nudge

What's the airport and flight experience like, @Carnivore Chris? Temp checks? Masks? Form filling upon arrival/departure?

It seems we have signed Erras on a free transfer!

Fabien Cousteau is following in the footsteps of his grandfather and intends to build Proteus - an underwater version of the International Space Station, which would be the world's largest underwater research station and habitat. https://www.ecowatch.com/ocean-research-proteus-underwater-station-2646792937.html First design renders:

There's another great (and long) read on PetaPixel, a very well researched analysis on why Fuji survived and thrived while Kodak died a slow but sure death. In short, it was lack of diversification and failure to adapt its business models to the changing market, but the article goes deep into it. One of the best pieces I have ever read on the topic, give it a go when you have some spare time... https://petapixel.com/2018/10/19/why-kodak-died-and-fujifilm-thrived-a-tale-of-two-film-companies/

Also while we're on Kodak, this is a very interesting read: https://www.businessinsider.com/this-man-invented-the-digital-camera-in-1975-and-his-bosses-at-kodak-never-let-it-see-the-light-of-day-2015-8 Kodak employee Steven Sasson was the first one to invent a digital camera... in 1975. They developed it further into what became the first ever DSLR in 1989, only for Kodak to reject it because they were afraid it would affect their film sales negatively. He started with this prototype in 1975: ...and turned it into this in 1989: It had a 1.2 megapixel sensor, and used image compression and memory cards. Just imagine if the bosses at Kodak had embraced the idea and new technology at that time...instead of getting into the market way too late and bankrupting in 2012. A lot of missed opportunities there. @Mel81x

Adaptability and diversification is the key to business success and sustainability; great stuff by Kodak...I believe they were already selling industrial chemicals for quite a while, getting into pharmaceuticals is certainly going to be huge for them. (Don't stop making film though, thank you).

Yeah, I know. Was just messing about...

Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge?

Yeah, they will have to, especially considering that Sony already has the technology on both their higher range and mid range cameras; A6400 for example costs less than a 1000€, and while it's not a full frame camera like R5/R6 and most of the specs are understandably way behind the new Canon models, it still boasts a better AF acquisition speed which is very impressive (0.02s compared to Canon's 0.05)... That's why I love competition, it makes high end technological innovations accessible and affordable for a regular user pretty soon after they hit the market...

Pre-season calendar: Monday, 03.08.2020: Start of the pre-season training Sunday, 09.08.2020, 13:00: Werder Bremen – Eintracht Braunschweig Saturday, 15.08.2020: Start of the training camp in Zillertal Mittwoch, 19.08.2020, 17:00: Werder Bremen – LASK Monday, 24.08.2020, 13:00: Werder Bremen – SC Austria Lustenau Tuesday, 25.08.2020: End of the training camp in Zillertal Saturday, 29.08.2020, 15:00: Werder Bremen – FC Groningen Saturday, 29.08.2020, 17:15: Werder Bremen – FC St. Pauli Saturday, 05.09.2020, 15:30: Werder Bremen – Hannover 96

Nevermind the hyena, it's the lion that blew me away at the very start of the video... It's almost completely dark, and the AF still manages to get the eye, even before the lion emerges from the darkness - and that's with a f/5 aperture! Very impressive and completely game changing... I also love how it automatically focuses on the face/head and the body of the animal at the very instant it loses track of the eye, and when goes straight back to it once it's detected again. AF points selection on the Touchscreen as well as the joystick is nice. Also 12 fps using mechanical shutter and 20 fps using the electrical one is completely mental! Hope the technology will trickle down do the models not intended for pros too...

This brings back some good memories...

Off topic (sort of), but I just read that William Storey (the Rich Energy dude with the ZZ Top beard) is apparently taking over Sunderland?

The new Canon EOS R5 is expected to be quite an ambitious camera overall, but this just blew my mind. It has Animal Eye Autofocus... and it's bloody impressive...

Yeah... that's once-in-a-lifetime shot for sure...

This photo is amazing...

Weather forecast currently still 80% GO.

@Mel81x, what are your thoughts on GPT-3? I spent a good chunk of my weekend exploring the available samples of its capabilities, and must say I find it very impressive for what it is... The bloody thing can write workable code, do machine translation, answer questions, one-shot learn novel words, write passable poetry, folk tales, generate news articles and pretty much anything else, in a much, much better, more human-like quality than its predecessor - which is of course not surprising, given the vast amount on data it was trained on (half a trillion words) and the number of parameters used that's even hard to comprehend (175 billion!!!), but nevertheless, the results are mind blowing; especially its ability to meta-learn, generalise to other tasks with barely any or none finetuning and solve tasks it has never encountered. One area where it impresses me in particular is the AI Dungeon "Dragon" model upgrade; the level of coherence in the world, story and dynamic characters generated by the GPT-3 are nothing short of amazing... Also this is some next level Westworld inspired shite: I'm getting serious Dolores vibes here... Have you ever seen anything so full of splendor?

No worries, I have just added it into my calendar so that such a fiasco can never happen again!

Happy birthday, Phil!

@Carnivore Chris UK has reinstated the 14 day quarantine for travellers returning from Spain. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-53540691

Sounds good! If you plan taking quite a few trips during your time there, consider getting the Berner Oberland Regional Pass, as transportation is expensive and it will save you a lot of money!

Look at Grindelwald or Lauterbrunnen as one of the options, any other towns/villages in the Jungfrauregion are similarly great as well, but smaller with less options. You can quite easily move between them though without spending a fortune on transportation. If you want more city experience, I'd go to Lucerne if I were you.

How long will you stay and what activities are you interested in?

Bali to open up for international tourists from mid September!