I got a Garmin vivosmart 3, and it's just that. Unobtrusive, a week worth of battery life, shows the time/date and notifications. It supports notifications from most apps, not just calls and texts.
Haven't had it more than a few months so can't say how durable it is, but been quite pleased with it so far. Price is also a lot more reasonable than a "proper" smart watch.
I am happy that downloads can't be written wherever. Isn't that a good thing?
Sure, but that's no good reason to restrict downloads to a singular location. Allow extensions to select alternate download locations (tied in with a directory selector dialog), and allow only downloads to the predefined directories.
It's more like, "I read a Mercurial tutorial once and know how to use that."
The point is, you don't really need to do more to be comfortable with Mercurial on the command line. Things make sense there, unlike with Git which bleeds implementation details all over the UI for no good reason.
In addition; what add-ons that do exist do not seem to be nearly as powerful as the add-ons I used previously. That may be due to the modular design not allowing as much control of Firefox by add-ons, it may be because there simply hasn't been time for third party developers to come up with equally powerful replacements.
The WebExtension API is significantly more limited than the old API. A lot of it is reasonable, but some of it is for no good reason.
For example, one of the extensions I use allows me to save images directly to one of several pre-configured directories. This is no longer possible, as all downloads have to in the main download directory or a sub-directory of it. Because Google says that's a good idea, and thus so it must be.
So, this extension cannot be ported in any reasonable way.
Yes yes, I could use symlinks or junction points, but that's a major PITA for no good reason except ineptitude and/or laziness.
Whenever someone says this, ask them if they are comfortable with the command-line. The answer is always no.
I've used Mercurial from the command line for 5+ years, didn't even cross my mind to use a GUI for it. Git however is completely unusable to me without SourceTree. Git has a horrible UI, especially on the command line.
So can you point to one which can control the Wii and isn't a pain to configure? I'm genuinely curious.
Obviously it'll need to support activities (that's the whole point) and have plenty of buttons to map to different actions (like switching "sound mode" on the receiver as mentioned).
I got a Harmony Elite remote, with the Hub. What non-cloud alternatives are there?
I currently need to control the following devices: - NVIDIA Shield TV - Surround receiver - Bluray player - Cable STB - Wii - TV
Of course I need to be able to do things like switch modes on the surround receiver (Dolby ProLogic to pure stereo etc), subtitles for the bluray player, tv guide for the STB etc etc. And some of the devices are inside the cabinet, so external IR blasters are a must.
I actually just started using them in the past year.
I bought a few Chromecast Audio's, and since I could I used optical cable to connect them to the amplifiers for minimum noise.
I also got a NUC not long ago, and wanted to connect the audio from the NUC to my desktop computer so I could listen to stuff on the NUC using the same headset I use for my desktop.
To do this I got a HDMI audio splitter, and fed that to my desktop. I tried using the regular 3.5mm line-out to line-in cable, but the background noise from the NUC was intolerable. So, I switched to using an optical cable which has zero background noise.
So, I'd say it still has a place, though the combined 3.5mm copper/optical jack seems to be a better solution going forward compared to the slightly awkward TOSLINK connector.
GigaTransfers per second, essentially the clock speed of the bus. The bandwidth can then be found by multiplying the number of transfers per second with the bus width, and adjust for the encoding overhead (8/10 for PCIe 2.0 and earlier, 128/130 for PCIe 3.0 and above).
So, 4x (lane) PCIe 4.0 can do 16 * 4 * 128 / 130 = ~63Gb/s or ~7.9GB/s.
Here's a paper detailing the branch predicition improvements of the last Intel platforms and their impact on scripting language execution: https://hal.inria.fr/hal-01100647/document
Our measures clearly show that, on Nehalem, on most benchmarks, 12 to 16 MPKI are encountered, that is about 240 to 320 cycles are lost every 1 kiloinstructions. On the next processor generation Sandy Bridge, the misprediction rate is much lower: generally about 4 to 8 MPKI on Javascript applications for instance, i.e. decreasing the global penalty to 80 to 160 cycles every Kiloinstructions. On the most recent processor generation Haswell, the misprediction rate further drops to 0.5 to 2 MPKI in most cases, that is a loss of 10 to 40 cycles every kiloinstructions.
