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You are gonna hate me now, but I grew up reading Dean Koontz and Stephen King years before the librarian at my middle suggested Lovecraft, so 12? My first Stephen King was Night Shift, with the eye in the middle of a mummified hand; Jerusalem's Lot ruined my ability to sleep. For some strange reason Lovecraft comforted me but King disturbed me lol -- My first Lovecraft reading was The Festival.

Anyway, it's my mom's fault, i jus read whatever she had lying around the house, which also included Mary Higgins Clark, Robert Ludlum, Danielle Steel, Michael Crichton, and who even knows what else.

Totally agree in having absorbed the material rather than fully understood. I mean shit, how does a 4th grader even under The Rising Sun? It's just shocking and strange. Like d3coding a new language.

I also read a lot of young adult thriller suspense books, notably Alfred Hitchcock's young readers books and short story collections. Ray Bradbury collections, random Asimov Foundation books, and old copies of Analog, that my dad would buy from local library sales. (Thas how poor people shop for books hahaha) He was the old school scifi guy, but not at all into horror.

I suppose I don't mind hacks. Reading the letters of Oscar Wilde changed my opinions on EVERYTHING. If Wilde belongs to the criminal class or what Danny Devito's character Frank terms the "Fringe" class, there must be some saving grace even in the intellectual crime of the hack writer.

that was awesome.
i hope del toro gets to make "mountains of madness",because i love the imagery he used in hellboy,which was VERY lovecraftian.

i stumbled upon lovecraft from my dad,and by accident.
my dad had a ton of the those sci-fi,horror pulp magazines from the 40's and 50's in the basement.

i think i was around 9 or 10 and my dad had given me the job of clearing out the basement,because he was going to remodel it..and i remember coming across this old,and dusty cardboard box filled with those books.

i spent the entire afternoon reading..and reading..and reading.
and it was lovecraft that i fell in love with,although at my young age he was not an easy read.you have to absorb lovecraft rather than actually read him.

this was the weekend i also discovered isaac asimov,ray bradbury,fred saberhagen and jack l chalker.

so i fell in love with lovecraft before stephen king.

and then my big sister tried to introduce me to dean r koontz.
and well..fuck dean r koontz,fucking hack and plagiarist.

seriously..fuck dean r koontz.

Lol. Lebowski.

I'm studying mechanical engineering (hons) with masters in biomedical engineering. It's a head fuck. I don't think anyone offers firearm design as a major itself.

The trigger finger is the primary safety (debatable), and there is usually a secondary safety and sometimes a tertiary safety. It's true that not having it is different than removing it but sometimes they are redundant. For example the palm safety (a tertiary safety on most guns) is often pinned to turn it off permanently because it didn't add any real benefit.

The particular gun in question looks like a CZ-75. A little hunting in the Youtube comments and other people agree. This particular model originally had a firing pin block which was eventually removed on later models (that have the same internals) because it wasn't needed (probably because they also have a thumb safety). This allowed for the short reset disconnector to be put in place (which is a factory part). So CZ ships two lines of the same gun - one with the firing pin block and one without. You're not suddenly unsafe if you remove it from the model that has it. With the quality of the video the way it is though, it could end up being another gun entirely.

Yes, x-ray diffraction is not the only method. It was an example only. The point being that your average gun owner and gunsmiths don't use these sorts of techniques as regular preventative maintenance. And they don't need to, guns are cheap and replacement parts are cheap. If something breaks you replace it. Some parts are replaced on a maintenance schedule (springs spring to mind). Most people never fire enough rounds through their firearms to need to replace anything.

Factory condition firearms malfunctioning is not rare. Factory condition firearms self firing is quite rare. But several model firearms have been affected over the years (meaning millions of firearms). But usually the problem is with a small batch of firearms from within those millions but they always do a blanket recall.

I agree, unintentional firing of a gun is almost always user error.

I still don't believe their is enough information from the video and accompanying text to make a judgment call on this guy.

That's not true either. Following their directions doesn't mean you won't be negligent. Not following their direction doesn't mean you are negligent. You're conflating things. Each situation needs to be judged on it's own merits.

