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Damn, this will break Minecraft on my original machine, an Acer C720 Chromebook modded to run Linux. The Intel HD4400 iGPU doesn’t support Vulcan!

I always appreciated that MC would run on virtually any hardware, especially as a kid without access to anything nice.


> Once this happens, players will be able to switch between OpenGL rendering and Vulkan rendering

I think this means you'll be able to continue using Minecraft with OpenGL.


In the following paragraph:

> Once we’re happy with the performance and stability of Vulkan across devices we will remove the OpenGL implementation.

So not for long.


At least Java lets you run older versions so you can just play 1.7.10 forever as Notch intended.

Notch already sold Minecraft to Microsoft before 1.7.10 was released.

It's pretty interesting that OpenGL achieved its stated goal and is the graphics API with the highest degree of compatibility across many devices.

Vulkan more or less also has that goal, but for then-current hardware 24 years later (2016). In this case (Intel HD Graphics 4400, Haswell?), there is unofficial support on Linux that can be enabled with some hacks, and it may or may not work. Similar support for my previous (desktop) AMD GPU generally worked fine. The situation for Haswell seems more iffy, though.

It depends what features they use but under Mesa that chip does have some Vulkan support.

it looks like "in hardware" it has vulkan 1.0 support, but looking at https://mesamatrix.net the hasvk driver (which i think is the haswell/gen 7 and 8 driver) seems to have some support for more recent extensions

and of course all the previous minecraft versions will continue working on opengl :p


I'm glad someone else is still using a C720. I keep mine in a case with some SDR gear. One of my favorite computers i've owned.

It was a great machine. It was my daily driver until a few years ago. I ran xubuntu on it with the Mr Chromebook firmware for a loooong time until my most commonly used websites became so heavy browsing was impossible.

I got mine first year of college because my 5ish year old 15" mbp was just too much of a boat anchor. I got a launch model with the celeron, 4gb of ram, and no touch screen so the battery life would last all day and then some.

I installed Chrouton which let you switch between chromeOS and a full ubuntu chroot, which was the best of both worlds as you could do the optimized browsing on ChromeOS and development tasks on the chroot.

After it fell out of ChromeOS favor, I just installed arch on it and called it a day. It's my go-to conference laptop because it's still so conveniently small, light, and 12 years on the battery still gets 6 hours.


Time for an upgrade buddy. I need my 32 chunk render distance when i play java, personally. A 10+ year old chromebook would not be cutting it - but it doesn't take much either if your simulation distance is low.

I’m very mixed about WASM. It’s clearly a very cool technology, and enables cool things by allowing native performance without needing multi-platform support.

But at the same time, it provides a vector for foreign, non-free software to run on my computer. Every time someone sends me a Google doc blocking printing/copying (on _my_ computer!), it makes me want to join a monastery.


Javascript already provides a way for foreign non-free software to run on your computer. WASM doesn't change anything about that.

Disagree. The most valuable feature of a fraction of people having guns is that the risk of someone having a gun discourages the most extreme harassment, even if no gun is ever fired.


Yes, just like government operators were recently discouraged from escalating with that one protestor who had a legal gun that he wasn't using.


Statistically, private CCL holders are more law-abiding than even police


You've just seen the people at the very top of the administration saying that just having a gun in any sort of proximity to federal agents = terrorist. If you show up tomorrow with a rifle on the other side of a Minnesota street from a bunch of ICE agents, do you think they're going to prioritize de-escalation and professionalism or just light you up? Serious question.


Two protesters were murdered by government agents (one of them armed!). How much more extreme do you want to get?


If only there was an extremely high profile example of how this isn’t at all true in the past several days!


You don’t need niche hardware to do this, if you’re handy with a soldering iron! You can quite easily modify devices intended for use on AC lines, for any conductor!

http://www.helicopting.de/

I used this to get an Ethernet link to the roof of a building using an old antenna feed line someone had left.


You’re comparing to GEO communication sat orbits, which are highly coordinated and expensive real estate, reserved for small numbers of vehicles.


