TwinIon

We've got some initial rumors of what more powerful M chips will be like. By late next year we're expected to get a chip with 16 and 32 high performance cores (as opposed to the 8 in the M1). These faster chips are expected to show up in MacBook Pros, iMacs, and "half-sized Mac Pros." They're also investigating GPUs with 128 dedicated cores.

It might be a "made for TV" exit, but who would put it on air other than Newsmax and OANN? Especially if he's scheduling it against the inauguration, I doubt even Fox would broadcast it on their main channel.

Yeah, this is something that I didn't consider when I was thinking about the tech company like spending that Warner is doing here. It's one thing to decide that you will take a bath on a whole year's worth of films in order to bolster your streaming service. It's quite another to be an unwitting partner in that venture. Legendary doesn't make any more money if this solidifies HBO Max as a top tier streaming service (nor do any actors/filmmakers that might have made deals for backend points). It'll be interesting to see just how much leverage Legendary has. I can kind of imagine that they wouldn't have any specific language dictating distribution schemes, if only out of the assumption from the before times that Warner would always want to maximize theater profits. As an aside, I'm conflicted as to if going directly to streaming is actually a good thing for Dune. I have high hopes for the film, but I also feel like there was a real chance of it turning out Blade Runner 2049 like numbers ($300M WW), which might sink the planned spin-off shows and possibly even the sequel(s). Maybe going streaming first will allow it to establish an audience that could then be built on for the follow up material.

I'll happily say it: Russell very much overperformed my expectations. He was so close to pole, despite still not knowing where all the buttons were in that car. Putting it in P2 is not nearly as impressive as just how close he was to his teammate. During the race he totally had Bottas' number. He made exactly the kind of bold moves through the field that you want to see a driver in a fast car is capable of. We've seen young drivers fail in fast cars before, and though this was an easy circuit, I was consistently impressed by how he faired. It's a sample size of one race, but that sure doesn't look great for Bottas' future. (of course, it's unlikely that Merc is nearly so dominate by the time Russell gets that drive). It's a shame that Max wasn't in the race to really push the Mercs, because I think he would have had a real shot. I was gutted for Russell as he really lost the race by no fault of his own, but on the other hand I think Perez had an outstanding day. Even before the Mercs imploded he was my easy driver of the day. His teammate stat in his starting position basically the entire race, and Perez was able to not only catch up, but make the overtakes on quick cars that were needed. Some strategy errors went his way, but he deserved the win just for being in a position to take advantage of it. As much as I like Albon and wanted him to succeed, it's clear that Perez is a driver deserving of a fast car. It was always the plan to put Russell in a Merc, and now it feels inevitable. It'll be a shame to see him back in that Williams next year. As a side note, I honestly believe that Hamilton wins that race, if only because he almost certainly would have ignored the calls to box.

I just mean that I think the difference between 53 and 76 is a better indication of the leap being made than "10 billion times faster."

Google's computer from last year used 53 qubits and this Chinese one uses 76. So a good improvement, but I think the exponential nature of qubits makes that improvement sound like a bigger deal than it is. Of course, we're still pretty far away from making these things do anything particularly useful.

It was announced in October, but Disney is doing a streaming focused "Investor Day" on December 10th. I somehow doubt they'll follow suit with a whole calendar year's worth of films, but I wouldn't be surprised if they put a couple big movies on Disney+.

While I love Oscar Isaac, it's hard for me to imagine this being a good movie. It's not like the plot of the games lends itself well to efficient storytelling.

The figure for Season 1 was ~$15M per episode. Given film length and what not, you could reasonably compare that to the ~$40M budget for Knives out. Of course, they had to invent that whole rig for the Mandalorian, and they spend a lot on stuff outside that video dome (or whatever they call it). However, they also had the benefit of ILM being in house and they could build that rig with the knowledge they'd use it for multiple seasons worth of filming. Certainly movies could be filmed that way, but right now I would say it's unclear if doing it that way would save anyone else any money. If Disney wanted to use it for other stuff, it might lower costs. If it becomes something others adopt and other studios build them out, future films could conceivably be made slightly cheaper with it, but I don't think that it's a game changer when it comes to budgeting.

Something else worth remembering when it comes to the survival of theater chains, is that it was only in August that the Paramount Consent Decrees of 1948 were overturned, allowing studios to own movie theaters. While profits might suffer for a year or two, I don't think anyone suspects that Disney or Warner AT&T or Amazon or Comcast Universal will go under. If there was ever a time for them to (purposefully or not) starve the theater chains and scoop them up on the cheap, it would be this coming year.

The leverage they have is in their ability to not show movies. If we think back to April when NBCUuniversal said they were considering going streaming only for Trolls World Tour, AMC threatened to stop showing any NBCU films. Warner does intend to put these movies in theaters, but clearly they're not banking on significant box office grosses, so AMC threatening to not show these films doesn't seem like much of a threat.

