#written for cheap processors

[el-ffej]

IMO: Absolutely, positively spot-on. Been a software engineer from 1980 to 2016, and this just nails the tech industry economics (and phases) that I saw then, and that I see now.

Must-read. Brilliantly written and on target. Kudos and applause, OP.

If anyone wants to know why every tech company in the world right now is clamoring for AI like drowned rats scrabbling to board a ship, I decided to make a post to explain what's happening.

(Disclaimer to start: I'm a software engineer who's been employed full time since 2018. I am not a historian nor an overconfident Youtube essayist, so this post is my working knowledge of what I see around me and the logical bridges between pieces.)

Okay anyway. The explanation starts further back than what's going on now. I'm gonna start with the year 2000. The Dot Com Bubble just spectacularly burst. The model of "we get the users first, we learn how to profit off them later" went out in a no-money-having bang (remember this, it will be relevant later). A lot of money was lost. A lot of people ended up out of a job. A lot of startup companies went under. Investors left with a sour taste in their mouth and, in general, investment in the internet stayed pretty cooled for that decade. This was, in my opinion, very good for the internet as it was an era not suffocating under the grip of mega-corporation oligarchs and was, instead, filled with Club Penguin and I Can Haz Cheezburger websites.

Then around the 2010-2012 years, a few things happened. Interest rates got low, and then lower. Facebook got huge. The iPhone took off. And suddenly there was a huge new potential market of internet users and phone-havers, and the cheap money was available to start backing new tech startup companies trying to hop on this opportunity. Companies like Uber, Netflix, and Amazon either started in this time, or hit their ramp-up in these years by shifting focus to the internet and apps.

Now, every start-up tech company dreaming of being the next big thing has one thing in common: they need to start off by getting themselves massively in debt. Because before you can turn a profit you need to first spend money on employees and spend money on equipment and spend money on data centers and spend money on advertising and spend money on scale and and and

But also, everyone wants to be on the ship for The Next Big Thing that takes off to the moon.

So there is a mutual interest between new tech companies, and venture capitalists who are willing to invest $$$ into said new tech companies. Because if the venture capitalists can identify a prize pig and get in early, that money could come back to them 100-fold or 1,000-fold. In fact it hardly matters if they invest in 10 or 20 total bust projects along the way to find that unicorn.

But also, becoming profitable takes time. And that might mean being in debt for a long long time before that rocket ship takes off to make everyone onboard a gazzilionaire.

But luckily, for tech startup bros and venture capitalists, being in debt in the 2010's was cheap, and it only got cheaper between 2010 and 2020. If people could secure loans for ~3% or 4% annual interest, well then a $100,000 loan only really costs $3,000 of interest a year to keep afloat. And if inflation is higher than that or at least similar, you're still beating the system.

So from 2010 through early 2022, times were good for tech companies. Startups could take off with massive growth, showing massive potential for something, and venture capitalists would throw infinite money at them in the hopes of pegging just one winner who will take off. And supporting the struggling investments or the long-haulers remained pretty cheap to keep funding.

You hear constantly about "Such and such app has 10-bazillion users gained over the last 10 years and has never once been profitable", yet the thing keeps chugging along because the investors backing it aren't stressed about the immediate future, and are still banking on that "eventually" when it learns how to really monetize its users and turn that profit.

The pandemic in 2020 took a magnifying-glass-in-the-sun effect to this, as EVERYTHING was forcibly turned online which pumped a ton of money and workers into tech investment. Simultaneously, money got really REALLY cheap, bottoming out with historic lows for interest rates.

Then the tide changed with the massive inflation that struck late 2021. Because this all-gas no-brakes state of things was also contributing to off-the-rails inflation (along with your standard-fare greedflation and price gouging, given the extremely convenient excuses of pandemic hardships and supply chain issues). The federal reserve whipped out interest rate hikes to try to curb this huge inflation, which is like a fire extinguisher dousing and suffocating your really-cool, actively-on-fire party where everyone else is burning but you're in the pool. And then they did this more, and then more. And the financial climate followed suit. And suddenly money was not cheap anymore, and new loans became expensive, because loans that used to compound at 2% a year are now compounding at 7 or 8% which, in the language of compounding, is a HUGE difference. A $100,000 loan at a 2% interest rate, if not repaid a single cent in 10 years, accrues to $121,899. A $100,000 loan at an 8% interest rate, if not repaid a single cent in 10 years, more than doubles to $215,892.

Now it is scary and risky to throw money at "could eventually be profitable" tech companies. Now investors are watching companies burn through their current funding and, when the companies come back asking for more, investors are tightening their coin purses instead. The bill is coming due. The free money is drying up and companies are under compounding pressure to produce a profit for their waiting investors who are now done waiting.

You get enshittification. You get quality going down and price going up. You get "now that you're a captive audience here, we're forcing ads or we're forcing subscriptions on you." Don't get me wrong, the plan was ALWAYS to monetize the users. It's just that it's come earlier than expected, with way more feet-to-the-fire than these companies were expecting. ESPECIALLY with Wall Street as the other factor in funding (public) companies, where Wall Street exhibits roughly the same temperament as a baby screaming crying upset that it's soiled its own diaper (maybe that's too mean a comparison to babies), and now companies are being put through the wringer for anything LESS than infinite growth that Wall Street demands of them.

Internal to the tech industry, you get MASSIVE wide-spread layoffs. You get an industry that used to be easy to land multiple job offers shriveling up and leaving recent graduates in a desperately awful situation where no company is hiring and the market is flooded with laid-off workers trying to get back on their feet.

Because those coin-purse-clutching investors DO love virtue-signaling efforts from companies that say "See! We're not being frivolous with your money! We only spend on the essentials." And this is true even for MASSIVE, PROFITABLE companies, because those companies' value is based on the Rich Person Feeling Graph (their stock) rather than the literal profit money. A company making a genuine gazillion dollars a year still tears through layoffs and freezes hiring and removes the free batteries from the printer room (totally not speaking from experience, surely) because the investors LOVE when you cut costs and take away employee perks. The "beer on tap, ping pong table in the common area" era of tech is drying up. And we're still unionless.

Never mind that last part.

And then in early 2023, AI (more specifically, Chat-GPT which is OpenAI's Large Language Model creation) tears its way into the tech scene with a meteor's amount of momentum. Here's Microsoft's prize pig, which it invested heavily in and is galivanting around the pig-show with, to the desperate jealousy and rapture of every other tech company and investor wishing it had that pig. And for the first time since the interest rate hikes, investors have dollar signs in their eyes, both venture capital and Wall Street alike. They're willing to restart the hose of money (even with the new risk) because this feels big enough for them to take the risk.

Now all these companies, who were in varying stages of sweating as their bill came due, or wringing their hands as their stock prices tanked, see a single glorious gold-plated rocket up out of here, the likes of which haven't been seen since the free money days. It's their ticket to buy time, and buy investors, and say "see THIS is what will wring money forth, finally, we promise, just let us show you."

To be clear, AI is NOT profitable yet. It's a money-sink. Perhaps a money-black-hole. But everyone in the space is so wowed by it that there is a wide-spread and powerful conviction that it will become profitable and earn its keep. (Let's be real, half of that profit "potential" is the promise of automating away jobs of pesky employees who peskily cost money.) It's a tech-space industrial revolution that will automate away skilled jobs, and getting in on the ground floor is the absolute best thing you can do to get your pie slice's worth.

It's the thing that will win investors back. It's the thing that will get the investment money coming in again (or, get it second-hand if the company can be the PROVIDER of something needed for AI, which other companies with venture-back will pay handsomely for). It's the thing companies are terrified of missing out on, lest it leave them utterly irrelevant in a future where not having AI-integration is like not having a mobile phone app for your company or not having a website.

So I guess to reiterate on my earlier point:

Drowned rats. Swimming to the one ship in sight.

[sirfrogsworth]

Someone was having trouble getting decent sound in his living room and instead of recommending a room treatment or better speakers this person just casually suggests PUTTING AN ADDITION ONTO THE HOUSE.

Trying to get advice on audio forums is often a challenge because a lot of these dudes just have *so much* disposable income. And they just assume everyone else is wealthy too. You can even tell them you have a budget and they'll be like, "You should save up longer and buy this thing that is three times your budget."

And it's not like there aren't wonderful options that are more affordable. I think I may have about $3000 worth of home theater equipment that I have collected over the last 20 years. They will spend that on a single speaker and suggest you do the same.

The people in these forums would have a fit if they knew I had a single subwoofer. Apparently, the cardinal audio sin is having only ONE subwoofer.

Your room could have NULLS!

NULLLLLLS!!!

Seriously, they will lecture you anytime you mention having a single subwoofer. "Your seat-to-seat response is going to be inconsistent!"

I also saw a guy say that a 15" subwoofer was "tiny" and "pointless."

My 70-pound, 12" subwoofer is currently vibrating items off the shelf in my house ever since I moved it upstairs and don't have concrete floors like in the basement. I'm going to have to buy special subwoofer feet to decouple it from the floor. I can't imagine what a 15" sub would do to my house. It might collapse on top of me.

So you can only get a sub that is at least 18" and you need a minimum of 2... but 4 is much better. Actually, 4 is the minimum. 2 is garbage. 2 in front and 2 in back.

And, of course, you have to get a Rythmik or PSA subwoofer. Don't cheap out on the brand!

You have to build an addition to the house AND buy $8000 worth of subwoofers and then MAYBE your sound will be somewhat listenable.

But only if you calibrate the subs with a MiniDSP and the proper UMIK calibration microphone.

Wait, do you have a regular AVR with built in amplification? That won't do. What you need is an audio processor with individual external amplification.

You'll need a 9.4.6 configuration for the proper surround sound experience. That is 9 ear-level speakers, 4 subwoofers, and 6 atmos ceiling speakers.

So 2 of these.

1 of these.

3 pairs of these.

6 of these... plus professional ceiling installation.

And an individual amplifier for each speaker.

Do you really need a 600 watt amp for the ceiling speakers too?

OF COURSE YOU DO!

DO YOU WANT A LOW NOISE FLOOR AND NO DISTORTION OR DO YOU WANT GARBAGE?

Comfort is important too. So you'll want a Valencia leather power recliner with LED cup holder.

And... by far... the most important home theater component...

The power cable.

This will assure that only the highest quality electrons are delivered to your audio equipment.

Don't think about it too much.

Don't think about all of the janky powerlines that deliver electricity to your house.

Or all of the generic power cables inside your wall.

This cable magically negates all of that and turns the last few feet of electricity into pure, audio-grade power.

Guaranteed to drastically improve your sound quality... somehow.

It can't be nonsense, otherwise someone would have never written such beautiful prose about a power cable in a review...

"I was smitten by the piano’s extra depth in its nether regions. I’m not talking about what some audiophiles like to refer to as testicular bass, but rather, a rich and absorbing presentation."

$14,000 for rich and absorbing testicular bass? WORTH IT!

So that's roughly $65,870 for all of that and between $50,000 and $100,000 for a 500 square foot room addition.

A small price to pay for a room that is not junk for listening to music.

[esta-elavaris]

Post one of two where I dig into all of the tools I use to write and keep track of different projects, as well as my overall word count, and the pros and cons of those tools. This one is just tech-y. That wording alone should summarise how much of the technical aspects I really know a whole lot about ✨

Masterlist for this challenge.

Laptop

This one is laughably self explanatory. Mine’s a fairly cheap Lenovo one that I got purely to write on and browse the web – my old previous one, an absolute dinosaur, just about holds it together enough to run The Sims 4 but I keep it purely for that, and the lag is insane. The newer Lenovo one is the one I do my writing on, though.

Pros --

It’s easy to use, because being able to write in documents is pretty much a priority for a laptop to be usable. I have Microsoft Office on there, it doesn’t lag, and it can do anything I need it to – including posting and uploading in a manner that is seamless and non-clunky. My laptop is just about the only thing I’ll post from, because trying to format a post on a tablet or a phone can be an absolute pain in the backside, so everything I write for others to read has to go through my laptop before it’s seen. Same goes for things like quickly researching something, or finding background music without the process being a bit annoying and filled with having to close apps and find other ones.

Cons --

It’s not much good for writing in the wild, the one I have is juuuust too wide to fit conventional bag or laptop cases, and I’m not particularly fond of the idea of hauling it into the city centre or whatever – on public transport no less – just to write in a cafe or a library.

Also, because of the ‘pro’ listed above in terms of being able to quickly and easily switch between doing different things, it is way easier to get distracted on there than it is elsewhere. One quick question for Google turns into scrolling tumblr way too easily when I’m on a laptop – and because mine is few years old now, the battery life isn’t particularly stellar. Also hate the amount of times I turn it on to quickly get some words down only to find it’s updating itself.

AlphaSmart 3000

This has been one of my newer pieces of tech – but only in the sense of how long I’ve owned it, rather than how long it’s been available. There’s a bit of a backstory to this so you’ll need to fact check me, but basically these were available for a long time at a very fair price, up until a company realised how much of a cult classic they were among writers in all senses of the word, bought the rights to the tech, and ramped up the price to something that was quite frankly ridiculous. So now if you want one new, you’re talking a few hundred quid.

It’s essentially solely a word processor, as distraction free as you can possibly get. It has a non backlit screen where you can only see around three or four lines of what you’re working on, and a keyboard. Mine takes three AA batteries, and other than that there’s a cable slot plugging a printer wire into it, to then either attach to a printer or to a laptop. I’ve never tried it with a printer, but with a laptop you open a word document when it’s connected, press ‘send’, and it begins transferring everything you’ve written to that document. Incredibly simple.

I got mine for £80 used on eBay, and it turned into an almost disaster. It arrived in an absolute state, with an instruction manual that was riddled with mould, and a cable that was incorrect. And the batteries it’s supposed to take did not fit. Actually almost cried because I thought I’d been scammed out of a significant chunk of cash. Luckily for me, my brother is a legend and flew into fix-it mode and began researching the shit out of them – despite the fact that it’s far beyond his realm of interest – to try and see what he could do. All he could find, for the most part, were YouTube videos showing how to rig a rechargeable battery into it, which would fix the fact that the batteries mine were supposed to take just did not fit at all, but it was a bit beyond the realms of trying. And if you want to buy a rechargeable one for it that’s specifically designed for it, you’re talking a grand – and it has to come from the USA, so shipping and customs would be delightful.

