• The metaverse will soo be more popular than the real world. Will reality disappear? No. (HackRead)
  
  The thing about reality is that it is real.
  
  It doesn't disappear when you stop believing in it.
  
  You do.

• Thanks to Nvidia, there's a new generation of PCs coming and they're running Linux. (ZDNet)
  
  Technically this is true. Nvidia is releasing new PCs, and they are running Linux.

  Powered by MediaTek and Nvidia's Grace Blackwell Superchip, Project DIGITS is a $3,000 personal AI that combines Nvidia's Blackwell GPU with a 20-core Grace CPU built on the Arm architecture. It's one impressive chip. It can deliver up to 1 petaflop of AI performance at FP4 precision and support 200-billion-parameter large language models.

  Not quite:

  Project DIGITS will be available in May from NVIDIA and top partners, starting at $3,000.

  There's a difference.

  OK, maybe you wouldn't pay three grand for a Project DIGITS PC. But what about a $1,000 Blackwell PC from Acer, Asus, or Lenovo?

  What about an endless magic cake that doesn't make you fat while we're wishing for things that will never happen?
  
  
  
• While we're wishing for things that will never happen the UK government is looking to leap into the red hot AI sector just before the bubble bursts. (CNBC)

  In a recent interview with CNBC, the boss of app development software firm Appian said he thinks the U.K. is well placed to be the "global leader on this issue."
  
  "The U.K. has put a stake in the ground declaring its prioritization of personal intellectual property rights," Matt Calkins, Appian’s CEO, told CNBC. He cited 2018′s Data Protection Act as an example of how the U.K. is "closely associated with intellectual property rights."
  
  The U.K. is also not "subject to the same overwhelming lobbying blitz from domestic AI leaders that the U.S. is," Calkins added — meaning it might not be as prone to bowing down to pressure from tech giants as politicians stateside.
  
  "In the U.S., anybody who writes a law about AI is going to hear from Amazon, Oracle, Microsoft or Google before that bill even reaches the floor," Calkins said.
  
  "That’s a powerful force stopping anyone from writing sensible legislation or protecting the rights of individuals whose intellectual property is being taken wholesale by these major AI players."

  In other words, the UK has failed before they have even started.
  
  
  
• THe J5Create is a Thunderbolt 5 dock that features a lot of stuff. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Lots of video ports, an M.2 slot, support for an MXM module for a graphics upgrade, 2.5Gb Ethernet, all that good stuff.
  
  And costs $1400.
  
  
  

Except...  The sky is green.

Update: I'm not sure why that happened but the next world I created the sky was blue again, so okay.

I'll upload as a beta soon.

The modpack is design to have a vanilla feel while hugely expanding the game under the surface.  So you don't have a new bar for your magic level, you don't start with a bunch of guidebooks, nothing looks out of place except...  When did they start using half-height slabs to smooth out the landscape, or when did they add magnolia trees, or swans?

Beyond that:

• Dye Depot adds sixteen new colours, neatly filling out the sixteen original ones, and Dye the World makes this compatible with several other mods.
• More Mob Variants adds all the new wolf varieties (and more) and does the same for cats, cows, pigs, sheep, chickens, and skeletons.  Sorry goats.
• Cane's Wonderful Spiders and Nebulus Spiders do this for spiders.
• Creeper Overhaul and Enderman Overhaul do this for creepers and endermen.
• Critters and Companions, Exotic Birds, Bugs Aplenty, What the Gecko, and Unusual Fish do this for mammals, birds (very scarce in vanilla Minecraft), bugs, lizards, snakes, and amphibians, and fish, respectively.
• Oh, and bees are Buzzier and more Productive.
• Look out though when the creatures from Grimoire of Gaia join the fray.  (Grimore of Gaia is on a timer so they don't show up and kill you before you even have a wooden sword, something that happened a lot during testing.) 
• Blocks+, Chipped, Chisels & Bits, Dawn of Time, and Domum Ornamentum greatly expand the range of building blocks.  (Chipped doesn't work with blocks from other mods, but Domum Ornamentum will happily create a permafrost door trimmed with olive wool, neither of which exists in vanilla Minecraft.) 
• The Aether, Blue Skies, the Undergarden, and the Twilight Forest give five brand new dimensions where you can lose all your items to unexpected dangers.
• Regions Unexplored, Terralith, and Mystic's Biomes add about 150 new biomes to the Minecraft world.
  
• Aquamirae, Deeper and Darker, the Galosophere, and the Graveyard add new regions where you can lose all your items without even venturing to another dimension.
• Villages are upgraded a lot.
  
• So are the Nether and the End.
  
• Cooking gets a boost from Farmer's Delight, Croptopia, and Aquaculture.
• The Let's Do series lets you brew tea, coffee, beer, wine, and stronger things.
• Corpse means you don't lose your items - at least, not permanently - and Pet Cemetery means you don't necessarily lose your pets either.
• Domestication Innovation makes your pets a lot more capable. 
• Supplementaries, Quark, and Clutter add a whole bunch of things.
• Small Ships add small ships, Immersive Aircraft adds immersive aircraft, and Create adds...  Pretty much everything else.

Musical Interlude

Posted by: Frank at Monday, January 13 2025 10:14 PM (+i6Xr)

Posted by: Joe Redfield at Tuesday, January 14 2025 04:41 AM (KOtXO)

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