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NVIDIA Project R.O.N Leaked – Google Home Like AI + Hologram Device

Nvidia employee takes a train, nosy nerd lands a scoop.

What will Nvidia call its Alexa?

AMD Navi 20 GPU Allegedly Supports Ray Tracing and Enhanced GCN Graphics Architecture – May End Up Being Much Faster Than RTX 2080 Ti

(for ray tracing, and a GPU that will be released long after the RTX 2000-series came out)

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 20 Series Receives Price Drop By Major UK Based Retailer – Custom RTX 2060 Down To £299, RTX 2070 For £419 and RTX 2080 for £599

Valve’s long-rumored VR headset is finally real: the Valve Index, coming in May

Valve just surprise revealed its own VR headset called the Valve Index

MDC quotes are going in the motd at the bottom of the page rotation starting tomorrow morning if my alarm can wake me up before I have to head out for yet another day of extreme remodeling. Post your favorites here.

[Update: Let's give it until Saturday before they go live, so people can be awake to actually contribute some quotes.]

Epic Showcases Gorgeous Ray Tracing Unreal Engine 4 Demo Running on a Single RTX 2080Ti GPU

During yesterday’s ‘State of Unreal’ keynote at the Game Developers Conference 2019, Epic Games showcased a gorgeous ray tracing demo titled ‘Troll’. Running on a single GeForce RTX 2080Ti graphics card and made with the Unreal Engine 4.22, Troll was developed with no custom plugins or code by Goodbye Kansas and Deep Forest Films.

‘Troll’ was visually inspired by the works of Swedish painter and illustrator John Bauer, who is famous for his illustrations of Swedish folklore and fairy tales anthology ‘Among Gnomes and Trolls’. Epic’s 3Lateral took care of 3D and 4D facial scanning.

“Troll’ from Goodbye Kansas and Deep Forest Films | GDC 2019 | Unreal Engine (1m33s)

AMD Ryzen 3000 CPUs Get Early BIOS Support in X370 & X470 Motherboards, Next-Gen Zen 2 Based Family Internally Codenamed as Valhalla

Also, the creator of the Ryzen DRAM calculator has listed down some new features that might be coming in the Ryzen 3000 processors with one confirming that the Ryzen 3000 series processors would indeed ship with CCD (Compute Core Design, a new name for CCX), support a maximum of 32 threads which confirms 16 core parts, following is the full list of features which were found:

1) New memory controller with partial error correction for nonECC memory
2) Desktop processor with two (2 CCD) chiplets on board, 32 threads maximum
3) New MBIST (Memory built-in self-test)
4) Core watchdog – is a fail/safe function used to reset a system in case the microprocessor gets lost due to address or data errors
5) XFR – at the moment I do not see anything special about it, the algorithm and limits have been updated. Scalar Controll come back with new processors.
6) Updated core control has a symmetric configuration of the active cores . In 2CCD configurations, each chiplet has its own RAM channel in order to minimize latency to memory access. 1 channel on 8 cores will be a bottleneck if you use the system in the default state.

Have you heard of any feature like this? Does it even matter?

If you are buying 8 GB or 16+ GB DRAM modules, do they need to be ECC?

Hipsters and millennials, please learn what irony means. Most of the ways you use it, they're just you being a pretentious little shit not irony. This is irony (and also funny as a motherfucker).

I want to consider the two separate incidents in Christchurch, and consider how gun control might have influenced those events.

In the first mosque, those people were just screwed. No one was armed, no one seemed to have any warning. Dude came on like gangbusters, firing in through the door, advancing, and shooting at anything that moved. The people inside had very, VERY little opportunity to respond in any meaningful way - they were pretty much herded into two different killing zones, and they were trapped there. There may have been the slightest opportunity for an armed person to respond meaningfully, if only someone had a weapon. Sometimes, that's how things go - no matter how prepared you think you are, you can be caught by surprise.

In that second mosque? Apparently, there were no armed persons there either. But, there was one ballsy man who stepped up, and said "NO!" Or, to steal back the phrase appropriated by Tarrant, "I will NOT go gentle into that good night!"

