#Optimized C++

[stars-and-branches]

One of my biggest pet peeves in fiction is super ornate cane handles. That shit has gotta be so rough on the hands

[thepersonalwords]

When your passion is aligned with your purpose, you are unstoppable! It is in that zone of high octane congruence that you are turned on and "cooking with gas.

Susan C. Young, The Art of Being: 8 Ways to Optimize Your Presence & Essence for Positive Impact

[quotelr]

There will be times in your life when things simply have to be replaced because they are tired, broken, worn out, harmful, outdated, or irrelevant. Take an inventory of the things that no longer serve your best and highest good so you can replace them with things which do.

Susan C. Young

[snixx]

FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU KILL YOURSELF DIE I HATE YOU

[paulagnewart]

Trans40mers Pt. 4/12: Primal's Parallel Paradigm!

Back in August 2012, Sydney played host to its first (and last) Heroes & Villains Pop Culture Expo. They dedicated the Sunday morning panel to a trio of comic book creators, who over the space of an hour, discussed and dissected the trials and tribulations of the publishing industry. It wasn't long before parallel development became a heated topic. One creator expressed enthusiasm over a new graphic novel idea; humanity is about to go extinct in the future, so they use time travel to zip back millions of years and rebuild the species. The outline was approved and story ready to go... until Kelly Marcel and Craig Silverstein's Terra Nova was announced. All their hard work? Instantly gone.

What's that got to do with Transformers? This month's robotic retrospect looks at two instances when the series was directly competing against itself, one where a competitor steals the same idea first, plus a bonus entry from a time when they... fought to survive accusations of being public enemy number one. So much senseless in-fighting. Can't we all just get along? No? Alrighty.

11th April 1984: Hoping to win the transforming toy robot race before it even began, Bandai Australia attempted to trademark the word "Transformers" for their ongoing Machine Men figures. For a brief time, both names are slapped on packaging released here and New Zealand.

-=-=-=-=-=-

When two tribes go to war, a point is all that you can score. And there were plenty of points on offer in 1984. Frankie Goes To Hollywood took a shameless swing at oil-oozed capitalist America and their delusions of nuclear grandeur, reaching fourth on the local music charts. Marvel Comics' greatest heroes clashed in their almighty 12 month shadow duel. A second election was held in as many years, cementing Bob Hawke's position as Prime Minister.

Yet one Secret War remains exactly that. On the left stood Bandai and their Sydney legal powerhouse Spruson & Ferguson. Up against them, Milton Bradley packing their own Sydney solicitors Baker McKenzie. The prize? Determine once and for all who deserved to use the name "Transformers" on their converting plastic toy robots.

Two people pushing the same yet distinct idea for total market control? A tale as old as time. Although these toys were described by news media as "An origami R2-D2", the potential $100 million industry was no laughing matter. Already having success with their Machine Men, Bandai swooped first and trademarked the name, hastily adding it to their products in bright yellow sans-serif font. Milton Bradley were less than impressed. Letters were sent and barbs were thrown, resulting in months of bureaucratic battles.

By October, the war had ended. Bandai withdrew their application and Milton Bradley's plans went ahead. When interviewed by The Sydney Morning Herald over this impending robo revolution, they attempted to save face by printing design chief Seiichi Haga's oft-quoted "Japanese children have always liked mechanical systems as well as all kinds of vehicles, so that gave us the idea to combine them" remark. But the press smelt blood and queried about their rival splurging $8 million on advertising. Bandai deflected with "We invent names that sound strong and futuristic. Foreign-sounding words are catching", followed by a list of their most popular robot toys, including GoBots.

Round One? Hasbro.

15th April 2019: Coles Supermarket dipped its toes into selling Signature Publishing's Transformers Rescue Bots magazine, offering shoppers an "exclusive" edition of issue 17. The partnership worked out, and by late 2020, they became said magazine's sole local distributor.

