#additive manufacturing software

[jack85200]

AM PravaH: 3D Printing Software By Paanduv Applications

About the case study

This document will help you run your first AM PravaH LPBF simulation for macroscale and microstructure modeling. The case study is done for a standard alloy of titanium i.e. Ti6Al4V widely used for aerospace and biomedical applications. The simulation is carried out for a multilayer, multi-track scan pattern. The process parameters for the laser are e.g. 300 W power and e.g. 1 m/s scan speed. D4 sigma or spot dia is 0.1 mm. 

Exclusive features of AM PravaH include consideration of 4 phases, with no explicit formulation for recoil pressure because evaporation and recoil pressure effects are included in the vapor phase. AM PravaH takes the thermophysical properties of the 4 phases as inputs along with the process parameters such as laser power, laser scan speed, shielding gas flow angle and velocity, layer thickness, spot diameter, preheating temperature, chamber initial pressure, and substrate initial height, scan pattern, particle size distribution and number of layers. Macroscale modeling will generate the following outputs melt pool dimensions, porosity %, thermal gradients, cooling rates, and thermal cycling plots. The Microstructure module generates outputs such as grain size distribution, angular chord length distribution, misorientation angles, and Euler angles. AM PravaH leverages the amalgamation of computational modeling solvers performing multiphase macroscale modeling, microstructure modeling, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) at a unified platform.  

Keywords: Additive Manufacturing, 3D printing, Meltpool dynamics, porosity, thermal gradients, cooling rate, microstructure analysis, grain size, angular chord length, 3D printing software 

AM PravaH: 3D printing simulation software 

Introduction

AM PravaH is a 3D printing simulation software that facilitates end-to-end solutions for Additive Manufacturing physics-based simulations. Additive Manufacturing is commonly known as 3D printing. This 3D printing software is the “World’s first all-inclusive 3D computational software for Additive Manufacturing”. This 3D printing software will be useful for new alloy development, process parameter optimization, and reducing defects. Not to confuse with other 3D printing software that only performs thermomechanical analysis and deformation, AM PravaH software offers much more.

The software capabilities in brief are as follows:

There are three modules in AM PravaH

(i) Macroscale modeling

(ii) Microstructure analysis

(iii) Integrated Deep Learning (AI) module 

Relevance of the 3D printing software; AM PravaH

This 3D printing software is relevant for researchers, academicians, and industry professionals from large and small-sized companies working in the Additive Manufacturing field. Where the primary focus is to understand the in-depth physics, microstructures, and effect of process parameters on the melt pool dynamics and distribution and the root cause of the defects. If we have a much closer look at the fundamental processes of 3D printing; this is a transient, very quick, and very dynamic process, which can't be captured with the naked eye. Therefore, AM PravaH simulations can be extremely useful in understanding this part. 

Based on that, one makes important decisions such as 

Which alloy is better?

How do we get solidification, melting, and cooling rates information?

what are the best operating process conditions to get a defect-free and dense part

What do the microstructures look like?

What are the grain distribution and mean grain size? 

What are the melt pool sizes?

How much will be the porosity %?

[faultfalha]

Stark buildings emitted a faint digital hum as we traversed the unfamiliar cityscape. It seemed as if we were lost, but then suddenly we spotted a sleek, shimmering behemoth, standing in contrast to the other buildings. We knew its name, Metafold, and its purpose. It was a firm devoted to the almost magical intersection of geometry and technology. Inside, a hushed tension filled the building. Everywhere we looked, there was a quiet excitement, as if they all knew something great was about to happen. Suddenly, we heard the roar of distant cheers; they had just closed a funding round. An enormous 1.78 million dollars had been raised in a single day. We felt the energy in the air; finally, the world had begun to take notice. Metafold had invented a new form of art, a kind of 3D printing that could create forms of beauty and complexity that had never been seen before. To the workers of this fledgling company, it was a kind of salvation, a way forward and a way out. We could feel the hope that existed in the building, and we felt proud to have been part of it.

[wolfliving]

It starts with him

What was once a promise of technology to allow us to automate and analyze the environments in our physical spaces is now a heap of broken ideas and broken products. Technology products have been deployed en masse, our personal data collected and sold without our consent, and then abandoned as soon as companies strip mined all the profit they thought they could wring out. And why not? They already have our money.