I have to wonder if working on They Shall Not Grow Old changed how Jackson went into the remastering for these disks. Whatever the case, I'm very glad to hear that they look good. I'm definitely going to wait for a price drop. I've bought these movies at least 4 times, so I can probably hold off.

Holy Moly. That's quite the bombshell landing on the box office. I'm surprised that They're going a full year ahead and not looking to see if things are better by summer, or at least next winter. For better or worse, this to me sounds like the move that a tech company would make. Dump billions into your product in the hopes that you can dominate the market and make it back later. We've seen Netflix, Uber, Amazon, Quibi, and any number of other successful and complete failures try the same thing. While Netflix did this exact thing in this exact market, I'm dubious that it's a great idea today. The streaming market may not be fully mature, but it's clear that this isn't going to be a winner-take-all marketplace. Netflix is going to stick around, Disney (with Disney+, Hulu, & ESPN) will be around, and it's hard to imagine too many of the other networks like NBC completely giving up (especially since they're subsidized by Comcast). Even before this I'd have put Warner as the third most likely company to keep their streaming service going, thanks to a significant library, a proven track record of building new shows, and all that sweet sweet AT&T cash to keep them going. Given that, I'm not so sure how much this buys them. I don't think this alone puts HBO Max in a better position than Netflix or Disney, and they were already well ahead of NBC/CBS/Sony/etc. The one thing I know for sure is that I'm glad they're finally going to be streaming in 4K, because I'll probably be watching all those movies as soon as they hit streaming.

From my understanding it's not terribly sophisticated, at least in the design of the trials. They get a big group of people, give half the vaccine, and track them for the length of the trial. The 95% number comes from comparing the control group's infection rate to those that got the real thing. It's not exactly ethical to purposefully expose vaccinated people to the virus. While they're monitoring people, they investigate any reported illnesses. Obviously people are going to get sick, but they do their best to make sure the illnesses aren't caused by the vaccine itself. The Oxford vaccine is an example of a case where there were some people that fell ill and they couldn't figure out if it was the vaccine or not, so they are going to re-do the trial. When it comes to the long term effects, the best data comes from other similar vaccines. So, if you create a new attenuated vaccine, we have a pretty good idea of what the potential long term effects (or lack thereof), because we've been using them for a long time. With the Covid vaccines the long term effects are slightly less well known. As far as I know they all are one of two types: mRNA and genetically engineered adenovirus-based. There are no current vaccines of either type that have been approved for use in the US, but both have been studied for decades now.

If Elon himself only gives you a 1 in 3 chance, I'm taking the under.

I need to rant a little more about the loot system in this game, and sunsetting in particular. I'm actually a fan of sunsetting gear. I haven't been playing Destiny 2 since launch so it surprised me that people had been using the same gear for years. I think it's healthy that new chapters in the game mean finding new loot. The thing that baffles me is that you can still acquire gear that has already hit its sunset point. You're still given quests that reward gear that is basically worthless. Even relatively challenging content like PoH or Master nightmare hunts give you gear that you can't really use. I suppose you could make the argument that they're directing people towards new content, but the Powerful / Pinnacle rewards already do that just fine. No gear currently in the loot pool should have already past its sell by date. It's really that simple. They've already shown they're fine with having the exact same item released with different sunset dates. They could decide that something you got from the Moon last season was sunset, but that exact same content now rewards the exact same thing, but with a new max light. Maybe people wouldn't love that, but at least you wouldn't feel cheated for playing the game. If they really want to move people away from stuff that came out in 2018, fine, just replace the loot tables in the still available content with current gear, problem solved. It's puzzling to me that someone thought the current state of this was ok. I have a bunch of other random complaints, but I won't go on too long about them. I will say that I think it's stupid how hard it is to get mods. You should be able to earn all the Charged with Light and Warmind Cell mods somehow. They're clearly keeping those around, and more than almost anything else in armor, they can change your whole playstyle, but people like me that haven't been checking Banshee daily for the last two years have no way of accessing many of those mods. Nevermind how completely hidden those kinds of build are within the game. Anyways, I do think Beyond Light is a good expansion, and I'm having fun in the new raid, but I think Bungie needs to talk to the new players they're trying to recruit more often.

I bought two unexciting things that I've been waiting on basically any discount for a long time. First was a Nest Hub Max. I really like the little Nest Hub as a photo frame / kitchen timer, but I wanted the bigger one. It's been in a million sales bundles with other stuff, but I only wanted a the Hub. I also got a XQD card for my camera. I was hoping that the introduction of CF Express or just being on the market for a while would take the prices slightly closer to SD cards, but no such luck. At this point I figure they're going to be expensive for a long time, so a $30 discount was sufficient to make me bite the bullet.

