GreatAlbatross

Maybe the best way to think about it is not dark, but the absence of more light.
On a DMD projector, we use tiny micromirrors for each pixel which flash thousands of times per frame of video.
The flash/no-flash ratio decides how much light makes it out of the projector. This gives us over a thousand light levels per colour channel, from near dark, to full light.
When the mirrors are not in position, the light output is very low. (1/1000th of the full output, on a projector with a static 1000:1 contrast ratio)

The screen is designed to reflect light well, which means in a non-perfect room, it will have a light floor of the reflected ambient light, plus whatever still makes it through the projector (as Cygnus mentioned, room treatment).

If you do treat a room well enough that the small amount of light that makes it through the projector at all-off is a problem, you can do things like fitting an ND filter to the lens (reducing the full light output, while also reducing the minimum).
Or you can use the dynamic iris fitted to some projectors (which reduces the amount of light being put out based on the overall scene illumination, similar to the way LCD TVs lower the backlight level to “reach” contrast ratios of 100000:1).

I love having a projector in the living room.
I won’t lie, it gets used far less than I’d like.
But it cost me almost nothing, and it’s just fun to have a massive wall of video.

AFAIK, LG still do not require internet access on first startup.
At least on their medium/high end lines (C and G series).
This was a hard requirement for me. Mine has never been on the internet.

I did it once a few years ago (IIRC with a copy of Falling Down by Muse, not for any particular reason), and compared V0 320 with FLAC.

After amplifying the tiny, tiny wiggle of a sound that was left, I was left with very slight thin echoes, mostly well above 10k.
The sort of stuff you really wouldn’t worry about, unless you 100% wanted bit-perfect reproduction, or wanted to justify a £2000 pair of headphones.

Funnily enough, that was the point I stopped bothering to load FLAC onto my DAC, and just mirror everything into V0 for portable use.

I can only speak from a UK perspective, but most home ADSL/VDSL/Fibre providers don’t have limits, other than “if your usage is tanking the network, we’ll ask you to knock it off” type clauses.

Most providers are also signed up to an agreement that if your speed drops 50% below the agreed speed on the package on average, they’ll either give you refunds, or let you out of the contract.

The only ones that throttle are the bargain basement operators aimed at people who don’t care, and one otherwise very competent provider that for some unexplainable reason only gives 1TB by default, charging an extra £10 for 10TB.

And I guess there is also a pricing step up to guaranteed bandwidth. For business use, they tend to be things like 1gbits headline, 500mbit guaranteed burst, 100mbit guaranteed sustained.

“Diddja laak tha’?”

imho, not dissimilar to model planes>drones.

To operate a model plane, there was a not-small amount of effort you needed to work through (building, specialist components, local club, access to a proper field, etc.).
This meant that by the time you were flying, you probably had a pretty good understanding of being responsible with the new skill.

In the era of self-stabilising GPS guided UAVs delivered next-day ready-to-fly, the barrier to entry flew down.
And it took a little while for the legislation to catch up from “the clubs are usually sensible” to “don’t fly a 2KG drone over a crowd of people at head height with no experience or training”

I’m not sure if there is a way to quickly find this. The best bet is probably trying the bigger instances, and seeing if it’s accessible through them.

You’ve made me think now: it might be a nice project for a some instance admins to flag when an instance they had received posts from goes offline. (I should probably check what I have from feddit.de!)

Somebody stop her!

You will be truly British once you register on feddit.uk

In seriousness, I like to think it’s a state of mind. If you find yourself generally aligning most with the more positive British attitudes, you’re British. Though living in Wales, you may end up feeling more Welsh eventually!

If you want to feel more connected, try getting involved with local festivities and traditions.
Explore the countryside with the Ramblers. Do some pub quizzes. Go to a folk festival.
The sorts of things that involve you with pleasant people.

Honestly? It’s tricky to find communities that give you a spread.

I can recommend picking an instance that has a secondary alignment with you (for example, country/state), as they’ll tend to pick up posts in All that may be of interest other than politics.

(Though tbf, our instance still leans left on whole. Just not so crazily)

You can pick an instance that aligns with the way you like to be. But those instances are still kept in check because if they get too shit, they get defederated.

For example, feddit.uk can operate in a uk-style way for which words we do and don’t find offensive, and the level of piss-taking we do.

Small actions are possible.
I won’t buy Kellogg’s any more.
Who knows, maybe all the own brand cereal manufacturers are doing horrible things too.
But I find peace in taking some action when some awful thing is done. As otherwise, I’d just have to hang my head in hopelessness.

This was also why the uk put massive prizes out for the first devices that could be used to accurately calculate longditude.

Ah, the Season 4 finale of For All Mankind.

For the UK, Which does similar things to ConsumerReports.
They’re not always experts, but they’re generally good reviews, and I honestly don’t have enough life to investigate every tumble drier myself. So having a summary of “in this price range, get this one” is very useful.

And there are plenty of people in russia who think everything that was ever USSR should be russia.

Sometimes they can be worse. “I’m an expert in this field, so I don’t need to think about any others”

Also, outside of opinion pieces, the FT tends to be fairly central, as it’s generally purchased by people who want information to make financial decisions with.