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Known Lecher posted:On topic, a while back someone posted about the 70s-era Canon 8-T calculator that could do math in hours/minutes/seconds in addition to regular base-10 math. I picked up one online and when I pulled it out of the case it had a "NORTHWEST ORIENT PILOT" sticker on the back. I thought that was kind of cool. More weird old calculators: When the first electronic calculators were being developed, not everyone got the memo about the standardisation of seven‐segment displays. The Ise Electronics Corporation in particular had this interesting arrangment:  Which results in numerals like this:  Zeros were half height, which improves readability when the machine does not suppress leading zeroes:  Here’s a video of an Itron‐equipped calculator in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xF6a5_koxog&t=493s The cascade as it displays intermediate results is tres magnifique. 
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Mar 2, 2017 04:07
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Platystemon posted:More weird old calculators: Neat.
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Mar 2, 2017 04:46
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Casu Marzu posted:The dry air in airplane cabins dull your sense of sweet and salty so tomato juice tastes super rich and fruity and delicious when it otherwise is terrible. I don't touch tomato juice or V8 normally, but a tomato juice while flying is completely different. Dry air and change in pressure.
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Mar 2, 2017 04:47
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Yes the effect is similar to what happens to astronauts in space, messes with your sinuses.
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Mar 2, 2017 05:01
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Re: train chat Even in Japan where the bullet train (and trains in general) is really popular, if you're going a distance that would be more than three hours or so by bullet train, many people will fly instead. It's cheaper and faster because the extra time you spend in airports doesn't make up for the increase in travel time. Eg, Tokyo to Kyoto/Osaka is about three hours by train or one hour by air + loving around in airports/transfers either side, so it balances out and trains and planes are equally popular. Tokyo to Fukuoka is about six hours by bullet train, but only 1.5-2 hours by plane, so even with the extra time in airports, flying is much more popular than taking the train. That's not even getting into how flexible air routes are compared to trains, especially bullet trains. You can only travel to a rather limited portion of the country solely by taking the bullet train, but not so with planes.
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Mar 2, 2017 06:41
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Platystemon posted:More weird old calculators: That is extremely attractive and I wish that design were still around.
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Mar 2, 2017 15:15
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Platystemon posted:Here’s a video of an Itron-equipped calculator in action: I made another one more recently which I slowed down to show the cascade better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9w4BOmWECBE (would have been nice with a real high-speed camera, though)
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Mar 3, 2017 20:57
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Iron Crowned posted:
You mean like the Graffiti Pro app on Android? (By Access, who took over the Palm OS licensing I believe) I've not tried it for many years, but when I used it it was fine. Then they updated it and added adverts. To a keyboard app. With no paid alternative app without the adverts. ffs :P (No idea if the current version does that crap)
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Mar 3, 2017 21:22
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although I think for me what I miss is being able to write instead of type. If I could use graffiti on a modern smart phone, that would be aces
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Spy_Guy posted:Oh, hey. One of my videos. You have a great voice. I would listen to all of your documentaries.
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Mar 3, 2017 21:52
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Casu Marzu posted:The dry air in airplane cabins dull your sense of sweet and salty so tomato juice tastes super rich and fruity and delicious when it otherwise is terrible. I don't touch tomato juice or V8 normally, but a tomato juice while flying is completely different. Or maybe they're putting vodka in it.
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Mar 3, 2017 22:35
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Goober Peas posted:You have a great voice. I would listen to all of your documentaries. If he, James May, and Techmoan combined a show, I would surely never find time to watch anything else.
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Mar 3, 2017 22:37
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Spy_Guy posted:Oh, hey. One of my videos.  I bought a Facit 1128† with the intention of using the tubes for a clock, but it’s a flawless working example so I can’t bring myself to butcher it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6dPH_D94B0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSkSCK0hjrE Now even broken Sharp EL‐8s sell for more than I paid for the Facit, and with fewer, slightly less pretty tubes at that.  † There is no information about the 1128 model online, but it’s basically the same as the 1126 but with a memory register. Platystemon has a new favorite as of 03:20 on Mar 4, 2017 |
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Mar 4, 2017 03:18
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1000 Brown M and Ms posted:Re: train chat And Japan is basically a best case for passenger rail because almost all of the major population centers lie along one axis.
