Unrelated to the article itself, but I'm really not a fan of websites like this one hijacking the back button to show more articles. It feels like a mistake to have ever allowed websites to modify behaviour of the back button like that, although I'm sure it leads to some usability improvements elsewhere.
That digital phosphor effect is fascinating! As someone who works frequently with DSP and occasionally with analogue signals, it's incredible to see how you can pull out the carrier/modulation just by looking at (effectively) a moving average. It's also interesting to see just how much they have to do behind the scenes to emulate a fairly simple physical effect.
Fascinating, thanks for explaining! I had assumed it was just that capacitors were easier to get hold of than batteries, and that the author was just putting up with a reduced "battery" life as a result. It makes sense to replace with capacitors if they're just using it for always-powered static applications -- probably with much lower fire risk to boot.
I love the aesthetic of cassette tapes and players -- there's just something really satisfying about the size and tactility of putting in a cassette. Beyond that, it feels better to choose to listen to a particular album rather than putting endless playlists on shuffle.
There's definitely space for tape to persist as a medium, even if quality and longevity is lower -- not everything has to be audiophile level, and the listening experience is far more than just sound quality.
> it feels better to choose to listen to a particular album rather than putting endless playlists on shuffle.
Isn't that something you can do with streaming services as well?
I understand that many people choose to go with playlists, but it's not like the choice of listening to full albums has been taken away (yet).
Sure, the implementation is lackluster, with gaps between tracks when there shouldn't be one (really annoying on ambient/atmospheric/drone tracks), but still better than nothing.
> Isn't that something you can do with streaming services as well?
There's a number of differences.
- While yes you can play albums, streamers have decided for us that giving us an album-oriented playlist is out of the question. Try it: make a playlist of 12 favorite albums, maybe with some double albums in there -- now quickly, play the Miles Davis album in the middle. Compare this to leaving 12 albums in the front of your drawer because it's what you're into now: no way to recreate this on streamers, and even if there was, they could change their mind and take that feature away anytime.
- As for picking something out of the blue, browsing a 120-album collection is easy IRL, a modest collection. On a screen it's annoying at best. It's like trying to page through a book on kindle, IRL books are vastly superior because of the combination of visual and sensory/touch.
- Finally there's the commitment of having to fire up the medium and the pleasure of considering the jacket art etc. With streaming there is no "dropping a needle" pleasure, no resistance to abandon the stream once that one not-amazing song comes up, and the album art experience is garbage.
Streaming is good for discovery of single songs, and a good radio experience (but only if there's a human behind the playlist, or the AI isn't total garbage which it usually is). It's also unbeatable for quickly assembling a party-length playlist. But for an enjoyable, artist-focused listening session, it's kind of crap.
If I'm reading this correctly, Opera added support in an earlier version then took it away again. Any idea why they might have done it? Maybe a browser engine change under the hood?
For me, the big killer feature would be if this device is approved for modern media DRM. As much as I'm tired of streaming and its level of control over how I watch TV, it's still a decent part of my media consumption, but any Linux mini-PC I connect to the TV can only do low-resolution streaming from most providers. If the steam machine is approved for high-resolution streaming, it could totally replace the smart TV stack in most homes.
Yeah. This is why I threw that all away and simply pirate for my NAS. Im not watching much new media to begin with. and they make it hell, if not impossible, to stream a lot of older shows. And of I do find them I need to compromise with how I stream it, with what account, and where.
I just got tired of all VPNs, the DRMs, and trying to tune my network just to try and get a decent feed. Instead, map a network drive once, find torrent, save to movies file, and let Plex (or Emby in my case, for historical reasons) find the metadata.
Yes, I think one of the most important things we as consumers can do is flood the zone for companies like Netflix, Disney, and Apple and keep asking about native Steam Machine apps installed directly from the Steam store that support 4k streams.
If Netflix can only get approval with Microsoft Edge or their app on Windows, with specific supported graphics hardware, I doubt there is much hope of that. They want essentially all the hardware and software locked down.
The blob-finding algorithm makes me think of the "advent of code" problems - I wouldn't have thought to do a two-pass approach, but now that I see it set out in front of me it's obviously a great idea. Seems like this technique could quite easily be generalised to work with a range of problems.
I've been using and loving the Affinity v2 suite for the last 3 years or so, and will continue to use v2 of the suite for the time being. I know how it works, I know it won't change drastically, and it already does all the things I need it to. I know new users won't have the luxury of staying behind on the old version, but it seems wise to give them a year or two to get some legs and see if they'll stand behind this "base product free" strategy, or if they'll start locking more features behind a paywall if it doesn't make money quickly enough.
Is the photo in the article relevant? Unless they have some new tech that isn't pictured in the article, it looks like all they're doing is installing solar panels facing multiple different angles with motorised mounts. Potentially increases efficiency a bit, but surely nothing groundbreaking?
Yes. The second sentence describes the target niche:
> The funds are expected to help the startup scale its patented 3D solar towers that are designed to have high levels of energy density for space-constrained areas.
Third describes applications where this arrangement could be relevant:
> The product has applications for data centers, EV charging hubs, telecom towers, universities, and a range of industrial facilities, said Janta Power.
Clearly if land is cheap, traditional surface mount with no tracking is simpler and cheaper. This is targeting areas where land is at a premium but on-site capacity is still desired.
Looking at their site[0] that's exactly what they're doing. Vertical alignment rather than horizontal, turning to face the sun.
Which doesn't seem that excitingly new to me, but I don't know the industry that well. Has nobody tried vertical alignment before? Seems unlikely to me.
And those motors plus their maintenance, aren't they adding significant setup costs and, well, maintenance? We don't create energy out of a vacuum and all this doesn't seem to be discussed there.
