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Comment Re:How to use JustWatch (Score 1) 259

It's broken on desktop when not logged in, but if take a minute to setup a free account suddenly it all starts working properly once it sees there's an account logged in. Yeah it's kinda shitty that you can't really use the site on desktop without an account anymore, I have to wonder how many people they've lost because their first and only experience of the site was that mess and so just didn't know there's an actually functional version hidden away behind a login.

Comment Re:To What End? (Score 2) 60

There's an extra quirk not mentioned in the summary, despite being produced in Canada the show was rendered out at 25fps 576p PAL not NTSC. These D1 tapes are the original PAL masters. I'm sure there are plenty of TV stations across the continent with a dusty old D1 machine sitting in a closet somewhere, but it's specifically finding a such a machine in North America that supports PAL that's the problem. Every DVD release of the show that I'm aware of has been sourced from NTSC tapes, and in fact I remember when Shout Factory released their set they made it clear that they were unable to find any native PAL versions of the episodes to work from so had make do cleaning up the NTSC tapes as best they could.

Comment Was planning on dropping anyway (Score 1) 34

My annual sub to Disney+ runs out in a few months. I had already decided that I wasn't going to renew for a full year again anyway, just switch over to re-subbing a month at a time once or twice a year. When I got the email about the updated terms of service the other day the result was simply me advising my brother that he and his family only had until the end of October to binge through whatever they wanted on my account instead of mid-January like I'd previously told him.

I had previously voted with my wallet by cancelling Netflix, the fact that other people voted en masse with theirs by signing up is their prerogative. I'm disappointed that this is the trajectory the industry is moving in, but not surprised. I'll re-sub there for a month when they drop a new season of Wednesday or Sandman, until then I've still got tons of stuff to watch elsewhere keeping me occupied.

Comment Re:Makes sense (Score 1) 141

President Bush senior kinda stepped in it back in 1992 when he didn't know Australia had this radically different interpretation of the thumbs up, IIRC he gave a real big one out to the crowd just as he was stepping onto Air Force One to leave at the end of a diplomatic trip and got quite the shock at the reaction he got. I don't know if that's still how its generally interpreted down under these days, a lot can change in ~30 years but it was certainly a thing back then.

Comment Re:$350 is way too much... (Score 3, Informative) 92

If I'm doing my math correctly 256x256 pixels on a 1.3" (0.92"x0.92") screen works out to ~278ppi, just a shade lower than the 300ppi common to most current gen ereaders like the latest Kindle Paperwhite. If fact I am unaware of any e-ink device offering more than 300ppi. That said you're generally not holding up a Kindle anywhere near as close to your eyes as these glasses will be so every pixel will matter, these just won't have anywhere near the pixel density you'd need for something getting that close to your eyes to have the same subjective density as something held at a more typical book-reading distance.

Comment Re:Shit Android skins (Score 1) 16

When I was looking at getting a new phone last year I simply narrowed my search to phones that are part of the 'Android One' program; more or less stock Android with monthly security patches guaranteed to keep rolling in for a minimum of 3 years (from hardware release date). The wikipedia entry even has a nice list of all the phones released as part of the program, broken down by year of release. Unfortunately few have actually been marketed here in the west, but most hardware released in 2018 and so far in 2019 have been 'worldwide' variants meaning that even if the manufacturer isn't selling them directly within your country they will still support them if you import one.

I wound up going with a Xiaomi Mi A2 Lite, same hardware and the Redmi 6 Pro that had released earlier in the year just without all the MIUI crap. I figured (rightly) that I could put up with the notch, the slightly old mid-range SOC, and the so-so camera just as long as I've got my headphone jack, dual sim+microsd, and especially that nice big 4000mAh battery. It's worked perfectly fine for me for about a year now (knock on wood)

Comment Re:Increased by 14% (Score 4, Insightful) 195

The Cavendish will still exist long after commercial cultivation becomes unprofitable due to TR4, just like you can still find the Gros Michel growing in its natural habitat today despite its large-scale commercial viability getting gutted by TR1 a century ago. The problem here is monoculture in the commercial banana industry. The situation is not one of a variety of banana at risk of going extinct, its that plantation-style mass cultivation of just one variety is naturally at higher risk to this exact kind of threat.

