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[SimRobert2001]

WTF?

What is this, I dont even-- on so many levels.

1) Countries STILL DO THIS? I thought dolphins and other cetaceans were protected species!
2) So, Russia now owns the Ukranian Navy? (Right, totally not an invasion-- Putin says so!)
3) The telegraph? Really? (well, at least it wasnt Daily Mail.)

RE: WTF Valve, E3, Lego

Yes. That has to be the worst Lego crossover shameless commercialism I have ever seen. I mean, WTF is gandalf even DOING at aperature science anyway?

the protection list is for each country to use as they will.

[hops]

I think my textbooks are reproducing through mitosis.

[Helgoland]

WTF?

What is this, I dont even-- on so many levels.

1) Countries STILL DO THIS? I thought dolphins and other cetaceans were protected species!
2) So, Russia now owns the Ukranian Navy? (Right, totally not an invasion-- Putin says so!)
3) The telegraph? Really? (well, at least it wasnt Daily Mail.)

RE: WTF Valve, E3, Lego

Yes. That has to be the worst Lego crossover shameless commercialism I have ever seen. I mean, WTF is gandalf even DOING at aperature science anyway?

the protection list is for each country to use as they will.

Also I'm not really sure how you're going to reason these programs to be immoral without throwing the whole military out the window.

[Graknorke]

Mass is negligible so E=c^2, and homeopathy is like bombing your neighbour.

How can a speaker this bad still convince people?

[NJW2000]

This made me pretty surprised. No idea I was that into naked gobline men.

[Bohandas]

Last night a car pulled up and asked to us my phone.

I told them they could if they stepped out of theur car.

They ran hopped out of the passanger side and took the phone.  They then jumped back into the car and I managed to get my hand into the door frame as they tried to speed off.

They punched me several times and I was forced to let go.

Why they do this thing where they exploit altruism?

Did you get their license number?

[Lord Shonus]

I learned a few weeks ago that the normally dry Israel had to develop their water infrastructure to the point that only 20% of the water in their pipes was lost to leakage. Which makes me wonder, how the hell does anyone else think wasting even that much is acceptable? That seems pretty wasteful to me.

"Acceptable" has to take a back seat to "practical". Any water infrastructure WILL leak - it's just a question of how much money you're able to invest to keep the leaks down.

[wierd]

How good are [you at determining compressed audio from lossless audio?

I got 3 out of 6 correct.  The three I missed, I guessed the high fidelity MP3--- I can hear compressed audio in the 3 I missed as part of the mix, which made it hard to judge.

Do I have exceptional hearing or something? I used my computer speakers from about 2 meters away.

[Frumple]

... huh. The coldplay one actually sounded worse to me with the uncompressed sample. Literally cannot tell the difference on the piano one. Neil young one, could also not tell a difference (though the random choice was correct). Same for the last one.

Of the six, I intentionally got one right. One sounded worse to me lossless than compressed. The rest, I could not at all tell. Somewhat amusingly considering how the article started off, the one I actually got right was the Jay Z one.

Was wearing headphones, to what extent a difference that makes. High fidelity audiophile, frumple is not.

[wierd]

For me, Susanne Vega and the Piano were the easiest to tell. The percussion is buggered in the compressed versions of the JayZ track.

The others, the source mix is all smashed. I hear compression artifacts in ALL of them, so I listened for the "least horrible" ones. As I said, I got the 320kbps MP3s instead of the WAV. Again, they all sound compressed.

The neil young one was HORRIBLE. His voice was murdered by compression in the cutting room. No natural polyphony from the vocal tract at all. (Natural human voices have complex resonance in the sound they make. Compression simplifies this based on some perceptual agorithms. Either he sang through a bandpass filter and got renormalized, or his editing crew used compression when they did the track mixing.)

[Putnam]

Understandable, since Tom's Diner was the example track used to calibrate the MP3 compression algorithm for sound quality in the first place.

EDIT: oh the article says that

[SealyStar]

I only got one out of six correct. If this is supposed to rub the superiority of uncompressed audio in to us plebs, it's got a lot of work to do because I couldn't tell any difference between the high-quality MP3 and the WAV (although I could tell the difference between the two MP3 quality levels).

[Frumple]

Heh. I liked the comment under the jay z part, though. "If you have a $10 pair of headphones, maybe not for you."

Joke's on him, my headphones cost like two bucks. Or maybe five? Somewhere in that range.

[wierd]

sealystar--

On the contrary, it's supposed to point out that audiophiles complaining about compressed audio are being asshats.
Here's there followup article.
www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2015/06/09/412271433/audio-quality-quiz-results-you-did-slightly-better-than-guessing-randomly

The result? aggregate, users scored only slightly better than choosing randomly.

[SealyStar]

sealystar--

On the contrary, it's supposed to point out that audiophiles complaining about compressed audio are being asshats.
Here's there followup article.
www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2015/06/09/412271433/audio-quality-quiz-results-you-did-slightly-better-than-guessing-randomly

The result? aggregate, users scored only slightly better than choosing randomly.

Missed that part. It really seemed kind of neutral to me, like "You can tell the difference? Congratulations for your incredible talent! You can't? Congratulations for being a normal person!"