> The mere facts that these days, each new round of gimmickry that gets the prized label “progress” tends to generate more downsides than upsides, and that the shining future paradise has been getting visibly further off for decades, has barely begun to dent that touching and childlike faith.
Many of us are alive solely because of technologies developed in the last 20-30 years, and (I at least) find such objectively false claims actually personally offensive.
If you think deepfakes and algorithmic social media are the main recent outcomes of technological progress, you’re
simply not paying attention. Did we forget about cheap solar? LiFePo4 battery technology? Monoclonal antibodies? 4nm process node chips?
> Record companies accordingly used sampling rates just dense enough to keep most listeners from complaining, and called it good. It was good for their profits, sure, but it made the music sound flat and tinny.
Were there CDs with lower sampling rates than the standard 44.1kHz? I could understand complaining about low quality DACs or something, but if 44kHz is not enough for you then you're either a child or a bat.
Wow, I never thought I would see the day that an article promoting something as widely discredited as homeopathy reach the front page. We can do better than this.
I hate when people say that vynils are better than CDs. Sure, some people feel this way for the "vintage" sound of vynils. But that's a personal and niche opinion that isn't objective or widely seen as better by listeners.
I was there when the switch happened. I can't express how happy I was to get rid of vynils and cassette tapes and trade the whole thing for CDs.
I'm a "musicphile" and always disliked vynils for the noise, slowly degrading sound, pain the ass handling and care and, yes, audio quality. I always loved CD's pristine quality and everything else really.
No, they weren't actually. It's fine to enjoy vinyl. I have some myself, but the audiophiles were no more right about sampling rates than they were about paying for platinum-coated speaker cables.
> For that matter, if any Ford Motor Company executives happen to read this, I have a helpful suggestion for you, too. Cooperate with the mass pruning of regulations, and then get one of your factories turning out brand new copies of the 1966 Mustang fastback.
I'm going to be generous and call this cute, but... no one wants this. And even aside from there not being a massive market for 1966 Mustang fastbacks, tossing out environmental regulations wholesale just so we could build more cars gets us what exactly, as a society?
> Chemical pesticides got marketed using the same high-pressure tactics that made CDs popular
This is just conspiracy brain. Chemical pesticides are cheap, they massively increase yields, and they work.
> I’m going to focus here on one of the many branches of homeopathic medicine, partly because it’s the one I use and partly because it’s been sedulously ignored by the pseudoskeptics who like to assail anything that doesn’t make profits for Big Pharma.
Basically, if you disagree with him about his quack medicine, you're a "pseudo-skeptic" just looking out for Big Pharma's bottom line.
This post has a very simple response: there is no book of "forbidden" technologies. These technologies were abandoned mostly out of experience and demonstrated inferiority to alternatives. The fact that conspiratorial thinking is used to explain their failure suggests that the author is more committed to believing in their superiority than actually gathering evidence and making a rational choice.
A very worthy premise for an article. Shame the content of it is claiming CDs sound "tinny" because of sample rates, and extolling homeopathy. Also, after praising the revival of vinyl records based on apparently higher audio fidelity compared to CDs, he undoes this point by also praising the comeback of cassette tapes, which, while having a kind of portability and (external) robustness about them, are one of the worst sounding physical media developed.
The biggest common factor for the benefits of old electronic technology now considered obsolete is much lower latency. For nearly every modern digital technology that takes a noticeable amount of time, there's an older version that is less capable but also has a practically instant response to input. Telephony, television, keyboard input lag, sound amplification, the list goes on.
"get one of your factories turning out brand new copies of the 1966 Mustang fastback. You’ve still got the plans, right? Don’t change a thing. Leave out all the improvements"
I.e. OP suggests FORD leave out all the modern safety improvements (air bags, crumple zones, ABS brakes) this is exactly the argument the GOP have about capitalism: regulations simply stand in the way of profits.
The whole article is narrow minded and short sighted IMHO.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 18.3 ms ] threadMany of us are alive solely because of technologies developed in the last 20-30 years, and (I at least) find such objectively false claims actually personally offensive.
If you think deepfakes and algorithmic social media are the main recent outcomes of technological progress, you’re simply not paying attention. Did we forget about cheap solar? LiFePo4 battery technology? Monoclonal antibodies? 4nm process node chips?
Like, wtf?
Were there CDs with lower sampling rates than the standard 44.1kHz? I could understand complaining about low quality DACs or something, but if 44kHz is not enough for you then you're either a child or a bat.
I was there when the switch happened. I can't express how happy I was to get rid of vynils and cassette tapes and trade the whole thing for CDs.
I'm a "musicphile" and always disliked vynils for the noise, slowly degrading sound, pain the ass handling and care and, yes, audio quality. I always loved CD's pristine quality and everything else really.
No, they weren't actually. It's fine to enjoy vinyl. I have some myself, but the audiophiles were no more right about sampling rates than they were about paying for platinum-coated speaker cables.
> For that matter, if any Ford Motor Company executives happen to read this, I have a helpful suggestion for you, too. Cooperate with the mass pruning of regulations, and then get one of your factories turning out brand new copies of the 1966 Mustang fastback.
I'm going to be generous and call this cute, but... no one wants this. And even aside from there not being a massive market for 1966 Mustang fastbacks, tossing out environmental regulations wholesale just so we could build more cars gets us what exactly, as a society?
> Chemical pesticides got marketed using the same high-pressure tactics that made CDs popular
This is just conspiracy brain. Chemical pesticides are cheap, they massively increase yields, and they work.
> I’m going to focus here on one of the many branches of homeopathic medicine, partly because it’s the one I use and partly because it’s been sedulously ignored by the pseudoskeptics who like to assail anything that doesn’t make profits for Big Pharma.
Basically, if you disagree with him about his quack medicine, you're a "pseudo-skeptic" just looking out for Big Pharma's bottom line.
This post has a very simple response: there is no book of "forbidden" technologies. These technologies were abandoned mostly out of experience and demonstrated inferiority to alternatives. The fact that conspiratorial thinking is used to explain their failure suggests that the author is more committed to believing in their superiority than actually gathering evidence and making a rational choice.
The biggest common factor for the benefits of old electronic technology now considered obsolete is much lower latency. For nearly every modern digital technology that takes a noticeable amount of time, there's an older version that is less capable but also has a practically instant response to input. Telephony, television, keyboard input lag, sound amplification, the list goes on.
I.e. OP suggests FORD leave out all the modern safety improvements (air bags, crumple zones, ABS brakes) this is exactly the argument the GOP have about capitalism: regulations simply stand in the way of profits.
The whole article is narrow minded and short sighted IMHO.