Yeah the effect is most noticeable to me for thematic albums or something classical like a symphony. I really don’t want those interrupted!
And I feel like fewer bands are making thematic albums now because they don’t translate well to the phone experience. That’s a shame.
My band plays charity gigs at nursing homes, and they seem to love the Wii! They’ll have like Wii Sports nights and stuff.
I’m getting on in years a bit myself. I have no problem with strategy/sim type games, but those where you can’t afford to even blink are beginning to test my stamina. Though my wife recently got me into Diablo IV, and I seem to be doing better with that. Maybe because it doesn’t use a 1st person perspective?
Others have covered the subtleties of how the sound could be reproduced on older players in a different way. But there may a psychological component as well? And I don’t just mean a nostalgia factor, though that could certainly be part of it.
One thing I miss is having a dedicated music player that will never interrupt my listening experience with a notification or anything like that. It’s the same reason I still prefer going to a theatre to watch movies. Zero distractions compared to a home screening and I feel like I can get far more immersed in it.
I guess most religions caution against getting too self-absorbed or materialistic in life. It’s a common trap we fall into, and it’s an awful place to find yourself when you’re on your deathbed.
As I get older, I think more about the people who will be left behind once I’m gone. Will they be all right? Will my passing cause a lot of drama? If they still really need me, I will fight to stick around a little longer, even if it entails some personal suffering. It’ll be over soon enough.
I guess if I’m in the middle of some personal quest, I may also fight to see it through before kicking the can? I dunno.
Otoh if my living on creates a greater burden, I might want to go sooner rather than later?
And I try not to concern myself with what happens to me personally after I’m gone. Whether you’re religious or atheist, let’s face it. Your fate is out of your hands at that point.
I’m not going to sugar coat it. There were good things and bad things, just like in any era.
On the good side, the standard of living was higher, especially for younger people. Wages, though already stagnating, had not reached the unliveability stage yet, and unions were still common. Communities were stronger because people hadn’t holed up online yet and local media hadn’t collapsed. What existed in terms of an online world was more open and trusting. They didn’t even have encryption on the www before '95 if you can imagine? Politicians were as corrupt as ever, but the media in general were more accountable.
On the bad side, there were a lot more incurable diseases. The Cold War was fucked up. Just knowing everything you know and love could end in 20 minutes just because some idiot turns a key somewhere. The air was actually really dirty in a lot of places. I know there are a lot of parts of the world where that’s still true, but clean air acts did work where implemented. Also, bars were all smoky as fuck. I couldn’t go near one with my asthma.
I could go on, but I’ll end on a more positive note. I was thinking just the other day how astronomy has been going through a golden age of discovery all throughout my life. In my childhood, they were sending out probes to give us the first close up looks at planets in our solar system. Then in the 90s we got the Hubble Space Telescope, we discovered our first exoplanets (planets around other stars) and that there is a 2nd ring system in our own solar system: the Kuiper Belt. Then we found a moon of Saturn with active geysers, Pluto sent us a ❤️, and now we have the James Webb Space Telescope joining massive ground-based telescopes that are just bursting with discoveries across the board. I just can’t get enough of this stuff!
Ha! That’s a great idea!
Along those lines, have you considered the name Richmond? I ask a Chinese friend once why the Richmond district in Vancouver and the Richmond Hill suburbs of Toronto are basically China at this point. He said oh that’s easy! Richmond sounds like “rich man” to the Chinese ear. Who wouldn’t wanna live on Rich Man Hill?
Ooh that’s a tricky one! I looked it up and the most common character for it is a verb meaning something like to arrange for display? Good luck finding an English equivalent to that! There is a 2nd meaning of “old or ancient” which sounds a little more promising, though I can’t think of an English name with that meaning off the top of my head.
Apparently, Chen is the most common family name in Taiwan, and is really the same name as Chan, Tam, and Tran depending on where you live and what you speak. Not that that helps you any.
fwiw family names in English come typically come from several sources. They may be place names (e.g. London), descriptions of places (e.g. Ford: a shallow place where you can cross a river), occupations (e.g. Smith), or the name of a family business (e.g. if your name is Fox, your ancestor likely owned a tavern with a name like The Fox & Whistle or something random). If it’s an occupation that sounds too good to be true like King or Bishop, your ancestor was probably not royalty but served a royal estate.
