When I was working in smaller analog ASICs we occasionally added pictures like these on the die. It sort of depends on the team and personality. In projects where the whole die was controlled by a small group (generally less than 10 people), you could do something like this. But recently working in teams where there are hundreds of people there are too many eyes scrutinizing every bit of space.

In addition, long ago, back on lower-end process nodes (eg. 0.25um+) there was not as hard requirements on density and fill. So it was easier to find open space on the die. But newer deep-submicron processes (anything below 40nm) has very strict requirements on density and fill. Usually any open space is back-filled with fill shapes to prevent problems in fabrication (shapes that are adjacent to large open spaces do not process equally to ones that are surrounded). So unless a section of the die is explicitly sectioned off, open areas are rare now.

Another thing that is very common is an area where you will see numbers/letters, usually a grid of them. What happens is each layer in the stack will get a letter or number such that they don't overlap each other. Later on if the die gets a mask update (this can happen if metal-changes are done to fix bugs/errors) then the layer identifier will get updated. So looking at the die you can identify which masks were used to make it. This is useful if you have multiple revisions of an otherwise identical product.

In college I also fabricated my own die through MOSIS for a research project (0.5um process IIRC). Of course when you control the whole die you can do anything you want, so I had to personalize it a bit.

An interesting one I saw once was a Pentium4 (I think). I had a bare die embedded in a clear keychain. Under the microscope they had a whole block sectioned off with what appeared to be the initials of everyone who worked on it. I sort of doubt Intel does that sort of thing anymore.

You are out of date on this. Bluray can be ripped, generally without much trouble. Check MakeMKV.

I've transferred many of our Bluray discs over to a Plex server. Which is useful because our Bluray player is starting to have problems.

The bigger issue with doing this is that the rips can take quite a lot of space. A 1080p movie takes about 6-8GB usually, which isn't too bad. But a 4K Bluray can take around 50-80GB each. You need a big storage array if you want a good size library.

This exactly. I had not upgraded our home systems to Win11, so I didn't have much experience on it.

Then our office pushed new Win11 laptops to everyone last year, and it has been incredibly infuriating. The damn forced updates are so in-your-face now it has driven me to strongly consider going Linux at home. I even had it happen that I was in the middle of a conference call, speaking at the moment, when Win11 pushed some update that kicked me off the call, and then spent 15 minutes rebooting and installing crap. I've lost more mid-edit document changes to forced reboots in the last 6 months then I have in the last 20 years. So a big FU Microsoft.

The main holdout I have going to Linux is not games, it is the large 3D CAD applications. None of these programs - Fusion, Solid Edge, or Solidworks - have Linux installs. I find this surprising in itself - at my workplace (not 3D CAD) -all- workstations are Linux. But regardless the recommended workaround is to use a VM, which if you are using a VM to run a desktop for apps, what is the point in having a different base OS for the desktop.

Agree completely. These are foolish parents, letting this kid trade some of the best years of his life for an early entry into the industry grind (especially of all places, at one of Musk's companies). Even if the kid was super smart, it is unlikely his maturity level is at the same place as his coworkers, so he will be socially ostracized regardless.

It would have been better if the kid used his skills to start his own company as an entrepreneur, and work at his own pace. I would also suggest maintaining social connections with other kids his age, but I'm guessing since he went through an accelerated school program, that is probably non-existant already.

Some parents seem to be oblivious to the social aspects of this type of accelerated placement. Even pushing your kid one grade up causes them to be the youngest kid in the class, so they will consistently be the smallest kid there (not just size, but maturity). And at some point when growth spurt hits all the other kids, it will become really obvious. Agree that the best thing is to divert their energy into other activites.

Not only is it obvious, assets that do exactly what they are talking about have been on the Unity asset store for a long time. It takes all of 5 seconds to find ready-to-go ad systems for in-game ads, this is just the first three I saw:

https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/3d/bidstack-in-game-advertising-serving-player-experiences-on-mobil-233179

https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/utilities/frameplay-sdk-152964

https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/add-ons/anzu-programmatic-in-game-pc-console-ad-monetization-that-respec-211181

In fact the last one claims "The only licensed XBOX in-game advertising provider", so there is no way Microsoft is unaware of these systems. From a patent perspective this should be rejected just on the basis of all the prior art.

Except they did: https://www.gartner.com/en/articles/think-hybrid-work-doesnt-work-the-data-disagrees

Forcing people into a performance bell-curve and firing the "underperformers" is the dumbest shit around. It's painting everyone with a broad brush by managers who are too lazy to figure out where the inefficiencies really are. I've seen it destroy working groups, including having it happen to a group I was in. What happens over time is positions are not refilled, so a group can get cut down to bone where all that remains is essential. Think of a group where everyone has a different skill role and there is no overlapping - now you cut one more person and the whole group fails.

Here is a car analogy - I'd like everyone with a car to designate one of the wheels as underperforming and get rid of it. Hey it's less maintenance cost - less wheels to maintain - but I doubt you will get where you want to go.

I did a similar thing a few years ago. I got an expensive QNAP to act as a NAS and Docker station, and it worked "ok" for about a year, after which it had a hardware problem. It would occasionally cycle in a boot loop. If it managed to come up it would run stable, but over time it became less and less likely. So they did fix it on RMA, but within a month or two it started having the same problem, and had to get RMA'd again.

And herein lies the problem with QNAP - their software and hardware are all proprietary. Their RMA cycle is a couple months. So if you can imagine your NAS disappearing for two months at a time every few months, you realize this is an untenable situation. There are numerous other issues with the QNAP experience, but I'll refrain from elaborating.

