It's not actually clear whether Amazon Instant Video will stream at 1080p for any/all HD material, or if the device just supports 1080p for other services like Netflix. Does anyone know?

I have Amazon Instant Video on a Sony Bluray and it is 1080p.

Out of interest, it's not really instant. The application could be swifter to respond.

In the press conference Felix stated that he pulled at 5200 feet, which was the planned deployment altitude (well, 5000 was planned, but the 200 feet difference is negligible at 170+mph).

So that solves it then. That would mean that he did not pull early to preserve Kittinger's record as many people were suggesting. He simply was going too fast and Kittinger had gone too slow (especially because of the drogue).

Total distance in free-fall is a better record, then, than total time.

The commentator on the live feed did reiterate several times that the exaggerated curvature was due to the lens, I guess the press just decided to ignore that.

I can tell you that's not the usual experience. I don't have a whole lot of experience, but I do have nearly 300 jumps and I'm still yet to experience a hard opening. Much more like coming to a slow, graceful stop in the car. People sometimes have a "slammer" but they're rare and can usually be attributed to some reason (bad packing, bad body position at deploy time etc).

"I don't have a whole lot of experience, but I do have nearly 300 jumps"

300? I take my hat of for you sir! I must of had a bad day. It was very cloudy and the plane we jumped from ended up above the wrong island. We found out in time, corrected, found a hole in the clouds and went for it.

At 13 jumps I have even less experience :)

The parent may have been doing a tandem jump; in my experience, the openings on those first few were much harder than most solo jumps I've done.

Edit: from reading the parent's other posts, perhaps not. Maybe it was a hard opening on a day he/she happened to be wearing denim. Who knows :)

Yep, and if not tandem could have been rental gear. Although I've never had a hard opening on any gear, the rental gear I jumped as a student was a lot less comfortable than my rig that's sized perfectly for me.

Congrats on the 13 jumps! Where do you jump at?

Sorry, I just saw your post! HN really needs a notification system a la Reddit :)

I jump out of Crosskeys in Williamstown, NJ, USA. The airport code is 17N. How about yourself?

Yes I did! I'm the guy with he black hair. Jumping with the No1 jumper from Holland. http://i.imgur.com/3beyM.jpg Everybody should do it at least once! It is incredibly cool.

He took the record for fastest freefall (supersonic), highest skydive and highest manned balloon flight. Pretty sure he'll be happy with that, and to let Kittinger keep longest freefall.

I'm not sure about the fastest free fall part--how is free fall defined for purposes of this record? In particular, how does the record not belong to Bill Weaver, the test pilot whose SR-71 disintegrated at Mach 3.18?

Here's his account of the incident: http://www.barthworks.com/aviation/sr71breakup.htm

Now that's a freakin' cool article!

Freefall is generally defined in terms of vertical speed.

If you exit a DeHavilland Twin Otter that's doing 90 knots forward speed, yes, you get "forward throw" from the plane...but you still have to accelerate vertically before reaching terminal velocity. As a skydiver flying on your belly in an arched position, you usually fall at ~5 seconds per 1000 feet...excepting the first 1000 feet, which takes ~10 seconds to fall as you move from 0 vertical speed to 120mph.

(It's that age-old physics problem of whether the forward speed of a projectile has an effect on its downward velocity.)

Don't world record attempts need to be supervised and checked for authenticity? /couldbewrong

He didn't survive, which is a requisite to get a record.

Then how did he write a firsthand account?

ghostblogging. It is the hottest new trend in the Valley.

I must say, I do subscribe to Tupac's ghost-podcast.