[-] RickRussell_CA@beehaw.org 6 points 1 month ago

"Do you feel... in charge?"

[-] RickRussell_CA@beehaw.org 3 points 2 months ago

Outer Worlds has no space-based content. Yes, you have a spaceship, but it's essentially a fast-travel device. One of the locations is a space station, but it's no different than a large building (e.g. it's not shaped like a torus or anything interesting like that).

Outer Worlds is a really fun take on the Firefly space western concept, though, as long as you understand all of your activities will take place on worlds/moons with basically the same gravity & atmosphere.

[-] RickRussell_CA@beehaw.org 19 points 3 months ago

Oh good, now when I search I'll have to wade through the effluent of AI-produced pablum to find an actual human journalism product.

[-] RickRussell_CA@beehaw.org 3 points 3 months ago

Haberdashers rejoice!

1
7

Article includes an interactive & searchable map of commercial air pollution hot spots

[-] RickRussell_CA@beehaw.org 5 points 6 months ago

Remember when Substack, the home of many excellent journalists, started to defend fascist and white supremacist content on their platform?

Oh, wait, that's happening right now.

[-] RickRussell_CA@beehaw.org 4 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

\3. Asserting that their IT system is a "separate legal entity" and that they are not responsible for the accuracy of the system. They are eating legal loco weed.

[-] RickRussell_CA@beehaw.org 4 points 8 months ago

I know I'm lucky -- I'm in a senior position in my career, so it's likely I'll find something new for the same or similar salary.

Still, it was completely unprovoked. I had nothing but glowing performance reviews, nothing like an HR writeup or anything.

[-] RickRussell_CA@beehaw.org 6 points 8 months ago

I'm to be dismissed from my job Jan 3.

I guess I have prospects. Still, it's a hell of a kick in the teeth, I've never been involuntarily terminated from a job in my entire life.

[-] RickRussell_CA@beehaw.org 11 points 9 months ago

If I remember correctly, at the time Valve justified the 30% by pointing out that Apple was charging the same for music and video content. And Valve immediately started building value-added services like forums, updaters, multiplayer support, achievements, etc. to justify the price.

If you compare what Valve was doing to the physical media distribution methods of the period, it was a MASSIVE improvement. Back then, you could sell 10000 units to Ingram Micro or PC Mall, or whatever, and you only got paid if they sold. And any unsold inventory would be destroyed and the reseller would never pay for it. And if you actually wanted anything other than a single-line entry in their catalogs, you paid a promotional fee. Those video games featured with a standup display or a poster in the window at the computer store? None of that was free; the developer was nickeled and dimed for every moment their game was featured in any premium store space.

[-] RickRussell_CA@beehaw.org 5 points 9 months ago

Huh. So, I actually own Lugaru, which I purchased through Humble Bundle in May 2010.

It... was not a good game. Basically anthropomorphic rabbits beating the crap out of each other, which SOUNDS good, but was not executed well.

[-] RickRussell_CA@beehaw.org 13 points 10 months ago

It's not "inexplicable".

DIMM mounting brackets introduce significant limitations to maximum bandwidth. SOC RAM offers huge benefits in bandwidth improvement and latency reduction. Memory bandwidth on the M2 Max is 400GB/second, compared to a max of 64GB/sec for DDR5 DIMMs.

It may not be optimizing for the compute problem that you have, and that's fine. But it's definitely optimizing for compute problems that Apple believes to be high priority for its customers.

64

Avram Piltch is the editor in chief of Tom's Hardware, and he's written a thoroughly researched article breaking down the promises and failures of LLM AIs.

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Excerpt:

Batteries are going to transform transportation and could also be key in storing renewables like wind or solar power for times when those resources aren’t available. So in a way, they’re a central technology for the two sectors responsible for the biggest share of emissions: energy and transportation.

And if you want to understand what’s coming in batteries, you need to look at what's happening right now in battery materials. The International Energy Agency just released a new report on the state of critical minerals in energy, which has some interesting battery-related tidbits. So for the newsletter this week, let’s dive into some data about battery materials.

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Excerpt:

More than 61,000 people died because of Europe’s record-shattering heat wave last summer, scientists have concluded. And that’s probably still an underestimation.

The figure is just shy of the 70,000 excess deaths researchers attribute to another exceptional heat wave that swept Europe in 2003. That disaster helped raise awareness about the dangers of climate change and the continent’s general lack of heat action plans.

Yet the new findings suggest that in the two decades since, efforts to prepare for a hotter future and protect the continent’s most vulnerable populations have fallen short.

...

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RickRussell_CA

joined 1 year ago