🇨🇦 tunetardis

I don’t know about the AI projections, but the idea that the current US administration would have a reasoned, thoughtful response to any emerging threat from AI or react in a constructive way to widespread public protests over it is what strains credulity for me.

I get what he’s saying about the fragmentary nature of film compositions. And serving an industry will inevitably have a certain meat grinder aspect to it that constrains artistic freedom.

I think even run-of-the-mill film music serves an important purpose of adding gravity to a scene. But when you have a master at work, it can be a somewhat bittersweet experience that leaves you craving for something you cannot have.

To take Williams as an example, in The Force Awakens, I thought Rey’s theme was hauntingly beautiful, but you’re only left with a glimpse of it. Where a film takes its music from a symphony, you can go listen to the latter afterwards to get your fix. I suppose that’s analogous to how a film adapted from a book leaves you the option to read the latter if you’re looking for more of the narrative?

But history is full of run-of-the-mill music written in a meat grinder way. You take someone like Joseph Haydn working at what essentially amounted to a symphony mill, churning out one after another. Most of this type of music doesn’t last the test of time, and there are plenty of forgotten composers. Will Williams be among them? I seriously doubt it, though only time will tell.

I guess I’m the opposite. The sensory nightmare for me involves having to interact with strangers, and self checkout offers the utopian promise of avoiding all that. But it fails only too often, as the slightest problem brings the clerk over. It’s a bait and switch for my introverted ass.

I think Guitar Hero was a good investment for my kids, as they came to love all the classics I grew up on.

This looks fascinating! Definitely signing up for the early access.

Here in Ontario, I think we have 16 reactors spread across 3 power plants? And more are purportedly on the way.

The CANDU reactors use heavy water and should, in theory, be safer than light water designs since they can function with unenriched uranium. OTOH the nearest reactor to where I live is in upstate New York and is rather Fukushima-like from what I’ve heard. Also, I don’t know what the new reactors will be, though the provincial gov seems to be pushing SMRs for whatever reason.

One thing to note here, though I researched this a few years ago so it may be dated? I was wondering at the time why there was almost no solar contribution compared to wind, and learned that while utilities operate most wind farms, solar tends to be private operations that sell their power to the grid and are often not included on a site like this which monitors only the utility’s contributions.

Meanwhile, at the Prince Wind Farm…

Output: 32 MW
Capability: 29 MW

Plant operator: Scotty! I need more power!!!
Scotty: I’m doin’ all I can! She canna take much more of this Cap’n!

Wow, I actually pretty qualified for this. But I’m rather busy… :/

What jumps out almost immediately is that it does not appear to be a loop. Were it a loop, you could have more than one car going around. Should it not at the bare minimum satisfy its own naming criteria?

I use Sourcetree for routine stuff, though I occasionally have to hit the command line when shit gets real.

Wait, they’re not all made in China? Last time we were ordering some for a development board at work, we had to source them from China, though that was admittedly a few years back.

iirc Rob was the user and Doug was the dealer.

A man rides an electric scooter along Polk Street on July 29, 2024 in San Francisco, California. According to a University of California San Francisco (UCSF) study, injuries involving e-bikes surged more than 3,000% across the country between 2017 and 2022, and e-scooter injuries jumped more than 560% during the same time.

So this is essentially the entire piece. Not so much as a link to the original study. How much did e-bike/scooter usage increase over that period? How many of these injuries were caused by vehicles? How did urban infrastructure—or lack thereof—contribute to any of this?

This reminds me of articles I’ve read on The Telegraph. Any UK people here? What is the deal with that rag? Why do they hate e-bikes so much? I read Apple News for certain paywalled sites, and they’re the first paper I’ve actually had to block. (I think the final straw was their recent diatribe over the blight of solar panels.) Do they just have a particularly curmudgeonly op-editor or is it the whole culture with them?

I wonder how much range you would get running your tricked out ebike at 70 mph? I bet you would burn through battery pretty fast. I say this after researching e-motorcycles awhile back. I was disappointed that most of the affordable offerings topped out at around 100 km range or less, where my use case would have been inter-city. I have an e-bike for the city I’m perfectly happy with. But then I found someone on a forum mentioning that you could more than double the e-motorcycle range if you restrict yourself to city speeds to cut the wind drag.

I ride my ebike on mixed use paths on my way to work. My personal policy is to treat it as a class 1 in that case, and not exceed 24 kph. When passing pedestrians, this drops to 20 or lower, depending on the circumstances (e.g. can I get their attention with the bell, are small children/unleashed dogs involved, etc.).

Yesterday, I saw someone shoot past me on an ordinary bike. I briefly sped up to match his speed and checked my speedometer. He was doing 36 kph. In fairness, regular bikes don’t tend to come with speedometers, so he may have had no idea how fast he was moving.

I have also seen ebikes going well over 32 kph though. Mine is software limited to top out at that for electric assist, but the cap can easily be lifted with the phone app. I have elected not to do so. I’m a commuter. I just want to get to work. Not trying to win any races.

I think my most common use case is with dictionary lookups.

if (val := dct.get(key)) is not None:
    # do something with val

I’ve also found some cases where the walrus is useful in something like a list comprehension. I suppose expanding on the above example, you you make one that looks up several keys in a dict and gives you their corresponding values where available.

vals =  [val for key in (key1, key2, key3) if (val := dct.get(key)) is not None]

I think that’s part of the plan though right? If they spot a compliance officer walking up, they can drive the patio around the block a bit until he’s gone.

I hope you post an unboxing video. It could be exceptional…