The HotSpot - Episode 401

Anyone who went to a party knows there's a bedroom where you open the door and smoke billows out and terrified stoners look up at you

There are definitely other faction logos in Transformers that are not Autobot/Decepticon or Maximal/Predacon.

The MERCENARIES logo (which looks kind of dumb) has most recently been used in certain angles of recent Transformers fiction represents, well, a merc faction!

I'm 31, and I grew up with 8tracks. My mother drove a 1970s Lincoln Continental, and always had a box of second hand country and classic rock cassettes rattling around in the passenger footwell. It as a junker, and when it got to be too expensive to maintain, my father took it out to a demolition derby, and kicked all kinds of ass with it. Heck of a car.

i get where you fellas are coming from with the hesitance to spend any significant amount of money on a decent vinyl setup- but food for thought: you're basically buying a very decent-to-borderline-audiophile-grade turntable every 2 years when you refresh your premium nvidia graphics cards. and turntables don't 'age out' like a GPU will.

i'd agree that premium audio gear is a terrible rabbit hole filled with a lot of expensive smoke and mirrors- but unlike PCs and gaming tech- if you're smart about your audio investments, it could last most of a lifetime.

Good quality chrome tapes can actually sound really good, but most albums are not pressed on them and you have to have a compatible player. I have a soundgarden album that sounds fuckin nice. also bandcamp rocks: https://drshipweight.bandcamp.com/album/korg-monologue-sample-pack-01 heres some royalty free samples!

dove in, and have since left, the vinyl rabbit hole. it's really cool and a lot of fun if you've got the interest and the money, and if you like pre-90's music, it's a fascinating collectible circuit for people who love music history. However, there's only so much you can do on a modest budget, and the vast majority of modern music 100% does not benefit from being pressed to vinyl.

the only reasons to buy a modern record on vinyl are a.) because it was specifically recorded and mastered in analog, which 9 times out of 10 it was not, or b.) the vinyl is really neat-looking. otherwise, just get the lossless files, as (at best) they'll be the source for the vinyl master anyway.

How you gonna compare Zack Snyder to DJ Screw Jeff. C'mon

Minidiscs have 0 gap space between tracks. Some artists and djs use this to advantage., There are some really cool experimental Minidisc projects that can only be played back properly in this physical audio format. This is the first thing that enters my mind when I think of Minidisc albums:

Gescom ‎– Minidisc

If you want to speed up videos like you might on youtube or podcasts, paste this in your web console. You can probably trust me. The 1.5 means 150% so adjust that number accordingly.

document.querySelector('video').playbackRate = 1.5;

You can also make a nice bookmarklet so you can just click on it when needed:

javascript:void(document.querySelector('video').playbackRate = 1.5);

Yeah, that vinyl sign Jeff mentioned sure is... something. Even putting aside the "Warriorbot" logo, which looks like an eighth grader's idea of a Transformers logo, there's the bad spelling and straight up using the wrong Predacon logo. It's like a hat trick of phoned in research.

This increased fetishization of old time tech has just gotten worse and worse over the years. Bringing back cassette tapes is extremely dumb. I'm with Jeff where I always thought vinyl was a scam and a lot of people get into collecting vinyl for the dumbest of reasons. Knew plenty of folks that had a ton of vinyl and didn't even own a player. It's your money but that doesn't make it any less stupid.

Idk if Jeff would see this, but the IRS has all your previous tax filings for you to download on their website, like the full thing

Ebay is definitely dodgy sometimes as a seller. I just recently had someone pull a return scam on me with my old airpods. They sent back their broken ones inside the original battery case I sent and claimed mine didn't work. Ebay wouldn't do anything to help and I was out of the money and now have a pair of airpods that are broken and have way less value lol. The buyer has a good standing ebay account with lots of positive feedback too, as far as I've seen as long as a buyer claims a return is "item not as described" it can be pretty difficult to avoid having to eat the cost of a return scam like that. This is the first time this has happened to me in a few years of selling but it was discouraging enough to now make me constantly question whether or not I should try to sell something on there.

I've never been to an adult party or an adult party.

@humanity: I’m one of those people. The covers and how the vinyl looks are usually really nice, mini works of art imo. If you’re into a specific act, getting their vinyl is also a good way to support them.

I am totally with Brad about the hard drive stuff. It's great to back and look at a person you thought you knew. Nostalgia all the way down.

I use Everything for some of our digital forensics cases and case management functions at work and can confirm it is the best program you can install on your desktop.

@janman Heads up, California is a two party consent state. all parties to a conversation have to agree to be recorded if they can reasonably expect confidentiality.

@mikachops: and you don’t have a record player? You’ve never listened to any of them? Aren’t those vinyls kind of expensive for just having the pleasure of a square poster on the wall?

@humanity: It’s nice to have nice things some times, among the other reasons I mentioned.

@humanity: isn't that what visual art is? something pretty to be posted on a wall to look at and enjoy? People pay much more than $20 (generalizing vinyl prices here) for something to just hang on a wall and look at; worth is all subjective at the end of the day!

I have this painting of a rooster from TJ Maxx in my kitchen that makes me smile every time a look at it, but most people probably think it is gaudy and stupid, but THAT'S THEIR PROBLEM :) he makes me smile!

