Wednesday, May 26
Daily News Stuff 26 May 2021
F-Word All The F-Words Edition
Anime of the day is Log Horizon from 2013. This is what is known as an isekai story - literally another world - and those have become something of a blight on anime and manga in recent years. But this is one of the better ones.
The plot is that everyone playing the latest update of a particular online game gets dumped into that world for real. Like... A hundred thousand people, all at once.
The difference between Log Horizon and most other isekais is that it actually examines what would happen if you took a small city's worth of people from our world and dumped them in a fantasy realm that they are used to treating as a game. And the results aren't always pretty.
F-Word All The F-Words Edition
Top Stories
- Dear Microsoft,
It's not fucking up to you how many fucking times I pause your fucking updates. Unlike you retards, I have a fucking job to do, so kindly take your updates, cover them in glitter glue, and shove them so far up your ass that you see stars when you close your eyes.
Love,
Pixy
Update: WINDOWS YOU FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT DIE IN ALL THE FIRES.
- Arm has announced three new Arm cores. (AnandTech)
Which is kind of a logical thing for Arm to announce, and a logical thing to be announced by Arm.
Anyway, specifically we have the X2, following the high-performance X1, the A710, following the formerly high-performance A78, and the A510, following the power-efficient A55.
All three support the new Armv9 instruction set, and the X2 and A510 are 64-bit only designs. As a developer I'm generally against ripping out backwards-compatibility like that, but on the other hand the x86 architecture has maintained binary compatibility since 1978 and as a result is now insane.
Anyway, the X2 is 16% faster than the X1, assuming the same manufacturing process and power consumption. The A710 - no longer being the top performing core - delivers the same performance as the A78 but uses 30% less power. And the A510 is 25% slower than the A73, which was Arm's high-end core in 2017 - and what powers my "new" phone.
Not an astounding upgrade but still pretty solid.
The plot is that everyone playing the latest update of a particular online game gets dumped into that world for real. Like... A hundred thousand people, all at once.
The difference between Log Horizon and most other isekais is that it actually examines what would happen if you took a small city's worth of people from our world and dumped them in a fantasy realm that they are used to treating as a game. And the results aren't always pretty.
Tech News
- A million PCs are being sold per day, with an expected growth of 18% for 2021. (Tom's Hardware)
The article says that this is happening "despite" the component shortages, but that's backwards. This is a major factor causing the component shortages. PC sales have been trending slowly downwards for years and certainly no-one was stockpiling parts in the event of a surge.
- It may look like a Flavoradio from 1980 but it is actually an FPGA developer kit for vision-centric AI projects. (Serve the Home)
At $199 it's a little more expensive than an AM radio too, but that's a pretty good price for this kind of developer board.
- Chrome 91 includes a gravity sensor API. (Phoronix)
That will come in handy the next time I forget to pay the gravity bill.
- Mathematicians have figured out how to figure out the square root of one. (Quanta)
For rather complicated definitions of "square root" and "one". Specifically it solves Hilbert's 12th problem from 1900 for what are known as totally real fields.
Not in the way Hilbert envisioned, since mathematics has advanced somewhat in 121 years, but solved nonetheless.
- Russia has fined Google 6 million rubles - approximately twelve cents - for failing to remove what it calls "illegal content". (Engadget)
What Russia means here is content inconvenient to their narrative, the kind of stuff Big Tech kills with an axe if it inconveniences their own narrative.
- Amazon's ad revenue is now twice that of Snap, Twitter, Roku, and Pinterest combined, or approximately twelve cents. (CNBC)
I don't think any of those companies are exactly raking it in right now.
- I mentioned that Phison has a dumb name but makes good SSD controllers, but a 15 microsecond access time? Really? (Hot Hardware)
That seems awfully fast but the chart data is at least consistent.
And speaking of dumb names, one of their competitors is called InnoGrit. I guess eventually all the cool names are taken.
- I hadn't heard Subaru - the dancing duck girl from yesterday - sing before. Her voice drops by about an octave. Rather striking.
You Have to Admit That They Know How to Draw Food Anime Music Video of the Day
Disclaimer: ALL THE FIRES. ALL OF THEM.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
06:58 PM
| Comments (13)
| Add Comment
| Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 752 words, total size 6 kb.
1
It's not like the 1970s when shops were running proprietary software that cost (tens of) thousands of dollars and were supported by one guy in Burbank who had hand built it in 8080 assembly so your new 80286 probably ought to run it if they want to sell you an 80286.
Posted by: normal at Wednesday, May 26 2021 07:40 PM (obo9H)
2
Yes and no. The other day I installed a 15 year old application and it just worked. No fuss at all.
The good side of Windows, as opposed the the updates, which are very much the bad side.
On MacOS, you can no longer do that. Applications that haven't been updated are dead. And iOS. And coming soon to Android.
The good side of Windows, as opposed the the updates, which are very much the bad side.
On MacOS, you can no longer do that. Applications that haven't been updated are dead. And iOS. And coming soon to Android.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, May 26 2021 07:53 PM (PiXy!)
3
In defense of the 'gravity sensor'...
Very sensitive ones were considered useful for investigating buried objects back in the day.