Removing safety features is not negligence unless you make the firearm unsafe. None of my firearms have a firing pin block from the factory. They're all safe firearms. My triggers have been lightened - they're still safe firearms. I've seen triggers lightened so much that they are unsafe. As before, each instance is judged on it's own merits.

I'll soon finish my mechanical engineering degree (and don't you know it, I'm looking for a job in firearm designing), so I do know a little about this stuff. Whilst with the proper equipment you can detect crack propagation or premature wear, this is not done on consumer products like firearms. That's why I wrote "this sort of item". Unless you're going to spend more money than the firearm is worth trying to detect cracks, you won't know it has cracked until you visually identify it.

Sure proper cleaning and gun inspection is part of having a safe, well functioning firearm. But don't fool yourself into thinking it's an aeroplane or space shuttle in inspections. Go ask your local gunsmith - the best one you can find - how many times he's done x-ray diffraction on a firearm for preventative maintenance. Chances are he's going to say zero.

Spend 5 seconds on google and I know you will find multiple videos of factory condition firearms discharging unintentionally. You'll also find recall information affecting millions of firearms - firearms at risk of unintentional discharge.

I should have qualified "much". More or less than 2500 rounds a year?

Tarkin's eyes still seemed "soulless" somehow. I hope they continue to tweak the effects before the Blu-Ray release, but I doubt it. I think Kathy Kennedy and crew think they nailed it. For me, it was close but no cigar.

The Baltimore Sun lets Bill Binney and Ray McGovern weigh in on the topic of hacking: Emails were leaked, not hacked

I don't fancy the lack of specificity in the use of "emails". There are no "emails" in this regard. There are the DNC emails, the Podesta emails, the Clinton server emails (incl Clinton SecState, Clinton GI, Clinton personal) -- did I miss any?

Clinton server emails were made public through FOIA requests directed at the FBI and later mirrored by WikiLeaks, Podesta emails were acquired through Podesta being a dumbass and falling for a rookie spear fishing scheme.

Only the DNC emails could even qualify as a potential "hack", with Assange on the record as it being a leak.

Man, I'm suuuper late to this party....
Anyways, Die Hard is and is not a Christmas movie at the same time. And it depends on your definition what makes a Christmas movie.
I'm gonna take an insane detour here that'll make sense.
Is Star Wars Episode 4 a science fiction movie?
That setting is futuristic, sure, must be sci-fi then. Lasers, Spaceships, Robots, the works. The checklist is done. Sci-Fi.
But what are the themes it touches upon, what is the story?
A young farmer's boy (naturally an adoptred orphan) named Luke is dragged into a rebellion against an evil king (Palpatine) by accident. When the boy get's hold of a pretty princess' (RIP Carrie Fisher) message to an old ally and menthor (Obi) through the fault of her two comic-relief servants (Robot-slaves), he decides to seek the adventure he's yearning for. He finds the old man (by fucking up) and both seek the next harbor to board a ship to join the resistance. The hire smuggler/pirate/bandit/nerfherder Han and his foreign friend Chewie and cross paths with the black knight Lord Vader, the evil kings enforcer. Hijinks ensue, princess rescued, the magic castle/ship/train of the evil king get's destroyed and everyone gets a medal.
What's exactly sci-fi here?
That could play out in medieval times. Or ancient greece. Or the wild west. Or on Christmas.
The setting and the genre are two different things and both determine what you'll label a story with.
Alien is a horror movie, a slasher. Aliens is a war movie. Alien³ is a horror movie of the animal-gone-maneater kind. Alien: Resurrection is a disaster movie (hihi).
They're all sci-fi, like Star Wars. Because of the setting.
Now look at Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 2 Episode 9 'The Measure Of A Man'.
Lasers, spaceships, robots, the usual. What is it about?
A Robot who's so sophisticated that he has to go to trial to prove he's not property but a real boy. Sure, you'll say, I've seen Pinocchio and I can see african men argue the same stuff in the 18th century. The point of the story is not only that is humanity is questioned, the point is he's an artificial lifeform. The question is not only 'What makes you a person?' but also 'When does artificial intelligence become an artificial person?'
That shit won't work in a setting without spaceships and robots. That's sci-fi because of its story.
So, setting and story are both what makes you label a movie a certain way but they're not the same.
Die Hard. Happens on Christmas. Could be Thanksgiving too. Setting interchangeable.
Story? Doesn't contain any christmas-related themes beyond two estranged family members become closer again. That could happen at a funeral as well.
I'm in my mid-thirties and I love Die Hard. It's one of the best 80's action movies. I can watch it anytime and I've seen it at least 20 times (noit joking here). But mostly in the summer. But I understand the question and its diverse answers perfectly well.
Die Hard is a christmas movie if it feels like one to you. For me, Lord of the Rings (especially Fellowship) feels like a Christmas movie to me. I've seen them all in theatres in December, I watched them on VHS and Blu-Ray only in December so far. They have fuck all to do with the occasion but this year was the first one I didn't watch any of them in December. And I feel I missed something this year. I'm not sure I can watch them at this time of the year.

