Snake oil

[PTR_1275]

How about this one that popped up on my Facebook feed

www.voltband.com.au

All it shows is that it is a band that goes on one arm of your pliers turning them into a volt stick.

2 (poorly) photoshopped photos on their website with no further information. No place for the circuitry / battery, no explanation how it would work if there is no sense circuit / battery. But you can preorder for $50

No contact details, no delivery dates, nothing. I sense a scam that a lot of electricians should be smart enough to avoid.

[G7PSK]

The voltband is probably a temperature sensitive liquid crystal, the current  flowing through the pliers to ground via the person holding them heats the band so it changes colour.  

[DIPLover]

I could think of some cheaper means of rejecting conducted noise in a power cable though

If conducted noise is your concern, then don't listen to classical or romantic orchestras. Stick to baroque, where there is no conductor, and the orchestra is lead from the keyboard. 

[SNGLinks]

http://www.audiovisualonline.co.uk/product/8040/audioquest-diamond-rj-e-ethernet-cable-8m/

[G7PSK]

http://www.audiovisualonline.co.uk/product/8040/audioquest-diamond-rj-e-ethernet-cable-8m/

What use is that, it is only a one directional Ethernet cable, so either you cannot receive or send on broad band without reversing the cable.
Definitely not worth £4000-00 for 8 meters.

[idpromnut]

http://www.audiovisualonline.co.uk/product/8040/audioquest-diamond-rj-e-ethernet-cable-8m/

My goodness, I felt dirty just reading the product description  *shudder*.

[Phaedrus]

Insulation is also a commodoty that slows down a signal so AQ have featured their Dielectric-Bias System (DBS); a self-generated stable electrostatic field which reduces energy storage and non-linear time delays to a minimum.

What? 

Oh, is that one of those things where they stick a CR2032 in the cable to give a DC bias?

[Excavatoree]

http://www.audiovisualonline.co.uk/product/8040/audioquest-diamond-rj-e-ethernet-cable-8m/

What use is that, it is only a one directional Ethernet cable, so either you cannot receive or send on broad band without reversing the cable.
Definitely not worth £4000-00 for 8 meters.

you must have to run two of them, with some sort of switch, otherwise you couldn't tell your NAS what music file you wanted.

[tom66]

The way it works is if you send music along the cable it makes it dirty and noisy, but if you receive it back along the cable it automatically cleans it up. It's sort of like a unidirectional filter for the bits.

[salamander]

Premium sound SD card? http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/02/19/sony-to-offer-premium-sound-memory-card/?mod=WSJBlog
 
I nearly died laughing

160dollars for 64gb, oh Sony ...

[electr_peter]

Premium sound SD card? http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/02/19/sony-to-offer-premium-sound-memory-card/?mod=WSJBlog
 
I nearly died laughing

160dollars for 64gb, oh Sony ...

Sony is not a good brand for some time. And now Sony steps into voodoo land.

[Jad.z]

I think they specially designed this microSD for their 1200$ "128 GB Walkman Hi-Res Digital Music Player" MP3  .

Link

It's looking more and more like Sony is going the way of the dodo.....or should I say the way of Nokia.

[daqq]

It's looking more and more like Sony is going the way of the dodo.....or should I say the way of Nokia.

About time, they've done enough bad stuff in their time (rootkits, Linux support for PS3 removal...)

http://www.audiovisualonline.co.uk/product/8040/audioquest-diamond-rj-e-ethernet-cable-8m/

For that amount of money for a cable I'd expect superconductivity at room temperatures, the ability to send data back in time/receive them from the future... apparently all I get is better sound... somehow? 

[codeboy2k]

It's looking more and more like Sony is going the way of the dodo.....or should I say the way of Nokia.

Oh oh. I better sell my original MD player and spare MD disks before it's too late

I got hosed by Sony so many times.. with all their format changes and dropping support EVERYTIME along the way.... I stopped buying Sony gear for that very reason.

[miguelvp]

Too bad everyone gets PS4s instead of XB1s at double the rate.
But sure, a couple of K$ will get you a PC that is better 

I don't think Sony is going anywhere anytime soon.

Source:
http://www.vgchartz.com/yearly/2015/Global/
http://www.vgchartz.com/yearly/2014/Global/

Check the hardware sales

[coppice]

It's looking more and more like Sony is going the way of the dodo.....or should I say the way of Nokia.

Oh oh. I better sell my original MD player and spare MD disks before it's too late

I got hosed by Sony so many times.. with all their format changes and dropping support EVERYTIME along the way.... I stopped buying Sony gear for that very reason.

