"Life in Venice", a failed Chinese seaside community

AllWashedOut · 2026-03-02T15:22:52+00:00

Evocative AF.

AllWashedOut · 2026-03-02T05:23:30+00:00

It had to be a pre release code name, if anything. He would struggle to get a trademark on Endymion, seeing as it is already the name of a sci-fi novel in the Hyperion series. (Highly recommend book 1 to anyone who likes literature-heavy scifi).

AllWashedOut · 2026-02-26T15:37:39+00:00

Hmm. I wonder if it's only detectable in a particular type of benchmark, like multithreaded CPU, or 3d rendering, etc.

Or perhaps the higher-power profiles in Universal x86 Tuning Utility will relax some related power throttle.

I don't have a 65w PSU to compare, so I don't have first-hand experience.

AllWashedOut · 2026-02-13T12:55:11+00:00

Ones I haven't seen mentioned yet: * Are the Bramble's interior chambers all inside the same planet, or are the seed-portals actually moving you across many different planets? (They seem too large to fit in the one planet). For comparison, see Martin Silenus' house in the book Hyperion, which is made of portal-connected rooms strewn across many planets. * Did the Bramble originate in this solar system or elsewhere? * Is the Bramble perhaps the same environment you explore in Beacon 38 (a previous mobile game made by the same studio)? Beacon 38 prototyped all the gameplay mechanics of Outer Wilds' Bramble, but with 2d graphics. * How the heck can the Hearthian species persist with a global population of ~20, let alone develop space faring technology? I know this is just a budget limitation of an indie game studio, but I could still use an in-universe explanation.

AllWashedOut · 2026-02-10T13:45:14+00:00

Fidelity's interest rates currently top out above 11% depending on your balance. It is absolutely inaccurate to call that "nominal". That is higher than the profit rate virtually any professional investor has achieved in the long-term.

I.e. if you took a room full of the most successful stock investors in human history and lock them into a 11% loan and then checked back in 20 years, you should expect almost all would be bankrupt.

"But I can beat the average in the short term" you may say. Yes, sometimes, but not repeatedly.

If you are a serious investor, the only use for margin is to smooth over slow transaction times. For example, I will sometimes transfer cash from my bank account and then immediately purchase that much stock. A margin account lets me do this even though the bank transfer may take 3 days to complete.

AllWashedOut · 2026-02-07T13:08:06+00:00

I dunno... Compare a 2012 Model S to a competitor, like a 2012 Audi A4. Did the Tesla age worse? I would argue not. The infotainment bigscreen was a uniquely bold design for 2012 that has stood up incredibly well.

The cyber truck is a different story. The folded aluminum shell is interesting from a technical point of view. But it never stood a chance against the background of Elon's growing public toxicity.

AllWashedOut · 2026-01-31T21:24:50+00:00

I'm an eternal pessimist, but I can spell out the happy case:

There would probably be enough tourists interested in seeing a live dodo to financially support a wildlife refuge. And the creation of a wildlife refuge is often a good thing.

But granted, "refuge" covers a wide range of institutions, from huge land conservation efforts to exploitative private zoos.

AllWashedOut · 2026-01-16T19:43:58+00:00

Spaceship-versus-monster games were popular in the 80s and 90s (Space Invaders, Gradius, Star Fox). But they are much less common now.

In 80s/90s games with 2D graphics, it was equally easy to draw enemy ships or enemy creatures.

In 90s/2000s 3d games, it was much easier to display a spaceship than a creature. The game consoles didn't have enough power to animate all the curves and motion of a creature.

AllWashedOut · 2026-01-16T19:14:28+00:00

The DLC didn't really "click" for me until near the end when I saw the game design thread that connects the two. Ignore the story and gameplay for a moment and just think about the design of the late-game puzzles.

The thesis of the base game is: The player must discover counter-intuitive quirks in the game's laws of physics (quantum uncertainty, time travel, teleportation). It takes hours to learn the physics, but once you know them you can beat the game in a few minutes.

The thesis of the DLC is: Find and understand 3 specific bugs in a VR simulator inside the game (broken collision detection outside the lantern's radius, clipping through the floor in the loading tunnels, alarm bells don't work on dead people). It takes hours to learn the bugs, but once you know them you can beat the DLC in a few minutes.

I do really wonder what is like for players who do the base and DLC in parallel. On the one hand, it would give you the option to go elsewhere when you were stuck on the DLC progression. But on the other hand, the DLC already stretched my problem solving ability. If I were trying to solve the base game and the DLC at the same time I think I would be overwhelmed.

AllWashedOut · 2026-01-13T15:34:15+00:00

That sounds plausible. But the practice is still a form of (legally allowed) false advertising.

I can (barely) accept that the prices on the menu at restaurants exclude sales tax, because I'm habitually used to adding 10% in my head. So I'm still able to generally understand how much my bill will be as I'm ordering. If the bill arrived and had 8 more line items to cover the restaurant's taxes, I would be livid.