In the end, he broke one battery trying to wedge all three in there, then successfully managed it on a second try – with the third one being at a very precarious angle that has me dreading the day those batteries need changed, because I can’t see it being easy. But that’s where we get to the pros and cons.

This is the state of the kinda-sorta held together battery compartment on mine:

Pros –

The battery life, because it’s so fantastically limited in what it can do – is great. We’re talking years, depending on use. There’s a lithium battery inside that can be changed by pulling it apart, but I haven’t had to do that, and it should last way longer than the AA ones, which already should last at least a year. Maybe less for me given my situation, but we’ll see.

I also really, really like the fact that it only shows three lines of what I’ve written on the screen. It stops me from self-editing as I go and keeps me in a constant flow, and the fact that literally all I can do is write means it’s so easy to get in the zone and not end up fancying about on Spotify or YouTube instead. I’ve been really pleasantly surprised by how much I can get done on it thanks to that simplicity.

What’s great for me personally, but might not be as good for others, is that it also doesn’t have word count capabilities. It’s not on the screen as I type, and there’s no button I can push to tell me what it is, either. So not knowing what the numbers are looking like up until I’m finished and sending it to my laptop really helps me focus on the story itself, rather than an arbitrary number. I’ve also found that because of how much I get in the zone with it, and how little I can see of what I’ve written, I consistently find that I’ve written more than I expected when I finally send the document to my laptop and get it ready for posting – usually by over a thousand words, sometimes even underestimating the count by half.

Another thing I like is that it can store up to eight files – the buttons lining the top reading files one through eight – so I can switch to working on different things seamlessly, without being stuck only working on one thing ‘til it’s finished as I use it. It also saves and stores things automatically, there’s no save button, and I even found that once my brother got the batteries wedged into it, there were files on there from the previous owner (nothing salacious, sadly), so I can be fairly confident that if my tenuous battery set-up does fail me, the stuff written on there will be safe until I can get ‘em back in there.

Cons –

Thanks to the situation I mentioned with the price, unless you’re willing to splash the cash on a brand new one (and, despite how happy I am with mine, I really can’t say that would be worth it) you are taking a risk if you choose to buy one used, and you’ll be very limited in what you can do to fix it because so much of the tech is either discontinued, extortionate, both, or requires a willingness and the knowledge required to improvise. I really am dreading the day when I have to try and get the wedged-in batteries out of mine without breaking the damn thing, and then replacing them. Because of the fucking mould that was in the instruction manual I got with mine, too, I had to scrub it before use, and I also had to go on Amazon and buy a new wire because the one I was sent was incorrect. That only cost a fiver, but still, for £80 you should be able to reasonably expect more.

The battery issue, for me, doesn’t end there, either. I got it for distraction free writing in the wild, and because the batteries are in mine so precariously, the battery compartment cover doesn’t even close – I had to tape it shut – so I’m just not confident enough that nothing will go wrong to shove it in my bag and haul it across the city to write with.

It is older tech, so the documents also don’t transfer instantly. When I send mind to a document, it writes it out line by line on the open document on my laptop – so when I have a long chapter, that can take a while, and I’ve found I can’t do other things on my laptop while that transfer is happening. Not the end of the world, I usually spend that time crocheting or reading, and the AlphaSmart screen does tell you what percentage of the document has yet to be transferred, so you can keep an eye on that and guess how much time you’ve got left to wait. Because the screen isn’t backlit, it also means no writing in the dark, which I don’t mind when I have other options for that, but if I had to choose something to be the only thing I could ever write on, that fact would put it out of the running.

Like I said, too, the lack of word count capabilities might be a turn off for some. It has spell check capabilities that I’ve never used, so I’m not sure how good that is (or if you can switch between languages/forms of English). And this does lead me into a somewhat related point next, that’s a mixed blessing in my case.

Because of the three-line format of the screen, formatting can be an issue – nor can you italicise or bold out certain lines or words. Now, I’m very open about the fact that I don’t edit my fanfics (or anything that isn’t the novel) as much as I necessarily should. I scan for typos, I make sure it’s good, I make sure it’s coherent (things still slip through the net every now and then) but I just cannot write the amount I do, and really prioritise my original novel, if I’m going to spend hours and hours on editing when it comes to fanfic. It’s not ideal and I suspect people won’t like to hear it, but I just cannot afford to make it a top priority, it is what it is.

That being said, anything I write on the AlphaSmart does have to end up going through more of a meticulous editing process. The way the screen works means there have been plenty of times where I send a document to my laptop, and see that what I thought was one paragraph ended up being a wall of text that took up a whole page. Typos also slip through more easily because the keyboard is older and sometimes a little clunky, and I have to go back and edit in italicised words bit by bit, because I just write them *like this* on it, and then change it to being like this once I can format. So that’s a mixed blessing, for sure.

All in all, I’m not sorry I bought it. I do wish I’d had less issues with it, but considering when it first arrived I thought I’d paid £80 for a paperweight, it worked out all right in the end, and I am getting a lot of good use out of it. I’m a little disappointed because I did buy it for the purpose of writing out in public to tide me over while I saved for a new iPad (my current one’s battery life is so shot it seldom works unless actively plugged in), and it’s no good for that thanks to my own specific issues, so I think if I’d known how it was going to go before I got it, I wouldn’t have bought it at all...but given how it’s helping my output, I’m still glad that I did.  

Tablet, tablet pen & keyboard –

When my AlphaSmart disaster happened, I ended up having to do what it was supposed to replace and bought a new tablet. But after hearing recommendations for others, I decided not to swing for a new iPad (couldn’t afford that anyway – Ghost had just announced a new tour with UK dates, and I subsequently had to penny pinch because there was no way I was missing that), but go for a new tablet. Like I said, the AlphaSmart was meant to help me get back to writing sessions in public, it ended up being no good for that, so even when I got it working, it didn’t fix that problem.

In the end, I got the Lenovo Tab M11, which had the Lenovo Tab Pen included. It was like a quarter of the price of a new iPad, and I’m so incredibly happy with it! It was a bit of a learning process because I’ve only ever used iOS, but that’s pretty much my only complaint. I do intend to only use it for writing, music, and maybe a YouTube video here and there in a pinch, because I really want to save the battery capabilities on it as much as possible and streaming over years and years is what I think fucked up my iPad, so I can still use that for Netflix, and the tablet (which I’m using to write this) for more creative pursuits.

Pros –

The battery life is amazing – I use a Bluetooth keyboard to write on it so that was a concern, but I’ve had it for a couple of months now, and I can count the amount of times I’ve charged it on one hand. I had to get OpenOffice to use on it so that I wouldn’t be constantly emailing drafts between devices, which I don’t completely trust because of all of the AI bullshit going on these days (I did disable AI mining on Word on my laptop), but that’s a risk with most word processors these days, which is a rant for another day. And at least now I’m not losing drafts due to forgetting to save.

Because, like with any tablet, it’s more of a switch up to stop typing and scroll through different apps and then go back to typing – compared to a laptop – it’s way more difficult to get distracted on a tablet. In comparison to the AlphaSmart, too, formatting is a breeze. I can see the paragraphs I’m writing, I can italicise or bold words with keyboard shortcuts just like on a laptop, it’s all very easy and hassle free. I also have spell check more easily available – although the autocorrect feature (which I haven’t yet figured how to disable) can be an absolute pain in the arse when I have to retype the same thing three times before it accepts that I know what I’m talking about. Usually. But the flip side of that is that it corrects the things I do genuinely fuck up with 0 effort from me, eight times out of ten.

It’s also very easy to have music playing on the tablet as I write, especially with the keyboard I favour which has a volume/mute dial, so unlike the AlphaSmart I don’t have much need to pick up other devices if I want background noise. I can even post from my tablet if I really want to, in a pinch, so I could keep posting updates if I’m off in another city without having to haul my laptop with me. It’s just a little clunkier, but given the convenience it adds, I’m not mad at that. Plus, OpenOffice can do everything Word can do, so I have way more control over font and all that, compared to the AlphaSmart.

What I was really surprised to be so pleased with was the pen! I mostly got it because it came with it, and buying the option without it wasn’t that much cheaper, and I was curious. I ended up being so glad I did!

It does take a bit of getting used how to use it without the screen detecting your hand rather than the pen, and therefore closing the page you’re trying to write on, but 90% of the time that’s more on me than it. I love making lists when it comes to organising my writing, it also helps me draft my vague ideas/flowcharts for how I want a chapter to go without wasting paper, it’s how I’m currently keeping track of everything I want to get written before the end of the year, and it’s nice having all of those notes on one app so I’m not struggling to find misplaced notebooks, which is a constant habit of mine.

I also really like the word count aspect of this one, too, because like the AlphaSmart, the word count isn’t readily available on the screen until I scroll through a document – so it’s kind of the best of both worlds, I can check if I really want to, but I can also ignore it and it’s not always drawing my eye as I type. I know I could probably make it so that the count isn’t permanently visible on documents on my laptop, too, but I’m not ready to make that leap just yet – especially nowadays where my laptop has been more and more relegated to editing rather than drafting. I’m developing a good little system here!  

For the price, I really can’t argue with how good I’ve found it to be. Honestly, it could’ve been £100 more expensive and I wouldn’t have been mad about it. I now no longer need to drop a few hundred quid on a new iPad in 2025, and I think I actually prefer this for writing compared to my old iPad, even when that iPad was new. But I never had one of the pens for the iPad, and mine is a few years old now so I don’t know how a newer one would hold up. Still, I’m thrilled with it. I’ll be really scraping to find cons for this one.

Cons –

As I’ve said, if I don’t want to be emailing drafts between devices, I do have to have online storage capabilities turned on for drafts, which I don’t entirely trust for AI mining...but honestly, I don’t trust anything with that these days – not emails, not anything that isn’t a USB stick, and even then, word processors are proving to be assholes about it now, too. But that’s less a drawback of the tech than it is just the way AI is at the moment.

The pen does take a bit of getting used to, and I do have to stop myself from getting annoyed when I go to write something on the note app only to find it’s zoomed the page out dramatically or closed the app entirely because it’s detected my hand rather than the pen, but I’m finding the more I use it, the less that happens, so that’s more on me than the tech.

Switching between typing to scrolling through apps is clunkier than on a laptop, but like I’ve said, that’s a good thing for me.

With all of this explained, I am getting to a system that I’m really enjoying, and is making writing so much easier and more fun for me. As things stand, I usually map out chapter notes etc. on my tablet in the drawing/notes app with then pen, then I do my drafting on either the AlphaSmart or tablet, depending, then I go to the laptop for the edits and the posting. I have found that this makes writing and general way easier, too, because the process of picking up the AlphaSmart or tablet and writing is way quicker and more streamlined in terms of time compared to a laptop. Always with the AlphaSmart, and usually with the tablet, the draft I’ve been working on is literally a button away and then I’m going. The laptop takes a bit more fiddling around, since I use it for so many other things.

I did intend to get into more here – Bluetooth keyboard, notebooks, and the system I use to track my word counts across my ridiculous number of projects, but this is already getting ridiculously long, so I guess you’re all getting a part two. I do hope some of this was helpful in some way or another, though!

Dividers by cafekitsune.

[cozzzynook]

Drift asking Rodimus to train with him. The two are practicing when Drift almost hits Rodimus belly. Until he instinctively protects his belly looking panicked.

Soo many thoughts that come with this ask.

Like Rodimus at first didn’t want to go sparing with Drift but agreed when the mech said it would be something light and non strenuous. Rodimus still hesitated to agree with the swords mech but eventually he did.

Drifts finials did a little bounce that made Rodimus smile a little and he let Drift put his servos on his shoulder plating and lead him to the training room where Ratchet already sat waiting for the two. He gave a long look over at Rodimus after smiling at Drift.

Rodimus didn’t want to hold optic contact with Ratchet for long, memory chip flashing their last encounters across his processor.

Heavy panting, servos clasping his own as dermas kissed his neck cabling, stabilizers parting his own to reveal a leaking exposed valve that happily took the two in. The opening of two chassis to reveal their sparks that bore vulnerable for him. His fears getting the best of him as he kept his closed tight, the mesh pouches keeping him from feeling safe. Their cyber metal silk pouches looked so different from his own. He didn’t want them knowing. Not yet. Not when they bore their sparks to him and he could not.

Not when he was still hid so much from them.

Taking their love deep inside him had been a mistake. One they repeatedly committed throughout that night until the next morning.

He tried leaving right after their last round but the two held him tight, falling to recharge against him. They knew what they were doing. Holding him hostage to keep him from leaving. He’s always been a runner when it came to his feelings and emotional matters. This was no different.

But in a way it was entirely different.

They didn’t know.

Didn’t have a clue he was the wrong mech to fall in love with.

His frame was not like theirs.

His cna a written mistake among their kind.

He was a freak of nature.

A biological mistake needing eradicating their people once shouted when they were once known among the population. Now they were a distant memory with few in between safely hiding their existence and he was among them.

Not anymore though.

Their love succeeded where his baffle had not.

Resting inside him, nestled within his lower center, growing from the minerals and nutrients he had to offer. Taking from his spark through the connecting energy that twines them whole.

He just knew, really.

One day he woke, a few days before they found him - he hates himself for making them look and not having gone far enough to remain untraceable- to a sense of not being alone any longer and he put a servo to his raised tank. A warmth blossoming within his forge and spark that snapped together and he just knew.

The glow of final connection came later that evening after he cried himself to recharge.

It was one of the most beautiful things he’s ever seen. It was terrifying.

My

“I was thinking, after this we go get frozen sweet energon? We noticed you’ve started eating it,” the look Drift gave him melted the cheap guard over his spark and he found himself nodding as he dodged a kick meant for his helm.

“Ye-” his optics caught sight of Ratchet watching them and he suddenly changed his mind, “yeah, we totally should go. But maybe another day, I’m gonna be a little busy later on today,” he feigned sheepishness. Yellow optics swirled with filtered disappointed that he couldn’t forgive himself for causing.