Comment Re:Too many exclusives!!! (Score 1) 218

Maybe this is an American thing? In Canada Netflix has Star Wars, Star Trek, Marvel movies, etc. It's not often I can't get something on Canadian Netflix because of an exclusive issue. Game of Thrones might not be on there, but I haven't checked.

Netflix Canada has all the same Disney-owned content as Netflix elsewhere at present (that's Disney/Marvel/Star Wars/Pixar/etc), but won't after the Disney/Netflix content deal expires some time next year. Presumably the Marvel Netflix Original shows like Daredevil would stay, but they weren't part of the larger content deal that's expiring.

Any mention of Star Trek being exlusive to this or that platform would be specifically referencing the current series Star Trek Discovery which is exclusive to CBS All Access in the US, Bell Media's Space and Crave services here in Canada, and Netflix everywhere else. Plenty of streaming services carry all the old Star Trek shows, but the new stuff is being walled off to only one provider in any given region.

As for Game of Thrones that's definitely NOT on Netflix, that's HBO. Bell Media has all the exclusive rights to HBO content in Canada locked up tight, both current and classic.

Comment Re:Cloud saves are flawed (Score 1) 51

5GB per save file? WTF are these games saving? Do you have any examples?

NBA 2K18 received a LOT of flack when it showed up on Switch last fall for needing both a 16GB download to play even with the physical cartridge PLUS another 5GB per save file. I'm unaware of any other games with such ludicrously large saves, but there is *one* example

Comment Re:Extremetech = Extremely uninformed (Score 1) 70

But it's not going to be fast enough for 4K data; Class 10 devices are limited to 10MB/s of sequential write performance. Obviously not all phones support shooting in 4K anyway, so whether this is a limitation will depend on what device you plan to plug it into. The 100MB/s speed trumpeted by Western Digital is a reference to read speeds; write speeds are lower and likely closer to the 10MB/s sequential target mentioned above.

A very brief glance at what Class 10 and A1 and U1 rating mean show that this is a hopelessly wrong summary. The card will almost certainly write video (sustained sequential writes) at much higher than 10MB/s. It is rated for 1080p video. It might or might not be able to write 4k video.

This. Class 10 cards are rated for a MINIMUM of 10MB/s sustained write speeds, not a maximum like the summary seems to suggest and most cards from the major manufacturers nowadays still have the old Class 10 even though they actually support drastically faster sustained write speeds.

Comment Re:Optimized for Apps? (Score 4, Insightful) 70

In my experience the stated "supported" capacity on phones and other devices is really just the largest card the manufacturer has actively tested on that device, something they obviously couldn't do if larger cards didn't exist when the device was still in pre-release testing. It doesn't mean larger cards won't work just fine if you pop one in and try yourself, it's just not guaranteed unless the manufacturer goes back to test it as bigger cards come out. The SDXC standard theoretically goes all the way up to 2TB, so anything that supports SDXC cards *might* work just fine with these new cards, no one knows for sure until someone tries.

Comment Re:Again? (Score 1) 135

Yup, Microsoft pulled the same trick as they did to Original Xbox owners again. Aka, announce a console, then after a short period of time announce a second console, radically different and hence by definition incompatible.

Dude, despite the significant upgrades in hardware it's still ultimately just a bunch of x86 CPU cores paired with DirectX compatible graphics running the same OS. It's being presented as a mid-gen upgrade with 100% backwards compatibility, with custom profiles being generated for each and every existing game to ensure that compatibility. No, it is nothing like the Xbox 360 launch.

Comment Re:What about games on non amazon app stores? (Score 2) 25

What about games on non amazon app stores?

Amazon sells those too. When you buy a game on Amazon, all you're really buying is an activation code for the game on whichever platform hosts it (Blizzard / Valve / Ubisoft / Origin).

That's what it's been historically, but they did recently introduced their "Twitch Launcher" app that they plan to have act as their own digital download client. They're not selling anything for it just yet, but they are currently beta testing it as a platform for giving away freebies to Twitch Prime subscribers. Once they start selling games directly on Twitch I can't imagine they'll have many Steam/Origin/Uplay codes for sale when they've got their own digital distribution platform in play.

Comment Re:I really don't understand (Score 1) 82

Uhh, Kindle devices have an SD slot.

https://www.google.com/search?...

Try again when you have even the most basic understanding of the hardware, you shill.

Those are Kindle Fire tablets, try again when you have even the most basic understanding of the difference between general purpose tablets and the e-ink ereaders both the article and the op were referring to.

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