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Comment Deathstar Telecom (Score 2) 104

It's now a toss-up for me as to whether they're still Deathstar Telecom or if they've become something more akin to The Doomsday Machine from classic Trek. Once satisfied to rule the galaxy, AT&T's appetite for acquisition has turned its primary weapon into a gaping maw into which many alternative options for consumers have found themselves trapped.

Comment Preference data I don't mind sharing (Score 1) 268

In no particular order:

The Dollop
Motorcycles & Misfits
No Agenda
Wheel Nerds
Daily Tech News Show
Mission Log
This Week in Enterprise Tech
Security Now
ICQ Podcast
HarmonCast
Sword & Laser
QSO Today
How Did This Get Made
Ham Radio Now
Stuff You Should Know
The Twin Peaks Podcast
Welcome to Night Vale
The Documentary
Ham Nation
ARNewsline
SolderSmoke
BBC World Football


The "Why?" is not very complicated. I'm interested in the subject matter, have a long daily commute and would rather listen to content targeting some of my exact interests than the same 10 songs over and over on the radio.
This way, all of that drive time is at least entertaining and often informative.

Submission + - Open Source Codec Encodes Voice Into Only 700 Bits Per Second (rowetel.com)

Bruce Perens writes: David Rowe VK5DGR has been working on ultra-low-bandwidth digital voice codecs for years, and his latest quest has been to come up with a digital codec that would compete well with single-sideband modulation used by ham contesters to score the longest-distance communications using HF radio. A new codec records clear, but not hi-fi, voice in 700 bits per second, that's 88 bytes per second. Connected to an already-existing Open Source digital modem, it might beat SSB.

Obviously there are other uses for recording voice at ultra-low-bandwidth. Many smartphones could record your voice for your entire life using their existing storage. A single IP packet could carry 15 seconds of speech. Ultra-low-bandwidth codecs don't help conventional VoIP, though. The payload size for low-latency voice is only a few bytes, and the packet overhead will be at least 10 times that size.

Comment Re:Dictation (Score 5, Informative) 188

Or, I could RTFA. "Further analysis, which might require a warrant, could be necessary to determine whether such usage was via hands-free dashboard technology and to confirm the original finding."

So you'd potentially be declared guilty of driving whilst distracted until a warrant was obtained to determine that you were using hands-free?

One would think that since they're already in the device that such a thing could easily be determined.

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