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In this week's episode, I rate the movies and TV shows I shaw in Winter 2024. This week's coupon is for the audiobook of GHOST IN THE PACT as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy. You can get the audiobook of GHOST IN THE PACT for 50% off at my Payhip store with this coupon code: MARCHEXILE The coupon code is valid through April 5th, 2024, so if you find yourself needing an audiobook to leap into spring, we've got one ready for you! TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 192 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is March 15th, 2024, The Ides of March, which we're traditionally told to beware, and today we are looking at my Movie and TV Review Roundup for Winter 2024. Before we do that, we will do Coupon of the Week, an update on my current writing projects, and our Question of the Week. So first up, Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon is for the audiobook of Ghost in the Pact, as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy. You can get the audiobook for Ghost in the Pact for 50% off at my Payhip store with this coupon: MARCHEXILE and that is spelled MARCHEXILE. As always, the coupon code will be in the show notes. This coupon code is valid through April the 5th 2024. So if you find yourself needing an audiobook on this Ides of March, we've got one ready for you. So an update on my current writing projects. I am about 56% of the way through the first edit of Ghost in the Veils. That means the book should be on track to come out before Easter (which is at the end of March this year), if all goes well. I'm also 40,000 words into Wizard Thief, so hopefully that will come out before too much longer after Ghost in the Veils. I'm 11,000 words into Cloak of Titans. So that is where we're at with my current writing projects. 00:01:19 Question of the Week Now on to our new feature: Question of the Week. This week's question is inspired by the fact that I've spent a lot of the last few weeks setting up my new computer and getting it configured properly. So the question is: what is the first computer you ever used? No wrong answers, obviously. Joachim says his first personal computer was an Atari 1040 ST with 1 MB of RAM. I participated in the “religious war” with the Amiga 500 users, which was better and looked down at the MS-DOS PCs, which only has 640 kilobytes of RAM. Justin says: my first computer was a Timex Sinclair. It had two kilobytes of RAM and I forked out $50 for the 16 KB RAM extender module. The manual that comes with it says you will never need this much memory. I use a cassette tape recorder/player to record more programs and it ran a 300 baud. Todd says his first computer was in 1994. I purchased a 486 DX 2 8 megabytes of RAM for use in school. I believe the hard drive was about 250 MB. The monitor weighed a ton. I wrote a bunch of machine code and played Wolfenstein 3D like crazy. Tarun says in 1993 it was a 386 with four megawatts of RAM with Windows 3.1. I played a lot of Prince of Persia and got bad grades in school. Then the computer was locked up. In my educational defense, I did do some Pascal programming. AM says: my first computer was an Apple IIe at school. Getting to play Number Munchers or Oregon Trail on it was some kind of behavioral reward (and a very effective one at that). William says his first computer was a Macintosh SE in my parent's home office, though “using” is an overstatement since all I did was play a few simple preinstalled games. I also have fond memories of playing the original King's Quest with said parents and something like a Compaq Portable. Rich says Commodore 64 with cassette drive. Didn't have cassette the first day. Spent the whole day punching in code for a blackjack game. My sister walks into the room to turn the computer off, erasing everything. That is a bummer. Juana says: a Gateway. My whole family came to gawk at it, and me setting it up! It had 120 megabytes of RAM. Twice what was the ones that used in the college computer lab! I thought I was set for life. Venus says Commodore Vic20. We played Radar Rat Race and Mom gave us a stack of computer magazines and tape recorder, so we played every game that was in the magazines at the time after we typed in the programs and saved them to the tapes. You are the first person outside my family that ever heard also had one. More on that later. Cheryl says: we got our first computer in the early ‘90s: an Amstrad with an AWA printer. I was doing courses for work, so I needed something to print the assignments, but we also played games on it: Wolfenstein, Lemmings, and Stock Markets. They're the only ones I can remember. Craig says: Apple IIe. I'm oldish. With dot matrix printer and handheld modem, dial-up Internet access, the one you had the dial phone into the holding cradle after you called it in. Tracy says: at college we used the TRS80s. I think she may win the award for oldest computer mentioned in this topic. And Perry says: IBM PC clone at school, a friend's family had a Commodore 64. Our first family computer was a Commodore 128. For myself, I had the same first computer as Venus earlier in the thread. That would be a Commodore Vic20. It had 20 kilobytes of RAM and the Word file for the rough draft of Ghosts in the Veils, which I'm editing right now, is 355 kilobytes in size. So to load the Microsoft Word document of Ghosts in the Veils in Microsoft Word format, I would need about 18 different Commodore Vic 20 computers. That's like 1 computer per chapter and a half. So it is amusing to see how computer technology has changed quite a bit over time. 00:04:56 Winter 2024 Movie/TV Review Roundup Now to our main topic. We are inching closer to spring, so I think it's time for my Winter 2024 Movie Review Roundup. I got a Paramount Plus subscription to watch the Frasier reboot and since Paramount owns Star Trek and the Frasier reboot was only 10 episodes long, I ended up watching a chunk of modern Star Trek this winter. This was a new-ish experience because the last new Star Trek I watched was Star Trek Beyond way back in 2016. That was only eight years ago, but it's been a very eventful eight years, you know? I did watch a lot of Star Trek back in the 1990s. If you had held a gun to my head and demanded, you know, if I consider myself a Trekkie, I would say no, because I think Gene Roddenberry's socialist/utopian vision for the Federation that he put into Star Trek is fundamentally kind of goofy. The shows and movies were at their best when they stayed away from it or subverted it, like how the Federation can only be a utopia because Starfleet seems to have a Black Ops section that does all the unsanctioned dirty work and regularly runs amuck. Or like how Starfleet seems to have an actual mad science division that cooks up all kinds of nasty stuff. So anyway, these are the movies and shows I watched in Winter 2024, and as always, my ratings are wholly subjective and based on nothing more rigorous than my own opinions. We will go through these in order from least favorite to most favorite. So the first movie I watched was Now You See Me, which came out in 2013. Last year, I compared Adam Sandler's Murder Mystery movie to a C- student, but a fun C- student who everyone likes for his great parties and goes on to have a successful career as a regional sales manager. By contrast, Now You See Me is the sort of moody art