SoylentNews

Yurikamome, a rail line on the Tokyo waterfront, is replacing the NEC PC-98 computers that have powered its automated traffic system since 1995.

https://news.yahoo.co.jp/articles/ef603f22fd6026319e1299b8e531e398084a9b76

Wow, hard to believe it's almost been 6 months since the last update!

Just after the last update, L decided to list her house. She lived about 30 minutes away from me (without any traffic) and all her friends and doctors and pretty much everything else was on the other side of the city, so she decided to move. I helped as much as I could getting her house ready for sale, and when it was finally listed, it sold the first day. That was pretty exciting. Shortly after that, the COVID starting ramping up, but luckily, the sale closed and she ended up selling her house for a good price with amazing timing!

She ended up looking for a rental nearish to me. We all (L, Wife, Daughter, and I) looked at a couple of places together, and she ended up choosing a place about 3 blocks from me. It's a pretty nice rental with lots of windows that is beside a couple parks/field, so it feels really open. She moved in to the new place near the end of April. It was/is really nice having her so close to us. Because of the Covid, everything was locked down. Having her so close effectively meant that we could live out of two houses. This change of scenery was great while everyone else was locked in their house.

When L physically moved closer, we all grew closer too. We starting having dinner as a big family every day. We all like to cook, so every meal was a feast. With three people working together, everyone can put together a dish and then without too much effort, we have an amazing dinner. I'd typically clean up while one of them looked after my daughter, and the other might get a chance to sit down.

L and my wife would spend a lot of time together, and L was great at looking after my wife in her pregnancy. She would rub oils and stuff on the sore muscles and do baby shaking to try get the baby in the right position. We all wanted to have L there at the birth, but at the time, the rules for the hospital were such that only one person was able to be in the delivery room. This was kind of a bummer, but luckily about 2 weeks before delivery, the rules changed and two people were allowed!

As the pregnancy went on, my wife had an appointment to go to the hospital to do some poking and prodding to try get the baby out. L went with her to the hospital, while I stayed home with the daughter. We didn't know it at the time, but they wouldn't be leaving the hospital until the baby came out. When they told me that they weren't letting my wife leave the hospital, I sent my daughter off to Grandma's place, and I went into the hospital and joined them. 20ish hours later, and I have a new son!

That was about 3 weeks ago. We are all adjusting to the new baby. L is amazing with the baby. Always holding and soothing him. Me... not so much. I'm not a baby fan... I'll hold him if needed, but I'd rather do the dishes, or clean the house, or look after my daughter so my wife can focus on the baby. With the addition of the baby, we are all trying to find the new normal. I'm unable to go for as many sleepovers at L's house, but this week we all had a sleepover at L's house, which was nice.

We also don't fit in any of our vehicles... I'm going to have to buy a minivan I think... It's a sad thought. I'm hoping to sell my wife's car, and get a minivan before we all go on vacation. We have a booking for an AirB&B for a week at a nearby lake in August. I'm looking forward to that. It will be nice to have everyone under one roof for a week.

With the new Baby, and L spending so much time with us, it feels like our house is too small. I really like my house (especially where it is located), so it's kind of a sad thought. We have had many discussions about potentially all moving in together, but we are still a ways away from that. We'll see how a week together on vacation goes first...

So yea, I've been busy. Working on getting a house ready for sale and moving, a new baby and the nesting that goes with that, a new job that I have so much to learn for, a wife, a daughter, and a girlfriend. I have almost no free time, and frequently feel overwhelmed, but I feel like I have a full and fulfilling life at the moment.

And yes, sometimes we have challenges or disagreements, but we are all trying. Everyone is looking out for each other, and there have been many times where I think to myself: This might actually be possible.

Facebook reveals holographic optics for thin and light VR headsets

Now it’s revealing a holographic optical architecture designed for thinner, lighter VR headsets, which it expects will appear in future “high performance AR/VR” devices.

Discussed in a Siggraph 2020 research paper titled “Holographic Optics for Thin and Lightweight Virtual Reality,” the system uses flat films to create a VR display only slightly thicker than today’s typical smartphones. Facebook’s “pancake optics” design combines several thin layers of holographic film with a laser projection system and directional backlights, delivering either flat imagery or volumetric holograms depending on the sophistication of the design. Depending on how many color, lighting, and alignment-enhancing components a prototype contains, the thickness of the optical system can range from 11mm to just under 9mm.

