Stuff you didn't know and probably don't care about

[igor_kavinski]

how do you know it looks bad? Hint, watching that video is not going to show you what it really looks like.

I can easily tell the difference in side by side comparisons because this Thinkpad's screen is crazy calibrated. First time I saw Avengers Endgame on this screen, I noticed colors I had only seen before on an HDR TV with wide color gamut so this screen has definitely 72% NTSC color coverage. The JVC in some scenes is producing deeper and more accurate colors than the reference image, like the night lit with moonlight looks more bluish and natural. The reference image looks off and the Valerion is too dark to see anything clearly. It has a gamma issue too. Maybe it's not properly calibrated.

 

[Kaido]

Valerion is faux k. the JVC is 3 x 4k chip so it can fake 8k. and that is a higher end D-ILA, there are cheaper 3 chip models.

Yes, but pretty good for NOT $15,000 lol

 

[Kaido]

Find something better. Dark scenes look bad especially when it's moonlight and no other artificial light sources.

Better off with a 77 inch OLED.

Hard to give up a 175" in a light-controlled basement lol

 

[igor_kavinski]

Yes, but pretty good for NOT $15,000 lol

https://vividstormscreen.com/products/awol-vision-ltv-3000-4k-triple-ultra-short-throw-laser-projector

 

[Kaido]

https://vividstormscreen.com/products/awol-vision-ltv-3000-4k-triple-ultra-short-throw-laser-projector

The new XGIMI Ascend looks pretty cool:

XGIMI Ascend is so much cooler than any new TV announced at CES 2025

At CES 2025, XGIMI introduced its Ascend concept product, which could revolutionize home projection. Here's what you need to know.

bgr.com

 

[IronWing]

Um did Klara learn chemistry from Chat GPT?

She's not wrong.

 

[Kaido]

1995 throwback:

The Hot-Dog Hullabaloo: Dumbest Fine Of All Time

One thousand dollars is peanuts to Seattle Seahawks stars Rick Mirer, Cortez Kennedy and Eugene Robinson. They can afford to plunk down a grand for a hot dog. Particularly when the money goes to a good charity.

But, if ever a mountain was made out of a mole hill, it was Coach Dennis Erickson's slapping $1,000 fines against each for munching frankfurters on the sidelines after they had put in their shift in a meaningless exhibition game against the Forty-Niners in San Francisco.

Erickson finally decided to make a statement about team discipline.

Not from all the mayhem that has occurred off the field, leading Sports Illustrated to label the Seahawks "Team Turmoil."

Not from the car crash in Kirkland involving players and open cans of beer that left teammate Mike Frier paralyzed.

Not from manslaughter charges against all-pro wide receiver Brian Blades for the shooting death of his cousin.

Not from drunken driving charges, including Erickson's own conviction.

Not from charges that star running back Chris Warren manhandled a woman outside a Renton bar at 2:45 a.m. Whatever he did, he shouldn't have been there.

No. Discipline for Team Turmoil finally came from eating hot dogs.

Sure it was on the sidelines. But the three players weren't going back in the game. It was the second half. They were finished for the day.

With a straight face, Erickson said he had no choice.

"We just felt the fine was necessary," Erickson said. "Obviously it wasn't done intentionally and they're great kids. But they made a mistake. They know that better than anybody."

They're not really kids. They're good men - three of the straightest arrows, hardest workers and best producers on the team.

I don't know what Erickson meant by saying it obviously wasn't done intentionally.

How do you unintentionally smuggle hot dogs out of the stands hidden in a helmet and sneak them into your mouth?

That's not the point. Let's put this thing in perspective.

John Madden, the FOX-network color analyst for the game, is the funniest man ever to invade a broadcast booth. He also was one of the best coaches in the National Football League when he was in charge of the Oakland Raiders.

Madden knows the game. He knows life. He knows how to perk up the audience when a game is putting them to sleep. So he did his hot-dog shtick on national TV, gee-whizzing as only Madden can.

At first, he thought the bulge in Mirer's mouth was chewing tobacco and that Mirer had a pouch hidden under a towel wrapped around his hand.

Then Madden saw the hot dogs. He turned the whole thing into a delightful comic opera. It was Madden mirth. Circles appeared on the screen around hot dogs. Cameras zeroed in on clandestine gulping. The game became secondary.

Erickson didn't get it. He must have thought it was a "60 Minutes" investigative piece - and he had to do something to improve the Seahawks' image. Hot-dog miscreants cannot go unpunished. Forget all the other team mayhem.

