We're at Web 4.0 actually.

Web 3.0 was supposed to be blockchain all the way all the time.

Intel, what the heck happened to you? In the past I would have never considered an AMD processor and/or GPU. Now it looks like the only way forward. How the mighty have fallen.

Ryzen happened. Then the Intel 13/14th gen happened that had stability issues. Then Intel's latest gen CPUs bombed because they couldn't beat Ryzen in any metric. The pandemic really helped.

However, Intel 13th/14th gen are making a comeback thanks to AI - because they can run DDR4 memory. AMD's AM5 platform is DDR5 only, and if you've priced DDR5, it's kind of out there. Meanwhile, DDR4 in the same amount is still way overpriced, but is around half the cost of DDR5.

This has put immense pressure on AMD ans they were transitioning to AM5 platforms and discontinuing AM4 (which can use DDR4 or DDR5). Intel has suddenly become relevant again as has older AM4 builds (which were basically set as "do not use AM4" only a year earlier) because of this.

You know, there's also a huge selection of books called "non-fiction" which you can also read. They cover a variety of topics and can present your technical material in new an interesting ways.

So branch out and look around the library because there are a lot of books that are not necessarily "literature" (face it, the vast majority of people who read books read pulp - it's just like the vast majority of money in movies is blockbusters).

Sometimes it can be interesting background, like learning how WiFi started from trading commodities in Chicago and how it evolved.

Some books are even just aimed at the super geek - like books about the software running on the Apollo Guidance Computer. A mix of hardcore datasheet but tempered with how things were done but goes into details on the executive and on the virtual machine it implements. (If you want more, look up "Luminary and Sunburst: An Apollo Memoir" by Don Eyles).

Michael J. Fox's memoir during the time he did Back to the Future is also fascinating if you're a fan of the movie ("Future Boy").

It's just silly to think you can never read a "book". I'm starting a new one about the CPU used on the F-14 Tomcat, which was so heavily classified that we were stuck with the Intel 4004 when quite literally there was a much better higher performance processor already created, and how the 4004 is NOT the first microprocessor out there. I haven't read it yet, so it should prove interesting.

It's a day behind

You say that like ti's a bad thing.

Not all news needs to be known the second it happens. Sometimes a headline works, but the details can be worked out later.

Heck, many reputable online news sites are often late with their news because they want to make sure their reporting is accurate, so a day late means it had more time to be researched and all that.

Plenty of other sources also delay their reporting - John Oliver's Last Week Tonight is often a couple of weeks behind simply because it takes that long to do the necessary research.

It's also a useful thing if you don't care about certain topics, but having a day later provides a static update on topics you don't really care about

Given the way companies buy reporting these days, late reporting is often better. Think hardware companies refusing to give review units ahead of release time if they don't get a glowing review, so the reporting that's critical may get a review unit after release, or they may just go out and acquire one themselves and run it through their gauntlet of tests but the article comes out a week later.

Our cells inherit a lot of stuff as well. In the early days, mitochondria were actually separate organisms until sometime in the past, a cell decided to absorb it. It made sense - the mitochondria took nutrients in and produced ATP out, which cells used to absorb to power themselves. Eventually a cell decided to absorb mitochondria into themselves and feed it with nutrients and take the ATP that comes out.

That's why mitochondrial DNA exists and is often a separate line from your normal DNA.

Indeed. I am always shocked when I see many of the same employees year after year. That is just unheard of anywhere else in retail. And they are all pleasant and helpful. And, generally, seem happy.

Costco pays its employees VERY well. As in, it's not that Costco pays well for retail, they pay well overall. And their benefits are great. They are generally on the "best employer" list all the time. Turns out treating your employees well and paying them well causes them to stick around.

Look at an employee's name tag and the color tells you how long they've been there. Less than 25 years is white. Silver tags for anyone who's been there for over 25 years, and gold tags are for anyone who's been there for 40 years or more. The fact that it's actually a thing should tell you Costco employees stick around.

Now that's really unheard of,e especially in an industry where the average annual turnover rate is 200%.

Most people are using IPv6 without even knowing they're using it. The cellular packet protocol used by LTE and 5G is IPv6 internally. Your phone gets an IPv6 address and tunnels IPv4 traffic through it. Your carrier uses CGNAT to bring those packets to the Internet.

Granted, only some carriers right now allow full IPv6 connectivity to the Internet from your phone, but it's all there. Heck, your carrier might just assign you a static IPv6 address to represent your account, and roaming data you actually keep your IPv6 address and the prefix is used to route the packet to your carrier (mobile IP is fun - you actually get what is a virtual VPN back to your carrier who then puts the packets onto the Internet for you).

Next up loyalty oaths.

That's already happening - new federal employees must swear an oath of allegiance to Trump to follow his policies and such.