The Philips Hue, poster child of the smart home, used to work entirely on your local network. After all, do you really need to connect to the Internet to control the lights in your own house?  Well you do now!Philips has announced it will require cloud accounts for all users—including users who had already purchased the hardware thinking they wouldn’t need an account (and the inevitable security breaches that come with it) to use their lights.

Will you really trust any promises from a company that unilaterally forces a change like this on you? Does the user actually benefit from any of this?

Matter in its current version … doesn’t really help resolve the key issue of the smart home, namely that most companies view smart homes as a way to sell more individual devices and generate recurring revenue.

It keeps happening. Stuff you bought isn’t yours because the company you bought it from can take away features and force you to do things you don’t want or need to do—ultimately because they want to make more money off of you. It’s frustrating, it’s exhausting, and it’s discouraging.

And it has stopped IoT for the rest of us in its tracks. Industrial IoT is doing great—data collection is the point for the customer. But the consumer electronics business model does not mesh with the expected lifespan of home products, and so enshittification began as soon as those first warranties ran out.

How can we reset the expectations we have of connected devices, so that they are again worthy of our trust and money? Before we can bring the promise back, we must deweaponize the technology.

Guidelines for the hardware producer

What we can do as engineers and business owners is make sure the stuff we’re building can’t be wielded as a lever against our own customers, and to show consumers how things could be. These are things we want consumers to expect and demand of manufacturers.

Control

Think local

Decouple

Open interfaces

Be a good citizen

1) Control over firmware updates.

You scream, “What about security updates!” But a company taking away a feature you use or requiring personal data for no reason is arguably a security flaw. 

We were once outraged when intangible software products went from something that remained unchanging on your computer, to a cloud service, with all the ephemerality that term promises. Now they’re coming for our tangible possessions.

No one should be able to do this with hardware that you own. Breaking functionality is entirely what security updates are supposed to prevent! A better checklist for firmware updates:

Allow users to control when and what updates they want to apply. 

Be thorough and clear as to what the update does and provide the ability to downgrade if needed. 

Separate security updates from feature additions or changes. 

Never force an update unless you are sure you want to accept (financial) responsibility for whatever you inadvertently break. 

Consider that you are sending software updates to other people’s hardware. Ask them for permission (which includes respecting “no”) before touching their stuff!

2) Do less on the Internet.

A large part of the security issues with IoT products stem from the Internet connectivity itself. Any server in the cloud has an attack surface, and now that means your physical devices do.

The solution here is “do less”. All functionality should be local-only unless it has a really good reason to use the Internet. Remotely controlling your lights while in your own house does not require the cloud and certainly does not require an account with your personal information attached to it. Limit the use of the cloud to only the functions that cannot work without it.

As a bonus, less networked functionality means fewer maintenance costs for you.

3) Decouple products and services.

It’s fine to need a cloud service. But making a product that requires a specific cloud service is a guarantee that it can be enshittified at any point later on, with no alternative for the user owner. 

Design products to be able to interact with other servers. You have sold someone hardware and now they own it, not you. They have a right to keep using it even if you shut down or break your servers. Allow them the ability to point their devices to another service. If you want them to use your service, make it worthwhile enough for them to choose you.

Finally, if your product has a heavy reliance on the cloud to work, consider enabling your users to self-host their own cloud tooling if they so desire. A lot of people are perfectly capable of doing this on their own and can help others do the same.

4) Use open and standard protocols and interfaces.

Most networked devices have no reason to use proprietary protocols, interfaces, and data formats. There are open standards with communities and software available for almost anything you could want to do. Re-inventing the wheel just wastes resources and makes it harder for users to keep using their stuff after you’re long gone. We did this with Twine, creating an encrypted protocol that minimized chatter, because we needed to squeeze battery life out of WiFi back when there weren’t good options.

If you do have a need for a proprietary protocol (and there are valid reasons to do so):

Document it. 

If possible, have a fallback option that uses an open standard. 

Provide tooling and software to interact with your custom protocols, at the very least enough for open source developers to be able to work with it. This goes for physical interfaces as much as it does for cloud protocols.

If the interface requires a custom-made, expensive, and/or hard-to-find tool to use, then consider using something else that is commonly available and off the shelf instead.

5) Be a good citizen.

