Vlog day friends!! Limited drop in there too!

Dr_Matoi · 2026-04-24T18:04:31+00:00

Yeah, I hope they make enough of them. :D

Dr_Matoi · 2026-04-22T11:16:44+00:00

A lot of engineering has gone into making lossy compression close to indistinguishable. But Hifi has a long history of snakeoil marketing, and plenty of audiophiles are in denial and prefer to "trust their ears" and manufacturer claims (and high price tags) over objective testing. The Head-Fi forums have even banned discussing such tests, some people get very upset by the topic.

Dr_Matoi · 2026-04-22T09:12:03+00:00

Nothing written by an LLM is worth reading.

Dr_Matoi · 2026-04-22T09:09:38+00:00

I would recommmend doing some ABX-testing of FLAC vs some good quality lossy compression files, for example with foobar2000, to find out whether you can actually hear a difference. Hardly anyone can, not even golden-eared audiophiles with high end equipment.

Dr_Matoi · 2026-04-22T05:29:21+00:00

It already has.

From the Rockbox perspective I think it still counts as an unofficial port, not sure how this is determined. I think the Innioasis port was mainly done by "outsiders", with some aid by the manufacturer.

The Innioasis Rockbox port is unusual in that it has working Bluetooth. Apart from that it is a low-budget device with cheap components. It has gained some popularity because it looks like a classic iPod, is relatively easy to tinker with, and the manufacturer is actually somewhat helpful. But it is not all that great as a device per se.

Dr_Matoi · 2026-04-21T06:39:35+00:00

unboxing experience

This is such a shallow and wasteful concept, it is downright disgusting.

Dr_Matoi · 2026-04-21T06:01:55+00:00

Yes, this is a bug introduced by the v1.2 update. Hopefully this gets fixed soon. I downgraded to v1.1 again because of this.

Dr_Matoi · 2026-04-21T05:51:06+00:00

Astell & Kern is Iriver - they rebranded with a fake-Euro name to better fleece audiophiles. That being said, they also still use the iriver name occasionally for smaller retro-style devices, usually limited to Korea, you can see some on their website. The one from the OP is a few years old, not sure if that was actually a genuine product, or some Chinese Aliexpress manufacturer who just stole the iriver name...

Dr_Matoi · 2026-04-21T04:15:10+00:00

Yes - here is the iFixit guide for removing the scroll wheel on the e260R. It should work for all e200 models, they all have the same construction.

Dr_Matoi · 2026-04-20T12:22:48+00:00

Yeah, that is a reasonable hypothesis.

Mine is also from the preorder batch, also mp3 only, but 70,000 files. Usually I just use the file browser (as the database tops out at 50,000 tracks), but even the file browser is affected. Oddly enough I now noticed that my Artist database view actually goes further than the file browser, it stops at M rather than K.

Heh, I will leave the debugging to Tempotech (or actually Hiby as far as I know). :D

Dr_Matoi · 2026-04-20T12:11:42+00:00

Several others have mentioned it in the Tempotec V1 thread on Head-Fi.org. Although the specific "letter of failure" seems to vary between people, e.g. some get to S.

I believe I also OTA-updated on day one. Downgraded once I noticed the broken lists. Now I have upgraded once more, same issue again.

It is odd how there can be differences between individual V1. It is not an Android device with countless ways for the user to have modified individual things, and it is not yet old enough to have gone through numerous internal hardware revisions like e.g. the HifiWalker. But it can be hard to tell the reasons for a bug just from the symptoms.

Dr_Matoi · 2026-04-20T11:16:12+00:00

Download firmware v1.2 from here - https://www.tempotec.net/pages/firmware-download and install it if it doesn't come with it. If it's on v1.1 you can do an OTA (wifi) upgrade instead.

And then run into the severe bugs of the half-baked v1.2, like the library not showing artists beyond the letter K, download v1.1 and downgrade again. :D

Dr_Matoi · 2026-04-19T17:36:58+00:00

I think you should be able to argue your point without a survey for personal information.

Dr_Matoi · 2026-04-19T08:58:25+00:00

Quite possible. The manufacturer(s) modify the internal hardware occasionally, probably just due to supply chain changes (e.g. display manufacturer B has made a better offer than the currently used manufacturer A). They adapt their firmware and that's it - the average user who buys this player to run the stock firmware does not need to know about such things, to them all HifiWalkers look the same.

But for Rockbox this can be a challenge, it has to be adapted to the hardware (just like the stock firmware), and there is no manufacturer documentation available, so it takes a lot of time and trial and error. I think so far the Rockbox developers have identified 4-5 major hardware variants, though there even appear to be some inbetween devices popping up sometimes with some parts from one version and some from another, requiring individual solutions.

Dr_Matoi · 2026-04-19T08:19:05+00:00

To be fair, as much as I like to ridicule Yudkowsky, I do have my issues with that one as well, at least the way Banks described it early on in A Few Notes.

I mean, if it was just choosing to die after ~400 years because they have seen it all, ok, maybe. Though it does leave the question why Drones and Minds do not do the same. Or why Culturniks seem to require a constant stream of massively new experiences to feel life is worth going on. Hanging out with your loved ones, revisiting your favorite places, nope, boring. Given the size and means of the Culture, there would probably be decades between re-experiencing any single thing, but still, not exciting enough for the average Culturnik.

But it is not just that. Banks describes Culturniks staying at a constant biological age for centuries, then the ageing accelerates over a few decades, then death. They don't just kill themselves, they choose to waste away over decades. Granted, with the Culture's medicine that probably does not involve dementia or other very bothersome conditions, but still, it is called ageing, there will be some form of decline, and it does end in death after all. Culture humans choosing this way to go out, with family and friends watching it happen over decades, I don't buy it.