Abdul Aziz faced off with the gunman as he advanced towards the mosque, yelling at him to "Come here!" and leading him outside.

EDIT: one of many sources for the quote - https://www.businessinsider.com/abdul-aziz-christchurch-new-zealand-mosque-shooting-2019-3

Abdul had no weapon. There isn't even any mention that he had a knife, however large or small. No firearms. He grabbed the first thing at hand - a stupid CREDIT CARD MACHINE, and advanced on the gun man. The thing was no better than a rock, but apparently there were no rocks at hand. With this near worthless poor excuse for a hefty rock, Abdul advanced, calling for the gunman to "COME HERE!"

You've all heard variations on the phrase, "Fortune favors the bold." In this case, Fortune did indeed favor the bold.

Somehow, in the confusion, the shooter ran out of ammo, apparently dropped the empty weapon, and ran back to his car to get another weapon. Although the details aren't clear, it seems that maybe Abdul threw his sorry excuse for a weapon at the shooter, who ducked into his car. Abdul then picked up the EMPTY weapon that had been dropped, and smashed the (already damaged) windshield, trying to get at the shooter.

About the time that the window was smashed out, the shooter lost his nerve, and drove away, cursing and screaming - and crazy-ass Abdul chased the car down the street!

Fortuna audentes juvat, or, fortune favors the bold

That fact has been observed since even before there was a Rome.

I think that puts paid to the several ideas proposed by hoplophobes that there is nothing a single person can do in these situations. Or, that an individual fighting back only endangers the people around him. All the excuses offered for ensuring that no one CAN fight back. True, the assailant has the initiative, but there is nothing to say that he is calm, cool, collected, and STABLE. If you watch the video of the killings at the first mosque, there are signs that he is falling apart, and losing his nerve. Here, at the second mosque, there is no - I hesitate to use the word "rational" - but there is no rational reason for him to run from an unarmed man. But, the shooter has lost it, in the face of one determined man who maybe has more balls than brains. He tucks his tail, and runs away!

But, we knew this people. Many of us have learned this fact from combat veterans, from police officers, and from anecdotes in real life emergencies. Many of us have seen this in our own lives. And, in fact, there have been some studies on the issue.

What good can an armed teacher do in a shool shooting situation? I invite you to peruse one study: https://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2013/01/foghorn/ttag-simulated-school-shooting-experiment-results-and-analysis/

Some teachers are pretty ineffective, others are more effective, and others are extremely effective in neutralizing an assailant.

Conclusion

This experiment was a preliminary test, providing a proving ground for the methodology and scenarios selected for testing before being implemented in a large scale test at a later date.

Based on the limited data collected from this experiment it appears that an armed teacher would save lives in an active shooter scenario. The caveat: the teacher’s effectiveness depends on their level of training. Maximum effectiveness of an armed teacher of any skill level is achieved with advanced warning of the approaching shooter and implementation of a classroom “lockdown.”

If you prefer the full report, rather than the story linked above, PDF here: https://86262a2d5a8678610839-0d14e49ee6aa00b4013e3b6293913ee7.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/SchoolShootingSimFINALREPORT.pdf

Executive Summary
At the King 33 facility in Connecticut, 11 volunteers along with 5 staff members enacted a series
of simulated shooting scenarios with the intent of determining whether an armed teacher or
armed guard at a school such as Sandy Hook Elementary would have been able to successfully
confront and interdict an active shooter.
When designing the scenarios for this experiment, care was taken to identify moments during
the progression of a “typical” active shooter case where armed intervention would have been
effective in interdicting the shooter. Three such moments were identified, specifically the
moment the shooter entered the school building, the moment they entered a classroom, and
the moment an armed response arrived on scene. One of these scenarios (when the shooter
entered the classroom) was enacted both without any advanced warning that the shooter was
coming, and with sufficient time for the teacher to enact a standard “lockdown” procedure as
implemented at Sandy Hook Elementary.
For scenarios where no advanced notice was given, unarmed participants were instructed to
leave and re-enter the area being defended at random in order to simulate normal traffic and
keep the defender from being able to react to an event such as the door opening instead of the
first sight of a gun or the sound of a gunshot, as would be the case during a real shooting.

