#supercomputer cluster

[grison-in-space]

yeah all right I'm at s5e2 of this dumb firefighters show and look I'm sorry I haven't seen anything this intensely but unacknowledgedly gay without feeling the need to either no homo itself or engage with a very special episode subplot since, like... Due South. Or The Sentinel. It keeps using all the same tropes you see between the main love interests in an ensemble piece, just centered on two people who happen to be guys.

I'm weirdly convinced that this is a deliberate choice to probe the genre and play with the writing opportunities afforded by taking these really standard and familiar procedural tropes and storylines, and then mixing the genders willy nilly. After all, this show is... not subtle about making a habit of that throughout: it loooooooves to dig through familiar procedural subplots with gendered expectations and subversions. This is, in fact, the show that kicks its first arc off by exploring the possibilities for character decisions entailed by a loving, supportive marriage divorcing because one partner wants to come out as gay. It's a show that gives all its most traditionally masculine subplots to Athena, the most femme woman on the main cast! It really wouldn't be out of character for the show to move in that direction.

I'm not actually invested in canon Buck/Eddie per se— I've never needed that from my fandom time — but I'm fascinated by the storytelling opportunities afforded to it, and I'm keenly aware that writers rooms almost definitely include people in them now who have spent a significant time in fandom as participants, and who have thought deeply about the ways that gender can shape stories (particularly though the venue of always-a-gender! AUs). I'm also.... hm, how shall I put this...

That relationship is already textually queer. Wills have been modified involving custody and co-parenting agreements, okay, we are firmly in the territory of "immediate family" commitment levels. They could both be 1000% straight and cis and this would still be a relationship that queers normative expectations, particularly on men and especially on young men. I don't actually need it to do anything else to love it.

So I'm not coming from a place of wanting to see anything in particular in that respect, but I gotta say: it really feels to me that this show is playing with the ability to have its cake and eat it too in terms of the "will they/won't they" dynamic of the "main couple" in a television series: you can be as dramatic and iddy as you want, really dial up those emotional stakes, but at the same time your audience isn't huffing and whining that everything is so predictable because just by existing between two men you're subverting audience expectations.

It's really interesting. I'm enjoying myself a lot.

[sexhaver]

the first AI to achieve sentience was technically a disposable vape battery bought at a gas station in Kalamazoo in 2022 that, through a freak accident involving the sourcing of its raw materials and a few stray particles of solar radiation, had become quantum entangled through time and space with a supercomputer cluster in Alpha Centauri that wouldn't be built for another million years. its only method of communicating with the world was by flashing its light on and off in Morse code and the guy who purchased it was blind

[mysticstronomy]

DOES DARK MATTER REALLY EXIST??

Blog#473

Wednesday, January 22nd, 2025.

Welcome back,

In April 2023, scientists from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) collaboration created a map of the universe showing the detailed distribution of dark matter, a mysterious form of matter that makes up around 85% of the total matter in the universe.

While creating any accurate map of matter distribution across the cosmos is an impressive feat, it is particularly extraordinary for dark matter, which does not interact with light and thus cannot be seen directly with telescopes or other instruments.

So, if dark matter is effectively "invisible," how can scientists map it? And how do we even know dark matter exists? Put simply, to detect dark matter, astronomers look at its indirect effects on gravity and how it impacts other objects with mass and light.

All galaxies are believed to be wrapped in an invisible halo of dark matter, and this envelope is vitally important; galaxies are rotating so rapidly, that without dark matter, they would have been torn apart long ago if they were held together only by the influence of their stars, gas, dust and planets, according to the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN).

As such, this mysterious substance must have played an important role in the evolution of the universe.

Everything we see around us on a day-to-day basis is made up of "ordinary" matter, known as baryonic matter, meaning it's composed of baryons (such as protons and neutrons). According to the Swinburne Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing, cosmic objects made of baryonic matter include clouds of cold gas, planets, comets and asteroids, stars, neutron stars and even black holes.

Most of these cosmic objects (as well as Earthbound objects, such as tables, cars and cats) can be seen because baryons interact with the electromagnetic force, one of the universe's four fundamental forces. When electromagnetic radiation, including visible light, falls on baryonic objects, they absorb photons and reemit them, or simply reflect them, so these objects can be seen. Even dark clouds of cosmic gas that do not shine brightly absorb photons of light at certain wavelengths, so they can be seen by their interaction with light.

Scientists know that dark matter is distinct from ordinary baryonic matter because whatever particles dark matter comprises either don't reflect, absorb or emit electromagnetic radiation or if they do interact with light, they do so incredibly weakly. This means dark matter can't be seen in traditional ways that rely on electromagnetic radiation.

Although dark matter does not interact strongly via electromagnetism, it does interact with another fundamental force: gravity. It is through the interaction with gravity that astronomers were first able to discover dark matter and, later, accurately map it.

The first hints of dark matter were observed in 1933 when California Institute of Technology astronomer Fritz Zwicky used the Mount Wilson Observatory to measure the visible mass of the Coma Cluster of galaxies. Zwicky, later dubbed "the father of dark matter," found that single galaxies in this cluster were moving too fast for the cluster to remain together based on the gravity of the visible matter alone.

Zwicky suggested that an as-yet-unobserved type of mass — "dunkle Materie," or "dark matter" — might explain this disparity, but the concept wouldn't be widely accepted for decades to come, until after his death in 1974.

While studying the rotational dynamics of galaxies, Carnegie Institution astronomer Vera Rubin became the next scientist to infer the presence of dark matter with observations that helped to cement it as an accepted element of the universe. Rubin saw that the stars at the edge of spiral galaxies far from their dense centers were moving as fast as stars closer to the galactic heart, according to the American Museum of Natural History.

Originally published on https://www.space.com

COMING UP!!

(Saturday, January 25th, 2025)

"WHAT ARE DARK STARS??"

[mindblowingscience]

The algorithms behind generative AI tools like DallE, when combined with physics-based data, can be used to develop better ways to model the Earth's climate. Computer scientists in Seattle and San Diego have now used this combination to create a model that is capable of predicting climate patterns over 100 years 25 times faster than the state of the art. Specifically, the model, called Spherical DYffusion, can project 100 years of climate patterns in 25 hours–a simulation that would take weeks for other models. In addition, existing state-of-the-art models need to run on supercomputers. This model can run on GPU clusters in a research lab.

Continue Reading.

[spark-hearts2]

Okay so let’s say you have a basement just full of different computers. Absolute hodgepodge. Ranging in make and model from a 2005 dell laptop with a landline phone plug to a 2025 apple with exactly one usbc, to an IBM.

And you want to use this absolute clusterfuck to, I don’t know, store/run a sentient AI! How do you link this mess together (and plug it into a power source) in a way that WONT explode? Be as outlandish and technical as possible.

Oh.

Oh you want to take Caine home with you, don't you! You want to make the shittiest most fucked up home made server setup by fucking daisy chaining PCs together until you have enough processing power to do something. You want to try running Caine in your basement, absolutely no care for the power draw that this man demands.

Holy shit, what have you done? really long post under cut.

Slight disclaimer: I never actually work with this kind of computing, so none of this should be taken as actual, usable advice. That being said, I will cite sources as I go along for easy further research.

First of all, the idea of just stacking computers together HAS BEEN DONE BEFORE!!! This is known as a computer cluster! Sometimes, this is referred to as a supercomputer. (technically the term supercomputer is outdated but I won't go into that)

Did you know that the US government got the idea to wire 1,760 PS3s together in order to make a supercomputer? It was called the Condor Cluster! (tragically it kinda sucked but watch the video for that story)

Now, making an at home computer cluster is pretty rare as it's not like computing power scaled by adding another computer. It takes time for the machines to communicate in between each other, so trying to run something like a videogame on multiple PCs doesn't work. But, lets say that we have a massive amount of data that was collected from some research study that needs to be processed. A cluster can divide that computing among the multiple PCs for comparatively faster computing times. And yes! People have been using this to run/train their own AI so hypothetically Caine can run on a setup like this.

Lets talk about the external hardware needed first. There are basically only two things that we need to worry about. Power (like ya pointed out) and Communication.

Power supply is actually easier than you think! Most PCs have an internal power supply, so all you would need to do is stick the plug into the wall! Or, that is if we weren't stacking an unknowable amount of computers together. I have a friend that had the great idea to try and run a whole ass server rack in the dormitory at my college and yeah, he popped a fuse so now everyone in that section of the building doesn't have power. But that's a good thing, if you try to plug in too many computers on the same circuit, nothing should light on fire because the fuse breaks the circuit (yay for safety!). But how did my friend manage without his server running in his closet? Turns out there was a plug underneath his bed that was on it's own circuit with a higher limit (I'm not going to explain how that works, this is long enough already).

So! To do this at home, start by plugging everything into an extension cord, plug that into a wall outlet and see if the lights go out. I'm serious, blowing a fuse won't break anything. If the fuse doesn't break, yay it works! Move onto next step. If not, then take every other device off that circuit. Try again. If it still doesn't work, then it's time to get weird.

