Random News Stories

[Mitchell Dvoskin]

While the Walkman was for cassettes, Sony in the early 1990's produced a DATMAN portable DAT digital audio tape recorder/player. Mine still works great!

datman.jpg

[Marcel Birgelen]

They should give people a free course how to increase mileage. While the base factor of mileage is obviously the car itself, most of what you can improve is by how you operate your right foot.

[Frank Cox]

https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/15/busin...age/index.html

New York (CNN Business)A computer chip shortage has long been dogging the auto industry — and now, it will mean added costs at the gas pump for buyers of some General Motors pickup trucks.

GM said Monday it will build some versions of the Chevrolet Silverado and the GMC Sierra without a fuel management module that improves mileage by about 1 mile per gallon.

Unfortunately for buyers, even once the chips are available, GM will not be able to retrofit the engines with the missing fuel management module. So the decrease in mileage, to about 16 miles per gallon from 17, will be permanent.

Buyers will get a small consolation prize a $50 credit off of the list price of the vehicle. The mileage sticker in the window will also be changed to reflect a lower mileage, according to GM spokeswoman Michelle Malcho.

Wow, a whole $50 off ....

[Marcel Birgelen]

I've never understood the CD jewel cases and why they seem to last to this day and age. Those things are truly broken by design.

I still remember quite a few people carrying around a "Discman" in the later part of the 1990s. Their size eventually shrunk down to about the size of a CD jewel case. With added shock-protection, those devices were even semi-usable during sports or while biking. I still remember illegal mix-CDs becoming highly popular in Western Europe. It's true that those things never really fit into your pocket, but I have the same problem with some of the almost tablet-sized smartphones of today, yet people still are getting around with them...

I guess the reason for MiniDisc never really beating the mix-tapes back in the 1990s, is because both players and recorders remained fairly expensive, compared to portable cassette players and later iterations of portable CD players. It also didn't help that it took Sony many years to license the technology to other parties. Before mass-digital flash storage in SD and USB disks became the norm, MiniDisc was by far the most portable, near-CD quality storage medium available.

[Steve Guttag]

There was another aspect to the Cassette format that CDs didn't have, beside recording...their size. A cassette fits in one's pocket, shirt or otherwise. Its form-factor worked really well. CDs couldn't fit in a typical pocket and were less transportable, as a result. You needed a carrier of some sort and the stupid "jewel" cases were practically broken before you even got them.

[Marcel Birgelen]

The Walkman certainly didn't hurt the Cassette's cause. It was definitely a pretty popular format in the '70s and grew heavily during that era. If you were to look through various audio/stereo magazines in the '70s, particularly "Audio" which did a buyer's guide edition each year...you could see how many companies were offering cassette machines and how many models each offered. It grew geometrically in that era. It effectively killed off reel-to-reel except in the high-end market (for home use). For the person making their own recordings (either mix tapes or safety copies, if not originals of either music or recitals...etc.) your choices were Reel-to-Reel or cassette. 8-track was just pre-recorded stuff and were notorious for short operational life with inconvenient track changes.

Cassette made inroads on that too as most every car stereo (either OEM or aftermarket) shifted to cassette too. All of this predates the Walkman. The Walkman moved "stereo" into the portable world so that it could be with you, wherever you were (mass-transit into work, jogging, airplane...wherever).

Had Sony not done it, I'd think, eventually other companies would have gotten there too. Sony always has a way of refining and presenting a technology where esthetics have as much importance as the technology. It helps sell the format. The original Walkman was a sleek piece for its day.

Yeah, it definitely got traction in the 70s as a cheap and much more practical alternative for reel-to-reel systems, but the 80s were the era of the CD, especially the second half, which came with quite a few advantages, but the disadvantage, at least for the home user, of not being recordable, at least not until ubiquitous and cheap CD recorders and media came around at the end of the 1990s, weighted heavy. But the Walkman was the iPod of the 1980s and probably extended the life of the cassette to well into the 1990s.