That's an order of magnitude difference. In their their Python benchmark the Nehalem has an average of ~1.5 instructions per clock (IPC) while Haswell has an average of ~2.4 IPC, a 50% increase over Nehalem. The branch predictor is likely a big factor in this.
Of course scripting languages is a "worst-case" of sorts, but lots of real-world code feature similar indirection for which improved branch prediction helps a lot.
The advantage of ECC RAM is NOT about "oh, the system has been up for 2 years without a glitch, see, ECC RAM was a waste of time".
The whole point is that you you can see that there were no errors.
Indeed. I just had to reformat an Intel NUC as the filesystem had been completely trashed. Firefox had been a bit unstable on it, but well, that didn't trigger any warnings on my end. I also got one or two weird errors when running apt, but I was running unstable so again I didn't think to much of it...
Then after a couple of months it stopped booting. Turned out the filesystem was bonkers, due to silent corruption.
Ran memtest86, and one small but sequential range of addresses failed for every test.
However I'm astonished about the significantly "above Carnot" efficiency. I wonder how they actually calculate and how they achieve that.
A big part, from what I understand, is Homogeneous charge compression ignition (HCCI) or Turbulet Jet Ignition (TJI). AFAIK Mercedes uses HCCI, while Ferrari (which has the second best engine) uses TJI.
Last I checked, a combustion engine practically can't get above 50% efficiency. The limit is actually 42%, Carnot Principle. In reality they are around 19%
I guess turbochargers don't follow that principle. Mercedes recently broke 50% efficiency for their F1 engine, albeit not in race-like conditions.
For $200 I could just build a regular PC or buy a pretty sweet used machine. I don't get it.
I doubt that would be as silent and as UHD capable as the Shield TV box. I'll agree it's not for everyone, but the Shield TV box is the best purchase I've done in years.
ITER, this is where the money should go. Either that, or show us a new structure, and the math/simulations that say it will get to break even more efficiently. Or don't show us... just do it.
I just watched this presentation yesterday by Dennis Whyte from MIT, and I must say it looked quite promising. His main point was that the recent development of commercially available high-temperature superconductors has radically changed the fusion playing field.
This is due to HTSC's having much larger operating windows compared to traditional superconductors. This allows one to scale down the reactor size while maintaining the magnetic field strength. And smaller size means cheaper and faster development.
He probably glossed over some hard problems, but I must admit it sounded a lot more realistic than other fusion proposals I've heard about.
But in Norway, doesn't the tax system give everyone about the same net income, no matter how much they may gross?
No. The base tax is 36%, but there's a decent base deduction on the gross income to find the taxable income. Then, if you make more than a certain amount (taxable, higher than the average income) you pay an extra ~10% on the amount above that limit.
The "intelligent" lock screen is actually the Peel Remote app's doing. Uninstall it (ie, revert it to factory version) and the lock screen will be normal again.
Eating less often matters more than eating less overall; extended periods of fasting (such as night time) are the moment where weight loss can be triggered.
I took a simple approach and simply targeted kcals, ignoring where those kcals came from. In order to reach the kcal goal, I found that eating two meals per day works very well for me. I have a late breakfast (9-10am) consisting of two slices of 100% wholemeal bread and then dinner in the afternoon (6pm-ish).
A nice side effect of skipping lunch is that I don't get the post-lunch drowsiness I used to get. In general I feel my energy level is much more constant during the day, which has increased my productivity at work.
And as mentioned, by keeping protein and fiber high, I'm stuffed for the rest of the evening, so most days the thought of a snack doesn't even cross my mind.
Yes it's early days still. But I have high hopes for my changes to stay, given that they require very minimal effort to maintain.
In short, yes. Here[1] they extract AES-256 keys in minutes or seconds (depending on distance) with inexpensive equipment.
From the paper:
Using improved antenna and signal processing, Fox-IT and Riscure show how to covertly recover the encryption key from two realistic AES-256 implementations while: 1. Attacking at a distance of up to 1 m (30 cm in realistic conditions; "TEMPEST"), 2. Using minimal equipment (fits in a jacket pocket, costs less than [EUR] 200) and 3. Needing only a few minutes (5 minutes for 1 m and 50 seconds for 30 cm).
Come back in one year and tell us about it. 6 months is not evidence when it comes to diets; most dieters gain back the weight after 12 to 18 months.
