Malfeasant

DVD is better than Blu-ray in that regard - I've ripped DVDs that look like they fell off a truck and got run over multiple times and had no problem, meanwhile about 1 out of 5 Blu-rays I got from Netflix would have problems despite looking pristine. It has to do with the data density, Blu-ray packs so much more in the same amount of space, one microscopic scratch wipes out so much data...

Of course some DVDs suffer from bad materials. I was re-ripping my collection recently, and I have a few that have sat in a closet untouched for years, not a scratch on them, but the drive won't even recognize there's a disc. Probably oxidation of the reflective layer.

VHS was kind of 2.5 thanks to macrovision...

Yo ho!

That's just single layer - dual layer is something like 8.4 if memory serves (which it often doesn't...)

Wow, I don't even remember that. I've been playing DVDs on a computer basically forever, which rarely obeyed such restrictions...

Tell that to my employer... We moved to a bigger office a little over a year ago. The old office was cramped, but it was reasonably quiet. Those of us who are on the phones were in a corner pretty well shielded from everything else. The new place is one huge continuous expanse, and we're right in the middle of it. And it's what I would call cheap and unfinished, but a commercial realtor would call it "modern industrial" meaning you can see all the wiring and ductwork and such- and bare concrete. Which makes sound carry throughout and echo. Just the other day my boss had to go hush a gaggle of developers that were congregating 20 feet away and laughing uproariously.

a more useless application of electrons

Microsoft is worse... Have a problem, google it, find a link that has a promising summary, click it- "try Windows 11!" Because that's what dead links do.

under the age of 40

I'm pushing 50 and I won't call if there's a website...

My wife... She will never stop buying from Amazon no matter how shitty they become. She was refusing to go to Wendy's for a while because they were considering surge pricing, she swore up and down she would not reward a company for doing that - so I said what about Amazon? How often does prime get you free shipping anymore? And with streaming, now you have to watch ads when you didn't before... But of course that's all "different".

Fahrenheit is fine for temperatures that humans can experience in our environment (and expect to survive, at least for a little while...)

I've worked a lot of different jobs over the years, some well in my skill set, some well outside, and if there's one thing I've noticed, it's that with very few exceptions, knowledge and skills matter very little, what matters most is sucking up to the boss, a skill I am exceedingly bad at. Interestingly enough, one of the jobs where skill mattered most was construction, even when I worked for my uncle, he barely cut me any breaks. He once said "you hammer like old people fuck". Not to mention the number of times he yelled at me because I was shit with a tape measure. "Cut it 3 times and it's still too short". Yeah nepotism didn't help me there.

I live in a suburb to the east of Phoenix. I wouldn't even consider a job on the west side. Nothing to do with Europe, just the reality of a large city.