So after this experience I decided to custom build a machine using commodity parts and software to avoid this RMA nightmare. I took my old desktop machine (Intel 3770, circa 2012), put it into a server case and loaded it with hotbays. Then I installed Linux (Ubuntu server I think), using ZFS storage, and running Docker. As a side note there are various OS that could be used here, but Linux has the nice ability to run both ZFS and Docker well, which was not the case on some BSD alternatives like FreeNAS (at least back when I did the build they did not support Docker well at all).

It took some work (a few weeks), but I was able to achieve something that works vastly better and faster than the QNAP I had. On mine I run the NAS, plus Portainer, Plex, and Gitlab as Docker containers. There are some elements that are not as point-and-clicky (QNAP is better at that), but at least Docker management is GUI driven. ZFS management is all from command-line, but once the arrays are setup it is not too bad (I've only had to replace one failed drive, and it went ok). To assist with remembering CLI commands I maintain a doc for myself with setup notes. On the plus side it is fairly automated, it has auto-backup across two ZFS arrays, and the Docker images auto-update also.

The software I run on it to replace QNAP functions is as follows:

Storage - ZFS, Samba and WSDD (note: search "toponce zfs admin" for a good intro to ZFS, and search "christgau wsdd" for a daemon to help Windows discovery)

Backup - sanoid/syncoid (ZFS autosnap utility), and rsync for mirroring the array to NTFS drives every so often (I find offline NTFS backups are good to cover the case of machine catastrophic failure, as it allows mounting the data on Windows if needed)

Containers - Docker and Portainer (Portainer is the GUI docker management tool)

Front-end "Desktop" - Heimdall (as a Docker container)

Other useful containers - Watchtower (auto updates containers), Glances (like web-based "top" command), GitLab (it is a personal Github, awesome), Plex (of course)

VNC/ssh - Something to allow remote access and config

I don't currently run straight VMs, I only use containers, but for that: KVM, QEMU, and Virtual Machine Manager.

Others might have software recommendations also. If I knew back when I got the QNAP what I know now, I would not have invested in it. The one feature QNAP is arguably better at is their camera monitoring software (QVR Pro), but it is time locked (2 weeks I think) unless you pay more for it. For everything else the Linux solution has been far better in my experience. And if anything breaks it is easier to fix it (nothing proprietary).

I will mention one thing I do not have a handle on yet is the Ubuntu server itself (root OS). I would recommend mirroring the boot drive before updating. I have had very bad luck with Linux (of various flavors) updating and breaking things. Last time I ran an update systemd modified some files that prevented Docker from starting (which kills most of the machine functions). I've had similar bad experience in Arch Linux with systemd (hang at boot, blank screen, no message). I really don't like systemd.

You can try to get Google Fi, which according to their site is compatible with LG V20: https://fi.google.com/compatib...

I switched to Fi a long time ago and will never go back to the standard carriers. But I usually get Google phones for the network switching (WiFi vs cellular).

This exactly. I recently had to deal with the MS store to get the PC version of Minecraft to coop with my son on a console (Bedrock version - which is the version required to interoperate with console versions of it, an independent annoying topic).

In any event, the problem with their store is they require a login (not a problem in itself, no different than Steam account), but they want to tie that login to the machine user login. And to do that means setting up a MS account as a user login to the machine. I never use MS accounts on my machines, I only use local accounts, so this was a highly annoying discovery.

As it turns out it is possible to use local account on the machine, and MS account on the store, but it is neither easy to do, or well documented. I was eventually able to get it to work, but a highly annoying process and frankly unnecessary requirement. And this really gets to the main annoyance of the MS "ecosystem", in that they will at-every-turn try to monetize their customers (usually with completely unnecessary BS like this). The thing is their ecosystem has no value to the end customer, it is only of value to them as they can then sell you to someone else.

I saw this again when I was working with Unity. Default Unity will try to preinstall Visual Studio, which will shortly expire, and then require you to setup an account to validate/license it or some BS. OR you can dump that garbage, install VScode, and not deal with any of that crap. I find it strange these are so opposite, but I very much prefer VScode for these reasons.

I didn't realize until recently, but PlutoTV has a contant live-tv stream on both MST3K and RiffTrax (note, has ads like broadcast tv):

http://pluto.tv/live-tv/mst3k

http://pluto.tv/live-tv/rifftrax

I kind of like the Hodgson-era stuff they show a bit more than the new stuff on Netflix.

But but but, Stadia will be different... Come on everyone, pay full price for a game locked to Stadia.

Is there any dev out there who doesn't see Stadia as a long term dead-end? I'm kind of wondering how many years Google will keep it up.

The real question is: When will I be able to pay with a backhand slap? (preferrably while talking with an Italian accent)

Although this might make getting change problematic:

Here take my money (slap).

Fine, here's your change (slap back).

Actually Clevo and rebrands of it are generally pretty good price/performance. A few years ago I had a Sager laptop which IIRC was also a rebranded Clevo. It had the same parts of name-brand laptops costing several hundred more. Also at the time the build was very customizable, high res screen, GPU, extra HD in place of CD, all those were build options. So in short, instead of this particular laptop, one can probably find a custom builder that can alter the build (xoticpc.com is one, but there are others) even using the same base Clevo.

However performance on paper is not the only criteria for laptops. My particular build at the time also had a keyboard like a trampoline, pretty flexy and hollow case build, and fairly bad battery life (although it had switchable GPU - anyone remember "Optimus"?). On the plus side it was easy to flip it over and pull the bottom panel off to get at the ram, HD, etc. It was also super back-breaking heavy (machine name "anvil").

You just need an innovative solution, just like at Veridian Dynamics: https://youtu.be/2SLFlNH0TLY?t=45