Have to admit that I never liked the Nintendo SNES. However, for such a low spec'ed CPU (a slightly more powerful 16bit 6502, the 68516), it did deliver a very good arcade-like experience for Mortal Kombat 2!
My kids were playing this two days ago on a retro gaming rig; "no! You can't use Hondo! Right, or the electric guy! I hate the electric guy!"
Or something very, very similar....
Reading up on electric fences to keep bears out of the yard, as you do. So far, I haven’t found anything that would keep bears out that wouldn’t hurt the dogs.
I decided to roll the dice, that my CV joint on my car wouldn't blowup, for a run up north out of city lights to see the aurora--& I'm so glad I did! Two shots from northern California: First is from Doyle & the second is from Frenchman Lake. What an amazing display! For a time the aurora covered a 180 degrees from east to west & was overhead & could be seen in the south! I shot these photos with a 15mm f/2.0 30sec ISO400.
Fellow academic colleagues: please get involved in shared governance at your institution. I know, that kind of service takes up your time and is often thankless, but it is crucially important. And it is on the verge of extinction at many places. The rug is being pulled out from under us while we go about our teaching and research.
If we value our work in #HigherEd we have to do the work to make the institution a place that is fair, equitable, and just.
The overhead for the AI on a minecraft ant is so great that the mod creators limit the colonies to just 20 ants to prevent lag. Fine for gameplay 20 feels like a lot.
Interesting the kind of things they do: remember the location of their nest, find a path back, collect leaves etc. are so taxing.
In the real world a colony of 1000+ is typical. Some colonies have millions of ants. And real ants have much more to "process" Kind of gives you a sense of the scale of the intelligence of a colony.
I'd guess that the ants each have their own GPU running a copy of the AntOS right? I wonder whether we could learn something about biological computing/cooperation by taking one of those stupid Bitcoin mining machines, installing AntOS on each of the GPUs and pointing the collective at a problem to solve?
As a model for computing though, could it solve different types of problems using existing hardware? I've been told that those Bitcoin mining computers can't do much else but could you build an OS that's local to a GPU but mimics the logic that ants use in order to solve types of problems that aren't any related?
Great article about how religion became part of American Law (and NOT by it’s Founders as some like to claim).
“The National Day of Prayer kicked off a profusion of official endorsements of religion: the National Prayer Breakfast (1953); “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance (1954); a Congressional Prayer Room in the U.S. Capitol (1955); “In God We Trust” as the U.S. motto (1956), on our money (1957) and inscribed on the rostrum of the speaker of the House (1962).”
And this crap is still playing out! trump learned from and admires Roy Cohn who was McCarthy's right hand in the early 50's; https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Cohn
We need, as a country, to get past that goddamn generation of fascists.
I need some new science fiction to read, who has some suggestions? I don't like military sci-fi. For reference, my favorite series is the Expanse, I also enjoyed Scalzi's Collapsing Empire, I love Robert Charles Wilson's books. I mostly enjoy space operas and unique stories about technology, for example I really liked the recent book Mountain in the Sea about AI and intelligent octopus. Suggestions from the awesome Bookstodon community? @bookstodon#Bookstodon#Scifi#ScienceFiction
My daughter brought home her stuff from college, yes, that's her being eaten by seagulls and the texture is sewn on beads. It's 5 feet tall, where can I possibly hang it
a like button is some straight 1984 shit. it can mean "I like this thing," or "I like that you told me about this thing I dislike." when something can mean either yes or no, why have it? people either have their own personal rules, or adhere to a convention they know, or don't. why have it? what outcome is it for? what outcome does it achieve? why have it?
I use it as a visual placeholder and acknowledgement of @GottaLaff long and incredibly interesting threads. I tick them off as I read them and I can come back to a thread, scroll through it quickly and find where I left off in a straightforward way. Same with other long threads that take a while to read or change over time.
So it's a multiply-functional tool for me!
Biology faculty at UT are meeting today to talk about a hiring plan. I really don't envy their job of trying to make a department located in Texas attractive.
We're in the middle of an ongoing purge of black staff, the adminstration just called in the state police to beat and jail students, and no one in their right mind would want to risk pregnancy to have a family here. It's bleak.
I'm a biologist/anthropologist, MPH, PhD in epidemiology and there is literally no number of dollars you could offer me that would attract me to Texas. I wouldn't accept Dean, Chancellor or President either. I'm not even tenure tracked faculty where I am and, no, no way.