ah ok! i have a fiio btr3 bluetooth receiver that is something along those lines. it doesnt show any track info but its got buttons at least and you can plug in whatever headphones you want. there could be others around that are more like the MD remotes but i havnt done much research

if youre on android theres also “key mapper” by sds100 that will let you change to the next/prev track by long pressing the volume keys so you dont need to take it out of your pocket!

this guy is using a transmitter with his minidisc, im sure any transmitter you could find would work

seems like kind of a chore having to charge 3 separate things though. if someone would just do a kickstarter for a new minidisc player that had bluetooth built in and usb-c to power it i would buy one in an instant!

the minidisc i have now uses mini usb to transfer data and then has a weird 3v charging port, and the cable for that doesnt work anymore so im just stuck with using AA batteries to power it now. its a bit of a mess. these days it would be just a single usb-c port that would handle all that

good luck with your minidisk journey anyway if you head down that road haha

putting a “backdoor” in secure software is the equivalent of taking a safe and installing a cat flap on the back of it

yea! those remotes were definitely handy back in the day when you would be out and about with it, but i mostly just use it at home these days so i dont have the remote attached.

webmd.pro is what i use. it runs in any chrome browser. its a bit on the slow side but i cant remember at this point whether it was always slow to burn to these disks.

but as long as the minidisc player has “netMD” on the front it should work with that. the only other thing you have to do if youre on windows is install this driver

theres also ElectronWMD which is basically just webmd.pro packaged into a desktop app. that may or may not have the driver included, i havnt tried it yet

minidiscs are a good sweet spot if youre looking for something physical. theyre not too big so you can fit a few discs in your pockets. the player itself can easily fit in your pants pocket as well. any minidisc player that has webMD netMD support will let you add or remove tracks using a web browser. theres the LP mode that lets you fit more music on a disc

back to the good old days when “self-hosting” wasnt even a term because of course you would be hosting it yourself!

duckduckgo added the “instant answers” sidebar for the first time back in 2014 and google did the same not too long after, so its definitely not a new issue