Random News not worthy of own thread

[BrasatoAlBarolo]

EU budget funding stopped by Hungary and Poland veto.
https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-in-c ... t-hold-up/
The budget and recovery budget was a € 1.8 trillion plan, which included the € 750 billion "recovery fund" related to Covid pandemy.
The two vetoeing countries refused to accept the fact the funds were linked to the respect of the rule of law clause, which they refuse to be included in the plan.
The rule of law is a specific set of rules EU countries would have needed to respect in order to be granted the funds.
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/legislat ... ficiencies

The proposal lays defines generalized deficiencies as regards the rule of law as including in particular endangering the independence of judiciary, failing to prevent, correct and sanction arbitrary or unlawful decisions by public authorities, and limiting the availability and effectiveness of legal remedies.

[burger1]

It looks like gog and Geforce Now are teaming up and allowing some gog purchased games on Geforce Now. Cyberpunk 2077 and Witcher 3 might be the first games.

https://mobile.twitter.com/goggalaxy/st ... 5801020657

[pjknibbs]

The Arecibo radio telescope, which was damaged during storms a few months ago and was scheduled to be demolished, has jumped the gun and collapsed of its own accord:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-55147973

Lot of firsts in radio astronomy owe themselves to that place, sad to see it go.

[felter]

The Arecibo radio telescope, which was damaged during storms a few months ago and was scheduled to be demolished, has jumped the gun and collapsed of its own accord:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-55147973

Lot of firsts in radio astronomy owe themselves to that place, sad to see it go.

Scott Manley has a video out showing video footage of the collapse. It was pretty spectacular to say the least and amazing that no one was injured in the collapse.

[CBJ]

I'm officially disappointed in the quality of the BBC's reporting today. To accompany an article entitled Beavers, burpees and bread: 2020's most-searched they've used a stock image of a marmot. I mean, how hard can it be to find a picture of a beaver? Yes, yes, no sniggering in the back row, please.

[Alan Phipps]

Marmot - love it or hate it.

[CBJ]

They've now corrected the image to one of the correct kind of animal.

[Vertigo 7]

So apparently honey bees are fighting back against the murder hornets by smearing poop near the entrance to the bee hive. The poop has an effect of warding away the hornets.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/09/scie ... rnets.html

It's so interesting that an insect would use the waste of animals to protect themselves. To me, that shows a high level of thinking for them to draw a line connecting poop to their own safety. And this seems to be a relatively new behavior from the bees.

[X2-Illuminatus]

American author Robert Lawrence Stine wins Creative Writing Award for the third year in a row!

[felter]

American author Robert Lawrence Stine wins Creative Writing Award for the third year in a row!

I hope you do realise that is a fake award that is only ever award to a writer called R. L. Stine, in other words only one person is eligible for it.

[X2-Illuminatus]

[felter]

OH I got it, I was just hoping you did too.

[X2-Illuminatus]

Sure, you did.

[felter]

It looks like Nvidia might be feeling the strain from some competition from AMD, as they made a major public relation screw up at the end of last week. Linus was definitely not impressed as he tore them a new one over it. I don't know what Nvidia were thinking when they sent that Email, as they must have known it would have been shared and it does not make them look good at all.

[Vertigo 7]

It looks like Nvidia might be feeling the strain from some competition from AMD, as they made a major public relation screw up at the end of last week. Linus was definitely not impressed as he tore them a new one over it. I don't know what Nvidia were thinking when they sent that Email, as they must have known it would have been shared and it does not make them look good at all.

I tried watching the video. I found it hard to care. I'm not familiar with what Unboxed has put out in the past but if Nvidia is handing out GPUs for reviews/marketing and the reviewer isn't reviewing the bits Nvidia told em to, sounds like they're perfectly justified in cutting them off.

If I were to produce a doohickey and gave you one to review and promote the item but you only focused on one minor aspect of it and didn't go over its function or use case or what have you, I'd find someone else to do the reviews too.

Maybe Nvidia could have worded the email differently but it made sense to me.

[felter]

It looks like Nvidia might be feeling the strain from some competition from AMD, as they made a major public relation screw up at the end of last week. Linus was definitely not impressed as he tore them a new one over it. I don't know what Nvidia were thinking when they sent that Email, as they must have known it would have been shared and it does not make them look good at all.