-=-=-=-=-=-

The latter 1980's were a grand time for comic enthusiasts. Dropping by a local newsagent offered a bounty of books; from Uncanny X-Men to The New Teen Titans and so many in between. But in particular for Transformers fans, the inclusion of Marvel US and UK titles ensured Aussie got the best of both worlds.

Fast forward three decades and the market has fallen apart. The loss of Dark Horse's Star Wars: Legacy and Archie Sonic the Hedgehog in November and December 2014 delivered the 32 page floppy format's final blow. An invasion of imported British magazines boasting free gifts became the way of the future, winning out similarly to the 2000's battle between K-Zone and Disney Adventures, where bigger was seen by cash-strapped parents as better.

And it was through these periodicals that Transformers made their triumphant return after a five year absence. Arriving last week of 2015 was Signature's first 'Robots in Disguise'. Priced at $8.50, young fans could now read the adventures of their new favourite characters. Yet if one monthly fix wasn't enough, history soon repeated itself. Joining the party in February 2019 was 'Rescue Bots', which in typical Australian fashion, kicked off with issue 15.

So what made this "exclusive" edition special compared to its newsagent counterpart? Why, the inclusion of a new Optimus Primal toy, ready to compliment next month's "Bumblebee Dino Bot". Was it excess stock sold on the cheap? Was one of Coles' upper echelons a Transformers fan? Perhaps the latter. It must've done well, for beginning with issue 32 in October 2020, Coles were the only store to stock copies.

Readers who missed Primal would have to wait until he resurfaced with Academy-approved packaging in issue 41. Or 48. Or 52. But ultimately both magazines, and Signature itself, went extinct. Shortly after Rescue Bots' final issue, it along with rival Kennedy Publishing were amalgamated into Claverley Group Ltd., bringing 19 years of family friendly features to an end.

19th April 1987: Canberra's Bruce Jones takes aim at The Transformers in a scathing Sydney Morning Herald article, proclaiming a direct link between the TV series and increased violent behaviour at schools. So which character do they use to draw reader attention? Voltron.

-=-=-=-=-=-

Ah, the Australian mainstream media. Can't live with them. Can live without them? In their ever-desperate, conservative-leaning bid to perpetually win The Right Side of History™, it doesn't take much for a person, politician or brand to go from yesterday's dream teen to media trash queen. The 80's were no different, as barely a week after running a colouring contest to win Betamax and VHS copies of their first movie, The Transformers became blacklisted under The Sydney Morning Herald's poison pen of publishing persecution.

"Kids Copy TV Violence at School!" bellowed their bold, boisterous headline. Taking up top third of page 19, Bruce dove into detailing a Federal Parliamentary Committee meeting over whether to include mandatory messages of "Research shows violent and degrading entertainment has a harmful effect on children and adults" on videos. Spearheading talks were Joint Select Committee on Video Martial chairman Dr Dick Klugman, plus National Coalition on Television Violence research director Dr Thomas Radecki.

A controversial figure then as now, no expense was spared in Radecki's mission to demonizing Cybertron's finest. According to studies carried out among Australian schools, "Children playing Transformer war games were more likely to lose their tempers and get into fights", "Develop aggressive attitudes in school" and "Were more likely to get into drugs"! He further took aim at the Australian Censorship Board's decision to give the show a G rating.

"It is an extremely violent war cartoon produced by Hasbro Toys, America's second largest toy company... to maximize the sale of Transformer war toys", and how "Violent entertainment was a $20 billion a year industry, with war toy sales of $1.2 billion". Other 'offensive' cartoons such as ABC's 'Battle of the Planets' and 'Mysterious Lost Cities (sic) of Gold' took a hit, though in spite of being used for the article's eye-catching image, The Herald made zero mention of Arus' legendary defender Voltron.

27th April 2000: The battle of Beasts deepened a divide between poor and rich Australian kids. Free TV's Channel Seven returns Beast Wars to its weekly afternoon timeslot with Optimal Situation, while Pay TV's Foxtel premieres the Beast Machines episode Mercenary Pursuits.

