TortoiseTTS can, given a handful of WAV files of someone speaking, try and clone them on local hardware.
https://github.com/neonbjb/tortoise-tts
I don’t know how well it would work on Trump, who has a lot of unique mannerisms, not just some sort of general accent.
Can’t use AMD hardware due to a dependency on transformers, though it sounds like you can run it on the CPU alone.
I also want to see a shapeshifter character as one of the good guys! Why are they always the bad guys?
Morph, from X-Men.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morph_(X-Men:_The_Animated_Series)
I think that it’s more that the viewer normally gets to see things from the view of the good guys, and suddenly revealing that someone is actually someone else shape-shifted — which doesn’t work if the viewer has been following along with the good guys — doesn’t work as well.
If you’re talking about what sort of content (rather than what type of media):
I haven’t really been into traditional superhero stuff for a while, but I did really very much enjoy the Parahumans novels (which some may know as Worm and Ward).
Those are dark, don’t shy away from taboo content, and tend to focus on using powers together in complex ways to pull off larger goals. The main character is an antiheroine.
I enjoyed the series more early-on, when it was “lower power”. I think that there’s a strong tendency with magic or superpowers or…honestly, many genres of fiction to always want to top the previous book or story in scope. This usually tends towards trying to save the world or universe or something like that. I feel like that gets to be a bit clichéd. It also limits the story and forms of antagonist that can come up, and makes it hard to continue the story effectively after a “save the universe” one. I’d like more authors who have discipline to hold the “power level” in their worlds down down. If Sherlock Holmes had been fighting cosmic brings by the end of story 10, I think it would have been hard to have a good story 11.
So I’d rather have characters with strongly-constrained, limited abilities that they have to use in creative ways, rather than doing the constant uncovering of new powers.
A few characters in the superhero genre have some form of ability that changes without their power, which helps to let the author explore other possibilities and then dial down the power later. Resurrection Man, for example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resurrection_Man_(character)
Due to sub-atomic technology in his bloodstream, Shelley cannot be permanently killed. No matter how he is killed or how much damage is done, he always resurrects fully healed. With each resurrection he has a new super-power (while whatever super-power he had previously disappears). In some cases, there is a physical transformation element to his resurrection (in one case, he resurrected as a living shadow, while another time his body altered into a woman’s form).
I’m not sure that that’s actually a fantastic solution — maybe too random — but as a mechanic, it helps keep characters with superpowers from becoming stale or written into a corner after being extra-powerful in one story. Maybe it’d be nice to have a world where characters have some character-defining fixed powers, but there’s also some mechanic that can cause others to shift from time to time.
It can’t really be strictly-called “superhero”, but probably my favorite graphic novel series was Sandman. That is the dead opposite of “low power”, but the protagonist also typically faces a lot of serious restrictions on what he can do, for one reason or another. It’s conflict, challenges for the protagonist that make for an interesting story, and having a constrained and limited set of powers, I think, helps permit for a wider range of interesting conflicts.
If you’re talking about the type of media, superheroes evolved around for comic books and graphic novels, and I think that that’s still the best place for them.
As I mentioned above, I do like the Parahumans series, and that’s an illustration-free novel series, so that can definitely work, and the lower cost of production maybe opens the doors to some interesting niches. I’ve read very few superhero books, though, so I don’t knownif I have a feel for it.
For movies…they’re okay, but certainly not my favorite type of media for superhero stuff. There was a long run of bad superhero movies. After 2000, some better ones have come out, but while I enjoyed some, I don’t watch many movies in general. I also tend to feel that movies are shorter than I’d like for a good plot. and that a lot of the fantastic stuff that superpowers involve requires expensive computer graphics, where movies tend to do better if a lot of what’s going to be done can be acted out by ordinary humans on more-or-less real sets. Also, actors and actresses age, which I don’t think works well with very long-running characters…and a lot of superheroes are pretty long-running.
