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Looking for this article about high dynamic range:

Netflix confirms HDR compatibility with Samsung Galaxy Note 8 and LG V30

Found this article with some nice historical and technical details:

Believe the Hype: HDR Is the Real Deal

HDR seems like a bigger deal than 4K for games with moody atmospherics or stealth mechanisms, as well as certain films. I doubt it will die and recede into the background like 3D did.

I'm working on a USB video driver. The way it works is quite complex so I ported from Linux rather than writing from scratch:

#define spin_lock_t IOSimpleLock *

Some things didn't have such simple ports, so I guarded them with #ifdefs. Then my coworker removed all the Linux-specific code as well as the ifdefs. Sucks to be him when it's maintenance time.

I get a big check when it goes to beta. I'm going to donate a good chunk of money to homeless shelters, soup kitchens and rescue missions.

And I'm going to buy a car.

The car won't help much with getting to work - because of the all-day rush our here in Portland, I'll stick to the light rail. But it might be worthwhile to drive instead of taking two busses to get from home to the North Portland light rail station. I expect that will cut my commute from two hours to ninety minutes.

More important to me in the short term is that I can go places where the busses don't go. Like the beach, the desert and the mountains.

I like to camp in the desert.

Say that ---^ in Reno and you get a 10-day involuntary hold for being a danger to yourself. That's because "camping in the desert" is a local euphemism for "committing suicide".

"But I'm not from Reno! I really _do_ like to camp in the desert." My pleas fell on deaf ears.

A good chunk of Eastern Washington, Eastern Oregon and Northeast California is a desert.

I get another big check when we ship. There will be quite a lot of work between beta and shipping; I have to support multiple dongles, as well as harmony with the competitor's dongle, as well as some other featureful things.

I'm going to get my stuff out of storage in Canada. I don't know yet how much that will cost but I'm guessing three grand.

I'll get my piano back. I mean like a real piano, with wires and wood.

It was way out of tune when I recorded this. I later had it tuned, but I wanted to record its memory in case tuning it broke some of the strings. While they could be replaced, the new wires would spoil the distinctive voice of the piano that I had lived with since I was a toddler.

In my experience, if you enjoy my recordings, you're not right in the head. One of my two biggest fans has Borderline Personality Disorder - I met her by playing a piano in a nuthouse - and Schizotypal Personality Disorder.

I also have a Fatar controller in storage. It doesn't make sound, I have to use a MIDI Sound Module for that. But it has a hammer-action mechanism that makes it feel like a real concert grand.

I also - presently - have an M-Audio ProKeys 88sx Lightweight Stage Piano. I bought it for playing open mics.

The Hell am I going to do with three pianos? My apartment is tiny! But I cannot bear to part with any of them.

Lately I've been writing down my favorite artists when they're played on Radio Paradise. Then ever couple of weeks I go to a real good record store and buy a half-dozen CDs. I've got over a hundred artists in my list, I'm going to be enjoying lots of new music, with the approval of the MAFIAA.

Ah! The privileged life: a couple weeks ago I bought parmesan cheese for my spaghetti.

Amateur writers, but some of them are pretty good. I thought I'd share this humorous take on airline safety with everyone. Visit http://dailysciencefiction.com for more!

On second thought - the story loses formatting when I c/p it. Looks like crap, and I'm not bright enough to fix it. Direct link to story - http://dailysciencefiction.com/hither-and-yon/humor/oliver-buckram/darkening-skies

Enjoy!!

All-righty - I have just nominated myself for a smart ass award with my post here - https://soylentnews.org/~FakeBeldin/journal/2592?&noupdate=1#comment_560273

And, it crosses my mind that a lot of folks here probably use multi-meters from time to time. I wonder how many of you might be using a ten dollar meter, from the bargain bin, at your local auto parts store? Maybe I can convince some of you to upgrade . . .

Like many of you, my first meters were cheap. As an apprentice or a helper, money is tight, so you're not willing to waste money on an expensive meter. But, those cheap meters can cost your life!!

Check the fuse in your multimeter. Is it a glass fuse? Most are, and if that thing is ever hit by a real high energy surge, it will become a plasma grenade, right there, in your hand! Check this PDF http://support.fluke.com/find-sales/Download/Asset/2041429_6001_ENG_A_W.PDF

Personally, my money goes to Fluke. Don't take that as a super-strong endorsement, it's just what I've settled on. There are other companies that make good, safe, quality meters, but my first decent quality meter was a Fluke 77 original. Not a Series II through Series IV, but an original Fluke 77 without a Series designator. Today, I'm very happy with the Fluke 179 - it feels right, it's reliable, and it's like a Timex - takes a licking and keeps on ticking.