student who always wears a black porkpie hat and thinks of himself or herself as deep and complicated, but in fact, they're just confusing. This is an apt comparison for this movie. Anyway, the plot centers around four sketchy magicians who are recruited by a mysterious organization called The Eye to carry out a series of high-profile heists using stage magic. I have to admit, that concept sounds even more ridiculous as I said the previous sentence. Anyway, after the first heist, the magicians become fugitives from the FBI but keep carrying on shows, sometimes staying ahead of law enforcement. The trouble is that nothing they do makes very much sense, and it all falls apart if you think about it for more than two seconds. Additionally, the movie overall feels very choppy since they rushed from scene to scene very quickly. The actors all gave very good performances that were entertaining to watch, but honestly, that was about the only thing the movie had going for it. Overall grade: D- Next up is The Marvels, which came out in 2023. This movie was logically incoherent, but actually rather charming and funny. It kind of reminds me of those ‘70s or ‘80s style science fiction movies that don't make much sense, though The Marvels was much lighter in tone than anything that came out in the science fiction space in the ‘60s or ‘70s. The movie got a bad rap because it didn't make back its budget, and apparently Disney rather shamefully threw the director under the bus. But to be fair, the budget for The Marvels was an enormous $274,000,000. To put this into context, the top three movies of 2023 (Barbie, Super Mario Brothers, and Oppenheimer) combined had a total budget across these three movies of $350 million, and together they grossed something like 15 times more than The Marvels did. Anyway, the plot picks up from the end of Ms. Marvel when Kamala Khan, Captain Marvel, and Monica Rambeau discover that their superpowers have become entangled. This means that if two of them use their powers at the same time, all three of them switch places randomly. This makes for a rather excellent fight scene earlier in the movie when the three characters don't know what's going on and are randomly teleporting between three different battles, much to the frequently amusing confusion of all participants. Once things settle down, Captain Marvel and her new friends realize that an old enemy of Captain Marvel is harvesting resources from worlds she cares about. So it's up to them to save Earth from this old enemy's vengeance. I have to admit, the plot of the movie didn't actually make much sense, but it was overall much funnier than Ant-Man 3 and Secret Invasion. The best thing about the movie was Kamala Khan and her family. Kamala, Monica, and Captain Marvel also had an entertaining dynamic together and the planet of space musicals was also pretty funny. I think the movie's biggest, unconquerable weakness was that it was the 33rd Marvel movie. There are all sorts of theories of why the movie didn't perform at the box office: superhero genre fatigue, everyone knew it would be on Disney Plus eventually, the lasting effects of COVID on movie theaters and the movie business, Disney throwing the director under the bus, Disney inserting itself into the US Cultural Wars, etcetera. All those reasons are subjective and subject to personal interpretation. What I think is objectively quantifiable is that The Marvels is the sequel to a lot of different Marvel stuff: The Avengers movie, Wandavision, Captain Marvel, the Guardians of the Galaxy movies, Secret Invasion, and Thor: Love and Thunder. That's like 50 to 60 plus hours of stuff to watch to fully understand the emotional significance of all the various characters in The Marvels. 50 to 60 hours of watching sounds like almost an entire entire semester's worth of homework assignments at this point. As someone who has written a lot of long series, I know that you lose some of the audience from book to book. I think that's ultimately why The Marvels didn't make back its budget. The Marvel movies as a series have just gone on too long and are just too interconnected. Ultimately, I am grateful to The Marvels. Realizing and understanding the concept of Marvel Continuity Lockout Syndrome helped me decide to write something new that wasn't a sequel or even connected to anything else I had written, which eventually led to Rivah Half-Elven and Half-Elven Thief. Overall grade: B- Our next movie is My Man Godfrey, which came out all the way back in 1936. This movie is considered the progenitor or one of the progenitors of the screwball comedy genre. A homeless man named Godfrey is living in a trash dump in New York, though despite his circumstances, Godfrey remained sharp and quick on his feet. One night, a wealthy woman named Cornelia approaches him and offers $5 if he'll come with her. Godfrey is naturally suspicious, but Cornelia assures him that she only needs to take him to a hotel to win a scavenger hunt by finding a forgotten man, which was a term President Roosevelt used to describe people who have been ruined by the Great Depression and then forgotten by the government. I have to admit, Cornelia immediately reminded me of the way the more obnoxious YouTubers and TikTokers will sometimes pay homeless people to participate in dance challenges and suchlike. King Solomon was indeed right when he said that there is nothing new under the sun and what has been done before will be done again. Anyway, Godfrey is offended by Cornell's imperious manner but after he sees Cornelia bullying her kindly but none too bright younger sister Irene, Godfrey decides he'll go with Irene so she can win. A grateful Irene offers him a job as the family's butler. At his first day at work, Godfrey very soon realizes the reason the family has gone through so many butlers: they are all certified certifiably and comedically insane. In addition to these other problems, Cornelia is harboring a massive grudge against Godfrey for losing the scavenger hunt and wants payback. Wacky hijinks ensue. Fortunately, Godfrey has some hidden depths that he will need, which include being much smarter than his employers. Admittedly, this is not hard. 1936 was towards the second half of the Great Depression in the United States, so obviously the movie has more than a bit of social commentary. The characters joked that prosperity is just around the corner and wonder where they can find that corner. The rich characters are uniformly portrayed as some combination of frivolous, clueless, or malicious. I think the movie was pretty funny, if sharply so, but the big weakness was that the male and female leads were so clearly unsuited for each other but got together at the end of the movie simply because it was the end of the movie. Still, it was definitely worth watching because you can see how this movie influenced many other movies after it. I definitely recommend watching it with captions if possible, because while human nature has not changed in the last 90 years, sound technology has in fact improved quite a bit. Overall grade: B. Next up is Charade, which came out in 1963. This is a sort of romantic comedy, sort of thriller that has Audrey Hepburn playing Regina, an American living in Paris who is in the process of getting divorced from her husband. When she returns to Paris, she learns that her husband was murdered in her absence and it turns out that he was in possession of $250,000 he stole from the US government during World War II. Regina had no idea about any of this, but the US government thinks that she has the money stashed away somewhere. It turns out that her late husband also betrayed the men he worked with to steal the money and they're convinced that she has the money as well, and they're going to get it from Regina regardless of what they have to do. Regina's only ally in this mess is a mysterious man calling himself Peter Joshua (played by Cary Grant), who may or may not be one of the other thieves operating under an assumed identity. I liked this movie, but I think it had two structural problems. First, Regina wasn't all that bright, though she did get smarter as the movie went on, probably out of sheer necessity. Second, it had some severe mood whiplash. The movie couldn't decide if he was a lighthearted romantic comedy or gritty thriller, though finally snapped into focus as a pretty good thriller in the last third of the movie. Amusing tidbit: Cary Grant only agreed to do the movie if Audrey Hepburn's character would be the one chasing his character in their romance, since he thought their age gap would be inappropriate otherwise, because he was so much older than Hepburn at the time of filming. Overall grade: B+ Next up is the new Frasier series from 2023. I admit I had very, very low expectations for this, but it was considerably better than I thought it would be. My low expectations came partly because the original show was so good. Some seasons were stronger than others, of course, but the show had some absolute masterpieces of sitcom comedy throughout its entire run. Some of this was because I think the 2020s are a much more humorless and dour age than the 1990s, so I had my doubts whether the new show could be funny at all. Fortunately, my doubts were misplaced. The new Frasier is actually pretty good. It's interesting that the show's generational dynamic has been flipped on its head. In the original show, the pretentious Frasier lived with his working-class father. 20 years later, it's now Frasier who lives with his son Freddie, who dropped out of Harvard to become a firefighter and consciously rejected his father's love of intellectualism and cultural elitism. The inversion of the original dynamic works quite well. It has some moments of genuine comedy because, like his father before him, Freddie is more like his father than he realizes. The show also avoided the pitfall of bringing back legacy characters that Disney and Lucasfilm stumbled into with Star Wars and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. Disney brought back legacy characters like Luke Skywalker and Indiana Jones but made them into sad, old losers. Frasier, by contrast, while frequently an unsympathetic comedy protagonist who brings his own misfortunes onto his own head, is most definitely not a sad old loser. He's famous, respected, and wealthy enough that he can afford to buy an apartment building in Boston at the drop of a hat. If you know anything about the United States, you know that the East Coast is the most expensive area of the of the country. Despite that, he remains the same well-meaning buffoon that he always was, the sort of man who, as a colleague aptly says, always goes that extra, ill-advised mile. There's a story that when Ricky Gervais was advising the creators of the American version of The Office, one of his chief pieces of advice was that Michael Scott could not be as incompetent as David Brent was in the original UK version of the show. American culture, Mr. Gervais said, was generally much less forgiving of incompetence than British culture. I thought of this as I watched Frasier because all the characters were in fact extremely competent at their jobs. Even Frasier himself, when he finally gets out of his own way, is a very good psychiatrist and teacher. Anyway, the show was funny and I think it deserves a second season. We'll see if that happens or not. Overall grade: A- Next up is Star Trek: Lower Decks Seasons One through Four, which came out from between 2020 and 2023. As I mentioned earlier, I ended up subscribing to Paramount Plus for a month after I watched Frasier, so I decided to watch Star Trek Lower Decks, since I'm forever seeing clips of that show turning up on social media. Lower Decks is a pitch perfect, affectionate parody of Star Trek from the point of view of four relatively hapless ensigns on the Cerritos, one of Starfleet's somewhat less prestigious ships. We have the self-sabotaging rebel Mariner, the insecure and ambitious Boimler, the enthusiastic science girl Tendi, and cheerful engineer Rutherford, who nonetheless has a dark and mysterious past that he can't remember. Season Four also adds T'Lyn, a Vulcan whose mild expressions of carefully measured annoyance make her a dangerous loose cannon by Vulcan standards. The show is hilarious because it makes fun of Star Trek tropes while wholeheartedly embracing them. The ensigns run into a lot of insane computers, random space anomalies, rubber forehead aliens, and other Star Trek tropes, including the grand and venerable Star Trek tradition of the Insane Admiral. Starfleet officers always seem to go off the deep end when they get promoted to Starfleet Command. The senior officers are also varying degrees of insane and drama generators. Starfleet, from the point of view of the Cerritos crew, is a vast bureaucratic organization that veers between ineffective idealism, blatant careerism, and whatever crazy project the Insane Admiral of the Week is pursuing. Yet since American sitcom characters have to be competent (like we just talked about above with Frasier), when the crisis really kicks into high gear, the Cerritos crew can pull itself together and save the galaxy with the best of them. I did like how the show grows from an affectionate parody to its own thing, with all the characters experiencing struggles and personal growth in their arcs. I liked it enough that when the 5th season of Lower Decks comes out, I'll subscribe to another month of Paramount Plus (assuming Paramount Plus still exists and hasn't been brought up by Warner Brothers or Skydance or something). Overall grade: A- Next up is Predator, which came out in 1987. When Carl Weathers died in early February of 2024, I realized I had never actually got around to seeing Predator. So I did and I'm glad that I watched it. Predator was an excellent blending of thriller, science fiction, and horror. Arnold Schwarzenegger plays Dutch, who commands a team of operators who do Black Ops work for the CIA. Since it's 1987, the CIA is up to its traditional shenanigans in Central America and Dutch is dispatched to help out his old friend Dillon (played by Carl Weathers), who has been ostensibly assigned to rescue a Pro-American cabinet minister from rebel guerrillas in the jungle. Since this is the CIA, naturally there is more than the mission than is apparent on the surface. However, the mission quickly becomes irrelevant when Dutch and his team realize they are being hunted by an unknown creature with capabilities unlike anything they have ever seen before. It turns out the creature is the Predator, an alien hunter who comes to Earth and takes human skulls as trophies. Soon the movie turns into a death match duel between Dutch and the Predator. The movie did a very good job of showing the Predator's capabilities such as stealth, heat vision, and his shoulder