I watched in 4K and there was a noticeable bump in Quality -- perceptually about half way between native 4k and 1080p. It was really obvious on the commercials where you could really tell which were in 4k and which were 1080p. Now the comparison shouldn't be to 1080p anyway as it is normally broadcast at 30 or 24 fps, but to 720p at 60 fps which this 4k was. FInally it was HDR (depending on your equipment and feed) as well as a higher bitrate steam than standard 1080p, 720p. Bitrate is often the real make or break thing here. High bitrate 720p looks better than low bitrate 1080p. The stream wasn't perfect, but for a first try, I think they got the job done. Following years can only become better as they phase out most 1080p cams and go full native 4k everywhere.

As a final note about upscaling. The higher the bitrate, the better the upscaling works. If you try to upscale a previous compressed video it just doesn't work and even gets worse. They are upscaling at the source with a much higher bitrate than you would get on your 4K TV upscaling from a regular 1080p source (not to mention the dedicated processing horse power they are probably using compared to your set). Yes it is a bit of a cheat, but done well it really does improve the apparent image quality.

No doubt a Back to the Future reboot would feature this truck as Doc Brown's ride (or more likely Marty's son's ride)

The book is much better, unfolds on a more realistic time scale, has a much more believable twist leading to people being unfairly persecuted. Totally hated the Hydrogen explosion at Jupiter saving the Earth in the movie.That said a great first try by China at a big budget Sci-Fi, as good or better than the average American big budget Sci-Fi. Not China's 2001, more like China's Armageddon.

Please China don't mess up The Three Body Problem (they've already shelved one failed attempt). Despite a comment in another thread. The Three Body Problem is the best Sci-Fi trilogy I've read in 40 years. The book Wandering Earth pails to insignificance compared to TTBP.

I have a high school aged daughter and the school system has a schizophrenic approach to text books. In the science curriculum they mostly switched over to Power Point demonstrations of the knowledge they need to know. Where is the “knowledge” itself? Undefined. Just an outline of what you need to know. In a parent teacher conference I asked where they get the “knowledge,” what I got was a rambling explanation of a variety of source including the “OLD Science Curriculum book”, but the book is only available to use at the school because it isn’t distributed to the students anymore. The Power Point is derived from the old book, but can’t be bothered to give page numbers or chapters for what needs to be looked up. Basically they expect the kids to just Google everything and if all else fails use an old book in class and find the item by looking them up in the index.

Very little emphasis is placed on knowing basic science knowledge and facts, but rather HOW to do research. Keeping elaborate lab books and statistics, but again hardly any real emphasis on knowing the structure of science from the ground up. That’s just all stuff you Google when you need it. Oh and about the knowledge they did look up, it is all mostly ephemeral stuff like percentage of this and percentage of that or completely isolated factoids with out a reference to the whole framework they reside in.

Now the math curriculum where we are at is much better, stellar as a matter of fact. No complaints there (other than the very competitive nature). But SCIENCE is a mess from what I’ve seen.

Last note, I don’t care if a book is paper or electronic, but learning shouldn’t be constant steam of Google look-ups. Which isn’t to say Google doesn’t have a place if you are doing your own separate learning project, but give’m books for the core stuff!

Same webpage Pacific hurricane seasons and ACE above normal 2014, 2015, 2016, 2018.

From a different mainstream source:
The Atlantic and Pacific Ocean hurricane season is most powerful on record this year

Combined ACE of 221

From Wikipedia on Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE): Atlantic Hurricane Seasons 1851 - 2018 scroll to the bottom, see how everything goes crazy yellow and orange starting in 1995.

I think I trust this more than your crazy conspiracy site. Hey, but don't let facts change your mind.

Seems all energy storage methods have pros and cons and this one seems to not be superior across the board from the replies I’m seeing. I remember seeing years ago compressed air as an energy storage type for cars. What I’m thinking though is it seems this method would make a really great adjunct storage solution where you need cooling. You have to add heat back in to get the efficiency back up, seems server farms could make great use of the added cooling. Maybe electric cars in warmer climbs would also benefit from an alternate AC powered by compressed air which also generates some extra watts as well.

VR growth may be slow, but it isn’t stopping. I have a Lenovo Microsoft Mixed Reality set and it can be very immersive. That said, it was balky to set up at first with unanticipated bluetooth problems. Even though the Headset is affordable, you still need a serious rig to run it. There is a very noticeable screen door effect that makes it impractical for watching movies or reading fine print (so don’t expect to replace your monitor for day to day tasks). That said, true 360 degree videos can be quite engaging, and games can also be knock your socks off experiences (you don’t really notice the screen door effect when your are really in a game or 360 video).

3D never caught on for many reasons, but VR will only improve with time. Screen door effects will go away especially once foveated rendering becomes common. Hardware costs will come down, eventually it will replace your desktop in many cases. Viewing 3D movies at home will probably make a resurgence once VR headset become better (as in watch in VR).

