes at all, other than putting 16GB of RAM in my machine, to reduce swapping.
It's currently at 2% on the wear counter, which I think is set to consider the drive "worn out" at 100TB of writes, or something similarly low.
They're still running as separate divisions, with their own R&D.
From what I hear, WD Reds are HGSTs with a different motor, though.
I have been buying exclusively HGST hard drives for a while now, because they're not actually that much more expensive, and as BackBlaze's numbers show, they're by far the most reliable.
For SSDs, I guess Samsung is still king, if we ignore the debacle with the 840 Evo and stick to the Pro versions.
MS is partially responsible for the debacle that is UEFI and (at least for a while) making it really shitty and annoying to put a non-MS OS on your newly purchased PC.
Not to mention the raft of new Windows-based "faux Chromebooks", which have all kinds of shitty hardware with absolutely no driver documentation.
It's better than 'Lync'.
"Hey, can you send me the Lync link?"
once of the very first things I do is disable Cortana. Not for privacy concerns, but because it still feels way too weird to talk to a computer...
Going through the "reset this computer" process to wipe a PC back to basics is really goddamn odd, since Cortana keeps speaking to you in a way too friendly and familiar manner. Not goddammit, you're not my friend, you're an OS and you should shut the hell up, I don't want my PC to talk to me or to be "friendly" with me. It's creepy as fuck.
The biggest reason is probably that Windows 7 is a really good, solid OS (especially post-SP1), and Win10 doesn't really offer anything new or revolutionary, at least not on the surface. The subscription licensing model is the biggest new change, and that's not really something that sells a new Windows version, nothing compared to going from Win3.11 to Win95 or Win98 to Win2000/XP, where serious and major improvements happened.
There is a lot of good stuff under the hood, like the changes to font rendering (no longer a kernel driver!), but nothing to really wow people. The new interface changes are "meh" at best, and the new flat interface looks worse than Aero, especially on devices that don't have high-DPI displays. The zooming effects on fonts when you click around the newly designed parts (like the fancy new control panel) looks like shit on a normal-DPI display.
It's a meh type release. A perfectly usable OS, with a few neat improvements here and there, but nothing big, nothing exciting. Win7 works, it's reliable, it's familiar and people have already paid for it. Why pay for Win10, that doesn't really offer anything compelling.
Sure, as people buy new devices, they'll move to Win10 eventually. But they probably won't really care about it.
Win10 is working fine for me, even on 2011-era HW (Phenom II desktop and i3 Thinkpad X220). Sure, it's a bit crap to have two separate control panels, and I'm not a fan of the forced update policy, nor of the tracking.
But there are a lot of everyday usage improvements that make it worth it. The improved task manager, file copy/move/delete status window, one easy place to enable all "developer options" (Powershell by default, show all hidden/system files, full paths in explorer, those things).
If they could just keep their dirty dick beaters off my usage information (no Microsoft, you don't need to know that stuff about me) and stop secretly installing Candy Crush or whatever, it would be a nice OS.
Linux Mint is my primary OS, but I honestly don't mind using Win10.
Still a hell of a lot more efficient than the internal combustion engine in your car.
Driving doesn't engage the brain. It's exceptionally dull on a long stretch with few cars and consistent speeds
If driving doesn't engange your brain, you're not giving it enough attention.
Well, more precisely "cars or phones don't kill people. Inattentive fuckstains do".
OpenOffice hasn't been maintained in just about forever.
There is an optional ribbon interface, but the traditional interface is staying as the default.
Meanwhile that power plant spewing tons of shit into the air to charge your EV (at lower efficiencies than just powering an engine directly from gasoline) is great for the environment.
That is objectively false. Big power plants are very efficient, and they can have much better exhaust filters and scrubbers, because they don't have to be small and light enough to fit on a car.