EDIT: I just read your original comment about how "fetisising old media" is stupid, etc. and I can see you're one of those people that just looks down on people for enjoying things that they do not enjoy themselves. Just because something doesn't make you happy doesn't mean it doesn't bring someone else IMMENSE joy. Why hate on people for enjoying something, just becuase you don't also enjoy it? I'd suggest to go and enjoy something yourself instead of wasting your time writing comments putting people down for enjoying collecting things that make them happy. I hope you have a nice day and enjoy something yourself! :)

@drshipweight: I think the practice of fetishing old things for the sake of displaying them on a mantle is dumb but at the end of the day it always comes down to "its your money" so do what you want. It's sort of when Alex brought up the 4:3 aspect ratio regarding Justice League and argued that if that was the original intent then it's fine but if you're specifically adjusting modern media to fit that oldschool format then thats dumb. I understand people hanging up vinyls that they collected 20 years ago as a kid and have kept all these years. I think it's different when you buy new pressings of old vinyls but ultimately I do agree it's kind of a harsh take and if thats what you wanna do then honestly why not. Sometimes the old curmudgeon in me comes out.

@humanity: Lol no worries and I proabably came off a bit rude there too, lol. At the end of the day my opinion is if it doesn't hurt anyone else, I just try to not judge people for their hobbies. I used to be judged for mine so harshly when I was a little kid and did a full 180 in high school / college and became really judgemental out of spite for past treatment. I now try to thing of things in a different way - like okay, adjusting a 2020 movie to have a vhs filter and be 4 x 3 may not be my thing, but just calling it "dumb" is kind of disresepctful to people that may enjoy doing it for whatever reason.

I'll give a bad example, but lets say someone lost their father who up until last year was still recording TV and movies on VHS because he didnt want to get DVR or something. Putting a modern movie in that format may remind that person of their father and that might turn into a hobby for them. At first glance it seems silly to the casual observer, but with more context and information, the true personal value emerges.

Now I just try and live and let live; worrying about how someone else is enjoying something is a really silly activity that is enforced by the recewnt influx of social media over the past 10-15 years. /rant have a great day GB Fam and enjoy your hobby if you can!

On the talk of fan art accidentally being used in an official capacity at around 1:17:24...this happened recently with Nintendo! Someone working on a ROM hack tweeted this but I'll summarize. Basically the Nintendo Land theme park seems to have used a cactus asset from a fan made Mario game that doesn't actually exist in Nintendo's own games.

This is an image from "Newer Super Mario Bros Wii" which is a popular ROM hack of the Wii game. This whole game has lots of fan-made assets, including these cacti right here:

And this is a prop from the Nintendo Land theme park:

Some people say they can't see the similarity but I think it's absolutely dead on (other than the flower being yellow) and it's wild that an entire art team made this cactus and put it up in the official Nintendo theme park when it isn't even from an official Nintendo game.

(I also have to mention this because the internet is horrible but the person who originally tweeted this is working on a remake of this ROM hack and the internet went crazy over it and did some "vigilante" junk as the internet tends to do. This is their tweet on the matter:)

"I just want to be very clear: it wasn't my intention to make a big deal out of it. It's just a cool thing that we noticed and wanted to point out. That's all. Don't get angry at anyone for this, please."

(I don't think anyone from this fantastic Giant Bomb community would be a weirdo but just in case!)

I worked a yard sale yesterday, and someone had donated a box full of CDs, cassettes, and most enjoyably, Mini Discs. The best thing I found in there was the Sleepless in Seattle soundtrack on Mini Disc. It’s probably the most niche piece of physical media I’ve ever come across. It was hilarious.

Back in the late 90s I had a minidisc player as a teen and would record all my music to it. Then in 2008 when I purchased a 1989 Range Rover Classic from eBay for $2200 it ended up having a minidisc player as a head unit. It was great bringing all my old minidiscs out of storage and reliving the memories.

Both vinyl and tape deteriorate with each play, tape can actually sound really really good if you are willing to go down that rabbit hole, but really I don't think anyone listens to tapes for fidelity, it does offer an experience though or just a nice little physical artifact.

I randomly bought a 90s Djs giant mini disc collection its pretty great. They later release HD minidiscs which were fully uncompressed. Maybe it is time to do a bandcamp minidisc release.

If you guys haven’t watched Halt and Catch Fire on NetFlix already, I recommend it. It’s a fictionalization of the computer industry in the 80s and early 90s.

@jeff@brad@alex guys dont use TurboTax, they nickel and dime you for everything, use Credit Karma. Federal and State are free. like zero cents, they never try to upsell you, I dont even know if they have a paid version, I think the only paid service they have is if you want a human being to look at your tax return. They support all sorts of stuff, stocks, sales of property, capital gains/losses, crypto etc etc.. all free.. check em out. I did mine in an afternoon and I had over 2,000 stock transactions, it just imported all that stuff from the broker.

Selling on ebay is fine, there is seller and buyer protection in worst case you get the money and they get refund (both). The shitty part about ebay is 15% comission they take. Sell something for $100, only get $85 for it (minus tax that they automatically take out now). not a huge deal, but when you get down to selling something for $1000 you fork over $150 to ebay... a bit much IMO.

@jeff@brad 5800X has been available pretty much 100% in stock on B&H Photos and Amazon at MSRP for about 2 weeks now. If its out of stock it usually comes back within a day and stays in stock for at least a few days. And 5600X comes back into stock every couple days. 5950X is illusive but thats due to lower numbers being shipped by AMD.

I did exactly what Jeff was talking about actually. I built my last pc which was approaching the end of its lifespan and actually ended up going through a pre-built company because I knew for a fact they would get those high end components before I could. Ordered in November and got my pc in February with a 3080 and a i9 10900kf. Way less expensive than it would have been if I tried to source the parts myself. Super recommend it for people itching for these new cards.

Keeping old computer files is rad. I've used the same email address since 2004, and I honestly think I've deleted less than 50 emails total throughout its lifespan. I just don't see the need. I have various dumps of HDDs pre-reformats from years previous, all scattered around. It's fun to go browse that stuff sometimes. Although admittedly I do have a lot of double-ups that I should go delete but I'm too lazy to do so.