I have no doubt that others would've eventually jumped into the portable personal audio space if Sony had not done it first. Apparently, Philips was working on their own device even before the Walkman hit the streets, but before the Walkman rolled onto the scene, their device still looked more like a more miniaturized portable tape recorder of the 1970s. Eventually they came up with the Sky Way D6621, about two years late, which was sold under many other brands and model names, but lacked the design and finesse of Sony's Walkman series.

Philips then did a lot of stuff that cost them a lot of money, but never got them anywhere. Like the failed Digital Cassette system called "DCC" of the early 1990s, which should've become the DAT for consumers. They failed to jump on the MiniDisc bandwagon, because of their competing but mostly inferior DCC system... Another such failed experiment was CD-i, which could've been the first CD-based gaming platform, years before any serious competitor came around. Heck, they had smooth, full-screen MPEG video from CDs back in 1991... They had Nintendo licenses... But they never marketed CD-i as a gaming platform, they instead choose to put the system into the most boring grey box and market the system as a boring "Edutainment" system. So how many kids wanted to have it? Zero.

If there was ever a piece of gear that I once owned that I loved, it was the Sony WMD6C Professional Walkman. Dolby B and C, lines in and out, variable pitch, everything. It seriously rivaled the Nakamichi CR7A in my home system for quality. It went all over the world with me. I seriously regret selling it, in part because a good condition one goes for $400 to $500 on eBay these days.

I'm still holding on to mine. It was constructed in a day and age that Sony products didn't just look sleek and industrial, they were actually still built to last. The thing can easily compete against any mid-range and most high-end fully fledged tape-decks out there.

I'm also still holding onto my BeoCord 9000, although I haven't used the thing in years. I've never really been a fan of Bang & Olufsen, as I consider them to be mostly overpriced, audiophile horse-shit in a nice design. But there is something special about this deck in how it records audio. Yeah, it's called by the fancy name of Dolby HX, but it seems to increase the dynamic range of anything you record with it. Yes, it actively messes with your recording, but the end-result for many, especially old records can be dramatic. Over the years I recorded many vinyl records over to tape using this machine and the tape recording often sounded better, much more vibrant than the original. Not just on the BeoCord 9000, but also on other cassette players.

IMHO, there were two important aspects of the cassette that this obituary didn't cover. First, though it was never conceived or intended as a high quality format, aftermarket manufacturers, both of equipment and tape stock, did develop it into an attempted replacement for the consumer 1/4" open reel technology of the '60s and '70s, in the '80s and early '90s. They introduced technologies such as chromium dioxide and evaporated metal particle tape, and higher end recording and playback decks, Nakamichi dominating this niche for most of this period.

Those improved tape formulas helped greatly in reducing noise and cranking up the fidelity of traditional cassettes, but I think the different noise-reduction schemes from Dolby also did their fair part in improving the tape-listening experience. I still remember metallic tape including either Dolby C or even Dolby S on a high-end deck to be virtually indistinguishable from most CD recordings with the audio gear at the time.

[Steve Guttag]

It's not forgetting but the U-Matic was never targeted to the home-market, let alone as an audio-only recording device. The U-Matic had a very long and distinguished life span. It could be argued that it had a bit of a parallel path to eliminating the open-reel video formats from Quad through Type-C and even the first Digital 1-inch open reel...that succumbed to DBeta and HDCAM...with the end game coming with HDCAM-SR...essentially taken out, prematurely, when the floods of Japan eliminated the supply of blank tapes forced people to look for non-tape based media storage. Cassette Tape video media's days were already numbered but the inability to obtain the blanks sped up the the departure.

[Mitchell Dvoskin]

I think everyone seems to be forgetting the first video cassette format, the 3/4” tape U-MATIC that Sony demonstrated in 1969 and commercially introduced in 1971. Many U-MATIC recorders had built-in TV tuners and we’re not much larger or heavier that the first generation of Betamax machines.