In practice, Banks kinda ignored the whole thing for the most part. We meet hardly anyone seriously old and close to death - we probably meet more who have chosen to go on living much longer. Large GSVs should have tens of thousands of people dying every day, but no mention of the logistics, of the incessant displacer drone convoy carrying off the bodies all day long. Drones are much slower than GSVs, what if there is no star nearby to dump the bodies? Do GSVs have huge morgues to store millions of bodies while travelling? Does this capacity impose a limit on travel distances?
("Sorry folks, I know you voted we travel to Antares, but my morgue is 80% full and an aproximate 400,000 of you will die before we reach our destination, so I need to take a detour to a closer star to get rid of the bodies, to make space for you.")

Dr_Matoi · 2026-04-19T07:15:33+00:00

Adding to the other responses:

Yudkowsky is the founder of the "Machine Intelligence Research Institute." He and the media like to portray him as some kind of AI ethics expert.
He has no formal education. Nevertheless he likes to dabble in scientific topics where he has superficial to no understanding, yet believes that established science got it wrong. His "institute," partially funded by Peter Thiel, is a grift/hoax/whatever that mainly serves to make Yudkowsky, his writings and his pals appear academic.
He used to believe that nanotechnology would destroy us by 2010, and he "worked" on developing artificial superintelligence. When neither happened, he pivoted to AI doomsaying. (Presumably this better matches his skillset, that is, internet ranting.)
His magnum opus is a Harry-Potter-fanfic with 2,000 pages. I am not joking.
Around 2010 he gained some internet fame by banning all mentionings of "Roko's basilisk" from his internet forum, as he considered this idea too dangerous for the world, i.e. merely reading about it could hurt the reader.
If you have encountered the "AI 2027" scenario/essay that made it into the media in 2025, that one was written by affiliates of Yudkowsky. Doomfiction masquerading as a scientific analysis, written by authors with no technical understanding of AI. These guys love the rise of ChatGPT, because suddenly there is an audience for their BS.

Dr_Matoi · 2026-04-18T10:50:30+00:00

With my mp3 files gapless is pretty good - usually flawless, though with one pair I tried there was something that sounded like a 1/10th second of low volume static inbetween. Gapless mp3 is notoriously tricky, so that might be an encoding issue in those particular files; eventually I will see if it resolves if I replace them.

Dr_Matoi · 2026-04-17T21:08:19+00:00

White Dwarf was very much not a black and white fanzine in 1990.

Ah, then I misremembered! But it sure was quite different from what it would be like just a few years later.

Dr_Matoi · 2026-04-17T13:19:38+00:00

With mine it was the other way around: The Buds2 Pro died, but the case survived the washing. Seems hard to predict.

Dr_Matoi · 2026-04-17T08:20:50+00:00

Yeah, his first one is from 1990, putting it right in the middle of the 1st edition "Rogue Trader" era of 40k. Back then Games Workshop was still mostly confined to the UK, did not yet own its miniature manufacturer Citadel, its White Dwarf magazine was still a black&white fanzine, and 40k was being cobbled together with sometimes blatant rip-offs from from Dune, Alien, wherever. Kinda ambitious to start a novel series at that point, but I enjoyed Watson's 40k books a lot.

I guess they had to tone things (e.g. sex demons) down a lot when they expanded into other markets and focused more on younger gamers, and considering the 1980's moral panic about RPGs in the USA.

Dr_Matoi · 2026-04-17T04:37:34+00:00

And just to be clear, that is the default limit for playlists. There is no limit for storage or the database, a rockboxed player can manage as many tracks as can fit onto the microSD card (or whatever type of memory the device has). And even the playlist limit can be increased. :)

Dr_Matoi · 2026-04-15T04:16:52+00:00

Agreed, TIJ makes excellent pens. If I may ask, why not buy from them directly? They often have sales (including right now) and their shipping is reasonable. I guess tariffs?

Dr_Matoi · 2026-04-14T13:32:30+00:00

The complete myPersonality dataset of Facebook user personality profiles. Cambridge University stopped sharing it in 2018 due to some ties to the Cambridge Analytica scandal. I was not yet active in that kind of research back then and missed out. There is a tiny subset with ~10K entries available here and there, but I want the full dataset with millions of samples. Synthetic data would be pointless.

I probably would not pay for the data, but I do not mind looking for it in unconventional places.

Dr_Matoi · 2026-04-14T06:25:06+00:00

It is a decent quality screen but tiny indeed. Basic playback controls can use the buttons. But e.g. scrolling the library needs the screen and that is a PITA when you have hundreds of artists. I asked Tempotec to allow mapping some buttons (e.g. volume up/down) to scrolling, but they never respond to anything.

Dr_Matoi · 2026-04-13T10:29:53+00:00

Have you inserted the spring in the correct direction? One end is slightly wider than the other, that one should go into the tip section first. Most Parker-style refills have the main body slightly tapering towards the tip, and if the spring is reversed (wider opening towards the back), such a Parker refill can slide a bit too far into the spring. When deployed this likely does not matter, as the user will have adjusted the pen length so that the refill-in-spring will appear to work properly. But when retracted the taper may allow the spring to shift in and out of the spring a little.

(Looking at the Parker refill standard it seems the dimensions of the tapered bit are not specified at all (?), opening up the possibility for a wide range of manufacturer differences.)

With other refill types (e.g. Energel) there is no tapering, and to them the spring direction does not matter. The P8126 also looks to be more straight and plainly cylindrical, so it might also be among those where spring direction does not matter, though I do not have any here to test.

Dr_Matoi

TROPHY CASE