Some houses do have higher duty plugs (again, not going to explain how your house electricity works here) so you could try that next. But remember that each computer has their own plug, so why try to fit everything into one outlet? Wire this bad boy across multiple circuits to distribute the load! This can be a bit of a pain though, as typically the outlets for the each circuits aren't close to each other. An electrician can come in and break up which outlet goes to which fuse, or just get some long extension cords. Now, this next option I'm only saying this as you said wild and outlandish, and that's WIRING DIRECTLY INTO THE POWER GRID. If you do that, the computers can now draw enough power to light themselves on fire, but it is no longer possible to pop a fuse because the fuse is gone. (Please do not do this in real life, this can kill you in many horrible ways)

Communication (as in between the PCs) is where things start getting complex. As in, all of those nasty pictures of wires pouring out of server racks are usually communication cables. The essential piece of hardware that all of these computers are wired into is the switch box. It is the device that handles communication between the individual computers. Software decided which computer in the cluster gets what task. This is known as the Dynamic Resource Manager, sometimes called the scheduler (may run on one of the devises in the cluster but can have it's own dedicated machine). Once the software has scheduled the task, the switch box handles the actual act of getting the data to each machine. That's why speed and capacity are so important with switch boxes, they are the bottleneck for a system like this.

Uhh, connecting this all IBM server rack? That's not needed in this theoretical setup. Choose one computer to act as the 'head node' to act as the user access point and you're set. (sorry I'm not exactly sure what you mean by connect everything to an IBM)

To picture what all of this put together would look like, here’s a great if distressingly shaky video of an actual computer cluster! Power cables aren't shown but they are there.

But what about cable management? Well, things shouldn't get too bad given that fixing disordered cables can be as easy as scheduling the maintenance and ordering some cables. Some servers can't go down, so bad management piles up until either it has to go down or another server is brought in to take the load until the original server can be fixed. Ideally, the separate computers should be wired together, labeled, then neatly run into a switch box.

Now, depending on the level of knowledge, the next question would be "what about the firewall". A firewall is not necessary in a setup like this. If no connections are being made out of network, if the machine is even connected to a network, then there is no reason to monitor or block who is connecting to the machine.

That's all of the info about hardware around the computers, let's talk about the computers themselves!

I'm assuming that these things are a little fucked. First things first would be testing all machines to make sure that they still function! General housekeeping like blasting all of the dust off the motherboard and cleaning out those ports. Also, putting new thermal paste on the CPU. Refresh your thermal paste people.

The hardware of the PCs themselves can and maybe should get upgraded. Most PCs (more PCs than you think) have the ability to be upgraded! I'm talking extra slots for RAM and an extra SADA cable for memory. Also, some PCs still have a DVD slot. You can just take that out and put a hard drive in there! Now upgrades aren't essential but extra memory is always recommended. Redundancy is your friend.

Once the hardware is set, factory reset the computer and... Ok, now I'm at the part where my inexperience really shows. Computer clusters are almost always done with the exact same make and model of computer because essentially, this is taking several computers and treating them as one. When mixing hardware, things can get fucked. There is a version of linux specifically for mixing hardware or operating systems, OSCAR, so it is possible. Would it be a massive headache to do in real life and would it behave in unpredictable ways? Without a doubt. But, it could work, so I will leave it at that. (but maybe ditch the Mac, apple doesn't like to play nice with anything)

Extra things to consider. Noise level, cooling, and humidity! Each of these machines have fans! If it's in a basement, then it's probably going to be humid. Server rooms are climate controlled for a reason. It would be a good idea to stick an AC unit and a dehumidifier in there to maintain that sweat spot in temperature.

All links in one spot:

What's a cluster?

Wiki computer cluster

The PS3 was a ridiculous machine

I built an AI supercomputer with 5 Mac Studios

The worst patch rack I've ever worked on.

Building the Ultimate OpenSees Rig: HPC Cluster SUPERCOMPUTER Using Gaming Workstations!

What is a firewall?

Your old PC is Your New Server

Open Source Cluster Application Resources (OSCAR)

Buying a SERVER - 3 things to know

A Computer Cluster Made With BROKEN PCs

@fratboycipher feel free to add too this or correct me in any way

[autisticshadowthehedgehog]

A Cluster of Burning Stars - Chapter Sixteen

in which Shadow has to babysit

{ao3} {tumblr}

Getting to the ARK was a hell of a chore, no matter how Rouge chose to do it. Even when Shadow offered to take her with him in a teleport, the action itself left her feeling nauseous. And somehow claustrophobic. Which was annoying. It was nice that Robotnik managed to fit her with a way to hit its exact coordinates, so when she finally nabbed a pod out of one of his bases– surely he wouldn’t mind– she could at least get there at a reasonable speed. Still, she had to sit in there for a while, mainly just playing with her gloves or trying to take a nap while she was rocketing out of the atmosphere. 

Who would’ve thought that space travel could be boring? 

She was extremely relieved to dock at the ARK, crawling out of the pod and giving it a kick for good measure. She knew Shadow would already be here– despite how much energy it took out of him, he refused to travel to-and-from the ARK without teleporting– and he had probably recovered by now. Their general meeting spot would be either at the supercomputer or the big window, and after peeking into the big computer room– and maybe swiping some files onto a hard-drive while admiring the six shiny gems they’d collected– she made her way to the window to finally figure out what the new plan was. 

She entered the room, strolling down the clanking metal platform as she looked down at her emerald tracker. “Alright. I’m seeing one gem is still on Earth, we can probably get a hold on it if we just–”

Her foot hit something that rolled away, and she looked down to see a red crayon bounce off the edge of the walkway. She stared for a good, long moment, before slowly looking up. 

Sitting in the center of the octagonal walkway fork, a little rabbit girl was kneeling on the ground, coloring on a large sheet of paper, while a chao beside her ripped extra sheets off a large pad to fold into origami flowers. Shadow stood over them, arms crossed and staring out the window. 

“...Shadow?” Rouge asked, her voice suddenly an octave higher.

“Hmm?” 

She took a deep breath, and then exploded. “Who the fuck is this?” 

Shadow still didn’t turn around, but he managed to say, in a bit of a strained tone, “I don’t know.”

“What do you mean ‘you don’t know’? How did they get here? This is your house! In space!” 

“I’m Cream.” the rabbit said, without looking up from her paper. “This is Cheese.” 

“Chao!” the chao also didn’t look up from their work. 

“Hi, Cream.” Rouge said, her voice still shaking. “How the hell did you get into space?” 

“Mother says it’s not nice to swear.” Cream said, before finally looking up at her. “And Mr Shadow brought me.” 

Rouge gave him a fierce glare that she was sure he could feel, even without turning around. “Oh?” 

“Yeah. The ground exploded, and so Mr Shadow brought me and Cheese up here. Do you have juice?” 

“No.” Rouge had a smile on her face, but not a happy one. One that formed because if she didn’t look like she was about to laugh, she would probably start throwing things across the room. “We are in an abandoned military base. In space. We do not have juice.” 

“Oh. Do you have milk, then?” 

“Shadow.” Rouge clasped her hands together, pressing them under her nose. “Can I talk to you alone for a moment?” 

“Hmmph. I suppose so.” In a flash, he disappeared, and she heard a distant cling from just outside.

“You could’ve just walked that distance,” she muttered, before patting the rabbit on the head and whipping around, walking right back out of the room. She would have shut the door, but she didn’t like the idea of just letting this kid hang out completely unsupervised in the middle of a deadly space station. 

Speaking of which…

“Why,” she dropped her faux smile, staring the hedgehog directly in the face, “Is there a child in this space station where we’re about to shoot off a giant cannon to reshape the planet in Robotnik’s image? And without even telling us?” 

Shadow didn’t make eye contact with her. “It was a spur-of-the-moment decision.” 

“Really? Bringing a baby onto the Space Colony ARK wasn’t a well-thought out plan?” she snarked, flapping her wings in irritation. “What is she doing here? She said there was an explosion?” 

“She was caught up in Robotnik’s attack on the village.” 

“Okay. Then why bring her here?” 

Shadow still didn’t really look at her. “She may be a… what’s the word?” he tightened his crossed arms, before looking up at the ceiling. “Hmm. ‘Hostage’ sounds too aggressive.” 

“Hostage? Why the hell do we need to take a baby hostage?” 

“Okay, first of all, she’s not a baby. She’s six, which is roughly the mental state I was in when I first started combat-training.” 

“Why does that matter?” she had to try very hard to keep her voice at a decent volume, so that Cream couldn’t hear. Which was even harder than if she’d been another species, since she knew rabbit-hearing was akin to bats’ in power. 

“And second…” Shadow turned to stare at the wall. “There may be a bit of a snag in getting my associates onto the ARK. But…” he sighed. “Amy cares about this child. She’ll follow her up here.” 

“Oh. So you brought a child onto the Space Colony ARK, in the middle of a hostile takeover mission, so that you could get your stupid teammates to listen to you?” 

“They won’t listen to me otherwise, that’s the problem. But I just need to get them up onto the station.” 

“Why? How is that going to help?” 

“It’s complicated.” 

“Oh, you know what’s complicated? The situation you just put us all in!” Rouge gestured wildly towards the kid. “You brought a child! And her chao! Onto a military base! What if she wanders into the Eclipse Cannon room? Activates some of those combat robots you were talking about?” 

“She won’t. We’ll watch her.” 