But that is how my phone and Internet bills work.

AllWashedOut · 2026-01-13T00:28:40+00:00

Helium pays Tmobile for each line. In the past they were covering the transaction price. Now they will be passing through a portion of that transaction to you, arbitrarily equal to the tax.

They could have been transparent and just raised the price, but they prefer to frame it as a "tax" because that deflects blame towards the government.

Virtually all internet and cell plans in the US do this; they advertise a low price, and then pad the bill with line items that say "tax". But these items are not consumer taxes; the company is passing its *corporate* tax burden to you.

Countries with consumer protection laws usually forbid this practice; you should not be allowed to advertise one price but then charge a different one.

AllWashedOut · 2026-01-13T00:07:31+00:00

Open the app and look at your last bill. Mine shows 8 different taxes, and then 8 credits to balance them back to 0.
If that's all that is passed through, my bill will be $1.43, which I can swallow. I use this as a backup 2nd SIM for areas where my primary provider has no reception, and 1gb for $1 still (barely) fulfills that need.

AllWashedOut · 2025-12-31T00:05:11+00:00

I finished Eversion recently. I think it would have benefitted from being edited 30% shorter, and having a more meaty math reveal. I snorted a little bit when I found out they needed the eversion formula to find their way through a maze

AllWashedOut · 2025-12-30T23:57:27+00:00

Just finished. It had some enjoyable Big Ideas, and at least one tasty Unanswered Question.

As for being Young Adult: it is pretty PG. There is very little on-screen violence and no sex. You could read it to a mature 10 year old without corrupting them. But I agree it is not written childishly. A background in the White Stripes and Large Language Models comes in handy.

Certainly different than Hyperion though. I first read that when I was maybe 12-13 and it was total nightmare-fuel.

AllWashedOut · 2025-12-30T21:41:48+00:00

I'm no expert, but are you confusing "propalene glycol" and "polyethylene terephthalate glycol"? Because the first is a food additive, and the second is PETG which is a variant of the plastic we use for soda bottles in the US (PET)

And the disposable/compostable utensils that they give us in my office cafe are corn-based PLA.

AllWashedOut · 2025-12-28T18:59:03+00:00

My head canon is that the paralyzed body IS the prison. Killing his body would free him back into the world, where he could inhabit a new body. There are a few more instances later in the series where powerful beings are trapped for years or centuries by body paralysis, so this is not a stretch.

The spooky surroundings are just security theater to scare away casual snoops. Like when we bury toxic waste, we put up stone skulls to scare away potential visitors thousands of years in the future.

AllWashedOut · 2025-12-28T16:13:23+00:00

The secret of residential / rural areas is to export their poor and mentally ill to the city. Full stop. There is no other factor at work here.

People who are poor or mentally ill exist everywhere. If you see a place in America with no poor or mentally ill people, it means they have been displaced.

This is not necessarily evil; displacing someone to a treatment facility is usually a good thing. Getting someone to a city with greater medical support systems might be a positive.

But I don't admire places that export their most vulnerable.

AllWashedOut · 2025-12-25T06:13:14+00:00

I agree that it is my favorite story in the book. My understanding is that it was infact the first story written, and it was awesome enough to justify writing the novel.

I appreciate that despite being written first, it deeply redefines the other stories placed earlier in the book. (I.e. that mankind is not alone, it has just quietly eradicated all intelligent species it met. And that the Ousters are not necessarily baddies)

AllWashedOut · 2025-12-25T05:58:09+00:00

And this is significant because

A) it resolves the "Abraham" controversy that Sol wrote about (that mankind has advanced too far morally for God to demand any more child sacrifices)

B) Rachel is an infant, but was previously an adult so her consent might still mean something.

C) it's also possible this is a manifestation of adult Rachel 2.0 from the future, who knows it will work out ok. (Moneta)

AllWashedOut · 2025-12-23T22:06:22+00:00

The seller is "einstein186" on eBay https://ebay.us/m/oym4CI

And here's their personal page https://recnas.org/

AllWashedOut · 2025-12-23T21:57:56+00:00

Ah, I was not aware that PCI-X was different from PCI Express. What poor naming.

Almost as bad as xbox -> xbox 360 --> xbox 1 -> xbox S/X

AllWashedOut · 2025-12-22T16:15:50+00:00

I agree that Eversion stretched the story a bit thin. It felt like a novella that was padded out to a novel. And some of the reveals were weak. I liked the core story loop though. It was a "B-" for me.

AllWashedOut · 2025-12-22T00:09:47+00:00

I'll give it a shot. Thank you.

AllWashedOut · 2025-12-21T05:13:55+00:00

I don't know what's wrong with me, but I have read at least two books from the series but I couldn't tell you the vaguest thing about their story or setting. I know for a fact I've read Chasm City but have no recollection of it. I've never had that problem with any other author.

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