[Leo Enticknap]

IMHO, there were two important aspects of the cassette that this obituary didn't cover. First, though it was never conceived or intended as a high quality format, aftermarket manufacturers, both of equipment and tape stock, did develop it into an attempted replacement for the consumer 1/4" open reel technology of the '60s and '70s, in the '80s and early '90s. They introduced technologies such as chromium dioxide and evaporated metal particle tape, and higher end recording and playback decks, Nakamichi dominating this niche for most of this period.

The other is that Sony took the concept of the tape cassette and applied it to other systems. As with everything Sony does, many were short-lived (e.g. the Elcaset, which put 1/4" tape into a cassette), but others, notably the Betamax/Betacam/Digibeta cassette (the physical form factor of which must have been used in for at least half a dozen tape formats in the end), became an industry staple for decades. It could be argued that the videocassette was what really enabled electronic news gathering to go mainstream (yes, there were "portable" 2" quad VTRs made, but they really required a professional weightlifter who also had a PhD in electronics to use), and that had its origins in Ottens's original invention.

[Mark Ogden]

If there was ever a piece of gear that I once owned that I loved, it was the Sony WMD6C Professional Walkman. Dolby B and C, lines in and out, variable pitch, everything. It seriously rivaled the Nakamichi CR7A in my home system for quality. It went all over the world with me. I seriously regret selling it, in part because a good condition one goes for $400 to $500 on eBay these days.

[Steve Guttag]

The Walkman certainly didn't hurt the Cassette's cause. It was definitely a pretty popular format in the '70s and grew heavily during that era. If you were to look through various audio/stereo magazines in the '70s, particularly "Audio" which did a buyer's guide edition each year...you could see how many companies were offering cassette machines and how many models each offered. It grew geometrically in that era. It effectively killed off reel-to-reel except in the high-end market (for home use). For the person making their own recordings (either mix tapes or safety copies, if not originals of either music or recitals...etc.) your choices were Reel-to-Reel or cassette. 8-track was just pre-recorded stuff and were notorious for short operational life with inconvenient track changes.

Cassette made inroads on that too as most every car stereo (either OEM or aftermarket) shifted to cassette too. All of this predates the Walkman. The Walkman moved "stereo" into the portable world so that it could be with you, wherever you were (mass-transit into work, jogging, airplane...wherever).

Had Sony not done it, I'd think, eventually other companies would have gotten there too. Sony always has a way of refining and presenting a technology where esthetics have as much importance as the technology. It helps sell the format. The original Walkman was a sleek piece for its day.

[Marcel Birgelen]

I guess if it wasn't for Sony's Walkman, the compact audio cassette would never have been as popular as it was in the 80s. Philips has always been good at concepts, but often failed to read and play the market. Without Sony, the CD probably also would never have gotten off the ground.

While Philips is a Dutch company, pretty close to home, back then, I personally always preferred the slick, industrial design of Sony products, compared to the often still very "retro-looking" Philips designs. Apparently, this also inspired the late Steve Jobs when contributing to the design of the iconic first Macintosh.

[Leo Enticknap]

From The Daily Telegraph, obituaries page:

Lou Ottens, who has died aged 94, was a Dutch engineer credited with inventing the compact audio cassette, a development said to have “democratised” music by providing fledgling bands, who lacked the budget for a recording studio, to get their music on to the market, and allowing fans to create homemade “mix-tapes” of favourite songs from the radio or vinyl records.

In the 1960s, as head of product development for the Philips electronics factory in Hasselt, Belgium Ottens became frustrated with the unwieldy reel-to-reel tape recorders the factory produced, which involved the user having to thread thin magnetic tape through mechanical guides, and decided there was a need for an audio device that was cheaper, less fiddly and small enough to fit into a jacket pocket.

He and his development team came up with the idea of encasing a slimmed-down version of the reel-to-reel tape in plastic housing, and the audio cassette, marketed as “Smaller than a pack of cigarettes!”, made its debut at the Berlin Radio Show in 1963.

