Something to remember is China was a much different place 10 years ago when Blizzard started being distributed there.
I don’t see this as being about the money as much as it is about really freaking complicated relationships. You can’t turn off a billion dollar business in an afternoon.
A few months ago I was looking for a similar solution but couldn't find one that handles empty cells very well. I ended up writing my own program[0] that is specific to my files' layout.
This library works perfectly and could've saved me a lot of time! Looking at some of the source code, we used similar logic to parse the tables. Pretty neat!
It depends on the model. For my XPS 15 with the bigger battery I can get up to 10 hours working on Python dev and checking out docs. But only when disabling the discrete Nvidia card, which is relatively straightforward[0] to do after having suffered setting up bumblebee.
Glad I'm not the only one having an awesome experience with Linux on the XPS 15 (a 9560 running Fedora in my case). Some of the stuff I've come across on the internet seems to imply that it's impossible to run Linux on this thing and I've had no issues at all!
I was just thinking about this today as I needed to conserve battery power on my xps 15 for an airplane trip. Thanks for reminding me to check out bumblebee.
As someone who despises BuzzFeed this article was about something I didn't already know about and was both somewhat interesting and informative. I liked it. Not every piece needs to be investigative reporting nor a rehash of reddits front page. This was a good example of middle ground
Buzzfeed is in a similar land as Gawker was sometimes. Yeah, a lot of what they post is trash, but sometimes they talk about something everyone else isn't talking about.
We can make fun of Buzzfeed (I encourage it), but there's no reason to trash a reasonably interesting article solely based on its source.
Unfortunately I can't recommend the book. It's a fascinating subject, but ... Much/most of the book is devoted to what various Eastern Mediterranean civilizations were like before the Collapse of the Late Bronze Age. It's useful as an introduction so that you can get some idea of what collapsed, but it shouldn't be most of the book.
The treatment of the collapse itself is fairly shallow. I know the collapse is still mysterious and comparatively little is known about it, but that's why a book like this should be so interesting. Surely there is enough information to fill a comparatively short book like this. The ever mysterious Sea People's are mentioned of course, but other than noting that they weren't just one group and that the Egyptians defeated one group of invaders he says little. There is the usual "they may have been from here, or perhaps there" but it doesn't go into much detail about the different theories. The possible causes of the collapse aren't discussed much either. Basically it says "stuff fell apart and here are some examples". I know that much of this stuff is far from settled but discussing the evidence and arguments for various theories is a good approach. Talking about how new civilizations arose after the collapse would have been interesting too; much more than endless detail about pre-collapse civilizations like the Minoans.
It's funny you say that because the author addresses this at the start of the talk. He says that when it was suggested to him by a friend that he write a book about the Collapse, he agreed only on the condition that he could distinguish himself from previous publications on the same topic precisely by talking more about what the Late Bronze Age was actually like, and what was lost.
He also says if he had to choose any period of history to live in he would choose that period.
I don't think he should be blamed for writing what he wants to write about, but maybe the marketing of the book is a bit misleading.
Take my opinion with a grain of salt because I put this books down after only 100 pages or so, but it seemed to exemplify my main gripe with many/most popular science/non-fiction publications these days...padding. Many authors seem to have a great ~150 page thesis, but publishers push hard that best sellers are 400-600 pages.
I recall someone commenting that most non-fiction books have only 15 minutes of true comment. The rest is commentary and persuasion.
I used to feel awful if I did t finish a book because the author created it with a certain vision. As I get older I've realized how limited my time is, and I am more content with a quick skim for many.
I would say this is true of a lot of non-technical, popular non-fiction. I would consider "The Art of Electronics" [1] one of the greatest pieces of non-fiction in the English language, but that sucker's dense.
that was my main problem with "The Lean Startup" too. it was really really hard to finish it when only 10% of the content was actionable (the rest anecdotal)
I often find myself reading about 30% of books like "The Lean Startup," and moving on. Not necessarily the first 30%, but overall. Understand the thesis, and move on.
I have yet to find a business book where this doesn't apply. I only finish the ones where I particularly like the writing style or the anecdotes.
I was stuck in a jury duty situation without any other materials (I had a library play away, my phone was dead, and reading materials were taken), and I still couldn't listen to that thing!
It's probably even worse than that. Ages ago [1] Philip Greenspun wrote about the gap between "the five-page magazine article, serving as filler among the ads [and] the book, with a minimum of 200 pages." For the most part surprisingly little has changed although that comment was made in 2009. There are some shorter form books these days, e.g. from O'Reilly. But if you want the gravitas that a book often conveys there are still a lot of forces pushing you toward 300+ pages.
> "...much more than endless detail about pre-collapse civilizations like the Minoans."
Funny you should say that, because the author does in the book (by your description) what he describes happening in a systems collapse scenario:
[describing a systems collapse, 48:10] "It usually takes about a century, there's usually a dark age that happens right afterward. And when they're coming out of that dark age they start immortalizing the great period ... before them."
Not that I know of. My guess is that somebody on that list threw a DMCA takedown notice at Github/Gitlab to get it pulled. Knee jerk reaction is to pull first, verify later.
That may have been the case with GitHub. Gitlab claimed that it fell into the same category as zero-day exploits (which is ridiculous), and that as such posting it wasn't responsible disclosure and it thus violated their ToS.
Sounds like he contacted some of the sites in the article and they blew him off ("We are 100% secure, don't you see the Verisign badge?!"). But yeah, that still makes sense that it could be pulled for that reason.
It's not just that it makes sense, that's what GitLab said. I can't find the link right now, but it's on the earlier HN post about Github/lab taking it down.
