bbot's blog

Yesterday SpaceX performed the first privately funded orbital launch in history. I think I speak for everyone when I say, "Fucking finally!" Weren't we supposed to be doing this back in 1950? Reality: Letting the aerospace industry down since, well, forever.

Here's the only decent video of the launch I could find:


EDIT:
21:25 < bbot> the space age starts now
21:25 <&ponbiki> lol
21:25 < bbot> the last fifty years were just a warmup
21:25 * ponbiki waves
21:25 <&lien> bbot, your frail white body would never make it in space
21:25 < bbot> Is that a bet?
21:26 <&ponbiki> oh my
21:26 <&lien> yea, that's right
21:26 < bbot> One dollar, I'll be in space before 2020.
21:26 <&lien> bring it
21:26 <&lien> make it 5
21:26 <&lien> five dollars
21:26 <&ponbiki> hrmmm
21:26 < bbot> These gentlemen's bets are usually one dollar, but inflation, sure.
21:26 <&lien> lol
21:27 <&lien> then it is written!

IT'S ON NOW

(rejected titles: "the gathering storm", "invest in gold", "oh god oh god oh god we're all screwed")

"Asia Needs Deal to Prevent Panic Selling of U.S. Debt"

It has been conventional wisdom that China, Japan, and other countries that run trade surpluses with the US, which means they fund our overconsumption by buying assets like US Treauries, would never restrict the flow of credit to us because it would lower their exports and hurt their growth. We've long been leery of the idea that unsustainable trends will have a life eternal, and Brad Setser has a simple reason why this process is self-limiting. Our foreign funding sources aren't just lending us money to buy their goods; they are also providing the funding for interest on the loans extended for past imports. At a certain point, the interest payments become so large relative to the value of the exports that the deal no longer makes sense.

The day of reckoning may be approaching well before Setser's tipping point. And the trigger is much simpler. We look like a lousy risk. The Freddie/Fannie conservatorship, the Lehman bankrutpcy, and the rescue of fallen Asian powerhouse AIG has, not surprisingly, lead to a reassessment of the US's creditworthiness.

"Snitow and Kaufman, Water Wars in America"

The spiraling collapse of the financial system may only intensify the quest for private investments in what is now the public sector. This flipping of public assets could be the next big phase of privatization, and it could happen even under an Obama administration, as local and state governments, starved during Bush's two terms in office, look to bail out on public assets, employees, and responsibilities. The Republican record of neglect of basic infrastructure reads like a police blotter: levees in New Orleans, a major bridge in Minneapolis, a collapsing power grid, bursting water mains, and outdated sewage treatment plants.

"Central banks dole out cash as bailout doubts grow"

SYDNEY/SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Central banks across Asia scrambled on Friday to meet a desperate demand for cash, both in their own currencies and the U.S. dollar, as the White House's $700 billion bailout plan ran into unexpected roadblocks.

News of the biggest ever U.S. bank failure only added to the thirst for liquidity, with the government brokering a last-ditch purchase of thrift Washington Mutual (WM.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) by JPMorgan (JPM.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz).

"The market is just frozen at the moment," said Claudio Piron, a strategist at JPMorgan Chase Bank in Singapore.

"We are at such a point of absent liquidity that prices are beginning to fail in their usefulness as a signal - this in itself is disturbing," Piron said.

"Government Seizes WaMu and Sells Some Assets"

Washington Mutual, the giant lender that came to symbolize the excesses of the mortgage boom, was seized by federal regulators on Thursday night, in what is by far the largest bank failure in American history.

Regulators simultaneously brokered an emergency sale of virtually all of Washington Mutual, the nation's largest savings and loan, to JPMorgan Chase for $1.9 billion, averting another potentially huge taxpayer bill for the rescue of a failing institution.

Washington Mutual, with $307 billion in assets, is by far the biggest bank failure in history, eclipsing the 1984 failure of Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust in Chicago, an event that presaged the savings and loan crisis. IndyMac, which was seized by regulators in July, was one-tenth the size of WaMu.

($1.9 billion for $307 billion of assets! That's a pretty good deal.)

