Sunday, April 12
Daily News Stuff 12 April 2020
Recycled Hamster Bedding Edition
Brickmuppet brings you stop-motion Gundam masterpieces. I bring you hamsters.
It's electronic ASMR.
Disclaimer: On a scale of skinned knee to false vacuum state collapse, I'd rate it a supercaldera eruption.
Recycled Hamster Bedding Edition
Tech News
- Went out to the shops this afternoon to pick up a few things that didn't come with my grocery delivery, such as carrot cake, brioche, and Easter eggs.
If you think that brioche is an extravagance and not an essential item in a time of Wuhan Bat Soup Death Plague, well, when it comes to gluten-free bread my choices come down to brioche which is indistinguishable from the real thing and what appears to be compressed distressed recycled leftover hamster bedding.
So yes, brioche matters.
Anyway, things seem to be returning slowly to normal. No toilet paper that I could see, but that did come with my delivery so no problems there. Hand wipes, tissues, paper towels, all back in stock.
No issues with food at all except that I couldn't find the gluten-free lamingtons. My favourite ice cream was on sale half price, so I picked up some of that.
There is a shortage of soap of all kinds. What are you people doing, eating it? I mean, my shower wash smells like vanilla custard so I understand the temptation, but don't.
Only seven new cases of WBSDP reported here in NSW yesterday, but it's the Easter long weekend and testing rates are down. Still, it looks like locking everybody up in tiny little glass boxes and dousing them with bleach did the trick.
- Speaking of toilet paper, The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe podcast covered the ongoing shortage in their latest episode. It's not just panic buying and hoarding that's causing the problem; there is a genuine shortage.
That's because there are two entirely different toilet paper supply chains - consumer and commercial. Different products made to different standards from different raw materials and shipped by different distributors. And right now nobody is using the commercial stuff, so it's just sitting on the loading dock while the consumer-focused companies scramble to keep up.
That will change, but it could take another month for the commercial production lines to completely switch over. Meanwhile, poop less.
- Time machine landed in the wrong era? Need a current map of Europe? Got you covered.
More here. (DevianTart)
Did you ever notice that the Sea of Marmara looks like an angry possum?
- Intel's upcoming Comet Lake S processors will deliver less performance than AMD's current lineup while costing more. (Tom's Hardware)
A winning combination. Just not for Intel.
- Also, about those Intel TDP figures: The 65W 10-core i9-10900F will draw 224W at full load unless it catches fire first. (WCCFTech)
224W is significantly more than 65W.
The 16-core Ryzen 3950X is rated at 105W TDP but can peak at 146W. But that's 40%, not 240%.
- This guy ownes 46 F/A-18 Hornets. (The Drive)
Bet he doesn't have much trouble with the local Home Owners Association. At least, not twice.
- Don't update that MacBook! (Tom's Guide)
If you've already bricked your MacBook with Catalina, you may be able to recover by booting into recovery mode and running the first aid thingy. I hope so, because all the Apple stores are shut and Louis Rossman is just one guy.
- Turbo Pascal 3 is smaller than the touch command on MacOS Lion. (Programming in the Twenty-First Century)
I'm happy to report that touch on MacOS whatever the hell version I'm running, let's call it Caracal - touch on MacOS Caracal has slimmed down and is now only 60% of the size of Turbo Pascal 3.
The touch command sets the date on a file to the current time. Turbo Pascal 3 is a complete IDE and compiler.
- Bootstrap is dropping support for Internet Explorer with version 5, due out this year. (ZDNet)
In fact, if the rollout is anything like Bootstrap 4, the main thing it will drop support for is all your existing code.
- No, 5G doesn't cause Wuhan Bat Soup Death Plague. (MSN)
If they'd actually call it by its real name rather than tiptoeing around it, maybe people would understand that it's a death plague caused by people in Wuhan eating bat soup.
- What part of "opt-in" is too complicated for you to understand, Mozilla? (Mozilla)
Oh look, there's a bullet point saying that if you opt out they will actually respect that. I SHOULD BLOODY WELL THINK SO.
- Just how bad is the FISA debacle? (Lawfare)
Bad enough that even people who still claim that the Russia Collusion hoax wasn't politically motivated think it's bad.
- John Conway (mathematician and creator of the Game of Life - no, the other one) and Stirling Moss have passed away.
- It's true, a Google search for "can i feed my dinosaur ramen" returns no results.
AnimeLab has this one tagged as Slice of Life. Correct.
