Mine is updated by a cron job that randomly abuses my neighbours by name.

MPEG2 lingers because it costs a lot to replace millions of existing set-top boxes, however that's only for video delivery to the home. A lot of backhaul/contribution/distribution is H264 which then gets transcoded at the edge of the broadcaster's networks. All the modern delivery over the internet systems are H264 because there's no legacy technology to replace and bandwidth is at a premium. HEVC will both get adopted both within broadcaster systems, and also for new domestic systems (4k being the obvious one).

Ultimately video over IP (which sounds like a bad plan to start off with) is all about the connection - modern broadcasters use adaptive streaming - the same video is encoded at a variety of bitrates and resolutions and made available to playback clients. The client assesses live buffer fill and decides between low bitrate and poor quality and high bitrate/quality dynamically depending on how the link is performing, fetching small/large files off the server as appropriate. It works very well and the user is left completely unaware that it's happening.

Curiously enough the H264 standard was very forward thinking in this respect and there are lots of clever ways to dynamically control streaming - none of which anyone uses as it's complicated to implement compared to just encoding the same thing at different bitrates.

H265/HEVC is the logical progression in computational complexity vs compression efficiency - definitely here to stay in the video compression industry.

I've run a server at home 24/7 for coming up on a decade. It does all our e-mail, runs a web server, runs a CCTV system and is a filtering proxy for the kids. For a long time it was one of only two Alien Arena master servers. And actually the uptime has been better than the shared hosting we used to have before we went for home serving. There is no additional cost when it comes to adding more web domains (running it as a virtual host), and it can be an ssh tunnelled proxy for when you're away from home.

The downsides?

If it goes down when you're on holiday, it stays down. You'd need someone to have keys to the house to go reset it.

If the hardware fails, it's you that has to fix it. If you run any moderately successful sites from it then you start getting calls. This added pressure can be stressful.

You're solely responsible for keeping it secure, so you'll have to stay on top of that, and keep monitoring it for intrusion. Heaven forbid you accidentally set up an open mail relay. Your ISP would crucify you :)

Most DSL is asymmetric which isn't ideal for servers, as most of the content is outbound. Plus it's easy to hit your maximum DSL monthly bandwidth allowance (vnstat is your friend!). If you don't think you have one, you may well discover in short order that actually, you do ;) Then you end up hunting around for deals that give greater bandwidth allowances. All more hassle!

Then there is the leccy cost, so you'll need a nice lightweight server (and unplug everything from it that isn't a hard drive, CPU or memory). Really this is the least of your worries considering everything else above.

All of that said, I wouldn't be without mine. It's far too useful.

Using a film camera. Then I scan the negatives for double redundancy and write the scans to tape.

Of course, I spend so much time doing backups I never have time to use the source data.

Expensive drone considering £32 will buy you a Hubsan x4 then £4 from Hong Kong for a keychain spycamera stripped and stuck to the underneath = spy drone for £36. And you end up with a stable, smaller quad that is better built (no nasty polystyrene body).

Some of the RC guys are experimenting with FPV for the Hubsan x4, there's a few vids on the forums of people flying it around their houses, first person style using lightweight video cams and TX modules.

Quadrotors can be a world of fun without breaking the bank :)

The Mayan calendar ends on December 21st, and drilling is due to resume into the Ellsworth sub-Antartic lake on the 21st?

http://www.ellsworth.org.uk/

I for one welcome our tiny little waterborn underlords.

You like this.

A little slashdot virtual facebook machine humour for you there ;)

Good flip. I work by the mantra "be nice to people on the way up, so that they will be nice to you when you're on the way down". This was not observed by a couple of bosses of mine (the ones that wave you off with a dismissive hand gesture or consider themselves superior to all other humans) and they've been bitten on the way back down.

Karma can definitely been seen in action in business. Makes me happy to be a human.

Nah screw that, set fire to the waste bins on the way out, at least they'll remember you! ;)

Made my own fuel from waste veg oil since 2008 so largely immune to crude oil prices. Get some funny looks from co-workers, and, increasingly, questions on how to make it.

It started as a hobby, became an economic necessity (which naturally sucked all the fun out of it). I'm such a skinflint that my homebuilt plant includes a still to recover the excess Methanol for re-use in the next batch, which one of my friends refers to as "skinning a fart".

However, the final product is so cheap that even when everyone is on leccy cars I suspect I'll still be trundling about in my old oil burner.

P = V * I

For the purpose of illustration, lets make:

P = pain
V = hardness of slap
I = number of slaps

I'm happy to keep V fixed but increase I until it starts to matter to you too.

This is based on the premise that the announcement is of the board's availability for purchase, and not something more mundane.

I guess we'll all find out at 6am GMT.

Anything that adds cost to PCBs is bit of a no-no - I can't see how the "self-healing" benefit can factor into any PCB design (especially motherboards, which have the least layers possible to reduce cost) unless it is for some specialist application, where using such tech would warrant the extra cost involved.

Cool, but, lets face it - not going to be every day.

It's Lake Nyos and there is a webcam on the plume which updates twice a day over satellite so the team can keep an eye on its height. The carbon dioxide is from magma below the lake, and this is not the only lake affected in this way.