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No, Virginia, "conservatism" is not the new counter-culture
First of all, by definition, conservatism cannot be "counterculture" because the very concept means to hold onto the status quo. Many self-described "conservatives" are actually reactionaries, which are the "let's blow up the observatory so no asteroid ever hits us!" types, and are either too dumb to know the difference or too evil to care and will use the word conservative to hide their actual intent. I am leaning toward the first. Nevertheless, a conservative by definition cannot be counterculture.
No, what we have here is reactionary backlash. It's another wave of the same kind of whiny crybaby temper tantrums people threw with the desegregation of public spaces, or the passage of Loving vs. Virginia, or the more recent passage of nationwide recognition of same-sex marriages: people who used to be the nation's punching bags now have (closer to...) equal rights in society, and the ones who used to be able to do anything from simply mocking them to discriminating against them for housing and jobs to outright killing them with few or no repercussions are asspained that they can't any longer.
And this reactionary backlash always follows a well-worn, drearily predictable pattern: demonizing twice as hard, insisting that equality under the law is actually special privilege, bitching and moaning that actually $GROUP are the bad guys and they (the complainers) are the real victims and the actual ones being discriminated against, all slathered with a heaping helping of pig-ignorant but incredibly loud wrongness about liberty and the First Amendment and family values and what have you.
The new demons-du-jour seem to be trans* people. I don't get it either, but Stonewall was barely 20 years before I was born, and even today there are people who will do anything from assault you to torture and kill you for being gay. For that reason, they have my support in general, even though I've had some really bad experiences with transwomen/MtFs and really only know transmen/FtMs (and all three of the ones I know are super-cool people and way less toxic as men than most cismen I know, somehow...).
Another thing I notice is that the specific pattern of accusations and charges leveled against the demonized group never changes: they're mentally ill, they're innately criminal and/or disordered, they're making society adapt to them instead of the other way around, they're loud and shrill, they're "shoving $DIFFERENCE down my throat," they're demanding special privileges, they're a tyrannical minority, and so on, and so forth. Crimes committed by any member of $GROUP are taken to be evidence that every member is the same way and, often, used to obscure or misdirect attention from the systematic injustices done to them. When they speak out, it's considered "troublemaking."
And at the heart of it all is, like I said above, plain ol' overprivileged resentment at not being able to divide the world into in-group and out-group and shit all over the out-group so easily any longer. It's not quite this simple of course; many people are "secondary racists" or "secondary gay/trans-haters," which is to say they have some very real economic or social grievances and have been convinced ("redpilled") that $GROUP is the cause of all their suffering by a few utter sociopaths who find their reactionary flailing useful (and perhaps amusing). Still, primary or secondary doesn't matter too much to the person whose life is made hell, or ended outright.
I don't know what to do about this. There are mind-disrupting memeplexes, "basilisks" as I've called them elsewhere, that seem able to permanently alter peoples' ability to relate to others different from them, and in many cases make them tacitly approve of if not outright participate in their ostracism, suffering, and deaths. As it is well-known that you can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into, there are few options left and even fewer that don't have horrible side effects themselves.
"Our great American companies are hereby ordered..."
You probably saw who said that, so I don't have to mention his name.
But you know, there are all those tax and other incentives that sent the jobs overseas. He could, like, take them away? Without sounding like a crazy man? Even if he is?
What is there to say? Genius! Got the whole world in a fishing net...
Do all OSes end at version 10 ?
Speculation: No operating system can have a version number higher than 10.
It started with Apple Mac OS X.
Next Microsoft Windows 10. Version 10 seems perpetual. It seems there will be no Windows 11. So why not just rename it: Microsoft Windows OS X ?
Next . . . Google deserts desserts: Android 10 is the official name for Android Q
Google has officially named the next version of Android, which is due to be released this fall: Android 10. Breaking the 10-year history of naming releases after desserts, the company is bailing on providing a codename beginning with a subsequent letter of the alphabet (in this case, Q), which is the way we’ve been referring to Android up to now. This year is Android 10, next year will be Android 11, and so on.
So maybe there will be an Android 11 ?
But then, there is Linux. To complicate things, Android is built on top of Linux.
The kernel isn't past version 10. Yet. Some distributions are well past version ten.
What about other OSes? MS-DOS didn't make it past six? What about the mainframe or minicomputer era?
Maybe older systems don't count. Maybe the trend toward X is a recent 21st century thing since Apple's Mac OS X and the need to identify with it.
(now back to the study of incandescent transistors!)
Intel has too much money
Intel goes on the defensive against AMD at Gamescom
Intel has been talking up its processors at Gamescom 2019, hosting an event where it admits that AMD, its chief rival, has “done a great job closing the gap, but we still have the highest performing CPUs.”
If that sounds a little defensive to you, we agree. We were at the event in Cologne, Germany, and there was a bit of a feeling that Intel wanted to remind everyone that while AMD has been getting a lot of positive news lately thanks to its new Ryzen 3000 series of processors, when it comes to gaming, Intel still has the best processors.