Well the thread won't be open then. But the point I was trying to make is that I'm not on a diet. Specifically it is very important for me not to feel like I'm on a diet. That way I won't have to resist my old life style going forward.
Instead I've changed my life style in a way that minimizes the amount of "force" required by me to maintain the new life style.
A key component for this was to make sure I could still eat the things I want to eat. Instead what I do is I adjust portion sizes and relative abundances of ingredients to make sure my meals fill me up for longer, and that they're below my kcal target. Specifically I try to make my meals contain much more protein and fiber compared to my old meals.
For example I use Romaine lettuce for my chicken or salmon salads as it has much more fiber compared to Iceberg lettuce. When I wok I use more chicken and veggies, and skip the rice and noodles. When I have a hamburger I use a bigger patty and skip the french fries.
I do that because I realized one reason I snacked a lot was that I got peckish late at night, before bedtime. Changing my meals the way I did means I feel stuffed until I go to bed, so I don't get any craving for snickers bar or whatever that I have to force myself to resist.
To lower the target weight, the key is not to exercise more or eat less, it's to gradually increase sensitivity to leptin, by having a carefully tuned rotation of high fat and carbs aspects to the diet.
My personal experience is that that is BS. In January I decided I should do something with my weight. I had a BMI of 34.1 then. As of today I have a BMI of 25.6, a net loss of 29kg.
I didn't do any "careful balance" of anything except making sure my daily energy intake was ~500kcal below my target. I still eat pizzas and hamburgers whenever I feel like (which is quite often). I'm still losing weight, as I'm still consuming less energy than I expend on a daily basis.
My key for losing weight was to figure out ways to hit my reduced kcal target without feeling like I was on a diet, so that I wouldn't have to resist urges for a snack or an extra meal.
Slashdot Mirror
I got a Garmin vivosmart 3, and it's just that. Unobtrusive, a week worth of battery life, shows the time/date and notifications. It supports notifications from most apps, not just calls and texts.
Haven't had it more than a few months so can't say how durable it is, but been quite pleased with it so far. Price is also a lot more reasonable than a "proper" smart watch.
Well you could always use the system mixer, at least on Windows, though I admit that's a bit of a hassle if your music is very varied.
I am happy that downloads can't be written wherever. Isn't that a good thing?
Sure, but that's no good reason to restrict downloads to a singular location. Allow extensions to select alternate download locations (tied in with a directory selector dialog), and allow only downloads to the predefined directories.
It's more like, "I read a Mercurial tutorial once and know how to use that."
The point is, you don't really need to do more to be comfortable with Mercurial on the command line. Things make sense there, unlike with Git which bleeds implementation details all over the UI for no good reason.
In addition; what add-ons that do exist do not seem to be nearly as powerful as the add-ons I used previously. That may be due to the modular design not allowing as much control of Firefox by add-ons, it may be because there simply hasn't been time for third party developers to come up with equally powerful replacements.
The WebExtension API is significantly more limited than the old API. A lot of it is reasonable, but some of it is for no good reason.
For example, one of the extensions I use allows me to save images directly to one of several pre-configured directories. This is no longer possible, as all downloads have to in the main download directory or a sub-directory of it. Because Google says that's a good idea, and thus so it must be.
So, this extension cannot be ported in any reasonable way.
Yes yes, I could use symlinks or junction points, but that's a major PITA for no good reason except ineptitude and/or laziness.
Whenever someone says this, ask them if they are comfortable with the command-line. The answer is always no.
I've used Mercurial from the command line for 5+ years, didn't even cross my mind to use a GUI for it. Git however is completely unusable to me without SourceTree. Git has a horrible UI, especially on the command line.
So can you point to one which can control the Wii and isn't a pain to configure? I'm genuinely curious.
Obviously it'll need to support activities (that's the whole point) and have plenty of buttons to map to different actions (like switching "sound mode" on the receiver as mentioned).
Smart phones are no replacement for a remote. Need the tactile feedback.
I got a Harmony Elite remote, with the Hub. What non-cloud alternatives are there?
I currently need to control the following devices:
- NVIDIA Shield TV
- Surround receiver
- Bluray player
- Cable STB
- Wii
- TV
Of course I need to be able to do things like switch modes on the surround receiver (Dolby ProLogic to pure stereo etc), subtitles for the bluray player, tv guide for the STB etc etc. And some of the devices are inside the cabinet, so external IR blasters are a must.
