Interestingly, the Nakamichi Dragon is/was a cassette deck that can do automatic azimuth adjustment on playback -- without having recorded tones to work with.
In loose terms: It does this with a special read head that splits one of the recorded tracks into 2 distinct signals (for a total of 3 signals from 1 stereo recording). The split tracks' signals are compared, and it adjusts the azimuth (by minutely rotating the head) until the signals from the split track match most-perfectly.
(Take note of the pictures of the machine. If anyone finds one sitting around at a flea market or in a forgotten pile of old junk, please rescue it. Nothing like this will ever be manufactured again. Even if the condition is "it looks like someone went after it with a big hammer as part of their anger management process," the bits that remain still have significant value and are easy to sell.)
I'm glad you called out the Dragon. Besides being an impressive piece of engineering, it's a beautiful piece of art. One of the most striking pieces of consumer electronics I've ever seen.
There's a Kroger grocery store near my house. It's very convenient -- I'm near it almost every day I'm alive. They have all kinds of things there, including factory-made bread and factory-made eggs.
There's also a tiny little Amish bakery that I know of. They make all kinds of things there, but the most interesting to me are the loaves of plain white bread that they bake every day (except Sunday) in their wood-fired oven. It is not near to me and is also off the beaten path a good bit, but I try to make a point to go there when I'm in the area. I usually just get a loaf of that plain white bread along with a dozen eggs from the chickens that they have roaming around outside eating bugs.
I wouldn't call any aspect of it artisanal or anything like that, but it's definitely not made by machines.
And for reasons I can't really rationalize or explain, I enjoy having things from the Amish bakery in my kitchen more than I do the superficially similar things that I get from Kroger.
And yet: I usually eat the factory stuff from Kroger. On a strictly functional basis it's about the same to me.
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Anyway: Software. Did a bot write it? Did a person? Was it a combined effort? Does it even matter?
I can accept that folks might prefer to have software in their library that is written by people. My acceptance of this does not require them to rationalize their preference, or for me to agree with it or even understand it.
It's fine when someone cares about that kind of thing. And it's fine if they don't care, too.
We're allowed to like what we like. It's good to have options, and it's OK to prefer one way over another.
> Does not specify if it's vibe coded or not, which I think should be normal practice now
I am trying to say that when people freely share software with the world, I do not think you are entitled to try to add conditions. People are free to share whatever they like, in the conditions they like - in this case the MIT license. Everybody else is free to take the code AS IS.
There is a difference between a commercial transaction and software which is shared without any expectations in return. With software shared without any expectations in return. I don’t believe that we should be trying to create normal practices on top of existing licences or trying to specify under what conditions somebody can share something
> It's fine when someone cares about that kind of thing. And it's fine if they don't care, too.
> We're allowed to like what we like. It's good to have options, and it's OK to prefer one way over another.
I agree and never said anything different, but if somebody wants to share under different conditions, then their conditions will always trump yours
If it's free (libre) software, then it is shared freely. Others are free to take and use it. They can also change it; they don't have to accept it as it is. The existing code can be molded to be something different, or the ideas copied and used in some new implementation.
We're free to hype it up and become huge supporters. We're free to be critical and dismissive of of it. We're free talk about these things.
We're even free to leave the software where it is and walk away from it while bitching and moaning the entire time we do so.
People aren't beholden to the author, and the author isn't beholden to the end-user. We're all mutually free of those kinds of chains.
> Does not specify if it's vibe coded or not, which I think should be normal practice now
That's just a preferential statement wrapped up in a critical package. It could be stated with a greater abundance of tact, but it's no better nor worse than stating "Doesn't have a GPL-compatible license, which I think should be normal practice now".
But the things from that bakery are made as the product of a soulless megacorp. The process may occur in-store, but it is prescribed from on-high, not invented or tweaked locally. And bread from the Kroger bakery costs more to buy than bread from this Amish bakery does.
So for those reasons, and some others that I could probably never properly articulate, having bread from the Kroger bakery in my kitchen does not enhance my joy. It instead diminishes it.
Personal preferences can be weird. In this instance, I prefer to actively avoid things from the Kroger bakery.
All we really have to look forward to in the future of increasing-performance personal computing is doing the same things as yesterday, but doing them faster.
The future after today will probably turn out more interesting than that, of course, but we can't know that until it happens.
And the future after 1988 certainly turned out to be a very interesting time in computing -- but they had no idea what was in store. Perhaps you can use your time machine to go back and let them know?
Ah yes, the cautionary tale where the leadership is willing to accept their own faults, seeks out the most competent to solve their issue, despite initial reservations are willing to go with the suggestions provided and a public that, upon being provided evidence accepts it. Kinda hopeful, if one thinks about it, the Eugenics nonsense notwithstanding…
At first, they had no plan. They tried to imprison their most competent person for being an outsider and being unable to pay their hospital bill at Carl's Jr, before making a public spectacle of working to kill him.