Robinson, the gifted Seahawk free safety, said: "We can make light of it all we want, but it's embarrassing and it makes it look like we're undisciplined . . . It's serious. It puts a blemish on the Seahawks."

The premier free safety took responsibility for bootlegging the hot dogs. That's because he's such a classy guy, not because this tempest in a teapot deserved an explanation.

Erickson ought to be less concerned about hot dogs and more concerned with what some players are washing them down with.

This was truly trivial compared to the Seahawks's real discipline problems. Erickson should have written the whole thing off as a John Madden joke.

Better yet, Erickson could have just sent $3,000 to First Place, a Seattle school for homeless children, as penance for his own undisciplined drunken driving.

 

[Kaido]

An international research team has successfully drilled and retrieved a 9,186-foot-long ice core from Antarctica that dates back 1.2 million years:

https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/10/science/antarctica-deep-ice-core/index.html

Really really cool (hah) project:

“The air bubbles trapped within the ice core provide a direct snapshot of past atmospheric composition, including greenhouse gas concentrations like carbon dioxide and methane,” Barbante said via email. “By analyzing these, we can reconstruct how Earth’s climate responded to changes in climate forcing factors, such as solar radiation, volcanic activity, and orbital variations. This data helps us understand the intricate relationship between greenhouse gases and global temperature over hundreds of thousands of years and now down to 1.2 million year(s) and hopefully beyond.”

 

[KMFJD]

I did not know this about Bob Hope, mad respect

The conservative comedian spoke out for gay rights and gun control, and got boycotted and ostracized by friends on the right, including Ronald Reagan.​

How Woke Bob Hope Got Canceled by the Right

The conservative comedian spoke out for gay rights and gun control, and got boycotted and ostracized by friends on the right, including Ronald Reagan.

www.thenation.com

 

[KMFJD]

The war that did not end at 11am on 11 November – History of government

Articles from guest historians and civil servants about the history of UK government.

history.blog.gov.uk

Armistice for WW 1 was signed at 5am and to be implemented at 11am that same day, in those hours idiots like John Pershing ordered continued attacks that caused 11,000 casualties.....more Americans casualties within those 6 hours than during the D-Day attacks

D-Day Casualties by Country 2024

worldpopulationreview.com

 

[KMFJD]

https://phys-org.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/phys.org/news/2025-01-dual-reactor-consumable-cell-protein.amp

just like in the show The Expanse, consumable single cell protein , can we eat our way out of climate change?

 

[sdifox]

Working link. I will wait for validation before getting excited. This is the country where people laced baby formula with melamine to boost protein content.

Dual-reactor system converts CO₂ to consumable single-cell protein

A team of chemical, industrial and biotechnical engineers affiliated with several institutions in China has developed a dual-reactor system that can be used to convert CO2 to a consumable single-cell protein. In their paper published in the journal Environmental Science and Ecotechnology, the...

phys.org

 

[KMFJD]

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scirobotics.adn3802

for all you budding pianists...a robotic exoskeleton that will train you to be a faster pianist...i wonder if this would work for typing?

 

[sdifox]

I am not willing to get whipped by a robot.

 

[KMFJD]

i wish these where more easily accessible, i've seen normal durians available in asian grocery stores though

i love durian, amazing fruit

 

[Red Squirrel]

Article about obesity in the middle ages, thought the part about this king was funny. Gives me GoT vibes. "Bring me wine!"

Obesity in the Middle Ages: Sancho el Craso - Hektoen International

Nicolás Roberto Robles Badajoz, Spain “Severe obesity restricts body movements and maneuvers . . . breathing passages become blocked and do not pass good air . . . these patients are at risk of sudden death . . . they are vulnerable to having a stroke, hemiplegia, palpitations, diarrhea...

hekint.org

An extreme case study of obesity in medieval Spain was that of the tenth-century King Sancho I of Leon, nicknamed “el Craso” (the Fat). He was so morbidly fat that he could not ride a horse, wield his sword, bed his wife, or even walk. Supposedly he weighed up to 240 kilograms and ate seven meals a day, chiefly composed of rich meat dishes. He took the vacant throne upon Ordoño III’s death in 956, but two years later was deposed by the nobles led by the Earl Fernán González of Castile because of his extreme obesity. He was replaced by Ordoño IV from 958 to 960.

