My morning oatmeal had ice on it!

Let me explain. :-)

I do overnight oats. I make it up before I go to bed: a packet of Nature's Path Maple Nut Instant Oatmeal, made with whole milk, add a teaspoon or two of maple syrup, stir thoroughly, and put in the fridge. The oats fully hydrate overnight, and I have a very yummy breakfast after nuking it. The oats are much fluffier than just throwing it all together and placing it in the microwave, completely different texture. And never use water to make oatmeal! So much better with milk.

It didn't look quite right when I pulled it out this morning. I quickly noticed there was an exceedingly thin film of ice on it. Just stirring it was enough to mostly break it up, and the texture was otherwise fine. I went and told Russet, she'd previously told me that it was 46f when she took the dogs out for a walk in the wee small hours and the house was about 65.

She said, "That's weird. Last night I made some food, and it was really hot so I put it in the fridge... on... the... top... shelf... by... the... temperature... control..."

We both laughed. She'd accidentally spoofed the temperature control into cranking itself down low to compensate for the hot food placed underneath it.

I walked back in a couple of minutes later and said "You know, my dad would have so loved that story!" She nodded and said "Yes, he would have."

Student-built electric vehicles smash two records!

Swiss and German engineering students are doing some great things!

First up, the Swiss. Swiss students built a car that did zero to 62 MPH (100 KPH) in UNDER ONE SECOND! That is some very impressive engineering. And to top that off, the car achieved that in FORTY FEET! Oh, and they designed, built, and completed the run in ONE YEAR!

The run is so short, and the speed is so low that the car isn't affected by conventional downforce like, say, a Formula 1 car would be, so it took some very impressive aerodynamics to generate it. You also had to control the acceleration in such a way to have zero tire slip because if you're spinning those tires, you're wasting energy and losing speed.

I'm curious how much energy was left in those batteries at the end of the run! My guess is that it that they were very low.

Oh, and the car was driven by a woman. So go, girls!

This will be a very nice line for the students to put on their CVs when they start job-hunting!

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/09/this-student-built-ev-just-set-a-new-world-record-for-0-62-mph/


The second record was set inside a German airport hanger, and went in a different direction. A team of seven drivers drove the vehicle that they built for distance, not speed.

From the article: "The car, called muc22, looks more conventional than the Swiss speedster, if only a little. The diminutive coupe in this case was built for efficiency, and in a six-day test at Munich airport, it set a new distance record on a single charge (for a non-solar EV): 1,599 miles (2,574 km), with less battery capacity than many plug-in hybrids—just 15.5 kWh." (emphasis mine)

At a speed of 26 MPH. Not exactly a commuter car, but an impressive technology demonstration. It was driven inside a hanger to eliminate weather factors disturbing the run.

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/09/1600-miles-on-a-single-charge-student-built-ev-sets-new-world-record/

"AI took my job, literally" - Gizmodo fires Spanish-speaking staff

They decided that an AI translator could replace the Spanish-speaking staff to translate articles.

It didn't work too well.

The translator program repeatedly failed partway through the articles, reverting to English. Also, the translators wrote tech articles of interest to the Spanish community, which the AI could not do.

A terrible loss all around.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/09/ai-took-my-job-literally-gizmodo-fires-spanish-staff-amid-switch-to-ai-translator/

Unity game engine just screwed the pooch, developers are up in arms

Unity used to be THE game engine that developers went to. It was multiplatform, and it was pretty much free for small developers to get in to for early projects. Big developers paid more for it, which makes sense.

Well, that all changed this week.

There's an old joke that when you take your car to your mechanic and you need a whole bunch of stuff done, like your brake fluid filter replaced, that the mechanic needs to make a boat payment. Well, in this case, it's like Unity's entire board needs new boats.

They are going to start charging users of Unity's engine $0.20 every time someone INSTALLS a game using the Unity engine! The developers/game company eats that fee. It slides slightly, like if you're a huge company like Bethesda or EA, it goes down once you're above a certain threshold.

But let's look at a couple of very real events. A game company developed a game with the Unity engine, I believe it was called Vampire. They sold it on the Steam platform for $0.99. Steam automatically takes a 30% cut. Had Unity been taking $0.20 at that time, the developer would have been taking a loss on every single unit.

Second scenario. For whatever reason, you hate Bob at Bob's Game Studio. Maybe he left a snarky comment on a social media post that you didn't like. So you write a script that will create a virtual machine that will then download Bob's game, install it, then delete the VM and repeat endlessly. Costing Bob $0.20 until you decide to stop the process. And hey, why not rent some Amazon cloud servers and spin up a few dozen VM servers to do the same thing?

Among the worst parts of this is that Unity promised to never do such a thing, now they're doing it. And to top it off, they're saying that this fee will be RETROACTIVE. The game that you made on a previous version of the Unity engine? Start coughing up those 80% of a quarter.

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2023/09/game-developers-unite-against-unitys-new-per-install-pricing-structure/


Developers are furious. So much so that Unity has had to close two offices because of threats against the company and its people. Closed at least through the end of the week. They have 15 offices in North America, 39 world-wide.

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2023/09/potential-threat-shuts-two-unity-offices-after-per-install-fee-announcement/


But there is a bright spot on the horizon: Godot. Yes, you don't have to wait for Godot. (sorry/not sorry: couldn't resist)

There's a new game engine in town that goes by Godot. It's fairly mature, up to the V4 stage with the v3 engine in long-term support. It is multi-platform including iOS and Android, supports C#, C++, Rust and a number of other languages. AND it's free and open source. You can use Blender with it and several other languages to create assets for it.

Absolutely guaranteed that computer game developers will be switching to it by the legion.

Humble Bundle frequently sells programming bundles for game developers for Unity. I wonder how long until they sell them for Godot and whether the frequency of offering them for Unity goes down.

https://godotengine.org/

Amazing timing! Humble Bundle posts a Godot programming bundle!

What timing! Looks like someone over there reads geek technical news and sees trends. Whouldathunkit?

The bundle will server you as an excellent introduction to the Godot gaming platform development system with 20 training courses for $25. They are listed as multi-platform.

These are not books, not 100% sure they're downloadable. The web site description: "Master Godot—the lightweight, fast, and free game engine behind hits like Sonic Colors: Ultimate. Whether you want to use the brand new version 4 or the battle-tested version 3, these courses will get you building platformers, RPGs, first-person shooters, city-builders, strategy games, and more—no prior experience required! Plus, you’ll learn how to customize your games by creating your own art and assets, all while supporting Girls Who Code with your purchase!"

The bundle will be available for twenty days!

https://www.humblebundle.com/software/everything-you-need-to-know-about-godot-4-encore-software