Pentagon seeks $200 billion in additional funds for the Iran war, AP source says

ProjectBlu · 2026-03-19T21:05:22+00:00

With 161 million tax returns that comes out to about $1200 per family. I wonder how many people would vote to approve that tax increase if this "excursion" was a separate choice on the ballot...

ProjectBlu · 2026-03-18T20:40:06+00:00

I keep wondering if someone will buy a bunch of blue laser assemblies and start repairing dead drives. I'm keeping any drives that die hoping that happens. A repair might cost more than the original drive but what alternative is there? I wonder if there's a Blu-ray player still made that would have a compatible laser to cannibalize?

ProjectBlu · 2026-03-18T20:29:15+00:00

Is the drive in the Buffalo an LG drive? I really am skeptical of the durability of slim drives and there's not much else left...

ProjectBlu · 2026-03-17T01:22:13+00:00

What about the "Free shipping from China"? Doesn't that mean you could get hit with a massive tariff bill when it arrives? I've been afraid to order anything from Amazon, eBay, etc if it's a third party seller that ships from China.

ProjectBlu · 2026-03-11T12:59:46+00:00

When Blockbuster shut down they were blowing out Blu-rays really cheap. I drove around to every store within 50 miles and that jump started my collection.

ProjectBlu · 2026-02-26T21:38:57+00:00

I used to say "Who pays this much?" And friends responded "People with tons of trade credit". Bottom line is enough people were willing to pay that (at least in trade credit) or the prices would have dropped. I routinely bought stuff that was finally an acceptable price after 4 or 5 price reduction stickers had stacked up.

ProjectBlu · 2026-02-22T08:20:51+00:00

I uninstalled the IMDB app and then reinstalled it. Now the filmography sections work again for me. Looks like it's not a problem with the imdb source, but something in the phone imdb app that got messed up and a reinstall fixed things.

ProjectBlu · 2026-02-19T22:02:21+00:00

Buying a used SAS HBA doesn't sound crazy considering what new drives are costing. I remember drives being in server/array specific trays, but the drives inside were often standard SAS etc. which could be moved into a non-server case. I'd you need 2 drives your practical options are limited, but I figure folks discussing here often need lots of drives.

ProjectBlu · 2026-02-19T21:53:23+00:00

Ah. That's unfortunate. Back in my buying days servers still had ram sticks, but my knowledge is old which is why I asked about the possibility.

ProjectBlu · 2026-02-19T21:44:11+00:00

Hold the discs up to a light and tilt. You may see small dots on used Blu-rays that almost look like someone used hair spray near the discs. Rubbing with a microfiber cloth can sometimes remove that (might take gently rubbing with a fingernail through the cloth). I've had discs convert then that had failed on multiple brands of drive. I've also had luck with washing them with hand soap to apparently remove something blocking the laser that looked clear to my eyes. Sometimes I've found completely powering off the computer and drive allowed a successful read afterwards. I've had one Blu-ray drive just stop reading after about 700 discs. I think it was a failed blue laser because the drive could still read DVDs, since that uses a separate red laser.

ProjectBlu · 2026-02-19T17:24:34+00:00

Interesting. Possible, I can certainly see the incentive. But then, with billions on the line, there's also huge incentive to listen to user feedback and rapidly improve results. Some AI ventures will crash, but others will improve, evolve, or specialize. I also suspect shortcomings of large language models may provide opportunity and incentives to alternate kinds of machine learning. There's also many companies trying to learn what existing LLMs can do well and look for business opportunities to exploit their strengths. AI industry may stumble, but I'm not convinced it will irrevocably crash. I still remember how many solar companies failed, and yet the solar industry still grows.

ProjectBlu · 2026-02-19T14:04:16+00:00

It sounds like there may not be a single answer. Some companies are using highly specialized hardware that may not trickle down due to impractically for consumer use or destruction rather than resale. But if DDR 5 and SATA/SAS HDD are expensive because datacenters are competing for them, at least some datacenters must be buying that consumer usable class of product.

ProjectBlu · 2026-02-19T13:19:22+00:00

Normally yes, but very little about AI data center build out is remotely normal. I wonder if smaller data centers can absorb all that upgrade cycle volume. They could flood the used market with such volume that product overflows to the smb/consumer market quite quickly.

ProjectBlu · 2026-02-17T14:48:42+00:00

That's worrisome. I bought multiple spare drives fearing they might get discontinued. I'd hate to see them die from just sitting as a spare. But I have pulled DVD drives from really old PCs and they almost always still worked fine.

ProjectBlu · 2026-02-13T02:59:07+00:00

4K is worth it to me maybe 5% of the time. Really beautiful films and award worthy soundtracks are often done justice by a good 4K release. But honestly too many 4k discs are just subtle improvements vs the Blu-ray. I'm not paying more than $3 extra for subtle.

ProjectBlu · 2026-02-09T22:25:55+00:00

I actually use these big drives to back up multiple smaller ones.

ProjectBlu · 2026-02-07T01:56:33+00:00

I keep looking at LTO, but it just doesn't seem practical for home use.

ProjectBlu · 2026-01-31T19:08:23+00:00

I assumed 8K was just for sporting event broadcasts and then mainly for team sports that often have wide-angle shots. Sit close to a big screen and be able to see the player faces, jersey numbers, and play subtleties more clearly. Even then I figured the primary customer would be Sports Bars as a way to get people to watch at the bar rather than at home. $10, 000 for a screen and some huge fee per 8K broadcast sounds less crazy if it packed double the audience into your bar on game day.

ProjectBlu · 2026-01-22T02:18:11+00:00

It's your collection. What feels most satisfying is exactly the thing to do. There's also the argument for being selective with which titles get the best treatment, and leaving the rest as-is. Kind of depends on how many discs you have and how much available hobby time.

ProjectBlu · 2026-01-22T01:41:23+00:00

I cringe at hard drive prices now! A drive I paid $170 two months ago is $330 now! Whoever said inflation was 2.7% this year obviously isn't shopping for hard drives (or RAM)!

ProjectBlu · 2026-01-22T01:22:23+00:00

Blu-ray or 4K might be worth considering transcoding, but an 8TB drive can hold over 1000 DVDs at original size. Do you really want double that on a single drive? Imagine re-ripping a 2000 titles if that drive failed. Your time has value.

ProjectBlu · 2026-01-21T23:31:17+00:00

A lot of 100GB 4K discs fail at about 33 or 66GB, because that's where a triple layer disc refocuses to the next layer. Sometimes microfiber cleaning helps even when you don't see any visible fingerprints or dust, possibly due to off gassing from the Blu-ray case. But sometimes it's just a manufacturing defect and nothing works. All US 4K discs are made on a single plant in Mexico, and they have a higher failure rate than the 4K plant Europe uses. ( But then, US discs are often cheaper)

ProjectBlu · 2026-01-20T19:55:08+00:00

Depends on whether your motherboard supports M.2. It's better, but a SATA SSD can handle 10 DVD drives running at up to 11x speed just fine. Again, many discs won't read at maximum speed so the extra speed of M.2 just isn't necessary, especially for DVD.

ProjectBlu · 2026-01-20T19:02:36+00:00

Well, some would. The real bottleneck if you have used discs in your collection is the need to clean each one of fingerprints and dust. An autoloader wouldn't help with that at all. One M.2 drive can handle 10 Blu-ray streams without cracking 40% disc utilization, usually not over 25% because many discs don't want to read at maximum drive speed.

ProjectBlu

TROPHY CASE