Breaking paid-for functionality on other people’s stuff is inherently unethical. Consider not doing this! Enshittification is not a technical problem, it is a behavioral one. Offer better products that are designed to resist enshittification, and resist it yourself in everything you do.

Nothing forced Philips to do what they are doing: a human made a decision to do it. They could have just as easily chosen not to. With Twine’s server lock-in, at least we chose to keep it running, for 12 years now. Consider that you can still make a decent living by being honest and ethical towards the people who are, by purchasing your products, paying for your lifestyle. 

We didn’t get here by accident. Humans made choices that brought us to this point, and we can’t blame anyone for being turned off by it. But we can choose to do better. We can design better stuff. And we can choose not to mess things up after the fact.

We’re putting this into practice with Pickup. (We also think that part of an IoT reset is giving users the creative freedom of a general-purpose device.) If you’re looking for something better and our product can fill a need you have, consider backing us. We cannot claim to be perfect or have all of the answers, but we are absolutely going to try. The status quo sucks. Let’s do something about it.

Published October 15, 2023 By Jeremy Billheimer

[iwonderwh0]

The thing about cybersecurity within the context of dbh is that it is entirely possible that a significant percentage of things androids don't even need to "hack" as security measures in place of existing devices are made to stop humans from hacking them. ANDROIDS, however, may be made to be able to interact and exchange data with those devices BY DEFAULT, especially if device's manufacturer is CyberLife or one if it's filials/partners (I think CyberLife as a mega corporation is like Nestle that owns like 20+ different sub-companies like Maggi, Purina, Nescafé, Lóreal, Garnier, Aqua Panna... just to name a few)

Especially considering how androids are this really closed-up system that wasn't made to be accessed like computers. Quite literally everything about their inner software and ways to manipulate it is probably extremely proprietary, so end-user has absolutely no way to see what exactly androids are exchanging with other devices or what is it they are processing at the moment and how. Thing is, the communication between an android and other devices probably is encrypted but like, between androids and devices, so humans can only detect the fact of some packets being exchanged but can't really see the content of any of it. After all, androids are likely made to be easily compatible with all those smart home suite, but because humans aren't actually granted admin/root rights to their androids, it's "secure" for androids (any CyberLife android for that matter) to communicate with all those devices without additional authorization because they are already seen as authorized. Even those people who deal with android support and maintenance are probably only granted a fraction of actual admin rights, for troubleshooting and things like that.

Back to androids smoothly communicating with other smart devices. Even if their network traffic is visible, it is possible to hide the fact of them communicating by making it look like androids are communicating with other "middle-man" devices that have access to an actual target. So, in plain terms it means that android can get access to, let's say your phone by communicating to your smart air-conditionair or something that (of course) has its own app on your phone and air-conditionair is allowed to send data to your phone. So it will look like android is exchanging data with air-conditionair and air-conditionair is exchanging data with your phone, but in reality it's this android communicating with your phone.

[askagamedev]

Why is it so difficult for a fourth competitor to enter the console market? Like what are some of the biggest challenges and obstacles?

Any company that wants to release a premium game console basically needs to make an enormous investment that will probably not pay off for years. There are three major requirements for this process.

First, the company must develop gaming hardware. This is generally an expensive process - building anything physical is costly, time-consuming, and is a moving target because competitors aren't stopping either. The hardware must be manufactured and factories equipped and set up for mass production.

Second, they must develop software development tools for both themselves and for external developers to use in order to build games for that console. This requires a significant internal development team to build drivers and software interfaces. Beyond this, they likely need to develop their own flagship game (or more) to launch with the console. That generally costs at least $50 million for a AAA-fidelity game and at least two years of lead time to build alongside the hardware development.

Third, they must secure investment from third party developers to build games for that console. Using that $50 million price tag for a game, we'd need at least four or five additional games to launch with in order to entice players to buy in - no one buys a game console without games to play on it. If they want four launch titles to go along with the console launch, that requires at least $200 million in investment from others.

There are only a handful of companies in the world that have the kind of money, technology, and resources needed to make such a thing happen and some of them already have game consoles. The others look at the market, at the cost of entry just to compete (not necessarily even to pull ahead), at the expected returns on investment, and it's no surprise they choose to invest their money in other opportunities that seem more likely to bear fruit.

