I work at a movie theater and while we don’t use Sony projectors, we were told to check all of our certificates to prevent this from happening. This sounds like a communication issue to me. Someone didn’t do their job in time. Also in the article it says they wouldn’t know if the film would work until it actually played. If that is either an outright lie or the equipment is designed horribly. On the projectors we use which are going on a decade old, the playlist won’t even start if it can’t verify that all of the content is playable and unlocked. We can see when our certificates expire as well so if all of these certificates expired at the beginning of the year. The theater should have already caught that and had the certificates reissued. Keeping in mind that this wasn’t some sort of bug or glitch that nobody could have predicted, then disregard everything I said. DRM on movie theater. Projectors is an industry standard and all companies use it, not just Sony. Until the actual reason comes out, it’s hard to say. If it’s the certificates of the projectors themselves and not the movie keys which are two different things then yeah I could see how nobody knew what was going on. Especially if the projectors are discontinued. I do know that if our servers lose power and the CMOS battery goes dead, they will internally destroy themselves and never function again. This is to prevent piracy I assume.
Curious about something, maybe you know since you work at a theater. I seem to remember hearing that a theater has to pay royalties each time they show a movie and that newer technology can track and report this automatically. Does the latest technology automatically track this as I recall? And if so, would playing a movie as a test count as a showing?
While this certainly may be possible, I don’t think it’s tracked to that degree. Theaters pay to lease a film and the studio decides if there are special rules for being shown. Some smaller known movies have deals with the theaters to show the film at a very low cost in order to get people to watch it. On the first weekend most of the ticket profit goes to the studios and then every week the profit to the studios gets lower and the theaters get more of that money depending on what was agreed on. Some movies like the Taylor Swift concert film could only be shown after 12:00 p.m. and only Thursday through Sunday for example. Say there was a busy night and we sold out of a show, we could cancel a different show and play that sold out movie in another auditorium to fit more people in. This is fine for most studios except for Disney, if Disney finds out that you cancel one of their films to show a different film, they will not be happy. As far as I know we can show movies and definitely as long as we have the keys active for them and I don’t think the specific amount of time is reported back to the studios, we are just required to play it a minimum amount of times.
I do know that if our servers lose power in the CMOS battery is dead and then they will internally destroy themselves and never function again. This is to prevent piracy I assume.
Not a cinema guy, but assuming those movies are encrypted with modern standards, it is practically impossible if you simply would steal the media. Could be done if you could tap into the original playback device where movie plays and pull decrypted copy out of it.
Edit: As per this AES 128 is used so good luck if you ever stumble upon an encrypted copy.
I’ve gotten bad keys from the studio before, usually when we were doing advanced screenings. It was a relatively quick fix… I think the longest delay was ~15 minutes. I never had to cancel a show because of it, certainly didn’t have to close the entire building.
For as much as I loved the convenience of digital, I really miss the days of 35 film.
35mm was a whole thing and while I miss the nostalgia, I certainly don’t miss the upkeep and the problems with film. Digital is so much easier. I feel the biggest issue with digital is if a problem goes wrong, there’s really not much you can do outside of standard problem fixes. If it’s an internal issue. You’re just screwed until the technician can fix it.
I agree that moving to digital saved so much time, and I’ll never miss brainwraps or thrown platters… but working booth shifts threading projectors were some of the happiest times I had running theaters.
Not familiar with cinema projectors, but as I have gatherered from this forum problem is caused by KDM (used to decrypt movie) provider / reseller called Deluxe. Neither Sony or this cinema chain is at fault and problem indeed seems worldwide.
I do know that if our servers lose power and the CMOS battery goes dead, they will internally destroy themselves and never function again. This is to prevent piracy I assume.
Find it very hard to believe to be honest. Could this be simply some rumour from colleagues? Doubt any vendor would implement anything like this, drives could be simply encrypted to protect data if they ever get stolen.
