We’re now on the third Windows 10 feature update after last year’s big Creators Update. I had not bothered writing about the two intervening updates as there wasn’t much to say, but the most recent one brought some nifty new functions you should be aware of. First, here are How-To Geek’s comprehensive feature lists for … Continue reading “Windows 10 October 2018 Update”
Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire is to Pillars of Eternity what Baldur’s Gate 2 was to Baldur’s Gate. There are some gameplay improvements but mostly the game is very similar, just way bigger. My total playtime was about 80 hours, and that’s without any expansions. The name stems from the caribbean-themed archipelago of Deadfire, to … Continue reading “Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire”
Java SE 11: The Great Removal
Java SE 11 has been released, with fairly few minor new features. That’s not surprising as Java 11 receives long-term support in Oracle’s new release cadence, so its main purpose is to stabilize the major changes from the previous short-term versions. The bigger issue with Java 11 is what it removes, as well as an … Continue reading “Java SE 11: The Great Removal”
Augsburg Impressions
Augsburg (more information in German) is among the German cities with the oldest documented history of continuous settlement. Orginally founded in 15 AD as a Roman army camp, it developed into a provincial capital called Aelia Augusta and later Augusta Vindelic[or]um. The town appears to have remained fully populated throughout the later transition from Roman … Continue reading “Augsburg Impressions”
Avoid WordPress Export
WordPress comes with a built-in Export feature that saves some or all posts and related metadata to an XML file, supposedly as a backup or for transfer to another WordPress installation. Unfortunately this feature has two glaring flaws. Export scrambles HTML markup! I’m using the raw HTML editor to write my posts, so I know … Continue reading “Avoid WordPress Export”
Some Windows Histories
For some reason, this year everyone decided to publish extensive articles on the history of Microsoft Windows and related technologies. Reading all of them will probably take you a month but they are quite informative, so I wanted to collect them here in case you missed some or all of them. Doing Windows at the … Continue reading “Some Windows Histories”
Altmühl Dinosaurs
The picturesque valley of the river Altmühl, crossing Bavaria from west to east where it joins the Danube, features a number of limestone quarries which continue to reveal large amounts of Jurassic fossils. The Dinosaur Park Altmühltal, located halfway between Munich and Nuremberg near the town of Denkendorf, has a number of them on display … Continue reading “Altmühl Dinosaurs”
Pillars of Eternity
Released in 2015, Pillars of Eternity was inspired by Bioware’s classic Baldur’s Gate games which revived isometric RPGs in a pausable real-time format, followed by other Black Isle Studios titles based on the same Infinity Engine, in particular Planescape: Torment. For lack of a willing publisher Pillars of Eternity was originally crowdfunded on Kickstarter. Its … Continue reading “Pillars of Eternity”
Newspapers Still Keep Shrinking
The recent massive layoffs at the New York Daily News prompted me to revisit the ongoing massacre at American newspapers and other news media. First, here are a couple of articles to quantify the damage. Bureau of Labor Statistics (1990–2016): newspaper employment shrank from 455,000 to 183,200 and books plus periodicals from 232,200 to 155,100, … Continue reading “Newspapers Still Keep Shrinking”
Artificial and Human Intelligence
Google Alpha Go’s victories over the world’s top-ranked human Go masters made headlines recently, just like IBM Deep Blue’s victories over world chess champion Garry Kasparov twenty years ago. The two programs were based on quite different paradigms: Deep Blue used the brute-force tree search that’s still common in computer games, whereas Alpha Go combined … Continue reading “Artificial and Human Intelligence”