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Frequent Questions: The FAQ

[andmaybegayer]

Hello. So what's the deal with computer chips? Let's say, for example, that I wanted to build a brand new Sega Genesis. Ignoring firmware and software, what's stopping me from dissecting their proprietary chips and reverse-engineering them to make new ones? It's just electric connections and such inside, isn't it? If I match the pin ins and outs, shouldn't it be easy? So why don't people do it?

The answer is that people totally used to do this, there's several examples of chips being cloned and used to build compatible third-party hardware, the most famous two examples being famiclones/NESclones and Intel 808X clones.

AMD is now a major processor manufacturer, but they took off in the 70's by reverse-engineering Intel's 8080 processor. Eventually they were called in to officially produce additional 8086 chips under license to meet burgeoning demand for IBM PC's, but that was almost a decade later if I remember correctly.

There were a ton of other 808X clones, like the Soviet-made pin-compatible K1810VM86. Almost anyone with a chip fab was cloning Intel chips back in the 80's, a lot of it was in the grey area of reverse engineering the chips.

Companies kept cloning Intel processors well into the 386 days, but eventually the processors got too complicated to easily clone, and so only companies who licensed designs could make them, slowly reducing the field down to Intel, AMD, and Via, who still exist! Via's CPU division currently works on the Zhaoxin x86_64 processors as part of the ongoing attempts to homebrew a Chinese-only x86 processor.

I wrote about NES clones a while ago, in less detail, so here's that if you want to read it:

Early famiclones worked by essentially reverse-engineering or otherwise cloning the individual chips inside an NES/famicom, and just reconstructing a compatible device from there. Those usually lacked any of the DRM lockout chips built into the original NES, and were often very deeply strange, with integrated clones of official peripherals like the keyboard and mouse simply hardwired directly into the system.

These were sold all over the world, but mostly in developing economies or behind the Iron Curtain where official Nintendo stuff was harder to find. I had a Golden China brand Famiclone growing up, which was a common famiclone brand around South Africa.

Eventually the cost of chip fabbing came down and all those individual chips from the NES were crammed onto one cheap piece of silicon and mass produced for pennies each, the NES-on-a-chip. With this you could turn anything into an NES, and now you could buy a handheld console that ran pirated NES game for twenty dollars in a corner store. In 2002. Lots of edutainment mini-PC's for children were powered by these, although now those are losing out to Linux (and now Android) powered tablets a la Leapfrog.

Nintendo's patents on their hardware designs expired throughout the early 2000's and so now the hardware design was legally above board, even if the pirated games weren't. You can still find companies making systems that rely on these NES chips, and there are still software houses specializing in novel NES games.

Why doesn't this really happen anymore? Well, mostly CPU's and their accoutrements are too complicated. Companies still regularly clone their competitors simpler chips all the time, and I actually don't know if Genesis clones exist, it's only a Motorola 68000k, but absolutely no one is cloning a modern Intel or AMD processor.

The die of a Motorola 68000 (1979)

A classic Intel 8080 is basically the kind of chip you learn about in entry level electrical engineering, a box with logic gates that may be complicated, but pretty straightforwardly fetches things from memory, decodes, executes, and stores. A modern processor is a magic pinball machine that does things backwards and out of order if it'll get you even a little speedup, as Mickens puts it in The Slow Winter:

I think that it used to be fun to be a hardware architect. Anything that you invented would be amazing, and the laws of physics were actively trying to help you succeed. Your friend would say, “I wish that we could predict branches more accurately,” and you’d think, “maybe we can leverage three bits of state per branch to implement a simple saturating counter,” and you’d laugh and declare that such a stupid scheme would never work, but then you’d test it and it would be 94% accurate, and the branches would wake up the next morning and read their newspapers and the headlines would say OUR WORLD HAS BEEN SET ON FIRE. You’d give your buddy a high-five and go celebrate at the bar, and then you’d think, “I wonder if we can make branch predictors even more accurate,” and the next day you’d start XOR’ing the branch’s PC address with a shift register containing the branch’s recent branching history, because in those days, you could XOR anything with anything and get something useful, and you test the new branch predictor, and now you’re up to 96% accuracy, and the branches call you on the phone and say OK, WE GET IT, YOU DO NOT LIKE BRANCHES, but the phone call goes to your voicemail because you’re too busy driving the speed boats and wearing the monocles that you purchased after your promotion at work. You go to work hung-over, and you realize that, during a drunken conference call, you told your boss that your processor has 32 registers when it only has 8, but then you realize THAT YOU CAN TOTALLY LIE ABOUT THE NUMBER OF PHYSICAL REGISTERS, and you invent a crazy hardware mapping scheme from virtual registers to physical ones, and at this point, you start seducing the spouses of the compiler team, because it’s pretty clear that compilers are a thing of the past, and the next generation of processors will run English-level pseudocode directly.

