TwinIon

I'm going to have to see it again before I render judgement, but I think it's both very satisfying and also not a great movie. There are a lot of emotional highs and it does a great job of wrapping up threads all over the place. There's also a lot more comedy than I expected, which I suppose is necessary so it doesn't go full Leftovers in the opening act. I also had a terrible theater experience sitting next to someone who couldn't stop sobbing throughout the film. I'll find some time to get into an IMAX or Dolby screening next week. One spoilery thing that I will comment on:

Hypothetically, I would think that game makers getting a larger cut could show itself as a benefit in limiting otherwise consumer hostile monetization practices. If a dev is less incentivized to put microtransactions or whatever else into a game, that could be a real consumer good. Of course, I emphasize the hypothetical nature of this, because we've seen no evidence that has been the case (nor would I expect to at this point). From a consumer standpoint, I feel like that's a distinction without a difference. In the same way that the next Spider-man movie is a Sony film and not a Disney one, who cares where the money is going to? If Borderlands 3 was an EA game and only available on their terrible launcher, no one would care, but it being only available on Epic's is somehow a big problem because they're not owned by Epic?

I'm also skeptical that Epic would really do that. It doesn't really matter to Epic's bottom line how much money Valve makes from Steam, and if exclusives drive sales on their platform, I don't see how that calculus would change. Still, I also don't harbor the same kind of ill will that the folks over at Reddit seem to have for Epic. The idea that having exclusives is some kind of red line for gamers is kinda silly to me. There are exclusives all over the place, including on the PC. While I doubt that Epic's 88% revenue share is any kind of genuine altruism on their part, I also think that the industry standard of 30% is insane. There was a time when digital distribution was hard, and that 30% felt like a good deal compared to traditional retailers. That is far from the case now. Maybe we'll actually get a look at some real numbers with the antitrust cases against Apple, but I'm guessing most of the 30% is pure profit at this point.

I feel like Biden's popularity is based on nostalgia for Obama, a generally likeable demeanor, and the appearance of electability. I know how well those will translate into actually winning a primary. Personally, I'm not a fan.

According to Motherboard, the reason that Twitter doesn't ban Nazis and white supremacists using the same algorithmic approach it uses on ISIS is that it would likely end up banning a bunch of Republican politicians.

I think it's pretty easy to make the case that climate change disproportionately affects the poor and working classes (who largely identify as Democrats). If political priorities are set by politicians and if you define politicians as being elites, then any political priority is by definition elitist. I don't think that's a particularly useful way to think about anything.

I was filling out my guesses for a summer movie box office wager, and I really don't know where to put Aladdin. I suspect that this won't be the smash $500M hit that Beauty and the Beast was, but I doubt it'll be the $100M flop that Dumbo was either. I feel like, based on the property alone that it should do better than the Jungle Book did at $364M, but I also think the response to the trailers has been tepid. I think I settled on it making something between $200-$300M, but I feel like I could be way off in either direction.

Google's knowledge graph apparently put's Slam magazine as the top result, but I'm guessing this is what you were referring to.

The reason that I'm slightly sympathetic Elon's take is that I can imagine a scenario where the maps are a crutch that prevents the kinds of advances that are necessary for safety. So maybe a system that doesn't rely on any kind of static map is necessarily better equipped to deal with the kinds of hazards that driving will constantly represent, even within a mapped area. Of course, I think it makes intuitive sense that a map would make things easier. Certainly the guys at Aurora think so. In a blog post they put up (which I think is worth a look in general), they argue that maps make everything easier: "if a system only has to handle changes relative to the map 1% of the time, we can be up to two orders of magnitude safer then one that must always rely on only its real-time perceptions of the world." I feel like a lot of Elon's arguments are from a business standpoint and not a technology one. There's no way it would be feasible to sell a car with LIDAR right now. Even the cheapest ones cost more than the whole self driving package in a Tesla does. It would also be a terrible business decision to sell a car whose headline feature only works in a small number of geofenced areas. Of course Telsa favors real world vehicle data over simulations, they have more of it than anyone else.

Yeah, I think you could maybe specify it a bit. Maybe they only want to reduce regulations that hinder profits?