I tried watching the video. I found it hard to care. I'm not familiar with what Unboxed has put out in the past but if Nvidia is handing out GPUs for reviews/marketing and the reviewer isn't reviewing the bits Nvidia told em to, sounds like they're perfectly justified in cutting them off.

If I were to produce a doohickey and gave you one to review and promote the item but you only focused on one minor aspect of it and didn't go over its function or use case or what have you, I'd find someone else to do the reviews too.

Maybe Nvidia could have worded the email differently but it made sense to me.

They did review but it sounds like Nvidia didn't like what they said or that they spent too much time reviewing something that Nvidia doesn't want to be reviewed. To make matters worse, Nvidia even uses a Hardware unboxing review as an example of how good they are on the Nvidia website. But it is more about that Nvidia are saying, they are only going to send out review items to only reviewers who have nice things to say and only say what Nvidia wants them to say. Do you honestly think that is right, that reviewers shouldn't criticise products or companies, that reviewers should only say good things about products or companies. If you do then what's the point of reviews, especially if everything is only going to get a 10 out f 10 review, and they will only ever talk about what companies want to be talked about, only the good, never the bad.

[Vertigo 7]

It looks like Nvidia might be feeling the strain from some competition from AMD, as they made a major public relation screw up at the end of last week. Linus was definitely not impressed as he tore them a new one over it. I don't know what Nvidia were thinking when they sent that Email, as they must have known it would have been shared and it does not make them look good at all.

I tried watching the video. I found it hard to care. I'm not familiar with what Unboxed has put out in the past but if Nvidia is handing out GPUs for reviews/marketing and the reviewer isn't reviewing the bits Nvidia told em to, sounds like they're perfectly justified in cutting them off.

If I were to produce a doohickey and gave you one to review and promote the item but you only focused on one minor aspect of it and didn't go over its function or use case or what have you, I'd find someone else to do the reviews too.

Maybe Nvidia could have worded the email differently but it made sense to me.

They did review but it sounds like Nvidia didn't like what they said or that they spent too much time reviewing something that Nvidia doesn't want to be reviewed. To make matters worse, Nvidia even uses a Hardware unboxing review as an example of how good they are on the Nvidia website. But it is more about that Nvidia are saying, they are only going to send out review items to only reviewers who have nice things to say and only say what Nvidia wants them to say. Do you honestly think that is right, that reviewers shouldn't criticise products or companies, that reviewers should only say good things about products or companies. If you do then what's the point of reviews, especially if everything is only going to get a 10 out f 10 review, and they will only ever talk about what companies want to be talked about, only the good, never the bad.

I didn't get that from the email, in fact the email said something along the lines of them being too focused on rasterization and not the rest of the card features. And it sounded like this has been an ongoing thing. I can totally see this from Nvidia's point of view. Ray tracing is new tech, and if the reviewers aren't talking about it, then why should Nvidia give them free top end cards?

[pjknibbs]

Well, nVidia have apparently backpedalled on their position here anyway and allowed Hardware Unboxed to continue getting their cards. And I have to say, I think that's the right thing to do. It is not for the card manufacturer to determine what aspects of the card's performance are important, even if they claim they're following the will of "gamers" as a whole by doing that--third party reviews should be allowed to be entirely impartial.

[Vertigo 7]

Well, nVidia have apparently backpedalled on their position here anyway and allowed Hardware Unboxed to continue getting their cards. And I have to say, I think that's the right thing to do. It is not for the card manufacturer to determine what aspects of the card's performance are important, even if they claim they're following the will of "gamers" as a whole by doing that--third party reviews should be allowed to be entirely impartial.

Agreed they should be impartial, but I also say they should be thorough. If they're focusing on one part of the GPU that ultimately means nothing to most people, then what's the point of providing them with the hardware to review?

[jlehtone]

If a "reviewer" tells the things that NVidia wants them to tell, then it is not an "independent review", but paid ad.
If the review describes the NVidia product as AMD wants it described, then it is not an unbiased review either.

You, the consumer, probably seek reviews that you believe to be independent, unbiased, and factual.

Did Hardware Unboxed claim that they had made a survey and that they focus on the bits that "majority of readers" had interest in?