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I'm pretty sure the general cinema-cartoon-watching public would've known who Stokowski was, having likely watched Disney's Fantasia (1940) where he appears prominently.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oWuvfBP8so


Now now, you know full well there is no antimemetics division

Because you asked that, the article is now called "SAML Considered Harmful"

Microsoft Solitaire (Klondike) frequently gives you unsolvable hands, especially if you're using Draw-3.

FreeCell "is fundamentally different from most solitaire games in that very few deals are unsolvable" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeCell) i.e. most solitaire games deals are unsolvable.

As you said, Microsoft FreeCell does only deal one unsolvable puzzle as standard (#11982 out of 32000) https://www.solitairelaboratory.com/fcfaq.html


They're one of the few companies that actually manage to sell "boxed software" (i.e. has not changed much in years but new customers keep buying it)

That said, Windows users should use 7-Zip. Better compression format, unpacks more kinds of archives


While I also like 7z a lot and use it all the time, it's really not a better format that RAR. Higher compression ratios? Sure, marginally. But for archival RAR is still the better choice as it supports recovery records, which 7z still does not. I also found it more difficult to restore data from a partial 7z file (i.e. trailer data is missing) compared to an incomplete RAR file.

> Windows users should use 7-Zip

Please no - no native zstd support. NanaZip is the better option (it's a different build of 7-zip) and it's available at windows store.

> Better compression format, unpacks more kinds of archives

winrar has supported zstd for 5 years[0]

In short - Everyone should be using zstd, and 7-zip does not support it.

[0]: https://www.win-rar.com/singlenewsview.html?&L=0&tx_ttnews%5...


Yeah, zstd is awesome. I built a webapp that uses it via wasm and the decompression speed is incredible, so much so that I store everything in zstd and decompress it on the app load. My wasm binary also does advanced search and tag insertion and stuff in addition to zstd but it's only 38kb. I wish zstd was supported natively by web browsers. The 8kb implementation of zstd is only half as slow as wasm, so even that is still viable.

Lzma. I did a simple test, same payload repeated with a gap. Lzma ruled it.

|gap |gzip |bz2 |lzma | |---------|----------|-----|--------| |0 |2.7% |18.9%|*0.9%*| |8 KB |2.4% |17.8%|0.9% | |*40 KB*|*94.4%* |17.7%|0.4% | |1 MB |*104.3%*|19.7%|*0.9%*|


HN doesn’t support Markdown tables. You can prepend two spaces to show it in monospace though.

I don’t see zstd in your comparison?


dont know the point of the table, but here it is:

  |gap      |gzip      |bz2  |lzma    | 
  |---------|----------|-----|--------|
  |0        |2.7%      |18.9%|  *0.9%*| 
  |8 KB     |2.4%      |17.8%|   0.9% |
  |*40 KB*  |*94.4%*   |17.7%|   0.4% |
  |1 MB     |*104.3%*  |19.7%|  *0.9%*|

seconding others' request to try with zstd! I'd be very curious what something like zstd -14 would give you

Good point. Looks like it’s related to window size (incl for lzma btw). Lzma stays 0.9 and goes to 88.5 post 8.8M gap. Zstd -14 is close to lzma up to 4.4M where it jumps to 91.5. 14L seems to be the best overall for this scenario staying at 1.9.

zstd is a good default for e.g. filesystem compression, but if you're making an archive file, presumably you're looking for higher compression and LZMA would be a better fit.

> Everyone should be using zstd

Why?


It's just the best general purpose compression algorithm, in terms of compression ratio to CPU used, for the vast majority of use cases

I'm not that fussed about CPU use.

https://github.com/mcmilk/7-Zip-zstd

By these charts, if I only need 5-10 megabytes per second of compression on a single core, LZMA2 wins significantly on ratio, and still decompresses at well over 100. If I'm doing a backup, or sending/receiving over my internet connection (which only has 2MB/s of upload), LZMA2 easily wins. If I need speed then zstd wins.


It's just this good.

On a more realistic note: few years back, I've added zstd compression to our log subsystem (hand written direct buffers, native code, in-process, java). For the same CPU utilization if provides twice dense compression compared to regular [-6] gzip (the topic in the title). Zstd is =much= faster on decompression as well, and it this case - unparalleledly better as it uses twice less disk.

zstd is 'silicon valley' (the tv show) - life imitates fiction, except entirely open source


>> Windows users should use 7-Zip

7z is now built into W11 right click so that or zip is what will be used by default anyway.


