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Cake day: June 16th, 2023

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  • Yes of course he needs to be prosecuted.

    I get that people hate insurance companies but at the end of the day this was a brutal and cold blooded murder.

    As unhappy as we may be at the state of the world, the last thing anyone should want is for things to be determined by who has the gun and is willing to shoot.

    Having said that though, maybe things are getting beyond the point of no return. Democracy in the US seems to be a joke, and the billionaire class have unfettered power. I worry we’re on trajectory towards violent revolution.

    The ambivelence and even open celebration of a shocking violent murder is a warning sign of how bad things are right now. Across the democratic world countries are devided and in flux because the political class is not listening to voters and in hoc to the billionaires.

    Trump in the US will be a mess. But France and Germany are also in political flux. What we are lacking globally at the moment is an outlet for this mess or a solution. People seem to be divided and unable to coalesce around a solution to the problems. I worry that means more chaos and ultimately violemce to come.



  • As someone who drives in Wales a fair bit, it was badly implemented so it became unpopular.

    The blanket rule was applied to roads it shouldn’t have been, with a slow and costly process to fix the speed limits on roads that’s shouldn’t have been covered.

    It makes sense on all side streets, but it doesn’t make sense on all main roads. Some yes, but not all inside towns and cities. I think this is being unpicked it seems with more flexibility for councils? I don’t really follow Welsh politics, like many people I suspect.

    The other issue is enforcement or lack there of. There seems to be zero enforcement so you get into the situation of driving down roads and everyone is still going at 30 ignoring the law. It puts you under pressure to go at 30 and it’s easy to drift up to that speed.

    I’m am generally a supporter of the new law but the politicians have to take ownership that the reason it’s controversial is because it was poorly implemented. Its easy to paint the critics as extreme or as part of a “culture-war” but that’s just people taking advantage of actual anger and frustration.

    The policy can be popular I think - there just needs to be some minor changes. As an example I can think of 4 roads in the town I drive or walk on that could do with going back to 30mph; thats nothing in the 100s of roads in the area.

    It’d even potentially be safer as people are just breaking the law and speeding on these road anyway making it less predictable for pedestrians.

    An example is a long main road that climbs up a steep hill in my town. It’s actually a struggle. climbing it at 20mph, and I even get foot pain trying to keep the accelerator at just the right depression to stay at 20mph. The road is wide too so you’re struggling all the time with the accelerator, monitoring your speed as it’s natural to go faster on wide roads and other drivers putting you under pressure to go faster. People are even overtaking each other which can be dangerous as you don’t always see what’s coming down the other way easily.

    So I’d be worrying less about the fringe lunatics stirring up anger and more about tweaking the implementation to get the majority on board. That’ll take the support and interest away from the fringe noise makers.


  • Yes it’s absolutely worth getting in to video games, there is huge breadth and choice on what to play, and a huge vibrant community.

    Starting place is really what devices do you have? Do you have a laptop or PC? If so the world is your oyster and you will find plenty to play even if it’s not very powerful.

    If you want something popular, cosy and accessible I’d recommend Stardew Valley. It’s cheap for such a great game, plenty of content, great learning curve and a huge wholesome community.

    But there is loads of choice - you could play card games or puzzle games on you other devices and explore what’s available. PC games offer much more variety and depth compared to a mobile, and is very easy to access - no need to buy a console or hardware.


  • Also English language books are going to be predominantly sold in English speaking countries. And it makes sense cost wise to target both markets together rather than printing individual runs priced for individual countries where possible.

    And Canada and the US both use dollars; there is potential ambiguity in price for manufacturers and retailers, so better to clearly specify both. There is not ambiguity with the peso - if a customer sees a book is $10 they will know there is a different price in pesos.



  • I’d recommend video streams from BBC, Sky News and Channel 4 all in the UK. Channel 4 is partnering with CNN for data and shared stories, and their UK election coverage earlier this year was well regarded. TV news in the UK has to be impartial by law so they will not take a side in the election. They will however voice opinions from both sides.

    Having said that though all coverage will endlessly speculate all night on what ever result means because that’s the nature of elections and filling air time.

    Regarding the Guardian, that is not regulated but it is a good quality broadsheet. It is left leaning and effectively supports Harris but it’s coverage will still be good quality and not as partisan in the style of US media. But expect it to be biased somehwta in Harris’ favour.



  • One significant difference that has been missed here is that Laptops can and often do run on the power supply, while phones usually use the power purely to charge the battery.

    It’s a significant difference as the laptop needs a stable electricity supply to supply all it’s components or the laptop would crash. That means not only does the brick need to dissipate heat, but it also needs to be able to deliver a stable continuous DC current. So as well as a transformer and rectifier (that together convert AC to the correct DC needed) there are smoothers and potentially capacitors to ensure a smooth continuous output even if the wall supply is janky.

