Random News not worthy of own thread

[Alan Phipps]

... or just 'Jonah'.

[Morkonan]

... or just 'Jonah'.

And, I'm sure Jonah got his fair share of ribbing, too.

"Hey, look, it's the "Whale Guy!"
"Yeah, hi. I know. I just-"
"You're that one guy, the one that got pooped on by a whale, right?"
"Well, actually, it wasn-"
"I knew it! You're the "Whale Poop Guy!" Hey, everybody, it's "Wale Poop Guy!"

[Morkonan]

Worthy of its own thread, but it could get kind of deep.. so:

MIT: Experiment suggests there is no such thing as objective reality.

Well, that should make Trump happy...

But, for myself, it makes me very happy as it confirms my own suspicions. (Which I haven't the knowledge to express mathematically so I can publish a paper and be famous... ) Though, I disagree on this implicating a "lack of freedom of choice."

Anyway, very interesting food for thought for those who wonder about such things.

[Bishop149]

Worthy of its own thread, but it could get kind of deep.. so:

MIT: Experiment suggests there is no such thing as objective reality.

This seems a bit hand wavy to me.
I don't pretend to understand quantum physics very well but as I understand this experiment correctly.

Observer A: Takes a measurement thus collapsing the waveform and determining the polarisation of a photon.
Observer B: Doesn't take a measurement (or takes a different measurement) and so the polarisation remains in a state of superposition.

Their conclusion: OMG! Their realities are different!! There is no objective reality!
My conclusion: Well duh! I mean yes a person possessing information another does, in a sense "changes their reality" but that's hardly a earth shattering conclusion.


In other news big meteor hits Earth, no one really noticed because it came in over the sea.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-47607696

We do get pretty damn lucky with these things, the energies involves are staggering. . . . many many nuclear bomb equivalents and yet the damage is proportionally minor because they tend to explode about 20-30km up and the majority of the energy is absorbed by the atmosphere. . . or in this case they explode over the sea.
I am now wondering what it is about that chunk of the Northern hemisphere, however, the three big ones I'm aware of came in: over bearing sea, Tunguska and Chelyabinsk a few years back.
All with in roughly the same area. . . . well, relative to the whole planet at least. Probably just a coincidence, right?

[Morkonan]

..My conclusion: Well duh! I mean yes a person possessing information another does, in a sense "changes their reality" but that's hardly a earth shattering conclusion....

And, saying that their realities are different because of "reasons" is less hand-wavy? IOW - They're looking at a way of actually proving it. The goal being there's an objective interpretation of the results saying that there's no objective interpretation of anything...

[burger1]

Nvidia is enabling ray tracing on 10xx (1060 6 gb and up but possibly others) and 16xx series cards

https://www.pcworld.com/article/3373496 ... g-dxr.html

[pjknibbs]

I am now wondering what it is about that chunk of the Northern hemisphere, however, the three big ones I'm aware of came in: over bearing sea, Tunguska and Chelyabinsk a few years back.
All with in roughly the same area. . . . well, relative to the whole planet at least. Probably just a coincidence, right?

Chelyabinsk wasn't in the same league as Tunguska. If it had been, Chelyabinsk would no longer exist. (Estimates for Chelyabinsk have it as a 500 kiloton blast, whereas Tunguska was more like 5 megatons). As for why it might be more common to see such things in the northern hemisphere, a brief glance at a map will show you the reason why--there's considerably more land in the northern hemisphere than there is in the south (around twice as much, in fact), so meteorites striking land is more likely there.

[Bishop149]

As for why it might be more common to see such things in the northern hemisphere, a brief glance at a map will show you the reason why--there's considerably more land in the northern hemisphere than there is in the south (around twice as much, in fact), so meteorites striking land is more likely there.

None of them hit the ground though, they all explode at least 10km up so the geography underneath is only relevant it terms of potential human impact.
The map in the link I posted shows that generally such events are scattered pretty uniformly across the globe, it just the three big ones (yes, Tunguska was on a different scale to the other two) that I'm aware of where all in roughly the same portion of the planet.
I'm sure its a coincidence, I can't think of any orbital mechanics that would bias it off the top of my head.

[Morkonan]

Nvidia is enabling ray tracing on 10xx (1060 6 gb and up but possibly others) and 16xx series cards

https://www.pcworld.com/article/3373496 ... g-dxr.html

Nice! Unfortunately, I only have a 1050Ti I bought as a temp replacement for my old burned out card. No problem, though - It probably couldn't handle the overhead.

Still, it's nice to know they're broadening the scope. The only issue is whether or not they're doing this to gain more of a footprint in ray-tracing or not. I'm sure my burned out vidcard could perform all the calculations to launch a new version of a Space Shuttle... eventually. Like, maybe in a hundred years or so. So, will enthusiastic owners of older cards just get disappointed at really nice looking slideshows and want to upgrade? Will developers promote their support of Nvidia's ray-tracing API more enthusiastically, adding the new lower minimum requirements for it to their requirement's lists? Probably all of the above.