Yes, I deal with KDMs weekly but I’m not for sure if this issue was KDM related or if it was certificate related. As for the service destroying themselves, I’ve never personally seen it happen, but I’ve been told by upper management that they’ve seen it happen twice. I don’t really have any way to verify the information but it wouldn’t surprise me and I don’t see why anyone would make that up unless they really don’t want people messing with it, but it seems like such an unlikely scenario.
I mean, my home is filled with ancient laptops that we use until they explode, its a pretty common occurrence when trying to watch something streaming the ads would load just fine but the actual show wouldn’t actually load. So… shrug
Notepad is heavily used as an IDE (Integrated Development Environment) by a lot of people. It’s not exactly a good development environment but it is nonetheless. I would actually argue Notepad is used primarily by programmers, and that casual Windows Notepad users are in the extreme minority. The whole reason it’s so heavily used is because unlike WordPad or Word, it doesn’t include formatting data, which can fuck up computer code.
Notepad++ for example is literally built to be more like an actual IDE and supports color-schemes and indentations for numerous computer programming languages.
Microsoft isn’t entirely stupid (just mostly), and in knowing this, they’re pushing to put their programming Copilot where they think it needs to be: Inside IDEs, which to them includes Notepad.
Notepad++ may very well be widely used as an IDE. Notepad isn’t. Other than the name they have nothing do do with each other. It’s just a plain text editor with absolutely no features. Maybe some people use it to write code but unless you can’t use anything else, even a web browser, why would you.
Notepad is used by anyone who wants to see what is actually in a text file.
It’s used a lot for stuff where data is transferred in a text format. Comma separated files etc. are still widely used for transferring data flawlessly without having to convert types or mapping a document standard or whatever method that could potentially fuck up or just take more time. It’s simple and it works.
F.i if you open a file in excel or word, change one character and then save, you can bet that the entire file is fucked up afterwards, because those programs don’t show the data directly. The moment you open it, it might very well be fucked up just from that. If you transfer a file by some kind of JSON format, which is all the rage currently you’ll have to map it from both ends, and it also begs the question: Why are we doing running all this code just to transfer one byte?
The beauty of text files is that it’s (almost) raw data. (Only “almost” because there are still different localization standards that can fuck up even a text file.)
Notepad covers that. Of course we could use other apps for viewing data, but most of the time, it actually is text and not hexidemal codes or whatever you can save in bytes.
Programming wise, the only thing I use notepad for is making DOS batch files. Again, because it’s raw text and should be created and read as such. No parsing, no compiling. Just text. I’ll also use it for storing data for programs, because it’s easy and raw.
For actual programs, it’d be better to get Notepad++ or MS visual studio code, which at least will highlight commands and collapse functions etc. And still, these also aren’t actually IDEs, because they don’t compile the code (unless you get those add-ins).
We could also use those for text files as well, but it’s overkill. I don’t really want to open an app to view data. Notepad is small and quick and not bloated with features, which is ideal for whenever I only want to see what’s in the file.
The original MS Paint was similar for pictures. They fucked that up real good. Its been…14 years and I haven’t really gotten over how bad it is. It used to be pixel perfect and logical, but now you can’t even save a file with transparency, but hey here’s s brush with stroke width and blur that’ll make sure you can’t edit a single pixel. Way to go Microsoft.
If they do the same to Notepad, I’ll have to resign my job, because it’s not going to work like that.
Peck was a part of the EPA and had legitimate reasons to investigate them.
Venkman was a dick and didn’t cooperate with Peck’s investigation, so Peck got pissed and went nuclear on their ass cause he thought they were charlatans.
The guy who actually flipped the switch even told Peck he’s never seen anything like that and didn’t want to do it.
I really wonder about bot synergy. How many haiku’s will one not write that another will correct the spelling on and a third find that all words are in alphabetical order?
I was just going to say this. Holding on to the illusion of power as a major moderator is about to turn into a shitshow. Even Reddit themselves have been caught using chat bots to sway public opinion.
Reddit has decided to make every bad decision (favoring profits) possible, all at once.
So hear me out. What if we took $6.9M out of the CEO bonus and dropped the Mozilla AI project?
Maybe that would be enough to hire a maintainer or two for Firefox iOS port?