In wearable prototype form, each eye display features a resolution of roughly 1,200 by 1,600 pixels — comparable to current VR goggles — with a field of view that’s either a 93-degree circle or a 92-by-69-degree rectangle. That’s roughly comparable to the display specs of a 571-gram Oculus Quest, but in a glasses-like form factor that weighs less than 10 grams in total, albeit with only a single eye display in the prototypes. The researchers note they could cut parts and change materials to achieve a 6.6 gram weight equivalent to plastic aviator sunglasses, but would compromise performance by doing so.

Google Takes a Step Closer to Making Volumetric VR Video Streaming a Thing

Google unveiled a method of capturing and streaming volumetric video, something Google researchers say can be compressed down to a lightweight format capable of even being rendered on standalone VR/AR headsets.

Both monoscopic and stereocopic 360 video are flawed insofar they don’t allow the VR user to move their head completely within a 3D area; you can rotationally look up, down, left, right, and side to side (3DOF), but you can’t positionally lean back or forward, stand up or sit down, or move your head’s position to look around something (6DOF). Even seated, you’d be surprised at how often you move in your chair, or make micro-adjustments with your neck, something that when coupled with a standard 360 video makes you feel like you’re ‘pulling’ the world along with your head. Not exactly ideal.

"You get the Trump stink on you, it’s hard to get it off.”

If there’s an organizing theme to Pence’s vice presidency, it’s that he must never offend a man whose emotional antennae quiver at any slight. That means he’s perennially validating a president who insists the pandemic is under control when reality screams that it’s not.
...
In public, Pence takes pains to ensure that he and the president are aligned. On June 26, at the task force’s first public briefing in two months, he delivered the Trumpian message that “truly remarkable progress” had been made fighting the coronavirus, despite a worrisome rise in cases in dozens of states.

I asked the task-force member why, at times, Pence hasn’t worn a mask in public to model responsible behavior. Is it because he doesn’t want Trump to see and take umbrage? “That’s the only reason,” this person said. “He’ll wear it in a microsecond. He doesn’t want to egregiously look like he’s opposing the president.” (Asked about Pence’s mask-wearing message, John Fea, a historian and the author of Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump, referenced Pence’s Christian identity: “You can’t apply these scriptural ideas about loving your neighbor until you first understand that actually wearing a mask is to protect your neighbor.”)

AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 3995WX Workstation CPU Spotted, Lots of Zen 2 Cores & Increased I/O on WRX80 Platform

They will be supported by AMD's new WRX80 platform which is actively being worked on by several board partners right now. Main features include 8-channel DDR4-3200 support in UDIMM, RDIMM, LRDIMM flavors, 96-128 Gen4 PCIe lanes with 32 switchable lanes to SATA and some PRO features which will allow these chips to be the ultimate workstation solution in the market. In another tweet, Videocardz reported that AMD will be introducing its Ryzen Threadripper PRO lineup on the 14th of July which is next week [Tuesday].

I think 256 GiB RDIMMs (Samsung) are still the highest capacity out there, so it could support up to 4 TiB of memory.

That's also a greater amount of PCIe 4.0 lanes, TR 3990X only supports 64.

The Ryzen 3000XT refresh CPUs are out:

New AMD Ryzen 3000XT Processors Available Today

Nothing interesting there as they offer bad price/performance compared to the CPUs they replace, low performance gains, and 3800XT and 3900XT also drop the stock coolers. And Zen 3 should be out within 3-4 months. If the non-X chips are forced out of stock and the prices drop, then it might be of some interest.

What could be more interesting is the top-end 8-core Renoir desktop APU:

AMD Ryzen 7 4700G Flagship Renoir APU Overclocked To 4.75 GHz Across All 8 Zen 2 Cores on Standard Cooling

Chiplet technology is good for scaling up core counts, but it's not as efficient as monolithic dies like Renoir. Importantly, the Infinity Fabric clock should be higher in Renoir. So it might perform better and use less power despite having 1/4 the L3 cache.

It could also mean that the 4700G will cost more than the 3800X (debuted at $400, now around $300-$320). But you don't have to buy a GPU.

In other news, Intel's Lakefield is widely being seen as a disappointment:

The Intel Lakefield Deep Dive: Everything To Know About the First x86 Hybrid CPU

It seems that the big and small cores won't run at the same time. The main improvements are in power consumption or idle power consumption, but performance will be lackluster, comparable to other low TDP dual-core or Atom quad-core chips. The devices that Lakefield will land in will also be absurdly overpriced (kind of like the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx it is competing against).

Intel will get another shot at a heterogeneous x86 architecture with Alder Lake next year.

I'll be the first to admit I'm a fan.