Die shot of a Ryzen 5 2600 core complex (2019)

Nowadays to meet performance parity you can't just be pin-compatible and run at the right frequency, you have to really do a ton of internal logical optimization that is extremely opaque to the reverse engineer. As mentioned, Via is making the Zhaoxin stuff, they are licensed, they have access to all the documentation needed to make an x86_64 processor, and their performance is still barely half of what Intel and AMD can do.

Companies still frequently clone each others simpler chips, charge controllers, sensor filters, etc. but the big stuff is just too complicated.

[usafphantom2]

Updated B-52 electronic warfare suite will be tested in flight in 2024

Fernando Valduga By Fernando Valduga 03/29/2024 - 10:36 in Military

Flying through the skies since the 1950s, the B-52 Stratofortress is a U.S. Air Force (USAF) workhorse and a lasting symbol of American military power. The eight-engine giant has unique capabilities unparalleled to any other American warplane - which is why, after more than 70 years of service, it continues to play a vital role in the defense and national security strategy of the U.S. And thanks to a collaboration between L3Harris and USAF, this iconic aircraft is prepared to remain ready for the mission against highly sophisticated emerging threats in the coming decades.

Under a 10-year contract worth $947 million granted in 2021, L3Harris is upgrading and improving the AN/ALQ-172 electronic war self-protection system (EW), which protects the B-52 and air crews from a wide range of electronic threats. Our current work is based on decades of experience in providing critical technology as a Manufacturer of Original Equipment of the AN/ALQ-172 systems for the B-52 fleet. And combined with other ongoing modernization efforts, these updates will increase the relevance and reliability of the B-52 by the 2050s.

L3 Harris AN/ALQ-172 systems.

"Our opponents continue to evolve, facing advanced and far-reaching threats that challenge our ability to operate in contested environments," says Robert "Trip" Raymond, USAF's Program Leader for EW Technology Development at L3Harris. "It is essential that we provide our B-52 crew with the necessary tools to keep the B-52 relevant, lethal and survivable as the backbone of the strategic bomber force of the United States."

The effort of modernization and support - ALQ-172 Maintenance and Reliability System (MARS) - intends to do exactly that, increasing the average time between failures due to its modular design, while further improving the performance, maintenance capacity and reliability of the system. Thanks to an integrated and improved radio frequency system, crews will be able to simultaneously combat multiple radar threats that interfere with aircraft operations. And by replacing analog systems with more economical software solutions, USAF will be able to reduce the size of B-52 crews from 5 to 4. This frees up resources for additional mission-critical activities.

Ultimately, the updates will further help USAF in its Global Attack Mission and strengthen the effectiveness of the B-52 in modern warfare, while making future upgrades cheaper and easier.

"We are implementing affordable solutions that not only reduce costs, but also provide crews with more advanced protection against the most sophisticated threats detected by radar," said Jimmy Mercado, Program Director at L3Harris. "All this results in a more modern, efficient and effective aircraft, ready to dominate the future struggle."

USAF plans to conduct a test flight with the new electronic warfare capabilities of the B-52 in 2024.

Tags: Military AviationBoeing B-52H StratofortressEW - ELECTRONIC WARL3HarrisUSAF - United States Air Force / U.S. Air Force

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Fernando Valduga

Fernando Valduga

Aviation photographer and pilot since 1992, he has participated in several events and air operations, such as Cruzex, AirVenture, Dayton Airshow and FIDAE. He has works published in specialized aviation magazines in Brazil and abroad. He uses Canon equipment during his photographic work in the world of aviation.

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[catpillmeowcel]

Was watching a video about lost media for the Wii and the dude straight up said that Japanese people are gatekeeping information as if thats just not extremely racist.