You chose an odd example to support your argument. MD was very well supported by a huge number of manufacturers right up to the time that MP3 players made MD truly obsolete.

[Mechanical Menace]

Too bad everyone gets PS4s instead of XB1s at double the rate.
But sure, a couple of K$ will get you a PC that is better 

I don't think Sony is going anywhere anytime soon.

Source:
http://www.vgchartz.com/yearly/2015/Global/
http://www.vgchartz.com/yearly/2014/Global/

Check the hardware sales

SCE may do well, but the whole of Sony (SCE, the music and movei studios, the consumer electronics etc) is worth less than Nintendo, a company that only makes toys.

And what do you mean a couple of thousand dollars? A dual core i3 system will piss all over the XB1 and PS4. They may have 8 cores but they're 8 smartphone class AMD cores. You can make a more powerful PC with a much better GPU (a discrete Geforce or Radeon) for about the same as a PS4, and if you're happy with a the APU GPU on the i3 just as or more powerful than the identical between consoles PS4 and XB1 for less.

[codeboy2k]

You chose an odd example to support your argument. MD was very well supported by a huge number of manufacturers right up to the time that MP3 players made MD truly obsolete.

oh, I didn't intend MD as an example. It was something that I really liked, which is why I still have it. Yes, it was very supported. But it was still another one of Sony's many dead-end formats, like Betamax, DAT, Memory Stick, UMD, all of which I had bought into.

I just segwayed into saying that I was hosed by Sony so many times ...

[Richard Crowley]

I just segued into saying that I was hosed by Sony so many times ...

I have quite a bit of Sony audio and video gear. And a couple of Sony still cameras, and several Sony computers, as well. And, indeed I have my share of failed Sony proprietary formats like MD and Memory Stick.

However, back in the 1970s, I caught myself from buying into yet another failed format: Elcassette. That was like the Phillips Compact Audio Cassette, except scaled up to use conventional 1/4 inch tape (vs. the 1/8 inch tape in the regular cassette).

I was seriously considering buying a recorder, but I asked the sales-gerb at Pacific Stereo about the availability of the tape cassettes. He told me they didn't stock the media, and the only cassette available was the one that came with the machine(!)

And I have several Sony VAIO computers which are now orphans since Sony is departing the computer biz.

[Jad.z]

I just segwayed into saying that I was hosed by Sony so many times ...

know you are not alone.

And I have several Sony VAIO computers which are now orphans since Sony is departing the computer biz.

Not just their computer business but also their smartphone and TV businesses. Source

[Chris_PL]

I think they specially designed this microSD for their 1200$ "128 GB Walkman Hi-Res Digital Music Player" MP3  .

Hey, it's cheap considering it has a worldwide submarine communication tuner built-in  (87 - 108 millihertz frequency range in specs)

[cloudscapes]

I'm not going to lie, I use a high definition portable audio player. Cowon J3, who are extremely highly regarded in terms of sound. Mainly because I'm a musician and want something of a reference when I'm listening to work-in-progress projects. And in regular music, it also does sound better than Apple players if you know what details to look for (and when you're a musician, you do look for details).

But it's also like $150-200. No f**king way would I spend more than a couple hundred on even a reference DAP. It's just not needed. There are extremely high quality players for a couple hundred, high def specs, great headphone amps with big caps, etc. If Sony think it's a good idea to charge over a grand for something you can get for $200, they're completely out of their minds. 

[devanno]

Sorry if this one has been covered before... I haven't had time to read all the threads.. but this is just classic.  Please note the price. 

http://www.audioadvisor.com/prodinfo.asp?number=AQWELINT&opt=1153

Some of the fun stuff "dialectric biasing" "perfect surface silver conductors"  "FEP air-tube dielectric"

Puhleeze....

[AndersAnd]

Premium sound SD card? http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/02/19/sony-to-offer-premium-sound-memory-card/?mod=WSJBlog
 
I nearly died laughing

160dollars for 64gb, oh Sony ...

Made it to the EEVblog:

EEVblog #719 – Sony Low Noise Audiophile SDXC Memory Card
http://www.eevblog.com/2015/03/01/eevblog-719-sony-low-noise-audiophile-sdxc-memory-card/

[jonwil]

Saw something on Shark Tank this week that I think fits in here. One of the inventors claims that he can somehow magically extract 10w of power from a 3w bicycle hub dynamo and spouts off some techno babble to somehow explain how this is possible. The website for this mob is http://www.klite.com.au/ and the TV show can be viewed on the Channel 10 catch-up site.

Anyone here want to attempt to explain if its possible to get 10w of power from a 3w dynamo or if its all snake oil and BS...