Uebercomplicated
@Uebercomplicated@lemmy.ml
Linux. Runit. SwayWM. Colemak-CAWS. Espresso. Cycling. The list goes on; stop using so many god-damn periods!
- Comment on Australia’s Social Media Ban Is Isolating Kids With Disabilities—Just Like Critics Warned 2 weeks ago:
Because lemmy and mastodon don’t have manipulative algorithms! Maybe we should just outlaw those? /showerthoughts
- Comment on Sacrifice for the greater good 2 weeks ago:
This is what I thought of too, lol. Lemmy is great, I never expected to find le Guin allusions in my doom scrolling
- Comment on Password managers are less secure than promised 2 weeks ago:
Does anyone still talk about Keeper password manager? I feel like I used to hear about that one a lot, and now it has just disappeared off of the face of the earth.
- Comment on Password managers are less secure than promised 2 weeks ago:
The beauty of open source
- Comment on Parents opt kids out of school computers, insisting on pen-and-paper instead 2 weeks ago:
Well, I unfortunately failed.
Do they install DNS filters locally on the machines at all?
No, the kids are allowed to bring their own laptops, because some rich parents insisted on their kids using MacBooks. I tried pushing Linux for the kiddo, but turns out whatever CISCO wifi system the school is using actively blocks Linux (including, for some reason, black listing the arch repos). A lot of stuff is blocked — though easily bypassed by VPNs or the wireguard router proxy I set up — by wifi black lists, including random stuff like duckduckgo and dict.cc
Actually, I did get an ad for a vibrator on dict.cc once, so maybe that makes sense after all. I, a man. Not sure what I’d use it for.
I’m unfortunately not a parent, just a relative, so there is only so much I can do to harass the school about it. I also live abroad, so 🤷 — I try though.
- Comment on Parents opt kids out of school computers, insisting on pen-and-paper instead 2 weeks ago:
Nah, I managed surprisingly well. In third grade I did really intense dyslexic-specific tutoring (9h a week), and it helped massively. I actually ended up scoring the highest reading comprehension score in my random regional school’s class in 5th grade, I think because of it. There were struggles, but nothing I couldn’t live without. One of my best friends was trans (not publicly back then, ofc), and trust me their school experience was far, far more difficult. I just felt some camaraderie, finding someone else with a audio processing disorder; I didn’t mean to fish for sympathy or anything like that.
- Comment on I want that setup. 2 weeks ago:
cause I feel like there’s more important hardware I could invest in
Well, I can recommend a desk record player, lol. I use the length of my desk-records (e.g., obscure 1€ techno finds) as a pomodoro timer, so I know when to take a break. Actually quite nice, though a little ridiculous as well.
- Comment on 2 North American 4 you has been created 2 weeks ago:
That is 100% fair. I just wanted to add my two cents. But you’re right, regional high cuisine, especially French, is a different league. I don’t necessarily think that league is superior, but it is a different class within haute cuisine.
- Comment on I want that setup. 2 weeks ago:
Damn, that is a much more reasonable explanation than I expected. Your life seems much more multi-tasky than mine, but I still kinda want an additional monitor now somehow; you’ve converted me, lol. I 100% get wanting a separate screen for meetings, especially, and the prompter solution sounds great. Maybe it is overkill, but if overkill is the best solution, and you can afford it, I would go for it.
- Comment on I want that setup. 2 weeks ago:
I only have space for one monitor, because the rest of my (large) desk if crammed with speakers, amplifiers, DACs, a record player, vacuum tube phono, and midi controllers. Someday I’ll get a super sized desk that has space for two monitors. Four is crazy though
- Comment on Parents opt kids out of school computers, insisting on pen-and-paper instead 2 weeks ago:
Fountain pens for the win, nothing as nice as writing cursive with a good, wet fountain pen. I learned in primary and hated it, and then got obsessed with calligraphy in 10th grade and got a proper fountain pen and good ink and fell in love with the experience.
Learning to write well is really wonderful. I wish I had learned properly in school, instead of having to teach myself. I will teach my offspring, though! If I ever have any — not looking so promising in the current climate. As in political, but also climate change.
- Comment on Parents opt kids out of school computers, insisting on pen-and-paper instead 2 weeks ago:
There’s an argument to be made against standardized testing. Very neurodivergent individuals, for example, can suffer a lot under bad standardized tests. Idk, though, it would be better to just make a better system, rather than letting people opt out. As long as that’s not happening, there is, however, an argument against standardized tests.
- Comment on Parents opt kids out of school computers, insisting on pen-and-paper instead 2 weeks ago:
Same!!! I have the auditory thingy and dyslexia, so writing (words, not math) was hell on earth for me for most of highschool. Getting to use a laptop in 11th and 12th grade was a godsent.