Yeah, I feel bad for Stoffel. I'm glad he found a decent gig, but I think he's probably a better driver than a couple guys currently on the grid. Getting outperformed by Fernando as a rookie shouldn't be an F1 death sentence. Clearly though, he's not someone Merc is looking to bring back. I'm very nervous for George. No matter what happens, people (possibly including myself) will overreact. He's been suddenly shoved into a position where he has very high expectations and a very low margin for error. For the race, I just hope he can keep it clean to the finish. There's enough inherent pace in that car that a clean drive will be good enough for some points, but I don't think he's automatically going to contend with Verstappen and Bottas. I don't think that Bottas gets sufficient credit for how much he pushes Hamilton. He's no Max or Lewis, but I think I'd put him right behind LeClerc and Riccardo. George might be "Mr Saturday" when compared to his Williams teammates, but Valteri is no slouch, and I'd be shocked if George is particularly close in Q3.

That looks like a cheap childrens TV show. Just awful. I'm guessing that they underestimated how difficult it is to make CG look good. Different elements look like they belong in different films, it feels like it doesn't have it's final lighting pass, and it feels like it's lacking texture or detail. The low quality doesn't help, but materials don't look noticeably different. I don't mind a simplistic art style, but I don't think this has a guiding sense of style. I don't think it's unsalvageable, but I hope this doesn't reflect the quality of the final result.

The full article in Nature is worth reading, but here are some highlights. There is a yearly protein structure prediction challenge called Critical Assessment of Structure Prediction (CASP) that plays out over several months. About 100 target proteins or portions of them are released on a regular basis, and teams have several weeks to submit their predictions for how the proteins are structured. A separate team uses methods such as X-ray crystallography and cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) to determine the actual structure and compare those against the predictions. A score of ~90 is considered to have effectively predicted the structure, and Google's AlphaFold 2 algorithm just about hit that mark this year. In 2016, the average score of the field competing was ~40. Interestingly the DeepMind team first tried to basically apply their tech to what other teams at the time had been trying. They tried to predict the distance between pairs of amino acids and then developed a consensus model of what the structure should look like. That approach hit a wall, so they changed their approach to just try and predict the whole final structure from the get go. It's a far more difficult task, but they've had far better results. It seems that even with our most advanced imaging techniques, we often still need a prediction of the structure of a protein in order to verify the experimental data. The problem isn't really "solved," but with sufficiently accurate predictions now possible from a computer model, scientists can now move on to a new realm of molecular biology. It's all very exciting, and great to see this kind of tech being used for something with such huge real world implications.

Yeah, I think this is a huge factor. If money equals success and accomplishment, getting more of it is less a way to improve your lifestyle than a way to continue seeking that same personal satisfaction that earing that money gives you. Also, when you have huge amounts of money, generally the best ways to continue making money involve having lots of money, so you're motivated to keep that money in order to earn more of it. I think you're right about changing societal metrics, but that's a really hard thing to do. If there was one thing I'd love to see change about the wealthiest people would be to change the fiscal incentives for them to horde their wealth. I don't have a great solution for that, but if we could find a system where billionaires were more incentivized to get rid of their fortunes over a certain point, it could change so much of the wealth gap. A huge bonus would be if they're incentivized to do it either through charity or simply passing more of their profits/wealth back to the whole organization.

I kind of hope that George Russell can move from Williams for the week, because I'd love to see him in a fast car, but I also kind of worry that with only race week to prepare he wouldn't fair very well. It does make sense for Merc to try and see what their likely "driver of the future" can do. Still, it makes sense that Williams might want to keep their best driver when they might have a chance to score some points for once. Probably for the best that this happened once the championships had been decided. On a side note, I'm pretty sure that Hamilton was taking his covid bubble pretty seriously. Everyone he regularly comes into contact with is tested regularly. Still, the realities of traveling and what not make it hard for anything to be foolproof.

Seems like one that I'll wait on, especially since I'm not even close to through Valhalla and Cyperpunk might actually arrive before I do, so my single player time is pretty well accounted for.

If the plan is to import huge amounts of drugs because someone else negotiated a good deal on them, surely the solution would be to negotiate a similar deal and not have to deal with importing anything. Obviously the roadblock to that is dealing with big pharma lobbying efforts, but I don't get this stupid plan was able to go this far when the real solution would presumably put them in a similar, and likely better position.

I think it's pretty clear that Nintendo would rather not have a competitive scene, but there are a bunch of reasons that they don't do more to actively shut it down. The bad PR the obvious cost, but I think there is a legal question that they'd rather not step into. My understanding is that while various publishers have claimed pretty broad rights to prohibit both in person events and streams of their games, I don't think it's ever been tested in court. If I were to bet, I'd guess that the publishers would likely win most of those battles, especially when it comes to using their game in any kind of promotional materials, but I do think there's a possibility that a court could decide that game streams in particular constitute fair use. Right now they operate under an assumption they'd win such a battle, so any actual decision could only hurt them. Regardless of why Nintendo doesn't want a competitive smash scene to exist, I don't think you need any inside information to show that's the case.