At least for browsers you can add an exception for the gov't certs that you trust.
I actually just started using them in the past year.
I bought a few Chromecast Audio's, and since I could I used optical cable to connect them to the amplifiers for minimum noise.
I also got a NUC not long ago, and wanted to connect the audio from the NUC to my desktop computer so I could listen to stuff on the NUC using the same headset I use for my desktop.
To do this I got a HDMI audio splitter, and fed that to my desktop. I tried using the regular 3.5mm line-out to line-in cable, but the background noise from the NUC was intolerable. So, I switched to using an optical cable which has zero background noise.
So, I'd say it still has a place, though the combined 3.5mm copper/optical jack seems to be a better solution going forward compared to the slightly awkward TOSLINK connector.
GigaTransfers per second, essentially the clock speed of the bus. The bandwidth can then be found by multiplying the number of transfers per second with the bus width, and adjust for the encoding overhead (8/10 for PCIe 2.0 and earlier, 128/130 for PCIe 3.0 and above).
So, 4x (lane) PCIe 4.0 can do 16 * 4 * 128 / 130 = ~63Gb/s or ~7.9GB/s.
Wikipedia got a nice table: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Express#History_and_revisions.
One element is better branch prediction.
Here's a paper detailing the branch predicition improvements of the last Intel platforms and their impact on scripting language execution: https://hal.inria.fr/hal-01100647/document
Our measures clearly show that, on Nehalem,
on most benchmarks, 12 to 16 MPKI are encountered, that is about 240 to 320 cycles are lost every 1 kiloinstructions. On the next processor generation Sandy Bridge, the misprediction rate is much lower: generally about 4 to 8 MPKI on Javascript applications for instance, i.e. decreasing the global penalty to 80 to 160 cycles every Kiloinstructions. On the most recent processor generation Haswell, the misprediction rate further drops to 0.5 to 2 MPKI in most cases, that is a loss of 10 to 40 cycles every kiloinstructions.
That's an order of magnitude difference. In their their Python benchmark the Nehalem has an average of ~1.5 instructions per clock (IPC) while Haswell has an average of ~2.4 IPC, a 50% increase over Nehalem. The branch predictor is likely a big factor in this.
Of course scripting languages is a "worst-case" of sorts, but lots of real-world code feature similar indirection for which improved branch prediction helps a lot.
The advantage of ECC RAM is NOT about "oh, the system has been up for 2 years without a glitch, see, ECC RAM was a waste of time".
The whole point is that you you can see that there were no errors.
Indeed. I just had to reformat an Intel NUC as the filesystem had been completely trashed. Firefox had been a bit unstable on it, but well, that didn't trigger any warnings on my end. I also got one or two weird errors when running apt, but I was running unstable so again I didn't think to much of it...
Then after a couple of months it stopped booting. Turned out the filesystem was bonkers, due to silent corruption.
Ran memtest86, and one small but sequential range of addresses failed for every test.
However I'm astonished about the significantly "above Carnot" efficiency. I wonder how they actually calculate and how they achieve that.
A big part, from what I understand, is Homogeneous charge compression ignition (HCCI) or Turbulet Jet Ignition (TJI). AFAIK Mercedes uses HCCI, while Ferrari (which has the second best engine) uses TJI.
They certainly have lots of other tricks too.
Last I checked, a combustion engine practically can't get above 50% efficiency.
The limit is actually 42%, Carnot Principle. In reality they are around 19%
I guess turbochargers don't follow that principle. Mercedes recently broke 50% efficiency for their F1 engine, albeit not in race-like conditions.
https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/131772/mercedes-engine-hits-remarkable-dyno-target
For $200 I could just build a regular PC or buy a pretty sweet used machine. I don't get it.
I doubt that would be as silent and as UHD capable as the Shield TV box. I'll agree it's not for everyone, but the Shield TV box is the best purchase I've done in years.
ITER, this is where the money should go. Either that, or show us a new structure, and the math/simulations that say it will get to break even more efficiently. Or don't show us... just do it.
I just watched this presentation yesterday by Dennis Whyte from MIT, and I must say it looked quite promising. His main point was that the recent development of commercially available high-temperature superconductors has radically changed the fusion playing field.