The Media Can Die in a Fire
Anime Microsoft Paint Video of the Day
Anime Music Video of the Day
Brickmuppet brings you stop-motion Gundam masterpieces. I bring you hamsters.
Louis Rossman Saves a Macbook Video of the Day
It's electronic ASMR.
Disclaimer: On a scale of skinned knee to false vacuum state collapse, I'd rate it a supercaldera eruption.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
07:48 PM
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1
In regards to toilet paper, I've been more than a little surprised that stores haven't just stated selling commercial grade toilet paper as a stop-gap. Keep the normal stuff on a maximum purchase limit long enough to refill the supply chain after things go back to normal, but let the commercial stuff be unlimited purchase and let the horders binge on it. A 6 month contract for the commercial TP would get the stores through this without leaving tons of unsalable commercial grade around.
Posted by: StargazerA5 at Monday, April 13 2020 01:10 AM (045dC)
2
I'm only shopping every ten days or so right now. The last time I was out, water and TP were still in short supply, as were a few other things, but I managed to buy a multipack by going in the morning. The time before that, half the store was empty.
Today, I didn't think to check the TP aisle, because I've got plenty, but everything else seemed to be in stock--there was even almost the regular amount of bottled water (and plenty of gallon jugs and the like). The bread aisle was moderately picked over but there was still a bunch.
Today, I didn't think to check the TP aisle, because I've got plenty, but everything else seemed to be in stock--there was even almost the regular amount of bottled water (and plenty of gallon jugs and the like). The bread aisle was moderately picked over but there was still a bunch.
Posted by: Rick C at Monday, April 13 2020 03:49 AM (Iwkd4)
3
My mother reports that her local Frisch's Big Boy has a buy-dinner-get-a-roll-free deal going on, and their web market is offering 2 commercial TP rolls for the price of 12 dinner rolls. I suspect the problem with trying to get commercial TP into most retail chains is centralized ordering: if an individual store isn't free to contact a distributor directly, they're stuck with the chain's suppliers, stock, and shipping windows.
Last time I was in CVS, the cashier was instructing customers to show up early on Thursday, since that's their only scheduled delivery of paper goods.
I noticed last week that Toto Washlet and other bidet conversion kits are mostly sold out on Amazon, except for the ones that run over $1,000. Glad I bought one before all this nonsense started; wish I'd gotten an electrician to install more GFCI outlets in January so I could have upgraded the other bathrooms.
-j
Last time I was in CVS, the cashier was instructing customers to show up early on Thursday, since that's their only scheduled delivery of paper goods.
I noticed last week that Toto Washlet and other bidet conversion kits are mostly sold out on Amazon, except for the ones that run over $1,000. Glad I bought one before all this nonsense started; wish I'd gotten an electrician to install more GFCI outlets in January so I could have upgraded the other bathrooms.
-j
Posted by: J Greely at Monday, April 13 2020 07:49 AM (ZlYZd)
4
Around here, a lot of places have stopped placing limits on the amount of bottled water. The supply seems ample for the moment, and people seemed less inclined to panic buy water.
Toilet paper are still selling out, but it takes much longer to do so - I was surprised to go into stores in the middle of the afternoon and still see sizable quantities of toilet paper available.
If you want to discourage all but the cheapest or most desperate people buying toilet paper, put the commercial stuff on sale in the retail stores. You are buying either tissue paper-quality TP, or sandpaper labeled as toilet paper.
Toilet paper are still selling out, but it takes much longer to do so - I was surprised to go into stores in the middle of the afternoon and still see sizable quantities of toilet paper available.
If you want to discourage all but the cheapest or most desperate people buying toilet paper, put the commercial stuff on sale in the retail stores. You are buying either tissue paper-quality TP, or sandpaper labeled as toilet paper.
Posted by: cxt217 at Tuesday, April 14 2020 10:48 AM (4i7w0)
5
I usually buy large packs of half-liter spring water bottles. Typically I get 40-packs from Costco, and I had gotten one, again luckily, right before the hoarding started. I managed to get a 32-pack from Kroger a couple weeks ago, and another last week, and sports drinks appeared on the shelves a lot faster than water and aren't selling out as fast, so I've also been drinking a lot of G0 (sugar-free Gatorade) to stretch the water.
The local Kroger doesn't have a ton of water but when I went there the shelves were mostly full, not mostly bare, so it looks like the panic buying is winding down.
The local Kroger doesn't have a ton of water but when I went there the shelves were mostly full, not mostly bare, so it looks like the panic buying is winding down.
Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, April 14 2020 02:01 PM (Iwkd4)
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