Last I checked windows handles compressed files in 4 byte or 4kb or something chunks and is incredibly slow to compress or decompress a lot of files.

but worse filebrowser

LucasArts then made the same mistake with Escape From Monkey Island, because they were targetting the PlayStation 2

It is funny to think that even back then people just didn't put up with bad controls. Like Elder Scrolls Redguard, amazing game for the time but the lousiest controls ever. Megaman Legends also comes to mind.

They would put up with crazy puzzles, huge grinds, weird RPG numbers systems (AD&D in BG1/2 for example), but if you want to do action A on thing B that can not, under any circumstance feel bad to do.


We take for granted now how much especially the defaults for Halo 1 rebuilt gamepad controls to a useful, reusable standard. It's really fun going back to Halo 1 and its tutorial of how its controls work and its menu full of optional entire layouts to sort of see the exact moment when game controls stopped being lousy and almost random from game to game. You can contrast with Halo Reach where most of the optional layouts are just gone and more people use the defaults and then say Halo Infinite where all the optional layouts are gone because the common ones moved into the platforms (and accessibility settings) and in some cases the gamepads themselves.

It remains an interesting reflection point in the history of 3D games. It's also why the Grim Fandango remaster turned out so well, now that controls have settled into their modern forms.


He likely did do what he was accused of, with two well-meaning (and now presumably former) fans of his (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assange_v_Swedish_Prosecution_...), though it's his right to argue against that. It does not seem like a "honeypot" trap, these were genuine supporters.

The trouble, though, was that the Swedish prosecutors had absolutely no way to process this alleged crime except to take him into their custody. They couldn't even begin to investigate without first locking him up and making him their possession, free to transfer to the US at any time. They chose not to make any exceptions or diplomatic guarantees.

I don't think it was ever going to be the case that if he surrendered himself to Sweden, they'd merely prosecute him for his alleged sexual crimes and if found guilty he'd be fined or jailed for that alone and eventually released. It seemed much more likely that the moment Sweden got him, he'd be immediately extradicted to the USA, Sweden would get a nice pat on the head from the USA for furthering their geopolitical hegemony, and the Swedish crime would never be looked at again. Maybe Sweden might change their process and interview him as soon as he was in a US prison instead, just to rub salt into the wound. You never know.

Once his Equadorian political asylum was removed, we saw it happen; the UK police immediately arrested for breach of bail conditions... and because the US wanted him.

Even the diplomatically brokered solution had him plea guilty to breaching the US's laws. The US simply had to have him and make an example of him.


The Norwegian model works because:

- Norway had and still has a lot more oil in their part of the North Sea than the UK does

- Norway has a vastly smaller population than the UK; more than ten times smaller (5.6m versus 69m). Each Norwegian gets 10x more money coming in than they would as UK citizens, just from demographics.

- Norway gambled by having the state directly invest in drilling (Statoil), while UK governments (both Labour in the 1960s and Conservative in the 1970s) refused to invest public money in drilling. Instead they let commercial companies find the money, the government merely licensed and taxed. The reason they did this was that Britain didn't have enough capital available to fund drilling at the time oil was discovered; it was the "sick man of Europe"

- Norway put its oil money into a state pension fund which continues to pay dividends today. Margaret Thatcher spent the oil money on rejuvenating the London Docklands, which admittedly did improve London's standing as the centre of global finance, which is what currently brings in most money for the UK. Perhaps if she didn't do that then financial companies might have moved elsewhere, we don't know that for sure. What we do know is she didn't spend it rejuvenating anywhere else in the country, like Scotland, Wales and Northern England after she shut the coal mines and steel mills and bought in foreign coal and steel.


My point is that there's no party in the UK that wants to drill as much as possible as well as burn as little as possible. It's either one or the other, never both like in Norway.

When I initially saw the game characters, I thought "this is janky". But by the end of the game, their personalities had won over my heart.

Tim Schafer is really good at this. Psychonauts has a large cast of deformed-looking characters, but you'll love them all by the end.


Absolutely this. The game is a prime example of how characters can drive engagement.


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