Robert Collins

7 hours ago, Andrew Reid said:

Amazing isn't it.

Hedge funds don't fail, they simply get bailed out.

Strange that isnt it? It is almost as if the Fed (unlimited printing for free) is in bed with the hedge funds...

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/16/business/ben-bernanke-will-work-with-citadel-a-hedge-fund-as-an-adviser.html

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/01/janet-yellen-paid-speeches-citadel-gamestop.html

42 minutes ago, Andrew Reid said:

Who is dumping? Last time I looked GME is still above $250 and that's in spite of Wall Street trying to get it down.

Let me ask you a question? 2 years from now will GME stock be above US$250 or below US$250 a share. I think we can both agree it will be below US$250 a share. 

So if you currently hold GME stock valued at US$250 a share you have already been 'pumped and dumped'

17 minutes ago, Andrew Reid said:

Who says anybody needs to 'destroy their own wealth'! What is $10 to a guy on Reddit? I put $150 in. This was my small gesture to see a few of the greedy elite in our society suffer some losses. Everyone should do it to send the message that short selling on the industrial scale of the big hedge funds is borderline illegal and deeply immoral.

It is the occupy wall street movement - but this time it actually made a difference, rather than blocking a few roads and annoying the average joe trying to get to work.

Robert, if you think the 99% are going to shed a tear because Citidel go out of business, you're in for a big uphill argument. And nor should they shed a tear.

Collective action to save thousands of peoples jobs at Gamespot and wipe billions off the profits sheets of these malignant machines of capitalism. I am all for it. You should be too. Unless you are on the side of the greedy short sellers.

Warren Buffet I have a lot more respect for. Knows businesses inside and out and rewards the good ones with his investments. In turn, he gets stinking rich. Would be nice if he did as much charity as his friend Bill Gates though.

I have enormous sympathy for your political views on this subject just not your financial ones.

I think you believe that you are part of a revolution when in reality you are just getting sucked into 'pump and dumps'

9 hours ago, Video Hummus said:

It's a $100+ middle finger that many people happily parted with.

This is a depressing cynical viewpoint and actually points to the core of the current problems in this world. Maybe if everybody was a little less cynical, a little less jaded, a little less full of themselves, a little more joyful the world would be a vastly better place; 100% money back guaranteed it would.

On the other hand, destroying your own wealth, to try destroying a hedge fund (Melvin Capital) because you believe they are destroying other people is a life affirming virtuous circle?

Revenge trading is simply a destructive circle and I 100% guarantee you wont get your money back!!

1 minute ago, Andrew Reid said:

It is a revolution, 100%. Internet users are controlling the market.

Bitcoin is worth $27,000 today. Are you saying that buying at the start of the global recognition of the currency is pointless? Tell that to the millionaires it created. Cryptocurrency is absolutely a revolution and a disruptive technology.

100% agree

I thought speculating on worthless stocks was the job of short sellers and hedge funds...

The largest investment I have in the world today is bitcoin and it has made me several million dollars (well I guess it would if I sold them). I also believe in the revolution that bitcoin 'could' create...

But there is a quantum difference between bitcoin and dogecoin (which was designed to be worthless).

Look at the end of the day if you are arguing about the price of shit ....you are simply arguing about the price of shit. Yes you can all agree that the price of shit should be higher and screw the odd hedge fund but at the end of the day all you are left with is pile of shit....

16 minutes ago, Andrew Reid said:

I get the feeling this is different. Coordinated, targeted action. I foresee... trouble.

Trouble? Wow lets start a revolution betting on Dogecoin....

Look I think our society suffers from very deep inherent problems - specifically the ever increasing inequalities between rich and poor and to less extent the young and the old....

Marx wrote about this over 100 years ago and predicted revolution with the rich being the first ones in front of the firing squad.

The reality is that people have simply been distracted (much like in The Hunger Games) by TV, by the internet and I guess ultimately by speculating on worthless stocks and cryptos where effectively they are swapping this rubbish amongst themselves. Dystopian it is. Trouble it is not....

As a former investment banker I guess I am the bad guy in all this.

But seriously the odd burps from financial markets arent going to change anything - the rich will get richer and well everyone else will simply have to get by.... The Hamptons may not be a defensible position but revolutions were never created on gambling sites on the internet. Enjoy the fun while it lasts...

Kind of reminds me of The Hunger Games....

