One thing that's clear from the comparison is that x265 and AV1 both have a marked reduction in sharpness around the fine details. They appear blurred and smeared. In the JPEG version, more sharpness is retained compared to the x265 and AV1, although with more noise in the form of macro blocks. I'd still take the JPEG version over the x265 or AV1 version for whatever settings they happen to be using. That said, the amount of macro blocks showing up indicates very high compression. I've played around with JPEG compression in the past and for anything over quality 70, they wouldn't be noticeable like they are here.

It's eye opening to see mobile (iOS and Android) makes up about 43% and desktops only (Windows and Mac) only about 55%. I'm assuming Linux is a lot of the "Other" at 0.7%.

Amazon Logistics has been by far the worst carrier experience I have ever had. I mean bar none. Packages not getting delivered, packages arriving days late, delivery attempts to a business 3-4 hours after closing, etc. Claims of making delivery attempts to my business multiple times in a day which has a receptionist at the front desk all day during business hours.

I did eventually get these issues fixed with Amazon after a string of complaints and them de-prioritizing Amazon Logistics on my account. But it's far from a unique experience. The official Amazon forums are flooded with complaints that go back over a year.

The whole thing about using Amazon and Prime is that you know whatever you buy will be there in two days, hassle free, no issue with returns, etc. But that two day thing is key. If the delivery network is crappy it'll kill Amazon's business. They really need to get that sorted out before they start trying to sell the service to other companies.

Team Fortress 2 is a decedent of Quake/Quake World/Team Fortress. It's a few years old, but still one of the more popular games on Steam. It usually has 70,000-80,000 concurrent players around peak time. It's also free to play so no cost to try it.

They've been selling various versions of the Atari Flashback since 2004. There've been more than a dozen different versions of it and they've been releasing like clockwork before the holidays every year. We already know the Atari Flashback 8 Gold is out in September. I seriously doubt they have 2 retro consoles coming simultaneously. I also doubt they have a "mysterious" marketing campaign going for a console that's already been announced.

http://www.ign.com/articles/20...

I'm ok with eBooks for borrowing them from a library, but I absolutely won't buy more to own. I've been burned enough times now over the years that I'd much rather have a paper copy. Two particular instances cement it for me:

In the early 2000s there was an eBook written about behind the scenes Star Trek. It included a lot of interesting info and photos. The only way to acquire it was through an old Microsoft reader and it was heavily DRMed. It was locked to that device and needless to say it won't work on newer machines and is effectively lost to me.

The most recent example is a book I bought on Amazon. I found that having books on my phone was convenient so bought maybe a dozen or so for their Kindle app. You're supposed to be able to lend them to a friend through Amazon. However, a lot of authors/publishers don't allow lending. I ended up buying a paperback copy and gave that to my friend. After that, I vowed never to purchase another eBook unless it's completely DRM free and in a standard format, which basically means I won't be buying many (any?) eBooks.

You're really jumping the gun based on editorialized title. There is one known instance of this ocurring. One! Out of millions of Nintendo Switches. Even if there are a handful of units that do this, it's certainly not wide spread.

Myself and a number of friends got a Switch on launch day. None of them are bent, scratched, or melted into a pile of good. None of them have wifi or joycon connection issues. And certainly that seems to be the case for most people.

While it sucks to be the guy to get a defective one, it does seem to be isolated. You can tell because this photo keeps getting reposted over and over, but never followed but a bunch of other people posting photos of theirs doing the same thing. It's a non story, and I'm sure Nintendo will fix/replace it.

I don't update for a very specific reason - it's difficult to rollback system and app updates on phones. I've run into the issue a couple times where I updated an app and the interface completely changed or features that I used were removed. So my policy now is that I only update if there's a critical security issue or an app no longer works because of a change in a web API it's using.

They migrated here too. There are no humans native to North/South America.

You can't follow guidelines that don't exist. Those were created specifically to hinder Axanar after the lawsuit was already in progress.

Silly policy? A fire on a plane in the air is usually fatal to everyone on board. A Galaxy Note 7 did catch on fire on a plane, but fortunately it was on the ground and they could evacuate. In the air, there's no where to go. That's why they banned them.

Verizon use to offer 1 or 2 year contracts, so that's what anyone who had Unlimited would have had. After that it's month to month and can be terminated by either side at any time. At this point, even folks who got a 2 year contract just before they stopped offering Unlimited have been off contract for 4 years. Verizon continuing to renew it every month is just to keep their customers. Now they've decided it's no longer in their interest to continue to offer that to some customers, so they're terminating it for users who go beyond a certain threshold.

On the one hand I agree with your argument. On the other, it's the reason why a lot of the US has poor internet speeds. Maybe "a company can continue to be profitable" isn't sufficient. I think the consumer impact/benefit needs to be considered as well. I wouldn't argue turning off FM provides much consumer benefit though.

Some of that may have been true in the 1990s. With th advancements in video processing though, even badly faded prints can be rescued. Fans have already done several 4K preservation ls from good quality 35mm theatrical prints. The original camera negatives may be too damaged/degraded, but I would guarantee there's an interpositive/internegative or LPP print sitting around somewhere in the Lucasfilm archives that's good enough for a 4K scan with some restoration. Even better if there are multiple copies with different damage that can be used to remove scratches.

Even before the fan made 4K 35mm scans, some restorations (harmy's) used the Blu-ray and HDTV broadcasts to get a 1080p version of most of the film with a few upscales from the (poor) DVD release of the originals. If fans can manage that, surely a studio like Disney/Lucasfilm can come up with a 4K scan and do some basic film restoration / color correction.

He may have damaged the original negatives, but fans have tracked down 35mm prints and done 4K scans of them. There's a number of fan restorations that use these. At the very least Lucasfilm has higher quality 70mm theatrical prints kicking around, but I would bet there's at least one original internegative/interpositive around from the original printing.

Assuming even that's not the case, they can do what the fan restorations have done and simply use what's left of the original and pull the missing bits from higher quality theatrical prints. I seriously doubt Lucas went and found every high quality version of the originals and destroyed them. When he's said that he's referring to the camera negatives which were recut to match the special edition. But there are doubtless numerous high quality copies that could provide a great 4K scan.