laser without explicitly spelling them out for the audience. It was a very well put together piece of storytelling and it is of course the source of the famous Internet meme of a muscular white arm gripping a muscular black arm and also Schwarzenegger's famous line of “Get to the choppa!” Also to quote a famous Internet meme, if you had a nickel for every future governor of a US state who is in this movie, you would have two nickels, which is not a lot, but even two is pretty weird, right? Overall grade: A. Now for the favorite thing I saw in winter 2024. That honor goes to Star Trek: Picard Season Three, which came out in 2023. Honestly, this was so much better than I thought it was going to be. I thought I would watch one or two episodes and then give up. Instead I watched the whole thing in like two days over the New Year's holiday. I watched the first episode of Picard Season One way back in 2020 was free on YouTube, but I didn't like it enough to subscribe to CBS All Access (or whatever the heck it was back then). The first episode also seemed more ponderous and dour in the sort of 21st century realistic prestige television snooze fest than I really wanted to watch. But Season Three of the show got high reviews from people whose opinions I generally respect when it came out in early 2023. Since I had Paramount Plus for a month because of Frasier, I decided to give it a go. I'm glad I did. How to describe the plot? You may remember that back in summer 2023, I watched the Battleship movie. Battleship is objectively a bad movie, but it does have one interesting subplot that would make a good movie all on its own. When space aliens imprison most of the US Navy, a bunch of retired veterans take a decommissioned battleship out to war to save the day. This basically is the plot of Picard Season 3. The plot kicks off when Doctor Crusher contacts Admiral Picard after they have not spoken for twenty years. Apparently, Picard had a son named Jack with Crusher that she never told him about and mysterious assailants are trying to kidnap Jack. On the original show, Picard and Crusher definitely gave off the vibe that they probably got romantic whenever they were alone in the elevator together. The fact that Doctor Crusher got pregnant with Picard's son is not all that surprising. Picard had always been adamant about his desire not to start a family and given that any son of the legendary Captain Picard would be a target for his equally legendary enemies, Crusher decided to keep the boy a secret. Picard, understandably, is shocked by the news, but teams up with his former first officer, Captain Riker, to rescue his son. Jack has an extensive Robin Hood-esque criminal history, so it seems that his misdeeds might have caught up to him. It turns out that deadly weapon is locked in Jack's DNA and the people pursuing him aren't merely criminals but powerful enemies intent on destroying Starfleet and the Federation. Jack Crusher's DNA will give them a weapon to do it, which means it's up to the crew of The Enterprise to save the galaxy one last time. This was ten episodes, but it was very, very tightly plotted, with not many wasted moments. Sometimes you see movies that seem like they should have been streaming shows, and sometimes streaming shows seem like they really should have been cut down to movie length. But Picard's Season Three does a good job of telling a tense story that we've been impossible either in a movie or the old days of network television. The show very quickly plunges into the crisis and keeps moving from new tension to new tension. The gradual reveal where Picard at first feels guilty that he has to ask his friends to help rescue his estranged son and ex-girlfriend like he's living his own personal version of some trashy daytime TV show, only to slowly realize that something much more dangerous and much, much bigger than his personal problems is happening, was put together well. The show was also another good example of how to bring back legacy characters right. All the characters from Star Trek: The Next Generation are older and have been knocked around by life or suffered personal tragedies, but none of them are sad old losers like in a Disney or Lucasfilm project. The new and supporting characters were also great. Seven of Nine returns as the first officer to Captain Shaw, a by the book officer who thinks Picard and Riker are dangerous mavericks. He has a point. Shaw turns out to be extremely competent in a crisis. Amanda Plummer was great as Vadic, a scenery chewing villain who has very good reasons to hate Starfleet and the Federation. Vadic's love of spinning directly in her command chair was a great homage to Amanda Plummer's late father, Christopher Plummer, who played a villain with a similar tic way back in Star Trek VI in the ‘90s. It is also great how the show wrapped up some of the dangling plot threads from the ‘90s, like Picard's strained relationship with his former mentee Commander Ro Laren or the brief return of Elizabeth Shelby, Riker's former First Officer. A few people have complained that Worf is now a pacifist, but he's a Klingon pacifist, which basically means he'll attempt negotiation before cutting off your head, but he is still probably going to cut off your head. Less Conan the Barbarian, more serene Warrior Monk. I think Data had an excellent ending to his character arc, which started with his character's very first appearance way back in the ‘80s and Brent Spiner did a good job of portraying Data's fractured personalities and then how they achieved unity. I'd say the weakest point of the show was how consistently dumb Starfleet command is. The plot hinged around Starfleet gathering its entire fleet together for a celebration and then putting all those ships under a remote control system, which seems both exceptionally stupid and very convenient for the bad guys. But to be fair, this is Starfleet, an organization whose high command regularly spits out insane Admirals and also has an unsanctioned Black Ops/Mad Science division that it can't control, so it definitely fits within the overall context of Star Trek. I mean, that's like half the premise of Lower Decks. And if you've ever worked for a large governmental, military, healthcare, or educational institution, you understand. We all know that working in a large institution under leaders who are either insane or dumb isn't exactly an anomaly in the human experience. I mean, the Roman Empire circa 190 A.D. was the most powerful institution on the planet and the Empire's maximum leader liked to spend his time LARPing as a gladiator in the Coliseum. Anyway, the emotional payoff at the end of Picard Season Three was very satisfying, and how the show wrapped up a lot of threads from Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager was pretty great. It's like the people who were in charge of Season Three of Picard watched the Star Wars sequel trilogy and thought, you know, we can do better and then they did. Overall grade: A So those are the movies and TV shows I watched in Winter 2024. If you're looking for something to watch, hopefully one of them sounds like it will catch your interest. That's it for this week. Thanks for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you that you can listen to all the back episodes on https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform or choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.

Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about business, innovation, and managing life as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-business-qa Questions include:What are your thoughts on operational systems and how they impact personal productivity? Have you ever used Microsoft Windows? Could you tell us a bit of your computer setup (OS, productivity tools, files sync systems, etc.)? - With consistent routines and self-tracking, have you developed a strong intuition for how many keystrokes you've made in a day or how many steps you've taken in a day? Other Wolfram-y intuitions? - I'm working on an IRC-client for my old Tiki 100 computer. I will only use IRC on that computer. It has to send signals to the PC that reroutes it into IRC though. But it should work. - The Tiki 100 is a Norwegian computer released in 1984. It has a Zilog Z80 processor and 64 KB RAM and some chunky video framebuffer. - ​Would you be able to go back to pencil and paper? Like pure research? - My first experience on a computer was the Commodore 64 playing Oregon Trail. Did you ever program any games? - Do you have any career advice/job seeking advice? I graduated, and searching for a job is quite slow. I've also been considering starting some sort of (3D printing) business instead but don't really know how I can gain the skills for that. What made you start a business? - How do you manage the "holiday madness" around this time of year (packed stores, more drivers than usual on the roads, house full of family)? - How do you apply computer science, 500+ employees, new kind of business to architecture and city planning for billions? - Do you ever feel like you spend too much time managing people instead of solving technical problems, or is the balance just right? - Is it safe to say a business is a machine made of people? - How do you decide balancing effort towards invention vs innovation? Not just your own effort and time but also the Wolfram organization. - Can this sort of scaling (employees needed for a functioning company) get modeled and planned by your technologies? - I guess sub-projects are a good thing to have when doing projects that involve more than one person. - ​As technologies become more and more complicated, do you sometimes feel a sense of losing control, or that it gets really overwhelming to try and understand how everything works? - ​How do you encourage people to envision a positive future when things aren't currently going as they expect?

OG Flow of Preachas in tha Hood on Sky Blue Radio Track List 09/04/22 "08 West Funk","President Chell""Who That Is","Social Club Misfits, DJ Laz""Still Up","Jon Keith, Nobigdyl.""Bible Going Viral (feat. Caleb Gordon)","Mike Teezy""CECE","Indie Tribe, Nobigdyl., Jon Keith""Don't Worry Bout It","Wande, Porsha Love""ONE WAY","Nobigdyl.""I Can't Lose","K Diamond, Brenno, Aable""Spread The Opps","Lecrae""WAY MAKER","Kkah$o, Kelo""Church House Trap House","1K Phew, 1k Pson""Hold Me Back","Canon, Derek Minor""You Know the Drill","Andy Mineo, Wordsplayed, Magic & Bird""CATFISH","Torey D'Shaun, Nobigdyl.""PETER BAND$ (feat. Hulvey)","DJ Mykael V & 350 & A3""La Fiesta (Remix)","116, Alex Zurdo, Redimi2, Lecrae, Funky""Pa' mi gente (Remix)","Jadi Torres, Rhyan LaMarr, Angie Rose, Fern, Mod G""Ionou Jack","Aha Gazelle""No Chains","KB""Ram in the Bush","Mike Teezy""God Flex","Tedashii""No Days Off","Trip Lee""Ready or Not","Hulvey""SPIN BACK!","Scootie Wop""...Falling?","Andy Mineo""The One With The Presidential Freestyle","Marty""Respect My Team","Tedashii, Lecrae, Trip Lee""WHAT A DAY","Nobigdyl.""So Good","Torey D'Shaun, 1kphew""Godfidence","Adrien Lamont""Long Way (feat. KB)","Lathan Warlick, KB""RED 23","PEEDY CASE""GOING UP!","DEON, Jon Keith""REST (feat. nobigdyl.)","Not Klyde""I Think (Securus Original Hip Hop Track Winner, Carmela Mose)","Good""No Loss","Canon""On E","Red Tips""Too Much? My Bad!","Datin, Dax Hamma, Bizzle, Mike Teezy""Cover Me","Chille' Baby (A Legendary Gospel Gangsta)""Show Down","A.G.E.""STERLING","Indie Tribe, Mogli the Iceburg, Jon Keith"

This week's EYE ON NPI is a throwback to the 8-bit era, with a new spin on the classic AVR microcontrollers we've loved for decades: it's Microchip's AVR® DD Family of Microcontrollers (https://www.digikey.com/en/product-highlight/m/microchip-technology/avr-dd-family-of-microcontrollers), a powerful update to the powerful and low-power AVR RISC core that came from Atmel. While many folks may be moving to Cortex M0 or RISC-V chipsets to get 32-bit performance, there's still a lot of demand and use for 8-bit microcontrollers. Cost, simplicity, reliability, code-size, and power usage can all be better on 8-bit. If you're only on a 32-bit micro because of peripherals that tend to come with the fancier chips, you might be surprised by what the AVR DD family has to offer. For example, these chips have external interrupts on (just about all) the GPIO pins. There's four 16-bit timers plus one 12-bit (that's *five* total timers!), SPI & I2C, two UARTs, a 10-bit DAC, and 12-bit input ADC that's muxed to almost every pin. In particular, the high-bit ADC and DAC are a little unusual to see in an 8-bit platform. (https://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/aemDocuments/documents/MCU08/ProductDocuments/DataSheets/AVR32-16DD20-14-Prel-DataSheet-DS40002413.pdf) There's also some funky MCP-specific peripherals that can help reduce BOM cost. For example, CCL/LUT