把 Sennheiser HD 555 升級成 HD 595 的故事

Hacker News 上看到的,只用一隻螺絲起子,就把 Sennheiser HD 555 升級成 HD 595 的方法:「sennheiser hd 555 to hd 595 mod」。

This page will show you how to turn a $199.95 (Canadian – Suggested Retail) pair of Sennheiser HD 555 headphones into a pair of Sennheiser HD 595‘s that cost $349.95. And all you need is a screwdriver.

兩者的差異只在 HD 555 多了一片泡綿 (foam),把他拆出來就好了:

Aside from the aesthetic differences, the only physical difference was an additional piece of foam inside the cheaper HD555 headphones, blocking about 50% of the outside-facing vents. Since both the HD 555 and HD 595 are designed to be “open” headphones, reducing the vent with this foam would alter the frequency response slightly. So to save yourself $150, open your HD 555’s up and remove the foam. Done.

作者說是注意的到的差別:

Yes. The actual sound difference is very slight, but it is noticeable.

在 Hacker News 上的討論「Sennheiser HD 555 to HD 595 Mod (mikebeauchamp.com)」裡面有在猜什麼原因,有可能是硬拉產品線,也有可能是將次級品改裝,但看起來兩個機體本身是相同的沒錯...

不過這兩隻都是老機了,看起來現在沒有再繼續生產。

Apple 與 Amazon 都要推出無損版的音樂串流服務了

首先是 Apple 宣佈了無損的音樂串流服務,不另外加價:「Apple Music Launching Spatial Audio With Dolby Atmos and Lossless Audio in June at No Extra Cost」,官方新聞稿在「Apple Music announces Spatial Audio with Dolby Atmos; will bring Lossless Audio to entire catalog」。

再來是 Amazon 也宣佈跟上,本來就有提供無損的 Amazon Music HD 下放到 Amazon Music Unlimited 方案也可以聽了:「Amazon Music Matching Apple by Offering Hi-Fi Tier at No Extra Cost」。

這對 Spotify 的壓力應該不小,畢竟已經先宣佈會推出無損版,但卻反而先被競爭對手出招先行制定價錢了...

用 NN 演算法重製 Full HD 版的 Star Trek: DS9

看到「Remastering Star Trek: Deep Space Nine With Machine Learning」這篇,裡面用了類神經網路演算法,將本來只有 480p (SD) 的 Star Trek: DS9 升到 1080p (Full HD) 的版本,而且看起來效果還不錯...

意外的看到有人拿 Star Trek 的材料來玩... 依照作者的說明,DS9 一直沒有 Full HD 版的其中一個原因反而是因為「數位化」了。使用類比膠卷的母帶可以透過更高規格的重新掃描而得到高畫質版本,但 DS9 的母帶似乎已經是數位版了,所以反而造成無法透過重新掃描的方式取得 Full HD 版本:

While you can rescan analog film at a higher resolution, video is digital and can't be rescanned. This makes it much costlier to remaster this TV show, which is one of the reasons why it hasn't happened.

現有的 upscale 技術主要都還是以圖片為主,所以作者本來以為對於動態畫面的處理會遇到問題,但蠻意外的超出預期,從影片可以看出來:

看起來之後的 remaster 版本有可能可以靠這個方法先做初步,然後再讓人進去修?

不吃電池的 HD Camera Streaming...

Hacker News Daily 上看到「Towards Battery-Free HD Video Streaming」這個,不使用電池僅靠反射產生訊號,可以達到 HD 畫質的 Camera Streaming (在原型機上測試可以跑出 720p/10fps):

Finally, we design a proof-of-concept prototype with off-the-shelf hardware components that successfully backscatter 720p HD video at 10 fps up to 16 feet.

而且畫質比想像中好很多,算是比「可用」的等級還高不少:

愈來愈多在研究用 backscatter 拼一些比較複雜的應用...

HP 的 audio driver 內含 Keylogger

HP 被發現 2015 年簽出來的 audio driver 內含 keylogger (yeah,因為有數位簽名,所以賴不掉...):「[EN] Keylogger in Hewlett-Packard Audio Driver」。完整的報告在「modzero Security Advisory: Unintended/Covert Storage Channel for sensitive data in Conexant HD Audio Driver Package. [MZ-17-01]」這邊。

keylogger 記錄後會寫到 local file 裡。來拉板凳...

Backblaze 再次發表各家硬碟耐用程度...

今年年初 (一月) 的時候發表過一次「各家硬碟的耐用程度...」引起爭議厚的最新力做,九月再發表一次:「Hard Drive Reliability Update – Sep 2014」。

灰色部份是一月的數據,其他顏色是九月的數據。文中有考慮是否要換成企業級的硬碟 (enterprise drives),但兩個評估的答案是否定的。

第一個評估是成本考量,就算一般硬碟以三年保固期有 15% 的 failure rate,相較於企業級 0% failure rate 計算 (於是直接算成 10 年),成本是不划算的:

Today on Amazon, a Seagate 3 TB “enterprise” drive costs $235 versus a Seagate 3 TB “desktop” drive costs $102. Most of the drives we get have a 3-year warranty, making failures a non-issue from a cost perspective for that period. However, even if there were no warranty, a 15% annual failure rate on the consumer “desktop” drive and a 0% failure rate on the “enterprise” drive, the breakeven would be 10 years, which is longer than we expect to even run the drives for.

更何況企業級硬碟的情況根本沒什麼差:

The assumption that “enterprise” drives would work better than “consumer” drives has not been true in our tests. I analyzed both of these types of drives in our system and found that their failure rates in our environment were very similar — with the “consumer” drives actually being slightly more reliable.