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Media

QuickTime Turns 34 (macworld.com) 1

On Dec. 2, QuickTime turned 34, and despite its origins in Apple's chaotic 1990s (1991 to be exact), "it's still the backbone of video on our devices," writes Macworld's Jason Snell. That includes MP4 and Apple's immersive video formats for Vision Pro. From the report: By the late '80s and early '90s, digital audio had been thoroughly integrated into Macs. (PCs needed add-on cards to do much more than issue beeps.) The next frontier was video, and even better, synchronized video and audio. There were a whole lot of challenges: the Macs of the day were not really powerful to decode and display more than a few frames per second, which was more of a slideshow than a proper video. Also, the software written to decode and encode such video (called codecs) was complex and expensive, and there were lots of different formats, making file exchange unreliable.

Apple's solution wasn't to invent entirely new software to cover every contingency, but to build a framework for multimedia creation and playback that could use different codecs as needed. At its heart was a file that was a container for other streams of audio and video in various formats: the QuickTime Movie, or MOV.

[...] QuickTime's legacy lives on. At a recent event I attended at Apple Park, Apple's experts in immersive video for the Vision Pro pointed out that the standard format for immersive videos is, at its heart, a QuickTime container. And perhaps the most ubiquitous video container format on the internet, the MP4 file? That standard file format is actually a container format that can encompass different kinds of audio, video, and other information, all in one place. If that sounds familiar, that's because MPEG-4 is based on the QuickTime format.

Thirty-four years later, QuickTime may seem like a quaint product of a long-lost era of Apple. But the truth is, it's become an integral part of the computing world, so pervasive that it's almost invisible. I'd like to forget most of what happened at Apple in the early 1990s, but QuickTime definitely deserves our appreciation.

Comment Re:3D printing wasn't the problem (Score 1) 82

I've done my first test of buying a whole pallet of filament straight from a Chinese manufacturer. It's a risk - it could be all junk - but if it's usable, the price advantage is insane. Like $3/kg for PETG at the factory gate (like $5/kg after sea freight and our 24% VAT). Versus local stores which sell for like $30/kg.

Crime

Contractors With Hacking Records Accused of Wiping 96 Government Databases (bleepingcomputer.com) 16

Two Virginia brothers Muneeb and Sohaib Akhter, previously convicted of hacking the U.S. State Department, were rehired as federal contractors and are now charged with conspiring to steal sensitive data and destroy government databases after being fired. "Following the termination of their employment, the brothers allegedly sought to harm the company and its U.S. government customers by accessing computers without authorization, issuing commands to prevent others from modifying the databases before deletion, deleting databases, stealing information, and destroying evidence of their unlawful activities," the Justice Department said in a Wednesday press release. BleepingComputer reports: According to court documents, Muneeb Akhter deleted roughly 96 databases containing U.S. government information in February 2025, including Freedom of Information Act records and sensitive investigative documents from multiple federal agencies. One minute after deleting a Department of Homeland Security database, Muneeb Akhter also allegedly asked an artificial intelligence tool for instructions on clearing system logs after deleting a database.

The two defendants also allegedly ran commands to prevent others from modifying the targeted databases before deletion, and destroyed evidence of their activities. The prosecutors added that both men wiped company laptops before returning them to the contractor and discussed cleaning out their house in anticipation of a law enforcement search. The complaint also claims that Muneeb Akhter stole IRS information from a virtual machine, including federal tax data and identifying information for at least 450 individuals, and stole Equal Employment Opportunity Commission information after being fired by the government contractor.

Muneeb Akhter has been charged with conspiracy to commit computer fraud and destroy records, two counts of computer fraud, theft of U.S. government records, and two counts of aggravated identity theft. If found guilty, he faces a minimum of two years in prison for each aggravated identity theft count, with a maximum of 45 years on other charges. His brother, Sohaib, is charged with conspiracy to commit computer fraud and password trafficking, facing a maximum penalty of six years if convicted.

Comment Re:No kidding (Score 1) 82

Early on, I was overdoing chamber heating, and later discovered that was part of my problem. A blanket and a duvet can get a P1S's chamber over 70C. But if you do that, in my experience, like half an hour or so into the print you'll get heat creep problems and the filament will split & the extruder will just dance around in the air as though it were clogged (though maybe my filament was just garbage... it certainly was *wound* terribly). I ended up using a meat thermometer stuck in through one of the holes to measure temperatures, and then I'dadjust the positioning of one small blanket over the chamber to try to keep it in the mid to upper 50s, and was able to finish big prints that way.

But yeah, whatever means you use, you need some sort of raft and very strong reinforcements.