Though I think Project 2026 has something to say about that as well. Yes, there is a new Project 2026 document which contains some of the stuff in Project 2025 that hasn't been done yet (e.g., banning pornography) but adds more stuff that they would like done as well

Plenty of money for that fat orange tub of shit to plaster his name on buildings like The Kennedy Center but they can't come up with the funds for this?

Don't forget that White House ballroom that still needs to be built, and construction costs have ballooned another $100M.

Of course, one wonders if ICE needs to be involved in its construction.

The bourbon industry wants you to drink as well. Turns out trade wars are bad for business and thus need Americans to make up for the fact the world isn't buying American.

This is horrifying, terrifying, and sadly well-known even to those who superficially monitor such things.

Popular media: More than one US film/tv studio has "lost" or "suffered a mysterious fire" in un-digitised archives, destroying the lot, during battles to preserve. The BBC sued Bob Monkhhouse for preserving material it destroyed. In Britain, it has been no better. Fans of the British TV series "The Avengers" can only see old episodes because armies of previous fans descended on rubbish tips and, at great risk to themselves, collected as much film as possible.

General history: Places like the John Ryland's Library and the British Library have suffered with rescuing archives at risk of becoming submerged or destroyed by mould. The Archimedes Palimpsest was partially destroyed by one collector filling in the pictures with coloured pens and by another collector allowing the book to be severely damaged by mould.

The National Archives have mysteriously "lost" a great many files over the years and are only digitising those they've retained at an incredibly slow rate. I know because I've personally forked out several hundred to get just two scanned, all because politicians far prefer frippery to archiving. We've absolutely no idea how many of the manuscripts held in other archives are still in usable condition because nobody bothers to check.

It's not just limited to archives, of course. The US has, over the last couple of decades, demolished numerous buildings within the US that are over 300 years old because malls produce profit and ancient structures don't. (They also then complain they have no history...) The Space Shuttle is to be taken to Texas for a PR stunt, which will require it being dismantled and those things aren't designed for that. There is no guarantee any of it will survive the journey. All because PR matters and preservation does not. Other countries? The Louvre... well... probably best not to talk about that utter disgrace. In Egypt, 3000 year old gold artefacts are routinely melted down so the conservators can pocket some extra cash.

It's at times like this that Kenny Everett's general comes to mind.

He also brought computing through various generations, from the 80s 8-bit micros to the rise of the IBM PC and the 386 and Windows, to Windows 95, to the early Internet era.

It's worth a watch just to see how things evolved over the 20 plus years it was on the air. You can tell how computing became democratized from the formal 80s where the hosts wore full suits to the 90s where things got more casual (still a shirt, maybe a tie) and such.

The show evolved and kept up during a period of unprecedented growth in computing

The good thing is that with multli-gigabit speeds available to home, deep packet inspection is practically impossible making it harder to throttle and limit speeds. When everyone was on 50Mbps, it was easy because a software DPI system running on relatively beefy hardware could process at gigabit speeds and throttle companies that refused to pay the full speed ransom. You could stick a box on every node in the neighbourhood cheaply.

But as homes started getting gigabit and faster speeds, equipment that can filter packets at those rates gets exponentially more expensive - processing 10gbps is harder, but if everyone on a block has 2Gbps service, that may not be enough.

Even the fastest firewalls are only processing at a little over 500Gbps and that's just firewall duties and likely costing into the the high six figures if not seven figure range.

It's why the game shifted from throttling non-paying "customers" to "zero rating" - it's much easier to have Netflix paying you and they can tag Netflix packets as "don't count" towards your bandwidth quota of the month - tagging packets and such is all done in hardware and thus all tagged packets don't count towards your limit. It's trivial to tag at the firewall or internal content server, and the flows can be multiple 10s of gigabits all counted cheaply in hardware without needing to deep inspect packets.

The silo series. The first book (Wool) is already a two season series on AppleTV+, and until the 3rd and 4th eeasons are released, reading the books provides additional details.

Shift provides the background information for how we got to where we are in Wool. Dust concludes the series and wraps it all up. There is a final short novel Sil0 (with a zero) which provides details on "everyone else" as well as an epilogue to the series.

I suggest reading first, the TV series then provides an interesting adaptation of the books which is remarkably well done but does change a few details (as they always do). Apple has done a remarkably good job at the adaptation. Honestly, they should kill their streaming service and be a production studio that concentrates on releasing their high quality content on multiple media including physical.

Even if we can't resurrect the entire animal, if we can produce muscle cells we can create lab meat. I want my mammoth burger.

Would be dry, tough (and crumbly), tasteless and likely gamey.

You need fat cells to provide flavor, cells that produce cartilage to help bind the cells together and provide the texture base after cooking. Probably need some blood cells as well to provide additional iron and flavoring.

The best steaks are marbled where the fat is distributed with the muscle to provide exquisite flavor and texture once cooked. Muscle cell only meant is known as lean meat which is useful for certain things but is otherwise not as appealing.