"Straws In The Wind"

Putting the jigsaw pieces together, you get a remarkably ugly picture:

* Old guy with 1-3 years to live
* Charismatic Evita Peron figure fronting for Karl Rove and the old gang, ready to step into his boots
* Battle-hardened infantry units (recruited from politically conservative areas, natch) being moved into position in the homeland
* Opposition members being harassed, bugged, arrested, beaten - before the junta steps in
* A gathering fiscal crisis which will leave a lot of very angry people looking for scapegoats to blame

("Junta" is strong; if this happens, which it won't, it'll just be another Republican victory, hardly a civil war at all)

"NKorea threatens to restart reactor, blaming US"

SEOUL, South Korea -- North Korea escalated its renewed confrontation with the U.S. on Friday, saying it is moving to restore a nuclear reactor and warning it "will go its own way" because Washington refuses to remove it from the U.S. terror blacklist.

The announcement was the communist regime's first confirmation it has started undoing the dismantlement of its nuclear program begun last November under an atomic disarmament deal that promised energy aid to the impoverished nation.

Things are lookin' good! Ayup.

Dear MCM Electronics,

I would dearly love to give you my money. In fact, I am literally sitting here with my credit card in hand, primed to type in the magical numbers on its face that would instantly transfer a sum of money to your bank from mine.

Perhaps that's why you are making it impossible to put what I want in my cart. After all, you're a huge electronics wholesaler with an eye-gougingly terribly designed web-site, and I'm some guy in Seattle. Hell, you don't need my business! Apparently, I can just go ahead and fuck off!

I understand, I've made it hard on you. Rather than endure your hilariously slow search engine, I've gone directly to the product pages. How dare I do such a thing! In response, you have, perfectly reasonably, caused the contents of my cart to change randomly depending on which part of the site I'm in. That'll teach me to try and bypass the morass of uncategorized and product picture-less crap that you call a site! After all, who needs pictures? Doesn't everyone instantly understand what 33404 - T-HANDLE HEX 3.0 X 150MM T-HANDLE HEX 3.0 X 150MM T-HANDLE HEX 3.0 X 150MM is supposed to mean? Screw them if they're not the kind of autist who memorizes product numbers for fun. MCM doesn't need their money!

Love, bbot.

But seriously, folks, I absolutely cannot wait until someone like Newegg, someone who, in short, knows how to run an e-commerce site, comes out of nowhere and blows these dinosaurs out of the water. Protip, guys! If you feature your paper catalog on the front page of you web site, then you are a fucking fossil, and should do us all a favor and die.

If people are writing their own search engines to navigate the sea of crap that is your catalog, and receiving great press as well as piles of money, then you are doing it wrong.

Ugh!

Saw "Ghost Town" on sunday, and, well, the Exhiled review sums it up nicely:

At first the movie seems like it might be headed toward some sort of semi-believable solution, suggesting that although Bertram Pincus is never going to be a grinning people-hugger, he might be happy if he could meet someone else who’s weird and self-sufficient and suits him. But the sloppy romantic comedy conventions are too strong. It’s not enough that two people get together and aren’t immediately repulsed again—that’s a miracle in itself—no, there must be fifty miracles, and every person and ghost must hug, and every rock and tree must rejoice, all bathed together in syrupy golden light. The ending’s like The Simpsons’ version of a Disneyland parade, with the shouted slogan, “Hurray for Everything!!”

It coulda been a contendah! Burn After Reading without the big names, but actual humor! But they had to have a happy ending. Also! Have you heard this shit about the 2003 bank robbery with the real, live, Running Man-style explosive collars? Insane! Why wasn't I told?

The DS was ridiculously prevalent at PAX. So I bought one!

Some thoughts from a guy who hasn't owned a gameboy since the gameboy color:

It's pretty cute, but not as cute as the EEE. The instant suspending trick is pretty neat, but it'd be even neater if the core dumps were persistent across cartridge changes. The failure mode for running out of memory (if you store them on the DS) would be to silently throw away the oldest core dump[*], which is lousy design, but can be avoided by storing them on the cart itself.