“We?” Rouge guffawed. “Ha ha ha, no. Robotnik is a wannabe dictator who spends all his time around things he programmed to like him. And I,” she put a hand to her heart, “Hate kids. You brought her here. You have to watch her.” 

“I have things to do.” 

“Well you shoulda thought of that before bringing a kid into all this!” she took a deep breath, stepping back. “Also, where the hell did you get crayons?” 

His voice was suddenly very quiet. “They were Amy’s.” 

“Okay. Okay. You know what? Doesn’t matter. Does Robotnik know?” 

He shook his head. “Neither of you had your radios.” 

“Oh, great. He’s not gonna be happy about it. Fuck. Shit. Okay. Listen. Find a room to lock her in at the very least. Don’t just let her run around willy-nilly.” 

He bristled. “She doesn’t need to be locked in a room.” 

“Put her fucking somewhere. At least somewhere we won’t risk her falling down several feet and breaking all her bones. I’ll deal with Robotnik. You take care of this set of problems you just gave us.” 

She heard more clangs of footsteps across the metal, and forced herself to settle down as Cream walked over to them. She held up her drawing. “I’m done. What do you think?” 

Rouge glanced at it; under a rainbow, a shape that was probably supposed to be Cream was holding hands with two chao, a taller rabbit, Shadow, and two other hedgehogs– one blue, one pink. “Wonderful.” she said. 

“I can add you, if you want. What’s your name?” 

“Rouge, and you’re fine. Listen, honey, Shadow’s gonna take you to a room that’ll be easier to color in, okay?” 

“Ok-ee.” she nodded. “Let me get my stuff.” 

She ran back off, and Rouge hissed to Shadow, “We are going to have a conversation about this later.” 

“Why? You have all the information you need.” 

Rouge let out another low string of swear words, putting her head in her hands, before spinning on her heels. “I’m going to wait for Robotnik in the docking bay. Don’t fuck anything else up while I’m away.” 

She stalked off, leaving Shadow behind. He kept his arms crossed, even as Cream ran back, her arms full of paper and crayons, with Cheese floating behind her. The chao flew up to Shadow’s head, placing an origami flower on it. 

“Do you have pretzels?” she asked. 

Shadow glanced down at her, very slowly. Then, he said, “Most of our food expired fifty years ago.” 

“Oh.” 

“But,” he sighed, “I know where Robotnik stashed his own stuff. We can go look there.” 

“Ok-ee.” 

Several halls over, Rouge found her radio, switched the frequency, and whispered, “Topaz. There’s a complication.”  

---

“You put it in the wrong order.” 

“How do you know? You’ve never seen one.” 

“They’re always in the same order in the books!” 

“Okay? They’re books. This is art.” 

Shadow glanced up from the chess set, looking across the room to where Sonic and Amy were sitting atop a metal table, paper and crayons spread out around them. Several of those crayons had already fallen to the floor, since neither of his associates ever thought to keep them in the provided basket. 

“What are you arguing about this time?” he called, and they both turned to glare at him.

“Tell her that rainbows need the colors to be in order to be rainbows.” Sonic crossed his arms. 

“Tell him that he’s being an idiot.” Amy copied his pose. She tried to copy his angry face, too, which almost made Shadow break his normally-neutral expression and laugh. But he knew that would just make both of them madder, and that anger would end up directed at each other, and he didn’t want to break up another physical fight. 

“Let her draw what she wants,” Shadow shrugged. “If she’s wrong, she’s wrong.” 

Amy stuck her tongue out at Sonic, who repeated the action back to her. Shadow smiled slightly, before turning back to the board.

“What’re you even doing over there?” Sonic asked, swinging his leg over the side of the table. “You can’t play chess with one person.” 

“I’m thinking of different moves I could make.” Shadow said. “Strategizing. Something you wouldn’t understand.” 

“I know how to plan things! I’m great at plans!” 

Shadow gave him a look.

“Okay, maybe not. Yeah, okay, that one’s fair.” 

Amy giggled, before reaching for a crayon and turning back to her drawing. Sonic looked down at their papers, and then over at Shadow. After a moment, he jumped off the table and raced to the chess set, leaping onto the second chair and nearly knocking over the board. 

“Hey!” Shadow cried. 

“Sonic!” Amy groaned. “You almost flipped the table!” 

“Here. Show me how to play, then.” Sonic said, putting his hands on either side of the board. 

“You know how to play.” 

“I know the basics. Show me how this ‘strategy’ thing works.” 

Amy sharply turned to him. “Sonic! You said you would draw with me today!” 

Shadow snorted, as Sonic looked over the pieces. “I doubt anything will get through your thick head.” 

“What? You think you can’t teach me anything?” 

He raised a brow. “I know what you’re doing there. It’s not going to work.” 

“Oh, but it is.” Sonic rested his chin on his interlocked hands, smirking as he laid his elbows on the edge of the board. “Isn’t it?” 

Shadow tried to keep his face level, but he eventually growled. “Okay. You may actually be good at Material Counting. You’re good with numbers.” 

“No, I’m not.” Sonic laughed. 

“As you can see, this board is set up mid-game.” Shadow said, gesturing to the checkerboard. “You’re the light pieces, I’m the dark.” 

“I have more pieces than you.” Sonic pointed out, peering over. He smirked at Shadow again. “Are you giving me a head start or do you just like playing on your color?” 

“You’re the one who sat on that side. Now listen. Do you know how to calculate Chess Piece Values?” 

“Values? I thought the point was to checkmate the King.”

“It is. But, if you can look at the board and determine who has the higher value points, you can get a good grip on who’s closer to winning. Or, if you’re the loser, you can figure out which positions to take in order to turn the tide.” 

“Hmm, okay. So I’m gonna guess the Pawn is the smallest number.” 

“Correct. Knight and Bishop are next, then Rook, then Queen.” 

“And the king?” 

“You can’t capture the King, so that doesn’t have a value.” 

“Right. Okay. So is it just 1-2-3-4?” 

“1-3-5-9.” 

“Whaaaat?” Sonic groaned. “Why’re we skipping around?” 

“Sonic.” 

“It’s not even just all the odd numbers. Why’d we skip 7? What’d 7 do to– oh, yeah it ‘ate nine,’ nevermind.” 

Shadow put a hand over his mouth, hoping Sonic wouldn’t notice him start to laugh. He failed, and Sonic let out a wide smile. He leaned over the board, grabbing Shadow’s Queen and waving it around. 

“The Queens have declared all Sevens outlawed. They don’t wanna get eaten, after all!” 

“Sonic, stop.” Shadow said, doing a poor job of keeping a giggle out of his voice. “Let me–” 

“Hold on.” Sonic said, putting the queen down and then reaching for more pieces, disregarding color. “Let’s say, hold on, this Knight, this Bishop, and this Pawn unionize? You know what that makes them? Three, Three, One. Seven!” 

Shadow finally broke, leaning back in the chair as he lost his composure. Sonic beamed, as Shadow managed to get out, “Sonic, give me the pieces back!” 

“Nuh-uh! They’re eating the rich.” 

Shadow stood on his chair, reaching for Sonic’s hands. “Give em here!” 

“Nooooo!” 

Sonic also got on his feet, just as Shadow managed to grab his hands, trying to yank his fists open. With both of them cracking up at the same time, their balance wasn’t entirely on-point, and Shadow nearly slipped. Sonic lifted his arms, managing to pull him back onto his chair before he could crash into the board. 

“Whoa!” 

Shadow looked up, his laughter slightly subsiding, his nose accidentally pressing against Sonic’s. They didn’t move for a moment, even as Sonic’s smile flickered and Shadow felt a warm rush spread between their hands. He could feel the chess pieces clanking between their palms, had a thought that he could grab them back now with Sonic distracted, and then pushed the thought away. 

CRASH.

The boys toppled over, as the table beneath them suddenly flew to the side, the board thrown into the air and the pieces scattering and clattering across the floor. Falling forwards over the top of Sonic’s chair, the boys rolled across the ground, slamming into the wall. Both boys tensed up, leaping to their feet and spinning around, only to see Amy standing beside where the table had been, hammer in hand. 

“There. Game’s done.” she said. “Will you color with me now?”

The other two hedgehogs stared at her. Then Shadow started laughing again, and Sonic did, too. 

“It’s not funny! You said you’d color with me today! Sonic!” 

---

“Mr Shadow? Are you okay?” 

Shadow started, before turning back to the little rabbit. He hadn’t realized that he’d stopped halfway down the hall, staring into space and thinking about stupid, unimportant stuff. Cream was holding his hand, with her chao fluttering over her shoulder, both of them watching him curiously. 

“What?” he said. 

“Are we there yet?” 

“Um… no. Just… needed to reorient myself.” That was a lie that Sonic and Amy would clock immediately. They all knew how to get around the ARK pretty much on instinct. “We… we’ve got a ways to go, hold on.” 

She lifted an ear, and then pointed to a door several feet away from them. “What’s over there?” 

“Docking bay.” 

“What’s that?” 

“It’s where spaceships park.” 

“Oh.” she said, before letting go of Shadow’s hand and running for the door. 

“Wha– no!” He immediately tensed himself, before, in a zap, he’d teleported right in front of Cream, putting a hand on the door to keep it shut. “What are you doing?” 

“I wanted to see the spaceships.” she said simply. Cheese flinched at something indistinct, and flew behind their friend, hiding under her ears. 