Yes adoption is not what was expected, but that is not a death knell, there is too much potential for what can be done in VR and AR. Right now you need to be somewhat technically inclined to know what you need or tweak things to work – that will change. What will always disappoint and be expensive going forward is haptics – that will be one very hard nut to crack. Another problem is motion sickness in games with motion not tied to your actual body position (driving games for instance). Walking around in VR is a blast, riding around in VR is a vomit inducing nightmare. So, as with any technology, there are places where it shines and places where it doesn’t.

1080p -- 2 Million Pixels, 4K -- 8 Million pixels, 8K -- 33 Million pixels.

4K is for the most part way overkill for most movies. I watch most of my stuff in 720p (1 Million pixels) as it is very, very superior to SD or DVD on my tablet. On my 8 foot projection screen 1080p makes a visible but not dramatic upgrade from 720p. That said, some wide screen movies would be better on a wider screen and we are throwing away some of our 2 Million pixels on letter-boxing. When Blu-Ray came out they should have had a 3 Million pixel Wide Screen option at 1080p, this would have twice the usable pixels of regular letter-boxed 1080p.

4K is really sweet for programming and browsing and having multiple windows in general.

8K haven't really seen any up close, can't imagine it is much needed much currently -- but I could be wrong -- can never have enough windows :)

VR at 1440p still has a lot of screen door. I suspect 4K VR will be about good enough, but not affordable soon. Eye tracking and Foviated rendering will be needed to make 8K VR viable (though we are then at a point 8K starts to make sense).

How'bout we do the 3/4 that's doable first, instead of, you know... not doing it because the last 1/4 is hard.

Aviation is already looking at creating electric motor planes that run on batteries.
I go one further and suggest using microwaves emitted from high locations (above most birds) that top off the batteries periodically, maybe even making the batteries essentially a backup for emergency landings (huge weight and efficiency savings).
That of course is just one idea as opposed to "We Still Have No Idea"

As someone with a 60 year view on things I can say excitement about technology wanes and waxes with time, but currently we are in a waxing phase. Voice activated AI is starting to permeate our lives, self driving cars will be arriving soon, space has become exiting again with SpaceX.

Here are the main upticks in general interest in technology as I see them, starting before I was born.

1920s Travel by Car
1930s Electricity delivered to the home (wide adoption).
1940s True air travel and widespread radio use.
1950s Atomic Age, Automation, TV
1960s Space Age, Mainframe Computers
1970s First Lull, we did get VCR's and time shifting
1980s Video Games, Personal Computer (OK both arrived in late 70’s, but this is wide adoption)
Early 1990s Another Lull, Personal Computing great for business – home use doesn’t live up to promise, Video Games cool a bit.
Late 1990s, Cell Phones, and the Internet (again wide adoption)
Early 2000s, Another Lull, though the Internet was continuing to pick up steam, computers are truly useful at home now.
Late 2000s, HDTV wide adoption (finally TV is improving at a rapid pace)
Early 2010s, Smart Phones wide adoption
Late 2010s, Voice recognition AI, AI in general is rapidly improving and being used widely in business, cusp of self-driving cars, Virtual Reality is now out of the lab, SpaceX has given us back the space-age.

Compared to previous decades I think this one is only getting hotter and hotter – Not quite yet at 1960’s Space Age general interest in technology, but a close second (and the decade isn't over yet).

My first job was at Burger King in 1974, and we had the conveyor belt broiler. Plop patties on the belt, they slid into a bin a few minutes later.

Your post suggests that all productivity improvements go only into corporate coffers and no real price decreases. However here is how it works in the real world. There is still inflation, the costs of making jeans will rise due to other factors and, yes, for a short time the company may reap increased profits, in the long run it will be forced to keep its prices lower than it would have otherwise or lose market share. Also it could be that buying the lasers and developing the tech will mean that it may be some years before it realizes all those said profits, by which time inflation or competition from someone else who has had productivity gains as well and has been able to lower costs (or keep them the same) will force them to keep prices lower than they otherwise would have been.

This isn’t to say there isn’t corporate greed, but lets not act like every productivity gain is an evil thing of no benefit to consumers.

As to displaced workers hopefully Levi is large enough to shuffle most to other activities. If not and they are treated very unfairly during termination, then Levi can feel the rightfully backlash of public scorn at that time.

Do Teslas have this problem now? I remember when you use to have to put down your exterior antenna before going into a car wash. Yes, many of the current under-development cars have this problem. Once self driving cars really arrive there maybe a short period where you have to cover some special equipment in some cases for some brands -- but quite quickly the cars will evolve to not need this or car washes will evolve to accommodate. To propose this is the thing that will prevent adoption is foolish (or wishful thinking) which I think is part of the suggestion behind this posting.

So I said I fear. You have now shown I should fear. Way to vividly validate my points. BTW by going down I meant impeachment, at some point even Republicans won't be able to stomach this administration.