Not that you need to follow any of that. Is there a Chinese ancestral name in your family you’re aware of? Maybe you could get it’s meaning and find a close English equivalent? I’m part Japanese myself, and Japanese family names are almost all of the descriptions of places variety. So say your name was Watanabe: a shallow place where you can cross a river. You might then choose to go with Ford as your English name? Just a thought.
The attack creates a large OPFS file on the victim’s SSD, with both Chrome and Safari allowing a website to claim up to 60% of total disk space through OPFS, which on a 256GB drive is over 150GB.
Am I reading this right? 60% of all your disk space can be confiscated by some random web site? I gotta figure out how to get my browser cache onto some tiny partition.
I have mixed feelings on the Catholic church and religion in general.
My father was an academic with a disdain for Catholicism, but my wife is a devout (though non-evangelical) Catholic. I decided to attend Mass just for the hell of it (ok maybe not the best choice of words?) and noticed the church in question had a desperate need for musicians. I play violin, so I wound up joining their music ministry.
I’m still not Catholic (let alone religious) to this day. When cornered, I say I’m a practicing non-Catholic (as opposed to the far more common non-practicing Catholic), as I attend weekly music practices. I understand all of my father’s well-reasoned arguments against, most of which are still all-too-relevant. Otoh I have to acknowledge that my church experience has been a net positive. I made contacts within the Irish Catholic community and started playing in Celtic bands and such. As an introvert, I don’t think any of this would’ve happened by default, and it’s been quite a ride.
This reminds me of my trip to northern Honshu in Japan. I took the Shinkansen (bullet train) which was so smooth and quiet you literally had to look out the window to even realize you were moving. But then we switched to an old clunker that was shaking around and belching smoke and working so hard just to pull out of the station.
And the on-board experience was a huge contrast as well. The Shinkansen was full of people in suits minding their own business and it was clean and space-age-looking. The other train had a lived-in look and was full of chatty country folk who started asking me all sorts of questions and laughing because we could barely understand each other. My Japanese is a little iffy and they had this country drawl that wasn’t helping. But I enjoyed both trains for different reasons.
I’m around 6’1 or 2. I’d say overall, I’m comfortable with the body I have (like I don’t think I have a dysmorphia issue), but it can be a literal pain when I’m visiting Japan. I learned the hard way that some older homes have head clearance of exactly 6’ in doorways. If I were just a little shorter, this would not be an issue. In fact, if I were taller, I’d probably see the obstruction better and know to duck? But as it is, I develop a nasty bruise after repeatedly hitting the exact same spot on my forehead over and over again. Otoh it’s nice to have some breathing space above the teeming masses of people packed onto a subway car.
Hmm…does this mean the Mexican and Canadian host cities are going to get swamped instead?
I have zero interest in attending a game, but I do have to make trips to Toronto and the traffic, even at the best of times…
Nearly 50,000 residents of Lake Tahoe, a popular tourist destination in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, have been told their utility company will stop providing them with electricity in 2027. The utility, NV Energy, will instead use that power for data centers in northern Nevada, one of the fastest growing data center corridors in the nation and where Google, Microsoft and Apple have all either built or planned facilities, Fortune reported. Residents have until next May to find a new electric provider.
Wow, that’s rather appalling. Ars has a longer write-up about it.
killer bees
https://www.puzzle-sudoku.com/
I’ve linked the sudoku page, but if you scroll down, there are dozens of other puzzles and they’re all well-implemented and free with plenty of customization options, difficulty levels, leader boards, etc. I patreoned the dev recently. He’s very responsive to any bugs, and considers, for example, a puzzle with multiple solutions to be a bug. He also adds new puzzles fairly regularly.
For instance, if an AI model could complete a one-hour task with 50% success, it only had a 25% chance of successfully completing a two-hour task. This indicates that for 99% reliability, task duration must be reduced by a factor of 70.
This is interesting. I have noticed this myself. Generally, when an LLM boosts productivity, it shoots back a solution very quickly, and after a quick sanity check, I can accept it and move on. When it has trouble, that’s something of a red flag. You might get there eventually by probing it more and more, but there is good reason for pessimism if it’s taking too long.
In the worst case scenario where you ask it a coding problem for which there is no solution—it’s just not possible to do what you’re asking—it may nevertheless engage you indefinitely until you eventually realize it’s running you around in circles. I’ve wasted a whole afternoon with that nonsense.
Anyway, I worry that companies are no longer hiring junior devs. Today’s juniors are tomorrow’s elites and there is going to be a talent gap in a decade that LLMs—in their current state at least—seem unlikely to fill.
There are certainly worse ways to spend your obscene wealth.