Random News not worthy of own thread

[fiksal]

Some news from US

US town rejects solar panels amid fears they 'suck energy from the sun', cause cancer - and will harm house prices

[felter]

Some news from US

US town rejects solar panels amid fears they 'suck energy from the sun', cause cancer - and will harm house prices

That story is just a little bit misleading, while they are not misreporting it the they are putting it is not quite right, for example: the flower part she was talking about the panels putting the flowers in the shade, as they cover a lot of area, meaning they were not getting the sunlight to photosynthesise. It also turns out there are quite a few solar farms in the area already. But then some of it was ignorant uneducated badly educated Americans. How someone can think they would suck all the power from the sun is just mindbogglingly stupid, Trump supporter for sure. Also how would they be able to give you cancer. To be honest I think they are blaming a lot of their problems on them, but they seem to have the exact same problems as every other rural town in America but they cannot see past their own town to notice this. Too much time watching Fox news and listening to Trump.

[fiksal]

Some news from US

US town rejects solar panels amid fears they 'suck energy from the sun', cause cancer - and will harm house prices

That story is just a little bit misleading, while they are not misreporting it the they are putting it is not quite right, for example: the flower part she was talking about the panels putting the flowers in the shade, as they cover a lot of area, meaning they were not getting the sunlight to photosynthesise. It also turns out there are quite a few solar farms in the area already. But then some of it was ignorant uneducated badly educated Americans. How someone can think they would suck all the power from the sun is just mindbogglingly stupid, Trump supporter for sure. Also how would they be able to give you cancer. To be honest I think they are blaming a lot of their problems on them, but they seem to have the exact same problems as every other rural town in America but they cannot see past their own town to notice this. Too much time watching Fox news and listening to Trump.

Good point. I just came across a verification myself


https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/north ... ar-panels/

[Chips]

It's funny, it's depressing.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-51234141

An African-American man is suing a bank in the Detroit area after employees called the police when he tried to deposit money he had been awarded in a racial discrimination suit.

with the punch line...

a bank employee - herself African-American - refused and called the police on suspicion of fraud.

[burger1]

GeForce NOW Open for All. Waitlist removed, memberships now available for everyone. It seems like it lets you play pc games on various devices (pc, mac, shield, android phone) and weaker computers using their servers resources/power. It might be region restricted to some areas? Limited free use and a paid tier. $4.99 seems to be the paid tier. Supports steam games, epic games and battle net.

https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2020/02/0 ... pc-gaming/

https://www.reddit.com/r/nvidia/comment ... n_for_all/

https://ca.ign.com/articles/nvidia-gefo ... n-progress

[red assassin]

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/02/ ... to-stadia/
Ars Technica were pretty impressed by it. Seems interesting. I'll give it a try at some point when I'm away from my gaming PC.

[pjknibbs]

Given that nVidia's business is mainly in selling graphics cards, you almost think they're the proverbial turkey voting for Christmas by doing this, given they're effectively saying "You don't need to buy an expensive graphics card, just stream your game through our system instead!".

[EDIT] In fact, found a chap on Youtube who tested the service on a way underspecced machine over a poor-ish Internet connection (10Mbit down, 1Mbit up or thereabouts) and I'm actually pretty impressed by how good a job it did--no obvious lag, and the image quality is OK if not stellar:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIOTMzLO41o

[burger1]

I wonder if people with 2 gb video cards would still get graphics corruption in x4 using geforce now?

[jlehtone]

They probably hope to get the money of those, who would never buy their cards anyway. Besides, if it runs on NVidia hardware, then the customer does not need to buy AMD or Intel graphics ...

[red assassin]

Given that nVidia's business is mainly in selling graphics cards, you almost think they're the proverbial turkey voting for Christmas by doing this, given they're effectively saying "You don't need to buy an expensive graphics card, just stream your game through our system instead!".

[EDIT] In fact, found a chap on Youtube who tested the service on a way underspecced machine over a poor-ish Internet connection (10Mbit down, 1Mbit up or thereabouts) and I'm actually pretty impressed by how good a job it did--no obvious lag, and the image quality is OK if not stellar:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIOTMzLO41o

I actually think this makes a lot of sense for Nvidia. Firstly, it's a hedge - if all the companies piling into the game streaming business are right and it is the future, what better way to ensure Nvidia hardware is still being used than setting up their own streaming business? A pretty significant chunk of their business is already server-grade GPU hardware, plus they've done a bunch of work on game streaming tech, so they're actually pretty well placed to do this compared to companies without that existing portfolio. And it allows them to effectively offer previews of their products to people who'll still want offline gaming hardware for whatever reason.

[RegisterMe]

Given that nVidia's business is mainly in selling graphics cards, you almost think they're the proverbial turkey voting for Christmas by doing this, given they're effectively saying "You don't need to buy an expensive graphics card, just stream your game through our system instead!".

[EDIT] In fact, found a chap on Youtube who tested the service on a way underspecced machine over a poor-ish Internet connection (10Mbit down, 1Mbit up or thereabouts) and I'm actually pretty impressed by how good a job it did--no obvious lag, and the image quality is OK if not stellar:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIOTMzLO41o

I actually think this makes a lot of sense for Nvidia. Firstly, it's a hedge - if all the companies piling into the game streaming business are right and it is the future, what better way to ensure Nvidia hardware is still being used than setting up their own streaming business? A pretty significant chunk of their business is already server-grade GPU hardware, plus they've done a bunch of work on game streaming tech, so they're actually pretty well placed to do this compared to companies without that existing portfolio. And it allows them to effectively offer previews of their products to people who'll still want offline gaming hardware for whatever reason.

And it positions then even better to be a snap up for the likes of Google (or a defensive move from the likes of, say, Facebook).

