What was THAT?
This dog has an existential crisis when a horse comes up to say hi.
AI GPU/Video Quality Metrics
How do you know when AI generated frames on your graphics card or in video playback look bad? Some folks at Intel published a paper and shared a dataset for a technique called CGVQM+D: Computer Graphics Video Quality Metric and Dataset – which tries to quantify the image quality issues created by using AI generation techniques like neural supersampling, novel-view synthesis, path tracing, neural denoising, frame interpolation, and variable rate shading.
2024 Pro-Palestinian protesters were backed by Biden’s biggest donors
Politico has done what one should always do to get to the bottom of things: follow the money. It seems to show that this was a perfect case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing – or even the dreaded left-wing circular firing squad not unlike what David Hogg has done by being a DNC official and activist with conflicting goals.
During the later part of his presidency, Joe Biden was dogged for months by pro-Palestinian protesters calling him “Genocide Joe” — but it turns out some of the groups behind the demonstrations receive financial backing from biggest names in Democratic donors: Soros, Rockefeller and Pritzker.
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Atari enters the Web3 blockchain nonsense
Even Atari isn’t immune from Web3 blockchain silliness. Using the AtariX platform, players can mint a non-fungible token that acts as their access pass and compete in the classic game Asteroids on the blockchain.
Players connect their bitcoin/ether wallet and mint NFT access passes. The access pass costs 0.0015 Ether (about $5). On AtariX, the fee allows players to compete against other players, potentially win Atari gift cards, and participate in its ecosystem of games.
PCI devices for those extra slots you don’t use
Now that motherboards have just about every device one could want built in (surround sound audio, networking, etc), most of us have a few extra PCI slots laying around in our PC’s that aren’t getting used. Don’t lose out – they can be put to good use as:
- Extra USB 3.1/3.0 ports
- PCIe storage cards – some that can accept up to 8 NVMe drives
- Video capture cards
- Audio cards
I went out and got a Fanblack USB 3.2 Gen 2 pci card that gave me 7 more super fast USB 3.2 and USB-C ports. I tested the ports with some of my devices, and the speeds were dramatically improved from one set of front panel ports that likely used a cheaper and slower USB chipset.
Even better, I moved a bunch of cords to the back of my PC and out of the way. Now the front of my PC is clear of cables and devices and it just gets the odd USB stick.
Don’t let those empty PCI slots go to waste. Just make sure you check your motherboard book and put cards in the right slots so each gets the correct number of internal PCI lanes and doesn’t share with other devices.
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What cables to use with my 4k monitor?
HowToGeek gives a good breakdown on the differences between the different versions and capabilities of HDMI, Displayport, and USB-C standards.
Riding through an electron beam irradiator
Electron beam irradiators are used for sterilization and specialized polymer generation/combination. These devices are rated in MeV range and emit astounding amounts of radiation/charged particles.
Anyone entering even the same room as the device would likely receive a fatal dose nearly instantly. The radiation is so intense, the air itself is ionized to the point it glows blue (seen clearly at timestamp 1:08 in the video below). It’s was an effect seen above the Chernobyl reactor right after it’s explosion.
The radiation is so powerful and dangerous that special hardened ‘radiation bunkers’ are created with winding shielded corridors that keep operators safely away from any straight-line exposure to radiation sources. Still, there is a long history of operators that have been seriously injured and killed by huge amounts of radiation when they ignored safety protocols and circumvented safety devices to enter the rooms.
Someone decided to see what it looked like inside an electron beam irradiator by putting a GoPro camera through the device. To even survive, it was encased in a 3/8″ lead case with a 1/2″ thick 50% lead glass window – with an additional 1/4″ lead plate above the camera. Even with all that shielding, it completely overwhelmed the CCD in the Gopro. It’s a terrifying ride through a lethal radiation dose. Give it a watch.
Un Caro
The Vatican has released the doctrinal note Una Caro: In Praise of Monogamy (Italian only so far, you can use google translate for now) to give guidance are re-enforce on already existing teaching on the subject of marriage.
You can find a great summary of it’s main points here.
In a world that is rapidly and constantly changing definitions about the nature of relationships as well as basic definitions of human biology, this is an excellent document to read if you want to know the beauty our physical bodies and relationships have always been understood as: gifts, signs, and multi-layered bonds of unity that mirror the love Christ has for the Church – his bride.
Give it a read as we await our bride groom who comes in just a few short weeks at Christmas – born in a barn, placed in a feed trough, and united with for us in our humble humanity.
Van Gogh’s Turbulent Night
Scientists using the Hubble space telescope discovered patterns of eddies and currents of dust around a distant star, and thought it looked a lot like Van Gogh’s Starry Night painting.
In digitizing and measuring the patterns in Van Gogh’s turbulent flows, they found the patterns of turbulent flow close to his end during a period of psychological difficulty closely matched Kolmogorov’s turbulent flow equations. Strangely, turbulent flow in his earlier paintings during a less troubled psychological time, did not exhibit this pattern.
Healing Junocam from 500 million miles away
The Juno spacecraft has had an amazing mission orbiting Jupiter since 2016. One of the biggest problems in exploring the Jupiter is the intense radiation. Jupiter has extremely powerful magnetic fields that trap charged particles. Those particles generate massive amounts of radiation in various bands around the planet – in the range of 500-3600rem/day. Many times a fatal dose for a human. The combined effect can even destroy electronics and instruments onboard any spacecraft sent there.
To combat this, much of Juno’s critical electronic hardware was encased in a special radiation resistant titanium vault. Sadly, not all devices could be put in the shielding. One of those devices was the camera – Junocam. On the 47th orbit, scientists noticed the camera started showing signs of radiation damage in the form of grainy, horizontal streaks. By orbit 56, almost all images showed signs of corruption.
Junocam, like most modern digital cameras, is based on CCD technology. Unfortunately, radiation shows up as streaks, bright spots, and noise. Prolonged exposure damages the silicon-crystal structure of the CCD itself.
By examining the kind of image degradation in the images, mission staff determined a voltage regular on the camera’s power supply was malfunctioning. But how to fix it?
“We knew annealing can sometimes alter a material like silicon at a microscopic level but didn’t know if this would fix the damage. We commanded JunoCam’s one heater to raise the camera’s temperature to 77 degrees Fahrenheit — much warmer than typical for JunoCam — and waited with bated breath to see the results.”
It worked. JunoCam’s imaging was restored and delivered clear images for the next few orbits. Unfortunately, as the mission took Juno closer and closer to Jupiter and Io, image damage returned. Image processing alone couldn’t fix the issue.
There was a deadline. Juno was going to come within 1500km of Io and they wanted to get the most amazing last shots of the mission. In a last attempt to fix the camera and get high quality pictures of Io, they cranked the heater all the way up and tried one more time. It worked, and they got crisp images of Io:
They used this same annealing method for several other components in Juno with success. NASA now even thinks they might specifically design components that will be damaged by radiation to be annealed.
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