*: A physical action obviously can't be interrupted with an "Are you sure?" dialog, so any action the DS's OS takes must be after the fact.

The nearest neighbor scaling the DS uses in 3D mode is almost startlingly ugly after using 4x+ MSAA for the last few years. All games used to look this bad!

The DS itself represents a mania of proprietary "standards". The game cartridges are pretty much thick SD cards, the headset plug is wacky, the power connector looks like a big usb-micro port; the list goes on. This strategy has obviously worked well for Nintendo, since they've made a hojillion dollars selling the things, but still. Disappointing.

I haven't actually used any of the wireless stuff. It's supposed to be awesome? I guess I'll find out.

I got two games with it, Mario Kart DS and Final Fantasy IV. Mario Kart DS is like Mario Kart 64, only with a decade's worth of polish, but FF4 is my first Final Fantasy game, since I'm about as old school as Halo.

FF4 has all the standard J-RPG tropes. Limited save points, unskippible cinematics, five character player names, etc. The first two have bit me in the ass big time, since I've sat through the intro cinematics three times now.[*] First time was a whole-party wipe on a Mist Dragon, with me stupidly not saving; and the second time was me rushing through the intro crap as quickly as possible, and forgetting to get some crucial equipment in the process. (Old school J-RPG trope #4, you can't sleep in the wilderness without a tent, an expensive, single-use, tent.) I closed the DS in disgust, and later changed carts without thinking. Whoops!

*: Protip, past me. Press start twice.

In Mario Kart DS, I have been marching through the Grand Prix unlocks with the grim inevitability of an avalanche, and recently unlocked Dry Bones, which is an animate koopa skeleton. What the hell is a skleton doing driving a go-kart? After death, was he raised by a dire Necromancer, who, in his madness, attempted to raise an army of the Undead, to sweep, unto a plague, across the world of the Living, installing him on the dark throne, a mad Emperor ruling an Empire of the Dead?

But he meddled with forces yet beyond his control, and foolishly raised an abomination with power unimaginable, a black soul forged in hatred, seeking only revenge, against the Hero who exterminated his race, the Mario. This hate machine made of bone and implacable rage turned upon his dark master and slew him, shrugging aside his pathetically weak curses in pursuit of his final goal.

But killing Mario would be too easy. No, he must be destroyed, unmade, made to watch as his works fall before him, his friends murdered, to be left desolate in an uncaring world. Only then, when all else is lost, will he be made to know the black embrace of Death. And the first step in Dry Bones' dark plan is to defeat Mario in the sport that bears his vile name, the Mario Kart.

In victory, he cackles, for he knows what is to come next. In the act of sweeping aside the racers' token acts of resistance, his dessicated vocal cords clatter in a ghastly parody of human laughter, knowing that this is but the prelude to destruction as yet born.

Or not! Probably not, yeah.

1506: I'm in the PC Freeplay line. The line, which I dismissed as being absurdly long the previous two days is now easily twice the length. But I will perservere!

1513: As usual, the line's bark is worse than it's bite.

1543: Interesting half hour match of TF2. The pings were low, but the equipment was actually worse than the stuff I have at home, and there was no voice chatter. So, by "interesting", I mean "shitty".

1604: This time, I'm going to wait in the SCII line until I get to play.

1625: Oh god, what have I gotten myself into.

1629: Challenged dude in line next to me in a three round rock paper scissors match, for a DTS button. He played rock all three rounds, and beat me.

1706: I get to play!

1720: Let this be a lesson in humiliating defeat. I was given 20 minutes in which to defeat a Zerg AI player set to "Easy". In the following 16 minutes I discovered that a single battlecruiser does not acquit itself honorably against the Zerg Horde. With four minutes left, and zero resources, I gave up like a pussy, and ran away to cry about it.

1734: Man, I am absolutely starving. I'm headed to the Pioneer Square food court to get somethin to eat.

1757: I had some shrimp tempura rolls, but they weren't that filling.

1801: Apparently everything starts closing at 6:00 PM. I guess I wasn't that hungry?