Soon afterwards Philips patented the term “compact cassette tape” and developed a player to handle the new format. Rather than patenting the design, however, Ottens urged Philips to share the company’s cassette technology, and subsequently struck a deal with Sony to make the Japanese company’s soon-to-be-ubiquitous portable cassette player, the Walkman, released in 1979.

Ottens thus helped to establish a uniform standard that ensured cassettes sold in one country would work in another; the compact cassette also superseded the bulkier “8-track” cartridge that had remained popular, mainly in North America, for in-car dashboard players.

As well as revolutionising the pop music scene (it is said that hip-hop would never have taken off without it), the tapes also were used to record telephone messages and books, and used in pocket dictation devices and car stereos. Streets all over the world suddenly seemed to be full of people plugged into their Walkmans.

The cassette fell out of favour from the early 1990s after they were overtaken by compact discs, which not only offered better sound quality but had the undeniable advantage that they could not get tangled up in the works. Ottens was also part of the Philips team which contributed to the invention of the CD in 1979.

In recent years cassettes have experienced something of a revival, though Ottens was bemused by the resurgence of a technology he regarded as obsolete. In 2016 the spry nonagenarian appeared in Cassette: A Documentary Mixtape, in which the director Zack Taylor invited his audience to celebrate “the worst format in the history of music”. Some people, Ottens observed, “prefer a worse quality of sound out of nostalgia”.

The son of schoolteachers, Lodewijk Frederik Ottens was born in Bellingwolde, in the Netherlands, on June 21 1926 and brought up in Hilversum. Fascinated by technology from an early age, during the Second World War he built a radio so that the family could listen to broadcasts from London during the German occupation.

After graduating in Mechanical Engineering from the Technical College (Institute) of Delft (now the Delft University of Technology), he joined Philips in 1952 and in 1960 became the head of product development for the company’s Hasselt division, which specialised in audio equipment, including turntables, tape recorders, and loudspeakers. In 1969 Ottens became Director of Philips Hasselt.

After contributing to the development of the CD, he worked on a Philips team that introduced it to the market with Sony in 1982. His only regret, when he retired in 1986, was that it was Sony rather than Philips that had developed the Walkman.

Ottens’s wife Margo, whom he married in 1958, died in 2002. Their three children survive him.

Lou Ottens, born June 21 1926, died March 6 2021

[Frank Cox]

A newspaper is planning to open a casino to pay the bills.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/tor...sino-1.5931827

Torstar Corp., owner of the Toronto Star, the Hamilton Spectator and other papers, announced on Monday it plans to launch an online casino betting brand in Ontario this year.

"We are excited at the prospect of participating in a regulated online Ontario gaming market with a made-in-Ontario product," said Corey Goodman, Torstar's chief corporate development officer, in a news release.

After decades of being controlled by a trust owned by the families who founded the Toronto Star in 1892, Torstar was recently bought by an investment company called Nordstar, which promised to maintain the company's focus on producing "world-class journalism befitting the Star's storied history."

Torstar has since its founding espoused the so-called Atkinson principles, which are focused on advancing progressive causes.

Torstar's new owners say they are branching into online gambling to help pay for those continuing efforts.

"Doing this as part of Torstar will help support the growth and expansion of quality community-based journalism," co-owner Paul Rivett said.

• Torstar posts losses as print ad revenue falls year-over-year

The company cited government data showing Ontarians spend about $500 million a year on online gambling, with the vast majority going to grey market websites domiciled outside Canada, where there is less legal and regulatory scrutiny.

Under current rules, only the Ontario government itself is licensed to conduct online gambling, but the province's last budget opened the door to expanding the market to other companies some time this year.

Torstar says its plans are contingent on those government plans moving ahead.

Rivett said it's to everyone's benefit for an Ontario-based company like Torstar to become a player in the province's industry. "We want to ensure the new marketplace is well represented with a Canadian, Ontario-based gaming brand so that more of our players' entertainment dollars stay in our province," he said.

