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Benny Hill is Prime Minister of Funky Kingston?
How deeply will this cut into the president's TV ratings?
Are the two in competition, or are they complimentary? Like, is one a condiment for the other?
Does anyone really like maple boards? [StringGeek]
But every guitar I've owned had rosewood, and I'm very familiar with the qualities and care and maintenance. They are pretty stable and predictable and unless grossly mistreated they do their job, for me they have become the baseline, the MINIMUM I EXPECT from a fretboard.
I've briefly played a few instruments with maple fretboards. My small sample falls easily into three categories; new looking and sounds good; new looking and sounds bad; or beat the hell out of and sounds GREAT.
Based on this rough and too small to be representative sample, I'll advance a hypothesis, probably wrong but either way let's try to advance.
The ones that look good and sound bad are just shit and likely to wind up in a dumpster, or stuck in craigslist limbo until the zombie apocalypse. Or maybe fixed with a setup, but that possibility is not what you bring up when you're trying to buy of course.
The ones that look good and sound good are the ones where things went as they should.
The ones that look beat the living bejezebelus out of and sound absurd, they always sounded good. Because they sounded good, they got played. Because they got played ridiculously, and maple is a nonsense material for a fretboard, they half disintegrated. Which amounts to a scallop job, as a bonus for playing all those years.
So, I'll happily pick up a maple fretboard in a store or private buyer in my locale, or in the area where I vacation, etc. after falling in love with it.
But otherwise I'm not interested. Rosewood ships bare and stands up well to extended use with nothing more than a clean and juice each time you change the strings, for decades. Maple comes covered in lacquer because it can't stand to be exposed unfinished, which means you need to refinish it every 3 months or so, which no one does, or you just wear the thing away until it finally plays perfectly?
I'm cheap as Josh believe me, but if I'm not misunderstanding something, I should just pay for the scallop on the rosewood if we're talking about a new instrument no?
Any maple fans please respond, reasonably or as flames, I'll read it for several weeks at least.
I'm planning another installment to this yawnfest of a square-brackets-don't-pound-me-too-tag if there's interest. A multi-stringed instrument with far more strings than any of us could possibly contain physically, without the use of levers or stuff. Conveniently, the design includes some sorts of levers or stuffs, a lagom amount of them.
Feel free also to comment which instruments I might be thinking about (I'll be honest, albeit possibly with a slight delay, about what I meant here, but I'm also shamelessly mining for future ideas of course.)
ASUS ROG Phone II
ASUS Announces New ROG Phone II: 120Hz OLED, 6000mAh & Snapdragon 855+
12 GB of RAM, 802.11ad wireless. Phone size, thickness, and weight increased significantly.
Also features one of the new ARM DynamIQ core cluster configs, that I think I've seen on at least one other recent smartphone:
1x Cortex-A76 @ 2.96GHz
3x Cortex-A76 @ 2.42GHz
4x Cortex-A55 @ 1.80GHz
I imagine that in 10 years, every smartphone sold will have specs exceeding this and will be intended for use with a dock and monitor/TV so it can be used as a portable desktop replacement. Or forget the dock, and just use a successor to 802.11ad to connect to a display wirelessly, maybe while laying it down on a nearby charging pad.
Corsair 32 GB DIMMs: Where da ECC at?
Corsair Unveils 32 GB Vengeance LPX DDR4 DIMMs, 64 GB & 128 GB Dual-Channel Kits
$150 for 1× 32 GB @ 2400 MT/s, $155 for 1× 32 GB @ 2666 MT/s (price for 3000 MT/s not specified). Basically no additional charge for 64, 128, and 256 GB kits.
That's the equivalent of $37.50-$38.75 for 8 GB, which isn't so awful but shows how DRAM pricing has stagnated over the last decade. If we had scaled down, we might be looking at $1-2 per GB today. Hopefully we will reach a point where 128 GB costs $100-$150, and larger module capacities could help make that happen.
This one from last month is a bit more expensive: Samsung 32GB DDR4-2666 Non-ECC Memory at Retail: $168
So when do we reach the point when all DIMMs have ECC by default? 64 GB modules? 128 GB? We have to protect against all those cosmic rays, right? ?
Tone wood (String Geek)
So, I'm going to put down a few words on one of the great eternal debates of mankind - the tonewood debate.