No, I'm not. AFAIK there has been years of regulatory wrangling between Starlink, Kuiper, OneWeb, etc. about who gets which orbital shell. Shells aren't yet as scarce as GEO slots but companies are already planning for a future where they might be.


For these large constellations, vehicles are generally raised slowly at the beginning of their lives, and debris spreads out as it decays downwards. A significant increase in debris at 550km would have an impact on all orbits below it, including all vehicles raising through that debris zone.


> A significant increase in debris at 550km would have an impact on all orbits below it, including all vehicles raising through that debris zone

Space is huge. Try this trick: the number of satellites in orbit is about the same as the number of planes in the air at any time. (~12,000 [1][2].)

The volume of space from the ground to 50,000 feet is about 200x smaller than the volume from the Karman line to the top of LEO alone (~2,000 km).

Put another way, we approach the density of planes in the sky in LEO when there are milliions of satellites in that space alone. Picture what happens if every plane in the sky fell to the ground. Now understand that the same thing happening in LEO, while it occurs at higher energy, also occurs in less-occupied space and will eventually (mostly) burn up in the atmosphere.

Put another way, you could poof every Starlink simultaneously and while it would be tremendously annoying, most satellites orbiting lower would be able to get out of the way, those that couldn't wouldn't cause much more damage, the whole mess would be avoidable for most and entirely gone within a few years.

There are serious problems with space pollution. Catastrophic Kessler cascades that block humans from space, or knock out all of our satellites, aren't one of them.

[1] https://www.travelandleisure.com/airlines-airports/number-of...

[2] https://www.travelandleisure.com/airlines-airports/number-of...


> The volume of space from the ground to 50,000 feet is about 200x smaller than the volume from the Karman line to the top of LEO alone (~2,000 km).

Volume is the natural way to assume space scales, but it's incorrect. Two planes can fly parallel, side by side. Two satellites cannot orbit side by side.

In the limit, if Earth had a solid ring of infinitesimal width, it would take zero volume but all orbits.


Yes, it’s absolutely a trade off against prop (argon) lifetime, energy spent thrusting, and atomic oxygen degradation of plastic components. The benefits of increased drag for these shells of thousands of vehicles must be worth it.


Why is drag desirable? Aside from faster decay for cleanup.

I just don’t understand why spacex would do this from a biz/strategic perspective


+1, if only for the documentation. If you haven’t, skim through it: https://pip.raspberrypi.com/documents/RP-008373-DS-2-rp2350-... it’s truly unlike any reference manual I’ve ever read. I will happily pay a few extra cents at modest volumes for a chance to get the detailed technical details and opinions from the design team.


Adafruit is pretty clearly the front-runner these days in the educational/hobbyist market, Arduino (and even SparkFun) have fallen by the wayside. My only gripe is the focus on micropython these days, it can introduce a barrier later in the learning process when you eventually need to leave the nicely organized sandbox. They still support the “Arduino” C++ libraries, but uPy is the default.


Adafruit actually focus on CircuitPython which is a fork of Micro Python but takes some of the complexity of Micro Python away. I don't personally like coding in C++ as I started my career with Perl then PHP and Javascript. Writing Python in my own choice of text editor instead of the Arduino IDE is much more my style.


A couple of weeks ago, I bought a 'sensor kit' from Amazon for my son to use with his Raspberry Pi. It includes some input devices (e.g. button, moisture sensor) and output devices (e.g. LED) that can be plugged onto breadboard.

The setup instructions included something to do with CircuitPython. I had not heard of it before then: https://github.com/sunfounder/universal-maker-sensor-kit/blo...


Using python makes sense though - it widens the user base. Not everyone is a C++ guru.


I can't afford the luxury of an interpreted language due to the speed hit.


In my experience LLMs can code C++ for the Arduino framework pretty well these days. The mistakes they make, like wrong pin numbers, are pretty language agnostic.


I’m not sure why the age of majority in the region of the server would be relevant. The user is not traveling to that region, the laws protecting them should be the laws in their own region.


> why

> should

I don't know if "should" is intended as a moral statement or a regulatory statement, but it's not at all unusual for server operators to need to comply with laws in the country in which they are operating…


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