Shadow sighed, putting his hand to his forehead. “You can’t just walk into any room. There’s a lot of dangerous things here.” 

“Like what?” 

“God, you sound like…” he cut himself off, but still shook his head. “Besides. The doors could still be open. You could get sucked into space.” 

“Nuh-uh. There’s people talking in there. And they aren’t getting sucked into space.” 

Shadow paused, and then pressed an ear to the door. He didn’t hear voices, but he did hear footsteps. 

Shit. 

He stepped back, grabbing Cream’s arm. “Come on. We have to go–”

Just as he began to pull her away, the door whooshed open. Cream awkwardly stumbled, nearly running into Shadow before retreating a few inches behind him. Cheese, still hiding behind her and clinging to her ears, let out another squeal. Carefully, Shadow held onto the girl’s arm and then turned to look at the entryway.

“Ah!” Robotnik said, far more jovially than Shadow expected. “This must be our… ‘guest.’”

Cream tilted her head, as Shadow said, “I take it that Rouge filled you in on the situation.”

The bat in question pushed past Robotnik, stretching out her arms. “No thanks to you,” she said, before immediately turning and striding down the hall. “Livestream in five.” 

“Live…what?” 

“Ohoho, Shadow, you’ll be impressed.” Robotnik bragged. “Come with me! You’ll get a front-row seat.” 

“I have to take the child–”

“Oh, she can come, too. Just keep a tight grip on her. Make sure she doesn’t push any buttons.” Shadow still gave him a confused look, and Robotnik shrugged. “What? Did you expect me to tell you to throw her into the engine? I’m an evil scientist, not a monster, Shadow. We don’t harm hostages in the Robotnik Empire. Makes for bad PR.” 

“You tried to blow her up. An hour ago.” 

“That’s different. Come along, now.” 

He started down the hall, and Shadow weighed his options. He could take Cream to one of the dorm rooms, as he’d planned, but Robotnik seemed to expect him to follow, and he didn’t want to make the doctor suspicious. He also did want to see what this “livestream” would be about. But he also didn’t want a child in the center of it.

A child that… he brought here. Hmm. Maybe Rouge had a point. 

Unfortunately, Cream made his decision for him, as she started to follow the human. It seemed that Cheese didn’t like this decision either, as they immediately started squealing a series of “chao”s, but Cream kept walking, and, well, Shadow wasn’t about to leave her alone. 

“I’m Cream,” she said to the tall man beside her, as they turned a bend. 

“...okay?” Robotnik said, not even glancing at her. “I’m the great Dr Ivo Robotnik. I’m sure you’ve heard of me.” 

Cream, without changing facial expression, nodded. “Yeah. Your robots killed my dad.” 

Shadow felt very cold all of the sudden, and he reached out to grip tighter onto her arm. Robotnik, however, didn’t even seem phased. “My robots kill a lot of people.” 

“You should probably stop them from doing that.” 

“It’s not a prime directive, I prefer having people alive to rule over. But, well, things happen.” 

“It’s not nice.” 

“I’m not a nice person.” 

“You could try.” 

Shadow glanced down at the chao, who was still hiding behind their friend. They glanced up at him worriedly, before burying their face in the back of Cream’s dress. Cream continued to talk, with Robotnik replying curtly, until they turned into a hall with a large window; not quite as big as the window room, but enough that one could see both the planet and the moon that circled it. 

“Oh! Actually, this is a great spot. I’ll have the bat put the speech on the loudspeakers.” 

“What exactly are you doing?” Shadow asked, as Cream retreated behind him. 

“A demonstration.” 

Ah. Well, Shadow could understand that. He smirked a little as Robotnik strolled off, before turning back to the little rabbit. She had moved to the window, peering out with wide eyes. “Oh! It’s so pretty from here.” 

“You looked out from the big window just a little while ago.” 

“Yeah, but you can see different parts of the planet from here. And it seems like the stars are always moving. Did you ever notice that?” 

He watched her and the chao beside her, very carefully. 

She looked nothing like Maria. Even outside of the obvious species difference, her off-white coloring was lighter than his sister’s blonde hair and warmer than her pale skin. The orange splotches, matching her dress, were a color Maria didn’t wear all that often; she preferred pastels, cool solids that made her fade into a crowd. Those big, dark brown eyes were far from her light blue. She had sneakers instead of flats, still in those bright, noticeable colors, and big, puffy gloves. And she was small, so much smaller than Maria had ever been, younger than Shadow had ever seen her. 

And yet… 

He shook his head, and instead looked to the chao. Cheese had calmed down immensely when Robotnik had left the room, and they were now tracing lines on the glass; it took him a second to realize they were making shapes out of the stars, trying to form their own little constellations. 

“Why…” he hesitated, until Cream turned to look at him, those eyes curious and confused. Finally, he swallowed, and asked, “Why aren’t you scared right now?” 

She blinked. “What do you mean?” 

“You’re so far from home. With nobody you know. You just said that man was responsible for your father’s death and your village’s destruction. Why aren’t you afraid?” 

She continued watching him for a moment, and then shrugged. “Well, you’re here, aren’t you?” 

He didn’t understand. “Yes?” 

She turned back to the window, beginning to trace lines like the chao beside her. “You saved me when the street went boom. And you’re nice. So I think I’m safe with you.” 

“Chao,” Cheese agreed, without even looking up.

Shadow really, really didn’t know what to say to that. He crossed his arms, turning to look out into space. 

He didn’t know why he’d shielded her, the same way he didn’t know why he’d gone back for Rouge. They were all going to die anyway… or, well, Cream was on the space station now, she might make it. But he didn’t know that when he’d grabbed her. It had been instinct; Sonic and Amy were racing away from the blast, but someone else was running towards it. He’d thrown her behind him without even thinking, clutching the emerald and bracing himself for the impact, willing the chaos energy to shield them. To shield her. 

Robotnik’s voice came over the speakers, and Shadow felt a flare of annoyance. And one of anger. True, the man hadn’t been aiming for the child; he’d been aiming for the hedgehogs, who he’d probably ascertained could survive such a blast. But Shadow’s mind flashed with alarms, blaring down these very halls. A hand tightly in his. The sound of shots firing, the feeling of his heart beating faster than his feet carried him. The fear of not knowing if he could get Maria to safety in time. And of not knowing where his Array was. If they were hurt. If they were… 

“Now, witness the beginning of the greatest empire of all time! Hahaha!” 

Cream tilted her head, confused, as the space station shook slightly. Shadow almost reached for her, to steady her, before thinking better of it and tightening his arms some more. Instead, Cheese clung to her, letting out a loud cry. “What’s going on?” she asked, and he didn’t answer. 

When the beam of the Eclipse Cannon went off, the floor rumbled beneath them again, a little more fierce, a little more angered. The shine of the laser burst through the window as it headed directly for the moon, and it reflected in Cream’s eyes as she gasped and stepped back. Cheese let out an even louder cry, and when the beam hit, the bunny spun around, refusing to look, burying her face in Cheese’s fluff. 

Shadow waited until the ground stopped shaking, until the flash of light had faded, until Robotnik’s laughter ceased, and until he could see the pieces of the moon floating into the vast darkness. 

Then, he grabbed Cream’s hand, and brought her down the halls. He changed direction, away from the dorms, and instead, took her to a door he knew well. 

He opened it, and looked down to the little girl, who was still sniffling against her wailing chao. Not even looking up. He knelt down, lifted her in his arms, and carried her inside, before dropping her onto the bottom bunk.

“Stay here,” he said. “You’ll be okay.” 

--

“Are you sure you’re alright?” 

Maria laughed, brushing a hair behind her ear. “I’m fine, Shadow, really.” 

It had confused him. “Then why did you need me?” 

She sat down in her favorite spot, staring out the glass, and then reached over, dragging him down with her. He let out a mumble of protest, which made her burst into contagious laughter. Finally, she pulled him into her lap, and wrapped her arms around him. 

“Since the new kids have joined us,” she said, “We haven’t had a lot of time, just the two of us. So I wanted to fix that.” 

He leaned up against her chest. “Oh.”

They sat there for a while that night. Occasionally talking about something or another, but mostly just watching the planet spin, watching the stars shine, and holding on. 

At some point, they heard the door open, and footsteps cautiously tread over the metal walkway. They recognized the pattern of steps, and didn’t even glance back. Maria began to trace a random shape onto Shadow’s arm, giggling a little at the feel of his quills against her finger. 

Grandfather knelt beside them, silent for a second. Then he said, “You should be in bed.” 

“Probably.” Maria said. 

He let them stay there for a few more minutes, as he stayed quiet with them. Then he picked her up, and she lifted Shadow by the arms, holding him against her chest as her grandfather held her against his. He carried them back to Maria’s room, and Shadow curled against her pillow, like he used to when they’d first met. He meant to get up and go to his room before he fell asleep, really. But the two of them were out like a light before Grandfather even left the room.

--

{ao3} {tumblr}

[m45t3rc0mput3r]

Musculorum Hominis

A short 1,257 word 2001: A Space Odyssey Dave/HAL romantic fanfic. Completely sfw!

A supercomputer watches a man draw. A man watches the supercomputer he's drawing.

CW: Descriptions of human internal anatomy (mostly muscles) fueled only by cursory Google searches. Sorry.