I'll try to put it down briefly and hit the important parts. None of this is new or original to me but maybe I can pull the critical pieces into focus.
The first thing is to distinguish between instruments like violins, cellos, and hollow body guitars - from solid body electric guitars.
No one with the slightest understanding of these instruments doubts that tone woods are a real thing *in that context.* These acoustic instruments are physical amplifiers, mechanical devices very similar to speaker cones. The top body panel physically resonates to create the sound the audience hears or the microphone picks up. Centuries of experience taught the makers of these instruments which woods are 'tone woods' and that means woods where you can find the right combination of qualities to make that top out of, something you can shave down until it's thin enough to resonate well, but without weakening it too much to hold up under use. You can make a perfectly functional instrument without any tone wood, btw, but it won't have much volume. That was important before mics and pickups and amps.
The most important tone wood is spruce. The stuff you make the back, sides, and neck from are NOT tone woods.
Now. Electric guitars are not mechanical amplifiers. Absolutely nothing learned from all these centuries of experience about tone woods has any direct application to electric guitars. Period. And I can't remember seeing one made of spruce or cedar either, come to think of it.
So, whenever anyone starts trying to sell you on 'tone woods' in relation to an electric guitar, your spidey sense should start tingling. There really isn't any such thing.
That said, the composition of the solid guitar *does* demonstrably affect the sound. Relatively little, compared to other components, as long as it's sufficiently solid to hold up under use. But it's demonstrable, it's measurable (*though I've yet to see anyone go to the trouble of measuring it properly there's no reason it couldn't be done.)
So then the question that comes into my mind is "Why?"
I haven't done any rigorous experimentation myself, just thought experiments, but I think there's a very simple answer which in this case is even correct.
Any effect of the body or neck materials on the sound in an electric guitar can only be due to damping.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damping_ratio
A solid body doesn't resonate, it's not going to ADD anything to the vibration of the strings which is sensed by the pickups and sent to the amp. Physically impossible.
But it can definitely dampen the sound. We can think of it as similar to the effect of the tone pot capacitor. Tone all the way up is the solidest of solid bodies, Les Paul's log, or maybe something you machined out of aluminum in your shop. The stiffest densest thing you can get. As you back away from that to lighter bodies that are just a bit less stiff and heavy, it's something like rolling that tone pot off the tiniest bit. You're not adding anything, you're only subtracting.
Not necessarily a bad thing, you'll probably subtract quite a bit more at other places before the signal hits the speaker cone. Cutting some frequencies ever so slightly can make others shine through.
(*The tests I've seen people do have all failed to be completely rigorous at one level or another. You'd really have to construct a test bed with a mechanical plucker, run a large number of tests on each configuration, and then spend a good deal of brain power analyzing them to really come to any conclusions. Most people just play their tests rigs (which means the difference you hear might just be the difference between two performances) instead of using mechanical player, and it's rare to even see an oscilloscope come out. But I'm convinced I do hear very slight differences. It's possible someone with better hearing would hear more; it's also likely that most of the public have worse hearing than I do. )
1 TB SSD Launched at $88
Patriot Launches P200 SSDs with Maxio and Silicon Motion Controllers: From $31.99
This is a launch of a budget line of SSDs. Not specified if it uses QLC NAND, but it has better rated endurance than Samsung 860 QVO (for the 1 TB models: 640 TB for P200, 360 TB for 860 QVO).
256 GB for $31.99 ($0.125/GB)
512 GB for $49.99 ($0.0977/GB)
1 TB for $87.99 ($0.088/GB)
2 TB for $189.99 ($0.095/GB)
That's newly released products, not sale prices.
A quick Slickdeals search finds:
$85: 1TB Intel 660p QLC 3D NAND NVMe M.2 2280 PCIe Internal SSD
$80: 1TB Crucial P1 3D NVMe PCIe M.2 SSD
$80.5: 1TB Samsung 860 QVO 2.5" SATA III Internal Solid State Drive
$80: Crucial 1TB BX500 2.5” SATA Internal SSD + F/S
Looks like $80 is a good sale price right now, with lower than $80 sure to come for drives like the Patriot P200 SSDs.
Even if you don't trust them as far as you can throw them, they might make good portable drives if you can insert them into an enclosure.
