efaardvark

I just upgraded my desktop (clean install) & haven't put back all my customizations yet so here's my phone...

Just to throw out some pseudo-random ideas.. The Baron (Whisper of the Heart), Tsumiki Miniwa (Acchi Kocchi), Eris, Kuune, or Melwin (Asobi ni Iku yo!), or Nimitz (from Weber's Honor Harrington series of books). For a black(ish) cat specifically maybe Kamineko (from Azumanga Daioh), Kuroneko (Trigun), or Jiji (Kiki's Delivery Service)? Finally, and not really good for a kitten but still on the subject of cat names, a friend has a (fat) older cat we've (re)named Catbus.

Granblue Fantasy. Interesting visuals. Felt it had potential, but by halfway through it was clear it wasn't going anywhere. Could have been much better if some of the ideas had been better developed (or developed at all). That ending(?) though.. Not quite as bad as Moon Phase, but only because that would have taken effort. Seems like they just gave up, threw a bunch of stuff at the audience, and walked out. Waste of time.

Discovered the aptly-named "Squid Lake".... (Aptly by yours truly of course. )

Devices like cochlear or retinal implants are already a fairly common thing. These "only" stimulate the peripheral nerves in the sense organs themselves though. The nifty research these days is in cortical sensors/stimulation. The current research seems to be using a fine net or array of sensors laid over the surface of the brain, with each node of the net connected to a signal processor, and the signals interpreted by a computer to literally read your thoughts. Apparently, once you know what to look for (that's the trick.. knowing what to look for & where), muscle signals, (sub)verbal commands, and more can be taken directly from a person's brain. Mostly this is read-only for now, but there has been some work in inputting external signals as well. The new technology for interfacing with neural tissue is much better too. Very cool stuff. The next 10 years will be very interesting. The next 50 should be amazing.

yeah right. But (probably(sure;;)) it will cost a LOOOT Now, yeah. You know electrical devices though.. today they're expensive and underpowered. Next year they're half as expensive and twice as capable. They're already working on hippocampal prosthesis. If they can do that then they can do anything. It is only a matter of time. As for cost, I can see applications even if it costs as much as a car, or a house, especially if it opens up avenues for employment. There's also the scenario of Yuuki in SAO: Mother's Rosario. I can imagine people who are profoundly disabled physically being really attracted to even partial cyberization (in GitS terms) if it means a way to overcome their physical predicament.

Might actually get there in a few decades. It probably won't be a simple helmet, at least not at first, and it won't be here in 2022, but maybe in 2052. And if/when someone invents "full dive" gear in whatever form you know there will be a kickstarter for an Aincrad MMORPG as well.

Same here. There's some amazing stuff going down now. Too bad the lunatics are running the asylum. The next 100 years are going to be literally incredible, one way or another.

Not actually watching it yet (I'll probably binge it when the series is done) but last night I previewed the first episode of "Cells at Work". For some reason it reminds me of "The Incredible, Indelible, Magical Physical, Mystery Trip" from way (way, way, way) back. Anyone else remember "Time for Timer!" and the Bod Squad on Saturday morning TV back in the '70s? Heck, does anyone remember TV back in the 70s? How about just TV? Kind of hankering for a hunk of cheese right now too... maybe a peanut butter sandwich.....