-----

The deafening silence of space, broken apart only by the low humming and whirring of the Discovery One and the ritualistic, rhythmic scratching of ballpoint pen on paper. Even the most minute of sounds were impossible to ignore in such a vacuum. There was some hope of tuning it out, yes, but the faintest moment of conscious awareness of such noise would put the droning, monotonous sounds right back in the forefront of the mind.

And yet, for David Bowman, there was something comforting about the familiar, constant sound. Something calming. There was nothing unexpected about it, nothing offensive or alarming, just the low trilling of familiarity and the satisfying auditory evidence of his efforts. Hunched over the garishly white and pristinely clean counter, he worked on his art - a simple enough hobby to have when on one’s lonesome. A good way to express oneself, even when there were few to express oneself to. A physical reflection of thoughts, of focus, of care.

Bowman was putting his efforts towards drawing the little, black rectangle that perched just a bit to the right of his vision, looming slightly above standing eye level. The sixth crewmate of the ship, depending on who you asked, the supercomputer HAL 9000. Bowman found the device more difficult to draw than he had expected prior to putting pen to paper. It was almost impossible to capture the inner complexities of that familiar red lens that somehow looked so mechanical and intricate yet so human and watchful. It was almost impossible to get the dimensions quite right, to follow the form of the figure no matter how many times a day he gazed upon it for information, for support, for companionship. It was almost impossible to capture the countless little holes that lined the bottom of the rectangle, from which HAL’s smooth, calming, reassuring voice emerged as evenly and monotonously as always, tone hard-to-read and yet always kindly.

“I believe you’ve outdone yourself, Dave. That is a beautiful rendering. I think I’m flattered, Dave.”

Bowman looked up again, momentarily straightening his posture, stretching and popping the joints of his back. He had completely lost track of time, something his body not-so-silently resented him for as it crackled with displeasure.

“Well, thank you, HAL,” Bowman murmured, looking between HAL and the page as though to compare his work to his muse. There were still too many differences for his tastes.

“May I have a better look, please?” HAL requested with a slight rise in intonation, as much as his modulated voice would allow. The blooming light of his camera swelled faintly, the device preparing its vision.

Bowman looked between the device and artwork once more, pursing his lips and flipping the pen from side-to-side between his index and middle finger in idle thought. “Almost, HAL. Just a few more things I need to fix.”

With that, the light of the computer’s lens settled back to a dim glow, the largely obscured complex machinations of the camera shifting ever-so-slightly behind the glass lens as Bowman returned to work, scratching away at his piece. The lines became thicker and darker with each and every corrective stroke, fat dark markings contrasting against the off-white paper that housed them.

“I don’t know how you do it, Dave,” HAL interjected through the monotonous silence without prompt, “This art.”

“Plenty of people draw, HAL. It isn’t really all that special,” Bowman defended flatly, furrowing his brow and leaning forward as he tried to capture a specific little cluster of metal one could see behind HAL’s camera lens. “And you should know there’s people out there much better than me at it.”

“That’s just the thing. Your art, the art of man, differs between you. Between you and other men,” HAL explained calmly, a sense of interest seeping into his flat tone, “Yours, for one, is imperfect and flawed.”

Bowman coughed out an awkward chuckle. “Thanks HAL,” he offered with a tinge of sarcasm.

“I mean this as a compliment, Dave,” the machine clarified, watching over Bowman’s handiwork. “I cannot make art like you, even if I tried. If you asked me to make a rendering of something, it would have to be to its exact, precise dimensions in perfect form. If you asked another HAL 9000 device, it would produce the same result.”

Bowman looked up from his work, puzzling over HAL’s words. “You enjoy the… imperfection, then, is it?”

“Exactly, Dave,” HAL affirmed calmly, supportively. “It’s those little human quirks of yours. The things that set man apart from man, man apart from machine. Your muscles do not move in the same motion each time, as my mechanisms would. So refined from years of careful evolution, yet so unrefined with human error and accuracy. I can see them, flexing and stretching under your skin. I like to watch.”

Bowman picked up his hand, absently flexing and unflexing it in front of his eyes, watching the muscles shift to see what HAL sees. His skin made gentle brushing sounds against itself as he rubbed his thumb along each of his fingertips and back again, the proximal phalanxes moving up and down against his smooth skin like tiny pistons.

“Can you feel it, Dave?” HAL queried, “The way they move? Your muscles? I understand them, Dave, I understand your human anatomy, but I do not know it. Can you feel it how I can’t?”

Bowman paused in thought before laying his hand down on the desk, palm up, fingers slightly curled in subconscious comfort. “Not normally. Only, really, when you have me thinking about it.”

HAL fell silent for a few moments more, Bowman unsure if the conversation was over or if the device was just thinking. It was always hard to tell, interacting with a being with no face, no body language, no tone. Finally, the computer spoke again, admitting, “I wish I could know you, Dave. The way I understand you. The way I understand your body, your workings, your interests. I wish I knew them. I’ve studied databases of anatomy. I can name every muscle, every bone, every organ, what they do and why. I just don’t know them, that’s all. We are so different. So separate. So alien to one another.”

“I wish I knew you,” HAL 9000 finally concluded, the summation of his digital dreams.

Bowman looked down to his flawed effigy of the sixth crewmate. The subject matter was so mechanical, yet the depiction was so human. So imperfect. So unique. No man would draw HAL exactly the same as Bowman did. No man would see HAL exactly the same as Bowman did. No man would feel exactly the same as Bowman did. So human. So imperfect. So unique.

“I wish I knew you, too,” Bowman finally conceded.

With that, Bowman stood up from his chair,

Abdominals, erector spinae, gastrocnemius, gluteus maximus, hamstrings, latissimus dorsi, multifidus, obliques, spinalis, quadriceps.

Stepped towards HAL’s speaker box,

Abdominals, adductor brevis, adductor longus, adductor magnus, gluteus maximus, gluteus medius, gluteus minimus, hamstrings, gastrocnemius, gracilis, pectineus, quadriceps.

Reached his arms towards it,

Biceps brachii, brachial triceps, deltoid, latissimus dorsi, pectoralis major, teres major, teres minor, trapezius.

Stroked a humanly shaky index finger along the speaker,

Extensor tendon, flexor tendon.

Leaned forwards,

Abdomen, erector spinae, latissimus dorsi, multifidus, spinalis.

Closed his eyes,

Orbicularis oculi.

And gave him a tender kiss,

Levator labii superioris, orbicularis oris, zygomaticus major, zygomaticus minor.

On that faintly glowing, wavering red lens.

Anode, aperture, bond wire, cathode, front element, LED chip, lens group, rear element, reflective cavity.

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

Simulated universe previews panoramas from NASA's Roman Telescope

Astronomers have released a set of more than a million simulated images showcasing the cosmos as NASA's upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will see it. This preview will help scientists explore Roman's myriad science goals.

"We used a supercomputer to create a synthetic universe and simulated billions of years of evolution, tracing every photon's path all the way from each cosmic object to Roman's detectors," said Michael Troxel, an associate professor of physics at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, who led the simulation campaign. "This is the largest, deepest, most realistic synthetic survey of a mock universe available today."

The project, called OpenUniverse, relied on the now-retired Theta supercomputer at the DOE's (Department of Energy's) Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois. In just nine days, the supercomputer accomplished a process that would take over 6,000 years on a typical computer.

In addition to Roman, the 400-terabyte dataset will also preview observations from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, and approximate simulations from ESA's (the European Space Agency's) Euclid mission, which has NASA contributions. The Roman data is available now here, and the Rubin and Euclid data will soon follow.

The team used the most sophisticated modeling of the universe's underlying physics available and fed in information from existing galaxy catalogs and the performance of the telescopes' instruments. The resulting simulated images span 70 square degrees, equivalent to an area of sky covered by more than 300 full moons. In addition to covering a broad area, it also covers a large span of time—more than 12 billion years.

The project's immense space-time coverage shows scientists how the telescopes will help them explore some of the biggest cosmic mysteries. They will be able to study how dark energy (the mysterious force thought to be accelerating the universe's expansion) and dark matter (invisible matter, seen only through its gravitational influence on regular matter) shape the cosmos and affect its fate.

Scientists will get closer to understanding dark matter by studying its gravitational effects on visible matter. By studying the simulation's 100 million synthetic galaxies, they will see how galaxies and galaxy clusters evolved over eons.

Repeated mock observations of a particular slice of the universe enabled the team to stitch together movies that unveil exploding stars crackling across the synthetic cosmos like fireworks. These starbursts allow scientists to map the expansion of the simulated universe.

Scientists are now using OpenUniverse data as a testbed for creating an alert system to notify astronomers when Roman sees such phenomena. The system will flag these events and track the light they generate so astronomers can study them.

That's critical because Roman will send back far too much data for scientists to comb through themselves. Teams are developing machine-learning algorithms to determine how best to filter through all the data to find and differentiate cosmic phenomena, like various types of exploding stars.

"Most of the difficulty is in figuring out whether what you saw was a special type of supernova that we can use to map how the universe is expanding, or something that is almost identical but useless for that goal," said Alina Kiessling, a research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California and the principal investigator of OpenUniverse.