Video games…I’ve played some video games with superheroes. Generally not that enthusiastic about them. Some superpowers of existing characters were designed around being fun to look at and read about rather than being fun to play with. Many superhero games are action games, which I’ve been decreasingly interested in. For RPG games, I tend to prefer more CRPG-style conventions, which don’t work as well with already-fleshed-out protagonists. I suppose that there’s nothing really prohibiting making a video game in any genre with superheroes, but the track record for me just hasn’t been that great. I do enjoy roguelike games, where the main character may get superhero-like abilities, but I don’t think that one would really call such things thematically “superhero”.
The Freedom Force series was fun, but not amazing.
The “Heroes Rise” multiple-choice adventure series from Choice of Games isn’t bad, is one of their better games, but it also never left me really super amazed. I don’t like the tendency of many Choice of Games games to try to make a winning strategy just consistently playing a particular type of character. Don’t remember if those did that.
Ehhh.
So, the initial, and real reason that NKRO was introduced was to deal with inexpensive keyboards that used grid encoders. This requires that each key be assigned a place on a grid, with each row and column having a wire associated with it. When you push a key, it sends the associated pair of wires high voltage. The keyboard encoder chip has those wires running to its pins.
Such a scheme can permit detecting any one key going down, which will always set two wires to high voltage. It can permit detecting any two keys going down, since that will always set at least one more line to high voltage, which will uniquely identify the key. But beyond that, additional keys may not be possible to uniquely identify (and, in fact, pushing one may send only lines that are already high to high, which is totally invisible to the encoder), and so it may ignore additional keys.
This prevents a grid-based encoder from doing NKRO.
If you want to do NKRO, you have to have a unique line coming from every keyswitch, which costs money.
There is a second issue with NKRO.
You can have a keyboard that can have NKRO to the encoder, rather than a grid. And can have a USB interface to talk to the computer.
But last I looked, USB has a protocol limitation that cannot support NKRO, and this was a major reason that you could still get some dual-interface keyboards with PS/2 support and USB recently.
PS/2 is edge-triggered by a key. A key goes down, the computer gets a message. A key goes up, the computer gets a message. All that message says is “this key went down” or “this key went up”. The computer maintains a list of keys and its idea of the up or down state of them.
This is also why PS/2 keyboards can sometimes have keys that appear to be “stuck” that get unstuck when you tap them — if the computer misses the “up” message for some reason, then it only gets notified about it next time the key changes state and the computer gets a message about it.
USB doesn’t work like that. When a USB keyboard sends an event, it contains a dump of the keyboard state. Every keypress, new dump. However, there’s a restriction on the size of the message. It can only contain…I think it’s seven keys that are down, plus modifier keys.
kagis
Six keys.
In practice, six is probably enough for pretty much anyone. The real problem was grid encoders, as a video game player might legitimately hit three or four keys at once. But…it still isn’t, strictly-speaking, NKRO unless it can do all.
It looks like there are basically two approaches that keyboards have used to try to provide a similar effect. One is to just invent a proprietary protocol, and rely on that and a driver rather than the standard USB keyboard behavior.
The other is to tell the computer that the keyboard is a whole array of keyboards. Since most OS environments can use multiple keyboards and just use their input, such a keyboard can pretend to have multiple keyboards pressing buttons.
The article certainly implies that this relates to AI, but doesn’t really provide support for that. Intel dominates all of the numbers here by an enormous amount, and I’m very skeptical that Intel layoffs are because they were able to automate positions — Intel just went through an absolutely catastrophic two generations of CPUs that destroyed themselves and then fell behind schedule on fabs.
Intel is laying off over 15,000 employees and will stop ‘non-essential work’
After losses, the chipmaker is cutting $10 billion in costs.
Also, while I’m not saying that a South African news source couldn’t provide reasonable US business coverage, it probably wouldn’t be the first place I’d look.
Here is a summary of the legal education of the sitting Supreme Court justices.