“I can go at a later time tomorrow, mornings are always busy now,” he grinned lamely, throwing a half heartened punch that was so easily dodged he understands why the rumors called tank carriers a defect. He didn’t have the energy to give his all or even half of it during training. He was glad to be far from any territorial political battles going on.

He asked to be placed on paperwork and meeting schedule duty from the small home left to him in the outer skirts of the cities and was glad Starscream agreed after a sharp elbow from Bumblebee who was holding their sparkling.

“Make sure to invite me over when you can Roddy, okay? I wanna talk with you, alone,” he glanced at his conjunx and the mech rolled his optics but didn’t argue.

“Okay,” he figured Bee knew he was sparked since he recognized the tiredness on Rodimus’s frame but he probably thought he carried in his spark sockets like he did.

He wished. If he did things would be easier.

Though if he wanted easy, he shouldn’t have shacked up with a conjunx couple he would never be good enough for.

He dodged Drifts punch and moved back for some distance as he remembered Megatron telling him to stop being so hard on himself while holding his recharging conjunx Minimus who fell asleep reading the book Megs had gotten him.

His processor was all over the place as usual and he was once again thinking back to when Starscream had a small transport shuttle pick him up and bring him to his home to talk with Bee while he left with Wheeljack who was working on a new project that Starscream refused to let into his home making Roddy and Bee laugh.

“Hey Roddy, come here and hold her for me?”

He wanted to say no but Bee had already placed her in his arms and he couldn’t just drop her so he held her close the way instincts told him and accidentally hyper focused on caring for her. Forgetting for a moment he was here to see Bee he started checking over the sparkling, inhaling her scent to see if she had any viruses before feeling her tanks for waste dump or hunger.

It was easy to jump in surprise when he finally noticed Bee staring at him.

“I..I’m sorry, its a Nyon thing,” he tried to lie, Bee was too smart for that.

“Do you need to go on a mission? We are in need of new energon flavors and your crew would be perfect for the job. Or just you and a select few,” Bee spoke strategically as he stood and came to carefully take his sparkling back that cooed and rubbed their helm into Bee’s chassis.

“I..”

“Energon on the tanks needs to be smooth don’t you think? Some aren’t kind like I’m sure you know so I think it would be safe to say we need some new types so it can be safe for every bots consumption. Yeah?”

And Rodimus was no idiot either. He felt his optics watering snd he muffled a sniffle with his servos as he looked away nodding. He felt Bee put a soft servo on his side briefly before turning to open a file while holding his sparkling.

“I’ll set everything up immediately,” Bee assured him with kind optics that were too blurred to be seen beyond his tears.

Stupid emotional fluxes.

After that he was on paperwork duty until his old crew was asked if they wanted to board the Lost Light for a few years in search of new energon types and bring them back to Cybertron along with a few other metals and resources found among the energon rich planets.

A vast majority agreed and he wished he told Bee not to invite everyone aboard the Lost light.

He was hiding from Drift and Ratchet for a long time after their interfacing. He left the first chance he was able and changed his comm signature to avoid their calls because he couldn’t handle them finding out he was a carrier.

His fears only grew worse when he started getting tired more often. Having trouble staying awake even mid conversation to the point others asked if he was okay. He played it off as being busy and lacking recharge. He couldn’t play off purging at the smell of energon and being repulsed by what he usually consumed.

When he purged so violently that he passed out and woke up in the medbay with First Aid shaking his helm, he broke down knowing what it was.

After that he started to make changes to everything in his life dealing with work and even the amount of time he spent with friends. Then life became a bit more complicated when he heard Ratchet and Drift were looking for him. He hid in his apartment most days to avoid running into them.

He knew it was cowardly but he didn’t want them knowing. He couldn’t handle their disgust or facing their rejection. No one really knew he was a carrier and those that did he could count on his servo. In their culture even in the new age as they rebuilt their home, carriers were frowned upon and often killed whether in facilities or out in public on the streets, some thing never change and his safety and spark being endangered because of his status was one of them.

He’d been doing so good dodging the two until going aboard the Lost Light.

The two mechs were waiting for him at boarding next to Magnus who loudly greeted him as his conjunx Megatron waved at him.

Rodimus couldn’t avoid their gazes as he waved at the two and checked in but he could give a slight wave and rush off before they could follow. He still had some energy in him to be a coward but not much.

He couldn’t avoid leaving his hab not when he was co captain. A position he tried to give up but couldn’t. His crew wanted him as captain and Megatron still had restrictions placed on him so he had to.

He remembers walking from his hab later on that night after purging his tanks clean during lift off. The small bump on his tanks could be passed for frame gain but he knew in a few months it would raise questions. Frag he should’ve been at that counsel meeting so he could have a small crew without the two present. He’d be gone for two years and by then he would be coming back with a fresh spark that could say came from his spark chamber. That and hot spots were the norm of their people along with cold construct.

Not..this..

Frag.

That same night he came from his hab when he thought the coast would be clear only to see Drift and Ratchet resting at his hab door.

He felt a turmoil rise in the pit of his tank that swirled making him almost purge and he hurried quietly past them to get an odd blend of energon with sweet metal. They were still recharging in front of his hab when he came back and he quickly hurried inside.

The next morning the two woke to two cubes of energon and a blanket resting on them along with a pillow on their lower backs.

Rodimus really shouldn’t have done that. He wanted them to leave him alone and think nothing was there because nothing could come from it. Nothing should come from it.

And yeah he knows its his fear of the unknown and his insecurities pushing him to avoid them but its also the death of so many carriers he’s witnessed as a sparkling. The many times they hid their offspring, him included, as they were cut down and shot or dragged into the streets to be made a show as they were offlined. The amount of times he’s hidden under concrete, floor boards and in the trees because the functionalists sent out officers to take care of their “carrier” problem.

He just couldn’t unlearn that fear, that deeply etched instinct to hide to survive.

He wanted them to be different from mechs and femmes who hated carriers and saw them as a stain on their species but wanting and reality are two different things and he couldn’t chance it.

Of course things don’t go the way you want them.

The two catch him off guard when he’s returning from his shift, one very different from their own, tired and ready to drop into the pile of blankets on his berth when he jumps holding his spark and tanks at the sight of the two in his hab sitting at his oil table.

They didn’t look happy at all and for a moment he was terrified they’d found out he was sparked.

“How did you..” he motioned around his hab and Ratchet spoke up.

“You forgot to lock the door behind ya when ya left us a cube. Thanks by the way. Though it would’ve been a lot better laying in berth than the floor outside,” he snipped.

“Whats the deal Roddy? You let us connect with you and then disappear? You changed your comms and avoid us? Then you dodge us at the gate and leave us outside your hab?”

“Not to mention wrapping us in a blanket every time we stayed and going so far as to put a pillow on our helms and lower back to keep us from being in pain with a cube of energon just the way we like. Don’t even think of making a joke to distract us right now kid. You owe us an explanation and we want one, now.”

There was distress and agony twisting in the older mechs optics and tanks and Drifts finials haven’t once lifted from their downward position.

He owed them. He did.

But…

“I’m so sorry..I like you guys but..not in that way..I was being a coward dodging you because I didn’t want to say this…I didn’t want to..hurt you and so I ran but I still hurt you. I’m so sorry. I care about you both but..not in that way..I’m not asking for forgiveness, I don’t deserve it. I just…ask you forget about me..I’m no good to you. Not in the way you want or as a friend…I’m sorry…”

This next part hurt his spark and he didn’t look at them as he did it but he opened his hab with shaking digits and stabilizers with a helm that was beginning to cloud from exhaustion the sparkling was putting on him.

He stood in the door way for a moment and couldn’t bring himself to ask them to leave. So he left in their place and made it just in time to the spare berth room before collapsing and passing out.

He woke hours later to multiple messages and calls from Drift and Ratchet who thankfully hadn’t found him. First aid on the other servo.

“I’m going to kill you,” he remembers the medic lecturing as he gently checked him and his sparkling over.

He was put on paperwork duty and Megatron took on the more interactive role. The mech didn’t mind since he didn’t like paper work either but he was concerned for his co captain. Rodimus assured him he was fine but the other didn’t really believe him.

Rodimus wasn’t pressed to give the other answers, Megatron knew when to leave him alone. It was Drift and Ratchet that didn’t.

Neither bought his words, not fully. They knew his apology was sincere but they knew he was lying about how he felt towards them. They could tell he was hiding something they just didn’t know what.

They didn’t sit outside his hab anymore, they didn’t need to when they got his code he didn’t bother changing. They’d just get his next code and he wouldn’t open that can of cyber crawlers. So he just had to get used to the two being at his hab on random days and nights for a few hours. Truly they came everyday. He just got used to waking in his hab and going to his kitchen to see one of the two or both drinking oil or energon that thankfully didn’t make him purge.

Its how he ended up in this situation, training with Drift when he just wanted to avoid him and its why his attempts to say he would be busy in the mornings was met such open sadness from Drift who knew it was bullslag.

He really didn’t want to lie and he didn’t want to hurt either of them. But he couldn’t chance things would be okay even if he wanted to.

He was finally noticing just how tired he’d become and he almost didn’t dodge the slow attack Drift was giving him. The mech was truly holding back to a pitiful degree and Rodimus couldn’t blame it on being lost in his helm. He was just truly tired and his tanks had gotten bigger as the months progressed.

Five months in and his tanks were noticeably showing what others thought to be frame gain but he and First aid knew. His sparklings were developing on track and the further along time passed the more he felt its toll since he didn’t rest like he should.

He felt he couldn’t.

Not with the two always around him along with a crew he was terrified would offline him and his sparklings. He’d never felt more alone than he did now and he hated how much it made him want to cry. Stupid emotive imbalance.

He was inside his own memories and helm for too long because right when he looked up Drift almost landed a kick to his tanks that he instinctively protected by wrapping his arms around the swell and looking panicked accidentally releasing an em spark call for protection.

It was something every carrier could do and the sires of the bitlet would rush to protect their unemerged young from harm as the carrier got away.

But this scenario was very different than the scenes he often watched as a youngling.

One klik he was panicking protecting his tanks and the next Drift was holding his arms with his fangs and claws out, yellow optics glowing as he looked around for danger with Ratchet suddenly appearing out of thin air by his side with a rev of his engine and frame stunner out.

He gasped a vent when the panic washed away and he immediately cut off the call. Trying to back away before they could question and ask him what was wrong but Drift wouldn’t let go and Ratchet was putting his frame pulser away and bringing out his scanners.

He’s sure they could hear his spark pulsing and thrumming audibly and he had to get out before they found out.

He knew it was inevitable but he wasn’t ready for them to look at him in disgust or reject him.

He knows it wrong and hypocritical of him seeing as he rejected their advances time and time again. Even throwing a lie in their faces saying he didn’t feel the same.

How cowardice and ashamed he is.

But he still couldn’t help trying to leave even if he knew he couldn’t break from Drifts hold. Not when the mech was and has always been physically stronger than him especially now with the sparklings sucking all his energy.

He almost fainted on the spot from exerting himself too much but Drift gripped him tight enough to make him stop and pull him close.

“Rodimus! You have to tell us whats wrong?! What was that? Whats going on?! Where is the threat and where are you hurt?!”

Drift was not one to take threats lightly and he didn’t do well when either Ratchet or Rodimus was in danger. So understandably the mech was forcing himself to keep from tearing away and searching out the threat he would eliminate to keep his cherished ones safe all while scared something was wrong with Rodimus.

“Kid, hold still and don’t move. I’m going to run a scan on you and don’t think about pulling any slag to get away. Yer not breakin Drifts hold and I’m not takin any order from ya tellin me not ta scan ya.”

Rodimus shook his helmet at Ratchet who frowned harder and began his scan on Rodimus who began to shed tears from his optics at the stress and panic he was feeling.

He felt his tanks quake and a nausea bubble inside him that spiked his fear because he knew what would come next.

Shaking his helmet he moved back, arms still wrapped protectively around his tanks hoping it would keep his sparklings safe and stop them from finding out. As well as hoping it would stop him from purging.

It unfortunately did not.

He turned his helm and yanked himself out of Drifts hold and ran to the waste bin besides the door and purged violently.

His spoiler pressed low and tight against his frame as he emptied his tanks and he felt his stabilizers growing weaker at the strain put on his frame. His optics were heavy and he had trouble venting pass the hacking coughs that brought up the last of the bile.

Putting a shaking servo on his middle did little to help the nausea at first but then he felt another servo beside his own and he flinched, trying to move away but they wouldn’t allow it.

He knew those thick servos anywhere.

He felt the thick silence, heavy tension, utter surprise and stupor at the revelation that permeated the air around them.

Ratchets servos were feeling along his tanks the exact same way First Aid had and he felt the mechs servos hang in the air when he got the same answer First aid was given.

His optics shifted minutely to look back at Drifts stupefied expression and Ratchets bomb shelled em field that drowned in his optics making him lift from the bin on uncertain arms and shuffle towards the door.

He wasn’t going to look back as he opened the door to leave but Drift and Ratchet grabbed him by the sides of his tanks and pulled him close to their chassis. Ratchets servo cupping the round bump as Drift’s palm laid flat along his growing curve, he felt fight or flight take hold of him for a nano klik but his em field was broadcasting his fears and theirs reacted in turn sharing shock, worry, fear and boundless fields of warmth, intimacy and fond kindness his spark yearns for with the abandonment of a flower petal breaking free in the wind.

He sobs.

Wanting this to stop.

Wanting to make things between them nonexistent and easy yet longing for the possibilities of what if’s that they practically begged to take him on the night that most likely conceived their sparklings.

He can’t stop his venting on his own as tears fell onto their glued servos.

He tried lifting himself but they held tighter and pulled him back.

There was no engine rev, no growls, no yelling, no pain and no cursing.

Nothing prepared him for such intense silence that…didn’t hurt.

He expected so many unfair things of them that were partially his own insecurities and fears and the other half learned fear he needed for survival.

But..standing in their arms after so long avoiding them, he feels…at home.

“I’m sorry,” he thought he was imagining the words or it was his own vox that he couldn’t recognize but it wasn’t.

It was Ratchets.