But in 10th grade I actually did something that mostly solved my hatred of handwriting: I taught myself calligraphy and whole-arm-writing. Now I love handwriting, don’t have pain doing it anymore, people compliment my writing, etc.
Though I still can’t listen to stuff while writing 🤷 luckily I was able to use a laptop in lectures (philosophy is very notes heavy), and after college it becomes irrelevant, thank god.
- Comment on Parents opt kids out of school computers, insisting on pen-and-paper instead 2 weeks ago:
I did! The IT department literally laughed at me. I also tried to get them to let teachers install uBlock Origin, because they apparently will watch educational YouTube videos in class sometimes, and then get random ads for everyone to suffer under. But uBlock Origin doesn’t have their support… Ironically, they only support Windows computers and iPhones on the school network. Android, MacOS, and Linux are all officially unsupported.
- Comment on 2 North American 4 you has been created 2 weeks ago:
Jazz!
- Comment on 2 North American 4 you has been created 2 weeks ago:
This depends. In my experience anything processed tastes horrible because of chemical and sugar overload. But you can get great ingredients! Much better than here in Germany anyway.
And there are many more diverse great restaurants than in most places in Germany, ngl. In the US, you can go to any small town and find a great homemade style Korean place, or something like that. No such luck in Germany, they’ll serve you 14€ frozen pizza.
(In my experience anyway. These are large countries, so none of this is rule, just personal experience)
The winner is no questions Italy, though. Best pizza I ever had was in 8€ in an Italian town with ~5000 inhabitants. Unbelievable. Only good restaurant there, though, but I’ll never forget the experience.
- Comment on 2 North American 4 you has been created 2 weeks ago:
I’ve been to one and two star places, never three stars (some day…). America has incredible food if you know what to look for. Some of the best Korean, Chinese, and Indian I’ve had in particular. It’s also a giant country with many immigrants, so it’s kinda obvious that it has good food. And southern food is great too.
- Comment on 2 North American 4 you has been created 2 weeks ago:
Or Sambal Ölek, which works great with haloumi and falafel too.
- Comment on ESL homework 2 weeks ago:
Seems pretty clear to me. You see “Task 3,” instructions (“Continue the dialogue with Bob:”, capital C for continue and colon ending the clause), and then “Task 4.” But you can come to your own conclusions, if you think context is missing.
Forgive me if I am not so sympathetic with the teacher who created/graded this. My experience of school was much closer to a torture experience conditioning me to be a good little servant than anything else. I had overwhelmingly bad teachers who made that experience all the worse and should never have gotten and kept their teaching positions. Though I remember the few good teachers all the more favorably, and have stayed in touch with a few of them. This is just to say that I’m a little biased, but that bias is also rooted in reality.
- Comment on ESL homework 2 weeks ago:
Maybe I’m messed up somehow (I guess I am in the 98th percentile of dyslexics), but the instructions aren’t clear to me at all.
This happened a lot to me in reading comprehension exams in highschool as well. I would have hated the teacher and the class had I received a question like this, because I genuinely don’t know how to proceed.
Funny, I did so badly in highschool until grades 11 and 12, where I started the IB, got a different set of teachers, etc. And suddenly I get straight As (or in IB lingo, 7s) instead of Cs. And I think a big factor, not kidding, was the style and formulation of exams like these. It really does make a difference for some people.
Good test design would be to have Bob‘s first answer already filled in, so you get a pointer to how the dialogue is supposed to develop. Or just to have an oral exam, which I think are superior anyway.
- Comment on In a blind test, audiophiles couldn't tell the difference between audio signals sent through copper wire, a banana, or wet mud 2 weeks ago:
Nowadays, it’s about how they mastered it. I can tell you for a fact Ozzy’s no more tears CD sounds like shit and the double record mix is FARRRR better, because it doesn’t have the life squished out of it from brickwalling. Is that digital vs analog? No. Its mastering.
This is 10000% true!! I worked as a mixing and mastering engineer for a while, and lemme tell you… the loudness wars never ended. This is why I still collect vinyl, the medium is kinda shit, but the masters are so much better that it’s hugely worth it for a about 2/3 albums I own (1/3 are duds; I can live with that).
- Comment on In a blind test, audiophiles couldn't tell the difference between audio signals sent through copper wire, a banana, or wet mud 2 weeks ago:
I don’t about you, but in my country Tidal is cheaper than Spotify. But that might be placebo
/jk, though tidal is actually cheaper here. I can’t tell the difference in blind testing between 320 kbps mp3 exported in Reaper and the original wav; they’re indistinguishable to me. Actually, I can tell them apart with some airwindows dithers, but that is a pretty esoteric exception.
