TwinIon

Elon's got you.

I should clarify: I personally don't grill steaks, but I'm not casting dispersion on those that do. I very much believe that heat is heat. The author isn't wrong that grills are less predictable, harder to control, and otherwise more difficult sources of heat than a pan or oven. That doesn't mean that any grilled steak is garbage, it just means that it's harder to get the exact result you're looking for. If I've paid a lot for a steak, and especially if it's really thick, I personally have a very hard time getting it the right temp throughout on a grill, and unless you're doing something else (indirect heat, etc.) I think most people would as well. If you have a thinner piece of meat, or something like a burger that you want medium to med-well, and don't mind a slight gradient, there's nothing wrong with a grill. Also, when it comes to smoking, that's a whole different ball game, and I don't think that most of the issues that apply to typical grilling apply.

I'm a big fan of sous vide, but it is important to understand that the results do differ slightly from what most are used to, and the timing makes a huge difference. While it is true you can't really overcook things in sous vide, because the temperature of the meat will never go above what you've set it for, keeping meet at a high temp does break down the proteins over time. So a steak in sous vide for 1 hour will be very different from one in a 4 hour bath, assuming equal thickness. I really like it for steak in particular. I get a nice thick piece of meat, and in the end it's perfectly to temp all the way through. Finish it in a very hot pan with some butter and aromatics, and you're good to go. Chicken works pretty well, but I don't often bother with it because it does take a while and I just don't care enough for chicken. I've not loved the texture I get from Salmon, but other fish has turned out pretty well. I think I need to reduce the time and try it again. As far as grilling is concerned, the author isn't wrong, but for a lot of grilled foods, it doesn't matter. I wouldn't grill a steak, but most burgers are perfectly fine.

An off duty middle school resource officer in street clothes saw a few teenagers driving too fast and decided to follow them in his personal pickup truck. When the teens got to the parking lot of Wicked Good Pizza, the officer got out of his truck and approached the kids with his gun drawn. When the kids didn't immediately get out of their car for this random crazy guy with a gun, he began to fire at them, striking the driver in the arm. Thankfully that was the only injury. Amazingly, the officer has now been charged with four felony counts.

If GTA really is 4 years off, I think it could easily beat ES6 to launch. Starfield might launch next year, and I would put the gap between Starfield and ES6 at something close to 4 years. So I wouldn't be surprised if GTA6 arrives a year earlier than ES6.

Not a shock considering they've been working on Starfield. I just really want these new Bethesda games to feel like a real leap from the previous games. As long as they are really a new generation of WRPG, they can take as much time as they want. If ES6 comes out and it's Skyrim but with ray tracing in a new map, I'll be really disappointed.

That's a really difficult market to define to a court though. You might not count iMessage, but Facebook's lawyers could probably successfully argue otherwise, same with SMS. Plus, tons of apps have messaging features built into them, from Twitter to Venmo to Google Photos. Speaking of Google, they're constantly launching messaging products. Then you have all the messaging platforms that Facebook is failing to compete against, like Slack and Teams. Yeah, you might think they're a clearly different market, but if you're talking about messages sent over the internet, it's not a stretch for Facebook to tell a court, "look at these innovative new products with millions of users that send messages over the internet that are demolishing our competing products." So from a court's perspective, they have to be convinced not only that some very specific subset of messaging constitutes a definable market, but also that Facebook lacks competition in that market, that they stifle innovation, and that their monopoly status inflicts consumer harm. Given the number of apps that are constantly coming out that in some way include messaging features, I think there's a good argument to be made that innovation in the space continues. And again, when it comes to consumer welfare, the current standard is that the consumer is harmed when prices go up. Given that Facebook's purchase of WhatsApp only made it free, and both Facebook and many of it's competitors are free, there's no consumer harm here. Now, if you could change that standard, then maybe there'd be a real case here, but under the current situation, I just don't see a court ruling against Facebook.