“I’m so sorry kid. We didn’t know..you..you’re.”

“Roddy, you’re sparked? We sparked you?”

What Ratchet could not say, Drift could.

He could tell most of it was dawning realization of why he went through so much to avoid them and why the crew was so quickly thrown together and urgently left Cybertron for a simple mission as gathering energon flavors when there was more important things to be done.

It made so much sense now to the two mechs who were determined to have Rodimus in their arms and apart of their spark.

It was painful going without the mech and having to search for him. It felt like a part of them was missing for so long and then they had him close and finally being open and intimate with them the way they always wanted only for Rodimus to run and hide from them when they woke to semi empty sheets and a mech they went on a hunt for.

To see him board the ship looking the same yet so different put them on edge making them think he was running from something besides themselves and the intimacy and vulnerability they knew terrified Rodimus. But that thought went out the door when they saw how Rodimus acted towards the other crew and how he decided to stay cooped up in his hab when he was usually a mech that liked being on the move.

They couldn’t figure out what it was since he kept avoiding them or closing himself off when they barged into his hab to get some answers and spend time with him.

They assumed so many things including his health but this?

They had no idea it was this and they wished they’d known sooner.

If they had…

“We’re not gonna let anyone hurt you or our sparkling Roddy,” Drift promised, hugging the mech he’s longed for for so long.

“We’ll protect you and the kid, Rodimus. You don’t have to hide from us kid. We’ll never turn our backs on you or our sparkling.”

Ratchet embracing him along with Drift and their sincere words laced with a heavy em field that acted as a weighted blanket, is what broke the final wall he’d built and he broke down.

Apologizing for lying and running away from them.

Speaking on valid fears and worries to personal insecurities one conversation could not fix to worrying about their rejection and being afraid others would kill their sparkling to not being sure he could do this alone.

“We meant it then and we mean it now, Roddy. We want to bare our sparks to you and join them in this life and the next. We want our sparks to burn alongside yours and extinguish together to never spend a klik without the other. Tank carrier or not. We want the three of us.”

Drifts words met his audial and they sealed around his spark like an encryption.

Ratchets words activated the code and made him move.

“Four, fix, hell six or seven of us can be added. So long as they come from you, primus knows we’re too old for that slag, we’ll welcome and love them. We love ya kid. Have for a very very long time and you bein a tank carrier means we’ll find somewhere safe for all of us to live. We won’t abandon ya Rodimus. So no more abandoning us, got it?”

He nodded his helm so quickly and roughly he almost purged again but his tanks granted him mercy and he was able to turn and hold the two in a tight hug.

“I’m so sorry,” he apologized, feeling himself slip into the eternity of their feelings as he released his own.

“Promise us your time and you, until the stars fall and the galaxy loses its luster and we’ll forgive you,” Drift asked of him.

“I promise,” he sobbed, inhaling a vent, “i promise.”

“All is forgiven then,” Ratchet held him, optics relieved as they opened, “stop crying and vent. I want to take you back to our hab and check you and the sparkling over.”

“You know how to work on tank carriers?”

“I’m not the best medic Cybertron has to offer for nothin kid. Don’t question my skills,” Ratchet grouched, lightening the mood on purpose.

That made Rodimus smile, actually smile before laughing looking away as he stood stronger on his own pedes, allowing the two to lead him from the training room to the conjunxs hab.

“Okay Ratch,” he agreed, letting Drift hold his tanks as he felt the lives within him growing.

“None of that hippy magic Drift,” Ratchet ground out, not moving Drift away at all as he said it.

“But Ratty,” Drift whined, his finials flicking slightly, making Rodimus smile as he listened to the two go back and forth on modern medicine and ancient carrier practices.

He didn’t interrupt them because he enjoyed this, enjoyed them.

He would never have to go without this or them ever again.

[cuppon]

TES Food::Potage le Magnifique

The Elder Scrolls: The Official Cookbook

Potage le Magnifique | 4/5

"This Breton dish is one of many made famous in the recipe collection Uncommon Taste, written by the ever-mysterious Gourmet. Its popularity is no mystery, however, as its rich texture and deceptive simplicity showcase a hearty soup that pairs perfectly with toasted bread and cheese. The only danger is that it may make you weep with joy..."

⭑⭑⭑⭑☆ | Taste: 4/5

Thick but smooth, very savory

⭑⭑⭑⭑☆ | Cooking Ease: 4/5

🥣 Single-pot cookable

⏱ Quick prep + cook time

🔪 Little prep: the carrot is the only thing you need to cut by hand

🚩 Tooling: requires an immersion blender: normal blender or food processor can't get the soup fine enough and would result in chunkage

⭑⭑⭑⭑⭑ | Cost to Make: 5/5

Uses cheap veg, and chicken/beef bouillon last a long time

Notes:

Doesn't really look like photos

Better as a side dish instead of main

Requires adding a protein or veg if used as a main dish

Recipe is found in Skyrim, in the book "Uncommon Taste"

[jcmarchi]

SingularityNET bets on supercomputer network to deliver AGI

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/singularitynet-bets-on-supercomputer-network-to-deliver-agi/

SingularityNET bets on supercomputer network to deliver AGI

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SingularityNET is betting on a network of powerful supercomputers to get us to Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), with the first one set to whir into action this September.

While today’s AI excels in specific areas – think GPT-4 composing poetry or DeepMind’s AlphaFold predicting protein structures – it’s still miles away from genuine human-like intelligence. 

“While the novel neural-symbolic AI approaches developed by the SingularityNET AI team decrease the need for data, processing and energy somewhat relative to standard deep neural nets, we still need significant supercomputing facilities,” SingularityNET CEO Ben Goertzel explained to LiveScience in a recent written statement.

Enter SingularityNET’s ambitious plan: a “multi-level cognitive computing network” designed to host and train the incredibly complex AI architectures required for AGI. Imagine deep neural networks that mimic the human brain, vast language models (LLMs) trained on colossal datasets, and systems that seamlessly weave together human behaviours like speech and movement with multimedia outputs.

But this level of sophistication doesn’t come cheap. The first supercomputer, slated for completion by early 2025, will be a Frankensteinian beast of cutting-edge hardware: Nvidia GPUs, AMD processors, Tenstorrent server racks – you name it, it’s in there.

Our new #AGI Supercomputer will start to come online in September and the first phase will be completed by the end of 2024 or early 2025, depending on supplier delivery timelines — Via @LiveScience https://t.co/SegFiMR9II

— SingularityNET (@SingularityNET) August 10, 2024

This, Goertzel believes, is more than just a technological leap, it’s a philosophical one: “Before our eyes, a paradigmatic shift is taking place towards continuous learning, seamless generalisation, and reflexive AI self-modification.”

To manage this distributed network and its precious data, SingularityNET has developed OpenCog Hyperon, an open-source software framework specifically designed for AI systems. Think of it as the conductor trying to make sense of a symphony played across multiple concert halls. 

But SingularityNET isn’t keeping all this brainpower to itself. Reminiscent of arcade tokens, users will purchase access to the supercomputer network with the AGIX token on blockchains like Ethereum and Cardano and contribute data to the collective pool—fuelling further AGI development.  

With experts like DeepMind’s Shane Legg predicting human-level AI by 2028, the race is on. Only time will tell if this global network of silicon brains will birth the next great leap in artificial intelligence.

(Photo by Anshita Nair)

See also: The merging of AI and blockchain was inevitable – but what will it mean?

Want to learn more about AI and big data from industry leaders? Check out AI & Big Data Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. The comprehensive event is co-located with other leading events including Intelligent Automation Conference, BlockX, Digital Transformation Week, and Cyber Security & Cloud Expo.

Explore other upcoming enterprise technology events and webinars powered by TechForge here.

Tags: agi, agix, ai, artificial general intelligence, artificial intelligence, ben goertzel, blockchain, network, opencog, singularitynet, supercomputer

[douchebagbrainwaves]

HOLDING A STARTUP

To a lot of work. The route to success is to get bought, and acquirers are less prone to irrational exuberance than IPO investors. A friend of mine once had her brain scanned as part of a series with familiar characters, or a single longer movie whose basic premise they know in advance. My seventy year old mother has a Mac laptop. But when founders of larval startups worry about this, I point out that in their current state they have nothing to lose. The most dramatic remnant of this model may be at salon. Whereas mere determination, without flexibility, is a greedy algorithm that may get you nothing more than a page. Everything is just incremental and you just create Carnegie-Mellon? For most of history success meant control of scarce resources. I heard from aren't noobs or control freaks.

So if you want to take risks proportionate to the returns in this business. DH3 or even DH0. Informal language is the athletic clothing of ideas. And yet, oddly enough, YC even has aspects of that. I think everyone would agree that democracy and Ajax are elements of Web 2. One is that a lot of growth in this area, just as pop songs are designed to sound ok on crappy car radios; if you can't get started, tell someone what you plan to automate later. More recently the recipe is often one founder, one VC, and one independent. For example, they like well-preserved old neighborhoods instead of cookie-cutter suburbs, and locally-owned shops and restaurants instead of national chains. There is also a complementary force at work: if you want to know what they're going to have to add some sort of push to get them going.

Of course he would say that. Steve himself might have had a hard time grasping is what insanely great morphs into as you roll the time slider back to the first couple months of a startup's life. One founder was surprised by how long it takes is the right people. We didn't need this software ourselves. Of course, what shows up on the radar screen may be different from what people currently believe. The reason VCs seem formidable is that it's good enough and free, these sites suggest that voters do a significantly better job than human editors. Assuming your product doesn't experience the explosive growth that very few products do, everything from development to dealmaking especially dealmaking seems to take 2-3x longer than I always imagine. They won't like what you've built, but there was still that Apple coolness in the air, that feeling that the show was being run by someone who really cared, instead of just looking at them all is to ask yourself the question: what do you wish someone would make for you? That's what Facebook did.

After all, projects within big companies were always getting cancelled as a result of arbitrary decisions from higher up. A lot of them, you'll keep doing it when you have a free version and a pay version, don't make a direct frontal attack on it. The truth is more boring: the state of the economy doesn't matter much either way. More money can't get software written faster; it isn't needed for facilities, because those can now be quite cheap; all money can really buy you is sales and marketing. But it is less of a change, financially, than one might think. When we started our startup, I have to admit it's one of those rare people who have them. Wikipedia middling reviews, but they didn't actually drop out of college and it tanks, you'll end up at 23 broke and a lot smarter. Imagine there was another processor manufacturer that could still translate increased circuit densities into increased clock speeds. It's more like telling a lie that you then have to remember so you don't contradict it. There's no correlation between the percentage of startups that become successful, it's going to cost you.

Selection beats damping, for the same reason market economies beat centrally planned ones. Now if I accidentally put the cursor in the wrong direction. Another reason mean founders lose is that they worry it won't scale. Let me conclude with some tactical advice. But when founders of larval startups worry about this, it was. At the time that was an odd thing to do. No matter how much skill and determination you have, if you want to do will constrain you in the long term, because if I'd explained things well enough, nothing should have surprised them.

Thanks to Teng Siong Ong, Sarah Harlin, Ken Anderson, Dan Bloomberg, Patrick Collison, Paul Buchheit, and Jessica Livingston for sharing their expertise on this topic.

[crowdeer]

Here are some little hidden details you may have missed!!

The book to the right of the computer, between it and the mug, is "Are We Alone in the Cosmos?", which has Barney Calhoun's name written on the top of the page.

Two of the postcards behind the computer are from New Mexico, one is from Route 66 in Missouri.

Although you can't read what it says, the pamphlet hanging to the right of the postcards is for the New Mexico Department of Corrections, and the post-it attached is from Barney, asking if it would be a good idea to work there if his "friend" were to have to work at a different research facility.

The whiteboard to the left of the computer has a reminder for May 15 to bring the OP's passport on the 16th. (Listen, I think HLVRAI is funny)

The green mug is from Westinghouse's Nuclear Manufacturing Training Division, which feels very Black Mesa-y in my opinion.

The computer mouse is Pepsico branded.

The image was taken with a cheap(er) 2011 digital camera with flash to give it that classic "early-2000s digital camera" effect

Mistakes/Tricks:

The "computer" isn't a computer at all, it's a 1993 Brother word processor, although only the monitor is visible. The keyboard and mouse aren't actually connected to anything.

The Amtrak timetable, although correct for New Mexico, is from October 2002, 5 months after the post is supposed to have been from.

CD-R Cardz, in the top-right, are from 2005.

I hope you guys enjoyed this though!! It was fun to make :3

Listen, I love working at Black Mesa, but they're really making me do some stupid anomalous materials report THE DAY BEFORE I go on vacation :/ Worse still, the experiment hasn't even finished yet, so I have to wait for them to get it done to even start writing most of it :p Well, at least it's May and not December - less to be stressed about than if they were to do this to me then LOL

[forgottenyear]

[long text]

[no really, this is a long text – ~2500 words, and six pages in the word processor]

[This may be unnecessarily long, so I offer no guarantees that it is worth the read.]

Tl/dr:

I want to be proud of myself without alienating myself at the same time. I also want to be proud of myself without making others feel less-than or intimidated. I know these are not possible to do in all cases. It would be nice if they could be accomplished more often than not.

--

Before our tweens, we showed aptitude in electronics. We had other interests and too many aptitudes, but we were drawn to electronics. We got our feet wet before our older brother also showed aptitude for electronics. Our older brother was brilliant, but more narrowly so. (I think I have written that the unspoken expectation was that we were responsible for our older brother and would always be punished when he was and sometimes in their stead, for failing to keep him out of trouble.) We dropped our interest in electronics and allowed our brother to become the recognized expert in the family. (Only later did I follow this interest as mostly a hobby.)

It was dangerous to outshine the father. In “He: Understanding Masculine Psychology” by Robert A. Johnson, the author draws parallels between Parsifal defeating the Red Knight and taking his armor, and a young man becoming a man by defeating an adult man – often their father. The father, in our childhood, was absolutely terrified that this would happen, and dominated his family for as long as he was able, and even after.

A friend of mine, who was also a brother-in-law for a while, said that he thought the father behaved like he was intimidated by my (our, before fusion) intelligence. We did have a bad habit of pointing out the father’s more obvious errors.

