Category: Tech

From Shellac to Cardboard

How many recordings on 78 rpm discs represent a loss of revenue to record labels? I’m guessing none, but they sued the Internet Archive anyway.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/09/internet-archives-big-battle-with-music-publishers-ends-in-settlement/

What about records glued onto the back of cereal boxes? I remember those. They have collectors, of course.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/15/arts/music/cereal-box-records.html?unlocked_article_code=1.mU8.tBqE.o8BSCUE6rGVt&smid=url-share

Maxed-out by de Minimus

As it turned out, ordering those turntable belts from Germany wasn’t a tariff test, because the “less than $800” import rule was still in force for the EU at that time.

Now that I have acquired a vintage JVC VL-5 turntable, to compensate for stupidly letting go of the one I owned long ago, I’ll place another belt order with Thakker to see what happens. A little outfit like that losing its American customers would be a crippling, and perhaps fatal, blow.

https://www.thakker.eu/en/

Fabrications

The Beatles are Fab

Their faces said it all, on the last day they were together, August 22, 1969, seven years and four days after Ringo joined the band*

This Detergent is Fab

Lady Penelope’s Car is Fab

Thunderbirds are GO!

Texas Instruments is Fab

* Seven short years, from ‘Love Me Do’ to ‘Abbey Road’. What was going on here, seven years ago? https://dograt.com/2018/08/

A Likely Story

I meant to post this link a while ago, but lost track of it. Sections of the Constitution, specifically about Congressional powers, recently disappeared from the Library of Congress website. The claimed explanation is that someone failed to close an XML tag.

https://techcrunch.com/2025/08/07/library-of-congress-explains-how-parts-of-us-constitution-vanished-from-its-website/

The LOC link provided on that Tech Crunch page is useless. This is where it should be directed:

https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/introduction/