Alito: Yale
Barrett: Notre Dame
Jackson: Harvard
Gorsuch: Harvard
Kavanaugh: Yale
Kagan: Harvard
Roberts: Harvard
Sotomeyer: Yale
Thomas: Yale
Now go start a fight with Yale too, Trump.
goes looking for anything regarding a pharmaceutical breakdown
Washington sources around 80% of its active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) from China, India, and the EU. In 2024, pharmaceuticals were the top US import from the EU, including $127 billion (€117 billion) worth of semaglutide, a key component in popular weight-loss medications.
Hmm. That’s a lot. That single chemical was imported at three times the value of all motor vehicle imports.
goes looking
I think that Euronews must have that statistic wrong. Semaglutide is big, but not that big. And that doesn’t mesh with the above bar chart I provided from the European Commission at all.
https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/semaglutide-market-report
The global semaglutide market size was estimated at USD 28.43 billion in 2024 and is projected to grow at a CAGR of 10.47% from 2025 to 2035.
looks further
Oh, Euronews must have mixed up the value of the whole pharma import category with the specific chemical. Smooth, guys. CNBC looks like it has it correct:
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/02/13/trumps-tariffs-will-hit-these-european-union-products-hardest.html
The top U.S. import from the EU in 2024, by category and dollar value, was pharmaceutical products, according to data from the U.S. Trade Census analyzed by ImportGenius. Included in that $127 billion worth of EU imports was semaglutide, an ingredient used in the popular GLP-1 weight loss drugs from Novo Nordisk, Ozempic and Wegovy. The GLP-1 compound was the sixth-largest import from the EU to the U.S., at $15.6 billion.
I will say that, even so, a major price increase there seems like it’d be pretty rough for a lot of Trump voters. Like, semaglutide is something that you’d be given if you’re obese.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semaglutide
Semaglutide is an anti-diabetic medication used for the treatment of type 2 diabetes and an anti-obesity medication used for long-term weight management.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/10/health/ozempic-glp-1-survey-kff
1 in 8 adults in the US has taken Ozempic or another GLP-1 drug, KFF survey finds
https://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/php/data-research/index.html
National Diabetes Statistics Report
Prevalence varied significantly by education level, which is an indicator of socioeconomic status. Specifically, 13.1% of adults with less than a high school education had diagnosed diabetes versus 9.1% of those with a high school education and 6.9% of those with more than a high school education (Appendix Table 3).
Trump’s rise back in 2016 was strongly supported by low-education voters in the Republican primaries; I remember people talking about demographic analysis:
Trump overwhelmingly leads rivals in support from less educated Americans
And presently, that’s also true for the Republican Party relative to the Democratic Party:
https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/14/politics/the-biggest-predictor-of-how-someone-will-vote
“The biggest single, best predictor of how someone’s going to vote in American politics now is education level. That is now the new fault line in American politics,” Sosnik told David Chalian on the “CNN Political Briefing” podcast.
Trump’s rise over the past three election cycles, Sosnik argued, “accelerated and completed this political realignment based on education that had been forming since the early ’70s, at the beginning of the decline in the middle class.”
As the US transitions to a 21st century economy, there’s a rift between the people who attain education – “that’s become the basic Democratic Party,” he said, comparing them with people who feel left behind, “that group of voters is now the modern Republican Party base.”
So you simultaneously have:
Low-education Americans having particularly supported Trump.
Medicaid (government medical services subsidy for low-income Americans) being slashed by the GOP, which transfers medical costs off taxpayers and more-heavily onto poor people who suffer from medical conditions; low-education Americans greatly disproportionately depend on this subsidy.
In theory, states could simply increase medical subisidy outside of Medicaid, but the fact that Medicaid provides federal funding causes fiscal transfers across states. Most of the states that pitch in to the federal budget are (wealthier) Democratic states. Aside from New Mexico, which is very Democratic and makes heavy use of Medicaid, most states that heavily use Medicaid are poorer Republican-voting states. West Virgina had the highest level of popular support for Trump in the last Presidential election, had every county get a majority vote for Trump, had the single county with the highest share of Trump support in the US…and the second-highest level of Medicaid dependence.