My work environment is basically a NOCC (Network Operations Control Center), though it is one with a little more reach than is typical. We have remote sensing equipment scattered all over, some of it billions of miles away, and they all send us data streams in real time. We also transform the data. The incoming data streams get processed, integrated, a copy stored in various databases for future reference, and then outgoing data streams get generated and sent to our various end users all over the world. 
 It's a great job when it isn't trying to make me crazy. I’ve been working there for 30 years come November. Not at the same job of course, but in the same building anyway, and supporting the same activities. My current job title is <TLDR> “data systems engineer”. One of those jobs where one "gets" to do all the things that aren’t covered by the SOP. (Standard Operating Procedures.. I should also mention that I swim in an acronym sea at work.) I get to vet and apply config files. I get to deal with software/hardware upgrades. Sh..tuff happens in real-time. Wildlife, backhoes, solar flares, vacuum cleaners, plumbing, brush fires, riots… Never a dull moment. I’m usually the one that gets to deal with the anomalies, making sure they’re investigated, documented, and fixes/workarounds developed and applied as required/possible, including updating SOPs and collecting and reprocessing any data that fell on the floor. And the meetings! Ghods I hate the endless meetings! One part I do enjoy is writing / maintaining software to monitor and control the system(s) my group is responsible for. I've always enjoyed programming. I’ve got one program that displays the current schedule, another that updates and displays the expected SOE (sequence of events), another that reads the SOE/schedule information and schedules the automation. Some of my software watchdogs the data streams and network connectivity to notify the operators if the data flow stops, and throws up quick diagnostics to hopefully narrow down where the problems are when it does. I have some back-end tools for making sure data gets stored in the databases properly and is accessible. Eventually some of the data gets archived, and the archive metadata itself gets stored in yet another database. I maintain the tools that collect the data, and create and label the archive media. Also the database that stores the metadata so we can find and retrieve the archive media when/if necessary. Finally there’s some SQL report tools for my boss’s weekly metrics reports.
 Always gotta keep the boss happy, right?

115F yesterday and 95 overnight. Only 96 today but I finally broke down and bought an air conditioner for the bedroom.

Uh oh!

Momokuri.. This one is all light and cute on the surface, but has a kind of creepy side if you think about it too much. Kurihara is totally a stalker! Natsuyuki Rendezvous... Love triangle between a widow, her husband's ghost (who hasn't let go yet), and some poor sod who doesn't know what he's getting himself into. Oh, and said sod is the only one who can see said ghost. Not horror/scary at all, but makes for some interesting situation comedy. Also getting back to Grancrest War that I'd put on hold after the first season.

I don't have any freak-out phobias, but I am not fond of heights, and I definitely don't like large groups of people, especially in a crush like a subway at rush hour. You will never find me in Times Square on New Year's Eve.

Congrats!

Yes, all the more reason to avoid buying from the bad players. I really wish someone would come up with a mainstream approach that could reliably connect artists more directly to fans, without having to funnel the money through all those greedy middlemen. Crowdfunding is working in some cases, but it is still kind of "fringe", and not (yet?) perceived as reliable by the artists. Newer artists seem more amenable to things like Patreon, but for existing artists it is still something of a leap of faith. Most of those who decide to "go indie" seem to wind up in advertiser-sponsored systems like youtube or facebook which, though different, are still fundamentally broken, and don't really move the artists any closer to the fans. Actually, I kind of like getting a physical disc. I use them as backups of last resort. Sure I could just burn my own copy from a download, but the ones you get from the factory are made differently (pressed, rather than "burned") so they last longer, especially if you don't happen to have a climate-controlled bunker for your personal archive. Also, a lot of early stuff I ripped from DVD when HD space was still relatively expensive and all I had was standard-definition displays, so I over-compressed them and/or used lower encoding resolution to conserve drive space. The encoding s/w back then was often pretty poor and CPUs slow too, so it took a reeeely long time and often didn't do a very good job even at lower compression. It was nice (if a bit time-consuming) to be able to go back and re-rip some things from original sources to better quality now that we have better software, more storage, faster CPUs, and HD displays. The trick is making sure you still have player soft/hardware for the discs when your HD crashes and you need to re-rip everything 20 years down the line. These days I have a RAIDed NAS with plenty of space on my LAN (and an off-site copy of my all my data, including my entertainment) so that's not such an issue anymore, but I still like having the original media as backups. There's also usually some interesting/cool material included along with physical discs that you don't get with downloads. If nothing else you get the packaging artwork, which is sometimes even good enough to display somewhere.

Sure there's ways around the DRM. There always is. Always will be. If nothing else, the video is ultimately useless to me unless I can view it with my eyes, and if I can do that then I can record it again with a simple camera. (And if even one person bothers to do that you can bet that the recording will find its way onto the 'Net.) Until/unless everyone is using cyborg eyes controlled by MPAA-approved software that fact won't change. But there's a point at which it just isn't worth the trouble. I'd rather find ways to give money to the artists that produce the content I like in formats I find useful than reward the companies that sell me expensive, inconvenient product, assume I'm a criminal before even making a sale, and divert most of the money to their own pockets instead of the artists'.