DVD is better than Blu-ray in that regard - I’ve ripped DVDs that look like they fell off a truck and got run over multiple times and had no problem, meanwhile about 1 out of 5 Blu-rays I got from Netflix would have problems despite looking pristine. It has to do with the data density, Blu-ray packs so much more in the same amount of space, one microscopic scratch wipes out so much data…

Of course some DVDs suffer from bad materials. I was re-ripping my collection recently, and I have a few that have sat in a closet untouched for years, not a scratch on them, but the drive won’t even recognize there’s a disc. Probably oxidation of the reflective layer.

VHS was kind of 2.5 thanks to macrovision…

Yo ho!

That’s just single layer - dual layer is something like 8.4 if memory serves (which it often doesn’t…)

Wow, I don’t even remember that. I’ve been playing DVDs on a computer basically forever, which rarely obeyed such restrictions…

Tell that to my employer… We moved to a bigger office a little over a year ago. The old office was cramped, but it was reasonably quiet. Those of us who are on the phones were in a corner pretty well shielded from everything else. The new place is one huge continuous expanse, and we’re right in the middle of it. And it’s what I would call cheap and unfinished, but a commercial realtor would call it “modern industrial” meaning you can see all the wiring and ductwork and such- and bare concrete. Which makes sound carry throughout and echo. Just the other day my boss had to go hush a gaggle of developers that were congregating 20 feet away and laughing uproariously.

a more useless application of electrons

Microsoft is worse… Have a problem, google it, find a link that has a promising summary, click it- “try Windows 11!” Because that’s what dead links do.

under the age of 40

I’m pushing 50 and I won’t call if there’s a website…

My wife… She will never stop buying from Amazon no matter how shitty they become. She was refusing to go to Wendy’s for a while because they were considering surge pricing, she swore up and down she would not reward a company for doing that - so I said what about Amazon? How often does prime get you free shipping anymore? And with streaming, now you have to watch ads when you didn’t before… But of course that’s all “different”.

Fahrenheit is fine for temperatures that humans can experience in our environment (and expect to survive, at least for a little while…)

I’ve worked a lot of different jobs over the years, some well in my skill set, some well outside, and if there’s one thing I’ve noticed, it’s that with very few exceptions, knowledge and skills matter very little, what matters most is sucking up to the boss, a skill I am exceedingly bad at. Interestingly enough, one of the jobs where skill mattered most was construction, even when I worked for my uncle, he barely cut me any breaks. He once said “you hammer like old people fuck”. Not to mention the number of times he yelled at me because I was shit with a tape measure. “Cut it 3 times and it’s still too short”. Yeah nepotism didn’t help me there.

I live in a suburb to the east of Phoenix. I wouldn’t even consider a job on the west side. Nothing to do with Europe, just the reality of a large city.

Weight does not affect orbit. It affects the amount of fuel needed to reach orbit, and therefore cost, but not the orbit itself.

Having worked in the financial industry for many years, I’m betting this has more to do with security than performance. Timeout before your screen locks is ridiculously short - you could be reading something, therefore not moving your mouse, then your screen locks, and you have to put in your password to unlock it. Then there’s the nature of call center work, if you’re not super busy, you might have a few minutes between calls, but when one comes in, you have to be immediately ready for it, not sitting there typing an overly complex password while an impatient customer is trying to give you all their information right away before you can take it down … so I totally get the usefulness of a mouse jiggler. I wrote my own in Java way back when- actually it didn’t jiggle the mouse, it was simpler to simulate a benign keypress, but same effect. I wrote it myself because I couldn’t download one, any reputable site that I might get one from was blocked- but who knows, if I hadn’t had the knowledge to write it, I might have been more motivated to find one, any one, any way, and that of course is a big nono- that’s how keyloggers and shit like that end up compromising systems and leaking millions of passwords and/or credit card numbers… So I get why the company is concerned, even though I don’t care.

I’m about your size- I was comfortable in a Mini Cooper. I still regret trading it in.

car decided a reflection was an imminent collision risk and braked hard on the motorway

I had that almost happen once- it didn’t actually brake, but it did the very loud “omg we’re gonna die” alert, freaked out my wife & kids. Then there’s the fun of fighting with the lane keeping assist when it wants to follow the seams in the concrete rather than the painted lines… Fortunately that “feature” can be disabled.

It’s pretty well established that women tend to get into more accidents than men, but they tend to be minor fender benders that don’t cost all that much, while men tend to cause accidents very rarely, but when we do, multiple vehicles are destroyed and people die, and that’s a great deal more expensive in the long run. So you haven’t had an at fault accident in 20 years, doesn’t mean you won’t destroy a school bus tomorrow.

A lot of people don’t seem to understand that google chrome isn’t the internet and what exactly a browser is.

It’s been that way for a lot longer than chrome has been the big one, it used to be the same with internet explorer…

That could at least be somewhat useful… It’s more like grabbing some random stranger and asking what their aunt thinks might be on your mum’s shopping list.

Looks like we found the AI…