Maybe that could work?
I don’t know, just an idea. Crazy.
Nearly 10k and 400 stars on those respective repos.
A way to run a large language model on any operating system, in any OS, in a simple, local, and privacy respecting manner?
For linux we have docker, but Windows users were starving for a good way to do this, and even on linux, removing the step of configuring docker (or other container runtimes) to work with nvidia, is nice.
And it’s still FOSS stuff they aren’t being paid for, currently. But there are plenty of ways to monetize this.
Here’s an easy one: tie in the the vpn service they have to allow you to access the web ui of the computer running the llamafile remotely. Configure something like end to end encryption or or nat traversal (so not even mozilla can sniff the traffic), and you end up with a private LLM you can access remotely.
With this, maybe they can afford some actual development on firefox, without having to rely on google money.
A lot of money, but not enough to actually to actually do a lot. They keep cutting features their “customers” like. Why?
Because development is expensive.
Google props mozilla up to pretend they don’t have a monopoly on the internet. Just enough money to barely keep up, not enough to truly stay competitive.
Mozilla wants to not rely on google money, so they are trying to expand their products. AI is overhyped, but still useful, and something worth investing in.
I know that, but why did you bring it up in order to contrast it with Mozilla’s consumer base? Do you mean to say that Google is the actual paying customer?
It seems like such a bizarre thing to bring up at all.
My wife has an iPad and one of the things I hate the most is that you can’t install adblock extensions into Firefox on it like you can on Android. Which is a thing that has made using the browser on the phone wayyyy more enjoyable.
I use AdGuard both on my Android phone and iPad. Not quite as good on the iPad because Apple doesn’t make it easy, but definitely makes a huge difference. For me, $30 a year is worth it and you can use it on 3 devices. I got sick of the ads in apps that were downright disturbing in some cases and reporting them didn’t do a whole lot. Browser extensions can do a lot more to tidy up the experience, but I will take what I can get.
I ended up getting it from them directly. I am on Android 90% of the time and don’t pay for the license from the Apple store. No idea if that one is a single device or the same as the multi-device. I tend to not do things from the Apple store as I don’t have an iPhone and they seem to want or assume you have one. Just like I can never use their watch (not that I want one).
The Orion browser for iOS/iPadOS supports both Firefox and Chromium extensions, however, the support is quite buggy and limited. Nonetheless, a valiant effort by Orion devs.
For the last decade I’ve paid for high speed fiber cable from Comcast, and that monthly 1tb limit was a killer with a family. So I paid the extra $50 (for a few years, then $30 these last 2) for unlimited. All for a total low package price of $250. My buddy in a nearby town with better speeds and multiple options has never paid for this add on, because he has competition in the area. I had zero choice, there were zero network improvements in my area until this year when a new local fiber company started burying fiber in my area. Today I pay $100 for 2gb symmetrical unlimited internet, way cheaper than the $250 I’ve paid for years for a forced tv/phone/internet package.
I hope there’s a class action for this. Fuck Comcast.
there's enough ways around charges of 'discriminating' based on the disallowed criteria of household income or race, that it will still be 'business as usual' for providers. they'll use other excuses, such as differences in local market (competition) and population/customer density, or the 'extreme' costs of upgrading aging infrastructure in previously-"avoided" areas, which would be 'allowed'.
Apple always had been painfull for any third party devs. Also Vivaldi worked several years to create a browser which works in this iPhone thing, and now, after it’s release, Apple admits Chromium. https://file.coffee/u/BPIaDNFX7YJkKtXuMdWNJ.gif
And it comes down to a fundamental question: Will the European Commission follow through with its intent to right-size Apple’s abuse of power? Or will the DMA be nice in theory, but in practice, have no substantive meaning for most developers?
They already do that, they can say whatever, they will be isolated with their shitty Apple products and if they want decent browsers then they will need to use decent systems. Apple can’t abuse of their power and force us to follow their abusive rules, they can’t even have a decent UI desktop. They are so bad programmers.
