You're Real Heavy Duty

Beast Wars 30th Predacon Multipack First Look

This appears to be a collection of the Takara decos of the season 1 Preds – Megatron, Tarantulas, Blackarachnia, Terrorsaur, Scorponok, Waspinator, and Inferno, shown off here in their robot and beast modes along with the box, which has some nice new artwork on it.

Do these articles bug anyone else?

Like, that isn't how money works.

Based on current market prices, that would be 1.35 billion metric tons of gold.

If that much gold was suddenly put into circulation, it would go from $2300 per ounce to $1 per ounce.

You just made gold as valuable as mediocre coffee grounds.

Potato chips are roughly a dollar per ounce.

Name brand shampoo.

You get the idea.

We need a useful asteroid, not a golden one.

Let's get some cobalt or lithium.

@elmofongo It's so bad.

I'm about to make a lot of people angry about helium (if they weren't already aware).

Liquid helium is the best substance we have to supercool shit. I'm talking very very cold. Helium cooling systems can get us within millionths of a degree above absolute zero.

Almost all groundbreaking modern science requires cooling shit down.

We are working on room temperature superconductors that don't require supercooling, but progress has been slow. We are pretty sure it is possible in theory, but it's unclear if a practical, scalable solution could ever be found.

So until then, we need to make things really frickin' cold.

Helium is vital for cooling the magnets in MRI scanners. If we run out of helium and the magical room temp conductor isn't invented, MRIs will literally be useless.

Pretty much all of our space hardware uses helium.

Particle physics research is dependent on supercolliders. No helium, no smashing protons together to see what happens.

Oh, were you excited about quantum computing helping to cure cancer?

Gotta have that cold ass helium.

8% of our total helium supply is used for party balloons.

I know that may not sound like a lot. But once the helium is gone... it is fucking GONE.

We cannot synthesize more and there isn't an alternative that can take over supercooling duties.

While we won't completely run out for hundreds of years, it will get more and more scarce. It could only be 30 years before helium is so rare that it will need to be rationed. It will become exorbitantly expensive and only the people with the most funding will have access to it.

So... enjoy your $10,000 "Get Well Soon" balloon in the hospital after getting a $50,000 MRI scan.

The infuriating part of this... no one cares.

There has been almost no success getting political bodies to regulate the non-essential use of helium.

So 8% of our helium goes into balloons and either leaks away into the atmosphere or goes into people's lungs so they can sound like a chipmunk.

Can we get more helium from space?

There is a lot of helium on the moon. And maybe in a hundred years we could figure out a way to bring it back to Earth.

Our best chance is if a helium-filled asteroid flew towards Earth at the perfect angle so it gets caught in orbit. If it burns up in the atmosphere, we'd lose the helium. If it crashes on Earth, we'd lose the helium.

I'd say the chances of that are 1 in a number so big it would take you a day to count all the zeros.

If we develop our space program to the point where we can go to the asteroid belt and land on things and mine them, we could probably reclaim some helium. But that would probably happen long after we have a serious helium scarcity.

Our only chance to realistically solve this problem within our lifetimes is room temperature superconductors.

You can read that here...

The short version is that I could not find any primary sources from actual helium experts on whether or not conserving balloon grade helium would be beneficial.

But I also could not find any trustworthy information to say it would not be beneficial.

I am not kidding but "Big Balloon" is the main entity saying it would not matter. And that is hard to trust.

Helium is economically scarce. We have plenty of it, but it is very expensive to procure on its own. All of our helium is a byproduct of extracting natural gas. The value of the natural gas is what keeps helium in the realm of affordability. Without the natural gas, helium could get so expensive that it might as well not exist.

And there is also an issue with the Iran war complicating things. We might have a helium shortage soon due to their natural gas production being disrupted by our presidential toddler.

The big concern is that helium is going to get more and more expensive as we move away from fossil fuels and there are fewer natural gas deposits that are easy and cheap to get to. Helium could cost more than printer ink in 10-20 years.

Balloon grade helium is not good for much other than putting in balloons. However, it could be purified. But that is a very costly process. It is not currently economically viable. But if helium gets super expensive in the future, having a bunch of balloon helium to purify might be a better option—especially if the purification technology advances.

While that logic makes sense, I cannot find any real expert who has presented this argument. I cannot find a primary source that believes stockpiling balloon helium would be helpful.