I think there's a good case to be made that making a super faithful adaptation of Foundation would make for a worse series than one that uses it more as a starting point.

Don't get me wrong, I support breaking Facebook up, I just didn't think the FTC could prove a monopoly here, especially given current antitrust standards. When it comes to Facebook, what do they have a monopoly in? Social networking? They can point to Twitter, Snapchat, YouTube, Reddit, Tik Tok, Pintersest, Linked In, and all the sites like WeChat that don't get as much play in the States. Then you get into messaging, where they clearly don't have a monopoly with competitors like iMessage, Telegram, and SMS/RCS. Then you have even more dubiously defined competitors when you get into things like Fortnite as a social space or email as internet communication. All this is why the FTC didn't really even define a market or Facebook's share of it. Then you have the question of where they actually make their money, which is internet advertising, in which they're a dominant player, but not even the dominant player, and they have two trillion dollar plus companies (Amazon and Apple) coming for them. Additionally, Facebook would argue that internet advertising itself is only a subset of the larger advertising space, where they're really far from being a monopolist. Which is all almost beside the point when the consumer welfare standard is still in place and you can't prove consumer harm because everything is free.

That article sure makes it sound like the FTC complaint was poorly written. That alone is pretty bad. I don't really think there was much for this FTC complaint to actually do. They weren't going to actually break Facebook up. The biggest lesson from Facebook is just to prevent the big mergers and acquisitions in general. A world where Facebook competes with Instagram is better than one where they own it.

It's a good article, and why I would rather see games that go for a pixel look just go for a high def image rather than try to re-create the CRT experience. CRTs just had a different look, and while it does seem like some of those CRT filters are doing a decent job, it's still not the same.

I think it's fine to make a clean-ish start and require newer hardware for new software, but I really wonder if the current CPU requirements will stand or if MS will continue certifying older CPUs for Win 11. If they hold firm on 8th gen and up, there must be a specific feature on newer CPUs they rely on. My desktop is fine, but my laptop (2017 XPS 15) has an Intel Core i7-7700HQ that is apparently one generation too old for Windows 11. It's a few years old now, but it was one of the fastest mobile chips you could get at the time, and according to Notebook Check it holds up pretty well against newer chips like the Intel Core i5-10200H, which makes sense given that despite being 1300 days newer, that 10th gen i5 uses the same 14nm process, has the same number of cores and threads, and runs at similar clock speeds. My expectation is that the current CPU list is very preliminary, and we'll see a much larger list of supported chips in the near future. Preview builds of W11 apparently don't enforce many hardware requirements, so MS will soon be collecting plenty of data on how it runs on older machines.

I understand Biden's desire to bring the GOP on board and get a bipartisan bill done. It's what he ran on, and I think it's important to him that he make every effort to cross the aisle. I really don't like that the compromise bill seems to jettison two of the things that I think would be the most lasting day-to-day impacts of the original plan: electric car charging and internet infrastructure. I'm in favor of rail and transit, but right now charging stations are probably the single biggest issue with electric cars, and a massive investment into that infrastructure could dramatically change how quickly the US electrifies. It could possibly be the single most visible and impactful large scale infrastructure project since the highway system. The internet stuff is less visible, but it might be even more crucial. The GOP has surrendered to lobbyists, and the Democrats haven't been fighting nearly hard enough on this issue, but I think the impacts will be long term if we don't get our infrastructure improved. As an anecdote, my brother just moved to TN and only a 30 min drive outside a major city he can't get any wired internet service. It's insane. I really hope that the big plans Biden had on these issues either find their way back into this bill (with or without the GOP) or into any other bill that he'll pass under reconciliation.

I definitely read that as two and a half years and was unhappy with that result.

I'm not optimistic about this holding up, but I'm glad they're trying at least.

When MS says that Direct Storage uses the "Standard NVM Express Controller" driver, I wonder if that means my RAID will need to go.

