Comment You should see drivers relying... (Score 1) 129
... on early versions of built-in SAT navs and ending up in harbor basins. At least as dangerous but arguably way more entertaining for onlookers. Especially if it was a BMW. 8-)
Comment A little late ... (Score 1) 32
I was a hardcore GOG advocate, because they opposed DRM and offered native Linux runtimes of their games. However, their Linux support was pretty lackluster in recent years. Game versions meant to run on Ubuntu 16 and 18 and unusable on any recent version. About half a year ago, after many attempts to get things running on current Linuxes, I finally caved and moved from GOG to Steam, since they offer a hassle-free Linux experience with a curated central Linux-compliant runtime environment.
I presume GOG has noticed people giving up on GOG and now has decided to follow suit. I hope they can build a compelling experience, but they've lost me for now.
Comment I checked it out IRL (Score 1) 18
A day after I wrote the the post I actually was in Hamburg to meet up with old school friends. My buddy and I went to check out the site afterwards. Quite impressive. They had the street covered in sand and gravel covered with steel plates in order to spread the load more evenly. The bridge has since been moved into place but there are pics videos floating around on the Internet if you want some visual details.
Comment why is this exposed to the net? (Score 1) 47
Submission + - Innocent man jailed 18 months on basis of mistyped userid. (ctvnews.ca)
Submission + - FBI gets voter's IP address in new fraud probe tactic (axios.com)
The FBI recently obtained the IP address of someone who registered online in South Carolina, according to documents first shared with Axios.
Comment Hamburgs massive bridge arrives at it's destinatio (Score 1) 2
Comment Re:Did they have 2 complete crews? (Score 2) 70
They already have a planned rotation. There will be two crews, rotating every four hours. This isn't unlike existing long-haul flights, except that instead of the crews rotating at the same time, they will be on two-hour offsets. One pilot will stay for the first four hours, the other for the first two hours. A replacement will swap in at two hours and stay through the sixth hour, and then the other will swap at four hours and stay through the eighth hour, and so on. Qantas said that this will apply to all flights of 20 hours or more.
Comment Here you can watch it getting moved in a live stre (Score 1) 2
Submission + - Hamburg is replacing a bridge in one huge piece (tagesschau.de) 2
German Tagesschau has an article with pics and video.
Comment Re:If he is found guilty (Score 3, Insightful) 182
If he is an American citizen, he is not compelled to give up his passcode.
The Fifth Amendment starts with "No person
Comment Re:And Nothing of Value was Included... (Score 1) 47
I got Google Play Music for my family back when that was a thing. It was the same price as Spotify, had the same catalog, and included any music on Youtube as well. The fact that it included ad free Youtube was just a bonus. These days that has morphed into Youtube Premium, and I still pay for it. I am mostly there for the music, but the ad free Youtube is not terrible.
The interesting thing is that it is pretty clear that most people just watch the ads. Youtube had $60 billion in yearly revenue last year. More than Disney, NBCUniversal, Paramount, and Warner Brothers combined. Roughly $20 billion of that is credited to Youtube Premium which is bigger than any of its Hollywood competitors.
There's a reason that Peacock is being included with Youtube Premium and not the other way around. Youtube is worth something. Peacock, not so much.
Comment Re:Predictable. (Score 1) 47
Things have changed dramatically since the heyday when everyone had a cable subscription. I used to work for SlingTV (and then Dish), and I had a front row seat as the whole industry imploded. Every year the television networks and movie studios would sit down and renegotiate their contracts. Despite the fact that viewership was always down at least 10% year over year they always wanted price increases. If the cable providers pushed back (as Dish often did) they would lose access to channels, invariably during football season when it mattered most.
You see, as technology started allowing people to purchase their entertainment piecemeal it soon became clear what parts they were willing to pay for, and which parts they weren't willing to pay for. Hollywood thought that people paid for cable subscriptions to watch their scripted television. It turns out that, for most people anyway, the part of television that they were willing to pay for was live sports.
That's why Disney won't sell you ESPN unless you bundle it with everything else that they sell, and that's also why Disney is suing SlingTV for reselling access on a daily basis. SlingTV's "sports pass" allows you to pay for just the games that you want at a ridiculous price. Disney should be stoked, but instead it has sued because it wants to force sports fans to continue to pay for their other channels.
Almost no one is watching traditional scripted television these days. The few hits that the networks do have tends to be reality TV stuff like "Dancing with the Stars," where the audience can watch people compete in real time. Youtube (not YoutubeTV) has at least half again as many viewers as their next highest competitor (Netflix), at any time during the day, on traditional 10 foot devices (your living room TV). That's not counting people watching Youtube on their phones or their computers. Youtube is killing scripted content on living room televisions, during prime time. During the day its an order of magnitude worse.
Take a look at nielsen.com and take a look for yourself. It's absolutely grim. Look at the shows that are doing relatively well, they are all either sports or sports commentary. That's literally the only reason that anyone watches anything besides YouTube and Netflix.
Apple spent over $20 billion building up a content catalog. At their height they were spending nearly $5 billion a year making shows. They made some great shows and got rave reviews. Amazon spends $1 billion a year for the rights to Thursday night football. That is arguably the worst football game of the week. However, Prime generally gets as many viewers for a single game as Apple has total subscribers, including all of the free subscriptions that Apple gives away. It's not just Apple that is shifting away from scripted television either. Take a look at any of the streaming sites (including Netflix) and you will see that all of their recent moves have been to try and compete for the sports market. That's definitely what YouTube is doing by bundling Peacock.
Hollywood is currently circling the drain. Everyone is up for sale right now. No one is watching scripted television. They certainly aren't paying for it.
Comment Misleading headline. (Score 1) 229
This is mostly just civil slander lawsuits ramping up. People are getting way to comfortable stepping on other peoples rights and slandering in what is basically a public forum.