If this is your basis of evaluation of spying, this is straight up xenophobic and racist. Why? Because you (and Anglos) intentionally abuse the language barrier as a way to obfuscate the difference between spying and regular internet activity. This is reddit tier bullshit that almost every “investigative” YouTuber and blogger does.
Calling people "Anglos" as if their race somehow defines their worldview is racist. Expressing concern because an application with alleged ties to an authoritarian regime is sending data to an endpoint within said regime's borders might be silly, but it has nothinvg to do with race. With respect, that right there is some Israel "pointing out our human rights atrocities is antisemitic" level of bullshit.
World systems theory woukd suggest that the inner core should have shifted in the 21st century to include at thd very least China. Western powers may have been dominant in the mid to late 20th century but that is decidedly no longer the case; China fits every metric offered by the theory.
I doubt OP meant that anyway, given that their statements were directed at individual actors and not national powers.
Regardless, expressing concern because an app that both has ties to an authoritarian regime AND is effectively banned in that regime is understandable. Screaming RACIST at anyone who dares criticize China and calling them Anglos is both ridiculous and racist itself.
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They were physically relocated to the US so that the US can access the data, as people like Edward Snowden and Mark Klein have shown us. I’m sure the US knows precisely what data is and isn’t being sent to China.
Microsoft has collaborated closely with US intelligence services to allow users’ communications to be intercepted, including helping the National Security Agency to circumvent the company’s own encryption, according to top-secret documents obtained by the Guardian.
The files provided by Edward Snowden illustrate the scale of co-operation between Silicon Valley and the intelligence agencies over the last three years. They also shed new light on the workings of the top-secret Prism program, which was disclosed by the Guardian and the Washington Post last month.
Well yeah, by default Microsoft holds your encryption keys. Why wouldn’t they be able to unencrypt it? Implement Customer Key if you want to hold your own encryption keys.
Honestly way less afraid of China snooping on my data than US corporations. Only one of those groups regularly colludes with the FBI/CIA/other three letter agencies.
I’m so glad amazon is useless in my country due to high delivery times and fees. Local stores never vanished and their online stores are so much better.
As a hobbyist musician, the more you externalise these sorts of things, the more latency you create. A discreet, internal, soundcard is probably going to trump external DACs for a long time to come.
External DACs totally have their place, music playback, movies/shows. But for doing audio work, internal is the way to go.
As a professional musician and someone who works for a prominent Japanese electronic musical instrument company, I’m going to have to disagree.
Thunderbolt provides all the low latency of a PCIe interface with none of the drawbacks. I use an Antelope Zen Tour in my home studio and it is just amazing.
The systems I designed for work though use RME PCIe cards, but those systems aren’t in the hobbyist space.
I absolutely notice when a game defaults to a resolution with 60hz refresh rate. It’s not even so much a stutter or stall as it just feels “off” and then feels “normal” if I adjust the settings to 144hz.
Though I don’t notice this when playing a game that has fps capped to 60, as long as the monitor is refreshing at 144hz still.
I’ve also had a few ms of latency adjustment make the difference between frequently missing notes and being able to sustain long combos in guitar hero or similar rhythm games.
It’s subtle to the point where it’s difficult to measure objectively (if it’s even possible to measure something where subjectivity is built in like sensory processing), but based on those I think our temporal resolution is higher than 60 fps in certain cases.
Edit: Though I’m not sure I agree that the latency difference between an internal and external sound card will be very noticeable. I used a USB dual pre for gaming for years and never noticed anything off with it. I might try breaking it out again to see if it makes a difference in rhythm games.
I would not buy PCI audio stuff. Lots of power goes through the motherboard, which makes these prone to RF interference, especially if you have a rig that has high power draw.
Best to buy a external USB dac/amp. Either make sure that your mobo has a separate USB hub from the main ones (which some mobos might label them DAC), or a USB cable that isn’t rated for high voltage.
I have a Fiio DAC and i have no complaints.
But i dont have golden ears that can hear the difference between good dacs, excellent dacs etc.
Above a certain level, its good enough for me
I got a EK10 bc my old MSI motherboard had noticeably worse audio quality than my android phone/MacBook. The EK10 is totally fine for my usage (mostly just driving ATH-M50X’s)
I have a K7.
My only con with it is that the headphone jack doesnt cut the line outputs. So, i had to make an inline switch to mute my speakers for headphones only.
I am now wishing it also had XLR outputs, but Im sure i can pick up a nice transformer balancing box from somewhere.
USB 5V power can be equally noisy, even from a powered hub, so that argument doesn’t make any sense. PCIe has a high current 12V rail available that has much more margin than USB for filtering with an LDO and run your signal chain well above the noise floor of the components.
Besides, Asus Xonar as in the picture can take 12V from a drive connector to bypass the motherboard PCIe 12V “just in case”.
Some of them have poor stability. I gave up on a Sound Blaster Audigy RX after it caused random crashes on two different Socket AM4 mainboards. I just got a 10 metre optical cable and a cheap DAC next to my reciever.
I suspect the industry is in a tailspin; the last players standing really don’t have to give a **** because the alternatives are onboard sudio or $$$$ pro cards.
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