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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

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  • People stopped ripping CDs and instead started downloading them (legally) via iTunes or (illegally) via napster or similar software more than a decade before disc drives became obsolete. Even the launch of Spotify predates the removal of disc drives from mainstream PCs/laptops.

    Also, teenagers still know about CDs. They just don’t see a reason to use them and to some degree, I agree. While not having to worry about monthly payments and availability of your own library, music discovery has never been easier. I don’t want to buy a whole album from an artist that has maybe one good song. I also want to be able to listen to whatever song comes to mind, whenever it does. I don’t want to be limited by the CDs I have in my collection or whatever my friends might be able to send me.

    With my shared family subscription to a streaming service, I can listen to whatever song I like, whenever I like for the price of 4 CDs a year. And I’m definitely adding more than 4 albums to my library every year.






  • From what I’ve read (although my numbers are a few years old), Qobuz and Napster pay artists even more than Tidal. The former even significantly so (about 3x, from what I’ve read), although it is slightly more expensive. Both also support lossless audio.

    And, for completion: Among the big-tech streaming services, the one that seems to pay the best is Apple Music, with a little more than half of what Tidal pays. The worst ones are amazon and Spotify which both pay about a third of Tidal.



  • On the one hand, I agree. Apple has positioned their power buttons with the assumption that the devices wouldn’t be turned off very often for quite a while now. It was on the backside of the previous mac mini design and also on the backside of the 2013 trashcan mac pro, for example.

    That still doesn’t make it less annoying though. We use a lot of macs for work, including aforementioned mac minis and mac pros and we do turn them off regularly because there’s no need for them to use power 24/7. Having to turn them around to find the power button is just stupid. That’s form over function in its finest. But if you’re the type of person who never turns off their computer, obviously it doesn’t really matter.

    That’s not to say, that the new mac minis aren’t remarkable machines. The redesign was necessary and is very good in general. It’s a tiny powerhouse. They could’ve just chosen less of afterthought of a power button location.



  • I regularly watch on my server when I’m not home and a few friends of mine also have access to it, so I need the content to be available in SDR and lower bit rates. When I stream from home, I‘d like to have access to the full quality and HDR though, so either I need multiple versions of each film or hardware encoding/tonemapping and a used gtx 1050ti was a lot cheaper than the required storage would be to have 4 or 5 versions of every film.

    But yes, if you’re only streaming within the same network, hardware transcoding isn’t necessary in the slightest. But then a SMB fileshare might also suffice…




  • I really love our German equivalents: Harald Lesch and the show TerraX. Had the privilege of seeing him live in a guest lecture in my uni about the anthropocene. He feels so much more genuine and less arrogant than Neil DeGrasse Tyson. If you know German and don’t know him, check him out. Both on TerraX and his YouTube presence. There are even some full lectures on there, similar to the one I saw life.








  • Yea. I like my MacBook and I like macOS (yes, I know, shame on me). But in a few years, when Apple eventually stops supporting it, I can just put Linux on it and keep using it (or give it to a relative who just needs a working computer). It’s good hardware and in true Apple fashion, it will probably outlast its software. I also have an old Core 2 Duo unibody macbook laying around and while it is possible to put the latest macOS on (thanks hackintosh community), Linux is a much better experience and the MacBook is sturdier and has a better trackpad and keyboard than most new laptops, even many that are much more expensive.