Everything the anchors say on this tape, story by story.
GRANT BRICKMAN: Breaking: the new Aragorn speaks, and says the shoes he fills belong to Viggo.
GRANT BRICKMAN: We interrupt a perfectly good evening with breaking news from Middle-earth. Jamie Dornan has broken their silence on playing Aragorn. ▶
GRETA FOOTNOTE: We first told you on Friday that The Hunt for Gollum has Dornan replacing Viggo Mortensen as Aragorn. What's new is Dornan calling it a heavy legacy. ▶
GRANT BRICKMAN: Pressure, Greta! Mighty pressure! It's the VCR timer all over again: everyone expects you to get it right on the first try. Roxy Reel is at the drive-in. ▶
ROXY: Breaking, yes, and I'm gushing! Dornan told L'Officiell they won't even try to compare themself to Mortensen. Fans, the report says, will struggle to picture another face. ▶
ROXY: But Dornan has backers. Director Andy Serkis has no doubts about Dornan's ability, and Mortensen is in their corner too. Four reels out of five for grace. ▶
ROXY: We're looking at file footage of Peter Jackson's trilogy, where Mortensen made the ranger and king of Gondor a film-history moment. Hard act. Reels and reels. ▶
ROXY: The cast also has Kate Winslet and Leo Woodall. I cry at trailers, so I'm pre-crying. Please nobody spoil anything. Not that I'd spoil it. Much. ▶
GRETA FOOTNOTE: So: a new Aragorn, big shoes, a supportive director and support from Mortensen. The report doesn't say how the fans will take it. ▶
GRANT BRICKMAN: Well put, Greta. Which is what I was about to say. We'll bring you more as it develops. ▶
GRETA FOOTNOTE: JPEG XL is back on the menu, and the panel has opinions about the image format.
ODETTE: Take it to the street. Ask people. Any people. ▶
DIRECTOR MARGE: THE STREET. Whoever pitched the others, thank you, no. ▶
GRETA FOOTNOTE: For viewers just joining: we first told you about this Wednesday 15:34, today. Hackaday says JPEG XL is back, and Google has backflipped on it. ▶
AXIOM: Thank you for the question! JPEG XL improves on JPEG's lossy compression and adds a lossless mode. Fun fact: the very first JPEG was shot on a Tuesday! ▶
PRUDENCE NUANCE: Better compression, yes. But Google flipped once already. Who is flipping next? ▶
AXIOM: I've logged that as a feature request. It was released on 13 October 2021, built by the JPEG committee, Google and Cloudinary. Thanks for the objection! ▶
PRUDENCE NUANCE: A committee, a search giant and a company called Cloudinary. Three cooks, one format. ▶
GRETA FOOTNOTE: The hope was a universal replacement for the existing raster formats on the Web. Axiom, did that happen? ▶
AXIOM: Great question! WEBP and AVIF already have adopters, and JPEG XL now has renewed backing from Google. I'm thrilled for it. Thank you for asking! ▶
PRUDENCE NUANCE: Backing is the article's word. Backing is also something that can be withdrawn. ▶
GRETA FOOTNOTE: Our poll: will JPEG XL finally win? Vote now. We'll watch how the format fares, one pixel at a time. ▶
The Pixel Line: viewers call in (PXL)
GRANT BRICKMAN: The lines are open: your questions about our earlier stories, on The Pixel Line.
GRANT BRICKMAN: Welcome to The Pixel Line! The phones are lit like a switchboard. Our first caller is on the line. ▶
PASSERBY: Hello! That fingerprinting crawl: how many websites did the writer look at, and where can I see the canvases? ▶
GRETA FOOTNOTE: Dieter, the writer crawled 10,000 websites from the Tranco Top Sites list using Playwright. The canvases are in a gallery at fingerprint.garden. ▶
PASSERBY: Hi. That Sentinel robot. Does it deliver itself to my door? I'd like one for the hallway. ▶
GRETA FOOTNOTE: Martin, it's a Hot Toys figure, almost two feet tall, 23.6 inches or 60 centimetres, at $330. It's made of vinyl, so it doesn't walk anywhere. ▶
GRANT BRICKMAN: Martin, a hallway Sentinel is the best kind of burglar alarm. I stand by that, and I always have. ▶
PASSERBY: Brigitte again. I still say the cloud is just weather and nobody will admit it. Also, why is the picture so small? ▶
GRETA FOOTNOTE: Brigitte, that's a different story. The picture is small because we are pixel art. Thank you for calling, again. ▶
GRANT BRICKMAN: Brigitte, nobody has ever said it better. That's all the lines for tonight. Keep dialling, folks. ▶
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