is a peripheral that allows you to make custom logic-lookup-tables for making simple - but very very fast - multi-input logic gates that can use interrupts or peripherals as input. (http://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/AppNotes/TB3218-Getting-Started-with-CCL-90003218A.pdf) For example, you can make a SR latch, logic gate, or Manchester encoder - you can think of it as like a 'micro' PIO or CPLD. MVIO is a new capability that we haven't seen before, where an IO port can run at a different logic level - either higher or lower than the VCC power. This allows easy bi-directional interfacing of SPI/I2C/GPIO to 3V logic from 5V, or vice versa, without the use of level shifting! (http://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/Appnotes/GettingStarted-MVIO-AVRDB-DS90003287A.pdf) Perfect if you want to run this main core at 5V for speed and signal strength, but have some 3V sensors to interface to, or run the core at 1.8V for power and IO but have a 3.4V LED you want to light up. Clock rate is up to 24 MHz, can be powered from 1.8 to 5.5V - it's exceedingly rare to find 5V ARM chips - and have FLASH, SRAM, EEPROM and NVM. EEPROM in particular is not common on ARM chips, and some don't even have built in Flash. So think of this as a compact li'l chip with pretty much everything you need to get a product out the door, with a range of memory sizes and physical packages from QFN to DIP! (http://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/DeviceDoc/AVR-DD-Product-Brief-DS40002215A.pdf) It's nice to see Microchip is still innovating the AVR line, to make better 8-bit micros that power the electronics around us. For programming, of course you can use MPLAB IDE but we like Arduino compatibility and SpenceKonde's DxCore (https://github.com/SpenceKonde/DxCore) looks like it's adding or added AVR DD support, so you can quickly get going with compiling code and using the basic peripherals in just a few minutes! Best of all, the AVR DD family of parts (https://www.digikey.com/short/m4qb8wf8) are totally in stock at Digi-Key right now for immediate shipment. There's SOIC, SSOP and QFN packages with up to 64KB flash / 8 KB RAM, all for about $1.50 in individuals, $1 in qty. If you're looking for an alternative to the ATmega328, this is a nice step up. We recommend getting started with the AVR DD Curiosity Nano board which is breadboard compatible and has everything needed to get started. (https://www.digikey.com/short/10n70tmc) Order today and you can be MVIOing towards your next AVR 8-bit based product by tomorrow afternoon!

Welcome to TechTime Radio with Nathan Mumm, the show that makes you go "Hummmm" Technology news of the week for March 6th - March 12th, 2022.Today on the show, the Ukraine Government is selling NFTs to fund the war against Russia and the criminal hacking group Anonymous hacking into Russian TV and streaming services with Ukraine war footage. Next, we have Samsung getting breached again, and a new gadget that puts the personal touch into your virtual world with Gwen Way on "Gadgets and Gear." Then we have our fan-favorite "Letters" segment. In addition, we have other favorite features including, "This Week in Technology," of course, "Mike's Mesmerizing Moment," and, of course, our "Pick of the Day" whiskey tasting. So sit back, raise a glass, and Welcome to TechTime with Nathan Mumm. Episode 91:  Starts at 2:35--- [Now on Today's Show]: Starts at 5:10--- [Top Stories In The First Five Minutes]: Starts at 9:10Anonymous hacked Russian TV and streaming services with Ukraine war footage - https://tinyurl.com/yryfppwrSamsung has confirmed that elements of the Galaxy source code were stolen by hackers but says no customer data has been compromised in the process - https://tinyurl.com/2p8etpj6 Ukraine Government to sell NFTs to fund the war against Russia - https://tinyurl.com/2p99hfr3--- [Pick of the Day - Whiskey Tasting Review]: Starts at 20:51PB&W Peanut Butter Whiskey | 70 Proof | 29.99--- [Gadgets and Gear with Gwen Way]: Starts at 24:41A new gadget from KickStarter that puts the personal touch into your virtual world with Gwen Way  --- [This Week in Technology]: Starts at 39:10IBM Introduces PC-XTMarch 8, 1983IBM introduces the IBM Personal Computer XT, which stands for eXtended Technology. For a price of $4,995, it features a Intel 8088 processor, a 10MB hard drive, eight expansion slots, serial port, 128 kB RAM, 40Kb ROM, a keyboard, and one double-sided 360kB floppy drive.--- [Letters]: Starts at 43:22Mike and Nathan share this week's informative emails that were received during the week. This includes scams, phishing emails, and all-out mistruths disguised as legitimate emails.--- [Mike's Mesmerizing Moment brought to us by StoriCoffee®]: Starts at 52:24--- [Pick of the Day]: Starts at 54:04PB&W Peanut Butter Whiskey | 70 Proof | 29.99 Mike: Thumbs Up Nathan: Thumbs Up

