Digi

I foresee having to pay a monthly subscription to maintain access 🤑

You know you’re onto something when this spread is a legitimate debate

Can't say I'd change much! Would liked to have figured out the talk therapy / ADD medication thing before my mid 30's. I traded having kids for my career in the music industry but it isn't about desiring change as much as it is curiosity of what would have happened. At the end of the day, my tech gig probably isn't as fun as fronting/touring and studio tracking/mix work but it sure pays a helluva lot better (and lets me raise kids in the best city in the world).

Bookmarked this for a watch tonight, thanks for sharing! An interesting point of note based on a recent thread - I'm fairly certain these videos are AI produced The talk track and voice over are definitely generated and the lack of a presenter in the videos makes me think they're clips from existing materials stitched together - especially at the rate they're producing videos.

I managed to snag two boxes about a year ago, both with gnarly pricing at ~$600 each.

Just in case anyone missed it:

HA! Go figure 😆

About as common as Qdo 50's in the 25 count boxes. Still haven't seen one! --edit: ok I take it back. Rob had 25 count SBN boxes up on 24:24 back on May 11th 2022 😆

Since the industrial revolution, when has a technological leap made for anything other than a significant increase in our workload? That makes me chuckle a bit but I'm also being serious. I already use generative AI daily in the work environment. We just wrapped up a project using generative AI to create talk tracks and voice-overs for a series of videos. The human role? We edited the draft talk-tracks the AI produced - it was maybe 75% of the way there. Good stuff. Means the AI can focus on producing the minutiae and the initial big lift while my folks get to use their expertise to polish up the product to perfection. The net result? Expectation went from producing 4 or 5 of these videos at a go to 20+. Still doing pretty much the same work just in a different tool and quite a bit more of it. The apocalyptic hand-wringing is both funny and irritating. The surveys about how many CEOs think AI will cause a catastrophe is particularly good. Even within educated populations there is little understanding of how AI actually works or is built - this includes CEOs. Every week, I spend time first-hand with execs and board members to specifically talk about future technology and roadmaps. They do not understand AI. They aren't qualified to speak on the topic. AI & machine learning are a massive leap forward in our computing capacity and capability but it's far from smart. To worry about it "taking over" isn't likely to be something even my grandchildren will have to worry about. Just to get started, we'd need an entirely different kind of computing foundation. It'd be like, when the Model T came out, people pitching a fit and having anxiety attacks about what could happen if a car could go 100 miles per hour or operate the throttle automatically. Remember Y2K? Fair to say even the technical people can get wound around the axle of FUD.

Interesting they are saying relative humidity within 1%. As far as I know, the primary mass manufacturer of integrated humidity sensors comes in at +\- 3%. That’s what Govee, various smartthings enabled units, and white-labeled home hub devices use. It’s one of the reasons they can be offered so cheaply. 1% is significantly more accurate so it’s either a custom built circuit or one from a specialty manufacturer. The 15 pound price tag is too low for either of those options!

As with most tech stuff I’m a big fan of the block chain concept and, although I don’t acknowledge it as an investment vehicle, a proponent of digital currencies. I’m having a hard time seeing the value here beyond the rarest and most expensive limited run items. For regular production boxes, once a token is out in the wild, there’s no issue copying the hash and applying it to a counterfeit box. Not to mention that it’s even simpler to have a real box with fake cigars in it. This is why I have a tough time with tokenizing physical items, especially the kind you literally can’t mark (such as the tobacco in the cigar or the wine in the bottle) - at best, you’re authenticating the packaging. The extra step (that still isn’t foolproof) is to have people register the token with additional, specific data. Beyond those ultra rare, expensive items, I sincerely doubt most folks would be willing to publish identifiable data to a public block chain. If they were, the current bar code system could serve a similar purpose. I’m also not advocating for this as I wouldn’t associate data to myself in this way. Going a step further, let’s say we have a suspect box of cigars and decide to validate the token. The token validates and shows us the record of this box; date of manuf, date a sale, cost, factory, and the chain of custody as it leaves the factory and makes its way to the shop. None of this is concrete proof that the cigars in my box are the real article, just a preponderance of supporting evidence. People can barely figure out the bar code and stamp system so I doubt they’ll be able take the records from a public ledger and make the logical leaps necessary to unwind the data. Additionally, we know for sure that grey market vendors wouldn’t participate in this program as they already scratch serials. Let’s also think about Habanos’ implementation of a relatively simple barcode lookup scheme…I think blockchain is probably out of reach. Last thought as I could ramble for a while on this topic. Maybe I’m over simplifying here but I see advanced print technologies as a much higher barrier to entry when compared to digital counterfeiting or hacking. Once you’re in computer-land, any jerk with a keyboard can take a crack at this. Way easier to get a computer and internet connection than it is to buy a modern secure printing rig. Not to mention there are likely far more people on the planet that understand how to take advantage of a blockchain tech compared to people who understand the ins and outs of printing currency, etc. Personally, I’d like to see Habanos step up the game on printing and regularly iterate it to keep the attack surface shifting. I’d also like them to revise the barcode site to something very user friendly.

Mine dropped a couple days ago. They smell divine! Loaded them up into an old PSP2 box 😃

Maybe an unlucky numbers collab between Asylum and MS 🙃

Gotta say, I've experienced the opposite! One the reasons I gravitated to Cuban cigars over the years was that I could sit around puffing them all day long and not get sick. Do you find yourself pulling hard on CC and heating them up due to a tight draw?

In my experience, the more potent end of the new world spectrum holds up better over time. Sticks with a good lashing of ligero like the Illusione MK Ultra, various lines from Litto Gomez, OpusX (but not across the board, Super Belicoso in particular ages quite gracefully) seem to stand up well with a decade on them. Will say, they all tend to merge into the same sort of super rich caramel with sweetness type profile - maybe that's a consequence of the shared ligero thread. I really enjoy the flavor but find that aged new world sticks (that hold up) tend to share very similar notes. With CC I find that, even 20 years on (original PSP2 release, I'm looking at you), there are distinct and specific notes that point to the original cigar. Will say I sincerely appreciate more NW manufactures adding box dates. Even though the individual tobaccos are of various ages, having a box dates gives us a benchmark to go off of when evaluating.