1809: Looking through my expo guide, I discover that PAX closes at 6:00 PM as well. AWESOME!

Post-PAX debrief: I played (sucked) Starcraft II, participated in the LAN, and didn't do much else. Was it worth it? Sure, but next year I'll BYOC, and try to attend with someone. I didn't see Ben this day, which was a shame, since I was planning on doing some quality hardware-gloating, inre: the HD 4870 I just bought.

tl;dr: A++, will attend again.

In the spirit of Sam512's transcript of >9000, I present, "The Scout's" Sexy Suspender Striptease"; a youtube poop of the Meet The Scout video. Watch them in order for maximum context, or not!

Typographic conventions: "Text:" denotes on screen text added by the editor. "--" denotes a jump cut. Four repetitions of anything is taken to mean "many", to avoid having to count a specific number.

Meet the Scout:
The Scout's Sexy Suspender Striptease:
The TF2 Sting plays over the title card. --ing --ing --ing --ing

The Scout taps a Heavy, eating a sandvich, in the head with a baseball bat.

Scout: Yo, what's up?

The Scout hits the heavy in the stomach with a baseball bat.

Scout: Bonk! -onk onk onk onk onk onk!

The Scout, in front of the title card.

Scout: Grass grows, grass --flies, grass --shines, and brother, grass --hurts people. --pl --pl --pl --pl

Scout: Wooooo! --ooo! --ooo! --ooo! --ooo!

Scout: If I --ooo! was from --ooo! where grass --ooo! was from? --ooo! I'm a force of nature. --ooo!

Scout: Bonk!

Scout: And brudda, if you? --ooo!

Heavy: Arrgh! Arrgh! Arrgh! Arrgh!

Scout: --ooo!

Scout: Birds --grow --grass.

The scout taps the camera repeatedly, forming a musical scale.

Scout: I'm a f(BEEP)ckin--

Heavy: Arrgh!

Scout: Nee-- grow, Nee-- grow, Nee-- grow, Nee-- grow, Nee-- grow, Nee-- grow.

Text: NEGRO

Scout pauses.

Scout: Okay.

The Scout screams "Woo!" repeatedly, forming a musical scale.

Scout: Aggggg! -g! -g! -g! -g! -g!

Scout: Okay.

Scout: --g --g --g --g --g --ass --ass --ass --ass --ass --s --s --s --s --s

The Scout screams "Woo!" repeatedly, forming a melody.

Scout: That's beautiful. Uuf --uf --uf --uf --uf

Scout: Arrgh! Arrgh! Arrgh! Arrgh!

Heavy: Arrgh! Arrgh! Arrgh! Arrgh!

Scout: Abu --dabu --dabu --dabu --dabu

Scout: I mean --uh --do you have any idea, --a --a --a --a --who I am.

Heavy: Arrgh! Arrgh! Arrgh! Arrgh!

Scout: Arrgh! Arrgh! Arrgh! Arrgh!

Scout: Arrrrrrrrrgh!

Heavy: Arrgh!

Scout: You listening? You listening? --ng --ng --ng --ng. You listening?

The Scout pauses.

Scout: You listening?

Scout: Woo --ooo! --ooo! --ooo! --ooo!

The Scout taps a Heavy, eating a sandvich, in the head with a baseball bat. --taps --taps --taps The heavy turns to look, then turns away.

Scout: --ta --ta --ta --ta --DoyouhaveanyideawhoIam. --Grass grows --Grass grows --grows --grows --Grass grows --Grass grows

Scout: Bonk!

Scout: Birds --shines, and brudda, I hurtya --brudda --brudda --brudda

Scout: --ya --ya --ya --ya --ya

Scout: I --grow --grass

Heavy: Arrgh!

Scout: Bonk!

The scout surveys the building housing the central capture point in cp_well, in slow motion, while a song plays in the background. He smirks, cycles the action on his shotgun, and begins to sprint forwards. A Blu, level one sentry tracks, and fires two shots.

Text: AND THEN HE DIED.

The TF2 sting plays over a group shot of the Red team.