If you read that PDF above, you may feel safe using your cheap multimeter, because you never get into Cat III or Cat IV. There's not enough energy to be really hazardous, you say. Hmmmm. Maybe. And, maybe not. Watch some crazy Aussies blowing shit up, then analyzing the results - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-FZP1U2dkM

I just want to make everyone aware that those ten to fifty dollar meters are a safety hazard. Make your own mind up. Maybe you don't need all the features that I need - all of which adds to the cost. But, whatever you do, you most likely need all the safety that I need. You probably enjoy the use of both of your hands, as well as both of your eyes! Just think about it . . .

Boy Scouts 'Exploring' Co-Ed Programming Provokes Girl Scout Ire

Girl Scouts Accuse Boy Scouts of Recruiting Girls, Souring Century-Old Friendship

Editorial: On their honor, the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts should settle their boundary issues

Parents, Don’t Let Your Girls Join the Boy Scouts

Lots Of Girls Want To Join The Boy Scouts. What's The Problem With That?

I can sense film scripts being written about this.

(Photo of the "waves" is here)
        I’d been eagerly looking forward to this event since I first heard about it—Illinois was going to see its second total solar eclipse in its history as a state, and no one alive had ever seen an Illinois total eclipse. It happened in 1869 and totality passed right through Springfield, the state’s capital. Then, as now, people were very excited.
        I heard more and more about it, like totality was passing through Carbondale. Carbondale is about a hundred miles from St. Louis, which is about a hundred miles from Springfield. Ozzy Osbourne was slated to hold a concert in a tiny town thirty miles from Carbondale, and play Bark at the Moon during totality.
        I was stoked; it was reported that the stars come out during totality and there are other strange things, like wavy lines on the ground that scientists couldn’t explain.
        At first I was planning to meet my daughter Patty, who lives in Cincinnati, in Carbondale, but Carbondale was where everyone was talking about. It was going to be a madhouse, I was sure, and decided to visit my mom in Bellville the day before, a Sunday, then go to my friend Mike’s in Columbia to cook pork on his Weber and drink beer. I planned on crashing on his couch and heading south early the next morning.
        Then I found NASA’s interactive eclipse map. Mom and Mike were right on the edge of totality, and the center of totality passed right through Prairie du Rocher, about thirty miles or so south of Mike’s house. Patty watched from the Shawnee National Forest, camping there the night before.
        I set out south Sunday morning, and traffic was thick. However, it always is on the weekends, which is why I usually visit during the week. As is my usual habit I set the cruise control to five miles under the limit to make for a stressless drive. But I knew traffic was going to be worse the next day.
        I visited my mom in Bellville, then headed to Mike’s, where we grilled pork steaks (well, he did) and we drank beer and bullshitted. I crashed on his couch, as planned.
        Patty texted me, excited that they had found eclipse glasses for ten bucks apiece. She was thrilled. I thought she had been ripped off, as Mike’s wife had five pairs she had picked up at the library for free. I just heard today when I picked up tacos at George Rank’s that they were selling them on the internet for $150!
        I’d planned on not using the glasses, not trusting them; there are some really evil people in the world who don’t mind blinding people for money, or even killing them. I wound up looking through them once or twice, anyway.
        Monday morning we got up and drank coffee, and headed south on Bluff Road for the middle of the umbra, the part of the shadow that is in totality.
        Bluff road is a little-used two lane highway that you can often travel without seeing another vehicle. We turned on to Bluff Road, and joined a parade of cars and truck headed for the best view. Traffic moved briskly, at the various speed limits on the way. It took about forty five minutes.
        On the way we saw a roadside stand selling eclipse glasses for twenty bucks apiece. Mike cursed the ripping off they were doing; they’d gotten theirs for free from the public library, donated by a veteran’s club. It was indeed a ripoff, because it would have probably cost less than a penny apiece to make them. But better than a hundred and fifty, at least.
        I wished Mike had driven rather than me, because there was some enchanting scenery on the way, as well as an eagle’s nest. The magic was beginning hours before the sun and moon met.
        Mike has a grandson who lives there, and we had a hard time finding the address of the house in the tiny town. His wife had told him that if he asked google for the address on Bluff Road it would lead to the wrong house, as his address was Bluff Street.
        Stupid Google kept giving directions to the address on Bluff Road, and it was even more maddening because we were surrounded by bluffs and the cell signals were nonexistent to very weak. We’d brought no refreshments, so stopped at a restaurant for soft drinks and directions to bluff street.
        When we got out of the car, the very humid heat was oppressive. The place was packed, inside and out. We had a hard time finding a parking spot. We were informed that the streets were the same; Bluff Road became Bluff Street for a while.
        His grandson lived in a house trailer right up against the bluff. We got out and it was even hotter and more humid. We went in, and it was perhaps five or ten degrees less hot than outside; the trailer had only a single one-room air conditioner. Every time I went outside, the heat started getting to me. My hands shook and I could barely walk; I was starting to suffer from heat exhaustion. Mike and his very young great granddaughter went up the hill exploring.