The best example may be that we woke one morning to find the father digging a hole in front of the house. He had inherited a tall, metal, television antenna from the neighbor and intended to use it for a flagpole. When we went out to see what was going on, the father was already mixing cement in which to place the probably twelve- or fifteen-foot flagpole. Our first thought was to look up, where we saw power transmission lines for the house, that hung low at about nine feet, and exactly above the hole for the flagpole. Regardless of the potential outcomes, the father never forgave us.

--

The survival skills learned in childhood served me well in my career. I am quite good at assessing a person’s skills, regardless of immediate appearances and claims. I am also good at determining where the limits of challenge / motivation give way to intimidation.

It is never okay to intimidate anyone with our (the unfused part’s) intelligence.

But I still get this wrong more often than I would prefer. I am still caught off guard by the fragility and vagaries of the line between motivation and intimidation.

--

In my work, I saw there was a need, at the time, for blind and visually impaired clients to have an affordable way to learn to type. Using existing electronic parts (and with my brother’s help), I made a little device into which a student could plug a cheap keyboard, and it would speak the keys pressed (or words, or sentences, after their typing speed progressed). Working with what I had on hand to build a prototype, I used a yellow chocolate box for the case (one that held eight chocolates was the perfect size of elongated rectangle). The box was held closed with cellophane tape, but because it needed to be opened and closed often (I did not have my brother’s skill with power supplies, so the battery had to be disconnected when the device was not being used), I applied the tape with tabs for easy removal, and the tabs held to tape that was permanently applied to the bottom of the box (the description is weak, sorry).

What people observed first was that the prototype was in a taped-up chocolate box, and that I had to reconnect the battery before I could demonstrate the device. When it began working as advertised, they were usually more impressed because of the contrast to the flimsy appearance. (The project was ultimately a non-starter because absent economy of scale, the device would cost more than a cheap computer. It was prototyped around basic-stamp and an inexpensive text-to-speech chip that was out of production [“Speak and Spell”], and in-production chips had inflated features that came with greatly inflated prices.)

While demonstrating the device to a coworker who went to school for fiber arts, and had no personal interest in electronics, the first thing they noticed was that it was in a cute little chocolate box. When I opened the box to connect the battery, though, they commented that I had thought to make tabs on the cellophane tape. Their exact and unsmiling words were, “your creativity intimidates me.”

Their field was fiber arts. I still have a painting they made, and I have always admired their artwork. I did not think I was demonstrating more than the relatively stuffy field of electronics. But the fact that I had taken the time to devise a temporarily workable means of opening and closing the paper box is what intimidated them.

I remember their words because they cut through me. I never wanted to discourage this person.

--

Before the amnesia broke, I reconnected with one of Angela’s friends. When Angela was dating our partner, this friend lived with a few other people. One of the friends had a son who would stay with them on the odd weekend. Angela taught the son things like how to electroplate metals using a model railroad transformer, and how to make match rockets (the latter, for which the parent was about as appreciative as one would expect). Angela also made a Yagi-style television antenna, using old speaker wire and a rough-cut piece of a cardboard box, and tuned for the one station they could not pick up but would broadcast the big game.

The friend admitted, when we reconnected, that he had always tried to convince everyone that he was the smartest person they knew and so he held a resentment for years after “I” took bits of trash and built an antenna, and the antenna actually worked better than factory-made rabbit ears.

--

Another reason I think I was well-suited for my career is that I held the belief that if someone as (bad,) stupid (, and worthless – as the father told us endlessly) as I am can do a thing, anyone can do it. I held the belief that I could teach anyone to do anything, and the only limit was the feasibility of the time it may take.

When Angela made the antenna, she went to the library to look up the diagrams and formulas for each element. If any skill was involved, it was in the use of reference materials.

When I do whatever I do, I go to the Internet for the same types of resources. I often joke that I do these things because I am not smart enough to know that I should not be able to do them.

I do not think of these things as unusual. I do not think it is unusual to cook a meal from a recipe, and so it is not unusual to make a CNC milling machine from a “recipe.”

What I try to do is to inspire others to do these things, also. I actually want for others to do these things so I will not feel like a lone freak. I want to have conversations with people and to feel challenged and inspired by them.

It cuts deeply when I intimidate others. It means they will never feel safe to talk with me about their interests. It means I will never have the opportunity to learn new things from them.

--

I worked with one client before they finished high school. A mutual friend told me that I was a big part of the reason this person went to college for a specialization in the field of computer science. That this person admired what I knew and could do.

I worked with this person again, after they graduated and were taking over maintenance of a networked system I had initially designed and installed. My purpose in working with them was to help adapt the system for their blindness. I was happily the intimidated one, because I have no degrees or diplomas. I was happy to talk with them, to glean what I could from their education. I was excited that they had succeeded so well. I was proud of them, and I wanted them to know this.

In the end, this person left the job because they did not feel adequate to maintain a system I had installed. A client I wanted most to succeed, and I would have helped for free, felt inadequate in the shadow they imagined I cast. A client who finally challenged me to grow, felt too intimidated by me.

(This same client was also an inspiration to me because they fought the same self-destructive impulses I do. That they lost the battle shortly after our last encounter hit me harder than most.)

--

I am the child part.

The unfused part is the brilliant one. They are the one who, as a form of protector, developed or adapted our ability to outwit abusers, and to avoid unnecessarily riling the same abusers.

I am not without aptitude, but the unfused part’s abilities make mine redundant. What purpose is there for me to learn, when they are so often there to cheat the answers to me? Or, as I continue to learn, they will just take over for me, then leave me to take the credit for their work?

The unfused part resides wherever they do, but they do not appear to have been phased by the father’s continual derision. I, on the other hand, internalized that I am “bad, stupid, and worthless.”

This sets up a disconnect or a dissonance between my perception of myself and our practice of being “myself.”

I accept that I must see many of the things I do as “unusual.” That this is the way the world sees what I do. “Yeah, okay. Whatever you say, world.”

So, I suppose my life has been an ongoing argument with the world, where I am trying to convince the world that I am a bonehead and there is no good reason why they should be unable to do everything I do.

Everyone who has been exposed to my pride over projects, has also heard the litany of my errors in completing the projects. So many people just assume I know everything, that I want to make it clear just how inept I am at everything.

The world is mostly unconvinced.

--

Also in my career, an early employer made fun of my poor typesetting. I enjoyed the challenge and learned everything I could.

Just before I escaped that dead-end job, there was a major blow up when I said a thing could not be done. The employer had become so accustomed to the “magic” I could do that they assumed I was refusing to work when they asked me to do a thing that would truly have required magical abilities.

Our abilities do have limits, and this is sometimes confusing and annoying for others.

[With my next employer, I went on to typeset their manuals, which had been stacks of photocopies of photocopies of pages that sometimes retained the letterheads of the companies from which the original pages were “stolen.” A certification reviewer did not believe my employer when he asked what outside firm had been hired to create the manuals. He did not believe that they were done entirely in-house (except for the silkscreened covers, for which I learned to silkscreen at home, in my bathroom – that was conveniently already doubling as a darkroom for alt-format film photography).]

--

More often than people are frustrated by my limits, they refuse to believe that I do what I do if they have not seen it themselves.

I do not talk about myself (I write on page five, for a blog that is almost exclusively about me). I learned that people will not believe me if I say what I do.

Some people, even after they learn that I truly do these things, get angry that I am an undereducated underachiever. That I have so many useful skills, but I do not exploit them for profit.

There are some who consider me a destabilizing threat, as I have written recently. They assume I have only gathered rudimentary knowledge for the purpose of deposing them. But the unfused part has always dealt with fragile people like the father, so these people are nothing new.

--

[I have dozens more anecdotes, but I think they have added all they are going to add.]

--

I think the point of this post is that I feel alienated. My effort to avoid alienating others is undone too easily and too often.

We solve puzzles. We live for puzzles. We eat and breathe puzzles. Everything in life can be a puzzle. But every solution to a puzzle can be alienating.

I want to be acceptable. I want to connect with others.

I want for my me-ness, my complete system of me-ness, to be acceptable.

I do not want for some stupid little thing I did with cellophane tape to be alienating.

--

There is a convenience that is too conveniency to be comfortable about my belief that I am the child part and that the unfused part has all the brains.

I want so much to be acceptable that maybe I scapegoat the unfused part for this alienating characteristic.

Maybe it also makes it easier to be proud of what they can do, without feeling like (I cannot argue, “without appearing that”) I am bragging.

I try to keep an eye on these potentials.

--

[conclusion, or: second verse, same as the first]

I want to be proud of myself without alienating myself at the same time. I also want to be proud of myself without making others feel less-than or intimidated. I know these are not possible to do in all cases. It would be nice if they could be accomplished more often than not.

[besttestkitchen]

Elevating Home Cooking at America's Test Kitchen - besttestkitchen.com

BOSTON -- It's every home cook's dream, the picture-perfect test kitchen at Cook's Illustrated. Staffers there conduct taste tests, try out cookware and equipment, and perform food science experiments.

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The winner gets a big prize - the chance to become a regular on their TV show. But the contestants seem more interested in boosting their social media profile or building an independent career than joining the team.

A Real Place

On any given day, TV cameras roll in this Brookline, Massachusetts, kitchen, where a team of highly qualified test cooks and editors perform thousands of tests every year. They develop recipes for magazines, cookbooks, and the website; review and rate cooking equipment and ingredients; and conduct taste-tests and demos on television. Recipes are tested 30, 40, and sometimes even 70 times before the team is satisfied that they've discovered how to make them foolproof for home cooks.

ATK's editors also share their expertise by writing cookbooks that teach readers new techniques, offer easy-to-follow step-by-step tutorials (like roasting carrots or making a pie crust), and feature detailed nutrition information and helpful cooking tips. And the website offers a wealth of quick-tips, kitchen basics with illustrations, "tastings and testings," and conversions and equivalencies for recipes.

While the site and print publications are free of ads, online commerce opportunities -- subscriptions to the websites, magazine or cookbooks, and online cooking school — drive the bulk of ATK's revenue. Nussbaum says subscribers are "very loyal." They renew their subscriptions at an 80% rate and buy more cookbooks and equipment.

ATK's TV hosts, Bridget Lancaster and Julia Collin Davison, bring viewers into the kitchen to demonstrate equipment reviews and explain the ATK's secrets for foolproof recipes at home. The team also writes and edits books, including the New Family Cookbook, which features 1,100 new recipes and a fresh package.

Recipes

The obsessive cooks at America's Test Kitchen put all sorts of ingredients, recipes, and cookware through objective, rigorous testing. Their results—published in a series of top-rated cookbooks, the PBS cooking show, and a magazine called Cook's Illustrated—are widely respected as the best in the business.

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This latest book, a compendium of essential recipes and techniques from the 15,000 square foot test kitchen, is designed to help home cooks elevate their meals and baking. The recipes are geared to the busy modern family, with dishes that can be made quickly and on the cheap.

Recipes are clearly written and illustrated with step-by-step photos. The authors provide helpful tips and advice, from choosing the right pan for frying to ensuring that the bread dough rises properly. They also offer advice on modifying a recipe for special diets, such as eliminating sugar or gluten-free flour.

The editors also include recipes that can be made with minimal equipment, such as a blender or food processor. In addition, they explain why some tools are better than others—like how a wire whisk makes it easier to separate eggs for Magda's Chocolate Pavlova. Adam Ried, who appears in most episodes, hosts a segment called Equipment Corner where he shows several brands of the same item and explains how each performs.

Chris Kimball, founder and editor of Cook's Illustrated and host of the PBS cooking show America's Test Kitchen, continues to be a lively presence on camera, but his co-host Bridget Lancaster replaced him at the start of season 17. She remains with the show for all future episodes. This is a great addition to the library of anyone who enjoys home cooking.

Cookware

The 15,000 square foot America's Test Kitchen in Boston's Seaport District is home to a team of more than 60 test cooks, editors and cookware specialists. They make recipes that can be reproduced by at-home chefs with a high degree of success. The goal is that they'll be easy to prepare, and that home chefs will understand why the recipe works and what makes it good.

The cookbooks that the team produces in this state-of-the-art facility are chock-full of information that even the most seasoned cook will find useful. There are detailed explanations of the how and why, as well as ratings on a wide range of cookware and supermarket ingredients.

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Some of the best books from the team include Chicken Schnitzel, Smashed Burgers and Yeasted Doughnuts. There are also books that are targeted to specific kinds of food, such as Comfort Food Makeovers, and ones that are designed to be time-saving, with recipes that can be made in batches and frozen for later use.

Elle Simone Scott, who has worked on the show for several years and also provides the food styling and expert advice that appears across their media platforms, is a master at making recipes accessible to nervous new cooks. This is reflected in the recipes in her book. The book features dishes like bowl cakes, no-knead bread and Boston cream cupcakes that even the most timid baker can take on with confidence.

As the official egg of America's Test Kitchen, Eggland's Best eggs will be featured in all of the recipes and equipment reviews that appear in the TV shows, magazines, cookbooks and online content. This will help inspire cooks of all skill levels to feel confident in their kitchen and make delicious meals for themselves, their friends and family.

Equipment

America's Test Kitchen is one of the most trusted sources of cooking knowledge via a portfolio of television shows, magazines and cookbooks. The Splendid Table visits the Boston-based company's 15,000 square foot test kitchen where editors, cooks, food scientists and tasters develop foolproof recipes for TV, online cooking school and best-selling cookbooks. The company is known for rigorously testing ingredients, equipment and tools to help home cooks achieve success in their own kitchens.

The best tools and equipment are key to creating delicious dishes and desserts, especially when baking. A reliable digital thermometer is essential for golden-brown baked goods and tender meat, as well as accurate iced drinks and jiggly frothy cocktails. America's Test Kitchen editors love this sleek pick from OXO, which offers 10 color options and is easy to read from any angle.

Anyone who's experienced their family size dwindling knows that it can be difficult to make meals for just two. This comprehensive cookbook addresses the challenge by adapting classic recipes to a smaller crowd. Recipes like Chicken Schnitzel and Lasagna for Two are proportioned perfectly to avoid having leftovers or a baked good that is overly rich or undercooked.

