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Comment Re:Last century stuff (Score 1) 753

I don't pay ATM fees - which makes all the easier to me to use cash as my primary payment method.
I can get cash from any ATM too, the limitation is that at banks other than my own the minimum withdrawal is 20 euros while I can withdraw 10 euros on my bank (and have the account balance printed).

Comment Re:Hardware Struggles Now Though (Score 1) 129

We're soon gonna see display using Displayport compression. Analogous to texture compression, small blocks are compressed but that is done in real time with dedicated hardware, with a supposedly very good algorithm. The goal is to enable power savings on mobile devices (including laptops), by reducing the insanely high bitrates for transmission between the GPU or SoC and the display. It will also allow a PC with Displayport 1.3 to output to an 8K display, even though the bandwith (increased from the current standard) would be too small to do that uncompressed.

Comment Re:What's the point? (Score 1) 129

Interesting.

I for one would simply like a high res monochrome LCD (or greyscale, if monochrome implies 1bit).
It was prevalent in the 80s and 90s, works unlit, is usable outdoors and gives you much longer battery life to boot. I wouldn't give a damn about black and white if I had a long-lived, always usable device. Hell, a 1989 Game Boy is still a better gaming device than a smartphone and I tried to read a book on one (read the first chapter before being bored with it. Blocky font with very few pixels per character is not exactly ideal)

Comment Too bad (Score 1) 202

I was getting used to the notions of multiverse so broad there exists a copy of me somewhere with a penis in place of the nose and a nose in place of the penis. And that's far from the weirdest things out there.

Comment Re:Subject bait (Score 4, Insightful) 379

Forget Star Wars the movie anyway. Vader royally fucked up on planet Hoth, seemed to have an overwhelming position but for some reason he decides to go on foot to capture Luke & Leia personnally. But everyone manages to escape and the scary star destroyers in orbit don't manage to destroy or stop any ship. The star destroyers are managed by grossly incompetent captains.. But even with such idiots at the bar, victory would have been certain would all the ships and stuff have burnt the rebel place to the ground with a giant laser/blaster/plasma massacre.

As for the first movie, it has manually aimed WW2-style air defences ;). "The rebel fighters are too small for our turbolasers", or something like that.
Star Wars is about resistance/terrorists defeating an evil military industrial empire that suffers from royal fuck ups and ineffective pork barrel weapon projects.

Comment Re:Inside the PC case? Forget it (Score 1) 502

Won't that crap PSU brick that powers your external device pick up noise from the mains? (rhetorical question)
A desktop PC probably has the highest quality PSU in a random home inside it.
PCI is "dead" by the way. It's no longer that central parallel bus where most every component was connected to (on board sound and network, IDE, cards..), instead we have segregated PCIe lanes and if there are PCI slots on a motherboard, they talk to a PCIe/PCI bridge.

I trust the dB numbers given by Asus, Creative (even them) etc. because that's the PC hardware market, and with PC hardware you have no bullshitting and very low prices. I also trust decent reviews. Or just people reporting no noise whatsoever with headphones that cost hundreds, I think that's good enough.

Comment Re:You're much better off investing in speakers (Score 1) 502

If you're still using stereo, it's still simple and actually cheap to have speakers that are only speakers, and an amplifier that only amplifies.
The DAC can be placed anywhere in the chain.. Inside the PC, in a standalone box, in an amp, in a preamp. I choose inside the PC because the footprint is low, cost is low and it's always there.

Comment Re:No. (Score 1) 502

I use an internal sound card for stereo sound, it's still decently cheap. The concept that internal noise from the PC will ruin it is a myth, at least if you use a branded PSU that gives clean power (that is cheap too if your PC is not a gas guzzler and you don't needlessly oversize the PSU). There's enough further filtering on the sound card I think.1

I use a Xonar DX, which is way overkill (four stereo DACs and I use only one), I bet it beats your $40 DAC but that's not actually important.
I bought the card to feel good lol, it's nice to have a totally perfect sound output that can get plugged on any sound system, my card beats silly audiophile $4000 CD players and the like. I'm sure some Chinese DAC on USB or S/PDIF can serve me well but there's a bit of convience for me of not having a dongle or small box hang out of the tower. The small box I have instead is what I call an "audiophile" amplifier that costs $20 and was reviewed on Klispch horn speakers by guys on the internet.

Comment Re:No. (Score 1) 502

Sure my second paragraph was more a general commentary about DAC quality, I could have written some different things in the posts. Using the receiver/amps DAC plus doing a long run, that's good enough reason to use digital, sucks that the live encoding is not always available.
One other little thing : some higher end onboards chips do support DTS Connect, and the vast majority of time it is disabled due to licensing reasons (a small cost must be paid by the motherboard vendor). It is enabled on some higher end motherboards.. and I'm pretty sure I read you can "unofficially" run the full featured driver!

By quick googling the DSX's manual says this, though I don't pretend to fully understand it (just plug a RCA into a jack?? but I guess you can use a trivial and cheap RCA to mono jack adapter)

"You can also use a coaxial cable for a S/PDIF connection. Just plug the coaxial RCA male connector to the S/PDIF-Out combo jack and connect the other end into the coaxial S/PDIF input on your decoder. ASUS Xonar DSX"

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