Like when Google purposely delivered 360P resolution video on YouTube to Firefox users for 2 weeks, when there was no technical reason (faking the user agent fixed it).

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1233970#c25

Or in 2020 when YouTube forced VP9 support for higher than 1080P video, even though H264 works fine, effectively making everything except Chrome choppy on YouTube.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-4k-ultra-high-definition-youtube-videos

    I rarely use google at all, be it search engine, browser, OS or whatever. It simply has no benefit and I don't have to grow any gray hair. Actually, I have also stopped growing hair :-)

    Shave-and-a-hair cut ...

    cybereality
    Yeah, kind of makes me want to use it more. 🙂

    Back in 2000 a company I worked at was bought out by Unisys.
    Unisys was the company that had acquired the patents on the compression algorithm in the GIF file format. When they realised what they owned (they got it as part of another company buyout), they were the ones who started charging something like $3000 for a license to put GIFs on a web page, and some fee to add GIF load/save to software. They are the reason a lot of software back then dropped GIF support (or had it as a plugin instead of integrated) and why the PNG format was invented as a competitor.

    I resigned. I was rather angry about the GIF thing at the time. Plus the managers were assholes (the director blamed me for changes made in the software 6 months before I joined the company. Idiot). Oh, and burn out from bad project management. But definitely the GIF thing was an influence. 🙂

        I think JPEG XL can stand on it's own merits, even with Google's apparent sabotage. The format is good, vastly better than JPEG/PNG/GIF and similar to WebP (beats it in some areas and I think overall better in feature set).

        And honestly, how long has WebP been out, even with Google backing, and it's barely supported anywhere. So I don't think they are a good judge of standards.

        JPEG is just ancient technology, it was made when people were using 14.4 K modems. We shouldn't still be using it. PNG is a solid format, but GIF could not be worse.

        And every other new format has been destroyed by either patent encumbrance or these stupid corporate format wars (which always end up with everyone losing).

        I think JPEG XL still has a shot, and if the open source community adopts it and it gets better support, Google will eventually add it back in.

        And, to be honest, it's not finished. So it is technically experimental, last time I tried the SDK it didn't even compile. So it could still happen.

        Here is a full quality uncompressed 1080P 4.5MB PNG that was converted to JPEG XL and it's only 697KB and almost the same quality (at least I can't tell by eye). At lossless it was 3MB, still a decent savings.

        I had to convert it back to PNG to upload to the forum, but the only compression was to JXL. The image here is 3MB. Open in a new tab to see full size.

        Here is a better comparison. This was 4.6MB uncompressed PNG. With JXL on 75% quality, we have a 336KB image, that still looks good.

        Here is the same original PNG converted to normal JPG with settings to get the same 336KB file size.

        It might look okay small, but open both in new tabs, you see that the JPEG has artifacts around the text and in some other areas.

        Playing around with a Blender addon called Building Tools. Nice for exterior low poly buildings. Just have a disembodied head for now. I downloaded the street light, trash can, and car for free. I'm not sure how much texturing I'm going to do. With a lot of static cameras and Resident Evil controls, I'll be able to build smaller sets.

        Cute. He's probably just wearing a cloaking device and forgot to put the hood on. Someone should tell him :-)

        The street light's shadow is spooky as well ...

        Kojack Back in 2000 a company I worked at was bought out by Unisys.

        Did you submit an entry when they had the contest to choose the name for the new company?

            cybereality Or in 2020 when YouTube forced VP9 support for higher than 1080P video

            To be fair to VP9(not google) it was a decent format and google did opensource it when they acquired it. Making it more open than Hxxx codecs. Ironically IIRC it was firefox that initially supported VP9/WebP while chrome didn't which effectively killed it's adoption/momentum.

            edit: I'm thinking of VP8 not 9, man it's been long.

              DaveTheCoder Did you submit an entry when they had the contest to choose the name for the new company?

              The company I was at didn't change its name, Just a small Australian business software developer.

                The name "Unisys" was chosen from entries submitted by employees.

                  DaveTheCoder
                  Ah, I checked wikipedia. The name competition was in 1986. I was 13 years old at the time. 🙂

                    I was on Steam today, hardly ever go there. They had the one game on sale I wanted to buy at 70 percent off. What Ever Happened to Edith Finch. I don't even know if I'll like it but I wanted to see it and I didn't want to spend full price.

                    Yeah, that game seems good. It's similar to Dear Esther. Still have to finish it some day.

                      cybereality It's more interactive than Dear Esther. I'm pretty sure I played D.E. a long time ago. I switched to the controller on Edith because it was kind of weird opening doors and things. I kept pressing the "a" button, but it uses the trigger for action. It's interesting so far. It would be perfect for a Quest 2, if it could fit. It's not a huge game. I downloaded it in a little over an hour on my 600kps connection. I think the game saves are kind of spaced though. I'll have to see what happens on this next save. I had to back up a bit on the first one. Didn't really mind though. I'm happy with it so far. This is miles ahead in terms of exploration. Esther was just walking around scenery that didn't do anything.

                        Gone Home was also really good. It was mostly just walking around a house and listening to audio recordings, but there were a couple puzzles. But my favorite of these types of games was Everybody's Gone to the Rapture. That game had an amazing story, which I'm still not sure I understood, but it was very engaging. Also had some interactivity, more than Dear Esther.

                          The problem with jpeg xl is that it doesn't meet a real need for most cases. The other formats are good enough, just like mp3 was good enough for 99% of everyone. Image compression is a minor issue now that video is everywhere.

                          And as much as I dislike google, I've gotten a lot of use out of their projects. I've used android for nearly as long as I used all the microsloth products, back in the day, and in another year or two it will be longer. I'm using AV1 almost exculsively now, and I still have three google accounts that I use on rare occasions.

                          Edit: Here are my favorite articles today about crazy companies:

                          https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/31/opinion_column_relevance_in_business/

                          http://techrights.org/2022/11/01/ibm-sensationalism/