Golden Globes 2017

• Best picture, drama: “Moonlight”
• Best picture, comedy or musical: “La La Land”
• Actress, drama: Isabelle Huppert, “Elle”
• Actor, drama: Casey Affleck, “Manchester by the Sea”
• Actress, comedy or musical: Emma Stone, “La La Land”
• Actor, comedy or musical: Ryan Gosling, “La La Land”

Not that any of this matters in the slightest. As the cartoon notes, there are only 93 voters of the "Foreign Press", who are mostly not really foreign, nor are they really journalists... but their identities are well known. And so for folks who are trying to get their picture noticed and voted on by the Oscar voters, getting your show to take a spraypainted doorknob is a good investment in the movie business.

There are quite a few things about the Golden Globes that raise quite a few eyebrows. Here's an article about it, if you care. Yes, the link is to Fox News, which programs opposite NBC - so read it with a grain of salt.

Helpful DVD Hack

If you've watched one DVD in your life, you know how annoying the endless title screens, trailers, and warnings are—primarily because you're often prevented from skipping them. Unless you know the right remote control shortcut, that is.

The always-helpful Amit Agarwal from Digital Inspiration rounds up several methods for skipping the trailers, warnings, and other crap on a DVD so you can get straight to the movie you're trying to watch. The first tip, from CNET author Tom Merritt, is the easiest. Just press Stop, Stop, then Play on many DVDs to skip right to the movie. This method won't always work, so if it doesn't, don't give up hope! If twice doesn't work, Salon.com's Richard Rider says pressing Stop three times, followed by Play, will do the trick.

Finally, if you're on a laptop or desktop computer, Lifehacker alum Rick Broida had this to say:

I popped in a DVD and fired up Windows Media Player. When the first splash screen appeared, I clicked the player's Stop button. Then I clicked Play, and the disc skipped ahead to the previews. I repeated the process - Stop, then Play - and it advanced to the FBI warning. I did it a third time and presto: I landed right on the movie's menu screen.

These tricks may not work every time and with every DVD, but thank god for the times they do. Got a trick of your own that does the trick? Share it in the comments. Photo by bizmac.

Skip the DVD Trailers & Go Straight to the Movie [Digital Inspiration]

Send an email to Adam Pash, the author of this post, at tips+adam@lifehacker.com.

In The Groove

Understand that audio is simply vibrations. The groove in a record is created by a pin being vibrated by an audio signal while you rotate the record at a certain rate. Going the other way, when you place a pin in the groove, rotate the record at the same velocity as it was recorded, and amplify the signal coming from the pin, the resulting signal is the audio.

A CD is simply a digitized version of those vibrations, called a wave. If you truly understand how a CD works, a record is basically a much simpler subset of that process: No conversions from/to digital to/from analog. The waveform of the audio is stored exactly as a physical reproduction of that waveform.

A cassette tape works on the same principle but instead of the vibrations being stored as a physical groove in a record, it is stored by magnetizing those vibrations onto a metallic strip of material over the length of the material. Playing it back is somewhat like placing a tiny piece of metal by the tape as it moves and as the tape goes by that little piece of metal, the magnetic changes that were stored on the tape move the little piece of metal. Those movements/vibrations are amplified and that's your audio.

These are very simplified explanations, but only to get the ideas across.

It isn't magic.

This is a photo of a single groove on a vinyl record, magnified by 1000x.

I Know Better Than You, And I Don’t Care What You Think

Said the Congressman to his constituents.


Transcript:

MASSA: I’m not going to vote for 3200 as it’s currently written. Step one, I will vote for a single payer option or a bill that does have a medicare coupled public option, which we don’t have right now. If my town hall meetings turn into the same media frenzies and ridiculousness, because every time that happens we lose, We lose another three million people in America. They see that happening and negate us.

PARTICIPANT: It changes America.

MASSA: Every time that occurs. So what happens in my town hall meetings frankly is important, because I am in one of the most right wing Republican districts in the country, and I’m not asking you guys to go back to wherever and send people to me. This is a generic statement of what can I do? Well that’s one thing we can do.

PARTICIPANT: So if we got your meetings to sixty forty, you’d vote…and there was single payer in a bill you would vote for it?

MASSA: Oh absolutely I would vote for single payer.

PARTICIPANT: If there was sixty forty sentiment in the room?

MASSA: Listen, I tell every audience I’m in favor of single payer.

PARTICIPANT: If there was eighty twenty in the room?

MASSA: If there was a single payer bill?

PARTICIPANT: And there was a single payer….

MASSA: I will vote for the single payer bill.

PARTICIPANT: Even if it meant you were being voted out of office?

MASSA: I will vote adamantly against the interests of my district if I actually think what I am doing is going to be helpful.

(inaudible participants’ comments regarding the “interests” of the district statement from Mr. Massa)

Massa: I will vote against their opinion if I actually believe it will help them.

If that isn't elitist arrogance from Democratic Congressman Eric Massa, then I don't know what is. He admits that he's stacking the room for his meetings, and that he will vote against his constituent's wishes because he knows what's better for them than they do. [source]

Knowing Is Half The Battle