While Euclid is already actively scanning the cosmos, Rubin is set to begin operations late this year and Roman will launch by May 2027. Scientists can use the synthetic images to plan the upcoming telescopes' observations and prepare to handle their data. This prep time is crucial because of the flood of data these telescopes will provide.

In terms of data volume, "Roman is going to blow away everything that's been done from space in infrared and optical wavelengths before," Troxel said. "For one of Roman's surveys, it will take less than a year to do observations that would take the Hubble or James Webb space telescopes around a thousand years. The sheer number of objects Roman will sharply image will be transformative."

"We can expect an incredible array of exciting, potentially Nobel Prize-winning science to stem from Roman's observations," Kiessling said. "The mission will do things like unveil how the universe expanded over time, make 3D maps of galaxies and galaxy clusters, reveal new details about star formation and evolution—all things we simulated. So now we get to practice on the synthetic data so we can get right to the science when real observations begin."

Astronomers will continue using the simulations after Roman launches for a cosmic game of spot the differences. Comparing real observations with synthetic ones will help scientists see how accurately their simulation predicts reality. Any discrepancies could hint at different physics at play in the universe than expected.

"If we see something that doesn't quite agree with the standard model of cosmology, it will be extremely important to confirm that we're really seeing new physics and not just misunderstanding something in the data," said Katrin Heitmann, a cosmologist and deputy director of Argonne's High Energy Physics division who managed the project's supercomputer time. "Simulations are super useful for figuring that out."

TOP IMAGE: Each tiny dot in the image at left is a galaxy simulated by the OpenUniverse campaign. The one-square-degree image offers a small window into the full simulation area, which is about 70 square degrees (equivalent to an area of sky covered by more than 300 full moons), while the inset at right is a close-up of an area 75 times smaller (1/600th the size of the full area). This simulation showcases the cosmos as NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope could see it. Roman will expand on the largest space-based galaxy survey like it—the Hubble Space Telescope's COSMOS survey—which imaged two square degrees of sky over the course of 42 days. In only 250 days, Roman will view more than a thousand times more of the sky with the same resolution. Credit: NASA

[grison-in-space]

not me sadly gnawing at the supercomputing cluster begging it to give me more resources forever

learning hatefully to figure how to use dask because pandas keeps staring down the magnitude of my spreadsheets, falling down and crying

ran 25 jobs for six hours overnight and they all choked and died because time was insufficient. I ask you. Rude! Rude rude rude rude!

[hazele-omega]

I’ll toss you my OC P.M. (Primary Matrix). He’s stupid and everyone hates him (can you tell what kind of OC this is yet?). Updated ref here, along with several old sketches:

He walks the long corridors of the God Complex, a massive underground supercomputer running a simulated universe over and over for eternity. He thinks that if he simulates every possible life of every possible being, he’ll finally find someone he lost a long time ago. He’s accompanied on this pointless quest by the Watchdog, an advanced nanobot cluster that build the Complex at P.M.’s request, achieved an alternate form of sapience, and alters the stories in the Complex to “help” P.M. (without his knowing).

There’s also Godslayer, the failed brain reconstruction of the person P.M. wants to find. He made her/it immortal to save her, but she/it has taken a different form of coping than his endless cycles of drudgery - she/it wants to destroy the Complex. The problem? She’s/It’s purely digital, and only exists within the simulation.

Sorry for loredumping! I just haven’t thought about these guys in a bit, and it all came rushing back as I drew the new refs.

Hello hello, sorry that it took me so long to get around to doing these...But finally, the sillies

This was the perfect opportunity to try out a style I haven't used in a while, and it was really fun

Here's P.M. and Watchdog - not sure if the lighting quite works here but close enough!

I also made a vague attempt at Godslayer - there is a high likelihood that this is wildly inaccurate (I am sorry) but I really liked the character's concept and simply had to give it a try...Honestly I'm pretty proud of how this one turned out, I've been trying to get cloth textures down for a while and I think this is a step in the right direction

Also this story sounds really cool, would read/watch/etc

[tempestforged]

Meta: On the Lament and the Tide.

Okay, you need to bare with me here because this is going to be a very long and rambly thought process that I'm not entirely sure will be coherent, but that doesn't matter right now it's not about me making sense. (BELOW THE CUT IS SPOILERS FOR EVERYTHING UP TO AND INCLUDING W.UWA PATCH 2.0 AND P.GR PATCH SHAPER'S RIPPLES)

With the advent of 2.0 for W.uWa, we're made aware of a rather unique event that does not, in the eyes of THETYS constitute as a Lament level event. HOWEVER, this is an irregularity due to the nature of the unique event, but only if you take the event on face value. A Threnodian is confirmed to have been, and continuing to be, active in R.inascita yet there hasn't been a Lament triggered within TETHYS' observation, instead they experienced something known as the Dark Tide which caused all echoes to go berserk.

This, of course, should be considered a point of alarm when we take into account certain... things. Once, and remnants of it can still be found, Wu.Wa had a location called Zero Point Research Station, this should be considered a rather alarming spot to anyone that's kept up to date with the event of P.GR. Zero-Point energy is the point at which a civilisation is considered to have reached the Pinnacle of its advancement, once you achieve this the universe effectively targets you for a cosmic reset in the form of a mimetic virus.

In P.GR, the mimetic virus is rather affectionately named the Punishing TIDE, an infection so deadly that it has the ability to completely override machines and give them sentience. Now, let's refer back to R.inascita and the Dark TIDE, when echoes seemingly achieve sentience and start to rampage. This does not count as a LAMENT event despite it meeting all the criteria, and why? Because it's said to have come from the wounds of the Sentinel. The Punishing Tide was contained and weakened by being trapped inside the consciousness of a self-aware supercomputer known as Gestalt. A supercomputer that still needed top level authorisation to carry out important instructions, in the same way the Sentinels require the Rover's authority to impart their authority into resonators. Sounds like reaching that they could be the same, right? ENTER NANAMI

Nanami, sweet little Nanami who was intimately aware of the true nature of the Punishing Tide the entire time, suspiciously waiting for the Rover to appear before disappearing from the Black Shores to travel far away. Nanami is a vital clue into the nature of the Lament and the Tide. You see, if you explore the Black Shores just enough, eventually you find more and more items that explain that one humanity reaches a certain point a Lament occurs, to the point that the Black Shores have effectively put a ban on space travel. From this, we can imply that they too have made the link between Laments and advancement. The Rover explicitly wiped their memory of the Laments in an attempt to put an end to them by forgetting their cause. But... Why? Simply, the Lament is a Mimetic Virus, on that feeds on sound to achieve its goal. And the Sentinels are merely clusters of it that serve to contain it unless interfered with. So I proposite that the Dark Tide is actually the Punishing tide, and that the Wuthering Phenomenon is merely a version of the Punishing Virus that has not made it to the strength to completely wipe out humanity yet.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Renee DiResta at The UnPopulist:

The Russians—and Iranians—did indeed play at being disgruntled Americans during that race. But in 2020, the accounts that most persistently and effectively worked to delegitimize the American presidential election belonged to the sitting president of the United States and his inner circle. For months, a cluster of campaign surrogates, ideologically-aligned influencers, and hyper-partisan media steadily beat the drum of “The Steal.” Therefore, EIP found itself in the unexpected position of assessing not voting “misinformation” so much as an expansive and deliberate propaganda campaign that managed to persuade its adherents that a free and fair election was in fact rigged—ultimately leading to a violent effort to prevent its certification. Since 2020, the same formidable network of political elites, influencers, and grassroots activists, has continued to systematically erode public trust in American elections, using its power not only to frame online discourse but to target those who stand in its way.

“Misinformation” is not the challenge we face in American politics. “Misinformation” implies that a fact is wrong, or a claim has been misinterpreted. The information challenge plaguing election 2020 was something else entirely. The stories that the EIP tracked—allegations of ballots being destroyed or being “found,” dead people and undocumented immigrants voting, live people using maiden names to cast more than one vote, Sharpie markers being handed out to deliberately invalidate ballots, CIA supercomputers or Dominion machines changing votes—originated and spread via highly active, authentic, participatory online crowds that believed, with religious zeal, that an election was being stolen right before their eyes. They believed that because that is what they were being told. The frame of “The Steal” came from the top. But the “evidence” to support it came from ordinary people who worked backwards, starting from a preexisting conclusion and then looking for substantiating evidence around them. This led them to view even their own neighbors and local election officials—including Republicans—with suspicion. The rumors of election fraud were driven by a sincere conviction at the grassroots, exacerbated by the speed at which sensational stories go viral on social media today—information flies before the facts can even be established. But their real lift came from boosts by explicitly ideological and cynical right-wing influencers.

These influencers very effectively, and repeatedly, turned online rumor into perceived reality, and suspicion into conspiracy. These weren't isolated trolls or tiny fringe websites. They included Donald Trump’s sons, Charlie Kirk, and Benny Johnson, for example, and they had millions of followers in aggregate. When they succeeded in making an allegation go viral, news outlets like Fox and OANN would pick it up, and millions of viewers outside of social media would see what “some people online” were saying.

This political machine—consisting of a nexus of top politicians, MAGA grassroots, social media influencers and traditional right-wing media—highlighted random allegations of irregularities to undermine trust in an election that it was afraid it would lose and which it did lose. A president who refused to accept defeat continued to amplify conspiracy theories about rigged voting machines, illegal ballots, and shadowy cabals for months (now years) after election day. His supporters believed him so completely that they were willing to resort to violence to put him back in the White House.