Tariffs that effectively amount to a substantial consumption tax on medicine are — assuming these Trump EU tariffs go into force — being put into place. Medicine has a low price elasticity of demand — one is pretty much going to have to pay for that whether it’s expensive or not — so I’d think that people who have to have medicine are going to likely have to pay such a tax. They can’t easily just not get medicine.
A major increase looks to be on a drug that is considerably-disproportionately needed by low-education Americans.
I have to say that this kind of adds to some observations that a number of high-profile Trump policies seem to be disproportionately financially bad for Trump supporters.
Started when I was noticing that the Trump administration seemed to be doing a lot of things that looked to be really negative for American agriculture. I’d intuitively expect a Republican trifecta to favor agriculture; rural states tend to vote Republican, and rural areas within states tend to vote Republican. But a lot of things, from crackdowns on illegal immigration (one of the most-economically-important areas for illegal immigrants is agricultural work that requires manual labor) to the likely impact of countertariffs (China has, in the past, targeted American soy farmers with countertariffs, and you normally want low barriers to trade if you’re globally competitive, which American agriculture generally is) seem to have real negatives for agriculture. Oh, and cutting SNAP (food stamps, a federal subsidy for food for low-income Americans). It used to be that federal subsidy for agriculture mostly took the form of subsidizing crop insurance, but I understand that over the decades, it shifted to SNAP to help build political support; this combines a subsidy for the poor and a subsidy for agriculture, so one can use political support from both factions.
https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/farm-commodity-policy/farm-bill-spending
Examples of Farm Act programs provided with mandatory funding include the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) as well as most commodity and conservation programs.
If you’re an American farmer and are looking at a pie chart like that, you probably don’t want to cut nutrition assistance…but that’s exactly what’s happening.
During the first Trump administration, the administration did send financial support to American farmers to help mitigate the damage from the trade war with China, and I was guessing that maybe that’d improve its popularity in the sense that Trump was sending very visible financial aid and the harm was indirect and harder to see, but the material I was able to find, including publications from generally-Republican farming regions, seemed to be pretty unenthusiastic about the prospect of trade wars.
I kind of feel like I’d like to see an economist who specializes in political economy kind of walk through this, because it’s left me more-than-a-little-puzzled. I can believe Trump burning someone who voted for him and maybe doesn’t have a great handle on the impact of his policies, but one would think that the Republican Congressional delegation would be expected to look out for constituent interests, and these don’t seem to do this. And agricultural industry associations like the Farm Bureau have not been happy either, and they’re going to have bean-counters who should know the relevant numbers and inputs taking a pretty close look at this:
https://www.fb.org/news-release/afbf-new-tariffs-will-impact-americas-farmers
American Farm Bureau President Zippy Duvall today expressed alarm about potential harm to farmers resulting from the order signed by President Trump imposing stiff tariffs on the United States’ top three agricultural markets by value. An economic emergency was declared to put duties of 25% on imports from Mexico and Canada, with limited exceptions, as well as 10% on all imports from China. Canada and Mexico both announced they would impose retaliatory measures.
“Farm Bureau members support the goals of security and ensuring fair trade with our North American neighbors and China, but, unfortunately, we know from experience that farmers and rural communities will bear the brunt of retaliation. Harmful effects of retaliation to farmers ripple through the rest of the rural economy.
“In addition, over 80% of the United States’ supply of a key fertilizer ingredient — potash — comes from Canada. Tariffs that increase fertilizer prices threaten to deliver another blow to the finances of farm families already grappling with inflation and high supply costs.
Looks like that’d be bad for EU pharmaceuticals and auto manufacturers in particular.
WRT autos, it’d be doing the opposite of eliminating the chicken tax.
EDIT: Assuming (a) that tariffs go into force, (b) stay in place (with China they were cut to 30% before long), (c) exceptions don’t show up (with China, electric devices were exempted), (d) and disregarding price elasticity of demand and how readily a given good could be obtained from elsewhere, all of which might, I expect, be substantial factors in impact.