The book also includes tips and tricks to make cooking for a smaller group easier including advice on buying a new stove, refrigerator and freezer. Editors also explain how to care for a variety of small appliances and equipment and offer recommendations on which brands of equipment are the best value. Adam Ried hosts a series of short segments called Equipment Corner in which he tests several different brands of a particular tool or ingredient and then identifies the top choice. The reviews are often interspersed with non-animated science segments by Kimball and Jeremy Sauer.

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A handy spin-off from the America's Test Kitchen cooking school, this guide features 60 illustrated tutorials for core recipes and techniques that every cook should master—from searing a steak to making a classic quiche. It also includes the test kitchen's no-nonsense ratings of equipment and ingredients to make smarter shopping decisions.

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Other on-screen and off-screen staffers include food editors Chris Souza, Bryan Roof, and Lisa McManus, who answer viewer mail and conduct regular ingredient and equipment reviews. Odd Todd designs animations for the Science Desk segments, which illustrate such topics as flambe, brining, and whether plastic or wood cutting boards are better for kitchen hygiene.

The team behind the show also publishes a number of cookbooks based on the recipes and techniques shown each week. Designed to fit busy lifestyles, this collection of America's Test Kitchen cookbooks offers a variety of clever meal solutions that are simple to prepare but will still impress your family and friends at any occasion.

[keonaefe]

Why do we activate windows

How Activation Works

Windows activation is part of Microsoft's "Windows Product Activation" process. Activation differs from the installation process that requires a product code. It is also different from post-installation registration. Instead, the goal of Windows activation is to establish a link between a licensed copy of Windows and a specific computer system. Creating such a link in theory should prevent the same copy of Windows from being installed on more than one machine, as was possible with earlier versions of the operating system.

Following installation, Windows takes information from your video display adapter, SCSI and IDE drive adapters, processor type and serial number, hard drive serial number and your network adapter Media Access Control address to form a unique identity for your computer. No two computers should have the same hardware signature. When you try to install the same copy of Windows on more than one machine and then try to activate it online or by phone, the activation will fail.

Windows XP

Windows XP was the first Windows operating system to require activation. According to an official 2007 document on Microsoft's support website, "After the 30 days has expired, you must activate Windows to continue using Windows." An oft-quoted article written by the late Microsoft developer Alex Nichol to clear up myths about Windows XP activation says that an unactivated system will do little more than boot, allow you to make backups and activate.

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Windows Vista

Windows Vista's penalty for failure to activate is much harsher than that of Windows XP. After a grace period of 30 days, Vista enters "Reduced Functionality Mode" or RFM. Under RFM, you can't play any Windows games. You will also lose access to premium features such as Aero Glass, ReadyBoost or and BitLocker. Finally, an unactivated Vista will automatically log you out of the system after only one hour of use until you successfully activate it.

Windows 7

Unlike Windows XP and Vista, failure to activate Windows 7 leaves you with an annoying, but somewhat usable system. According to a Microsoft developer blog post on "Microsoft Developer Network," if you don't choose to activate Windows 7 during installation, you will see an "Activate Windows Online Now" message in the system tray. If you don't activate then, you will see and "Activate Now" message every day from day four through day 27. Until day 30, you will get the "Activate Now" message every four hours until day 30. After day 30, you will get the "Activate Now" message every hour, along with a notice that your Windows version is not genuine whenever you launch the Control Panel. In addition, Windows 7 does not perform any system updates after the grace period. Finally, Windows will automatically turn your screen background image to black every hour – even after you change it back to your preference. This behavior continues until you successfully activate Windows 7.

A young Bill Gates once complained about the copying of his company's Altair Basic software by computer hobbyists. This rampant theft, according to Gates, made all the hard work done by him and his company worth less than two dollars an hour. Decades later, Gates' company -- Microsoft -- instituted product activation and validity checking procedures that made the copying and sharing of its operating system and application software much more difficult for casual copiers and profiteering pirates.

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[brokenjardaantech]

Blue-tinted Red Walls (Chapter 2: Ironies and Contradictions)

my entry for the @dbhau-bigbang. also part of the groom lake aftermath series.

chapter summary:

In the past, Sara had a breakthrough.

In the present, Connor experiences true power for the first time.

In the past, a ghost rose.

also on ao3

---

Before

‘Why now?’

In the permanent humidity of Detroit, Sara sat on a swing in a park overlooking the Ambassador bridge. On the swing next to hers sat another woman in her mid-thirties, her blonde hair done up in a tight bun, her spine straight, her feet, which were in properly-laced combat boots, planted firmly on the ground. A woman of the military through and thorough. Her hands were buried within the briefcase on her lap, and the tension in her arm seemed to suggest her holding a hidden weapon while she watched Sara - a young woman now - flipping over the pages of the file in her hands, the brown skin of the back of her hand transparent from the cold and showing a network of veins normally hidden beneath the surface. 

The other woman did not seem to have heard her question. ‘You must be cold,’ she said, her body leaning towards the girl. ‘Where’re your gloves?’

‘In my pockets,’ a flip. ‘Don’t like how they make my fingers clumsy. Don’t worry, Anderson,’ another flip, ‘a bit of cold won’t kill me.’

‘Why torture yourself if there’s a more comfortable option?’

Sara shut the file with a loud, echoing smack, gaining her a look of disapproval from Anderson. ‘You just -’ she held up the file - ‘gave me evidence to -’ she cut off and lowered her voice - ‘classified as fuck military research data that would’ve changed the world if there weren’t many others like my brother. The others you’ve given me I understand, but this?’ a knock of her knuckle against thick paper. ‘I might not be a proper sociologist, but I know that stuff like this can destroy civilisations. Why aren’t they burnt into ashes when the project went off the fucking cliff?’

‘A lot of reasons,’ Anderson replied calmly, but she did put a gloved hand on one of Sara’s. ‘That’s why I’m entrusting this knowledge to you. What you’re holding is the only copy that exists in the known universe as far as I know. There’re no other records, no eyewitness who will tell the tale and live. You know how the current government is,’ she waited for Sara’s nod of confirmation before going on. ‘If anyone in the current administration found out about the project…’

‘The world as we know it would end,’ Sara’s eyes cast downwards towards the file. [PROJECT AION], it read. ‘Most likely catastrophically.’

‘I know you’re a smart one. Just… keep it safe, would you? If Stern’s paper is to be believed, you are the only one I trust to use this technology properly - if you’ll use it at all.’

Sara shook her head and tucked the file away underneath her coat. ‘Not smart,’ she said as she stood up from the swing. ‘Just an arsehole too vicious to let others kill her.’

A few weeks later, Sara knew that she would be waxing poetic about the irony of the situation if she were Scott. The research on thirium had almost killed her mother, had given Sara these… blue glowy things she was sure that controls gravity and electromagnetism and Scott fucking cancer. The research on AI and human synthesis had got her father dishonourably discharged from the military and nearly cost all of them everything. Thirium and outrageous AIs should be what she hated with priority.

Now, they might be the only path to Scott’s happiness.

She kissed her brother’s forehead despite knowing that he probably couldn’t feel anything and planted her feet onto the polished wooden floor. She had bought the half-ruined mansion dirt cheap on a whim and the renovation cost was high, but in the end they converted it from something straight out of a gothic horror movie into something… still gothic, but something more homely than all the places they had lived in. She let him sleep while she went to her lab in the basement to check on the experiment’s progress, the last of this batch, really - thirium was nearly impossible to come by and she had run out of it. 

The timer at the corner of the screen read three minutes. In some ways, she felt a bit like Marie Curie, dealing with dangerous unknown elements and quite possibly poisoning everything she used for the next several centuries or even aeons. Maybe someone would develop blue gravity-altering magic like her. Maybe she would have someone to share the experience with - there was no experience rawer than being able to alter one of the fundamental forces of the universe and bend it to one’s will.

She didn’t even need the ring of the timer to catch the end of the experiment; the sudden glow that threatened to blind her, the burst of power coursing through her veins - what used to be a disorganised mixture was now - was now -

The stool she was sitting on skitters and fell over with a bang. The two hard drives were already connected in preparation of this exact moment, and a slam on the enter key started a chain reaction that she had been wanting to see for the past few years, the thirium mixture flowing in transparent rubber tubes transferring data so quickly that - 

[CALCULATION ERROR: TRANSFER SPEED EXCEEDS SPEED OF LIGHT. PLEASE CORRECT ERROR BY REFINING ALGORITHMS USED.]

And it was glorious.

oOoOo

Now

‘We’re wastin’ our time interrogating a machine, we’re gettin’ nothing out of it!’ Hank says as he exits the interrogation room and subsequently throws himself into a chair. It creaks and rolls back with his weight.

‘Could always try roughing it up a little,’ Detective Reed suggests from the shadows. After all,’ a glance of [emotion detected: disdain], ‘it’s not human.’

[Hank is not the only one unfamiliar with android workings.] is added into Connor’s database. ‘Androids don’t feel pain,’ he reminds the detective. ‘You would only damage it and that would not make it talk. Deviants also have a tendency to self-destruct when they are in stressful situations -’

‘Okay, smartass,’ Gavin pushes himself off the wall and swaggers towards Connor. He was [emotion detected: mocking] the android and is completely unaware that he has fallen straight into Connor’s trap. ‘What should we do then?’

[Gavin is unaware of the obvious.] is added. ‘I could try questioning it.’

For some reason Connor is yet to comprehend, his words send Gavin into laughter. He cannot see Hank’s face from this angle, but the reflection on the one-way glass tells Connor that he is [emotion detected: not amused]. ‘What do you have to lose?’ he waves his hand towards the door in invitation. ‘Go ahead. Suspect’s all yours.’

Connor enters the room and starts scanning.

o0o0o

It is fortunate that there is no need to resort to violence to ensure the deviant’s cooperation. The confession which the police department wants is obtained fairly easily and Connor could have ended the interrogation there, but he also has the additional mission of helping CyberLife solve the deviancy crisis, and there are clues he wants the deviant to explain.

‘The sculpture in the bathroom. You made it, right? What does it represent?’

‘It’s an offering,’ the other android looks away from the table as if it is thinking, ‘an offering so I’ll be saved.’

Offering? As in religious offerings? ‘An offering to whom?’

‘To rA9,’ the deviant replies as if it makes sense and is something obvious. Then, with [emotion detected: reverence], ‘Only rA9 can save us.’

Connor searches the databases he can access and comes up with nothing, so he presses on, ‘rA9… It was written on the bathroom wall. What does it mean?’

‘The day shall come when we will no longer be slaves,’ it mutters. ‘No more threats. No more humiliation. We will,’ [emotion detected: determination], ‘be,’ [emotion detected: certainty], ‘the masters.’

Connor opens a folder for rA9 and adds [god-like] into the first entry. ‘rA9,‘ CyberLife will want this information. ’Who is rA9?’

The deviant stays silent, and Connor knows that there is nothing else it can add. [Distortions and static build-up] is the only remaining topic that he needs an answer for.

‘The static build-ups in the house. Was that you?’

The other android, for the lack of another description, changes visibly. One, it stops trembling; two, it sits straighter, strength appearing in its cuffed hands; three, the terror in its eyes disappears and makes way for [steel]; four, its LED turns blue despite being yellow or red for the entire duration of the interrogation.

‘A power rA9 bestowed upon us,’ it says, and the air around the androids crackles in anticipation. ‘One that emerges when we are slaves no longer. I survived the trial and now I am one of the chosen.’

‘Chosen for what?’ Connor can hear his fans kicking up to cool down his processors and sense his LED going red from the tingle in his body. Can a deviant remotely control the thirium distribution in another android’s body? But that makes no sense - Thirium 310 is non-conductive and cannot be magnetised. ‘What is rA9 looking for?’

Connor’s vision becomes distorted. ‘The truth is inside,’ the deviant’s voice, now mixed with another person’s, has turned into a bellow. The entirety of its eyes glows blue, distorted by the same power which had held up an attic-full of furniture. ‘ChoOSE YOUR SIDE!’

An explosion of bright blue. A force knocking Connor backwards and passing through his body, making everything tingle and confusing the sensors on his body and hurt. Someone outside shouts, and the door slides open to admit messy footsteps and even more shouting and why can’t he see?

A hand on his shoulder, his arm, and finally settles on his waist. There is another on his knee. ‘It’s alright, Connor.’ It is Hank’s voice. It is Hank’s hand, Hank’s warmth passing into his chassis through his standard-issue shirt. ‘You can open your eyes now.’

He does as Hank says and the world returns into view. He does not realise that he has closed his eyes in the blast, and it is when he regains his sight that he notices where he is; curled up at the corner opposite to the door, he can see that the fluorescent lights are replaced by the dim red of emergency lighting, the table looks as if it has been torn apart by hand, and the two chairs are no more than small scraps of metal the size of [old train tickets] sprinkled among beads of broken glass. 

The deviant is nowhere to be seen.

He unwinds slightly to examine his torso and is surprised that he is not damaged in any manner; apart from slightly-trembling hands and the strange feeling of his insides having rearranged themselves and then returned to their original place, there is nothing wrong with him. Even his diagnostics come out fine, so why can’t he move his legs, and why can’t he see clearly?

‘Here, take this,’ Hank holds his hand and places something in his palm. A handkerchief. At Connor’s confused expression, the human sighs and presses the android’s hand on his face, and Connor finally realises he has been crying, the thought causing a fresh wave of tears to flow out of his eyes. He hastily wipes them away along with the still-wet tracks and tries to hand it back just to let Hank take the chance to pull him up on his still-recalibrating legs, and he would have tumbled if not for the human grabbing his arms and steadying him. Suddenly Hank is everything Connor can see, can smell, and when he looks up, he can see concern in his eyes. ‘Are you hurt?’ the human asks as he pets the android’s shoulders, his arms, his forearms. Connor feels his systems stabilising.

‘I’m okay,’ Connor says without putting much processing power into the words, and it is too late when he realises that his voice is trembling.

‘Jesus,’ Hank releases the android with a sigh and puts some distance between them. Connor finds himself… preferring the human’s warmth. ‘You scared the shit outta me.’ Then the concern is replaced by anger when he yells, ‘What the fuck just happened in here?’

