Warner Brothers DVDs are rotting in their cases

*sigh*

Many WB DVDs and box sets made from 2006 to 2008 or 2009 are rotting and becoming unplayable due to a manufacturing plant in Pennsylvania that "used subpar materials and cut corners". The discs might show the menus then fail when you start playing, or may die during a layer change, it's very unpredictable.

WB is replacing failed media. But there's a catch: a lot of the movies are no longer available. Licensing has expired, or for whatever reason, you're not going to be able to get a direct replacement. In which case WB is offering an equivalent value voucher for another title.

*bigger sigh*

The only way to know if your media is affected is to stick it in your player and see if it plays.

Why do I expect the Jolly Roger is going to be increasingly hoisted soon?

The article includes a link to a list of identified titles. It's several pages, and I know I have some. I do not look forward to an inspection of my library. This is definitely a good reason to build your own digital library in the form of a media player and rip your discs.


https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/03/they-curdle-like-milk-wb-dvds-from-2006-2008-are-rotting-away-in-their-cases/

Official cause of death for Gene Hackman and his wife released

The Santa Fe county coroner released the report today revealing what happened, and it's pretty sad.

Both deaths were from natural causes. The first death, his wife, Betty Arakawa, died on February 11 of Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome. Hantavirus is not very common outside of northern New Mexico and Arizona, it's spread by Eastern Deer Mice feces and saliva and can cause an asymptomatic infection. Gene passed away on the 18th from heart disease and advanced Alzheimer's. Reportedly his pacemaker logged his heart stopping. Could be the heart disease, could be Broken Heart Syndrome from his wife dying, or perhaps malnutrition of not feeding himself after she died? The advanced Alzheimers could account for him not calling for help.

No foul play is suspected but the investigation is continuing.

Very tragic.

https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-news/gene-hackman-cause-of-death-revealed-1235281821/

EDIT to add non-paywalled source:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/gene-hackman-betsy-arakawa-cause-of-death_n_67c9ea6ce4b0404dff30062e

To read Rolling Stone articles and avoid paywalls, open a private browsing window. Normally on PCs this will be a Ctrl-Shift-N. You can also install the Epic browser which focuses on user privacy and does not maintain cookies.

Trying to get a laptop repaired

I've had a high-end gaming laptop for a few years, an Asus Strix. It's a few years old, probably 7 years or so. 32 gig of ram, both SSD and spinning rust drives, 15" screen. Given to me and served me well, but retired when I bought a really powerful PC tower after my dad passed away. The keyboard was in pretty bad shape, I had taken to using an external keyboard before I'd retired it. I'd looked in to what was involved in replacing it, and you basically had to remove absolutely everything from the case. Far more work than I was really eager to embrace.

I decided it needed to get repaired and put back into service, so I got an RMA number and shipped it off to Asus a couple of weeks ago - just to get them to look at it was some $90. I knew it needed a keyboard and battery, as far as I could tell everything else was fine. And early this week I got an estimate that confirmed everything that I suspected. Parts and labor, plus the initial $90~, I was looking at about $500 to get it back into service. Not bad, a lot less than $2500 or so for a comparable new laptop.

Then a couple of nights later I get an email saying that they can't get parts. I don't know if it's the battery or keyboard, but something is not readily available. But it wasn't really bad news - they were offering to swap me for one of two much newer factory refurbished models! They were about two years old, same memory and about the same disk capacity, same screen size. So very comparable.

Well, memory is an issue. Mine definitely has 32 gig, and they're saying it only has 16. But I can buy 64 gig from Crucial and install it myself for about $155 or so. No problem.

But the annoying thing is that the person handling the exchange will only send me one email a night!

I'm not joking!

I receive an email around 7:45pm, it takes me a little time to digest, maybe do a little research, formulate and type my response and send it, and that's it for the night. Maybe I get a response the next night? Or it'll be two nights later? I really don't understand why they're working like this, are they so utterly slammed by repairs that they can only respond once to any given case per night? It doesn't make sense and isn't that great of customer service.

Regardless, hopefully I'm on the way to getting a new(er) laptop in the not distant future! Once I get shipping confirmation, I'll get on to New Egg and order the Crucial memory, and if there's a lag on the memory arrival I'll have time to do some configuration and initial software loading on the new box. Installing the new memory should be no more than 30-60 minutes work.

Laptop is sorted!

7:55pm email excerpt:
"Thank you for approving the replacement offer, model 2 / FX507VV , our repair center will be notified and the replacement will ship in approx. 5 business days."

YAY! So probably in two weeks I'll have my new(ish) laptop! I should review memory installation videos and consider when I want to order the new ram.