COVID
Victoria is down to 61 active cases. NSW is down to 48 active cases. Does anyone else find it funny that the Victorian CHO has a donut in his name?
Some people who have been in Melbourne a majority of their life are relocating to other states because of lock down. Others are moving their family to regional Victoria, with regional schools expecting a spike in enrollment from families who can work from home forever. However the NAB is directing its staff in other states to come back to the offices now. Michigan in the US is trying to lure people to their city with a free $15k. “All of a sudden we have an office that is oversized” is something that’s going to send a chill down the spines of commercial real estate agents everywhere in the world.
The world is at 11,982,866 active cases, with 1,201,905 total deceased. Belgian doctors in Liège with COVID are being asked to keep working, to prevent a collapse of the hospital system. Police are attacking anti-lockdown protesters in Florence Italy. People are protesting in Spain, and chasing down police cars.
The patient sheet for people on the Oxford vaccine trial is interesting and long. Vaccines are trailed on healthy people first before it’s moved to the more sensitive groups.
Markets and Economics
The fight is still on to pass an amendment to prevent the regulator from being able to use bail-in to confiscate your deposit in Australia. Conversation starts around 25 mins in. For our friends in France / Europe, you need to protect your money in the bank so that you have access to it and it’s not taken by the government.
Watching APRA getting grilled about opposing laws that protect your money in the bank, and the RBA getting grilled about their ability to control credit in the system is insightful as to where their priorities lie. Central institutions are not here to protect you, they are here to protect the system and keep the status quo going.
The world economic forum wants you to own nothing, rent everything and be happy about that. They leave out the fact that you will have to rent it from an elite group who own everything. I love how they try to include what is technology development, to try and convince you that slavery is a good idea.
The usual weekly Raoul Pal update as always is interesting. Spain is in trouble. The economic overhang is going to last at least all through 2021.
Where property prices in Point Cook and Werribee is headed is interesting.
China is moving towards their digital yuan. CBDC Are an Extension of the Flaws of Fiat Currencies, They Can’t Compete With Bitcoin. MicroStrategy Q3 earning call is a good listen. BTC is trading at around $13,700 USD or $19,500 AUD.
Others Stuff
Some great talks that I’ve listen to last week from people who I think have interesting views and thought processes:
- Chamath Palihapitiya
- Prof. Yuval Noah Harari – Author of Sapiens.
Francois Forget talk about his modeling on the climate on Mars is interesting. Jess interviewed him last Friday, and when he looks at what installed for Earth in the next 50 years, it is very very bleak.
Tech
I enjoyed this episode of 10 tips for Flask Developers. Flask is a popular python web framework for those who haven’t come across it.
So I spend the week deep diving into water cooling, how to do it, brands, reviews and all that. Building your own computer is a niche area, and water cooling is a niche of the niche. And it’s a little bit of engineering challenge to incorporate water into a computer with the need to get pipes, cutting them, bending them and ensuring everything lines up so it doesn’t leak and ruin expensive computer equipment. But if done right it then Water cooling like on a Lian Li O11 XL is pretty cool. Anyway I came to the conclusion tonight that I maybe I’m not up for the cost of so many extra components this time around even though I think it will be a fun project.
Programs I use to get the specs of my computer include Speccy and CPU-Z. And I can tell you that my 8 year old desktop is currently running the below specs:
CPU – Intel Core i5 3570k – 22nm Ivy Bridge
Mobo – ASROCK Z77 Extream4
RAM – 16gb G.Skill PC3-12800
GPU – Nvidia GeForce GTX 660
SSD – 500GB Sansung 860 EVO (this is a recently upgrade I did this year where I moved the whole OS to a new SDD)
HDD – there’s 2 HDD from Western Digital and 1 faster HDD from Samsung
PSU – Antec Truepower 750
Case – Thermaltake Shark (that you saw pic of in my last update)
All the above parts will replace except for the SSD and HDD. They will move across to the new system. I haven’t worked out what I will do with the old parts yet. Building your own computer is something common for the comp sci people I went to uni with. One of the first questions you ask when meeting someone in comp sci for the first time was what computer they were running. Talking about geeking out!
Where did I grow up?
This was a question I saw on twitter not long ago, and it’s answered in the as per below. I couldn’t pick one, so I just included a bunch! Do you recognise any of these places?
Ultima 8 – I loved the below game, it’s probably my first real CRPG.
Stonekeep – I had the demo of the below and it was so good that I brought it when I found it at a computer swap meet.
Original Quake – it fit on 19 diskettes zipped up.
Final Fantasy 1 – 8, not sure i remember finishing 8.
Jetpack – A kind of fun puzzle game that I spent many frustrating hours.
Master of Magic – I actually have the below game installed on my current laptop!
Age of Empires – Aka “Age”, could have possible been the first game I spend many hours playing on the Internet with friends.
Total Annihilation – We use to play the below over phone dial-up, not even internet, there were many funny moments when instead of connecting, my friend would be speaking and he would come through the modem and then I had to go pick up the physical phone.
Dungeon Master – There was an exploit for the below where the monsters couldn’t come into the shops, so you can setup a drone just beyond their reach and level up without doing much.
Original Pokemon! I picked Charmander.
Warcraft 2 – Tides of Darkness
Original DOTA!
Theme Hospital – There was a time when everyone who was coming to my hospital was vomiting everywhere!
Heretic – Use to give me motion sickness if i spent too long on it. I really just enjoyed typing in “rambo” and getting all weapons. Remember the days of cheat codes!
Street fighter.
One Must Fall
Rise of the Triad – We had the below installed in the computers at school! You had to reboot out of windows and into DOS to play.
The Simpsons – Also something we played on the school computers! It use to fit on 1 diskette.
X-Men Vs Street Fighter – A lot of time was spend in the fish and chip shop where they had a machine in the corner!
Ultima 7 – I remember all this gear!
Counter Strike.
Since I’m being nostalgic, bash.org always makes me laugh, having grown up in the mIRC days.
Have a great week!