        “There’s a cave up here!” Mike yelled down to me, so I staggered up the hill. There was a cool breeze coming out of the cave.
        It wasn’t cool enough, so I got in the car and started it and blasted the air conditioning. It really helped, and I was in the car several times before the eclipse started.
        I saw something I’d not seen since I was a kid—a toad. Then another one. This hellishly hot day was really cool!
        Finally, some time between twelve thirty and one it started. I finally looked through the glasses once, and afterward made a pinhole viewer out of my fist. When the sun was a crescent, I saw the “wavy lines” science couldn’t explain and I had no trouble at all explaining them. It was the multiple crescents moving around the gravel. The tree was causing multiple pinhole viewers. The way the breeze moved the leaves did look like wavy lines on the ground as the crescents moved around the gravel.
        There were clouds which sometimes covered the sun, and I feared the clouds would cover it during totality, but they didn’t. I hear clouds occluded the totality in Carbondale. I hope they didn’t cover the sun in the forest where Patty was.
        I’d brought my big tablet, thinking I could use its front-facing camera to watch the eclipse on it and maybe make movies, but I feared the glare on the screen might harm my eyes, so that was out. I tried to take a photo with my phone, and I got a picture, but it didn’t show the sun as a crescent. The only halfway decent photo was the tree shadows when it was still partial.
        Then the sky gradually changed colors for about ten minutes, after which it took seconds for it to become dark and for all the streetlights to come on, and the screams and cheers and applause of the thousands of people in town for the sight were very loud, from half a mile away. Mike kept saying “Wow! Man, that’s the neatest thing I’ve ever seen in my life!” Nobody could help but agree.
        It did get very dark, about like under a full moon. But I saw no stars, although a friend who was in a different spot in totality told me he saw two or three stars right by the corona, which I only glanced at. Around the corona it was indeed pitch black. but the horizons were like dusk. Obviously light was being reflected from places that weren’t in totality. It’s hard to explain what it looked like.
        Darkness lasted maybe two minutes, give or take a few seconds. I was way too busy taking it in for photos, and it was too dark for my phone’s camera to work without a flash, anyway. I should have bought film and brought my Canon 35mm SLR I’d bought half a century ago. Yes, film is coming back. They now sell and develop it again at Walgreen’s.
        When it was over I was again in distress from the heat, then we headed back to his house. Mike, who knew where we were going and I didn’t, was too busy watching the scenery to see a turn we needed to take. We got all the way to Red Bud before realizing our mistake, and highway three was in gridlock. We didn’t want to go that way, anyway, and turned back around.
        The little-used Bluff road was full, but traffic was moving at a reasonable pace. I’d planned on crossing the river for cheaper gasoline, but was still heat-distressed and decided not to. We went to his house, where I drank a copious amount of water, and we ate leftover pork steaks, but eating was making me hot. They say “starve a fever, feed a chill” and the reason is that eating will warm you up, unless it’s ice cream.
        I left Mike’s about two, planning to stop by Mom’s house on the way home, and changed my mind as soon as I got on I-255. Traffic was at a crawl. The normally ten or fifteen minute trip to Bellville took nearly an hour. I drove right past her exit, because I could see this was going to be a long drive and I didn’t want to get home after dark.
        Not once did the speedometer measure over 30 mph on 255. Getting off 255 to I-55 is a nightmare in normal traffic because of the idiotic interchange design, so I decided to bypass it and take Collinsville Road to I-55. Traffic was heavy, but moving briskly, far faster than the interstate. I stopped for gas and a soda and got on I-55. I was really glad I’d bypassed a bit, probably saved myself half an hour or even more.
        I’ve never seen traffic that heavy outside Chicago in my life, and never saw traffic that heavy that stretched that far. My phone rang three times before I reached a rest stop, just past the I-70 interchange. I had to pee, I had to get my tortuously aching back out of that car, and I wanted to see who was trying to call. I figured it was my mom, who I’d told I’d probably visit again on my way home.
        Two of the calls were from her, worried about me, and I ignored the other one, because I don’t answer calls without attached names. If you’re not a spammer, scammer, or pollster you can leave a message and I’ll call you back and add your number to my address book.
        I’ve never seen an interstate rest area so crowded. Cars parked where they didn’t normally, and so did I. This wasn’t a normal day. I reassured Mom, walked quite a long way to the rest room, and walked back and resumed the arduous journey.
        Four and a half hours after leaving Mike’s I’d traveled fifty miles. Past Staunton I had it up to 55mph for a short time, and hit sixty past Mount Olive. Five miles from Litchfield, traffic was stopped again.
        Past Litchfield traffic thinned somewhat, and you could usually do forty, but it was almost in Springfield before anyone could do the speed limit. There was simply far, far more traffic than that highway was designed to handle.
        Which makes me wonder how bad it will be if a nuclear missile is headed to a major city whose occupants have only half an hour to escape.
        The trip was finally over about eight, just as it was getting dark. It had been a seven hour journey with an average speed of 14.3 mph. But it was well worth it! I’m really looking forward to the one in 2024.