This is due to HTSC's having much larger operating windows compared to traditional superconductors. This allows one to scale down the reactor size while maintaining the magnetic field strength. And smaller size means cheaper and faster development.
He probably glossed over some hard problems, but I must admit it sounded a lot more realistic than other fusion proposals I've heard about.
But in Norway, doesn't the tax system give everyone about the same net income, no matter how much they may gross?
No. The base tax is 36%, but there's a decent base deduction on the gross income to find the taxable income. Then, if you make more than a certain amount (taxable, higher than the average income) you pay an extra ~10% on the amount above that limit.
The "intelligent" lock screen is actually the Peel Remote app's doing. Uninstall it (ie, revert it to factory version) and the lock screen will be normal again.
Eating less often matters more than eating less overall; extended periods of fasting (such as night time) are the moment where weight loss can be triggered.
I took a simple approach and simply targeted kcals, ignoring where those kcals came from. In order to reach the kcal goal, I found that eating two meals per day works very well for me. I have a late breakfast (9-10am) consisting of two slices of 100% wholemeal bread and then dinner in the afternoon (6pm-ish).
A nice side effect of skipping lunch is that I don't get the post-lunch drowsiness I used to get. In general I feel my energy level is much more constant during the day, which has increased my productivity at work.
And as mentioned, by keeping protein and fiber high, I'm stuffed for the rest of the evening, so most days the thought of a snack doesn't even cross my mind.
Yes it's early days still. But I have high hopes for my changes to stay, given that they require very minimal effort to maintain.
Is the Tempest Attack still a thing these days?
In short, yes. Here[1] they extract AES-256 keys in minutes or seconds (depending on distance) with inexpensive equipment.
From the paper:
Using improved antenna and signal processing, Fox-IT and Riscure show how to covertly recover the encryption key from two realistic AES-256 implementations while:
1. Attacking at a distance of up to 1 m (30 cm in realistic conditions; "TEMPEST"),
2. Using minimal equipment (fits in a jacket pocket, costs less than [EUR] 200) and
3. Needing only a few minutes (5 minutes for 1 m and 50 seconds for 30 cm).
The specific target is a Cortex-M3 processor.
[1]: https://www.fox-it.com/nl/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/Tempest_attacks_against_AES.pdf
Come back in one year and tell us about it. 6 months is not evidence when it comes to diets; most dieters gain back the weight after 12 to 18 months.
Well the thread won't be open then. But the point I was trying to make is that I'm not on a diet. Specifically it is very important for me not to feel like I'm on a diet. That way I won't have to resist my old life style going forward.
Instead I've changed my life style in a way that minimizes the amount of "force" required by me to maintain the new life style.
A key component for this was to make sure I could still eat the things I want to eat. Instead what I do is I adjust portion sizes and relative abundances of ingredients to make sure my meals fill me up for longer, and that they're below my kcal target. Specifically I try to make my meals contain much more protein and fiber compared to my old meals.
For example I use Romaine lettuce for my chicken or salmon salads as it has much more fiber compared to Iceberg lettuce. When I wok I use more chicken and veggies, and skip the rice and noodles. When I have a hamburger I use a bigger patty and skip the french fries.
I do that because I realized one reason I snacked a lot was that I got peckish late at night, before bedtime. Changing my meals the way I did means I feel stuffed until I go to bed, so I don't get any craving for snickers bar or whatever that I have to force myself to resist.
To lower the target weight, the key is not to exercise more or eat less, it's to gradually increase sensitivity to leptin, by having a carefully tuned rotation of high fat and carbs aspects to the diet.
My personal experience is that that is BS. In January I decided I should do something with my weight. I had a BMI of 34.1 then. As of today I have a BMI of 25.6, a net loss of 29kg.
I didn't do any "careful balance" of anything except making sure my daily energy intake was ~500kcal below my target. I still eat pizzas and hamburgers whenever I feel like (which is quite often). I'm still losing weight, as I'm still consuming less energy than I expend on a daily basis.
My key for losing weight was to figure out ways to hit my reduced kcal target without feeling like I was on a diet, so that I wouldn't have to resist urges for a snack or an extra meal.
The top quark has a lifetime on the order of 10^-25 seconds, so short they don't hadronize. So doubt there's any chance we'll make tt particles.