Carpet Bomberz Inc.

https://venturebeat.com/2020/11/17/cerebras-wafer-size-chip-is-10000-times-faster-than-a-gpu/amp/

Cerebras is finally hitting the racks in some locations and doing benchmarks to see how well it performs. And as compared to custom made/bespoke computer clusters with a mix of CPU/GPU, it’s performing very well. One benchmark has shown it is a significant improvement over the #82 ranked supercomputer (200x faster on certain benchmarks) and performs those calculations at a reduced power consumption 20KW versus 450KW (for #82 ranked super computer). So as a first time out, it seems like some of the promises and hand-waving made by the company are being proved out. The question still remains as Venture Beat points out, is how applicable Cerebras CS-1 is to a range of compute problems. The value of any of these multi-million dollar specialty compute machines is only as good as the range of problems you can solve with them. Thinking back to the 1970s, Control Data Corporation spent a fortune optimizing for vector math with their first vector-based super computer. But that was all for naught when scalar type calculations were mixed in. Seymour Cray saw this and addressed it with the Cray-1 by allowing a performant mix of scalar, with much better performance vector calculations. So having a good enough performance on scalar, was so far ahead of the CDC vector-optimized that people gravitated to the Cray-1 instead. We’ll see how closely the Cerebras CS-1 hews to this pattern over the next year or so as people figure out what it is good at and whether or not it’s good value for the money.

Following Japan’s “paper tiger sandwich” incident, we went out and bought every sandwich we could find to investigate. It’s impossible not to feel the draw of the snack food and pastry aisles on a trip into a Japanese convenience store, but they also have plenty of tasty, sensible meal options too. Any convenience store in…

25 different Japanese convenience store sandwiches – What’s inside them?【Photos】 — SoraNews24 -Japan News-

Japanese researchers use mannequin heads to prove that face coverings really do work against COVID-19. After over half a year of flip-flopping from the international medical community and the World Health Organisation on the efficacy of masks, Japanese researchers have now proven that face coverings help to reduce coronavirus transmission.  Professors at the University of Tokyo’s Institute […]

World-first confirmation that masks can protect you from coronavirus【Video】

I’ve written enough about the challenges of Windows devices and the real-time clock that you’ve probably heard this one before:  Windows stores the time in the real-time clock in the local time zone, which causes problems if you install a new OS on the device and it boots up in a different default time zone […]

Windows 10 and a PC’s real-time clock — Out of Office Hours

Mike makes a good point here. So much behavior today in setup/deployment/config of PCs and updates to PCs is guided by practice set back in IBM PC/AT Bios days. Real-time clocks should all be UTC with the offset calculated by location, or sync based NTP settings. That way you’re always at least “correct” to UTC, you just need to refine the display of that UTC counter to the human being running the computer. By now, one would have thought this was solved or coordinated. But it’s all just random, with set workflows, and production steps for each and every computer manufacturer. Me personally, I’m going to follow Mike’s sterling example. I’m going to set my Win10 Registry setting to use the UEFI UTC real clock for my system clock and be done with it.

Now this is what I call “Reclaim Video” but Japanese Style (shout out Tim and Jim). Seems like there’s more than one person on this planet that also wants to hold onto those tapes.

1.) My commissioner of elections cares about my health and safety and sent out, (without me even asking) an application for an absentee/mail-in ballot including a No Postage Necessary self-addressed stamped envelope.

2.) I have filled it in, signed and have mailed it.

Thankyou Monroe Co. Election Commissioners and USPS. Because of you I can exercise my rights as a grown ass U.S. Citizen. All of us together, there’s nothing we can’t do!

I’m watching the ceremony at the U.S. Capitol right now, Waiting to see the casket moved to the Rotunda. There is “good” trouble and Rev. Al Green says it best: The Message is Love.

Things sure were looking up for Japan and the whole world back then

British Olympic team sends heartfelt message to Tokyo one year before the opening ceremony

The Olympic team for Great Britain just submitted a wonder message to the world, marking what would have been the opening ceremony for the 2020 Olympic games. The film makers draw a parallel to ’64, when last the Olympics were held in Japan. It was a bright shining moment. The bullet-train had JUST entered service, Japan had built all new stadiums and venues for the competition. Think too about this, the World’s Fair was going on at the same time in Queens/NYC. The Vietnam War had not yet been informally declared. Things weren’t so bad. Great Britain would score some gold medals, and that’s shown in the video too. Notably they set a world’s record in the Women’s 800m with Ann Packer coming from the back in the last 200m leg of the race (that’s a story all unto itself). But the video really is a call for not only rememberance but for HOPE. There is hope. Truly we will meet again, in July 2021. And maybe by then things will be a little less dark, a little more hopeful if not joyful. We will meet again some sunny day, in Tokyo, July 2021. That message gives me all the feels.