That's so random...

In PayPal’s defense, they’re absolutely deluged with bad sellers - not just outright fraudsters, but eBay sellers who have no clue how to run a business and people who try to bend the rules and bootstrap a business by making sales without any inventory. PayPal doesn’t like to talk about this problem for obvious…

The real issue here is that consoles have effectively peeled off the the vast majority of average, everyday gamers from the PC platform, leaving behind a bunch of people who are absolutely obsessive about graphics to the exclusion of virtually every other aspect of the gaming experience.

Speaking as a former PayPal employee and current, occasional still-customer, PayPal could have been (and perhaps, if something massive changes, still could be) a reputable, customer-focused company providing a useful way to securely and conveniently pay for things on the online. Unfortunately, they were effectively…

Exactly. I would say that the show never even attempted to address gay versus straight. The basic conflict in the show was closeted versus open homosexuality. It was all about the fact that you should be able to be open about your sexuality.

Thank God he didn’t have a passenger.

A few, mostly aimed at making the car more track-friendly: Boost Logic intercooler/intake + Cobb AP (595 WHP @ 19 psi), transmission oil cooler, upgraded brake rotors/pads/lines, aftermarket front upper A arms for more negative camber, and wider wheels running 305-with cup tires all around.

(and I own a GT-R, for the record).

ping politicians.funding.transportation.gov

Water is fungible. Irrespective of where it technically comes from, the point is it could be used for something a bit more essential, and thereby lessen the load on Lake Mead.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the straw...

That’s true, although you can argue that, with twin cranks, the H-Block configuration was even more mechanically complex.

It should also be noted that another engine with a similar configuration, the Napier Sabre, was ultimately quite successful, so I’m not sure this really counts as an “obvious” engineering disaster.

Someone finally got The Great Panjandrum working!

They sure look different when they grow up...

After some experimentation I think you’re correct. Specifically, it doesn’t like my Mac Mini. I get much better quality playing it on my iMac. Either HBO or the Flash Player (or some combination of the two) seem to be making some unfortunately arbitrary decisions about the capabilites of my Mac Mini, which is a shame…

Yeah, I know it's not my Mac Mini per se because it is perfectly capable of streaming 1080p Flash video from other sources. Assuming others are actually getting a better quality result, I can only speculate that it is either an issue with The HBO Flash Player on Mac in particular, or an issue with AT&T UVerse…

I suppose it’s also possible that AT&T is throttling things on their back end (I have U-Verse, unfortunately). I certainly wouldn’t put it past them. I’m getting Google Fiber this summer, so perhaps that will improve things.

Anyway, here’s another crop of the same title text, this time from a (highly compressed) HD video file (mkv running full screen with VLC). Notice how much better it looks than the other crop from the HBO Now player:

I have similar bandwidth, so I don’t think that’s the issue. It may be a problem with the Flash player on OS X (although I use other sites that do 720 or 1080 flash video and it looks fine). Regardless, it consistently looks like crap (not just GOT, but everything else as well). Guess I’ll be sticking with torrents.