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Mar 7, 2017 06:19
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Really people want a better plane experience, which is never going to happen.
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Mar 7, 2017 07:39
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:Really people want a better plane experience, which is never going to happen. It exists already as first or business class, just gotta be ready to pay out the rear end for it.
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Mar 7, 2017 08:58
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Economy class has to be a painful and annoying experience, otherwise nobody would ever pay more for business class.
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Mar 7, 2017 09:52
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Well, I guess I have to go back on some of my earlier statements regarding Spotify, because I've been on their premium plan for about a week now, and it's totally great  Out of 16,304 songs in my MP3 collection (all legally obtained, I swear...), only 1,835 are not on Spotify. Most of them are relatively obscure (MS-DOS themed synth metal chiptunes and such), but there some surprises. For instance, only the three newest Blind Guardian albums are on Spotify, none of their older (and better) albums are there. The same goes for Fu Manchu, four of their best albums are missing. And Skunk Anansie's "Post Orgasmic Chill", which I think is a really odd omission. And it's all down to record label bullshit. But as a whole, most of the missing stuff is relatively obscure, and I don't have any issues keeping it around. In fact I'm keeping all of the stuff that's on Spotify too, because I need music for the MP3 player in my car, at least until I find a decent Bluetooth receiver, I guess. So yeah, Spotify is pretty great, CDs are pretty much obsolete. I'm not sure locally stored MP3 etc. music is obsolete, but streaming is a drat good replacement for most people. If I can save $40-50/month for the $9.99 Spotify Premium costs, I'm definitely down with that.
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Mar 9, 2017 18:47
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KozmoNaut posted:So yeah, Spotify is pretty great, CDs are pretty much obsolete. I'm not sure locally stored MP3 etc. music is obsolete, but streaming is a drat good replacement for most people. If I can save $40-50/month for the $9.99 Spotify Premium costs, I'm definitely down with that. For me, having my music on an iPod plugged into my car for highway travel is the only reliable way to get music I want on the go. Long stretches of rural highways in the Midwest aren't nice to internet connections. But that does sound pretty great overall.
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Mar 9, 2017 18:54
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KozmoNaut posted:Well, I guess I have to go back on some of my earlier statements regarding Spotify, because I've been on their premium plan for about a week now, and it's totally great There is only one format you need that on: 
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Mar 9, 2017 19:02
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Explosionface posted:For me, having my music on an iPod plugged into my car for highway travel is the only reliable way to get music I want on the go. Long stretches of rural highways in the Midwest aren't nice to internet connections. But that does sound pretty great overall. I'll have to try and see how it'll turn out, but I think I have good coverage just about anywhere I would consider going, other than international travel. I know one of the arguments from Spotify in response to Taylor Swift and others pulling the music from Spotify, is that their premium subscribers pay more ($120/year) than the average music listener spends on music, around twice as much actually. I'm definitely an edge case, I probably spent at least $500 on music last year, not counting concerts and festivals. I'm definitely saving money, by not buying albums that I would only listen to a couple of times, to be honest. Zodijackylite posted:There is only one format you need that on: I am SO tempted by those albums.
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Mar 9, 2017 19:09
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Zodijackylite posted:There is only one format you need that on: Holy poo poo. Also the music is pretty cool, I just hope it was made only with an array of floppy drives and dot matrix printers and scanners and hard drives like one would expect. mobby_6kl has a new favorite as of 19:53 on Mar 9, 2017 |
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Mar 9, 2017 19:47
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Why not just set up a Plex server and stream your own music for free?
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Mar 9, 2017 20:22
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Imagined posted:Why not just set up a Plex server and stream your own music for free? Because I would have to acquire that music somehow, and even cheap albums on Bandcamp are usually between $5-7. For less indie artists, that increases to $15-$20 for a CD or even more for an LP. Sure, I could just listen to the music I have now and never buy any more, but I'm not really interested in that solution  I can stream from my NAS via DLNA to my Chromecasts when I'm at home, but that doesn't have Spotify's huge catalog, recommendations and curated playlists. It works for my non-Spotify music, though.