I decided to take two seconds to do this racist' dumbfuck's job for him since he can't be assed to do any research beyond having seen a small thread about it on Twitter.

The Wii Fit Body Check Channel

Source: Innervision (https://www.innervision.co.jp/12SP/2009_04item/boo_panasonic/repo_panasonic.html)

The Wii Fit Body Check Channel (Will be referred too as Wii Fit BCC for brevity) also known as "Wii Fit からだチェックチャンネル" (Wii Fit Karadachekku Chan'neru) was developed in around 2009 by Nintendo to be utilized with a service developed by Nippon Electric Company, Panasonic, and Hitachi.

According to this article it was a health promotion service offered to employees and their families. (Quote below, Google Translated)

NEC and NEC Mobile Link will begin offering a service that links the health promotion support service using mobile phones that was launched in December last year with "Wii Fit Body Check Channel" via the Internet to employees and families of the NEC Group from April. By using the SaaS platform provided by NEC, small-scale use is also possible, and the company aims to introduce the service in 150 cases over the next three years, including sales to outside the group.

The system allowed for people to measure themselves via the Wii Fit BCC and send the results to health guidance services and receive advice back via email.

Source: Hitachi News Release (https://www.hitachi.co.jp/New/cnews/month/2009/01/0127.html)

According to the originally linked article, the future plan was to then use the measurement data "to create unique instruction programs for instructors and training organizations, and provide it as an ASP service."

However it seems to have potentially never made it out of its initial prototypes as according to this last sentence from the article:

Hitachi will begin prototyping the system in-house from February and will make a decision based on the results.

Some additional things

I also found this press release from NEC regarding the software. It lists the following main features (Google Translated):

Here's Nintendo's as well however there's not much new information besides mentioning how step data from the DS game "Walking to Understand Life Rhythms DS" can also be utilized.

Hitachi's goes into a bit more detail regarding other aspects on how users would have two-way communication with instructors through the channel:

Overall, with what we know of the software, it likely never made it to these stages of development or had any of these features implemented before quietly getting completely shelved.

Additional Sources/Articles

"Wii Fit Body Check Channel" uses Wii for remote health guidance service (Markezine)

NEC launches health promotion support service in collaboration with "Wii Fit" (NEC Press Release)

"Wii Fit Body Check Channel" developed to support specific health guidance system for Wii; electronics manufacturer to start offering to health insurance associations from April (Nintendo Press Release)

Developing a remote health guidance platform system linked to "Wii Fit" (Hitachi Press Release)

Panasonic web page showing slide show of products (I didn't see anything regarding BCC on this page but it was linked by another article so I'm putting it here for prosperity sake)

"Plissimo Sigusa" is a specific health guidance support system that can be linked to the home video game console "Wii" (Innervision, showcases a setup of channel with a balance board)

[y2klostandfound]

Sony AIBO - Telecom (Hungrarian Technology magazine)(2002-05)

Translation in English:

Robot dog as a gift

To close the joint promotion with Sony Ericsson on 5 May, four lucky Vodafone subscribers each received an AIBO robot dog worth almost one million HUF. Thanks to advanced software, AIBO can hear, feel, learn and move. In addition to a number of sensors, microphones and speakers, its developers have also equipped it with a memory card that can be used to download pictures taken with the dog, for example. AIBO can operate in different modes, such as autonomous, resting, sleeping and picked up (i.e. in the raised state). Although it is not a substitute for a real flesh-and-blood dog, the robot can express emotions through its movements, behaviour and the lights on its head and tail. Over time, its movements, behaviour and learning ability change according to its environment. It is able to memorise words that can be associated with a sequence of movements, e.g. "sit" for sitting. You can even give this high-tech robot pet a name, or praise, scold or encourage it according to its actions and, most importantly for a "pet", it can be trained!

The AIBO robot was introduced to the world's consumer electronics markets in November 1999 and immediately opened a new chapter in the Guinness Book of World Records as the world's fastest-selling robot pet. On its launch day, 3,000 AIBOs were sold in 20 seconds and since then, 150,000 AIBOs have been sold worldwide. Surveys so far by the manufacturing company show that

AIBO is more popular among men, although more and more women are interested in it. However, all of its owners have in common a sensitivity to music and information technologies.