    If you turn off the power at the wall / unplug you often see any light on the power brick stay on - that is because of the capacitors and there is still a small amount of energy available to the laptop as it discharges.

    While phones are mini computers they are usually designed to always run on the battery. Even when charging, the phone draws it’s power from the battery and it’s in built circuits to smooth the current; there isn’t usually the redundancy in a phone to switch between different supplies in the same way as a laptop. There isn’t also the expectation that they need to run off the wall continuously by users (even if users might plug their phone in and expect to continue to use it, they will find their phone shuts down if its at 0% and they push it beyond what the recharging battery can supply; a laptop would be expected to run solely on the wall not shut off).

    Things are blurring now with USB C power supplies for laptops - but you will find the plug itself has more of the electronics built in or some of the functions of the power brick have moved into the laptop to reduce charger bulkiness. Look at how bulky a USB c charger plug is for a Mac - they’re not simple USB chargers you’d use for a phone or tablet, they’re bulky because they are also doing the smoothing and stabilisation people expect for their laptops.

    Tl:Dr they’re different sizes because they’re doing different things. Basic chargers purely charges a battery, while laptop chargers both charge a battery and provide good quality supply to keep a laptop running optimally.








  • Intel claims to have caught up with the upcoming Lunar Lake series but still to be seen.

    That may be too late for whatever new device Valve is working on as given the lead time for such devices they may already have committed to an architecture for devices next year.

    Also running X86 games on Arm devices is not likely to be efficient. I doubt the energy efficiency of Arm chips would outweigh the overhead of X86 to Arm translation?

    But it’s all speculation - even without hardware, getting Proton to work with Arm is good for steam regardless of any specific devices. For example it would allow steam to push the compatability tools onto Mac devices and even potentially mobile devices. Makes sense for Valve to do this without it meaning anything more that it being a god idea in itself.


  • Its not about memory size its about the asymmetric sticks. It was a classic problem with OS memory management in the past. Modern OS are better at dealing with it but it is not the optimal set up.

    You’re running windows game which use proton/wine that manage memory for the game and use linux for access to RAM. The asymmetry could conceivably cause issues you wouldn’t notice with native apps.

    I’d try removing the 16gb stick (or the two 8gb sticks and keeo the 16gb stick; all that matters is whatever ram isnleft is the uniform) and see what happens with the games you’ve been trying. It might not he the issue but the only way to know is to test it, rather than dismiss it because its not what you expected.


  • The common denominator in your issues would be your PC. If games are working according to protonDB and you’re unable to get them to work on multiple distros that suggests its your PC.

    There are two candidates in your specs - your RAM and your Graphics card.

    As others have said, asymmetric RAM is unusual and it certainly was warned against in the past as it caused system issues. While OSs may be much better at managing RAM now, that doesn’t mean all scenarios can tolerate it. Given what Proton is doing is complex (running Wine, which is essentially a windows layer) I would not be surprised if the memory configuration is just a step too far - you have windows software using a windows compatibility layer for memory asking a linuxn system for memory access.

    An obvious way to test this is to remove the 16gb stick from your machine and see what happens.

    The other side is your graphics card - are you using the latest nvidia drivers?


  • I think Discovery had the worst. It isn’t the technobabbke it self that was the problem, it was how it was delivered.

    Everyone seemed to be needed to be the most intelligent person in the room. So one person would start with some sudden realisation and solution, and then another would interrupt them and pick up the idea and then either back to the first person, or yet another person would interrupt. Between then all they’d build a tower of technobabble and deus ex machina, and self congratulatory nonsense. It was just so silly.

    Person 1 “wait if we reveresed the polarity of the neutron projector…”

    Person 2 “yes! It’d cause a build of tachyons and we’d be able to resonate the electron confabulaotr! Oh but there wouldn’t be enough plasma.”

    Person 3: “no wait, that might work! We’d have to recomboulate the manifolds and…”

    Person 1: "…that would allow us to recrystallise the warp matrix! Of course!’

    Whose a genius? Everyone in the room is a genius! Let’s all give ourselves a round of applause.

    That and all the space kung fu.


  • The US healthcare system is built around money and profit. A cheaper procedure which does not require general anaesthetic costs less, and reduces profit. That can be beneficial to the providers but bloat is incentivised in the US healthcare system as providers battle with insurance companies for money. Crudely healthcare providers don’t care about saving you money; they want to take as much money as they can get.

    Meanwhile, countries with tax funded health care opt for the most cost effective procedures, investigations and treatments. The incentive is to reduce costs and offer the most effective things to the most people possible. That can also sometimes have negative side effects if not carefully regulated but in such systems generally Doctors advocate for the best procedure and best medical practice, as they themselves do not directly benefit financially from which procedure is pushed. The downside is you do get the opposite side of things where patients are dissuaded from things as they’re not deemed cost effective by those who control the spending.