My long time issue with the "they would be too intelligent/evolved to have any interest in us" type scenario, such as he puts as number two here, is that we go through great lengths to try and research and understand very primitive life. There are efforts being made to talk to dolphins and apes. We're looking to build ships to crash or land ships onto Titan to see if there is microbial life on a moon orbiting a gas giant, not to mention work to see if Mars once upon had life. So the very fact we're able to get off our little rock (though not much off it), I think would warrant a stop and look, perhaps to help answer what was life like at such an early stage of evolution.

Not said stop and look doesn't imply any sort of communications. Indeed there may be a Prime Directive like thing with them where by they see and observe, but leave no evidence of such a visit (alien abductions being just mental illness coupled with abuse or other issues).

Now distance is a super valid point, but by far the most likely point is the survivability window, which he talks about in point three. We're still a level zero civilization (Kardashev scale) and decades until we reach a level one civilization (unfortunately it seems delayed even further due to some very anti-science moves being made by certain groups). Moving up that scale is only one thing, avoiding killing ourselves via war is another huge one. With CRISPR technology advancing, there is a very real danger of a Division/Stand/Utopia type disease coming to the foreground, especially if driven by a zealot (ala Division and Utopia). I highly doubt a man made black hole or something, but war or a CRISPR engineered disease... Not to mention the natural disasters he mentioned, and others, such as huge gamma ray bursts and others that we've managed to avoid. And we'd have to think that most civilizations go through somewhat similar phases, with a universe that is fairly hostile to life, even if many planets are capable of at least starting life. Generally I figure that most civilizations never make it past the stage we are at now, and those that do probably don't get to stage two and beyond (to be fair, I doubt any civilization can achieve stage two on Kardashev's scale as it goes beyond knowledge needed, but materials and more).

Back to the technology of communications point. I've generally figured if you are space faring, you gave up on radio communications and are using strange properties or something along those lines.

colour grading as in DI is "new" and related to digital film but colour timing, which is the analogue method, goes back to the start of film making.

i've done work for several marvel films, their DI is generally pretty subtle. the raw footage def. has blacks (and negative values in the blacks). the new cameras used wont change this unless they want to change it. the colour gamut has been wide the whole time. OCIO colour may have a certain effect but i can't see it having the colour effect wanted here.

@AeroMechanical is exactly right. the new cameras aren't going to change shit. they're still going to grade the movies to be consistent with past movies. and they've fully had the latitude to grade them in a more vibrant manner the whole time.

and as far as rereleasing them as "UHD Blu-Ray box set" (i'm assuming 4K UHD), they can't. they were all done in HD or 2K (at least the ones i've worked on). uprezing is possible (4K outside of a theatre is actually pretty bullshit, you can uprez HD uncompressed to 4K without that much effect) but resolution doesn't change colour grading/DI.

I think part of it is a conscience decision to make all Marvel movies have a similar feel, because they are supposed to be in the same universe.

Maybe they'll re-release all Marvel movies in some gigantic UHD Blu-Ray box set, and all will be remastered with a more vivid color grading.

Vimeo description:
Atmospheric refraction plays with the light of any object near the horizon. Here stars, startrails and the sun, filmed in timelapse photography from two major observatories in Chile, display immense distortion above inversion layers in the outskirts of the Atacama desert, Chile. The moon scene is filmed near Boston at the Atlantic Ocean shoreline. The mirage is an optical phenomenon in which light rays are refracted and bent in the atmosphere and produce distorted or multiple images of the object.

Thanks! this has been my jam today.