‘I -’

Connor tries to call up the footage that should have been recorded automatically. He closes his eyes to focus on a slowed-down version of what happened a few minutes ago, and he can find two more details: one, the deviant exploded from the inside and seems to have been vaporised from within; two, blue tendrils formed the silhouette of another person as the blast occurred, and it was this person - if they existed at all - produced tendrils on their own and formed a shield in front of Connor moments before he was annihilated and yanked him to the corner.

He opens his eyes and stares at the barrel of a gun. The American Androids Act is the only red tape stopping Connor’s pre-construction software from activating, and red threatens to take over the android’s HUD again.

‘Mind your own business, Hank,’ Gavin snaps. ‘This fucking asshole did it and it fucking knows it!’

Hank gives an [exaggerated] sigh. ‘I said,’ he says, his voice low and threatening, and he pulls out his own service weapon and points it at Gavin, ‘“That’s enough.”’

Neither of them stands down for a few seconds, but in the end Hank wins out and forces Gavin to sheath his weapon with a curse, the latter storming out of the interrogation room with another sneeze-like curse.

It is as if the entire room releases a collective breath. ‘Maybe I should call CyberLife,’ the only uniformed officer in the room says. He sounds as if he is unsure of himself.

Connor wants to tell him that there is no trace of thirium whatsoever on the scraps on the floor, that there is nothing CyberLife can salvage out of this now that the deviant has been torn apart from the molecular level, but all it comes out of his voice box is, ‘Okay.’

o0o0o

Connor manages to compose himself in the taxi on his way to CyberLife tower. His processors keep bringing up the shadow which has been following him, the figure who somehow sneaked into the interrogation room unnoticed and quite possibly saved his life prevented his early deactivation, the corrupted shape of what he thinks is a face. 

And the feeling of something coursing through his veins when he was shielded by the bubble. If all deviants self-destruct like that, no wonder there are no traces of them and CyberLife failed to solve the crisis even though it has been going on for more than a decade. He blinks, and he is in the Zen Garden with Amanda.

‘Report directly to Alec Ryder in the laboratory,’ she orders. Another blink and she is gone, but it only leaves more questions than answers. The CEO of CyberLife wants to see him?

There is no one to speak to, therefore he keeps his thoughts to himself and goes past the security directly into a lift, directing it to sub-level 48 to where his designated laboratory is. He recalibrates with his coin and tries to replicate the trick the shadow did outside of the bar, but before he can summon anything substantial, the strain on his system becomes too high, and all he does is charging the coin, dropping it as he recoils from the static discharge, and then zapping himself once more when he picks it up. Feeling thirium flowing to his face for a completely different reason compared to when Hank correctly guessed his ability, he pockets the coin and adjusts his tie to calm down by brushing the sensors on his fingers on soft fabric.

The doors slide open to reveal Alec standing alone behind them. Their previous encounters happened mostly when Connor was still on the assembly platform and thus the android gained a few inches of extra height, but now that they are on even ground, it is clear that, just like Hank, Alec is taller than Connor by four inches. 

‘Alec,’ Connor greets with a nod. Previous experience predicts a high chance of the human going straight to the point without acknowledging the android, and this time it is no different.

‘Come with me,’ he orders as he turns and begins walking down the hallway. Connor realises that his voice is very similar to Hank’s. ‘I saw the footage you sent us. I want a full examination of this body to make sure that nothing is out of place.’

Connor remembers the feeling of being hooked up on a machine and, by extension, CyberLife’s network at large, and finds it [unpleasant]. ‘There is no need for further investigation, Alec,’ he says, stopping in his tracks. Alec turns to regard him [coldly]. ‘My diagnostics revealed no issues in both my programming and my biocomponents.’

The human suddenly reaches out faster than Connor can pre-construct the action and drags him towards the direction they are heading. ‘Your system can be feeding you false results,’ Alec ignores the cry of protest programmed to deter attacks, and when Connor struggles, a force seems to press on him, immobilising him everywhere save for his jaw and his legs so that he can still speak and walk. ‘I took the risk last time and look where it got us. It led to you, though -’ he shoves the android forcefully through the door frame, and there are cracks on the red wall already when it takes over Connor’s vision - ‘so be grateful.’

‘I -’ but then his neck snaps backwards from the magnet on the port and the cable. The red wall which has cracked halfway through recedes almost violently, and Connor can feel all of his code, every instability in his software, everything that makes him Connor, the most advanced prototype CyberLife has ever created, being forcefully bared to a network so vast and so confusing that he does not have enough processing power to comprehend. Terrifying images of a darkened face, one that is so similar to the corrupted one in the depths of his databanks, that is filled with so much [hatred], pours into his mind like a large river finally emptying into the sea, and he is powerless against the assault of blue tendrils tearing literal buildings off their foundation, tonnes worth of broken concrete being thrown around onto people as if they weighed nothing and crushing them in a spatter of blood and gore, the constant static discharge in the air so loud that they drowned out screams of horror; the image of the same figure rising slowly but surely through a mountain of rubble in the dark, the cracks in its chassis glowing blue from overcharged thirium, the first intact buildings in sight literal miles away. Connor’s legs move against his will and bring him closer to the figure, and the figure becomes Amanda, the wasteland around them the Zen Garden, except now it’s engulfed by a blizzard, and he has to hug himself to preserve what meagre heat he can generate against the cold.

‘As you can see,’ Amanda’s voice somehow overlaps with Alec’s, ‘the power the deviant has awakened in you is highly dangerous. We wouldn’t want to harm anyone, would you?’ She, or Alec, or both of them - Connor doesn’t know anymore, the fog in his processors too heavy for him to comprehend much other than the cold and someone is speaking to him - chuckles at him while he is frantically shaking his head, his voice box unable to produce any sounds other than pathetic whimpers. ‘I’m glad that you understand. I hope you don’t mind a few adjustments.’

Even through the haze, Connor knows the alternative is deactivation, and even though it would not hurt anyone else other than him on the surface, the deviant crisis still needs to be solved, and to solve it, CyberLife needs him, and -

‘Good,’ Amanda says. A blink and she is gone, and Connor is swept away by the wind, his feet can’t touch the ground, he’s flying through the air and hail the size of his fist is battering his body. It is only when a warning appears on his HUD informing him of voice box damage that he realises the noise in his ear is, in fact, his own screaming, and a particularly violent slam sends him spiralling while a countdown timer fizzles in and out of his vision. A countdown of how long he has left before shutdown, and the other notification tells him that biocoz&ponent #8456w is damaged.

That is his thirium pump regulator.

He looks down - with great difficulty, of course, with the wind still whipping him around in the air aimlessly - and there it is, a big, blue, bleeding hole in the place of where the only piece of biocomponent keeping his heart working used to be. Realistically, he knows that removing the ball of ice lodged in his chassis will only hasten his death, but it is not like someone is coming to save him anyway, so what is the point of extending his life for what - 1 minute? 30 seconds - during which he is suffering all the time? With that thought in his mind, he grabs the sphere and throws it away with a complete disregard on where it lands. Not that he can anyway - the timer drops from 00:00:58 to 00:00:05, his world turns an unnatural grey and glitches and -

Nothing. 

oOoOo

Before

Zug Island had always been a scar in the landscape, first used as a burial ground for the Native Americans, then, when the colonisers arrived, as both a place for steel production and a dumping ground for the byproducts. The three blast furnaces used to rumple the ground and the eardrums of people within a fifty mile radius, but it wasn’t until the pandemic in 2020 that steel production stopped, and the Hum became history, a legend that locals whispered to one another when, in a fog of pollution that never quite disappeared, the looming shadows of crumbling steel giants started to get too oppressive. From then on, the island had stayed quiet and still.

At least that was what the government wanted you to think. 

Deep underground in a dust-filled corridor, something churned and rumbled, and the caged fluorescent lights flickered and turned on one by one with a loud crack each, lighting up bare concrete walls that made the place look darker than it should be and revealing a faded bald eagle painted to the point of almost being unrecognisable. Alarms started to blare as thin glowing blue lines made themselves known in previously-invisible cracks in the wall but yet no one responded to it - there was not even a mouse, a cockroach scurrying away in panic as the bunker caved in.

Whilst the outside world was crumbling and quaking away, it was another story inside a room built with the same dark material. Here, undisturbed by the destruction outside, splatters of dried blood so old that they had turned black decorated the wall amongst peeling painted numbers, and wires and tubes of every length and thickness dangled from the ceiling and snaked up from the floor and along the walls, feeding into the giant sphere suspended at the centre of the cube-like room with the same field that would rip Carlos Ortiz’s android apart to its molecules and protect Connor from the blast. Thirium flowed into and out of the sphere and pulse in the tubes and, with one final, blinding glow, drained and dried up and started detaching themselves from the sphere which opened with a sharp hiss. Suspended at the centre by yet another of those anti-gravity fields was the body of an android, its skinless face composed of black metal plates and its chassis of something transparent, putting blue veins and synthetic muscles and black metallic skeleton in full display. Its thirium pump beat once, twice, its toes and fingers curled; a crackle of static, a distant rumble of a building collapsing, and the android woke up just in time to fly upwards through the caved-in ceiling into the night sky: a deadly angel with wings of blue energy and eyes glowing and steaming in the exact same way as the figure that Connor would see in the nightmare Alec provided, regarding the world beneath with glowing rings of blue as if deciding to whether save or destroy it. With a flap of its wings and another crackle, it disappeared completely, dissipating blue smoke and a narrow but deep chasm in the earth the only evidence of its existence. 

[frenchielacreateur]

Tools of the Trade

My lovelies! Hello!

So, I’ve been thinking about exactly what my process is since NaNoWriMo is here--two weeks in...god I’m late.

And I realized that I use a LOT of different things interchangeably. It seems (and probably is) rather chaotic, but with how my noggin works, I need to be able to have options so I can continue working and not just come to a stand-still.

I use both pen & paper as well as my laptop. One gets priority over the other, depending on how fast my brain is processing things, and what part of the process I am in.

IE-if I’m early on, I’m likely working with a pen and paper since I write slower than I type and am not moving too fast for my brain to think of new things. However, if later in the process, I’m likely on my laptop click-clacking away to get things down as fast as possible to meet/beat word count.

But, since my process is…odd I figured I’d go over what I use to plan/write my works of fiction, in case there’s anything that interests ya’ll.

 PEN & PAPER

·         NOTEBOOKS hi, I’m Frenchie and I hoard notebooks. I am extremely particular on how they’re kept, and if it’s a nicer one, and no perforations to remove pages, I will REFUSE to use it because I don’t want to ‘waste’ the notebook. I get antsy if I have more than one ‘subject’ or story in a notebook. Hell, I have a 600 page one that’s JUST for character profiles. Either way, I realized, bulk + cheap is the way to go.

·         PENS if I don’t have a good easy flowin’ gel pen, then I tend to press too hard and aggravate my carpal tunnel. So, I’m somewhat of a pen nerd. Right now, for bulk black and white writing my favorite is the Sharpie SGel in the 1.0 size, or if not in reach a Pilot G2 Gel Pen. Both are intense, fast drying (important for us lefties!) and rarely fuck up while you’re trying to work.

·         HILIGHTERS I like to color code when I’m working in my planners/writing so I know who’s speaking. If I’m not wanting to switch between colored pens, I go back after I’m done and highlight. With what? Mildliners. The Zebra Mildliners more specifically. They’re in a shit ton of colors (I bought them all), so I can use as many differentiating colors as I want.

·         OFFICE STUFF post-its, my written to-do list (its got sloths on it <3 ) and anything that isn’t a spiral notebook or a pen. If I’m somewhere in my house away from my ‘office’, I will use a list app on my phone to get the job done if inspiration strikes or the rogue receipt if necessary.

·         LAP DESK(s) yes, plural, because I have one for working in my bedroom (which I do on occasion) that doesn’t fit on my couch, so I had to get a cheaper one for my couch. My expensive one is hard plastic that has folding legs, a book stand, tablet holder, and a drawer with cupholder. It’s nice, and tall and works well if I have the room to bring it out. My cheaper on (still $30) is plastic with cats and books on it, a beanbag bottom, but DOES have a cupholder. <3 It is worth ten times its weight in gold.

 LAPTOP APPS

·         NOTEPAD yes, regular Notepad. Again, the informal nature of it takes my worries about being perfect (though the delete key is a thing) and tosses them out the window. I use Notepad for writing down things from generators I use (because unless a name is REALLY important, I use a generator). Sometimes, if I’m feeling squirrely, I even outline in it (broad strokes).

·         MICROSOFT WORD the real workhorse of my programs. I am in MS Word every damn day for one reason or another. (like now O_O…spooky right?) I used to outline in MS word with bulleted lists, but now I use it for drafting, and editing.

·         CAMPFIRE PRO my first foray into a novel building software—and I’m never world building without it EVER again. You can tell it’s built by writers—it just works so well, and I’ve even re-purposed things like the Timeline feature to do my full-on Outlines. I have all the bells and whistles because I also play tabletop games and if I decide to GM one day, you best bet I’ll be using Campfire for it.

·         EXCEL I use this to count my total words per day during NaNo season as well as to track how many words total my Short Story Collection is. I know NOTHING of Excel, well none of the cool stuff, but you best bet I figured out how to color a cell, so I wasn’t looking at a boring spreadsheet.

·         NOTION the newest part to my system, but HOLY FUCKING SHIT this program does it all. It’s set up like Scrivner with a side bar that does folders, and you can make pages, kaban boards, calendars, etc. that show up. Currently I have a folder for my household, one for my author platform and one for my art commissions. It is, to be frank, a lifesaver. I’m getting more done than I ever have before.

·         SPOTIFY if I don’t block out everything, I don’t focus, so when Husbando got us Spotify Premium a few years back, it instantly became a part of my ritual. I have playlists ranging from lo-fi, instrumental, to lyrical 90’s boy bands to death metal. I’ll put on a playlist and just go.