[burger1]

It looks like Rebel Galaxy Outlaws and The Outer Worlds (from Fallout NV developers) are going to be epic game stores exclusive for 1 year after releasing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGLTgt0EEqc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jS5PR5locpU

[pjknibbs]

Then I won't be buying them for 1 year after release...

[Morkonan]

Then I won't be buying them for 1 year after release...

^--- This.

But, I'm going to be interested to see how this attempt to lure away and capture an audience from Steam turns out for them. GoG is fairly successful because they project a certain image and that encourages customer loyalty. They're kinda like "The Good Guys" sort of e-distributors. Plus, they have all the old cool games that they usually manage to get working fairly well with modern systems.

The point is: Will "Exclusive Content Appeal" be enough? Can a "Console Wars" mechanic work? Several publishers do that with what I assume is some degree of success. But, can it be done right out of the gate?

Will every major publisher end up trying to produce their own front-end store? After all, base Steam fees use a sliding scale starting at around 30%. It's likely AAA game offerings end up with significantly lower percentages charged for their distribution, but it's still a hefty chunk. I don't know if some producers get preferred status or can pay a sort of Marketing Fee that can lean on that percentage a bit or not when a title is finally released.

Steam's captive audience is still a huge draw. According to this Kotaku article, it's over 125 million active accounts as of 2015. Probably some liberal inflation there, but it's now four years later.

Will snubbing 125 million + sized captive audience be worth it for producers? Is it worth the opportunity cost?

[Bishop149]

Today I have learned two things I will share with you

1) That the Americans probably weren't the first to plant a Nationalistic symbol on the moon. . . . The Soviet probe Luna 2 carried device designed to fragment on impact in such a way that some of the fragments were likely to survive. Each fragment was a little disc inscribed with the soviet coat of arms and "CCCP"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_2
Also this was Luna 2, Luna 1 managed to miss the moon. Now I know orbital injections and landings are hard. . . . but how do you screw up an impactor?

2) That ammonites existed that were bigger than people, and that if you went for a swim ~350 million years ago it was entirely possible one might try and eat you.
Given the number of other large predatory beasties around at that time it was possibly the worst time in history to go for a swim, all told.
http://www.eartharchives.org/articles/s ... zoic-deep/

[Morkonan]

... Each fragment was a little disc inscribed with the soviet coat of arms and "CCCP"...

First case of a space-litter bottle-tops being dumped on an orbiting moon...

(Actually, that'd be a cool piece of historical memorabilia for Moon Dwellers to go out hunting for on their weekends off from their Moon jobs.

[pjknibbs]

Also this was Luna 2, Luna 1 managed to miss the moon. Now I know orbital injections and landings are hard. . . . but how do you screw up an impactor?

The Moon is travelling at 2000mph and it takes three days to get there with our current technology. It really doesn't take a large error to miss a target that's moved nearly 150,000 miles while your probe has been travelling.

[Morkonan]

Well, I don't know about you guys, but I'm excited: Starship Troopers may be getting a sequel TV series with the Original Cast!

I loved that movie. No, it wasn't like the book. But, it was friggin' brave and brash and in-your-face and so over-the-top that I couldn't help but respect it. A darn brave movie with good sci-fi and a bucketload of practically brilliant social commentary. "Science-fiction with meaning." On the Big Screen. We don't see that kind of thing very much anymore.

A TV series might be a bit much... But, still, it could be very refreshing and offer something really "different." We'll have to see.

[Ronald Sandoval]

the first movie was great the later ones were not very good cant believe that wes 22 years ago

[Morkonan]

the first movie was great the later ones were not very good cant believe that wes 22 years ago

y u make me feel old?

Yeah, I saw part of the second one, I think. I stopped watching it after a few minutes. I preferred to continue the fiction of the first movie in my head rather than confront the horrors Hollywood is capable of.

Interestingly enough, I read some comments about it and people said that if one forgot the first movie was ever made, the second one wan't too bad. I'll take their word for it.

[brucewarren]

The second one had a different tone, but the ending. The ending was both tragic and damning.

After all the horror the last guy standing pleaded with the authorities not to make his last report into a propaganda video. So what did they do?
Turned the whole thing into a propaganda video. Bastards.

[Bishop149]

The Starship Troopers movies are weird movies

The first one was good and had a budget of $100M. They hired some reasonably big name actors and it is considered a good cult classic movie but barely broke even at the box office.
The second one looks like a film students final year project which is much grimdark (can't find a budget), it stars no one you'll likely have heard of didn't even get a cinema release . . . . . .I recall it being "not too bad" but I'd imagine few people are aware it even exists.
So far so as expected.

But the third one is between these two, it had a budget of $9M, Rico is back, Jolene Blalock is in it. . . . it looks pretty much as bright and flashy as the first one, but the plot is straight up INSANE and it went straight to DVD. . . . even fewer people know it exists.
How the hell did the 3rd on get made?

I only just learned there is a 4 and a 5 . . . . both animated apparently?!