But how can those factors simultaneously cause a warm highlight on black and a cool blue tint on white?

The answer is that they cannot do that.

No, it's distinctly a grayish blue. The photo is perfectly fine showing which colors the dress is, it's just a bit overexposed so the colors doesn't show through as strongly as the official model photo on Amazon.

And shiny black often appears golden or brownish under strong direct light which is actually a really big clue. Since the "gold" parts fade way too much to black in the dark parts, it's obviously now brown/gold, but black with a strong light shining on it. And no light source can simultaneously put warm highlights on black, while at the same time casting a cool blue tint on white, especially not one as strong as in the picture. Not in this universe, at least.

No, the highlights are simply blowout because the picture was taken on a phone camera. Give me a bright enough light, a piece of dark fabric and a phone camera, and I can easily make white or near-white highlights appear on a picture of said dark fabric.

Brown highlights are common on "black" fabrics, since they are often extremely dark brown (or blue), not true black. So the dark parts are definitely black.

If the blue parts of the dress were actually white, that would require a light source with a lot of blue light, as well as a camera with very misconfigured white balance. You would have to deliberately do this to mislead. It's also impossible to do this on an iPhone (which the picture was taken with).

Lastly, we know for a fact that the dress is blue and black, because the manufacturer doesn't even sell a white and gold version.

Both games run on RAGE (Rockstar Advanced Game Engine). Same foundation, same animation engine (Euphoria), same physics engine (Bullet) and so on.

The step from IV to V is not comparable to the move from RenderWare to RAGE at all.

Learning stuff from the bottom up is really good advice. Learn the basic of how stuff works and get a good knowledge foundation. From that you can usually extrapolate or at least make educated enough guesses that learning more complex systems becomes easier.

Be yourself. Stay curious. Treat others as you wish to be treated. Never shy away from a challenging task, because even if it fails, it will teach you something new and grant you valuable experience.

GTA IV and GTA V share the same engine, though.

I can beat that.

I own a gold-plated TOSLINK cable.

Keep diggin', you'll hit gold any day now.

Any. Day. Now.

I am happy to see that you continue to get worked up to absolutely no avail. No matter how long and rambling your screeds continue to be, you will change no opinions and sway no votes.

But please, do continue. You're quite amusing :-)

Oh right, another little thing.

Why not? Why can't everyone be happy, or at least content and unafraid of what tomorrow is going to bring? Why do you think fear, suffering, anguish and unhappiness is necessary?

In the western world, we have the capital, technology and manpower to let literally every single human being on the earth live a comfortable life. Maybe not one in outright luxury, but at least decently-fed, clothed, housed and safe. But instead we insist on concentrating this enormous wealth in the hands of a very small group of people who have grown so jaded that they can't even appreciate the lives of insane luxury they lead, so they just want more more more.

Why is suffering necessary, when we have the means to end it?

You "HURF DURF FREEEEEDOM!" types are so cute when you get agitated :-)

A fully free market cannot work unless people act rationally. As long as people do not act rationally 100% of the time, there will be a need for rules and regulations, otherwise it turns into "dog eat dog" very quickly.

The very core principle of libertarianism is "every man for himself", which quickly becomes "fuck you, got mine". So yes, it is perfectly in line with the libertarian mindset to sell blatantly overpriced goods by false advertising, to naive people who don't know any better.

The most insane idea (which is held by Ron Paul, among others), is that we should abolish all regulations on pollution and environmental controls. If people downstream get sick, they can just sue, right? Because no environmental effect was ever subtle and long-term, right? Increased cancer risk for generations would never happen, right?

Once you enter the real world where you can't just do what you want nilly-willy without caring about consequences, we can have an enlightened and fruitful discussion. Until then, feel free to wallow in your fantasy of a world where grown-ups can't tell you what to do, and you can eat ice cream for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day.

Oh wow, I certainly struck a randroid nerve there, didn't I?

The spirit of the free market is that every player is 100% informed and rational, and will therefore make the best possible decisions to their own benefit. Because everyone is 100% informed and rational, everyone acts in their own best interest, and everyone is happy.

To everyone living in the real world, it is blatantly obvious that this will never work in real life. No one is 100% informed and everyone acts irrationally to a certain degree. Marketers know this, and they exploit the hell out of it, including to sell $10 cables for 1000 times more than they're worth.

I don't live in the US, so I don't vote in your corrupt two-party system. I vote in my own country's fucked up system, thank you very much.

And yes, I am in fact a marxist. You should read up on what that means. I recommend starting with Thomas Piketty's brilliant book "Capital in the 21st century".

Because the cable that came with it is gray. Good point, though :-)

Speakers, listening room and good quality recordings are by far the most important parts. Everything else is irrelevant as long as it meets some very basic performance parameters, which basically everything these days does. It's literally a question of differences that can only be measured on very sensitive measuring equipment, and is completely inaudible to the human ear, even under ideal conditions.

Ironically, it is often exotically-constructed expensive audiophile products that fail to adhere to basic performance parameters, such as Ayre's idiotic no-feedback amplifiers.

With speakers, there are definite diminishing returns once you get beyond a couple thousand dollars for 99,9% of use cases. For recordings, well-mastered CD-quality audio is all you'll ever need (or surround mixes of equivalent quality, of course). But when it comes to acoustic treatment of the listening room, there is a hell of a lot you can do. Acoustics are so hard to get completely right.