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Mar 9, 2017 20:56
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:Really people want a better plane experience, which is never going to happen. They say they want that. But that doesn't mean they do. If they're given the choice between a more expensive better plane experience and a cheaper coach seat, they pick the coach seat, which means their actual preference is for the cheaper seat. KozmoNaut posted:So yeah, Spotify is pretty great, CDs are pretty much obsolete. I'm not sure locally stored MP3 etc. music is obsolete, but streaming is a drat good replacement for most people. If I can save $40-50/month for the $9.99 Spotify Premium costs, I'm definitely down with that. Sirius, however, still sucks. Got a new car so it came with a 6-month subscription or whatever, and dear lord I can't figure out why anyone wants to pay for it. They have a station for each decade (70s, 80s, 90s, etc) and you'd think that if they're going to broadcast nothing but 80s pop 24 hours a day that they'd have some real variety in what they play. Nope, it's the same exact playlist any terrestrial 80s station would have. There's one station called "Deep Tracks" where they'll play the lesser-known stuff off of albums, but why the gently caress isn't every station that? Maybe it's a similar phenomenon, and even though people say they want variety they really don't actually want to hear any Depeche Mode songs other than People Are People and if you try playing them anything off of A Broken Frame they'll unsubscribe. But really, unless you're a big Howard Stern fan and need to listen to him, who the gently caress pays for Sirius?
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Mar 9, 2017 21:10
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I took the train once, from Amsterdam to Berlin. It was alright, definitely nice to be able to walk around, and the bar car is always fun. Flying lately has been such a loving mixed bag, though. I read somewhere that airlines are starting to bring back amenities because the market is so cut-throat now, but it's weirdly inconsistent. I flew NYC to Dallas and back a couple of weeks ago on the same airline - on the way down, alcoholic drinks and wi-fi were free, on the way back I asked for a pillow and they told me it was $8  Phanatic posted:
Holy poo poo, it's like $10-20 a month now, too. I feel like back in the day when they were separate companies I had a Sirius subscription for like $12 a year. Most of the stations are poo poo, yeah, but the metal station is decent, and the punk-ish station is alright when it's not one of the "drunken extreme sports pro and his idiot friends bullshitting on-air for an hour." I never saw Jason Ellis do his sport (I think he's a BMXer, maybe?) but holy gently caress do I hate his guts from listening to his idiotic show on Faction in college. Snow Cone Capone has a new favorite as of 21:15 on Mar 9, 2017 |
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Mar 9, 2017 21:11
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Phanatic posted:Sirius, however, still sucks. Got a new car so it came with a 6-month subscription or whatever, and dear lord I can't figure out why anyone wants to pay for it. They have a station for each decade (70s, 80s, 90s, etc) and you'd think that if they're going to broadcast nothing but 80s pop 24 hours a day that they'd have some real variety in what they play. Nope, it's the same exact playlist any terrestrial 80s station would have. There's one station called "Deep Tracks" where they'll play the lesser-known stuff off of albums, but why the gently caress isn't every station that? Maybe it's a similar phenomenon, and even though people say they want variety they really don't actually want to hear any Depeche Mode songs other than People Are People and if you try playing them anything off of A Broken Frame they'll unsubscribe. But really, unless you're a big Howard Stern fan and need to listen to him, who the gently caress pays for Sirius? Truckers are a big market, especially since they often go to areas with spotty mobile data coverage.
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Mar 9, 2017 21:16
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Phanatic posted:But really, unless you're a big Howard Stern fan and need to listen to him, who the gently caress pays for Sirius? I do, even though I don't listen to Stern  It comes down to terrestrial radio being miles worse for two reasons: I truly believe the variety (especially genre-wise) is far worse, and the commercials are interminable. That said, yes -- SXM has gotten too expensive. I'll be calling them up to renegotiate my subscription. I still like Lithium, Liquid Metal, First Wave, Chill... A streaming service seems like the obvious alternative but my car (2005 Infiniti G35) doesn't have Bluetooth, USB, or even an AUX jack. I'd have to cobble together a FM transmitter + cables solution, and I'd even deal with that if I found a streaming service that was better at DJ-generated sets than SXM.
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Mar 9, 2017 22:00
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At ten bucks a month, you could earn back the price of a new head for your car stereo in less than a year. Buy one with bluetooth/aux or whatever.
