As the VP8 vs x264 test is using SSIM, I found these important from the article about encoder cheating.

3. Making invalid comparisons using objective metrics. I explained this earlier in the linked blog post, but in short, if you’re going to measure PSNR, make sure all the encoders are optimized for PSNR. Equally, if you’re going to leave the encoder optimized for visual quality, don’t measure PSNR — post screenshots instead. Same with SSIM or any other objective metric. Furthermore, don’t blindly do metric comparisons — always at least look at the output as a sanity test. Finally, do not claim that PSNR is particularly representative of visual quality, because it isn’t.

How to spot it: Encoders with psy optimizations, such as x264 or Theora 1.2, do considerably worse than expected in PSNR tests, but look much better in visual comparisons.

4. Lying with graphs. Using misleading scales on graphs is a great way to make the differences between encoders seem larger or smaller than they actually are. A common mistake is to scale SSIM linearly: in fact, 0.99 is about twice as good as 0.98, not 1% better. One solution for this is to use db to compare SSIM values.

The Apollo project, even though run by NASA, was really a military project. It was an extension of the Cold War. It was all about beating the Soviet Union, and not about the science of getting to the Moon.

Any project to the Moon, to be cost effective, would have to use existing technologies. And it's questionable if the the President and Congress will fund NASA enough to develop those technologies.

10% taller visually? I think that's because that both videos were encoded at 704x576. That gives us an 11:9 aspect ratio for both, however the H.264 version has a 4:3 display aspect ratio set, so that it looks correct. It would be better if they had used square pixels for their raw source, so we don't need to compare anamorphic displaying of the videos as well.