It will take games that have not been updated to include native HDR support and allow them to be played in HDR, just like on the Xbox. The resulting HDR effect isn't quite as good as a native implementation, but you do end up with a higher dynamic range than without it. I've heard pretty good things about it on the Series X, but never seen it for myself.

The GOP is very good at riling people up over nothing, but it does feel like CRT could be a bigger deal that many of the previous passing hysterias, and the rush of legislation seems to indicate that is the case. The GOP incorrectly defines CRT in ways that are so broad as to encompass anything they dislike, while also focusing in on specifics that are obviously not present in CRT.

Sure, Android itself can run on x86, but we have zero real world examples of x86 products running Android apps on top of another OS well. We've seen various Windows apps try and Chrome OS, which does run a Linux kernel, hasn't gotten it right either. Plus, even if you do get everything working on the performance side of things, you still have to reckon with using apps built for touch, GPS, cameras, etc. run on a platform that may not have any of those things. Maybe there are some fringe cases for this, but when I look at my phone I see a bunch of apps that I'd either have no interest in running on my PC or already have Windows or web versions.

The android app thing feels like it's a guaranteed disaster. I struggle to think of a good use case for it, and can't imagine everything working smoothly. Maybe it'll work better on future ARM based Windows PCs, but when Google can't even get them working well on Chrome OS, I have little hope for Windows. I like the new design elements well enough, but unless the final build is differs greatly from the leak, I have to imagine that they're only at the very surface level. I really wish Windows would just give us a clean break from all the cruft that has accumulated since 95

I would take the Manchin deal if it meant ending the filibuster or actually passing the bill.

I had to double check and make sure this was indeed the CEO that in 2017 said “I don’t think we’re ever going to lose money again. We have an industry that’s going to be profitable in good and bad times.” Somehow I'm not shocked that he was unable to predict the future.

I was really interested by Stadia's promise to build cloud based games that couldn't be done on PCs/Consoles, but I don't feel like we really even got much hint as to what those might be. I'm glad that Microsoft is now looking to do the same, because at a high level it makes sense that hosting a game session for everyone on the same cloud server could open up possibilities that might not otherwise exist.

Kind of a shame that SCOTUS only looked at such a small portion of the NCAA rules. It seems plausible they might have struck down more if they'd been appealed all the way up. Still, glad to see these get struck down. Of all the stupid rules the NCAA has around compensation, preventing education-related benefits seems easily the most stupid. A quick search didn't really reveal what the current state of student athlete compensation is. CA passed the Fair Pay to Play Act back in 2019. Shortly thereafter the NCAA Board of Governors "supported rule changes" that would allow compensation for third party endorsements, but still prevent compensation for name, image, or likeness (NIL). In their statement today, the NCAA said “even though the decision does not directly address name, image and likeness, the NCAA remains committed to supporting NIL benefits for student-athletes." The CA law goes into effect in 2023, but the rule changes the NCAA proposed were supposed to go into affect for this school year, but I couldn't find anything specifically saying they'd been adopted, and from that statement today it sounds like they haven't been. Perhaps they'd been waiting for the outcome of this decision?

I'm mostly done with the game, and while we got basically exactly what you would expect, I also want more. The graphics are killer. They're impressive in nearly every possible way. Hardly enough can be said about how good this game looks while achieving such an incredible density and also swapping between dimensions instantly. As far as the game is concerned, it's a Ratchet and Clank game with very few surprises. It continues to do things the series has done well, with cartoon characters firing crazy guns while telling a silly story. Nothing is done poorly, but I also can't help but wish the series would move on a bit. I wouldn't say the game itself feels stale, but the formula kinda does. R&C is hardly unique in this. Plenty of series stick to the same formula that gained them popularity (looking at you Pokemon). If all you want is to play some more R&C with a fun new set of guns and an incredible coat of paint, then there is hardly a flaw to be found in Rift Apart. If you were hoping the game might evolve along with the graphics, no such luck.