Google advises some employees on visas, including H-1B visas, not to travel outside the US due to processing delays, following new social media screening rules (Business Insider)
https://www.businessinsider.com/google-tells-visa-holders-stamp-le…
Wow. RIP Ace. One of the first to inspire me to play.
Still remember flipping through the TV channels randomly and stumbling on a KISS concert, being blown away by the guitar bursting into flames during a solo and rising out of his hands into the rafters.
#kiss #AceFrehley
Just finished "Beasts Made of Night" by Tochi Onyebuchi...
Indirect CW for fantasy police state violence.
So I very much enjoyed Onyebuchi's "Riot Baby," and when I grabbed this at the library, I was certain it would be excellent. But having finished it, I'm not sure I like it that much overall?
The first maybe third is excellent, including the world-building, which is fascinating. I feel like Onyebuchi must have played "Shadow of the Colossus" at some point. Onyebuchi certainly does know how to make me care for his characters.
Some spoilers from here on out...
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I felt like it stumbles towards the middle, with Bo's reactions neither making sense in the immediate context, nor in retrospect by the end when we've learned more. Things are a bit floaty in the middle with an unclear picture of what exactly is going on politics-wise and what the motivations are. Here I think there were some nuances that didn't make it to the page, or perhaps I'm just a bit thick and not getting stuff I should be? More is of course revealed by the end, but I still wasn't satisfied with the explanations of things. For example, (spoilers) I don't feel I understand clearly what kind of power the army of aki was supposed to represent within the city? Perhaps necessary to wield the threat of offensive inisisia use? In that case, a single scene somewhere of Izu's faction deploying that tactic would have been helpful I think.
Then towards the end, for me things really started to jumble, with unclear motivations, revelations that didn't feel well-paced or -structured, and a finale where both the action & collapsing concerns felt stilted and disjointed. Particularly the mechanics/ethics of the most important death that set the finale in motion bothered me, and the unexplained mechanism by which that led to what came next? I can read a couple of possible interesting morals into the whole denouement, but didn't feel that any of them were sufficiently explored. Especially if we're supposed to see some personal failing in the protagonist's actions, I don't think it's made clear enough what that is, since I feel his reasons to reject each faction are pretty solid, and if we're meant to either pity or abjure his indecision, I don't think the message lands clearly enough.
There *is* a sequel, which honestly I wasn't sure of after the last page, and which I now very interested in. Beasts is Onyebuchi's debut, which maybe makes sense of me feeling that Riot Baby didn't have the same plotting issues. It also maybe means that Onyebuchi couldn't be sure a sequel would make it to publication in terms of setting up the ending.
Overall I really enjoyed at least 80% of this, but was expecting even better (especially politically) given Onyebuchi's other work, and I didn't feel like I found it.
#AmReading
STM32MP2 update: slowly working on getting stm32-cpp ported over. It's now failing to build because I haven't implemented any of the RCC code paths to turn on I2C, timer, or GPIO blocks, so that at least should be straightforward.
All of the peripherals are close to STM32H7, but with some extensions and new features in most cases (all of them have an IP identifier and version ID which is handy and I wish they had put this on their older parts too).
One thing that's bothered me about the aftermath of the loss at Stamford Bridge is the punditry acting like Cucurella's comment that they targeted the space behind Salah shows some sort of tactical brilliance by Maresca.
Literally EVERY team flings diagonal balls into space on that flank, a known risk and a calculation that Salah's lethality will negate a willingness for the LB to go forward and join the attack.
The real story is that he's not been dangerous and c…
Gas stoves are filling millions of homes with hidden toxic air #environment
"A confusing contradiction is unfolding in companies embracing generative AI tools: while workers are largely following mandates to embrace the technology, few are seeing it create real value. [...] In collaboration with Stanford Social Media Lab, our research team at BetterUp Labs has identified one possible reason: Employees are using AI tools to create low-effort, passable looking work that ends up creating more work for their coworkers."
"Unlike this mental outsourc…
New York City sues Meta, Alphabet, Snap, and ByteDance, accusing them of fueling a mental health crisis among children by addicting them to social media (Jonathan Stempel/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boa…
Moonlake AI, which creates tools to "vibe code virtual worlds", including for gaming, animation, and filmmaking, comes out of stealth with a $28M seed (Rashi Shrivastava/Forbes)
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rashishrivast