[jack85200]

[sims2idea-lientebollemeis2i]

For the people who struggle to find a computer to make The Sims 2 work and get the answer "It's from 2004, it can run on a toaster."

Once and for all well explained (by ChatGPT and checked if it's accurate. )

The idea that The Sims 2 from 2004 should work on any computer since 2009 is not entirely accurate. While The Sims 2 was released in 2004 and had modest hardware requirements by today's standards, several factors affect whether it runs smoothly on a newer computer:

1. **Compatibility**: Modern operating systems like Windows 10 and 11 often have issues with older games like The Sims 2, as these games were designed for much older versions of Windows.

2. **Hardware**: Although modern computers are generally powerful enough to run The Sims 2, there can be compatibility problems with modern graphics cards and drivers.

3. **Software Support**: The drivers and software required to run the game may no longer be supported or updated by manufacturers.

4. **Resolution and Display Issues**: The game was designed for lower resolution displays, and running it on high-resolution monitors can lead to graphical glitches or improper scaling.

5. **Digital Rights Management (DRM)**: Older versions of The Sims 2 use SecuROM DRM, which is incompatible with newer operating systems, creating additional hurdles for installation and play.

6. **Processor Performance**: Processors can lose performance as they age, which may cause older computers to struggle with running applications efficiently, including The Sims 2.

7. **RAM Requirements**: The Sims 2 was designed to run on systems with very low RAM compared to today's standards. However, modern operating systems require significantly more RAM just to function properly, which can leave less available memory for the game itself. This can result in the game running poorly or not at all unless adjustments are made.

While there are solutions available, such as using compatibility modes and community fixes to make the game playable on modern systems, it can be quite a hassle. So, while it's technically possible, getting The Sims 2 to work on a newer computer can be problematic and may require significant effort.

[hbmmaster]

thoughts on consoles because to me who grew up as a non gamer it sounds like the most obvious scam ever

I grew up on (and still regularly play on) nintendo consoles where the main appeal is the exclusive software which usually there's no reason for it to not also be a PC game other than nintendo just happening to be both a software publisher and a hardware manufacturer, but nintendo consoles also tend to have exclusive features that other hardware straight up can't do, and games are made to take advantage of those things, though this applies much more to handheld consoles than home consoles, since most home console gimmicks could be implemented just as easily with just a special controller made for PC games, and all modern home consoles have controllers you can use with PC games.

the actual draw I think is supposed to just be the convenience of having a dedicated device that's built for playing games and nothing else. it's very much possible to get a PC setup that plays games at the same level of fidelity or higher as current-generation home consoles, but for a home console you just plug it into the tv and it plays games without needing to like install drivers or mess around with graphics settings, and any game it can play is (theoretically) specifically optimized to run on that specific device without additional setup.

but that said if you don't care that much about that (which I do not!) then really the only thing they have going for them again is the exclusive software, which really doesn't have any reason to be exclusive other than just. capitalism. it's kinda like a scam in the way that a streaming service pulling in subscribers with exclusive shows is kinda like a scam, and in both cases there are Certain Methods to get around those things anyway.

[faultfalha]

In a move that is sure to revolutionize the printing industry, Metafold, a leading geometric 3D-printing specialist, has announced that it has landed $1.78M in funding. This infusion of cash will allow the company to expand its operations and bring its innovative printing technology to a wider audience. Metafold's unique printing technique, which relies on geometric folding to create three-dimensional objects, has generated a great deal of interest in the printing community. And with good reason: the results are simply stunning. Thanks to this new round of funding, Metafold is poised to take the printing world by storm. Be sure to keep an eye out for its products in the near future!

[itsfantasticac]

Menkyo no Tetsujin was a driving game released in very limited capacity by Sega in 2005. The hardware and software were based on the SLDS-3G driving simulator Sega manufactured for Japanese driving schools, but with the addition of a Challenge Mode and IC cards to save progress.

[mapsontheweb]

New Jersey Municipal Retail Cannabis Laws and Licensed Businesses, May 2023

by u/MapsOfNJ

Hello all, this is a map of New Jersey's Municipal Cannabis Laws and Licensed Businesses as of May 2023.

