Interesting thing about tomorrow's tarot show, rendering now, is that I upgraded from Blender 4.0 to blender 4.4 and it's quite a bit nicer to look at the timeline editor.
Was sad to find that the render time was up though. From about 3 seconds per frame usually to more like 12!?
Trying it with an old version I see that the lights and textures look way better with 4.4 than 4.0 though. A substantial step up in the way the show looks without me even doing anything other than waiting four times longer per frame.
Seems to be heavily dependent upon lighting now. The slow frames are like 12 seconds but the fast frames with minimal lighting and close up on the video are more like 2.
Looks too beautiful now to go back though. Upgraded my cloud-remote render machines too. We will render on four machines tonight. FOUR! The power of it all.
g3.4xlarge is no faster than g3.large but g6.xlarge seems to be twice the speed.
But hard to be sure really coz of the massive variance in time depending on the lighting.
Anyway, great show coming tomorrow. Sometimes I wonder what the hell I'm trying to do with it but tomorrow's show is the answer. Hide the angry bitter political rant behind a strange CGI tarot show. When the rant comes together well I like it.
https://wordcloudtarot.com/@wordcloudtarot/statuses/01JYFF0GQV1680Z0VG0YTFZDTP
“What we ultimately want, and what we believe we need, is a commons that is strong, resilient, growing, useful (to machines and to humans)—all the good things, frankly. But as our open infrastructures mature they become increasingly taken for granted, and the feeling that “this is for all of us” is replaced with “everyone is entitled to this”. While this sounds the same, it really isn’t. Because with entitlement comes misuse, the social contract breaks, reciprocation evaporates, and ultimately the magic weakens.”
Very glad to see that @… is working to address the deep challenges that have arisen at the intersection of the open movement and corporate AI.
https://creativecommons.org/2025/04/02/reciprocity-in-the-age-of-ai/
h/t @…
"Journalism screwed itself over by betting
on Meta and its profit-over-society peers.
Now, nobody trusts “the media” and
everyone is going bankrupt. The next bet
is on generative AI, with its inability to
distinguish truth from “hallucinations” –
fabrications that on the page become lies.
The Continent is an attempt to prove
journalism can be done differently.
Expect more of this in what our team
has decided to call our “serious era”.
We’re no longer a start-up. We’re going
to empower more people with quality
journalism. We’re going to help others
launch newspapers. We’re going to
stay sane. And we’re going to prove
that African excellence can set global
standards."
@… reaches 5 years and 200 issues. If you're not already receiving their copy via @… (or email, telegram or WhatsApp if you must) then it's really worth signing up to remind yourself just how big and diverse the world ist.
This weeks highlights are an extraordinary story about how Zanu-PF in Zimbabwe directly interfered with Mozambique's election. Plus a frankly beautiful photo piece on Addis Ababa
Berezinian expansion and super exterior powers
Maheshan Ekanayaka, Ekaterina Shemyakova
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.16549 https://arxi…
France Becomes First Government to Endorse UN #OpenSource Principles, Joined by 19 Organizations
https://unite.un.org/fr/news/france-be
A Sea of Cyber Threats: Maritime Cybersecurity from the Perspective of Mariners
Anna Raymaker, Akshaya Kumar, Miuyin Yong Wong, Ryan Pickren, Animesh Chhotaray, Frank Li, Saman Zonouz, Raheem Beyah
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.15842
paris_transportation: Paris Transportation (2016)
A multiplex transportation network of Ile-de-France, jointly representing the road network, train network, and subway network. Nodes are intersections, rail stations or metro stations. Different modes of transportation are given by different layers. Within-layer edges represent direct transference by a particular mode of transportation, and between-layer edges represent the conjunction of those layers at that node.
This network ha…
Q&A with Pavel Durov on his arrest in France, Macron, Russia, the FBI, the fight for Telegram, leaving his wealth to the 100 children he fathered, and more (Guillaume Grallet/Le Point)
https://www.
Bad Type Patterns - The Duplicate duck
https://www.schneems.com/2025/05/07/bad-type-patterns-the-duplicate-duck/
Sharpening Kubernetes Audit Logs with Context Awareness
Matteo Franzil, Valentino Armani, Luis Augusto Dias Knob, Domenico Siracusa
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.16328