Memory manufactures have previously run an actual cartel on memory pricing a few times. but this time it can be pretty easily explained from AI companies flush with investment and worried about anything standing in the way of their megaprofits creating contracts to buy up huge amounts of storage and memory.

At this point, to be honest, all the stuff you have to do to Windows to de-AI it…turning off registries and installing programs and using the command line…

(For example as per this post:)

Installing Linux is in fact easier than doing all that. Like I mean that genuinely.

“But some people have to use Windows for work!” In which case they’re probably using a company computer and don’t have access to the registry or have the ability uninstall or turn off any of that stuff in the first place! This is clearly not about them.

This is about your personal computer.

What to use

I recommend Linux Mint: Cinnamon. It’s really easy to install and it’s really easy to use right away. You can do this.

You have three main options:

Run Mint off a USB and see if you like it

Install Mint alongside Windows on your computer so you can choose which to boot

Completely replace Windows with Mint

If you’re really unsure, I recommend #1. If you are convinced you absolutely cannot do without Windows for certain activities, go with #2. If you’re able to make the full commitment (like if you don’t need Windows or you have a spare computer), do #3.

…

And if you’ve read this far, you probably hate Office and Google Docs too. That’s where Libre Office comes in. It’s free. You can download it on your Windows computer to try it out if you want.

I run Mint on my old Windows laptop and it works great. I have Discord, Steam, and the internet. I run Libre Office when I need it.

The website has a long list of supporters, so if you really know nothing and / or are afraid of trying it and messing something up you will be able to get professional help from this website.

There's even a list of places where you can go physically to get help. All over the world, not just in the USA by the way.

Say goodbye to Microsoft treating you like you don't own your PC. Say goodbye to intrusive features you didn't ask for. Say goodbye to ads on the OS you paid for.

The Earth does not exist in a bubble. It’s part of a dynamic and ever-evolving solar system, and galaxy and universe. He have to look at the earth in that context to be able to know and care for it. To care for a planet, we have to know how planets work. When doctors treat patients they look at the medical record, they look at family history, they look at symptoms and compare them to known diseases to find a diagnosis.

How did the earth form? What was it like in the past? Why did it change? That’s the medical record.

We’ve got the earths siblings in the neighborhood. Why is Mars a frozen desert? Why is Venus a molten hell scape? Could those things happen here? That’s the family history.

What kinds of things are floating around our neighborhood? Could they affect us? All this is necessary to diagnose the Earths problem, to anticipate the direction it’s going, and to help it heal.

click on the links to get taken to the posts

Transformers Prime 2011 IDW Comic:

Volume 1 - Volume 2 - Volume 3 - Volume 4

Transformers Prime Titan Comics:

#1 The Safe and the Failsafe - #2 War Story

#3 Ice Breaker - #4 Tinker, Tailor, Gamer, Spy!

#5 School Is... Out! - #6 All The President's Bots

#7 Megatron's Law - #8 The Mind Trap!

#9 The Novo Incident - #10 Mad Dogs and Autobots

#11 The Battle for Bulkhead - #12 The Evil Shred

#13 Protecting the Lady - #14 It's A Knock Out

#15 Poster Special (missing) - #16 Fury From the Deep (comic only)

#17 Collider Scope (missing) - #18 Power Outage. (missing)

#19 Smoked Out (missing) - #20 Starscream's Beast (comic only)

Transformers Prime Eaglemoss Comics (English fantranslations are being added slowly):

#1–2 On Thin Ice - #3–4 Sand Trap - #5–6 King of the Road

#7–8 Mount Problem! - #9-10 (doesnt include a comic)

#11-12 Friend or Foe - #13-14 Horrible TV

#15–16 Cell - #17–18 Cleanup

#19-22 At a Deadlock - #23–26 Deadly Alliance

#27–28 The Time Machine - #29–30 Monkey Business

#31–32 Personality Crisis - #33–36 Battle of the Clones

#37–39 Parasite of Happiness - #40–41 Out of Sight

#42–43 Chaos at the Museum - #44–45 A Nightmare on Base

#46–47 In Cuffs - #48–50 Deep Trouble - #51–52 Perfect Trap

#53–55 Subway Mystery - #56–57 Asteroid Attack

#58–59 Car Crash - #60–61 Civil War - #62–63 Fighting Fair

#64–65 Mind Games

The Art Of Prime (Transformers Prime Artbook):