The specs on this camera seem almost insane - I guess there will be a catch. Shouldnt it suffer from overheating?

I remember a problem with the A9/A9ii that didnt have 'picture profiles' in video (possibly linked to the electronic shutter.) 

How about this A1?

2 hours ago, jpleong said:

I think WD owns SanDisk, too, right?

Yes, right. Bought them in 2016.

BTW someone told me that Glyph was suffering from financial problems

LaCie is owned by Seagate - GTech by Western Digital. These are effectively the only 2 major spinning hard drive manufacturers in the world. I doubt you would go far wrong with either one but if you have a preference it should be based on the original manufacturer.

In my case, I chose LaCie because support/product availability/price all seemed better in my country (Thailand).

My advice (and what I have done) is to buy TWO enclosures (2x2Big T3s). ONE enclosure simply syncs with the other providing back up. That way you can have RAID0 for fast speeds/maximum space over 2 drives as well as redundancy for BOTH hard disk failure AND enclosure failure.

This might sound a very expensive option but if you price it out on a 'per TB' basis it doesnt work out too bad at all.

45 minutes ago, pixelpreaching said:

FWIW, I have a Sandisk external SSD which is my working hard drive, so it's always plugged into my computer, and it's wonderful. Then I have a G-Tech which is a backup of the Sandisk... it's great as well, but has only seen a fraction of the use since I only plug it in to do a backup.

I use Samsung T5's with my BMPCC4K & 6K and they've never done me wrong.

I did have a Vectotech Rapid, which was originally my backup for the Sandisk. But one day I plugged it in and just... nothing. I will say though, that I emailed them and they had me send it in and quickly sent me a brand new one, no hassle at all. So that could easily have been a one off, but all I can say is their warranty/customer service was excellent.

Sandisk, G-Tech, and Samsung are the brands I'd feel most comfortable with. I do have a Lacie (regular hard drive, not SSD) as my Time Machine backup and it's been great.

Seagate is the only company I'll never buy from again - way too many second chances given to their hard drives.

LaCie is owned by Seagate and your LaCie will likely have Seagate drives.

I like Ben Kingsley but I thought that Ghandhi was an awful self-indulgic film. Actually it reminds me of E.T. Which came out the same year, had a pretty similar story and with a star who looked and sounded remarkably similar!!

42 minutes ago, EphraimP said:

Yeah, 5 bills for a job wheel and 6 dials plus a few buttons is spendy. Since I started using a track ball with a jog wheel, I couldn't imagine going without one. I definitely want to find a control surface with dials and maybe sliders to add to my setup. I'm enjoying my Stream Deck XL, how does  the Monogram system fit in your workflow with your Stream Deck? Any connectivity issues like you were having with the original Palettegear?

The more I think about it, the more the Loupedeck idea of combining Stream Deck-style programable screen buttons with dials and preset/function type buttons would be the way to go. Add a few sliders, jog wheels and a track ball with the regular buttons and you'd have a pretty amazing setup, given the right software to make it work. Too bad the Loupedeck CT don't work very well. 

Has anyone had experience with the Loupedeck+? It seems like it would pair well with a Stream Deck for anyone married to the Adobe ecosystem. 

I have the smaller stream deck (15 key) and love it. The Stream Deck works in layers - so press photoshop and move to 15 shortcut/macros, press lightroom and move to 15 shortcut/macros, press chrome and have links to 15 websites. It can also control my sound, aircon and lights. I have well over 100 shortcuts/macros mapped to my stream deck. It works very well for me....

Against this - the 3 macro black macro tabs on the monogram seem somewhat redundant although their location does make them useful. As I said before it is the jog wheel and dials that monogram has done really well (my guess is the sliders would be good too...) Monogram has learnt from their mistakes with palette gear and this set up works really well with a premium feel. In terms of complaints - sometimes the profile doesnt change automatically when you switch programs (so you have to switch manually.) Secondly there seems very limited program profiles available - it is very adobe centric. I would have liked to see profiles for Photo Mechanic and Kyno for instance.

Ok, I have to add this one Monogram CC (essentially Palettegear 2.0). It is very expensive - this setup US$499 (although discount coupons available) but it works incredibly well.