Welcome to the latest “EYE on NPI” with the Nordic nRF5340 Bluetooth Microcontroller – available for purchase from Digi-Key. https://www.digikey.com/products/en/rf-if-and-rfid/37?k=nrf5340&newproducts=1 What is EYE on NPI? The acronym NPI stands for New Product Introduction and sometimes you’ll also see NPD (New Product Development). EYE on NPI will showcase, spotlight, and discuss the latest new products and announcements from the entire component industry. EYE on NPI will help engineers go from prototype to market and get important information on pricing and availability. The more you know, the more you can reduce time-to-market, the more you increase the quality of the product(s) and reduce production costs! Adafruit releases dozens of new products per month. We live, eat, and breathe datasheets and we wanted to share our NPI process with everyone: how we get to market quickly, and what the latest NPIs are out there. ====== This week’s EYE ON NPI takes a peek at the new chips coming from Nordic Semi – makers of some great wireless chipsets and their new major chipset release, the nRF5340! We’ve been huge fans of the nRF5 series, which has combined a powerful microcontroller and a 2.4GHz BLE radio. We started with the nRF51 which we’ve used in our popular Feather 32u4 Bluefruit LE board, and then moved onto the nRF52 series which is used in the Circuit Playground Bluefruit. So naturally we’re very interested in the latest major version of this family – the nRF5340. Please note: this is a really new NPI, so new that this part is an engineering sample and is not fully tested. There may be silicon bugs that will be fixed in the final release. Even if it’s not ready for mass manufacture, it’s a great time to start prototyping or developing with it. According to Nordic: The nRF5340 is the world’s first wireless SoC with two Arm® Cortex®-M33 processors. The nRF5340 is an all-in-one SoC, including a superset of the most prominent nRF52® Series features. Features like Bluetooth® Direction Finding, high-speed SPI, QSPI, USB, up to 105°C operating temperature, and more, are combined with more performance, memory and integration, while minimizing current consumption. The application processor is optimized for performance and can be clocked at either 128 or 64 MHz, using voltage-frequency scaling. It has 1 MB Flash, 512 KB RAM, a floating-point unit (FPU), an 8 KB 2-way associative cache and DSP instruction capabilities. The network processor is clocked at 64 MHz and is optimized for low power and efficiency (101 CoreMark/mA). It has 256 KB Flash and 64 KB RAM. The most interesting thing about this new chip is how powerful the processors are – they’ve upgraded the nRF52840’s Cortex-M4 to two M33’s, and doubled the max clock speed to 128 MHz. The second processor will be useful for products where you have very specific real-time requirements, as the Nordic radio software (SoftDevice) can interrupt user code to handle incoming packets. It’s better if you can dedicate one core to handling all radio requirements, and any secure/encryption/sync/authentication work, so the main thread can run on another processor to handle user interface requirements. This chip is powerful enough to run DOOM You can pick up nRF5340 chips right now from DigiKey, and don’t forget to also grab an nRF5340 preliminary dev kit as well. We’re a fan of the Nordic DK’s: they’re very complete and easy to use with built in J-Link program/debug, just-the-right-amount of peripherals, and power monitoring support, all for a really great price. Visit the Adafruit shop online - http://www.adafruit.com ----------------------------------------- LIVE CHAT IS HERE! http://adafru.it/discord Adafruit on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adafruit Subscribe to Adafruit on YouTube: http://adafru.it/subscribe New tutorials on the Adafruit Learning System: http://learn.adafruit.com/ -----------------------------------------

1984 – Apple introduces the Apple IIc, their answer to a portable machine. It weighed 7 1/2 lbs and featured a 1.023MHz CPU and 128 KB RAM. $1,295. The device device had a built-in floppy and peripheral expansion ports. This was a closed system – no expansion slots to plug in cards. It was deemed […]

Buying a laptop for college, VM Password advice, securing your online medical account, Facebook privacy, Profiles in IT (Anthony M Fadell, father of the Apple iPod), BART cuts wireless service to stop protest, World Wide Web turn 20 (Tim Berner-Lee launched the first website August 6, 1991 at CERN), IBM PC turns 20 (PC announced in Waldorf Astoria on August 12, 1981, cost $1,565, 4.77 MHz Intel 8088, 16 kB RAM), Perseid Meteor Shower (peak nights this weekend, images available via webcam for first time), DARPA lostes Mach 20 aircraft (reached speeds 20 times the speed of sound, telemetry failure after 13 minutes), and Black Hat Conference (held in Las Vegas, many security vulnerabilities discusses included certifcate authority system, UPNP on wireless routers, new phishing techniques). This show originally aired on Saturday, August 13, 2011, at 9:00 AM EST on WFED (1500 AM).

Buying a laptop for college, VM Password advice, securing your online medical account, Facebook privacy, Profiles in IT (Anthony M Fadell, father of the Apple iPod), BART cuts wireless service to stop protest, World Wide Web turn 20 (Tim Berner-Lee launched the first website August 6, 1991 at CERN), IBM PC turns 20 (PC announced in Waldorf Astoria on August 12, 1981, cost $1,565, 4.77 MHz Intel 8088, 16 kB RAM), Perseid Meteor Shower (peak nights this weekend, images available via webcam for first time), DARPA lostes Mach 20 aircraft (reached speeds 20 times the speed of sound, telemetry failure after 13 minutes), and Black Hat Conference (held in Las Vegas, many security vulnerabilities discusses included certifcate authority system, UPNP on wireless routers, new phishing techniques). This show originally aired on Saturday, August 13, 2011, at 9:00 AM EST on WFED (1500 AM).