I agree. I think Tryion is relatively safe. It really feels like he needs to do at least one more thing to set the realm on the right path before he can die. That could just as easily be killing Cersei as it is some game changing idea for dealing with the Night King. Hail King Pod.

I won't disagree that this last episode was a lot of good feelings before the end comes, but I'd disagree both in their assessment of the show as being that much of a trailblazer and in their downplaying of the still very much alive drama that exists. Post Red Wedding, I don't think there's a lot in the books or the show that uphold its reputation for breaking free from fantasy tropes. I really don't think the show is "ignoring the past" in order to give us nice "Hollywood" moments. The redemption of Jamie wasn't a one off, it was a multi-season long arc that brought him to a place where he could be welcomed in Winterfell. The same is true for Theon. All the while, there remains political tension. Sure, most of it is between Sansa and Dany, but that's just the most visible part of a larger divide. There was obvious tension in Grey Worm and Missandei being welcomed to the North, there's the factiontial divide between and the general attitude of the Northern lords not liking Dany. There were also little issues like the Mormont's meeting up and Yohn Royce standing separate from the North (and only recognizing Sansa's authority). Then there's the threat that Jon now plays to Dany's throne. Last episode, for all the table setting it had to do, did a lot of this. I don't think this is a hard pivot from what the show has been for a while.

I know people are really rooting for a Clegane Bowl, but I don't think that's particularly important to the story, so I certainly wouldn't say that the Hound is as safe as Bran. I'd also argue that Jamie might not be as safe as people think. His arc feels like it's come around. He told Cersei off and is going off to fight for the good guys. I don't expect him to die, but I don't think he's top tier safe. I'd also say that Jon is more likely to die than Dany, but neither is doomed next episode. I also wouldn't be that shocked if one of the Stark girls die next episode. Both of their arcs are more or less complete. Neither really wants the Iron Throne, and if Winterfell falls, it seems pretty thematically appropriate that a Stark dies with it.

More than even just his grand promises about what the car can do (which we'll find out for ourselves soon enough, one way or another), I think the most interesting part of all this is how fundamentally different Tesla's approach to autonomous driving is than their competitors. The Verge covers much of it here. Obviously the biggest difference is their insistence that regular cameras and some RADAR are sufficient sensors for everything. Elon calls LIDAR "a fool's errand," going further to say that anyone relying on LIDAR is doomed. I just don't understand that thought process. Certainly I can see the argument that it's unnecessary, but I feel like the worst case scenario is that you build a more expensive car, and even that only seems like a short to medium term problem. If there were a few hundred thousand LIDAR equipped cars a year rather than a few thousand, I suspect the cost would come down quite quickly. Another area that I'm slightly more sympathetic towards is the necessity of super high resolution maps. Most companies are relying on their maps to help reduce the workload the car has to do. It doesn't have to guess at the speed limit, it can anticipate certain "hard" features of the roads, it can place itself much more precisely than GPS, and it can put more processing towards tracking dynamic objects like cars and pedestrians. Still, I understand the idea that a car that can't operate without such a map is necessarily more limited than one that relies on them. If your car can navigate without prior knowledge of an area, that seems obviously preferable, though it seems more difficult. According to Musk, by 2020 they'll work in every condition. I'm not aware of them actually demonstrating that, so yeah.

It's amazing that this far in and it seems like Jack still doesn't understand Twitter. For a while I think it was understandable. They created a tool and didn't anticipate how it could and would be used, but we're way past that now. I don't understand how investors aren't trying to push him out. Facebook has more than 2 billion users but when news happens, it happens on Twitter. Your mom is on Facebook, your kids are obsessing over Instagram, but your politicians and CEOs and journalists are on Twitter making news, and as far as I can tell they've completely failed to capitalize on that at all. Their UI has remained basically the same. Their feature set hasn't really evolved, nor have the tools they use to govern the platform. It's insane that they have so little idea on how to build on the success that they fell into.

I was sure that my nearest IMAX would add more showing before tomorrow, but I guess not. They're playing Penguins at 1:45pm, but they don't have another IMAX screening until the 10:30pm showing of Endgame. I thought I'd be able to watch that page and snag an IMAX seat once they confirmed their schedule. Maybe they have a screening they're not opening to the public.