[Chips]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-51397956

Scotland's finance secretary has quit hours before delivering his budget amid reports that he messaged a 16-year-old boy on social media.

The Scottish Sun said that Derek Mackay contacted the schoolboy over a six-month period, and told him that he was "cute".

Mr Mackay said he had "behaved foolishly" and took full responsibility for his actions.

He also apologised "unreservedly" to the boy and his family.

I just really do not understand some people. On what f.... planet do you live where you think "I know, this CHILD is good looking and i'm 42, also a Government minister. This will end JUST HOW I WANT IT".

Honestly, WHAT THE VERY... seriously. I... just... i mean... i... what... can't... no. no no no. Can't ever comprehend this. Sick.

[pjknibbs]

I just really do not understand some people. On what f.... planet do you live where you think "I know, this CHILD is good looking and i'm 42, also a Government minister. This will end JUST HOW I WANT IT".

Let's be honest here, this is entirely inappropriate behaviour regardless what your job is. He should have been thinking "I shouldn't be doing this because it's WRONG", not "I shouldn't do this because I'm a government minister and might get caught".

[Bishop149]

Mother Reunited With Deceased Daughter In VR Show

Article pretty much encapsulates my feelings on this with its final few paragraphs.
Once I got past my initial knee-jerk that was basically; "Kill it!!! Kill it with fire!!"

This is one of those things that I thought we had another 5-10 years to get ready for, maybe form some kind of means to react or respond. The uncanny valley is something we still struggle with when it comes simply to entertainment; we’re definitely not equipped to be tackling the same issues with loved ones.

Were this done behind closed doors, then maybe we could argue the psychological and ethical merits of such an exercise. And now we’ll have to. But putting it on TV, and then the internet, for the world to see? Whatever the long-term moral and ethical questions are that we’re going to have to face, this is extremely ****** up.

To go into more depth in the "we're not ready" angle.

There is a fairly well establish theory that most human mental illness derives from the human brain being forced to operate within a context it most definitely did not evolve to deal with. Our brains are essentially designed to function within the context of a relatively small, family orientated group of hunter gathers, not vast complex, metropolises comprising millions of strangers where everything is buried under several layers of abstraction.
The strongest support for this idea IMO comes from the rare occasions in which we can see "mental illness" developing in animals also being when they are forced to live in "unnatural" conditions.
There is a parallel idea that the brain's adaptation to better cope with modern living is perhaps the most active area of ongoing human evolution, but that even here evolution will be slowed by natural selection having been somewhat blunted.

Things like the above are going to take this issue and dial it up to 11. It could truly break us as a species.

[CBJ]

Modern society has made us uniquely ill-prepared for the only certainty in life, which is death. This is largely because we have become accustomed to being able avoid it, at least until we get to a ripe old age, but also probably has something to do with the fact that we are no longer comfortable with the mourning process, so it's become internalised and hidden away. The very last thing we need is something that interferes with that even more by allowing us to pretend that a death didn't happen. This has to be a case of, to quote Jurassic Park, "...scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should."

[Bishop149]

Modern society has made us uniquely ill-prepared for the only certainty in life, which is death. This is largely because we have become accustomed to being able avoid it, at least until we get to a ripe old age, but also probably has something to do with the fact that we are no longer comfortable with the mourning process, so it's become internalised and hidden away. The very last thing we need is something that interferes with that even more by allowing us to pretend that a death didn't happen. This has to be a case of, to quote Jurassic Park, "...scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should."

Absolutely, there is a whole field of study on this one (Thanatology).
Modern society at some point decided that death was something to be distanced and hidden away, in stark contrast to most of human history where it was treated as a central and important part of everyday life.

[Alan Phipps]

It's the modern equivalent of a so-called 'medium' holding a seance around a table for grieving relatives. It's probably just as unhealthy in terms of actual comfort and resolution provided, and is probably born out of exactly the same commercial rather than caring reasons too.

[Chips]

In other news, the storm means good people are put at risk trying to rescue or locate the truly retarded.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-englan ... ough-waves

The crew of Hastings lifeboat were called out to a surfer who had gone missing during Storm Ciara.

The lifeboat itself struggled through the waves, at one point nearly capsizing.

The surfer was later found conscious by rescuers about six miles away from where he entered the water.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland- ... s-51447226

Rescuers said four people helped from Ben Nevis were lucky to be alive.

They said the tourists who were caught in blizzard conditions had "no ice axes, no crampons and as far as we are aware, no maps". Three of them were wearing trainers.

Lochaber Mountain Rescue Team found them near the summit of the mountain.

All four were taken by helicopter from part-way down the mountain to be checked over at Belford Hospital in Fort William.

Inverness Coastguard helicopter, Rescue 151, could not be used near the summit because of the severity of the conditions.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-wales- ... ave-selfie

People were spotted "risking their lives" to take selfies on cliffs near Swansea.

Storm Ciara battered Wales over the weekend with strong winds and flooding.

Mumbles Coastguard cliff rescue team tweeted: "Whilst on patrol this afternoon we saw a few people risking their lives for a photo.

"This may seem like fun, but it just isn’t a good idea!

"It’s why we have highly trained Volunteer Coastguard Teams and Lifeboat Crew on call 24/7 ready to risk their lives to come and get you."

With the last one, if they'd been swept off by a big wave, they'd be dead against those rocks. The lifeboat would still try to recover them though...

Some people

[burger1]

'Mad Mike' Hughes, daredevil who built a homemade steam rocket, dies in launch attempt

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/23/us/m ... -dead.html

[fiksal]

'Mad Mike' Hughes, daredevil who built a homemade steam rocket, dies in launch attempt

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/23/us/m ... -dead.html

I saw that. Will anyone now prove that Earth is flat...