-=-=-=-=-=-

Cometh the hour, cometh the machine.

An exciting new millennium meant exciting new things. The Sydney Olympic Games, K-Zone magazine, Sam Neill's hit 'The Dish', Bardot's rise to fame, plus Dragon Ball Z. The TV arrival of Beast Machines on Easter Monday should've by all rights been just as grand, but almost immediately found itself taking one side of a fierce rivalry over conglomerate media control.

It's a feud which could be traced all the way back to October 1998, when Optimal Optimus led the charge among Hasbro's third wave of Transmetals toys. Just in time for the premiere of Beast Wars' second season, boasting a then-unprecedented $80 price and limited to a handful of stores, fans itching to see this primate powerhouse in action would have to wait longer. Significantly longer. Seven's summer of sports played havoc among all three installments of 'The Agenda', and with no news of more episodes anytime soon, fans were left to explore other avenues.

In their attempt to win back a steadily rising crowd switching over to Foxtel, Seven resurrected the idea of hosted weekday morning cartoons. Thus 'The Big Breakfast' took on a second life in August 1999, where among the lineup was a batch of Beast Wars repeats running erratic on alternating days at 6:45am. Here the third season premiered with little promotion and even less fanfare in November.

By comparison, Beast Machines began its invasion of local shelves come late March 2000. Bigger, plentiful, pricier, but the only way to watch their adventures was via a Foxtel subscription. 5pm weeknights soon marked an evolution revolution, while Seven returning Beast Wars to 3:30 pm Thursdays hoped to recapture glory days. Viewers had three choices; watch old episodes again with now outdated characters, keep up with expected societal trends and dump them all in favour of the hot new toys on the hot new channel, or for many poor fans, miss out entirely.

Once again The Transformers brand was competing against itself.

[stuckasmain]

Alternative universe where Clarke actually wanted to write 3001

The future Frank is revived in is not dystopian

There’s no “save the world” anti monolith plot

It has consistency with the original theme of the series

[fingertipsmp3]

The good news is my smart typewriter arrived, the bad news is its battery is deceased

[communist-octoling]

Minecraft Java players when Mojang fixes a bug that only affects a small part of the game: OMG LITERALLY UNPLAYABLE!!1! MOJANG HATES JAVA CLEARLY BEDROCK IS THEIR FAVORITE!!!1!!!1! :( Minecraft Bedrock players when Mojang changes a perfectly fine part of the game to be more like Java for no reason for the thousandth time: Well, as long as its for parity ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[alienaiver]

practicing fore edging on books right now for my friend's 30th birthday present. for a test project where i both winged and free-handed it, i think its a pretty solid first test? picture of the book is the lotr paperback edition i own, bcos i went.... hm. which book to try out first?

im letting it dry over night and then doing the sides tmrw! ive gotten quite a few days off here in january, so i hope that besides the needed projects (like this 30th gift and guest on a podcast) i have to do, i hope ill be able to be more online!!!!!!!!!!! 🥺✨ i miss u!!!

[razreads]

Hope is better than nothing.

R.C. Lewis, Spinning Starlight

[return2zero]

⬅ medium + custom setting || Full Ultra! ➡

So.... I decided to try Ultra mode on my phone and by the gods are my eyes blessed with really pretty graphics...