[Leo Enticknap]

Potentially good news if there is anything to this. From Barron's:

The Pandemic Could Be ‘Effectively’ Over by April, According to J.P. Morgan

The current trajectory of Covid-19 cases and vaccinations implies that the global pandemic could be as good as over in just a couple of months, a team of J.P. Morgan analysts that includes global head of quantitative and derivatives strategy Marko Kolanovic said on Friday. That’s a much faster timeline than the market and most economists are working with.

The J.P. Morgan analysts aren’t concerned about the potentially more contagious U.K. coronavirus variant, referred to as B.1.1.7., which has been discovered in dozens of countries and more than 30 U.S. states. Last month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned that the U.K. variant could become the dominant strain in the U.S. by March.

“The spread of the B.1.1.7. variant is not inconsistent with an overall decline of Covid and an end of the pandemic in Q2 due to vaccination, natural immunity, seasonality, and other factors,” Kolanovic wrote on Friday. “…While the dataset is still small, statistical analysis of current vaccination data is consistent with a strong decline (i.e. effective end) of the pandemic within ~40-70 days.”

That range means somewhere between the end of March and the end of April—in other words, just around the corner.

The J.P. Morgan quants analyzed the impact of vaccination rollouts on Covid-19 cases and the rate of spread in areas where the U.K. variant was and was not widely circulating. They found that the post-holidays spike in cases in both the U.S. and the U.K. were “almost identical,” despite the U.K. variant not being detected in the U.S. yet.

They also noted that cases in Denmark during the same period rose even faster than in the U.K. and the U.S. And since then, cases in Denmark have been declining more quickly despite the U.K. variant becoming more prevalent in the country at the same time. Likewise, new coronavirus cases in Florida and California have come off their January peak faster than the national average, despite those two states having a higher rate of U.K. variant cases than the U.S. overall.

“This is another example that an increase of B.1.1.7. prevalence can be consistent with a decline in overall cases (e.g., due to seasonality, vaccination, or natural immunity),” Kolanovic wrote.

The J.P. Morgan analysts also looked at the global vaccine rollout. They found that on average, for every 10% increase in vaccines administered, new Covid-19 cases have declined at a rate of 117 per million people. That compares with a median spread of 230 Covid-19 cases per million people in the analysts’ sample of about 25 countries.

Just using those two figures and assuming that the current pace of vaccinations remains constant—and that social distancing and other preventive measures remain in place—gets the quants to their 40-to-70-day estimate.

The team’s analysis comes with a disclaimer: The calculation assumes no hiccups with the rollout or supply of vaccines, and ignores regional differences in geography, demographics, and the uneven distribution of vaccines. But the current round of vaccinations targets the lowest-hanging fruit: People over 65 have accounted for about half of hospitalizations and some 85% of deaths since the pandemic began. Vaccinating that group will likely have a much larger incremental impact on beating back Covid-19 than the next group of younger and less susceptible people.

The pandemic’s economic damage will likely long outlast the end of rapid community spread. But, unsurprisingly, the J.P. Morgan analysts’ calculations have them bullish on the companies and assets most sensitive to a post-pandemic recovery. They advise using any near-term pessimism as an opportunity to buy the dip.

“Any weakness in reflation and cyclical assets should be used as an opportunity to increase exposure to the reopening theme, in our view,” Kolanovic wrote.

The market, however, isn’t pricing in an end to the pandemic that soon. If consensus expectations come around to J.P. Morgan’s view, expect stocks in sectors like energy and financials to shoot higher. Commodity prices would continue to climb, as forecasted demand would increase. Treasuries would sell off, and rates would jump—which could be problematic for high-multiple growth and technology stocks.

An effective end to the Covid-19 pandemic before the summer is not the consensus view on Wall Street, and a lot could still go wrong. But given current trends, the math works.