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Mar 9, 2017 22:26
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Trabant posted:I do, even though I don't listen to Stern Does it have a tape deck by chance? I used this in my 04 Deville for years. 
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Mar 9, 2017 22:44
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Trebek posted:Does it have a tape deck by chance? I used this in my 04 Deville for years. I bet you a shiny new donkey that it doesn't. I have an 06 xterra with no aux/usb/bluetooth and it sucks to cobble fm transmitters onto things. I really want to get a new head unit one of these days.
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Mar 9, 2017 23:14
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It's burgin' time! 
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Your car's radio might have an aux port in the back of the unit. My 2006 Corolla radio just has a CD player, but around back is an aux port for hooking up a CD changer. I got an adapter that has an iPod dock connector and just a regular 3.5mm jack.
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Mar 9, 2017 23:17
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My car has an aux port but using it would be a bitch, you have to drill a goddamn hole in the dash for it. It's the stock head unit too.
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Mar 9, 2017 23:21
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Worst case you buy something like this: https://www.amazon.com/iSimple-IS31-Antenna-Modulator-Aftermarket/dp/B002U5XPBE It goes between your FM antenna and the stereo, then when you plug in your phone & flip the switch it disconnects the antenna and instead runs your music through FM modulation and directly into the stereo. Supposed to have much better sound than an FM transmitter, at the cost of some installation. My personal preference is for tape adapters because tape decks are cool.
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Mar 9, 2017 23:22
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Yeah, a lot of cars, especially cheaper ones, from the late 2000s only have CD, AM/FM, and (probably subsidized) Sirius/XM receivers. No aux, no Bluetooth, nothing.
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Mar 9, 2017 23:23
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Anyone who recommends an FM transmitter has never tried using one in or around a major city
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Mar 9, 2017 23:31
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Kelp Me! posted:Anyone who recommends an FM transmitter has never tried using one in or around a major city I disagree, I live in a major city and used to live directly below the main FM broadcast tower, a good one works perfectly fine and doesn't interfere with anyone else. There is enough unused bandwidth, at least in my country.
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Mar 9, 2017 23:34
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carry on then posted:Yeah, a lot of cars, especially cheaper ones, from the late 2000s only have CD, AM/FM, and (probably subsidized) Sirius/XM receivers. No aux, no Bluetooth, nothing. My 2005 Mazda has a button for a minidisc player.  (There's no actual minidisc player installed since I didn't get the option package for it, so the button does nothing. But it's my go-to button for when I want to pretend I'm hitting Turbo Boost or Passenger Ejection Seat or Dispense Root Beer.)
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Mar 9, 2017 23:35
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We rent cars every few months and it's a complete crapshoot what any given car will have for music connections, or where they'll be hidden. Bluetooth is awful because the only thing that's more of a pain in the rear end than pairing your phone is unpairing it so it doesn't stick around in the device list forever. USB is also terrible because God alone knows what depth of file structure the car's system can handle. And every entertainment system seems to have a different UI and different rules as to what it'll play automatically or where it will look for your files. Just put in an audio jack. Pure audio signal, no need for communication between car and phone, and everyone's happy. And I can hook up whatever audio source I want. I've more than once thought about bringing a synthesizer but my girlfriend explained she would throw us both out of the car.
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Mar 9, 2017 23:36
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Kelp Me! posted:Anyone who recommends an FM transmitter has never tried using one in or around a major city Good thing nobody's suggested that. My Lovely Horse posted:We rent cars every few months and it's a complete crapshoot what any given car will have for music connections, or where they'll be hidden. Bluetooth is awful because the only thing that's more of a pain in the rear end than pairing your phone is unpairing it so it doesn't stick around in the device list forever. USB is also terrible because God alone knows what depth of file structure the car's system can handle. And every entertainment system seems to have a different UI and different rules as to what it'll play automatically or where it will look for your files. Bluetooth really is loving awful.
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Mar 9, 2017 23:37
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Kelp Me! posted:Anyone who recommends an FM transmitter has never tried using one in or around a major city The linked product has a direct electric connection to the FM tuner.
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Mar 9, 2017 23:41
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