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5 - Part 6 - Part 7

Concept art:

Christophe Valcher (environment) Part 1 - Part 2

Marcelo Bonifacio (environment)

Jason Park (environment) Part 1 - Part 2

Jose Lopez (character design) Part 1 - Part 2

Papercrafts:

If you don't know why Foss is awesome its not just that its free. Open source software has a huge set of advantages. Most software is proprietary meaning that its code cannot be viewed by other people. Open source softwares code can be viewed by everyone and people can contribute their own code to make it better. Open source is often more secure than proprietary because more people have more eyes on it and more people have contributed to it's security. Its also easy to know how much privacy you have with every software because you can read the code. No more "trust me bro I'm not harvesting and selling your data" you know if they are collecting and selling because the code is publicly available.

In the last two months I have been switching almost completely to Foss. I was worried at first because when I stopped using Foss over 10 years ago the average Foss software was genuinely worse than the paid proprietary alternative. Thankfully things have really come full circle. 90℅ of the software I have tried in the last 2 months works better than the proprietary alternative and is 100℅ less obnoxious.

So here is a list of every Foss software I have tried and recommend. There is way more than this available. This list is just what I have used and like personally. Anyone can feel free to add and we can turn it into a master list. Please just take these as a place to start and do your own research to see if these softwares will work for your use case before you fully ditch your proprietary software.

Operating systems

Graphene os: android alt. Security and privacy focused. The most secure and private smartphone currently available.

Linux mint: easy to use linux, 100℅ better than windows.

Pop!: The Linux distro you should use if you have nividia hardware and want to play games using said hardware. Very intuitive and easy to use.

Kubuntu: Ubuntu Linux with KDE desktop. This is the linux distro one I am currently using and I don't have any plans to jump ship again. Better than windows and better than Mac. The companion app for your phone makes life soooo easy. Its pretty and easy to customize to a ridiculously granular level. No fucking notes.

Kindle jailbreak- ko reader: use jailbreak to free your kindle from the tyranny of the bezos. It will download ko reader which is a Foss OS that has every fucking feature you always wished kindle had and let's you read whatever the fuck you want, and have whatever the screensaver you want (no more ads!). Soooo fuck amazon and use this. I genuinely cannot recommend it enough.

Linux FOSS: (some available on windows and android as well)

Calibre: Foss desktop eBook library. Packed with features. You will want to use this with koreader to make managing your kindle easy.

Manuscript: skrivner alt. Does absolutely everything I need.

Bitwarden: password manager (use a keepass fork if you want self hosted)

Next cloud: private google drive and cloud alternative that you can self host if you want but it's not required. App available

Proton VPN: to the best of my knowledge it is the only Foss no log VPN you can get. You can pay for higher speeds. App available

Quad9dns: free encrypted DNS provider. App available.

News software:

Use any Foss RSS reader and for the love of god stop getting news from social media. Take control of your feed!

Apps (I only know for android)

Fdroid: great app store to find Foss android apps and download them.

Antennapod: you can get all of your podcasts fetched to one feature rich app via RSS feed. No need to rely on spotify or music steaming services.

Openreads: it's good reads but private and 100℅ stored locally. No amazon, no social media aspect, it just tracks your reading, you can import your good reads but if you want to import from storygraph you have to make a good reads burner account, import to good reads, then import to openreads. The menus Navigation on this one is a bit cumbersome but honestly good reads app is worse.

Newpipe: YouTube frontend that let's you have YouTube subscriptions, watch YouTube in the background, and blocks all ads, without logging in to YouTube. You will want to use this one with a VPN set to Canada (or any other country) so YouTube doesn't keep blocking it in order to force you to sign in. But even with that extra step its worth it for the privacy and the lack of ads.

Proton mail: one of 2 more private gmail alts. But you should note that email cannot be 100℅ anonymous or private.

So here‘s the thing: I recently bought a 4TB sandisk external ssd. A few years prior I already got a 1TB and later a 2TB one for all my 2D and 3D art files and backups, that worked just fine and everyone else I knew used sandisk, so I saw no problem. Now through coincidence I found out that since 2022 you should never ever buy a sandisk since they’re now faulty to begin with. And low and behold I checked and saw that my new sandisk is one of those faulty ones. On this 4TB is my whole dvd/bluray backup and I planned on connecting it to my TV, so I can revert to using it when watching smth that is not on streaming services or even when canceling streaming services.