And this might be talking about a three axis accelerometer, which I think are included in a lot of the inertial measurement unit chips these days.
I think these aren't the same quality of accelerometer that are used in neat things like experimental modal analysis, but those are topics I'm not well read in.
But letting a browser talk to them sounds nuts, and wanting Google to have access to that data should be grounds to confine someone in a mental health care facility.
Very sensitive ones were considered useful for investigating buried objects back in the day.
And this might be talking about a three axis accelerometer, which I think are included in a lot of the inertial measurement unit chips these days.
I think these aren't the same quality of accelerometer that are used in neat things like experimental modal analysis, but those are topics I'm not well read in.
But letting a browser talk to them sounds nuts, and wanting Google to have access to that data should be grounds to confine someone in a mental health care facility.
Posted by: PatBuckman at Thursday, May 27 2021 12:34 AM (6y7dz)
4
Chasing the links, it does look like the GravitySensor is a 3-axis accelerometer. Among other things, you can use them as step counters, although that seems silly with a Chromebook.
Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, May 27 2021 03:13 AM (eqaFC)
5
Chrome apparently runs on smartphones, so there are obvious browser gaming applications.
Beyond telling when someone is shaking their phone, you can also tell the angle/attitude the phone is at without using a gyro.
I just don't think that sounds fun enough to be worthwhile. I am very much not the target market for a smartphone.
Beyond telling when someone is shaking their phone, you can also tell the angle/attitude the phone is at without using a gyro.
I just don't think that sounds fun enough to be worthwhile. I am very much not the target market for a smartphone.
Posted by: PatBuckman at Thursday, May 27 2021 03:30 AM (6y7dz)
6
For some reason I read it as ChromeOS, not Chrome.
Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, May 27 2021 04:27 AM (eqaFC)
7
Bought a used PC a while back. Original owner must have been a business - there were no standard games on it, and it was locked down good and tight.
I keep getting pop-ups saying I should unlock it so MS can bollix things up whenever they feel like it, but I've preferred to do my updates myself on my time line, thank you very much 
Posted by: Frank at Thursday, May 27 2021 05:21 AM (rglbH)
8
Given that the forced updates was one of the reason why I stayed away from Windows 10 as long as I did (Basically, until I had to have my main desktop rebuilt a few months ago, which are another couples stories in themselves.), and having the forced updates crash another desktop in the household on a routine basis...Yeah, whoever at Microsoft thought it was a good idea should be rounded up and forced to spend time on the Golan until they have an encounter with Syrian fire support.
Posted by: cxt217 at Thursday, May 27 2021 08:44 AM (4i7w0)
9
Well, linux isn't an escape, unless you use a distro that doesn't have an auto-update service running by default (or roll your own). I mean, I run minimalist stuff, so feel free to live your own authentic storyline, but you're not going to avoid the plebe shit* if you still run the plebe shit** (even if it's linux).
*autoupdates, nutty defaults changing every release, unavoidable stupid crap
**basically any distro that ships systemd by default
*autoupdates, nutty defaults changing every release, unavoidable stupid crap
**basically any distro that ships systemd by default
Posted by: normal at Thursday, May 27 2021 10:49 AM (obo9H)
10
And, to clarify, I'm not just saying "plebe" (as if it was a meme), I mean plebian: if you let someone else decide what happens to your computer you have already surrendered your status. And good luck \;^)
Posted by: normal at Thursday, May 27 2021 11:07 AM (obo9H)
11
Fuck systemd.
I mean, it doesn't have a lot to do with this topic, but on general principles I am obliged to say that.
I mean, it doesn't have a lot to do with this topic, but on general principles I am obliged to say that.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, May 27 2021 03:33 PM (PiXy!)
12
"Yeah, whoever at Microsoft thought [forced updates were] a good idea"
Well, to be fair, they were in a pretty tough spot. One of the big complaints about Windows was systems being vulnerable to all kinds of bugs that had been patched because the people running them wouldn't stay up to date.
I've yet to see people griping about Windows forced updates do the same about their phones (although, to be fair, Google & Apple seem to do a better job of not having updates that break stuff, although on the gripping hand, they don't have the variety of hardware Windows supports.)
Well, to be fair, they were in a pretty tough spot. One of the big complaints about Windows was systems being vulnerable to all kinds of bugs that had been patched because the people running them wouldn't stay up to date.
I've yet to see people griping about Windows forced updates do the same about their phones (although, to be fair, Google & Apple seem to do a better job of not having updates that break stuff, although on the gripping hand, they don't have the variety of hardware Windows supports.)
Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, May 27 2021 11:31 PM (eqaFC)
13
It is a tough spot. And if Windows merely popped up reminders every single day - fine. But it will force you to upgrade. The moment you stop clicking on the wait an hour button, it takes over your computer.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, May 28 2021 01:08 AM (PiXy!)
60kb generated in CPU 0.0266, elapsed 0.144 seconds.
58 queries taking 0.127 seconds, 361 records returned.
Powered by Minx 1.1.6c-pink.
58 queries taking 0.127 seconds, 361 records returned.
Powered by Minx 1.1.6c-pink.