The key is the jog wheel and the dials. The jog wheel seamlessly moves from 1 frame to rapid scrubbing (and its sensitivity can be adjusted). The same with the dials they just feel right (and sensitivity can be adjusted). For Premiere i have the dials set to position x, position y, scale, rotation, zoom timeline, next/previous edit. The dials can also be pressed so scale/reset scale.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/11/disney-stock-had-its-best-day-since-march-jumping-14percent-to-a-record.html?&qsearchterm=disney

Its interesting that Disney's share price has just hit an all time high....

1) Remember Disney had the top 6 grossing films in 2019 and that business has gone away

2) Disney's cruise business has gone

3) As has it parks business

So why are investors so bullish? Because of the streaming business and its projections...

17 hours ago, zerocool22 said:

Def could live without all those movies, but the shit netflix is producing is even worse. I def see value in the fact that cinema plays movies at a certain time. There is no pauze, everybody needs to be quiet, so the movie has your full attention. While at home there are thousand distractions (please pauze I need to go to the bathroom or I need a snack, oh I forgot to start the dishwasser, smartphones, kids, friends/wife/kids start talking when bored, or commenting and the list continues)

This is a very good point. But what we have done in my household during the pandemic is to have 'family film night' once every couple of weeks. We literally microwave the popcorn, turn down the lights, switch off our phones and enjoy a film...

Top 30 grossing films in the US 2019 (all those that earned over US$100m at the box office)

I know it sounds selfish but I simply dont care....

Part of the problem here is that we are sort of discussing a 'fight over control of deckchairs on the Titanic'. Realistically the ship has been going down for sometime and when a GFX100 medium format camera is being match by a Huawei P40 it apparently sank a while ago...

I remember all the talk about Samsung... bet they are pleased to be out of this market.

Look at how Sony has invested so heavily in this market but it is not as though they are making money (or much in the way of sales.)

A 'compact camera' that isnt even compact. Jesus.

The Rx1Rii is usually impossible to find or ridiculously expensive for what it is - which only goes to show the market is crying out for something like this....

22 minutes ago, Kisaha said:

so, you reccomend Εlgato Stream Deck (the XL?) and ShuttleXpress? 

I wanted the Shuttle before, but after using the wheel of my Kensington as a jog wheel, I left it behind in my priorities, do you think the Elgato's will be a better option for me?

Do they work ok with Premiere and Resolve (I believe you work FinalCut, more?). 

Is it convinient to buy both brands, or an exaggeration? 

Thank you if you have the time to reply.

https://www.thomann.de/gb/elgato_stream_deck_xl.htm

https://www.thomann.de/gb/elgato_stream_deck.htm

https://www.thomann.de/gb/contour_av_solutions_shuttlepro_hardwarecontroller.htm?sid=c398e6b5cc9843280c7a5b19ef455448

https://www.thomann.de/gb/contour_shuttlexpress_black.htm

I would without a moment of hesitation recommend an Elgato Stream Deck. I have the mid sized one which is 15 keys. But you can work in layers - so press photoshop and have 15 shortcuts in PS, same for Premiere, LR, or Chrome (with website shortcuts.) It is just super easy and intuitive to setup... 

I have to admit that I am a constant sucker for these control systems. I seem to have bought just about everything out there.

In terms of recommendations the Elgato Stream Deck is simple but excellent and another oldie but goody is the shuttleXpress.

Really the two biggest disappointments were the products I had most hope for. First, palettegear - constant connection issues and really not that user friendly (although I will probably be stupid enough to give their monogrammcc offering a go (if they can get their website to work.) Biggest disappointment for me (and collecting dust at the back of some cupboard) was 'loupedeck' that on the face it seems 'perfect' but in reality was a huge disappointment...

This guys review of the Loupedeck is so spot on....

And just like him - I so wanted this control deck to good - it was just so disappointing....,

21 hours ago, RawZion said:

Andrew or other owners of the Sony a7s3 : Did Sony finally fix their file system?  Do files run sequentially?  Can we rename them?  Or is the first shot on a card always going to be C01, etc?

I can't believe I'm still asking after all these years, but here we are.  If the fixed that horrible, maddening, unncessary glitch that no other camera system does I think I'll buy one, maybe even two

Yes, this has been sorted - in fact there are a bewildering array of options as to how to name files.....

I found this video incredibly informative. It explained a lot of things I didnt really understand such as why the differences in isos between picture profiles exist.

I imagine that Sony will chop a couple of hundred dollars off the Sony A7iii over Christmas and compete with the new offerings by 'price'. They are well positioned to do so with a plethora of cheap lenses out there for the A7 series....