 

[William Gaatjes]

Article about obesity in the middle ages, thought the part about this king was funny. Gives me GoT vibes. "Bring me wine!"

Obesity in the Middle Ages: Sancho el Craso - Hektoen International

Nicolás Roberto Robles Badajoz, Spain “Severe obesity restricts body movements and maneuvers . . . breathing passages become blocked and do not pass good air . . . these patients are at risk of sudden death . . . they are vulnerable to having a stroke, hemiplegia, palpitations, diarrhea...

hekint.org

Makes me think if this guy just ate a lot or had a dysfunctional thyroid or a combination of both.
Not all obese people are obese because of too much eating.
Some retain fluid, lymph housekeeping not working well.

The thyroid can be infected by at least several herpes viruses. More viruses out there...

 

[William Gaatjes]

Article about obesity in the middle ages, thought the part about this king was funny. Gives me GoT vibes. "Bring me wine!"

Obesity in the Middle Ages: Sancho el Craso - Hektoen International

Nicolás Roberto Robles Badajoz, Spain “Severe obesity restricts body movements and maneuvers . . . breathing passages become blocked and do not pass good air . . . these patients are at risk of sudden death . . . they are vulnerable to having a stroke, hemiplegia, palpitations, diarrhea...

hekint.org

That mentioning of the great faminine.
Reminds me of this article from ARStechnica how a vulcanic eruption in Iceland changed the weather.
The fun part is that in Great Britain, since before that time, records were kept about the weather. And even there it can be seen that the weather was really bad years in a row.

When will the Earth try to kill us again?

Most mass extinctions began with vast convulsions of Earth’s interior—can we detect that?

arstechnica.com

Small excerpt of text :
"
Even if LIPs are the “smoking gun” behind most mass extinctions, that still doesn’t tell us how they killed animals. It wasn’t the lava. Despite the moniker—flood basalts—these are not raging torrents. You could probably out-walk the lava from a Large Igneous Province. As vast as they were, they flowed in much the same way as lava in Iceland or Hawaii flows today, with glistening orange and grey lobes swelling, stretching, and spilling to make new lobes. An advancing front will typically move at about a kilometer or two in a day (the average person can walk that distance in 30 minutes).

Unfortunately, gas is deadlier than lava.

The 1783-4 Laki eruption in Iceland gave us a tiny taste of what to expect from a LIP. It bathed Europe in an acid haze for five months, strong enough to burn throats and eyes, scorch vegetation and tarnish metal, to kill insects and even fish. That may be a killer, but, as far as science can tell, the haze from a LIP on its own is unlikely to be sufficient to cause a mass extinction. The climate effects of volcanic gases are deadlier still. Stratospheric sulfur from Laki cooled the planet by 1.3 degrees Celsius for three years, triggering one of the most severe winters on record in Europe, North America, Russia, and Japan. Famines ensued in many parts of the world, and that may have planted the seeds for the French Revolution five years later.

A decade-long LIP eruption could cool the planet by about 4.5 degrees Celsius, although the climate would recover in 50 years. This would no doubt cause geopolitical and financial chaos, but it’s unlikely by itself to eradicate a significant percentage of species from the sea, given the time it takes to mix the oceans (about a thousand years) and their huge thermal inertia.
"

Weather records :

Weather in History 1750 to 1799 AD

premium.weatherweb.net

and

climate4you ClimateAndHistory 1700-1799

 

[William Gaatjes]

More and more proof reveals that the much needed building blocks of life , also exist outside the warm protection of Mother Earth.
I once read that our current solar system is the second iteration of a solar system long ago.
Our sun is a second generation star, based upon the material composition of our sun.
Our Sun is not just comprised of hydrogen and helium for example.
Makes one think about the first generation star with perhaps "Goldilocks" planets rotating around that first generation star long ago.
Billions of years before our sun came to be and our solar system came to be.

Ancient Asteroid Sample Reveals Life’s Surprisingly Common Extraterrestrial Ingredients

Material retrieved from the asteroid Bennu by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft shows that all the basic building blocks of life were astonishingly widespread in the early solar system

www.scientificamerican.com

Small excerpt from text from the website, click link above for the complete text :
"
January 28, 2025

Asteroid Bennu Is Packed with Life’s Building Blocks, New Studies Confirm
Material retrieved from the asteroid Bennu by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft shows that all the basic building blocks of life were astonishingly widespread in the early solar system

The breathtaking preliminary results from that work, teased early last year, have now become more detailed and definitive, confirming the enormous scientific value of the samples.
Two studies published on January 29, 2025, show that even in dark, cold regions of the early solar system, astonishingly diverse chemical processes gave rise to numerous building blocks of life.

