Author Archives: pappp

Article note: Oh hell yeah. OpenSCAD is a super handy tool, and it's really easy to make models that render it obnoxiously slow. This isn't general parallelism, but it gets a ton of other chokepoints _and_ removes barriers to parallel processing.

Article note: I have the better part of a terabyte of encrypted incremental backups rclone'd into my university institutional google drive as a remote, because it was advertised as "unlimited". I haven't heard anything, but I should probably expect to.

Article note: Excellent. An independent ARM is currently important for the industry.

Enlarge (credit: Arm)

SoftBank’s $66 billion sale of UK-based chip business Arm to Nvidia collapsed on Monday after regulators in the US, UK, and EU raised serious concerns about its effects on competition in the global semiconductor industry, according to three people with direct knowledge of the transaction.

The deal, the largest ever in the chip sector, would have given California-based Nvidia control of a company that makes technology at the heart of most of the world’s mobile devices. A handful of Big Tech companies that rely on Arm’s chip designs, including Qualcomm and Microsoft, had objected to the purchase.

SoftBank will receive a break-up fee of up to $1.25 billion and is seeking to unload Arm through an initial public offering before the end of the year, said one of the people.

Article note: I don't understand what kind of buys-security-products-they-saw-in-an-airport-ad useless middle-manager decision making lead to them getting involved with ID.me in the first place.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | imaginima)

The Internal Revenue Service is dropping a controversial facial recognition system that requires people to upload video selfies when creating new IRS online accounts.

"The IRS announced it will transition away from using a third-party service for facial recognition to help authenticate people creating new online accounts," the agency said today. "The transition will occur over the coming weeks in order to prevent larger disruptions to taxpayers during filing season. During the transition, the IRS will quickly develop and bring online an additional authentication process that does not involve facial recognition."

The IRS has been using the third-party system ID.me for facial recognition of taxpayers. Privacy and civil rights advocates and lawmakers from both major parties have objected to the system. The IRS wasn't demanding ID.me verification for filing tax returns but was requiring it for accessing related services, such as account information, applying for payment plans online, requesting transcripts, and the Child Tax Credit Update Portal.

Article note: I click-holed about the NEC V20/V30 8080-alike family a while ago. They really were shockingly impressive parts for how little attention they get. Some of their extensions were awesome and well-conceived, their BCD system is sort of unbelievably sophisticated, and the trapping in- and out- of compatibility mode trick is awesome.

Article note: Well, that's going exactly as expected. The controller I got as a freebie will be a fun bit of ephemera one day in the not-too-distant future.

Enlarge / How much longer can Stadia stay aloft? (credit: Google / Aurich Lawson)

As Stadia continues to cling to life inside Google, a new report from Business Insider's Hugh Langley sheds light on what the cloud gaming division has been up to for the past few months. As usual, the report is not promising.

According to the BI report, the "Stadia consumer platform" has been "deprioritized" inside Google and now only takes up an estimated 20 percent of the Stadia division's time. After Google closed its only first-party studio last year (before it had ever produced a game!), a blog post hinted that a white-label service would be Stadia's future. We saw a bit of what that would look like in October when AT&T released a cloud version of Batman: Arkham Knight that was secretly powered by Google Stadia. BI reports that service will be called "Google Stream" and that "the focus of leadership is now on securing business deals for Stream."

The white-label Stadia service would work a lot like the way Google Cloud Platform works—companies that don't want to run their own cloud gaming service could just use Google's back end and distribute their games however they want. Like with Batman, presumably there are no branding requirements necessary and no need to plug into the Stadia store or the rest of the Stadia ecosystem.

Article note: It took me a minute to figure out what they were going on about about because the article is all emotional pleas no content. They're talking about Sodium Nitrite. The extremely common preservative/curing agent used in meat curing and sausage making (its why hot dogs have that pink color). Its LD50 is like 71mg/kg, it's less dangerous than most cleaning products.

Article note: Narrator: it isn't. If the power companies were extractive enough to decline standard strip-heaters in equipment before, they've pocketed most of the repair money and slapped a band-aid on it.

Enlarge / Texas Governor Greg Abbott, center, during a press conference at the Capitol on June 8, 2021, in Austin, Texas. He signed two bills into law to reform the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. (credit: Montinique Monroe/Getty Images)

Nearly one year ago, the state of Texas suffered a debilitating power outage to its independent power grid amidst one of the coldest Arctic freezes in decades.

During this power outage crisis, 246 people died, and homeowners and businesses suffered an estimated $200 billion in damages as pipes froze, melted, and then burst. In the aftermath of this crisis, the Republican-led legislature vowed to shore up the state's power grid. Critics, however, said the state officials only took care of the power companies at taxpayers' expense and left power-generating facilities at risk to extreme cold.

Now, we may be about to find out the truth of the matter.

Article note: Cute.

Article note: Geez. Good for the dude who hacked that thing out for funsies, especially since I can't think of a way to monetize it without ruining it.

Enlarge / The New York Times is buying Wordle. (credit: Wordle)

The New York Times announced today that its Games division would be purchasing Wordle—everyone's favorite five-letter-word guessing game and emoji-square generator—for a number in the "low-seven figures."

The sale caps a meteoric rise for the simple game. It rode word-of-mouth recommendations and glowing media coverage to prominence, was subject to multiple copycat apps that Apple removed from its App Store, and inevitably generated backlash from people who don't like it when other people have fun in public.

"At the time it moves to The New York Times, Wordle will be free to play for new and existing players, and no changes will be made to its gameplay," the Times notes in its press release. Presumably after Wordle has moved, the Times will tweak its gameplay and impose a registration requirement or paywall as it sees fit. Many of the Times' games, including Sudoku, Spelling Bee, and the mini-version of its crossword, can also be played for free without signing in or registering. But a subscription is required to play the full version of the crossword puzzle and access the NYT's crossword puzzle archive.