At the event, Intel’s Troy Severson said that “when we introduced the i9 9900K… it was dubbed the fastest gaming CPU in the world. And I can honestly say nothing’s changed. It’s still the fastest gaming CPU in the world.”
And the finisher:
Holding an event to essentially say that ‘nothing’s changed’ and ‘we’re still the best’ felt a little odd, and we (and many others) left feeling that Intel was a bit rattled by AMD’s recent success. At one point, it even talked about how it was sending anthropologists to live with gamers to study their habits – which doesn't sound like a job we'd fancy doing.
US Deficit to Reach Highest Level Since World War II
America’s federal deficit will expand by about $800 billion more than previously expected over 10 years, primarily because of two legislative packages approved this year, pushing the nation further into levels of debt unseen since the end of World War II, the Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday.
The CBO also said that the impact of higher trade barriers, primarily President Trump’s trade war, could hurt economic growth amid widespread fears of a recession.
The United States was already expected to hit about $1 trillion in annual deficits next year, an unusually high number, particularly given that deficits normally contract during sustained periods of economic growth.
U.S. deficit to expand by about $800 billion more than previously expected over 10 years, CBO says
FAA Foot Dragging on Starhopper 200 meter hop test
Aug. 13: SpaceX settles on Friday for Starhopper’s next flight test milestone, FAA permitting
Aug. 15: SpaceX’s next Starhopper flight needs more analysis for FAA go-ahead, says Elon Musk
Aug. 20: SpaceX’s next major Starhopper flight test still awaiting FAA approval, says Elon Musk
News of the next hop test’s additional delays comes some four days before Elon Musk had planned to present an updated overview of Starship and Super Heavy in Boca Chica, Texas, and it seems that both events may have to wait.
[...] According to Musk, either or both of those orbital-class prototypes could be ready for their inaugural flight tests as early as mid-September, perhaps just 1-2 months from now. Given that Starships Mk1 and Mk2 are significantly higher fidelity than Starhopper, the ungainly testbed will likely become redundant the moment that its successors are ready for flight. In other words, Starhopper is fast approaching the end of its useful life, and SpaceX’s fight for a 200m hop-test permit could ultimately be a waste of time, effort, and money if said permit doesn’t also cover Starship Mk1.
Very annoying, but hopefully the presentation on the 24th goes ahead anyway. That will be more interesting than a second hop.
There are a lot of topics that could be addressed, such as the current plan for heat shield(s), amount of engines that will be used (at least initially) on the spaceship and the booster, the type of engines (sea level, vacuum), and updated figures for tons of cargo to LEO, as well as other destinations without an in-orbit refuel. How many tons can it get to geostationary orbit without a refuel (cheaper, less complicated)?
Prez wants to bankrupt Social Security and Medicare
It's not happening fast enough. He has a plan
Live Action Mulan Actress Opposes Hong Kong Protests
Hong Kong protesters call for 'Mulan' boycott after star went public in support of police
Even Mulan is getting political. Liu Yifei, the Chinese-born actress starring in Disney's upcoming live-action "Mulan" remake, waded into the Hong Kong protest controversy on Thursday by expressing support for the city's police, who anti-government demonstrators accuse of using excessive force to quell unrest. "I support the Hong Kong police. You can all attack me now. What a shame for Hong Kong," she posted on Weibo, a Twitter-like Chinese social media platform.
Immediately, people began posting #BoycottMulan on Twitter -- which is banned in China. Hours later, the hashtag was trending in Hong Kong and the United States with 37,700 tweets posted at time of writing. Twitter users accused the actress of supporting police brutality, and called out the fact that she's an American citizen. "Liu is a naturalized American citizen. It must be nice. Meanwhile she pisses on people fighting for democracy," one person tweeted.
On the flip side, she also received plenty of praise on Weibo, the dominant platform in China. Nearly all the comments on her post echoed support for the Hong Kong police and Beijing.
I'll make a man out of you.
Can the prez buy Greenland?
Can't get past the paywall to find out.
I'd go for it...
256 GB Gen-Z Memory Module
SMART Modular Shows Off 256 GB Gen-Z Memory Module
SMART Modular this month demonstrated one of the industry’s first prototypes of a EDSFF 3-inch DDR4 Gen-Z memory module. The ZMM supports advanced functionality enabled by the new interface and offers throughput akin to that offered by today’s DDR4-4000 memory modules.
SMART Modular’s 256 GB ZMM uses Samsung’s 32 Gb 4-high DDR4 DRAM devices as well as IntelliProp’s Gen-Z Mamba memory controller ASSP, which supports multiple access semantics, including byte and block addressable DRAM access, in-band configuration, and access key/region key memory isolation opcodes in a bid to simplify memory access needed to handle emerging data-centric workloads. The controller features 16 Gen-Z lanes with 25 Gbps PHY as well as 400 Gbps aggregate performance. The chip requires up to 20 W of power, so it needs proper cooling.