Do you want to be safe, people? Put an end to gun control. Allow individuals to protect themselves, their loved ones, their friends and associates, as well as random strangers in the vicinity. Put gun safety courses in the junior high schools, and encourage kids to learn how to handle weapons. Put advanced courses in the high schools, and form gun clubs in those schools. Familiarize everyone with weapons, and end the fear of weapons.

An inanimate object cannot decide to kill you. A PERSON has to make that decision. A PERSON with the tools for the job can protect you from the nut case.

In this case, a PERSON, even without any tools for the job at hand, managed to protect a building full of people. Imagine, if he had a real weapon at hand. Imagine if someone at the first mosque had a weapon at hand. At the sound of the first gunshots, he might have armed himself, and put an end to the massacre.

Ask yourself a question: If you should ever be caught in a kill-or-be-killed situation, would you rather be armed, or unarmed? Yeah, you know the cops will respond to the situation - sometime. Would you rather be the survivor who drops his weapon, and surrenders to the police, or would you rather be the sheep, bleeding out on the ground?

The weapon is NOT what you should fear. Fear the bastard holding the weapon!

Tarrant feared Abdul, even though he had no weapon!

EDIT: link to the video, supplied by an anonymous coward, earlier today. via bittorrent, magnet:?xt=urn:btih:52b278c6769eb2edb9773ff6fe0923598ff42fea&dn=Christchurch-Mosque-Shooting-New-Zealand-FULL-VIDEO.mp4&tr=udp://tracker.leechers-paradise.org:6969&tr=udp://tracker.openbittorrent.com:80&tr=udp://open.demonii.com:1337&tr=udp://tracker.coppersurfer.tk:6969&tr=udp://exodus.desync.com:6969

Pence hosts openly gay Irish prime minister and his partner for breakfast

Vice President Pence hosted the openly gay prime minister of Ireland and his partner for breakfast at the Naval Observatory Thursday.

Leo Varadkar, who is in the U.S. for an annual meeting with U.S. officials ahead of St. Patrick's Day, shared photos of the event on Twitter.

[...] Although Pence has hosted Varadkar before, this is the first time the vice president has hosted the partner of an openly gay world leader.

gay men > lone woman

In his book Asimov On Numbers there is an essay titled “A Piece of Pi”, explaining what pi is, its history, and workings. It’s an excellent book, as are all of his books. Carl Sagan called him “the greatest explainer of the age”. He had books in nine of the ten Dewey decimal categories and is one of my favorite authors.
        The atheist Asimov takes a poke at his parents’ religion in that chapter, correctly pointing out that the ancient Hebrews weren't very good at math or building, and needed the Phoenicians to build the Temple of Solomon for them. Their plans, Chronicled in Chronicles 2:4, states that the diameter must be thirty cubits and the radius ten cubits. He correctly points out that this would result not in a circle, but a hexagon.
        But Dr. Asimov was thinking like a mathematician, not an engineer or architect. There is no such thing as a circle; a circle is a two dimensional construct, and no physical object exists in only two dimensions... not in this universe, anyway. The vat had an inside diameter of 30 cubits and an outside diameter of 31.4 cubits, So the walls of the vat would be .7 cubits thick.
        The good doctor mentions that the Hebrews held certain numbers, like the number three, in holy respect. In fact, seven is also one of those numbers, and the Star of David has six points. Draw straight lines from the star’s points and you have... a hexagon!
        So even not understanding math, they got it right. Now, how could they have possibly done that?

Join Us for a Tom's Hardware AMA with Intel Optane

1. What even is it?
2. Why does it suck?
3. Can I have some for free?

Something I've been thinking about a bit lately is the ability to communicate your message well. I'm not the best at it but it's not difficult to spot those who really are. Their number sure as fuck doesn't include Jordan Peterson. Or most any intellectual, especially with an academia background, for that matter.

You know who the best are? Really good standup comedians. They have to be. If you need to explain a joke, it's no longer funny. If you're consistently not funny, you have to get a dreaded day job.

If you want to take up public speaking in any sort of persuasive capacity, you could do a lot worse than to learn from them.