Even if you assume that her email was hacked. What in the world do they think was in there that was so damaging?

This is exactly why I'm of two minds about the way Tesla is handling this. I suspect that the "autopilot" driving that Teslas do now and what they showed off yesterday are probably safer than the average human driver in terms of both accidents and deaths per mile traveled. I'd also suspect that Tesla's self driving tech is not where the public or even Tesla's customers probably think self driving should be before it's widely deployed.

At an event yesterday Tesla showed off their new "full self driving" stack, and Elon continues to be Elon, promising oh so much more. In terms of concrete announcements, and in a rare case of Tesla delivering something when promised, they showed off the new computing hardware that will power their "HW3" self driving tech. The new chip ditches nVidia chips for some custom Tesla silicon. Boasting 6 billion transistors and 21x the performance of the old chip, while also having full redundancy, Tesla has apparently been shipping it in cars for over a month already. The chip is built by Samsung in Texas. With the new hardware and improved software, Musk promised that self driving will be available in Telsas by the end of this year. They had a video of a car navigating a not-particularly-difficult stretch of road by itself. Musk said that by the middle of 2020, you won't even need to pay attention to the road, and at that point Tesla will launch their robo-taxi driving service. Musk said their taxi service would be able to dramatically undercut typical ride sharing services, offering rides for $0.18 a mile. Musk said that within a year of launch, maybe even three months, they'd have a million robo-taxis on the road. Tesla owners would be able to add their cars to the fleet, making as much as $30,000 in profit a year. (Of course, if you do the math on $0.18 a mile and $30,000 in profit a year, assuming 3 cents per mile in charging costs, that works out to ~550 miles per day (200k miles a year) your Tesla would need to drive. That's also almost two full charges in a long range Model 3. So I suppose it's theoretically possible, but insanely unpractical.) Musk also said that soon Teslas should be good for at least a million miles. So yeah. Elon continues to be Elon, and it certainly seems like Tesla is pushing ahead with their self driving deployment, ready or not.

The only social media impressions that matter:

Samsung has changed their minds and delayed the Galaxy Fold. They announced they'd be pushing forward with the launch after the reviews came out, but it seems they “will take measures to strengthen the display protection.”

I feel like this case is part and parcel with the tax returns case. I'm not aware of any legal standard that Congress has for its investigations, and Trump's defense doesn't seem to reference one. It seems like they're just hoping the court finds one for them.

My biggest quibble with this episode is that Jon doesn't immediately tell Dany he's not interested in the throne. I certainly understand his hesitance in telling Dany about his parentage, he likes her and it's bound to make things more complicated, but it's a conversation that really should have gone "hey, turns out I'm kinda the rightful King, but I don't really care about that, I don't want to be King, I don't even know how to spell Aegon Targaryen, I just want to make sure the living survive." Again, I understand why they can't bury that hatchet. The unreasonable lust for power in the face of death is rather central to the thesis of the show. That's why they keep building up Sansa and her feud with Dany, it's the only reason Jon's parentage matters, it's the driving force behind Cerci. They can't make it simple, but at the same time you know that Jon is thinking it, and I just want him to say it. All that aside, I enjoyed all the lovely goodbyes we got this week. They certainly set it up such that nearly every scene felt like a farewell. Obviously a lot of folk are gonna die next week, but I'm glad they spent this time to set it all up. I also find it kinda hilarious that Ghost is back, completely unacknowledged.

I expect MS will be pushing their new exclusives pretty hard when they show off their next console, but I also don't expect many of them to be too far along. I'm interested to see how the X fairs after the release of Anaconda. Right now the difference for most games between the X and the S are relatively minor. They're slightly spruced up versions, but playing in the same ballpark. If we assume that games targeted at the Anaconda arrive looking like a real step above the current gen, how will those games compare on the X? I assume the we'll be seeing a lot of games released on all three platforms, and I wonder if the X will benefit from the targeting of the higher end specs, or if it will end up being kinda stuck in the middle.

Some pretty poor quality video of the incident is floating around, though it appears the original source (a tweet) is missing. After a successful launch and recovery it certainly seemed like this was all ready to go. I imagine that this will set them back a bit.