Oh well, so much for "Mayor Pete"
Eats the same slop from the same trough
Will we ever rid ourselves of republicans and democrats? Or the financial industry that supports them?
Nintendo Switch Followup
Following the Nintendo Switch Lite, they announced a refresh of the original. Same features, but longer battery life due to using a die shrink of the Tegra X1.
Someone somewhere speculated that it could improve performance a little bit by alleviating thermal limits.
You would have to wait for a "Switch 2" or "Switch Pro", but maybe that's a good thing.
Nintendo Announces New Version of Switch with Longer Battery Life
Nintendo Switch Delivers On Promises Of Streaming, Doug Bowser Says
Trump Epstein BFF Tape
Tape shows Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein discussing women at 1992 party
The November 1992 tape in the NBC archives shows Donald Trump partying with Jeffrey Epstein at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, now a private club, more than a decade before Epstein pleaded guilty to felony prostitution charges in Florida.
The president says he hasn’t spoken to Epstein since, and that his relationship with him was no different than that of anyone else in their elite circle. “I knew him like everybody in Palm Beach knew him,” Trump said last week. “I was not a fan.”
But on the tape, Trump gives Epstein plenty of personal attention.
Bruh momentum.
FULL Morning Joe [6AM] 7/17/19 | MSNBC News Today July 17, 2019
30:07: Pre-commercial break teaser
32:28: Segment starts
33:35: Footage from tape starts
34:13: Trump greets Epstein and 2 other guests
34:33-35:12: Trump totally not vibing with Epstein
39:41: Segment ends
The ‘Lady of the House’ Who Was Long Entangled With Jeffrey Epstein
One former employee of Mr. Epstein’s mansion in Palm Beach, Fla., referred to her as the “lady of the house.” Euan Rellie, an investment banker who attended dinner parties that she and Mr. Epstein hosted in New York, said she “seemed to be half ex-girlfriend, half employee, half best friend, and fixer.”
One of Mr. Epstein’s accusers, in court papers, used another word: madam.
Jeffrey Epstein had cash, diamonds and a foreign passport stashed in safe, prosecutors say
Epstein's lawyers argued that the passport acquired in the 1980s was only used "for personal protection" in connection with Middle East travel because Epstein is Jewish.
[...] "Epstein - an affluent member of the Jewish faith — acquired the passport in the 1980s, when hijackings were prevalent, in connection to Middle East travel," they wrote. "The passport was for personal protection in the event of travel to dangerous areas, only to be presented to potential kidnappers, hijackers or terrorists should violent episodes occur."
"The government offers nothing to suggest — and certainly no evidence — that Epstein ever used it," his lawyers argued.
How Jeffrey Epstein Lost $80 Million in a Hedge-Fund Bet Gone Bad
Real Hedge-Fund Managers Have Some Thoughts on What Epstein Was Actually Doing
Remembering the Time Jeffrey Epstein Rode on Donald Trump’s Plane
^ Mentioned in MSNBC segment panel discussion.
Previously: Jeffrey Epstein Settles Suit
Jeffrey Epstein Plea Deal Must Stand
Epstein Charged Again
There is no such thing as chance
One is chance.
We say; 'When one flips a coin, there is an equal chance that it lands heads or tails. This is a 50/50 or .50 chance.'
Now 50/50 is 1/1, but no one seems to remember their fractions these days, and it's not important, so I'll let it slide.
The main thing is, this is nonsense. When one flips a coin, it will either land heads or tails. One or zero. There's absolutely no chance involved.
We think of it as a 50/50 chance, because the two possible outcomes appear to approximate equality, and the longer our test run, the closer the approximation comes. All very rational. Except, again, there's no chance. It's going one way or the other. We just don't have any way that we know of to tell which, ahead of time.
Doesn't mean there's a bit of chance involved though. With good perception and a lot of practice, you can throw a head, or a tail, nearly every time. I knew a guy that made a lot of money in tiny bets at parties proving this. In the case of someone without that skill, the outcome is still contained and determined by the flip, no less. It's just that they aren't consciously in control of the factors.
Einstein famously protested that G_d does not not play dice with the universe. I would add that if He does, it still not be random, as He would clearly be able to throw any numbers He wanted.
