Saturday, July 17
Daily News Stuff 17 July 2021
Ban All The Things Edition
Anime of the day is Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions from 2012. Chunibyo means second-year disease and it's a term for teenagers who develop strange obsessions in their second year of middle school, and that is writ large with these kids.
The saving grace - and the reason this series is great rather than unbearable - is that it examines why these particular teenagers developed their strange obsessions, rather than just acting them out for 12 episodes.
You need to get through the first episode before the signs of something deeper appear, but it's worth the effort.
After the original 12 episode TV run, there's an OVA episode, then a film, then another 12 episode TV series, then another OVA episode, then another film.
You can skip the first film if you want - it retells the first TV series from a different perspective - but you shouldn't skip the OVA episodes. I did and I got rather confused, because they're continuity, not just filler.
Oh, and I chose an AMV to present this one rather than the opening credits, because I don't much like the opening credits.
Yes, this looks like fascism, but it's not, because you're being censored by the good guys.
And you know they're the good guys because they said so.
I mean, if anyone disagreed with them, the news would be all over the place, right?
Ban All The Things Edition
Top Story
- Google has banned distributing what they deem to be "content that deceives, misleads or confuses users" - on Google Docs.
Yeah, they're watching you, you and your sneaky words.
Top comment on Hacker News is from a Google employee who now loathes the company.
- Oh, and when they ban you and your sneaky words - probably for telling the truth - the federal government expects the rest of Big Tech to follow suit.
But they're totally not fascists, because fascism is the other guys.
The saving grace - and the reason this series is great rather than unbearable - is that it examines why these particular teenagers developed their strange obsessions, rather than just acting them out for 12 episodes.
You need to get through the first episode before the signs of something deeper appear, but it's worth the effort.
After the original 12 episode TV run, there's an OVA episode, then a film, then another 12 episode TV series, then another OVA episode, then another film.
You can skip the first film if you want - it retells the first TV series from a different perspective - but you shouldn't skip the OVA episodes. I did and I got rather confused, because they're continuity, not just filler.
Oh, and I chose an AMV to present this one rather than the opening credits, because I don't much like the opening credits.
Tech News
- Oberon+ is a cross-platform Oberon compiler and IDE. (GitHub)
It compiles down to LuaJIT bytecode rather than native code, which is fine by me. LuaJIT is a work of art in the compiler space and it makes total sense for smaller projects to reuse it.
- A closer look at Threadripper Pro. (AnandTech)
Threadripper Pro starts at 16 cores for $1150, vs. $800 for a 16 core Ryzen. And the cores are slower (though the base clock is higher).
On the other hand, you get 120 PCIe lanes instead of 20, 8 memory channels instead of 2, and a maximum of 2TB of RAM compared to 128GB. So if your work depends on any of that it's not a particularly costly option.
The motherboards are certainly more expensive than even a top-of-the-line Ryzen board, but you get up to 7 PCIe x16 slots, dual 10GbE ports, up to 16 SATA ports, and official rather than just unofficial ECC support.
- Speaking of unofficial ECC support, unbuffered ECC DDR4-3200 modules seem to be readily available for about 25% more than non-ECC. So if I do build a new system this year it will be AMD with ECC RAM. Easily worth the extra hundred bucks on 64GB of RAM.
- More details on the Steam Deck. (PC Perspective)
One thing not on the specs list but reported by Linus Tech Tips is that the storage is user-upgradeable. You'll need an M.2 2230 drive - the smallest size available. Regular drives are 2280, meaning 22x80mm. A quick look around only showed 128GB drives, though and the next size up, 2242, you can easily get 2TB.
There will also be a dock coming so you can plug it into monitors and keyboards and such. Personally I'd prefer a 1080p screen, but the GPU isn't really up to 1080p gaming on recent titles, and people would complain.
- Oh, and while it's called the Steam Deck, it supports other app stores too. (WCCFTech)
It's an open PC running Linux with a gaming compatibility layer, and you can do whatever the hell you want with it. In fact, it's so open that some games won't run because they have embedded anti-cheating measures depending on locked-down hardware.
- NASA dug yet another C64 out of the garage and got the Hubble working again. (Science)
One of the onboard computers failed. They have multiple backup systems, but after switching to a backup they still got the same error, and couldn't work out why.
Turns out that two of the onboard computers have failed. Good thing there are four of them.
- There was a remote execution vulnerability in Cloudflare's CDNJS. (Bleeping Computer)
There was a bug in the handling of build scripts that could have compromised 12% of all the world's websites.
More generally, build scripts for interpreted / JIT-compiled languages are cancer.
- Sea walls might simply make floods someone else's problem, study suggests. (Ars Technica)
The oldest known standing wall is in Theopetra Cave in Greece, and dates to around 23,000 BC. Scientists, meanwhile, are just now figuring out that the entire purpose of walls is to make problems happen somewhere else.
- Pocket Casts - the podcast app - has been bought by Automattic, which runs WordPress and the ashes of what used to be Tumblr. (The Verge)
I like Pocket Casts and used it for years before half of the podcasts I listened to got eaten by brain worms. But it's also been losing money for years - not a lot of money, but consistently in the red.
So I hope this works out for them.
Totally Not Fascism Video of the Day
Yes, this looks like fascism, but it's not, because you're being censored by the good guys.
And you know they're the good guys because they said so.
I mean, if anyone disagreed with them, the news would be all over the place, right?
Disclaimer: The difference between the Democrats and the Nazis is the Nazis only needed one Reichstag Fire.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
03:30 PM
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1
On the back of the Anime of the Day recommendation, I'm halfway into Little Witch Academia. Fun show, but the soundtrack is just incredible: orchestral high adventure of the finest quality. It's inspired me to get down to composing again myself.
Posted by: Jay at Sunday, July 18 2021 12:27 AM (0jVI9)
2
"For example, if you protect the Napa-Sonoma shoreline, the Santa Clara Valley and San Leandro in the South Bay can expect to experience $82 million and $70 million in flooding damages, respectively, with a sea-level rise of 200 cm. San Rafael would also be hit with an additional $53 million in damages in the case of a flood."
It's pretty amazing to see what some people can do with numbers. It's like watching a baboon use a $3000 laptop to smash a pile of wildebeest dung.
It's pretty amazing to see what some people can do with numbers. It's like watching a baboon use a $3000 laptop to smash a pile of wildebeest dung.
Posted by: normal at Sunday, July 18 2021 07:11 AM (obo9H)
3
200cm? What, in six thousand years? Global average sea rise is what, 7mm/year? (Yes, I know they're talking about imaginary tsunami and the like, that only happen in Syfy channel disaster movies. Might as well worry about a Sharknado. It's just as likely.)
Posted by: Rick C at Sunday, July 18 2021 07:39 AM (eqaFC)
4
Right. If the sea level rises 200cm, building a sea-wall around Napa & Sonoma will cause the oceans to end up 0.0000003cm deeper, ruining everything! EVERYTHING!
And $82 million will buy exactly one thumbtack by then.
And $82 million will buy exactly one thumbtack by then.
Posted by: normal at Sunday, July 18 2021 08:34 AM (obo9H)
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