Redefining 'Drug Bust': German Police Seize 5,000 Pills In Shape Of Trump's Head

'Donald Trump-shaped' ecstasy pills seized by German police

German Police Seize Thousands of 'Trump' Ecstasy Tablets

Germany’s orange ecstasy pills have Trump’s name — and face — all over them

Molly!

Joss Whedon fan site shuts down after ex-wife's critical essay

Joss Whedon's Ex-Wife Warns He's A Hypocrite 'Preaching Feminist Ideals'

Joss Whedon Is a 'Hypocrite Preaching Feminist Ideals,' Ex-Wife Kai Cole Says (Guest Blog)

Five times Joss Whedon, self-proclaimed 'woke bae', blew his feminist credentials

So farewell then.

Warp Life is a particularly fast implementation of Conway's Game of Life. Golly may be faster but it doesn't run on the smaller devices, just the iPad.

If you're willing to help, I'll need the UDIDs of each device you want to test with. Follow these instructions to obtain your device's UDID.

Mail your UDID(s) to mdcrawford@gmail.com.

You could really help a brother out if you would forward the URL to my beta test page to anyone you genuinely feel would be interested in or would benefit from it:

http://www.warplife.com/beta-testing

Race Bias #1 - "Blissful Ignorance"

I began the "Race Bias" series in 1995 in response to a post on the alt.politics.nationalism.white newsgroup to the effect that there was no discrimination in employment, university admissions, or otherwise, against European-Americans.

I was stunned that the regular posters to the group had no instant supply of material to post in reply.

Most regular posters and "lurkers" on the newsgroup, have some first-hand experience with anti-White race preferences. But very few of them are aware of just how pervasive these anti-White preferences have become. Unfortunately, the primary weakness of our defensive political movement is that a commanding plurality of _Whites_ are utterly unaware of it. They have no clue that the nice sounding phrase "Affirmative Action" means the systematic disfavor of Whites and race based preferences for non- whites.

Indeed, it is hard to imagine how a White can grow up in this society and not be aware of the legal and social impediments imposed on him, but a recent survey from the Washington Post found that 41% of Whites think "affirmative action" included benefits for white men. (Affirmative Action for White Guys? Washington Post, Oct. 22, 1995, p. C5.)

A Harte-Hanks Texas Poll conducted for media outlets by UT's Office of Survey Research and reported in the June 29, 1996 Austin American-Statesman (p A1) is consistent with the Washington Post results:

"A vastly lopsided percentage of Texans, eight of 10, oppose giving any consideration to race when admitting students to college. But when asked about affirmative action in general, respondents were more positive than not."

However, when asked "whether affirmative action for minorities and women "has had a positive effect on Texas," the response indicated that most had no clue what the words "affirmative action" really mean:

"Forty-seven percent of the 1,000 respondents either agreed or strongly agreed that affirmative action for minorities has had a positive effect, while 33 percent disagreed or strongly disagreed."

"When asked about affirmative action for women, 59 percent agreed it has had a positive effect on Texas and 23 percent disagreed. The higher percentage favoring affirmative action for women is not surprising, experts said, because women make up half of the population."

Of course, the issue is not whether "affirmative action has had a positive effect on _Texas_" - a proposition that asks the interviewees to speculate on the impact of race preferences on an inanimate parcel of real estate, but whether affirmative action hurts or harms the interviewee.

But the survey itself highlights one of the means by which large institutions hide the truth from Whites. By selecting the term "affirmative action," conjuring images of a little extra recruiting effort to overcome any "information deficit" that non- whites might have in the marketplace, most Whites are kept in the dark.

Only the minority of Whites who read newspapers will know the truth. Those who get their information from TV will be blissfully ignorant.

The problem is that nearly half of this nation's Whites lack the basic vocabulary and the rudimentary facts needed to defend themselves in the political process.

With this in mind, I produced the "Race Bias" series.

I am a firm believer that the people of the Euro-American nation need facts more than they need ideologies. With that in mind, the series has been reorganized and lengthened from the original 30 to a revised 42 posts.

Copy them and circulate them to others!

Yggdrasil-

(As a P.S., I am indebted to "American Renaissance" magazine for reporting the Washington Post survey [Volume 7, Number 4, April, 1996] Subscriptions to American Renaissance are $20.00 per year. Make checks payable to: American Renaissance, P. O. Box 1674 Louisville, KY 40201.)

http://www.whitenationalism.com/rb/rb-01.htm