At that time, more than 4.5 billion years ago, countless celestial bodies orbiting the newborn sun repeatedly collided in a chaotic game of primordial billiards, at turns smashing on another to smithereens or clumping together into larger objects.
Bennu was somewhere in the mix—a rubble pile ejected from a larger celestial body that at some point fell victim to a massive impact. But signs of this nameless progenitor survived on Bennu—raw material from the solar system’s youth, preserved in the cold of space.

Bennu’s parent body apparently contained plenty of water, as described in a paper appearing in the journal Nature. Some of the water evaporated and left behind a salty brine.
According to an accompanying paper published in Nature Astronomy, this brine contained thousands of organic compounds, including 14 of the 20 amino acids found in terrestrial organisms, as well as all the nucleotide bases that make up our DNA and RNA.
This means that the basic molecules of life existed in our solar system practically from the start.
"

 

[stargazr]

There is a bell in Oxford University that has been ringing for 175 years. The nature of the battery is a mystery.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/thi...ears-and-no-one-knows-how/?trk_source=popular

 

[William Gaatjes]

I just read an old article about Massive in EOS magazine(september 2003) , a software suite to generate large amount of animated characters each with their own specific character traits.
Created by at the time by Weta digital. For example the 70000 blood thirsty Uruk hay warriors are all animated and each is an individual. The software used fuzzy logic at the time to define the character and personality based upon a set of values.
The thing with fuzzy logic is that you do not need a hard 1 or 0 anymore. It is all memberships and distribution values. A little bit of this and a little bit of that. A bit of averaging.
Fun part is that when they ran the software simulation about the battles, some Uruk Hay soldiers (technical term , these are called agents) got scared and ran away in some simulations.


Fuzzy logic ,as example what it can do : Is the computing force behind many cameras, image stabilization software.

Makes one think, that neural networks and fuzzy logic combined as is done these days makes for a powerful dynamic duo.

https://www.massivesoftware.com/about.html
"
About Massive

Massive was originally developed for use in Peter Jackson's The Lord Of The Rings film trilogy. Subsequently the company Massive Software was created to bring this technology to film and television productions around the world. Since then Massive has become the leading software for crowd related visual effects and autonomous character animation.
"

 

[sdifox]

I am not willing to get whipped by a robot.

and I doubt the exoskeleton will get me to this level

 

[Kaido]

I just read an old article about Massive in EOS magazine(september 2003) , a software suite to generate large amount of animated characters each with their own specific character traits.
Created by at the time by Weta digital. For example the 70000 blood thirsty Uruk hay warriors are all animated and each is an individual. The software used fuzzy logic at the time to define the character and personality based upon a set of values.
The thing with fuzzy logic is that you do not need a hard 1 or 0 anymore. It is all memberships and distribution values. A little bit of this and a little bit of that. A bit of averaging.
Fun part is that when they ran the software simulation about the battles, some Uruk Hay soldiers (technical term , these are called agents) got scared and ran away in some simulations.


Fuzzy logic ,as example what it can do : Is the computing force behind many cameras, image stabilization software.

Makes one think, that neural networks and fuzzy logic combined as is done these days makes for a powerful dynamic duo.

https://www.massivesoftware.com/about.html
"
About Massive

Massive was originally developed for use in Peter Jackson's The Lord Of The Rings film trilogy. Subsequently the company Massive Software was created to bring this technology to film and television productions around the world. Since then Massive has become the leading software for crowd related visual effects and autonomous character animation.
"

Wait until you see the new AI CGI tools they just released:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1888487168181731508

The editing tools are INSANE!

https://x.com/AIWarper/status/1881910369062715855

 

[William Gaatjes]

Wait until you see the new AI CGI tools they just released:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1888487168181731508

The editing tools are INSANE!

https://twitter.com/x/status/1881910369062715855

Amazing . I am getting old though. I find it all fascinating but i did not get on the AI train before it left. For me it is all magic. I am happy if i master PID and fuzzy logic in such a way i can rapidly produce results. Which for now, i can not.

 

[Charmonium]

I like the AI Google uses (Gemini). I can pose moderately complicated queries and so far, I've been mostly happy with the results. You still need to check whatever source it spits back you though.