Gastheer Maarten Hendrikx, @maartenhendrikx op Twitter, of via zijn website. Panel Marco Frissen, @mfrissen op Twitter, of via zijn website. Jan Seurinck, @janseurinck op Twitter, of via zijn website. Davy Buntinx, @dirtyjos op Twitter, of via zijn website. Cindy de Smet, @drsmetty op Twitter, of via haar website. Stefaan Lesage, @stefaanlesage op Twitter of via de Devia website. Gast Wammes Witkop, bekend in Nederland van het MSX Computer Magazine en tegenwoordig PC-Active Feestje! Een speciale opname deze keer. Ter gelegenheid van de 45e podcast gaan we terug in de tijd. Onderwerpen zijn deze keer per panellid: Stefaan: Commodore lanceert na de Vic20 de Commodore 64. De Amiga werd geboren in 1987 Schrijft zijn eerste echt applicatie ... een kennis zijn videotheek / kledingzaak draaide volledig op een Amiga (alles in AmigaBasic geschreven). Marco: Zijn 1e computer: Goldstar FC200 MSX1 - later opgevolgd door MSX2, MSX2+, TurboR Flop van het decennium op computer (marketing) gebied: Elan Enterprise -- technisch mooi, marketing flop - uiteindelijk meeste in hongarije - ISBASIC - meerdere programma's in geheugen mogelijk (toen uniek) De jaren 80 computerclubs en scenes - FAC (Federation Against Commodore) - MSX Gebruikersclubs - kopieren van diskettes - demo's Cindy: Game & Watch brengt Mickey Mouse uit op Wide Screen, een jaar later volgt Donkey Kong Jr op New Wide Screen. Mijn persoonlijke favoriet is Egg uit 1981, waarbij je eieren opvangt die door kippen gelegd worden. Dokter Bibber onder de kerstboom in 1984. Blijkt een game uit 1965 te zijn, maar dat doet er niet toe hé. 1997 Abo bij eerste internetprovider Ping Davy: In november brengt Casio een high-end G-Shock uit, de codenaam is momenteel de Frogman. In augustus 1995 brengt Nintendo de Virtual Boy uit! Op 7 mei 1997 brengt Intel de Pentium II uit. Kan ik eindelijk mijn Pentium Pro vervangen! Kloksnelheden zullen tot 266 MHz gaan, wat véél meer is dan de huidige 200 Mhz van de Pro en bevat dezelfde technologie, de P6-core. Maarten: De Motorola DynaTAC wordt uitgebracht In 1984 komt de eerste echte Apple Mac, de Macintosh 128K uit. Jan: Nintendo brengt de gameboy op de markt. Ik heb mijn eerste e-verslaving Bij ons komt ergens in 1996-1997  de eerste modem binnen. Een 56K. Ik ontdek het internet, mail en alles. Lancering van Google in 1997, ik gebruikte altavista nog voor afbeeldingen, ik herinner me dat google daar in het begin niet zo goed in was. Wammes: In de jaren 80 waren de computerbeurzen heel groot - ooit klein begonnen, begin jaren tachtig, toen geëxplodeerd. Verkeer rond Utrecht liep vast in 1989 tijdens de HCC-dagen. Ook in België elk weekend meerdere grote verkoopbeurzen. En dat alles stortte weer ineen met WWW. Van eng tot algemeen - begin jaren tachtig werd je zcheef aangekeken als je computers leuk vond. Die dingen waren eng en dat was jij ook, als je dat anders zag. Nerds en Geeks werden echt omheen gelopen. Sinclair kondigt geheugenuitbreiding aan voor ZX81. Op 5 maart 1981 verscheen de ZX81 in de winkels, een homecomputer met 1 kB RAM geheugen. Waarvan een groot deel voor het scherm gebruikt werd, je had echt maar een paar honderd bytes vrij. Wat waren we blij met de gelijktijdig gelanceerde geheugenuitbreiding van 16 kB! Werd achterop geklikt, rechtstreeks op een aansluiting van het moederbordje. En owee als je gefrustreerd door de verschrikkelijke membraamtoetsjes te hard ging tikken - een wiebeltje van die cartridge en de handel resette zichzelf: weg je werk. Vaak opslaan op een cassetterecorder was overigens ook geen echte optie... WINNEN! Deze keer kan je ook een mooie prijs winnen: 1 x Een DVD collectors set "Back to The Future". 5 x De Tech45 aflevering op cassette. 5 x topups bij Mobile Vikings Om kans te maken dien je de jaartallen van het 1e onderwerp genoemd door de vaste panelleden (Stefaan, Maarten, Cindy, Davy, Jan en Marco) op te tellen en de uitkomst te tweeten met de hashtag #tech45. Meedoen kan tot maandag 7 februari middernacht. Winnaars worden de volgende aflevering bekend gemaakt. Diegene met als 1e het juiste antwoord mag kiezen, de rest wordt verloot onder de juiste inzendingen. Tips Marco tipt Commodore 64 (iTunes link), een C64 emulator voor je iPhone. Jan tipt Open Transport Tycoon Deluxe. Stefaan vind Dashkards handig, cheatsheets voor mac en webapps. Davy tipt Super Mega Worm (iTunes link), een hilarische game voor iPhone/iPad. Cindy raadt het gebruik van Send To Dropbox aan. Gewoon bestanden mailen die in je Dropbox terecht komen. Handig! Wammes waarschuwt potentiele kopers van computers met een Intel Sandy Bridge liever te wachten, vanwege een nogal nare bug. Feedback Het Tech45-team apprecieert alle feedback die ingestuurd wordt. Heb je dus opmerkingen, reacties of suggesties, laat dan een commentaar hieronder achter. Via twitter kan natuurlijk ook @tech45cast. Ook audio-reacties in .mp3-formaat zijn altijd welkom. Items voor de volgende aflevering kunnen gemarkeerd worden in Delicious met de tag 'tech45'. Vergeet ook niet dat je 'live' kan komen meepraten via live.tech45.eu op dinsdag 8 februari vanaf 21u30. Deze aflevering van de podcast kan je downloaden via deze link, rechtstreeks beluisteren via de onderstaande player, of gewoon gratis abonneren via iTunes.