Android was a victim of the NSO’s Pegasus because of WhatsApp, and possibly that only worked because Facebook negotiated with phone manufacturers to bundle dodgy pre-installed system apps outside the Google Play Store.
Apple’s iOS was a victim of the NSO’s Pegasus because of iMessages.
For me, that’s enough to completely steer clear of iOS altogether. I mean, the lack of customisation and control over my device was already enough, but that kind of vindicated it for me.
Yeah, my Android doesn’t have WhatsApp, I neither have Google apps. It’s a degoogled OS. I feel free and things works, even my default web browser on my Android has NoScript (JavaScript blocker), to make it safer. With Apple… you are sold.
Ditto! No Google needed, and Facebook apps are prohibited on my phone. I can even get banking apps working with a bit of Magisk, working in Zygisk domain with a deny list hiding it from the apps. Apparently proper SafetyNet checks aren’t that common anymore.
For browsers, I’d recommend Mull and Mulch. Mull is a privacy fork of Firefox, Mulch is a hardened version of Android System Webview (the backend browser that lots of apps use). Both come pre-installed with DivestOS.
Mozilla doesn’t have the sort of leverage to make an impact by abandoning apple devices. Firefox has an incredibly low market share and this could push people to other browsers. People tend to use the same browser for stuff like bookmark and password syncing, so abandoning ios could have larger consequences.
Yeah I understand, but if Apple is fucking up with our development, not only for Firefox, for any developer that makes apps for phones… why keep following their abusive rules? When I say “stopping developing apps for Apple” I mean, any developer that dislikes the abusive rules of Apple and fees. If we abandon the system, the iOS users will need to move to Android or other systems that are more friendly for developers.
Oh yeah generally I’d agree, with firefox I just think it’d be better to do what will push the fewest people away as long as it’s possible to maintain development.
Nah, because that would involve the slightest reduction in personal freedom which as we all know is a fate not only worse than death, but worse than hellfire itself.
What? Are you suggesting I drive a smaller truck just to help other people? Are you saying I crash into people? I need that giant truck! Do you know how much I haul and tow every day?! I mean, I don’t, I commute back and forth to work every day in it, but I need to do that. My coworkers see that truck next to their cars and think “Damn, that guy drives a Truck”. Maybe if they see how big of a truck I drive it’ll make up for the crippling social anxiety I have that I just keep pushing further and further down, maybe it’ll make up for not getting that promotion I worked for. Now they’ll have to notice me. So no, you aren’t taking away my F350 Mega Macho Man-Manliness Super Truck. How else will people know I’m a man?
Which is why we call them ESTs. Emotional Support Trucks.
Indeed, those slight distortions are a surefire clue that this art is a witch!
The AI image checkers are of course great evidence and never return false positives, but just to be sure I'd like to see whether the image sinks or floats when thrown in a pond.
Sideloading is explicitly about enabling the user to install multimedia and apps that are not approved by the manufacturer or OS vendor, so this is probably illegal (depends on how the law’s been written) and I expect Apple to be taken to court over it in the very near future.
I don't get why this would be a problem. It's just a poster image.
Hell, even if they used AI for the in-show VFX, I still don't see why it would be an issue. Almost all VFX for the last several years have been using some level of AI tools.
You are forgetting a cardinal rule: When something is likely to affect the press, the press affords it more attention.
So the writers, editors, graphic designers etc of the press are likely to be very affected by generative AI. So they worry about it. So they write about it.
I’m also in a line of work that will see substantial changes … so I understand their plight. But I think a large part of the reason the press write about the use of genAI to make “art output” is that they worry about genAI will make their “art output” soon.
“So they write about it” with AI assistance. It can easily be argued that modern word processor software has some level of AI in it.
She: What kind of woman do you think I am?
He: We’ve already established that. Now we’re just haggling over the price.
Same story, it’s just a question to what extent the software moves from being an unacceptable amount of assistance as a tool. Sports equipment follows the same story, at some point it’s regarded as cheating, we just haven’t established what that line is. Clearly there are people who don’t care what that line is and so long as it represents a competitive advantage to ignore that line then people will freely cross it.
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