And cursed with a battery dying faster than Xavier falling asleep and burning like a thousand suns (okay maybe not that bad)

I... Might need a new phone at this rate... Or find a way to record and play on PC without the weird rendering issues happening c':

~~~

And I feel like I should make a side blog for all my LaDs stuff (mainly Xavier ramblings... >>;;;; )

[thepersonalwords]

When you choose a career that is aligned with your passion, the work becomes irrelevant because anticipation and fulfillment can outweigh everything.

Susan C. Young, The Art of Being: 8 Ways to Optimize Your Presence & Essence for Positive Impact

[quotelr]

Reconnect with who you truly are and what you really want rather than letting the outside world determine it for you. Reconnect with your purpose and your passion to know if your actions are helping you to achieve it.

Susan C. Young

[pleucas]

Hiiiiiiiii

Have you ever done/will you ever do an art livestream (like viria sometimes does)? Or posted a process video?

I would love to see how you create art in real time, i kinda look up to you (I'm sure you've been told before, but your coloring is insanely beautiful) and i think i could learn a lot of things from seeing how you work 🌟

hihihiiii~ ty for sending in an ask :0 it's crazy that ppl wanna see the nitty gritty... tytyty

i've never posted a speedpaint before or done any streaming stuff, not because of personal preference but bc i'm not too sure that they'll be enjoyable aha

my process is horrid, so i spend hoooourrrs afk and rendering tiny details that Don't Matter lol. the speedpaints that procreate throws back @ me are all 7+ minutes long, and it's just condensed footage of me losing my mind

if you're still interested then i do have (low quality) speedpaints of everything on hand by virtue of procreate! is there anything in particular that y'all wanna see? i'll see if i can trim it a lil, or post it on YT...

[mentalisttraceur-software]

When I was younger and still stuck thinking in terms of concrete current implementations more than abstract semantics and their best possible implementations, I kept wanting to bypass the standard library, especially in low-level languages like C, because the standard library had code paths I didn't need.

If I knew I didn't need my newly allocated memory to start zeroed out, I disliked calling calloc, because a naive implementation of calloc implies extra work, and most implementations would imply extra work at least some of the time. Because I failed to conceive of the OS and hardware having extremely efficient code and circuitry for giving us zeroed out memory pages, and I failed to conceive of optimizing compilers generating code which doesn't bother zeroing out that memory if you truly never read those bytes before writing them.

If I just wanted one memory allocation for the lifetime of the program, I disliked calling malloc at all, because most malloc implementations have a complex memory allocator which is only more optimal for larger and churnier memory usage. I wanted to call the rawest, most direct memory allocation operation - for example, on modern Linux that's an mmap system call asking for an anonymous page (or for a mapping of /dev/zero, although I later learned of sloppy/overbroad SELinux policies in production, f.e. on some Android devices, which reject opening or mapping /dev/zero). Or I wanted to just manually try to grow the stack (and have raw feedback from the kernel if I didn't have enough). Because I was stuck thinking about what the concrete implementations I had on hand would do. Instead, I should've been imagining the optimizing compiler which can look at a simple "malloc", and at everything else in the code, and at any optimization preferences and other information passed in when invoking the compiler, and just compile that malloc as a raw memory system call, or as a stack allocation, if that's actually the best thing to do in that situation.

Painstakingly chipping away at this has been one of the most liberating and healing things for me as a software developer. This is why I eventually realized that we should "code for the optimizer" rather than optimizing by hand in almost every situation. But it took the overwhelming accumulation of examples of actual real-world situations where automatic optimizations beat manual fiddling, or did just as well, and where the manual fiddling was actively counter-productive.

I wish they taught this in schools or something. Just one class, one semester, which is mostly just a showcase of "here's some code. here's how it could be inefficient. how might we optimize this? yeah, yeah, cool, cool... good ideas class. Now here's what a modern compiler can do if you just give it the simple code that doesn't try to optimize. Notice how it did everything you thought of, plus things you didn't. And oh look, if we change the optimization tuning from execution speed to memory usage for example, the compiler can optimize the simple code totally differently, but our hand-optimized code is stuck using more memory, because the compiler can no longer discern the relevant intent and invariants in this code - and neither could a human, without extensive comments and context".

I know lots of developers just don't care, but it would go a long way towards either unblocking or constructively directing the type of developer who can be very productive but would otherwise spend too much time prematurely or needlessly optimizing in the wrong places.

[gatorade50k333]