Thanks for this post. I bought this model used in 2019 and still use it daily. Beautiful screen and form factor, a real gem. The updates stopped a long time ago.

I owned the eee 701 and it was fun using it in cafés. I graduated to the Acer 1410. Now I have a used Lenovo OG bought for $80 but its use case is similar to the netbook.

This is a blow in particular to anyone who likes the Radio3 classical music station. The BBC may even block VPNs like Proton so there might be no workaround eventually.

The fascination with home recording on disc is not new: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42037367

There is an argument that the loss of dynamic range and other factors in the compression required in mp3 or CD recordings make the latter inferior to vinyl. This was a prolonged debate forty years ago

CDs have better quality than vinyl in every way. If you want the sound of a vinyl, apply the modulation and record the result on a CD.

In practise, popular music recorded on CDs often had poor mastering (see "loudness wars") where the dynamic range was reduced to make the recording sound louder.

> CDs have better quality than vinyl in every way.

that’s an entirely subjective statement which critically hangs on what “quality” means to the audience.

i don’t agree, but then i’m not limiting myself to define quality in terms of how some signal reproduces sounds.

That's why some deaf people feel superior

huh?

Deaf culture, presumably.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaf_culture

"Refuge from the grinding frustrations of the hearing world", appreciation of the quality of no sounds, sort of like John Cage's 4'33" but quieter.

Dynamic range compression is not "required", it's a choice of the mastering engineer. You can produce MP3 or CD recordings with higher dynamic range than vinyl if you want to.

This is the reason why classical music CDs (and radio) usually sound much quieter. More dynamic range.

Dynamic range compression is often used on most mainstream music because said music is rarely listened in perfect conditions in one's living room. They need to sound decent enough in the street, in a car, on a metro/train during rush hours, in the kitchen while cooking, on the beach, from allkinf of devices from crappy smartphone headphones, phones and computers integrated speakers or cheap bluetooth speakers.

Ideally one would own 2 different recording of the songs they like. One for good listening environments and high quality equipment, one for more hostile environments. Or have devices that apply dynamic range compression on the fly when needed.

I am surprised no one mentioned otomata: https://earslap.com/page/otomata.html

I used it to prepare for retirement. The investment in T-bills is not the sole strategy they proposed but the basic ideas are solid.

> The investment in T-bills is not the sole strategy they proposed but the basic ideas are solid.

Agreed. They actually updated their stance in their second edition that was published in 2017 since Vicki acknowledges that their advice was only relevant when it was originally published. They lean more towards index funds now.

No. Dennis Cooper lost work this way years ago. They need to be aware of this and let some of their followers help them.

The Centrum brand is mentioned explicitly in some of the articles on this story as well as a guidance from a scientist to use established brands of multivitamin. Hmmm.

I also thought this was an actual harpsichord rather than a metaphor, until I followed the hyperlink back to your blog.