I've been watching the Rockford Files on Samsung TV and the commercials and syndication cuts have been getting on my nerves. I decided to get the series on Blu ray and ordered a set on eBay that I didn't realize was from Mill Creek.

I figure I'll just rant and post my warning here.

The Packaging-Not as bad as I have seen in the past from Mill Creek, but there are 4 discs per season and only 2 disc spindles per case. This is annoying and may or may not scratch the top discs over time. There are also 2 of the Blu Ray cases that have slightly different cases than the rest. Not the biggest deal in the world but still just a lack of attention to any kind of detail. The cardboard case that holds all the Blu-ray cases is incredibly flimsy and not glued or printed with any gloss. The slipcovers are kind of shoddy too.

The Content-No special features, no commentary tracks, NOT EVEN SUBTITLES! Half the reason I like physical media is stuff like that. At least the scans are nice. Clean and pre

I don't know whether it's a popular opinion or not, but I think Dr. Pulaski was a great character and I found her much more interesting than Dr. Crusher. I don't know if it was down to the writing or the performance but Pulaski is one of the best parts of season 2 and I would have been happy to see her character continue.

She wasn't very nice to Data but that bit of friction between some of the main characters of the show was welcome, especially in the early seasons. And her performance in Unnatural Selection is a moment in the series my mind returns to often.

How about it? Do we like Dr. Pulaski? What's her best moment on the show?

I use heliboard for my keyboard and quite enjoy it but on the 2023 RAZR+ it only allows Gboard to be used on the outer display. No other keyboard will fail to crash on the front screen.

I know its a niche issue but this is Android. Surely there's a way around it. Either with some kind of context-aware keyboard that only used Gboard on the outer display or some way to get other keyboards working on the front display.

I run a Windows 11 VM on xcp-ng to do testing and Windows specific graphic and video work. I use an old R9 390 in passthrough mode right now but it's running out of steam.

I'm particularly interested in the A380 series of gpus as they have a lot of the modern compute and video encoding features for around $100.

Before I pull the trigger I just wanted to know if anyone has had much experience with ARC GPUs in a VM passthrough scenario. I see in their official docs that resizable BAR is a requirement and I didn't know whether that is handled properly in a virtual environment or on XCP-NG specifically.

Any experience you're willing to share would be most appreciated.

Thanks!

I went out and got the AMD 7800xt to do ultrafast AV1 encoding of large h264 and hevc files.

I am able to select VCN acceleration options in Windows but not Linux Handbrake.

I have tried the flatpak and both the Pop_OS and ppa deb packages of Handbrake. I have the latest mesa driver and am running the most current version of PopOS 22.04. I've had no issues gaming at all, just with picking the hardware encoder in Handbrake. Any ideas or rabbit holes I can go down?

My first Android phone was the HTC One M8. I got it because at the time it made my iPhone 5 look like a chump. Bigger screen, unrivaled stereo front speakers, much more internal storage you name it.

I also got the LG G series after that because I loved that the battery was removable (I ended up with an enormous aftermarket battery pack that lasted 3.5 days of constant use) and the buttons were all on the back of the phone.

I got the Essential PH1 because the ceramic body was nice and the promise of the 2 pin magnetic accessory port was really neat (only a 360 camera was released for it but still).

I got a Pixel 4a because every Android phone at that point was a 6 inch rectangle with side buttons and a fingerprint reader but at least it was cheap and still had a headphone jack.

I'm glad to see flip phones returning because I think it is giving Android back what has always been its biggest advantage to me which is unique hardware features.

Personally, the HTC M8 speakers with the

Of course the real-world reason is that it's cheaper to shake the camera and set off a firecracker than to build a scale model just to paint a burn scar on the side.

But my thoughts were always that the in-universe reason had to do with the modular nature of federation starships.

In almost every episode, someone on a starship either suggests rerouting something, shunting power from one thing through another, bypassing something, compensating for one power source with another etc.

It seems that in space, being able to re-configure everything at a moment's notice is important, and to be able to do that, you need easy, fast and direct, access to everything, therefore it needs to be immediately accessible, ergo high voltage power directly behind the controls.

The lack of seatbelts goes right along with it. If a console blows up in someone's face, the next guy over needs to be able to quickly move down and take over. Don't need to have to be fighting with seatbelts when nobody is steeri

I don't know whether this is an unpopular opinion or not but I actually think that the way Tasha Yar died gave the show much higher stakes throughout it's entire run. Here is the chief security officer, main bridge crew, tragic back story, potential love interest for the robot character just slapped down by the monster of the week. It made all the subsequent dangerous situations seem much more dire because "they were willing to kill off someone in the main cast". I also think that Yesterday's Enterprise was an awesome send off for that character that let them have a heroic ending for her after all.

It was a shame because I think Denise Crosby could have been awesome as a recurring character and in my opinion, we didn't get a great strong female character in the main cast (until DS9 which is an embarrassment of riches in that department). But I maintain that casually killing off Tasha Yar made my first watchthrough of TNG much more exciting.

I don't however like the additional stretch

At the end of the day, its pretty clear to me that Youtube is going to lose the war on adblocking. Either by hook or by crook those that want to use Adblockers are going to keep doing it no matter what.

And to be clear, I am not trying to equate Adblocking to video piracy. To me, the fact that I choose to go to the bathroom during a commercial of a tv show doesn't constitute piracy and Adblocks just automate that process for me on Youtube. I would also never click on an ad purposefully, no matter what it is for.

With all that being said, I am a hopeless cause and I don't think that anything will convince me to buy YouTube premium, but I also used to think that about MP3s.

My real question to anyone reading this is, as the devil's advocate, what could YouTube do with ads or otherwise that would solve the "service problem" of "YouTube piracy"? And furthermore, is there any situaton where you would do anything other than block all Youtube Ads immdediately and with extreme prejudice?

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I have a Razr flip phone that I often use folded halfway (laptop style) and watch videos on the top half while I do other things.

Certain video apps center the content across both halves of the screen and I have to activate split screen and put a random app on the bottom half of the screen.

Long story short, is there a way to split screen only 1 app to only the top half of the screen? I've tried to search for something but I'm coming up empty.

Pretty much every pair of Sketchers shoes now has memory foam soles and everyone seems to think they are great but I hate them.

They are really hot, the foam is like a layer of insulation.

The top of the memory foam soles is somewhat elastic so it's really smooth and slippery so your socks slide around inside

They are no more comfortable than regular shoes and in fact I think they provide less arch support since they are squishy compared to shoes with harder foam.

And most of all the memory foam gets smashed and wears out in no time with some shoes having the foam glued in so replacing the insole is impossible.

I just can't fathom how they are so popular.

Apologizes in advance for the wall of text.

I wanted to let people know my experience about the Razr+ because I don't think it's got a ton of reviews out there and I "bought" one impulsively the second I could because of how cool it looked. Im not going to go into a ton of technical stuff, more just the experience of using it.

The time of the flip phones is on us once again and the Razr+ and the upcoming Galaxy Flip 5 are finally adding something that to me, is a legitimate game changer for smartphones.

To me the Galaxy S3/iPhone 4 solidified the smartphone as we know it and since then, other than the last gasps of BlackBerry, there hasn't been much innovation other than features/price. Fundamentally we are still using touch-screen rectangles with 3 buttons.

Even the first generations of the smart flip phones were just a folding version of the same rectangle. With this latest generation, the large second screen is finally changing the game again.

The mini second screen on the fron