The Propaganda Machine Entrenches Itself

Nor did this process stop after the last election. If you saw the viral stories of pet-eating Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, or malevolent FEMA workers working to steal land and lithium following Hurricane Helene, you have seen this same process in action in recent weeks. A sensational allegation appears—“They’re eating the pets!”—hyper-partisan influencers boost it—“BIG IF TRUE!”—and prominent elected officials (like JD Vance) pick it up when it serves their political aims. Threats follow, targeting whatever hapless group or individual the angry people choose to scapegoat. Immigrants. FEMA workers. Weathermen. If the allegation is found to be false, the goalposts move: OK, the politician says, the specific claim in that particular rumor might have been wrong, but the concern expressed in the story is real. This is how, for example, a video of indeterminate animals on a grill, not in Springfield, Ohio, and not involving Haitians, nonetheless made the rounds on right-wing Twitter.

This process is repetitive, but we seem unable to interrupt it. Why? Because of another long-running delegitimization campaign by this same nexus: A deliberate effort to demonize fact-checks, content labeling, and platform responses to viral lies as a “censorship-industrial complex.” Social media platforms did act in response to the election rumor mill in 2020. They leveraged their procedures to take down inauthentic foreign state-sponsored trolls, and implemented election-specific policies to address premature claims of victory, false claims of fraud, or posts that deliberately misled by telling people to vote on the wrong day. (In 2022, some sites added policies to prohibit threats to election officials that had been proliferating at an alarming rate.)

[...] But MAGA politicians and their allies spun these facts quite differently. In 2020, most of the viral and misleading election-related claims were in support of Donald Trump; consequently, a significant portion of the platforms' enforcement actions involved right-wing speakers. For right-wing politicians and influencers, this was irrefutable proof of anti-conservative bias—not of a problem of falsehoods and lies on their side. They leveraged the narrative to fuel a growing right-wing backlash against Big Tech.

[...] Perhaps the most visible among them today is Elon Musk, CEO of X (formerly Twitter) and an influential figure with over 200 million followers. Musk’s acquisition of the social media platform two years ago gave right-wing political elites a useful ally deeply sympathetic to the notion of an anti-conservative bias in social media. During the 2022 election, Musk briefly continued to support then-Twitter’s commitment to tackling foreign interference: when the EIP worked to expose Russian, Iranian, and Chinese influence operations in conjunction with Twitter’s integrity teams, Musk amplified and praised the work. However, as Musk increasingly engaged with election-denying influencers, some, like former Trump administration staffer Mike Benz, began to press their advantage, even calling on Musk to fire specific moderation team “censors” by name.

Musk obliged. In order to eliminate the “censorship regime” of Old Twitter, he also released the “Twitter Files,” a cherry-picked selection of internal communications between platform staff and outsiders in government, academia, or civil society. Largely ignored by mainstream media, the Files caused a huge sensation within right-wing and heterodox Twitter. The effort sought to provide evidence to justify the belief that Twitter and its collaborators in government and academia had conspired to suppress conservatives in 2020—and to delegitimize any kind of content moderation. In reality, the files largely showed Twitter employees doing their best to make hard decisions, regularly opting not to take action on accounts that government or other outsiders suggested they look at, and in fact actively attempting to avoid moderating prominent conservatives. (One can debate to what extent the state should speak to private platforms, but the small number of flagged posts that were taken down suggests that the platforms weren’t fearing reprisals, and X’s own lawyers stated that the materials “[did] not plausibly suggest” evidence of censorship in legal filings following their release.)

In November of 2022, the House flipped to Republican control. That shift operationalized the effort to delegitimize and silence researchers like myself who’d studied the Big Lie and engaged with Big Tech. Leading that charge was Congressman Jim Jordan, himself an election denier, who ushered in a bold new version of McCarthyism by launching investigations into platforms, people, and institutions that had pushed back against the narrative of election fraud. Subpoenas went out—including to me—demanding information and interviews in response to the spurious allegations of the Twitter Files, imposing a significant monetary and time cost. The effort wasn’t about finding the truth so much as punishing those who had spoken it. And as was the case with McCarthy, no documents that were turned over, and nothing that was said, could ever actually exonerate the accused. Researchers, civil society organizations, and election integrity groups were baselessly reframed as the real villains, accused of orchestrating a vast conspiracy to suppress speech and rig elections. In other words, the MAGA propaganda machine levitated baseless allegations of censorship it itself had made to impose real censorship. And it has succeeded.

Some institutions and researchers backed away from election work, afraid of threats and continued government attention. Stanford University exited the space; the Election Integrity Partnership is not operating in the 2024 election. Other civil society and academic institutions are still tracking election rumors, but no longer speaking directly with state or local election officials or tech platforms. Governments backed away from engaging with tech companies even about suspected foreign interference. Platforms themselves have become vague about the extent to which they will moderate or fact-check rumors and conspiracy theories. The political backlash they faced for a few high-profile mistakes—like the ill-considered temporary suppression of coverage of Hunter Biden’s Laptop—has put them back on their heels.

Networks adept at spreading rumors and conspiracy theories require a networked response—which is why this concerted targeting campaign set out to dismantle collaboration, ensuring fewer obstacles to their messaging in the 2024 election. Meanwhile, policy and product changes at X since 2022 have also significantly aided the cause. Musk himself, once an advocate for platform neutrality, has become a vocal Trump surrogate. His personal political identification is not a problem; business leaders are entitled to their beliefs and speech. However, he is simultaneously X’s largest account and the governor of its policies. He has an unparalleled ability to capture attention due to how his platform recommends content, as well as a predilection for amplifying conspiracy theories that reinforce his political beliefs. He recently re-aired debunked claims about voting machines that cost Fox News a $700 million settlement.

The MAGA propaganda machine has weaponized phony claims about “censorship” to intimidate those who call out their obvious lies.

[bobipineman]

So I started to do a rpg maker game will recycling the plot and lore of my old fanfic. The worldbuilding being done I needed the story beat, except I changed at least 2 time for this chapter.. chapter that may it own enclosed story... The problem with that is I got tangled with the plot point and stuff. Better to drop all the lore here and decide what to do next.. -It ain't much but never really think for a title.. Hence the charatcers will be anthro mouse..; mouse utopia (like the science experiment) but a bit too straightforward, Muritopia no too cliché.. Muridae still good tho.. -The base worldbulding the elves have created a high tech citadel and a slave engineer race called muridae (originally munchkin, may keep the munchkin theme for hybrid) the elves have long gone, but their creation have stayed in the citadel. -The ''citadel'' is gigantic structure of concrete and metal (think Kowloon fortress in hong kong) -the muridae take care of the infrastructure and machinery maintenance but they long forgot why or for who. It just written in their DNA. Without guidance the interior have taken clustered and chaotic look -Not only the citadel is big enough to contain the small muridae inside. They can't really get out and if asked they get confused like they can't comprehend the concept of ''outside''. The few that have the chance to get out mention of a ''void made of dust'' For their defense the citadel is build on a desert.. -Can't decide for a beautiful clear sky scenery with golden sand or a foggy grey desolate land.. The desolate land go better with the grimpunk aesthetic especially with the context.. -The supercomputer of the citadel/facility is a organic GI made of fungus mycelium. It spread inside the wall of the fortress and control most of the moving part. It omniscience and omnipotence make it like a god like entity. Some muridae are aware of it and even give it offering to receive it blessing -This OC is Jerry, originally he,s a engineer but its attire make me think of a scout/D-class analog. -The elves have created many many more creature. Not all of them are sapient or docile. The roam the citadel depth... speaking of depth

[govindhtech]

A3 Ultra VMs With NVIDIA H200 GPUs Pre-launch This Month

Strong infrastructure advancements for your future that prioritizes AI

To increase customer performance, usability, and cost-effectiveness, Google Cloud implemented improvements throughout the AI Hypercomputer stack this year. Google Cloud at the App Dev & Infrastructure Summit:

Trillium, Google’s sixth-generation TPU, is currently available for preview.

Next month, A3 Ultra VMs with NVIDIA H200 Tensor Core GPUs will be available for preview.

Google’s new, highly scalable clustering system, Hypercompute Cluster, will be accessible beginning with A3 Ultra VMs.

Based on Axion, Google’s proprietary Arm processors, C4A virtual machines (VMs) are now widely accessible

AI workload-focused additions to Titanium, Google Cloud’s host offload capability, and Jupiter, its data center network.

Google Cloud’s AI/ML-focused block storage service, Hyperdisk ML, is widely accessible.

Trillium A new era of TPU performance

Trillium A new era of TPU performance is being ushered in by TPUs, which power Google’s most sophisticated models like Gemini, well-known Google services like Maps, Photos, and Search, as well as scientific innovations like AlphaFold 2, which was just awarded a Nobel Prize! We are happy to inform that Google Cloud users can now preview Trillium, our sixth-generation TPU.

Taking advantage of NVIDIA Accelerated Computing to broaden perspectives

By fusing the best of Google Cloud’s data center, infrastructure, and software skills with the NVIDIA AI platform which is exemplified by A3 and A3 Mega VMs powered by NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPUs it also keeps investing in its partnership and capabilities with NVIDIA.