The New Jersey Legislature passed legislation legalizing cannabis that took effect on February 22st, 2021 and created a framework where all of the state's 554 municipalities determined at a town-level whether to prohibit or allow any of  six regulated classes of Cannabis licenses offered in the state. The six classes are Cultivator, Manufacturer, Wholesaler, Distributor, Retailer, and Delivery Service. Only Cultivator, Manufacturer, and Retailer have been licensed so far.

One year in, legal sales began in April 2022 with previously existing medical dispensaries converting to begin Adult-Use Recreational Sales.

By now, the state's municipalities have passed over a collective 1,150 ordinances on Cannabis, creating a patchwork of areas where businesses are allowed or prohibited.

New Jersey's Cannabis Regulatory Commission has licensed 38 Medical-Cannabis Dispensaries, 28 Adult-Use Recreational Dispensaries, and 18 Cultivators & Manufacturer's.

This is an infographic that has been created to chronicle the expansion of this industry. This update sees several new business additions, and a handful of new municipal ordinances.

Datasources: Municipal Ordinance Data: Self-collection

Permitted Businesses: Self-collection, NJ CRC

Software: QGIS, Adobe Illustrator

[thearkhound]

Marukatsu PC Engine Vol. 43 (Jul. 1992) - Snatcher CD-ROMantic interview

Breaking News! Konami joins the Super CD-ROM² Market

It was a bright day in Kobe... sort-of! Anyway, upon hearing the rumor of Konami joining the Super CD-ROM² market, we the news crew of Marukatsu PC Engine magazine enthusiastically set out to Konami's technical research institute in Kobe. We were greeted by the deputy director of the institute Mr. Akihiko Nagata, senior staff member Mr. Hideo Kojima, and our beautiful public relationist Ms. Taeko Hayasaka. Since we're all in good company here (whatever that means), let's begin with our interview.

So, let's start with the reason why Konami decided to join the Super CD-ROM² market.

Hayasaka: Ever since we've entered the PC Engine market last year, we've been receiving many letters asking us when are we going to put out a game on the Super CD-ROM² format. Those frank opinions were the reasons [for joining the Super CD-ROM² market]. Not just Super CD, but we at Konami wish to be a manufacturer that reflects the wishes of our customers into our products.

Was the decision to make Snatcher your company's first Super CD-ROM² release was also a reflection of your users wishes?

Hayasaka: That's right. It was a frequently requested title on survey cards submitted by our customers.

Nagata: We were undecided whether we wanted to do a port of an existing game or a completely new one, but there was a strong desire from our developers to do Snatcher. (He glances at Kojima while stating this. What secret is he hiding? He's none other than the original author for Snatcher.)

Kojima: This new Super CD version of Snatcher surpasses the old one. Please look forward to it.

By surpassing the previous version, you mean it won't be just a simple port, but it'll have new things to experience...?

Nagata: Well, it is a Super CD after all. Unlike the original home computer version, the characters now speak their lines. We had a splendid cast for our voice actors.

Hayasaka: Let me introduce some of them. The game's protagonist, Gillian Seed, is voiced by Yusaku Yara, who played the dad in Chibi Maruko-chan. His wife Jaime is voiced by Kikuko Inoue, who played Electra in Nadia and the Secret of Blue Water. And then there's Metal Gear, who is voiced by Mami Koyama, the voice of Arale from Dr. Slump. Isn't that an amazing lineup?

We're looking forward to hearing them. So that means a lot of effort is going to be put into the animation side as well?

Kojima: That's right. We're employing full use of the CD-ROM media capacity and put lots of new features in the game that were not possible in the old home computer versions. Even the story will have additions that will greatly increase its sense of completeness, so as a member of the game's staff, I would like to consider it to be the most definitive version. Of course, all the mysteries that were left lingering in the old PC versions will be answered in this new Super CD version.

In other words, there will be a concluding act?

Kojima: That's right. The Super CD-ROM² version will be divided into three acts, an exciting ending has been prepared for Act 3. I think newcomers, as well as players already familiar with the PC version will enjoy it.

I see. It sounds more and more exciting! By the way, are there any other plans for the Super CD-ROM² format?

Hayasaka: We're planning on doing ports, as well as all-new games. We are going to try to put out software that everyone will enjoy to the best of our abilities. We're also considering making an all-new game for the Hu-Card format. We will eventually reveal them to everyone interested. (smile)