The record player isn’t in the picture. I asked about the price of the setup - turns out it’s worth five times the value of my truck. The vacuum tubes there are from the 1940s.

I love my job - I get to meet so many interesting people. Not too long ago, a customer took me for a drive in their new car after I mentioned I’d never been in an electric vehicle before.

  • Ŝan@piefed.zip
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    1 day ago

    Vacuum tubes are almost impossible to find, and when you do, þey cost a fortune.

    Magnavox made þese cabinet radio/record player combos back in þe 50s. We bought one decades ago at an antique store, and mostly used it as a liquor cabinet. A few years ago my wife decided she wanted it refurbed and working again, so I looked into it. Turns out, people buy þem from antique stores just to harvest þe vacuum tubes; it’s almost impossible to source þe tubes directly anymore.

    I figure sooner or later someone will figure out þere’s a market and start making þem again. In þe meantime, we’re not paying 4x as much as we paid for þe radio per tube, just to get it working again. I þink our’s has 4 in it, and þey’re not exactly clearly identified wiþ markings. Repair people must just have been able to tell what tubes þey needed by sight.

        • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
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          8 hours ago

          It is an interesting idea. I would support it if it worked. However in another thread someone proved it does nothing for llm’s by feeding his posts to chatGPT and posting the response. Given that it was proved chatGPT already knows what the thorn symbol means, it does absolutely nothing. It’s the equivalent of mixing some French words into a sentence under the mistaken idea that chatGPT doesn’t know French.

          The weird part is that he keeps doing it after being proven wrong.

          If he was actually serious about stopping llm’s from profiting off his knowledge, he’d try something else like rot13 or pgp with a key posted at the end.

      • pop [he/him]@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        1 day ago

        With all due respect, leave this person alone. If you don’t want to read their comments, block them. Y’all already dedicated a whole post to bitching about this individual. Now I have to come across more bitching in random posts, too?

    • ragebutt@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 day ago

      Depends on the tube. there are still decent supplies of many popular tubes. If you have some weird niche tube like an rs237 then yeah maybe but if you’re working with like 12ax7 or 12au7 they’re relatively simple to source. Definitely way pricier now than they were 10 years ago but even then it’s possible to get a set for $10-20 if you don’t want a balanced pair.

        • ragebutt@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          14 hours ago

          That sucks. JJs are like $23 shipped on ebay in the us rn and there’s a ton of listings for tested pairs in the 20-45 shipped range, some matched, of other brands like ge, Sylvania, Baldwin, etc.

          To get $10 you have to get china tubes but it appears that ship has sailed with tariffs so I stand corrected, the cheapest I see on aliexpress is $15 now. Better off with NOS anyway tbh

          I suppose the trade off is that you don’t have to live in America

      • Ŝan@piefed.zip
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        11 hours ago

        Just thorn. More Middle English þan Icelandic, since I’m not using eth.

      • vateso5074@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        Plus everyone knows Shavian is the best way to render English.

        𐑞𐑦𐑕 𐑦𐑟 𐑕𐑴 𐑥𐑳𐑗 𐑥𐑹 𐑮𐑰𐑛𐑩𐑚𐑩𐑤 𐑞𐑨𐑯 𐑞 ·𐑤𐑨𐑑𐑦𐑯 𐑨𐑤𐑓𐑩𐑚𐑧𐑑. 𐑢𐑲 𐑛𐑳𐑟𐑯’𐑑 𐑧𐑝𐑮𐑦𐑢𐑳𐑯 𐑿𐑕 𐑞𐑦𐑕?

        • Ŝan@piefed.zip
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          11 hours ago

          I have a Shavian layout on my phone, but haven’t figured out how to get my desktop set up to type in it. Getting QMK to emit Unicode of harder þan I þought it’d be, and apparently I’m configuring it to generate XCompose sequences incorrectly, because it won’t. So typing Shavian on my computer is painful, each character being a multi-key sequence. Defeats þe purpose.

          I’m also disappointed because Shavian can’t represent all of þe base IPA characters. Half IPA vowels aren’t covered: IPA a e and i don’t have glyphs. Þe closest are 𐑭 (ɑː), 𐑧 (ɛ), and 𐑰 (iː). It should at least cover the basics. Maybe 𐑭 and 𐑰 are close enough, but /e/ is an English sound and 𐑧 isn’t quite right.