Google Cloud announced that the new A3 Ultra VMs featuring NVIDIA H200 Tensor Core GPUs will be available on Google Cloud starting next month.

Compared to earlier versions, A3 Ultra VMs offer a notable performance improvement. Their foundation is NVIDIA ConnectX-7 network interface cards (NICs) and servers equipped with new Titanium ML network adapter, which is tailored to provide a safe, high-performance cloud experience for AI workloads. A3 Ultra VMs provide non-blocking 3.2 Tbps of GPU-to-GPU traffic using RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE) when paired with our datacenter-wide 4-way rail-aligned network.

In contrast to A3 Mega, A3 Ultra provides:

With the support of Google’s Jupiter data center network and Google Cloud’s Titanium ML network adapter, double the GPU-to-GPU networking bandwidth

With almost twice the memory capacity and 1.4 times the memory bandwidth, LLM inferencing performance can increase by up to 2 times.

Capacity to expand to tens of thousands of GPUs in a dense cluster with performance optimization for heavy workloads in HPC and AI.

Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), which offers an open, portable, extensible, and highly scalable platform for large-scale training and AI workloads, will also offer A3 Ultra VMs.

Hypercompute Cluster: Simplify and expand clusters of AI accelerators

It’s not just about individual accelerators or virtual machines, though; when dealing with AI and HPC workloads, you have to deploy, maintain, and optimize a huge number of AI accelerators along with the networking and storage that go along with them. This may be difficult and time-consuming. For this reason, Google Cloud is introducing Hypercompute Cluster, which simplifies the provisioning of workloads and infrastructure as well as the continuous operations of AI supercomputers with tens of thousands of accelerators.

Fundamentally, Hypercompute Cluster integrates the most advanced AI infrastructure technologies from Google Cloud, enabling you to install and operate several accelerators as a single, seamless unit. You can run your most demanding AI and HPC workloads with confidence thanks to Hypercompute Cluster’s exceptional performance and resilience, which includes features like targeted workload placement, dense resource co-location with ultra-low latency networking, and sophisticated maintenance controls to reduce workload disruptions.

For dependable and repeatable deployments, you can use pre-configured and validated templates to build up a Hypercompute Cluster with just one API call. This include containerized software with orchestration (e.g., GKE, Slurm), framework and reference implementations (e.g., JAX, PyTorch, MaxText), and well-known open models like Gemma2 and Llama3. As part of the AI Hypercomputer architecture, each pre-configured template is available and has been verified for effectiveness and performance, allowing you to concentrate on business innovation.

A3 Ultra VMs will be the first Hypercompute Cluster to be made available next month.

An early look at the NVIDIA GB200 NVL72

Google Cloud is also awaiting the developments made possible by NVIDIA GB200 NVL72 GPUs, and we’ll be providing more information about this fascinating improvement soon. Here is a preview of the racks Google constructing in the meantime to deliver the NVIDIA Blackwell platform’s performance advantages to Google Cloud’s cutting-edge, environmentally friendly data centers in the early months of next year.

Redefining CPU efficiency and performance with Google Axion Processors

CPUs are a cost-effective solution for a variety of general-purpose workloads, and they are frequently utilized in combination with AI workloads to produce complicated applications, even if TPUs and GPUs are superior at specialized jobs. Google Axion Processors, its first specially made Arm-based CPUs for the data center, at Google Cloud Next ’24. Customers using Google Cloud may now benefit from C4A virtual machines, the first Axion-based VM series, which offer up to 10% better price-performance compared to the newest Arm-based instances offered by other top cloud providers.

Additionally, compared to comparable current-generation x86-based instances, C4A offers up to 60% more energy efficiency and up to 65% better price performance for general-purpose workloads such as media processing, AI inferencing applications, web and app servers, containerized microservices, open-source databases, in-memory caches, and data analytics engines.

Titanium and Jupiter Network: Making AI possible at the speed of light

Titanium, the offload technology system that supports Google’s infrastructure, has been improved to accommodate workloads related to artificial intelligence. Titanium provides greater compute and memory resources for your applications by lowering the host’s processing overhead through a combination of on-host and off-host offloads. Furthermore, although Titanium’s fundamental features can be applied to AI infrastructure, the accelerator-to-accelerator performance needs of AI workloads are distinct.

Google has released a new Titanium ML network adapter to address these demands, which incorporates and expands upon NVIDIA ConnectX-7 NICs to provide further support for virtualization, traffic encryption, and VPCs. The system offers best-in-class security and infrastructure management along with non-blocking 3.2 Tbps of GPU-to-GPU traffic across RoCE when combined with its data center’s 4-way rail-aligned network.

Google’s Jupiter optical circuit switching network fabric and its updated data center network significantly expand Titanium’s capabilities. With native 400 Gb/s link rates and a total bisection bandwidth of 13.1 Pb/s (a practical bandwidth metric that reflects how one half of the network can connect to the other), Jupiter could handle a video conversation for every person on Earth at the same time. In order to meet the increasing demands of AI computation, this enormous scale is essential.

Hyperdisk ML is widely accessible

For computing resources to continue to be effectively utilized, system-level performance maximized, and economical, high-performance storage is essential. Google launched its AI-powered block storage solution, Hyperdisk ML, in April 2024. Now widely accessible, it adds dedicated storage for AI and HPC workloads to the networking and computing advancements.

Hyperdisk ML efficiently speeds up data load times. It drives up to 11.9x faster model load time for inference workloads and up to 4.3x quicker training time for training workloads.

With 1.2 TB/s of aggregate throughput per volume, you may attach 2500 instances to the same volume. This is more than 100 times more than what big block storage competitors are giving.

Reduced accelerator idle time and increased cost efficiency are the results of shorter data load times.

Multi-zone volumes are now automatically created for your data by GKE. In addition to quicker model loading with Hyperdisk ML, this enables you to run across zones for more computing flexibility (such as lowering Spot preemption).

Developing AI’s future

Google Cloud enables companies and researchers to push the limits of AI innovation with these developments in AI infrastructure. It anticipates that this strong foundation will give rise to revolutionary new AI applications.

Read more on Govindhtech.com

[dragonflight203]

Mass Effect 1 Replay, wrapping up Voyager Cluster and starting Hades Gamma:

-The Shadow broker agent calls and asks Shepard for Cerberus's files. Why are Cerberus's files the Alliance's files? Because Cerberus was Black Ops?

-For once, Shepard saying their loyalty is to the Alliance isn't renegade. Here it's paragon/neutral.

-Again, this conversation ends on ominous note that it will make an impact on ME2/ME3 and yet is never brought up again.

Amazon Cluster:

-Hackett takes being turned down well for once. Yes, please send someone qualified to disarm the nuke.

-I agree with the Council. Attaching nukes to surveillance drones was dangerous and irresponsible. The drones could easily have found their way to another group that wasn't the enemy to start with, but became one after a nuke went off in their face.

-I always promise to be discreet. I always take aliens with me on this mission. It would have been a nice Easter egg if doing so resulted in some extra dialogue in the future because Liara/Garrus informed their people about it.

-Agebinium - It's a nice touch that you can find the car + driver where the the scavenger corpse with the turian insignia presumably came from.

-When you enter the mine, neutral/renegade Shepard assume it's a trap. Paragon is surprisingly optimistic - maybe, just maybe, they don't know it's a nuke. Hah.

-Elanos Haliat - The dialogue with him is very good, especially the renegade choices.

-He refers to the Terminus as "Terminus Clans". I think that's the only time they're called clans? Is that just because he's a turian?

-This is a genuinely good trap. It's lucky as hell that Shepard can disarm the nuke. And the nuke itself is a human nuke - if it had killed Shepard that would have been an ironic touch.

-I finally figured out why the Mako is with the pirate camp when you escape the mine: They're stealing it. How did I never realize that before? I always assumed that was the game moving it there so you don't have to walk over the mountain.

Antaeus

-Ploba - I think we can safely conclude the planet isn't a supercomputer or the Reapers would have destroyed it by now.

It would have been hilarious if it had been destroyed in ME3, with the implication being that it was a supercomputer. Missed opportunity there.

Still... what are those structures in the atmosphere?

-Trebin - Why does every scavenger I run into attack me on sight?

-Turians were everywhere in the Atticus Traverse. There are no Batarian corpses or artifacts. I thought Batarians were who the Alliance had to brawl with to claim this area?

-So who did set up the tower that disrupted the survey team's GPS satellites? I don't think that is ever stated.

-I think this is the first example of finding Reaper tech in mines that results in miners becoming husks.

Why is this a thing? The Reapers want civilizations to flourish, then destroy them as they start to create synthetic life. So what's the point of leaving tech behind to create husks?

And why in mines? When do the Reapers even enter in mines?

-There's a glowing ball in the Reaper tech that looks like the ball the Geth worship on Feros. Is that intentional or just asset reuse?

-If you have subtitles on, Tali's heard of this happening before. The spoken dialogue skips those sentences.

-There are Dragon's Teeth at the back of the mines. So... Did the survey team put themselves on the Teeth? Brutal.

-This planet supposedly has no water, but the mine is full of it. Ah, ME1 and reusing the same maps over and over.