- Comment on Audio cable measurements are driving me crazy — why don’t they null?!? 2 weeks ago:
I realize I may have left out something key to understanding dBFS for the unfamiliar. Unlike with dB SPL, which is what you are referring to with “at audible 0dB,” zero dB refers to the loudest possible sound in dBFS. The unit stands for decibel relative to full scale, where full scale (loudest possible sound) is 0 dB. So in dBFS, unlike with dB SPL (sound pressure level), all audible sound is stored as a negative dB value. When you listen to the audio file, this is first converted to a voltage, and then to sound pressure, which is finally measured in positive dB SPL.
If that doesn’t explain it for you, I don’t know what you don’t understand, and I can’t help. I would recommend finding some YouTube videos on the subject, in case you’re a visual learner.
- Comment on Audio cable measurements are driving me crazy — why don’t they null?!? 2 weeks ago:
So, ironically, the expensive $200 cable he compliments to greatly might actually have the worst shielding. This just goes to show that the only way to approach this is scientifically, and that the YouTuber’s very unqualified self shouldn’t be performing these tests with any authority!
- Comment on Audio cable measurements are driving me crazy — why don’t they null?!? 2 weeks ago:
BTW, you also seem to have misunderstood dBU. That is in voltage, which means the signal is amplified before you listen to it. I would highly recommend reading the wiki page on decibels: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decibel
I think there’s good YouTube videos on how decibels and digital audio work as well.
- Comment on Audio cable measurements are driving me crazy — why don’t they null?!? 2 weeks ago:
What you quote is for conversion with analog levels, which is not what’s happening here. Everything I’m doing is 24 bit digital audio, which has 144 dB of dynamic range. That is a little over-kill, which is why most audio files are distributed as 16 bit, so 96 dB. That means you can hear anything from 0 dBFS to -96 dBFS (with proper dithering). That is why the cutoff point in the graphs I showed you is -100 dBFS, since you realistically won’t be able to hear below that anyway (audiophiles disagree), in the final file.
-40 dBFS only represents how the signal is stored in the digital file. It has nothing to do with the signal’s actual volume. I play those -40 dbFS through my computer, then my DAC, which outputs at about 2 VRMS, into my pre-amp, which increases the voltage again, into my amp (which, again, increases the volume), and finally into my speakers, which output that -40 dBFS, which is now signal at about 70 dB SPL (actual volume).
dBU is for analog line-level, and the conversion you showed is what I would use when routing my console back into my computer. But analog line levels are still very audible at -40 dBU, usually, not that that’s relevant.
You have to understand that this is not real volume. It is just how the volume is stored digitally. If you have a -40 dBFS noise floor in your audio file, and the music has a 12 dB dynamic range peaking at -1 dBFS, you will hear the noise clearly throughout the entire track, because you are amplifying the entire thing greatly, since you are ultimately transforming this into dB SPL.
- Comment on Audio cable measurements are driving me crazy — why don’t they null?!? 2 weeks ago:
- Comment on Audio cable measurements are driving me crazy — why don’t they null?!? 2 weeks ago:
Yeah, you’re right. I should have just stopped when he said his source was a CD player, meaning he had no pure digital copy (i.e., no control) to compare too. Or, at least, he didn’t provide one… I get hung up on things easily. Thanks, though, you’re 100% right
- Comment on Audio cable measurements are driving me crazy — why don’t they null?!? 2 weeks ago:
I’m not sure if you’re reading the graph correctly, this is the delta between two of the digital files from the video’s description. So a signal of -40 dBFS is quite audible, since it’s all relative to 0 dBFS (full scale).
And it isn’t the recording itself, it’s just the difference between two of the recordings provided in the video’s description. This is commonly known as a digital null-test, and let’s you find the amount (and significance) of difference between two digitally encoded recordings, and in particular at which frequencies those differences lie.
You can try doing it yourself by downloading the audio from the YouTube video’s description and then playing two of them at the same time in audacity, but with the phase inverterted for one of them. Just make sure the phase and volume are aligned. Then you can hear the difference between the recordings yourself!
The question is, where does this difference come from.
- Comment on Audio cable measurements are driving me crazy — why don’t they null?!? 2 weeks ago:
I love ASR and am a long time reader of Amir’s reviews and measurements :). I am more curious, in this case, about what, since it’s probably not the cables themselves, is creating that delta in the null test. That’s the part I can’t figure out, though I’ve pretty much resigned myself to just presuming it’s something else in the YouTuber’s signal chain and calling it a day.