They also consumed all of the french fries and burrito coverings, and were otherwise reduced to eating Flaturin -- "Hand-to-Mouth Goodness". Let us also not forget about the Great Trash Avalanche of 2506.
It was only towards the very end that they came 'round to using water (from the toilet!) for crops, put the smart dude in charge, and they all lived happily ever after.
Perhaps it'd have been a better fit if they actually killed the protagonist, Not Sure, and faded to black after the last edible plant was shown to wither and die. Maybe the end credits could have even included sepia-toned photos akin to those from the Siege of Leningrad, with slow Ken Burns-style layered pans and zooms documenting the peril.
It's also important to remember that chargebacks aren't under our control. As cardholders, we can't issue them directly.
All we can do is submit a dispute to the bank. The bank will then investigate (however they do that), and eventually act (in whatever way they choose -- which may include a chargeback).
It may seem pedantic, but it's an important detail. Chargebacks are ugly. They constitute red flags on merchant accounts, and with enough of those red flags their own rates are affected (or worse).
Nobody wants chargebacks. Banks don't want them (they take time, and therefore money, to deal with). Vendors certainly don't want them. And consumers don't want them, either -- they just want to be made financially whole, however that happens.
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I had a problem once with a local record store where I got charged twice for one purchase. I loved that store very much (I grew up buying my music there), and at no point did I think that they would ever deliberately rip anyone off. But somehow after repeated phone calls and at least one visit, nobody I talked was able to either fix the problem or hand it over to someone who could.
So, in desperation: I called the bank and asked for help. I told them what had happened, and what I'd tried to do to resolve it, and they told me I could file a dispute and they would investigate. So that's what I did.
The next afternoon, I got a phone call from the store's very apologetic bookkeeper. He informed me that he'd received a call from my bank, and that he'd fixed the problem by refunding both of the charges, asked if that made me satisfied, apologized profusely again, and thanked me for my business.
That was a little bit above-and-beyond on the humbleness scale, but whatever. My problem was more than fixed and my fondness for the business was completely restored.
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Anyway, back to the point about being pedantic with nomenclature: All I did was file a dispute, all the bank did was make a phone call to the right person, and all the vendor did was fix the problem.
The fact that the record store could have easily handled your issue, but chose not to (and chose to not empower any of their employees to) until a bank got involved, should give a clue about what kind of company they actually were.
I'll just forget about the fact that I'd spent thousands of dollars there over the course of decades, and they knew what I liked and would order inventory hoping that I'd buy it, and hold onto some of the tchotchke when it was time to take down some release date posters and put up new, just in case I wanted to take some, and I still kept giving them money until they eventually closed their doors forever because the owner was old and the building got ruined in a flood.
You're right. None of that was important. I'll just focus on that one incident when the kid at the counter of a record store couldn't figure out a financial problem on their own. That's all I need to know about the place. Those fuckin' scumbags!
Thank you very much. Your insight is very rewarding to me.
There are rich people who charter private jets instead of own them. Their personal whereabouts aren't being tracked in the air. (They get to skip the entirety of TSA screening for these charters, too.)
But Flock tracks them on the ground when they get in their big S Mercedes after arriving at their third vacation home in Aspen.
Flock also tracks the wealthy who can't afford charter a jet, but who can afford to buy seats on the fanciest side of the curtain.
Flock tracks the doing-alright folks in business class.
Flock tracks those aspires to reach these levels: It even tracks the temporarily-disadvantaged billionaires who work soulless factory jobs and stuggle to keep up on the lease for their Black Express RAM 1500 Quad Cab, who rail against taxing the people who actually do have money as if that would ruin their own lives.
Flock tracks Joey who manages the sandwich shop down the way.
Flock tracks everyone.
By the time we get down to the point of mentioning that "everyone" includes the subset of people who are criminals, that part almost seems like a bug instead of a feature.
Eh, it's probably OK either way. People have been saying since day 1 that Raspberry Pis are not low-power devices and they're probably right.
Everything is relative, though. In terms of maximums, a Pi 4 (for example) can use up to about 7 Watts under load by itself, which adds up fast when operating on batteries.
But a single 1 meter string of 144 WS2812B LEDs can suck down up to around 43 Watts, and 43 is a lot more than 7. :)
Lighting rigs are thirsty. The processing (even if it's the whole Pi) is generally a small drop in the bucket.
In loose terms: It does this with a special read head that splits one of the recorded tracks into 2 distinct signals (for a total of 3 signals from 1 stereo recording). The split tracks' signals are compared, and it adjusts the azimuth (by minutely rotating the head) until the signals from the split track match most-perfectly.
A better overview is found in this sales flyer: https://www.richardhess.com/manuals/Nakamichi/dragon_folder....
(Take note of the pictures of the machine. If anyone finds one sitting around at a flea market or in a forgotten pile of old junk, please rescue it. Nothing like this will ever be manufactured again. Even if the condition is "it looks like someone went after it with a big hammer as part of their anger management process," the bits that remain still have significant value and are easy to sell.)
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