YouTube is following Netflix by reducing streaming quality due to coronavirus:
YouTube is following Netflix's lead in cutting the quality of its video streaming from high definition to standard in the European Union, it confirmed to CNET, as the bloc's leaders try to reduce strain on the internet during the coronavirus outbreak. Since more people are working from home and children are staying out of school, internet usage has spiked.
"We are in ongoing conversations with the regulators, governments and network operators all over Europe, and are making a commitment to temporarily default all traffic in the UK and the EU to standard definition," the Google-owned video streaming service said in a statement.
The service said it had seen "only a few usage peaks," but is reducing the default quality in the EU for 30 days. Video quality can still be manually adjusted.
European Commissioner Thierry Breton called on streaming services to switch to standard definition "when HD is not necessary" on Thursday. YouTube decided to reduce its default streaming quality after Breton spoke to Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai and YouTube boss Susan Wojcicki, as previously reported by Reuters.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday March 21 2020, @03:26AM (9 children)
Have you seen Picard? I'm at episode 4 and waiting for some things to arrive so I can watch the remaining 5 episodes I have pirated. Awhile back I asked in a journal if Star Trek: Discovery was worth watching, and I fucking ignored it outright. Well, I like Patrick Stewart even if he did go full-retard with his pro-globohomo, anti-Trump comments; so this series deserves a shot.
Let's start with the theme. The theme song is not the brass-fanfare stuff (and thankfully also unlike Enterprise with that obnoxious Sammy Hagar "Flying High" bullshit) that you'd expect from the canon successor to Star Trek: TNG and is more like something you'd hear in Chrono Cross or a Final Fantasy game, though I find it to be a bit too uncertain and melancholy considering the current times.
Patrick Stewart's senile weary-as-fuck look was totally out of place in Nemesis, where you got that "just fucking retire already" vibe. Picard plays upon Piccard's age rather nicely, even going so far as some borderline senility-jokes, but unlike in Nemesis where he looked totally out-of-place Patrick Stewart plays to his age as giving off an almost goofy, lovable-old-grandpa vibe. The character of captain Picard was always idealistic but cold, in this show he's warmer and more emotional and his English Shakespearean acting has been masterfully retooled to evoke a character like a reformed Ebeneezer Scrooge or some otherwise-friendly character from some Dickens novel.
But since this is an Ethanol-fueled review, and these are modern times, some things must be pointed out: First and foremost, this is a series of seriously cunty women, you can expect a lot of "girl power" in this one. There is a lot of Picard being lectured by cunty women while he stares at his toes. Additionally, in the first episode, little time was wasted before the first patronizing example of a Black male/White female relationship, although that scene kicks off a good action sequence before you get enough time to roll your eyes.
Like DS9, there are elements of spirituality and forces unknown, but unlike that in DS9 this spirituality seems cold, mechanical, almost Lovecraftian; and I mean that in the best possible way. The flashback scene where the synth goes rogue on Mars is short but pure nightmare fuel, and it appears that the synths in that case were modeled after The Coomer. [gstatic.com] We also discover that Romulans, for reasons, don't utilize AI in their technology and that their ships' computers are limited to only numeric computations. Again, for reasons.
Lots of eye candy in the user interfaces depicted in the show. Makes you wonder how stupid and hokey those actors felt when filming, flailing their hands around like retards, and the UI's are more smartphone-like than in previous series -- lotta vertical and horizontal swiping etc. Definitely looking forward to seeing the rest of the series even if the dialogue could have been better-written.
Anyway, these times are good times for torrents.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 21 2020, @04:19AM
One unfortunate side-effect of the Corona Situation: Extended Ethanol_fouled posts.
(Score: 3, Informative) by epitaxial on Saturday March 21 2020, @05:14AM (3 children)
It starts to get better. The episode where the captain dressed in a pimp outfit and Seven showed up was awful. Half the series was spent tracking down Maddox and guess what happens two minutes after he is found? It gets better on the cube with the Romulan elf wielding his sword in an era of energy weapons. In episode 9 we learn an Android has learned to mind meld...
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 21 2020, @06:45AM
Yeah at this point i'm kinda hoping the Romuans kill everyone and we can all go home.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 21 2020, @09:33PM (1 child)
Literally a few episodes before they are hanging out with Riker and Deanna where Deanna says she can sense nothing emotionally from Soji, implying that their artificial bodies, regardless of if you consider the 'soul' aspect, do not operate on the same biological principles as telepathy capable races. If that is true, then the events a few episodes later involving a vulcan mind meld either imply telepathy is possible (since Vulcan mind melds were an extension of their limited telepathic abilities), meaning betazoid empathy should have been possible, or that they can't keep consistency over 5 episodes, not unlike the canonicty issues between Relics and Generations, or Enterprise and the previous Trek series. Or Voyager and its Time Travel finale.
A more interesting Parallel, for anyone who has read the novel 'Blade Runner' is based off (PKD's Do Androids dream of Electric Sheep?), the parallel of human acting androids becoming independent, but also incapable of empathizing with humans, leading to the potential destruction of the human race really makes Picard Decker, and that romulan guy the origami swan folding detective. The rest of the characters, while somewhat itneresting are entirely secondary to the plot.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Sunday March 22 2020, @04:30AM
I haven't seen it. I don't know who mind-melded with whom.
But I can imagine androids doing a mind-meld as basically induction networking. Which might require an updated driver.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 21 2020, @08:17AM
After Star Trek: Discovery, there will never be a new Star Trek series that is not woke trash. You should have seen it coming.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Saturday March 21 2020, @11:36AM (2 children)
Well these are indeed extraordinary times if Ethanol-Fueled feels inspired to contribute something positive to the conversation.
On a serious note, if we don't respond to Woke by immediately switching it off, they will only produce more Woke. They consider it like bitter medicine that's good for everybody and which they must keep ramming down everybody's throats. Just say no.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 21 2020, @12:20PM (1 child)
The wheel of time series they are making right now is so Woke it is likely none of them sleep. Showrunner Rafe Judkins has said “As much as possible, our cast should look like America will in a few hundred years — a beautiful mix of white, brown, black and everything in between.” which makes you wonder if he has read the series with a massive infection of social justice in case anyone is offended by the series as it was written decades ago in a more darker and less friendly LGBTI time.
The author of the series is noted to have modeled the characters on famous actors. Egwene was described as Audrey Hepburn at age 18. Nynaeve was described as a young Jacqueline Bisset and Perrin Aybara was a young Val Kilmer. Andor is the the local equivalent of medieval England. This must be fixed, of course. We can't go around making a series after an author has died and actually create a show on the screen as it is in the books. We must bow to the struggles of our society on this planet at this time and show in this creation that we have evolved past our history.
What I find really fantastic is that in a series renowned for not having the crappy racist attitudes we see every day has managed to introduce them right from the start. It says a lot about our society.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Monday March 23 2020, @12:00AM
It's interesting to witness how contemporary movies and series feature tons of mental masturbations and citations and subtexts while the end result manages to look shallower than an early 80s b-movie.
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