Adventures in decentralization
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quantitative thinking, critique of
It seems to me that we rely more and more on quantitaive measurement as a gauge of our success. Income, percentage gained, value-at-risk, earnings before tax, carbon footprint, jobs created, hours worked, mass of produce delivered. While this is very convenient, and calms our fears of not knowing what’s going on, of darkness, that is,…
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government in the 21st century, draft of
I keep being thrown by the nature of our governments, especially by democracies. Dictatorships are usually quite straightforward in their aim to control their citizens as well as in their open espousal of nepotism. But our democracies create the illusion of control, by votes or freedom of speech. In reality, electing one of a couple…
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the hive – thoughts about
I had some thoughts about the way humanity, or at least the part of it that I can observe evolves. I see 3 trends: individual passivity – consumerism: individuals seek to maximize their short-term pleasure more than ever before. Shurely, some of that is driven by the relentless onslaught of advertisment and the perfection of…
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Monkey Banana Turbo 6 – Review
I am currently looking for studio monitors for my home studio. It’s a rather small setup, so I decided early on that my budget will not exceed 700€. Also, my home studio is in the family living room, meaning I can really use the speakers only during the day, when I have the apartment for…
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individualism and consumerism – differentiate that!
I know it’s Christmas and we’re all swimming in a sea of presents, happily munching Christmas cookies and having a great-ole-time! But: I realized, with shock, that for most of the way to express our individuality is extremely tied, if not solely reliant on the choices we make as consumers. “I’m vegan!”, “I don’t buy…
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Philips Fidelio X1/00 – Review
So I went out and bought the Philips X1 headphone. It’s expensive. It comes in a HUGE box, the unboxing experience is nice, although it’s kind of hard to get the cable out. I plugged the cable into my tube headphone preamp, put in the SACD remastered version of “Kind of Blue” by Miles Davis…
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in search of the ultimate headphone – update
My search for the perfect headphone continued with me buying Shure SRH 840s. These are great everyday headphones, workhorses. Easy to wear, not fatiguing, comfortable, come with a nice carrying pouch, and are really affordable (100€). But, they’re not great. So I kept searching, listening to stuff like Chambers by RZA, HD 700 by Sennheiser,…
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My vision for mobile computing – 2015
I’ve been carrying around a vision of where mobile computing could go in the next couple of years. 3 trends shape that vision: mobile devices are increasingly location aware – geospatial big data. more and more of our activities are organized, shared and conducted online. economic development suggests fewer full jobs – the rise of…
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The wounded child – misunderstandings about
Although I set this up and edit this blog as very tech-centered and tech-related, from time to time I feel moved to write something about life, our perceptions or our attitudes. This blog post is one example. For some time now there has been a lot of talk, especially in psychological, spiritual and self-help circles…
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Why High Definition digital audio matters
Today I found a very well-researched, well written article on xiph.org, that basically said that 16/44.1k should be enough for everybody. I was slightly irritated, because I’m a firm advocate of DSD and 24/96k; having heard, and been able to spot the differences many times. The author, Monty, argued that the human hear is unable…
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