Sunday, April 14

Geek

Daily News Stuff 14 April 2024

Dynamicising Edition

Top Story


Tech News

  • Scientists think they have found a way to double the lifespan of lithium-ion batteries.  (Science Daily)

    Lithium-ion batteries wear out a little each time they are recharged (and have another flaw that if you keep them on the charger full-time they can swell up and destroy your expensive gadget entirely).

    In testing the effects of different charging patterns, researchers found that charging with high-frequency AC power caused half as much wear as regular DC power.

    It should be cheap and simple to implement as well.


  • Yes, Virginia, the CPI is bullshit.  (Forbes)

    Ace might have covered this previously - the Forbes article is undated, but the research paper came out in February.

    Calculating the CPI using the same approach used up until 1982, annualised inflation in the US peaked at 18% in 2022, more than double the official number, and worse than the  darkest days of the Carter Era.

    So no, you're not imagining it.  Anyone who has been inside a grocery store in the past five years knows that, but some economists now also know it.


  • Apple executives have defended the company's practice of selling expensive laptops with just 8GB of RAM and no possibility of ever upgrading that unless you learn surface-mount resoldering techniques and probably not even then.  (WCCFTech)

    I looked up the cost of the chips themselves, and the 8GB RAM upgrade that Apple charges you $200 for - only at the time you order the machine, since it can never be upgraded afterwards - appears to cost the company less than $5.

    Apple's markup on memory upgrades is between 2000% and 4000%, depending on the model.

    That's why they won't let you add memory yourself.

    Their markup on storage is tame by comparison - about 600% over retail SSD pricing, likely 1000% on wholesale prices.


  • Modpack status: Functional but overweight, with 368 mods and no crashes.

    I am deliberately testing on a less-than-ideal system: A laptop with 16GB of RAM, loaded up with background apps that use most of that RAM by the time Windows has booted, with Intel integrated graphics and a high-resolution (2880x1800) display.

    I was getting around 60 fps previously, but with the latest additions and changes it's become slower and has noticeably more frame rate hitches.

    It also takes a good while to load.

    I hope to test it on my new laptop this week.  That probably won't be any faster, but since it has 40GB of RAM it will determine whether that is the limiting factor; if it loads and run smoothly that will be a good sign.

    I've set ModernFix to dynamic mode which has let me add Every Compat back in (adding 25,000 new wooden items) without the Java heap exploding - with static allocation, Every Compat would use up 2.5GB of RAM all by itself - but the modpack is still pretty memory hungry.

    I've also seen a squirrel and a silk cocoon in the latest test world, which means Zoo Architect and Critters and Companions are working.  And the villagers were shooting back at the nearby pillagers, so Guard Villagers is working too.


  • Update 2: Caverns and Chasms has a known incompatibility with Friends and Foes.  They're both open source and the developers have communicated, but there's currently no fix.

    That's what was causing those crashes.

    I think I want F&F more than C&C, so if there are no other incompatibilities I'll leave C&C disabled.


  • Update 3: Slimming it back down now.  One camel, eight penguins, no crashes.


Disclaimer: Up with which I will not put.

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Apple pies are delicious. But never mind apple pies. What colour is a green orange?




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