Comment Re:If we extract the newspeak: (Score 2) 7

Remember that models used from a decade or more ago always make simplifying assumptions, and that those tend to be unquestioned until data shows that they must be. Even now climate models can't handle all the variables known to be needed. Turbulence is *extremely* difficult to handle. And there probably is some "butterfly effect". The way that's normally handled it to run an ensemble of models with slightly different conditions, but they may all make some of the same simplifying assumptions.

Comment Re:As the saying goes (Score 1) 28

Well, panspermia is possible, but not extremely likely. OTOH, if life started on Mars, it could well have spread to Earth on impact debris. The further away, the less likely. But remember that yeast have survived in space conditions for months, perhaps years...and that wasn't in extreme cold (though it was in inactive form).

OTOH, years is different from centuries. And for interstellar trips in a comet, centuries wouldn't be enough.

Comment Re: Life is extremely improbable (Score 1) 28

Those are descendants of LUCA. A better question would be viruses, because in that case we don't really know. (There aren't any ribosomes. [OTOH, if there are descendants of another origin, they've massively adapted.])

OTOH, we haven't checked all life on earth. So assertions about universals should be viewed with that in mind.

Comment Re:Life is extremely improbable (Score 1) 28

No. The mapping of nucleotide sequences onto amino acids isn't predetermined. We've built in the labs versions that are different.

OTOH, the argument still isn't good. It could be a low, but not extremely low, probability. In that case the first one to show up could have a VERY strong advantage. And we haven't checked all life on Earth, so the assertion that they are all the same hasn't really been proven, either.

We are pretty certain that the appearance of life involved some very low probability events, but that there were a lot of environments around with lots of different samples for a long period of time, so a "low probability event" should be expected to show up (even if not any particular low probability event).

Comment Re:Who's Stupid? (Score 1) 82

As was mentioned earlier, this isn't talking about a turbine blade, it's talking about an air intake. Also, "millimeter level"? This isn't the early 2000s. I usually print with a layer thickness of 100 microns, and the printer's control of the Z axis is well finer than that.

The problem is that they made an insane choice of a material for the intake. It was supposed to be ABS-CF, but instead it was apparently PLA. Corn plastic. The stuff people make Warhammer figures and the like out of.

Comment Re:Better info (Score 1) 82

I mean, the fact that PLA's chain is vulnerable to scission by water is in a way nice - not just from a compostability perspective, but from a health perspective too. I don't mind sanding PLA, for example, because PLA microplastics aren't going to build up in your body the way that, say, PETG or ABS might. At 60C, PLA microparticles decompose fully in just 10h. It's significantly slower at lower temperatures, but still, they don't persist. Also, a lot of people like that it's made out of corn rather than petroleum (personally, I don't care).

But yeah, it's pretty insane to use a PLA part on a plane.

Comment Re:Meanwhile (Score 1) 65

Different groups of people designate street crossings and manage school buses. Ideally you're right, it should be fixed. Now get two different groups of people with different priorities to agree.

If you don't like the rule, manage it with school bus routing, but prepare to need twice as many route miles along lots of segments.

Comment Re:3D printing wasn't the problem (Score 1) 82

It's pretty counterintuitive for those used to working with macroscopic fibre composites. For example, glass fibre fill adds more strength than CF fibre fill (CF fibre fill adds more stiffness). Because it's not so much about the strength of the fibres themselves, but rather how well the polymer matrix grips the fibres.

Media

AV1 Open Video Codec Now Powers 30% of Netflix Streaming (tvtechnology.com) 10

Netflix says its open AV1 video codec now powers about 30% of all streaming on the platform and is rapidly becoming its primary delivery format thanks to major gains in compression, bandwidth efficiency, HDR support, and film-grain rendering. TVTechnology reports: The blog by Liwei Guo, Zhi Li, Sheldon Radford and Jeff Watts comes at a time when AV2 is on the horizon. [...] The blog revisits Netflix's AV1 journey to date, highlights emerging use cases, and shares adoption trends across the device ecosystem. It noted that since entering the streaming business in 2007, Netflix has primarily relied on H.264/AVC as its streaming format. "Looking ahead, we are excited about the forthcoming release of AV2, announced by the Alliance for Open Media for the end of 2025," said the authors. "AV2 is poised to set a new benchmark for compression efficiency and streaming capabilities, building on the solid foundation laid by AV1. At Netflix, we remain committed to adopting the best open technologies to delight our members around the globe. While AV2 represents the future of streaming, AV1 is very much the present -- serving as the backbone of our platform and powering exceptional entertainment experiences across a vast and ever-expanding ecosystem of devices."

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