I now need to spend a lot of money again on another external backup device and I don’t know which one. I want to make the right choice. I see forums recommending the samsung T7 ssd. Though I did some research and computer experts recommend hdd in general. I always thought ssd have at least the same longevity as hdd but are faster so I always chose ssd. But now I am reading that ssd always need to be „charged“ unlike hdd and have quicker wearout. Especially when you’re storing them in a drawer instead of constantly connected to a computer. Data starts to deteriorate faster. And hdd is fine with being stored in a drawer if not needed.

My first ssd was from 2019 I think (which also has important files on it) my second was from 2021 I guess. So I need to switch those soon too I guess. So what to do?

I need to store all my art stuff, my books, my backups, and separately my movies backup that is connected to a tv. Hdd? Ssd?

EDIT: I have my data stored on several external devices. That is one thing I learned from the past to store everything on at least two external devices.

EDIT2: I need a new setup. I will probably rely on online recommendations from experts to buy a samsung T7 or T9 ssd and a hdd one. Though I still need to figure out which one would be best. I often see seagate desktop expansion and toshiba canvio. Maybe one of those?

The primary limitation with SSD longevity is that they have a limited number of read/write cycles; once you hit that number you can't read data from the drive and you can't write data to it, and at that point it's just a useless piece of plastic. The goal is to replace SSDs before they get to that point in their lifespan.

SSDs don't have very predictable failure rates because when they fail is based on how much they are used; if you're using them a lot they'll fail faster, whereas if they mostly sit in a drawer they'll probably last longer.

All that said: the only advantage that SSDs have over HDDs is speed. Lifespan, cost, and predictability are all way, WAY better on HDDs, and data recovery on an HDD is cheaper and more likely to be successful.

So I'd say go with one HDD for backups and possibly an SSD for media, but even then video delivery doesn't have to be super fast and you'd probably be fine with an HDD? (I don't understand home media servers the same way I don't understand gaming rigs, my area of expertise is enterprise computing, but my buddies who have set up home media servers all use HDDs because SSDs aren't worth the cost but they're also storing like 12TB of movies)

Western Digital makes extremely reliable external HDDs for backups that have 3-5 year warranties depending on the model. The My Passport series is about $120 for a 5TB 2.5" external and is what I use for my backups; we recently got a 26TB 3.5" external WD for a client and it was around $500.

One day I'll write about what it's like to grow up knowing you might have a terminal, incurable illness, and not be allowed to test yourself because "it's such a serious decision" they don't want it hanging over you until you're an adult (as if it doesn't hang over you as you witness a parent die, and know you've got 50% chance of inheriting the same illness--as do your siblings). One day, I will talk about how, in the fear of traumatising children with the knowledge they might be incurably, terminally ill, they also took away their right to decide over their bodies to a degree that is traumatising. One day.

But today I am going to cry. Because it's over. Because no child will ever have to go through the same uncertainty, because at least they will know there is a treatment option available. A treatment option that one of my siblings might come to rely on. With all the shit things happening around us, my childhood hope and dream have been realised. That's got to count for something.

"Maybe for their children we can hope for that" from 'leading international expert in Huntington's disease Julie Stout', who said that the exciting results may not be able to help people currently showing symptoms of this disease.

These quotes comes from Dr Bryce Vissel, of Centre for Neuroscience and Regenerative Medicine at St Vincent's Hospital Sydney: "At the same time, caution is essential: only a small number of patients have been followed, the comparison is with an external group not a randomised placebo, and the findings come from company announcements rather than peer-reviewed data...

Larger and longer studies will be needed to confirm whether this treatment truly changes the lives of people with Huntington's disease."

Emphasis mine on all quotes. Please watch or read the full reports for the complete context of this very exciting news. We still must be cautious - while this is likely world changing, per the ABC article, it's not yet been peer reviewed so we must still be patient as scientific rigor is applied to this.

Particles of matter in this area can be that hot.

However since there are vanishingly few particles of matter in that part of space, comparatively, neither Voyager actually touched any of said particles, and were totally unscathed.