First time I heard her play, was about 8 years ago. It was just Amy, a guitar, and a tambourine. Still a teenager and up on stage in front of maybe 100 people. By the end of the first song, I knew she was gifted. Outstanding voice and timing. When the crowd applauded after the third song, I heard her say "Awww!" in a "You like me, you really like me!" Sally Fields kind of way. She didn't know how good she was! I knew then I was witnessing something special.

Background: I played an instrument in band for 8 years (grade school through high school). In college, I was a member of the sound group that set up, mixed, and tore down concerts at the student union (and other venues). There's more, but suffice it to say I like to think I have an "ear" for music.

I saw her perform several more over times over the years as she went to Berklee School of Music in Boston, started a band, did some touring, moved to New York City (Brooklyn), and then to Los Angeles. She proceeded to co-write songs for other artists: "Back to You" -- Selena Gomez; "Without Me" -- Halsey (#1 Billboard charts); "Adore You" -- Harry Styles; et al.

In January of 2020, she was listed on the Forbes 30 under 30 for music. It's an annual list of the top 30 people under 30 years old who are recognized for their accomplishments.

On several occasions I had the good fortune to meet and chat with her. She has always struck me as a genuine, humble, down-to-earth person first and foremost as well as a gifted performer.

She signed with Warner Music about a year ago. She'd been working on an album and was on the verge of its release... and then the Covid-19 pandemic hit.

Finally, the first single off her upcoming album is out. There's a video up on YouTube: "Queen of Silver Linings" -- Amy Allen. She has an Instagram page and an official web page which also has links to where the single is available..

More background info is available on her Wikipedia page.

UPDATE:

"Queen of Silver Linings" is a different style for Amy. She used to have a bunch of videos of her own up on YouTube, especially of when she was fronting her band (Amy & The Engine), but took them down a while ago. That said, other people who saw her perform had put up videos, as well. Some are of poor quality, so I'll spare you having to endure those. Here are some "historically representative examples". For starters, check out Get Me Outta Here (Vine Sessions), Love Me (Sofar Session), and Love Me (Live at Boston Tree Lighting )

One of the very old hard disks (Western Digital Green, 2TB) that I recycled to put in my new PC is starting to fail. At the moment I have a manual backup strategy where I have a pair of disks partitioned identically, one as the "live" system and the other as the backup, and I rsync things across as and when needed.

I was looking at the price of SSDs and they're still way too high for what I need. I am not going back to 1TB of storage. I really need at least 3TB so I was looking at buying some more spinning rust.

I did a quick search for hard disk reliability by brand and found some tables which, at a glance, basically told be not very much apart from that there's one brand I don't trust and apparently I was right.

I was looking at Scan Computers and I was thinking of buying a pair of Western Digital Blue 4TB drives, but they're on pre-order. I noticed that there are Toshiba drives, which look like they should be a lot faster for about the same or less money (7200rpm vs 5400rpm, 128MB cache vs. 64MB cache).

For about the same money (a few £ more) as a pair of Western Digital 4TB 5400rpm drives, I could get four 2TB Toshiba 7200rpm drives with 64MB cache, or four 5400 WD Blue 2TB drives, and RAID them. I was thinking of RAID 10 (striped and mirrored).

In the past I have usually bought slower drives since I imagined they might last longer. Am I over-thinking this?

Update: I bought a pair of 4TB Toshiba X300 disks (non-SMR). They seem pretty quick so far. I put the very latest Slackware64-current (kernel 4.5.50) on and copied over all my data. The only thing to note is that the heads are quite noisy compared with the old 2TB Western Digital Greens.

Hong Kong security law: Pro-democracy books pulled from libraries

Books by pro-democracy figures have been removed from public libraries in Hong Kong in the wake of a controversial new security law.

[...] Since the security law came into effect on Tuesday, several leading pro-democracy activists have stepped down from their roles. One of them - one-time student leader and local legislator Nathan Law - has fled the territory.

At least nine books have become unavailable or marked as "under review", according to the South China Morning Post newspaper. They include books authored or co-authored by Joshua Wong, a prominent pro-democracy activist, and pro-democracy politician Tanya Chan.

Hong Kong: books by pro-democracy activists disappear from library shelves

I will add a list here if I find it. Authors censored include Joshua Wong, Tanya Chan, and Chin Wan.

Unfree Speech - Joshua Wong
http://libgen.li/search.php?req=Unfree+Speech%3A+The+Threat+to+Global+Democracy&open=0&res=25&view=simple&phrase=1&column=def