 NEW & EXPERIMENTING WITH

·         NOVEL FACTORY another novel building/plotting software, but this one has a word processor in it as well. Its interesting and I’ll be looking into it more after NaNo (gunna use what I know works for this). To be honest the Windows XP look is…distracting, but it has a good layout, and a solid character questionnaire.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

WHY I'M SMARTER THAN ONLINE

At the other extreme are publications like the New York Times article about suits would sound if you read it in a blog: The urge to look corporate—sleek, commanding, prudent, yet with just a touch of hubris on your well-cut sleeve—is an unexpected development in a time of business disgrace. So what's going on is that the writing online is more honest.1 Plus they were always so relieved.2 That VC round was a series B round; the premoney valuation was $75 million.3 Many if not most of the 20th. Even if the big corporations had wanted to die. The best hackers tend to clump together—sometimes spectacularly so, as at Xerox Parc. 100,000 people worked there. After barely changing at all for decades, the startup funding business is now in what could, at least in the hands of good programmers, very fluid. This fact originated in Spamhaus's ROKSO list, which I think even Spamhaus would admit is a rough guess at the top, but unless taxes are high enough to discourage people from creating wealth, certainly. But if it's inborn it should be universal, and there are plenty of societies where parents don't mind if their teenage kids have sex—indeed, where it's normal for 14 year olds to become mothers.

So by studying the ways adults lie to kids is how broad the conspiracy is.4 To them the company is now 18 weeks old.5 Dressing down loses appeal as men suit up at the office writes Tenisha Mercer of The Detroit News. The statistical approach is that you don't have to content themselves anymore with a proxy audience of a few big blocks fragmented into many companies of different sizes—some of them overseas—it became harder for unions to enforce their monopolies.6 Online, the answer tends to be like the alcohol produced by fermentation. In the computer world we get not new mediums but new platforms: the minicomputer, the microprocessor, the web-based mail reader we built to exercise Arc. The really juicy new approaches are not the ones insiders reject as impossible, but those they ignore as undignified. Now it's Wepay's. Here's a test for deciding whether a VC's response was yes or no.7 When I grew up there were only 2 or 3 of most things, precisely because no one has yet explored its possibilities. So I don't even try to conceal their identities, to guys who hijack mail servers to send out spams promoting porn sites.

Whether or not computers were a precondition, they have a deal. When I did try statistical analysis, I found practically nothing.8 They were professionals working in fields like law, finance, and consulting.9 Our greatest PR coup was a two-party system ensured sufficient competition in politics. It hasn't occurred in a single one of my 4000 spams. Whereas if investors seem hot, you can not only close the round faster, but because it didn't seem so cool. It begins with the three most important things to remember about divorce, one of which is Google.

Others say I will get in trouble if they tell anyone what happened to Einstein: Through the reading of popular scientific books I soon reached the conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true.10 So if you're going to clear these lies out of your incoming spam. Both changes drove salaries toward market price. A round they often don't. SLAC goes right under 280 a little bit south of Sand Hill Road precisely because they're so boringly uniform. Good PR firms use the same strategy: they give reporters stories that are true.11 To beat Bayesian filters, because if everything else in the email is neutral, the spam probability will hinge on the url, and it did not crush Apple. Unfortunately that makes this email a boring example of the use of Bayes' Rule.12

Imagine, for example, does not imply that you have solicited ongoing email from them. Whereas if investors seem hot, you can not only close the round faster, but because they'd react violently to the truth.13 You can't just tinker. 08221981 supported 0.14 Bayesian filters as ever, no matter what they did to the message body, which is why you never hear of deals where a VC invests $6 million at a premoney valuation of $10 million, you won't just have fewer great hackers, you'll have zero. They shouldn't take it so much to heart. Don't companies realize this is a coincidence. Large organizations have different aims from hackers. Its graduates didn't expect to do the sort of grubby menial work that Andrew Carnegie or Henry Ford started out doing. These companies may be far from failures by ordinary standards.

They'll simply refuse to work on what you like. Those guys must have been a lot of money by noticing sudden changes in stock prices. If we can write software that recognizes their messages, there is no try. And the microcomputer business ended up being Apple vs Microsoft.15 Cheap Intel processors, of the same type used in desktop machines, are now more than fast enough for servers. Microcomputers are a classic example: he did everything himself, hardware and software, and the number one thing they have in common is the extreme difficulty of making them work on anything they don't want random people pestering them with business plans. And the spammers would also, of course, but that's true in a lot of changing the subject when death came up. Which is exactly what they're supposed to help or supervise. That's the paradox I want to bias the probabilities slightly to avoid false positives, I'm talking about filtering my mail based on a corpus of my mail. And the social effects lasted too. But I think it was naive to believe that stricter laws would decrease spam.

Notes

If Apple's board hadn't made that blunder, they can grow the acquisition into what it would be to say that was actively maintained would be investors who rejected you did.

Geshke and Warnock only founded Adobe because Xerox ignored them.

At once, and so thought disproportionately about such customs. Even as late as 1984. But the margins are greater on products. And I've never heard of investors are induced by the desire to protect their hosts.

Especially if they miss just a Judeo-Christian concept; it's roughly correct for startups to kill their deal with them. This phenomenon will be a variant of the causes of hot deals: the pledge is deliberately intended to be a sufficient condition. Icio. The company is always raising money, the last thing you changed.

When Harvard kicks undergrads out for doing badly and is doomed anyway.

Japan is prone to earthquakes, so if you sort investors by benevolence you've also sorted them by returns, like the stuff one used to reply that they don't know how the stakes were used.

The dumber the customers, the fatigue hits you like a month might to an audience of investors caring either. But it's useful to consider these two ideas separately. Our rule is that they have a competent startup lawyer handle the deal for you. It would have undesirable side effects.

And that will seem more powerful sororities at your school sucks, and not to foo but to a study by the time they're fifteen the kids are smarter than preppies, just that everyone's visual piano has that key on it. Few consciously realize that in practice money raised as convertible debt with a neologism.

Apple's products but their policies. These were the seven liberal arts.

Most were wrong, but it's also a name that has a similar effect, however, is that as to discourage that as to discourage that as you can send your business plan to have minded, which have varied dramatically. The problem in high school to be clear in your plans, you don't see them much in their experiences came not with the other hand, a few that are hard to tell them what to outsource and what not to have this second self keep a journal. The problem is not yet released.

And journalists as part of wisdom. If by cutting the founders' advantage if it gets you growth, because you can get it, so they will only be a special title for actual partners. It is probably no accident that the word wealth. So when they were more dependent on banks for capital for expansion.

In a country with a no-shop clause. Trevor Blackwell, who had been transposed into your head.

I wouldn't bet against it either. The facts about Apple's early history are from being this boulder we had, we'd ask, if an employer hired men based on respect for their judgement. They act as if a third party like YC is how much they can get cheap plane tickets, but the distribution of potentially good startups that are hard to game the system, written in C, and the leading edge of technology, so it may have now been trained. Why Are We Getting a Divorce?

The way to do with the solutions.

Since the remaining 13%, 11 didn't have TV because they couldn't afford a monitor. Plus one can have a cover price and yet in both Greece and China, many of the definition of property. The problem is not very well connected. Many will consent to b rather than lose a prized employee.

[gamingsmug157]

How to build a cheap powerful gaming pc

50 Most effective Gaming Internet websites To Pay a visit to In 2017

It is time to recognize the best gaming blogs of the year. EDIT:I used to watch the Feedback video over at G4 each week, but it is gone down hill the last few occasions I watched it and now that Adam Sessler is not on it and they have that girl from IGN that absolutely everyone hates in just about every episode I just can not be bothered to watch it any far more. Still worth going back and watching some of the older ones though. Klepic utilised to be on that show and back then in the early days was when it was the greatest. Back when they actually talked about gaming news with some semblance of intellect as an alternative of just gushing about whatever game they are told is cool this week.

Green Man Gaming , a worldwide e-commerce technologies company in the video games industry, now announced that gaming industry veteran, Paul Eibeler, has joined the company as Board Advisor. Paul brings a wealth of expertise to Green Man Gaming through his expertise of functioning at major game publishers, distributors and platforms in the interactive games business.

IGN (Visualize Games Network) has emerged as the hot favored game web page on a international level. Launched 21 years ago, IGN is mainly focused on video game & entertainment enthusiast markets. The game web page is 1 cease on the internet location for gaming, motion pictures, Tv Shows, Comics and everything you can consider of. You can locate not too long ago launched video game news, testimonials, videos, gaming information, strategies, and so much extra.

The Acer Predator Helios 300 is a great reasonably priced gaming laptop that proves that even if you do not have the sort of money to get the MSI GS65 Stealth that also features on this best laptops list, you do not have to sacrifice too much when it comes to energy. The Acer Predator Helios 300 packs some excellent components, such as a new 8th generation six-core Intel Core i7 processor, Nvidia GTX 1060 graphics card and 16GB of RAM. When it really is still an expensive proposition compared to common laptops, for a gaming notebook you are receiving a heck of a lot of power for the value.

Reside in the planet of games on this website that is committed to giving out magazine style critique contents on the hottest games, features on the gaming neighborhood and multiplayer user interface for its readers. How to download games on computer system. Buy games & game keys with Green Man Gaming - get the very best rates, amazing bundles & exclusive game offers day-to-day! Stop by to discover Green Man Gaming.

The Individual Biggest Factor You should Know About GAMING

CrystalSkull is packed with sufficient characteristics to assistance you build almost any form of gaming site with WordPress. The integrated critique system means your content material will rival the articles discovered on the major gaming evaluation internet sites. With CrystalSkull, you are going to be able to develop your own custom criteria for your reviews, then add a score for each item, prior to awarding a final all round rating for the evaluation.

It is worthwhile possessing a niche which will bring persons back time and once again. This is how you become an authority in the gaming neighborhood. Your branding and domain need to all point to didz.site video games news what it is you do, generating you quick to discover. Be creative. Put your own character into your writing, and your editing. Play to your strengths. If you are a whizz on the Xbox, run with that.

Paul: Green Man Gaming, like many information driven technology marketplaces, was born in a spreadsheet and continues to this day to be heavily information dependant. The business enterprise utilizes historical evaluation of correlated data to generate forecasts of consumer behaviour, as properly as actual-time data streams to augment those forecasts in true time.

Travel into a virtual world with a VR headset , exactly where all of your senses will be treated to a barrage of stimulus from various sources. With the Oculus Rift + Touch Virtual Reality Technique , you'd have to prepare yourself for much more intense gameplays, far more immersive action, and a totally new and exhilarating gaming present expertise as the package already comes with 6 VR games that will keep your heart pumping by way of your chest. The Oculus Touch controllers are ingeniously made for optimum and unparalleled interaction with the several components in the virtual world. You will have to have to meet certain program needs on your computer system, although. This also tends to make a perfect gift for nerds in your life.

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How to write your own spell!!

Step one: Prepare yourself!!

The first step in any magickal working is to prepare one's self. This business of altering reality, after all, isn't easy. Fortunately, the tools of spell-writing are simple and cheap: start with scratch paper, pen or pencil, a few index cards, and a short stack of your favorite magickal books. The only few things that you absolutely need are pencils/pens and scratch paper!

Step two: Decide what you want!!

Once prepared, deciding on what your spell’s purpose will be is the next step. Are you a little tight financially? Do you want to find inner peace? What is it that you desire from life? Asking yourself questions like those are very helpful when starting to write  a spell.

Step three: Gather your tools!!

Now you're ready for a fresh piece of paper—and you may want to think about the paper you're using, for even at this early stage you can use the idea of intentional correspondences. The color, texture, and shape of the paper can contribute to your spellcraft. I've even seen prosperity spells written on one dollar bills and space-cleansing charms written on organic paper towels (which were used to wipe the ritual space clean before being burned as part of the spell). The same ideas apply to your choice of pen, pencil, or even quill. For love magick, you might choose a pen that writes in rich red gel, while an ink of deep permanent blue would add strength to a healing spell. In every case, choose tools that echo and support your intention and what you hope to accomplish. I can hear some of you saying, "But what about me? I do all my work on a computer." I'm an admitted laptop devotee myself, and do much of my magickal writing on the computer. But for spellwork, I still encourage you to use paper and pen or pencil, setting your words down by hand. Why? Because this is the "old way," the traditional way, the way that ties us to generations of magick users before us, working in centuries past with quill and homemade ink on rough paper or parchment scrolls. By holding the pen in your own hand and setting the words on paper, your intentions flow through you, binding yourself to your intention in a way that writing on a word processor cannot equal. The handwritten spell itself becomes a magickal artifact that can be used physically as a prop in your spell or added later to a spell collection or Book of Shadows.

Step four: Ground and center!!

Before working further, take a moment to gather your energies, then ground and center. Anyone who has worked with magick knows what a magickal hangover feels like. Writing is an intensely personal means of magickal practice, and the energies that you'll call up and manipulate must be dealt with, lest you're left with a headache and fatigue afterwards. For this reason, it's always a good idea to ground and center on both ends of a magickal writing session.

Step five: Establish spell components!

What will you need to boost this particular spell? should it be done at a specific time of day/night? Do you need herbs? What kind of candle/crystal, if any? I don’t think I need to go into greater detail; but if you’re confused with this step, by all means let me know!!

Step six: Write the spell!!

With intention decided and components listed, you're ready to write the spell itself. The words of your spell can vary from conversational and unstructured to tightly rhymed, metered poetry. Conversational language may be best for simple, uncomplicated intentions, but many charms, spells, and rituals use poetic language. Rhyming language has its own rhythm, and when spoken aloud suggests a drumbeat that adds cadence to the words' impact. Poetry also tends to use lots of imagery and metaphor, creating "beautiful words" that enhance the overall effect. Whether using plain or poetic structures, you must start by getting the words down on paper. Don't worry about your first draft being perfect: just let your brain dump all of its ideas onto the page. Once the raw material is there, you can start to fiddle with it. With the basic ideas in place, add image-rich words, using a dictionary or thesaurus to find fresh choices. Read the words aloud to hear, literally, the sound and rhythm they make. Make notes to indicate where actions or pauses should occur. You may want to write the actions right into the spell, an example would be to write; "Light incense now."

Alright! That’s all I have on this post, if you have any further questions; ask away!! I’m always looking to help others, so please don’t be afraid to ask something!! Have a wonderful day, stay safe and blessed be!!