Tag: blog

Headphones for calls – JBL Quantum 200 vs JBL Quantum 400.

~ Veselin ~ 9 Comments

I do many calls and my environment is often noisy – coffee shops, kids around, and ninja turtles on TV. I’ve tried finding headphones that have a good microphone and are comfortable for my ears. I believe the headphones need to be wired so I don’t charge them. I like retractable microphones. Over the last months, I used JBL Quantum 200 with a good success. Unfortunately, they broke so I bought a replacement. The local electronics shop only had Quantum 100 and 400, and here we are.

JBL Quantum 100 doesn’t have a retractable microphone but otherwise looks like my old headphones.

JBL Quantum 200 has a retractable mic with no cover and a roller for volume control. When folded, the mic is muted. That roller was a bit inconvenient until I got used to it because it would roll while the headphones were in my backpack. They broke soon-ish but come with a 2-year warranty.

Quantum 400 has a retractable mic with some cover, volume control, some other roller with unclear purpose, and a mute button. They also mute when the mic is folded.

Here are some mic samples from Starbucks, the speakers are right over my head and quite loud:

Quantum 200

Quantum 400

My backup Devia headphones for reference

Here is how they look.

The patch is not the broken old headphones, it’s the new ones. The reason is that the mute button is loose and makes a clicking noise that annoys me. So here I fixed it. I’ll upgrade myself with a fancier patch at some point.

Out of those three, my old JBL Quantum 200 headphones were the top pick. Sure, the 400s come with buttons, rollers, extra cables, and flashy LED lights packed in a fancy box. But, the loose mute button and the extra roller with no clear purpose actually made them worse. The microphone quality is sufficient in both.

Matt Mullenweg wrote a much more detailed post on the same subject – his recommendation was for a Sennheiser, which I followed 5-6 headphones back. The locally available set didn’t have a retractable microphone and couldn’t use it for calls from coffee shops. I moved on quickly.

UPDATE 2025-03-10

The JBL Quantum 400 also broke down. It’s a very minimal problem but nevertheless I’m going to look for a replacement in the following weeks. Overall, I think the Quantum 400 are significantly better than the 200 because of the better cable that can be replaced.

I think they’re better overall than the other headphones I used over the last 10 years but the build quality is not fantastic.

Disappointed by the second roller on my Quantum 400, I bought a pair of Quantum 100 as well. These are not up to the bar needed for my daily work needs. They’re less comfortable, the mic is located on a piece of wire, which is much less convenient than the Quantum 200/400 mic. I didn’t use them much and actually kept doing calls with the slightly broken Quantum 200s.

Electric car license plates in Sofia

~ Veselin ~ Leave a comment

In November 2023, newly registered electric cars in Sofia began receiving license plates starting with EA (Electric Automobile). Electric vehicles have the right to park for free in the city center and this change probably makes it easier for everyone who uses the benefit. Me and my kids on the other hand started counting the cars. All newly registered cars would have plates that look like EA XXXX AA. We would try to find the highest number but it would always end with AA. Today we spotted an EA AB number, meaning that there are at least 10K electric cars registered since the introduction of the new plates in November.

2 electric cars, parked in the middle of nowhere, Poligona, one of which has the highest EA AB number on our family record. Looks like a Zoe.

Daily dose of AI – the human powered API

~ Veselin ~ 5 Comments

The Guardian has a nice article on the curious case of Amazon’s AI-powered shops. Customers would go to the Amazon shops, pick whatever they wanted, and leave, and Amazon would charge them using AI. According to the article, the AI was in the form of human data labelers in India.

The whole thing is funny and a bit sad. Primarily funny.

Imagine the first truly self-driving car that turns out to be driven not by AI but by humans through an API. You get this gigantic self-driving center with state-of-the-art gamer sets where young folks will ride your luxury self-driving car for you. Tesla couldn’t solve this problem for 10 years using the brightest engineers. Here we are, solved for you, Tesla, using some Amazon Mechanical Turk magic. Then this driving center can be optimized, for the moments when the drivers have no cars to ride, they’d vacuum with robots or mow grass with the 100% AI lawn mowers.

Celestial Hit List by Charles Ingrid book review

~ Veselin ~ 3 Comments

The elite battlesuit carrier and a walking tank Jack Storm goes to a new planet. He’ll face prophecies, miracles, magic, and a human nemesis. Or at least the nemesis he thinks he has. I’m sure there will be no shortage of future nemeses to Jack and his sentient suit. One of the major opponents is a civilization of cruel and clever cockroaches that’s unlikely to go away.

The series is still interesting to me. I’m captivated by books with complex worlds and simple plots. The enemies are clear, and the solution to the problems they create is also clear. There will be battles with lasers, jets, and spaceships. What is not clear is who will endure all the challenges and who will be sacrificed by the writer.

I think the score for this one is 4/5.