EDIT2:
European autos index sheds 3.6% after Trump 50% tariff threat on EU
I guess that’d support an argument of auto manufacturers being impacted.
It is going to kill people
Mostly in states that Trump won, ironically.
https://www.newsweek.com/map-shows-states-most-impacted-republicans-plan-medicaid-benefits-2069129
Not to mention that even within that, it will tend to impact older voters, who use medical care at a greatly-disproportionate rate and also tend to vote Republican.
This doesn’t have much to do with international use of the dollar.
but doesn’t explain why the administration appears to be more focused on cuts than any particular requirements
Gotta pay for tax cuts one way or another.
I don’t think that that’s very uncommon. When one “goes to the bathroom”, it’s understood that this is a euphemism for urinating or defecating, not just hanging out there.
I don’t know if I fully agree with the petition, but I do think that there are some real problems with the status quo.
I also think that either a legislature or courts need to provide legal criteria for the good or service division with games. I think that there probably need to be “good” games, "serviceʾ games, and possibly even games that have a component of both.
But I’m not in the EU or UK.
I also am kind of puzzled by this:
https://www.stopkillinggames.com/faq
Isn’t the law on this already settled?
A: It mostly is within the United States, but not in many other countries.
It doesn’t sound like it was as of 2020 in the US, at least on the good/service distinction:
Of course, case law has never really been settled on whether games are goods or services. Right, Steve?
Steve Blickensderfer: No. No, I haven’t been able to figure this out one way or the other looking at the cases.
A few quick searches haven’t picked up US case law, if it’s out there.
1.25 year ROI
They had $6.6 billion in 2023 revenue, not profit.
EDIT:
OnlyFans total 2023 pre-tax profit was $658 million…
The broccoli thing depends on the kid. I loved broccoli as a kid.
Whether-or-not it and some other vegetables have a really unpleasant taste is a genetic thing.
https://distance.physiology.med.ufl.edu/the-science-of-supertasters/
It’s a tale as old as time. Growing up, your family tried to instill a love of broccoli and other leafy greens in you, but it never quite took. Now, you might be an adult who still doesn’t appreciate certain veggies, coffee or spicy foods. Perhaps you’d even go so far as to call yourself a picky eater. If so, have you ever considered whether you might be a supertaster?
Picky Eating
Many supertasters have a laundry list of foods they wouldn’t dare touch unless they were stranded on a deserted island — and even then, it would be a challenge. To their credit, there is a scientific reason behind their finicky food preferences. Scientists believe that many supertasters have the gene TAS2R38.
This particular gene increases a person’s perception of the bitterness in various foods and drinks. Many supertasters that have taken part in scientific studies often find that they’re extremely sensitive to a chemical called propylthiouracil (PROP). This chemical is often used in research to measure a person’s sensitivity to notes of tartness. Because PROP has an easily detectable bitter taste, supertasters often note an extremely bitter taste when given the chemical, more so than average or non-tasters.
Camouflaging Bitter Flavors by Overcompensating With Other Flavors
Broccoli and spinach may leave an overwhelmingly bitter taste in the mouths of supertasters, but that doesn’t mean they don’t understand the nutritional value veggies offer. To mask the bitterness, some supertasters add sweet, salty or fatty flavors to foods they wouldn’t eat otherwise. This makes certain bitter-tasting foods more palatable so supertasters can have their vegetables — and their nutrients too.
Easy-Bake Ultimate Electric Oven Playset, Kids Toys for Ages 8 up
CAUTION – ELECTRIC TOY: This toy has a heating element, which can result in burns.
I’m absolutely confident that I helped Mom in the kitchen long before 8, though. A relative’s toddler was helping make cookies the other month. Wasn’t putting the cookies in the oven, though.
A lot of services today do require a cell number for sign-up, as a form of “expensive ID” that one can’t just make more of.
My guess is that a lot of kids might be kinda conditioned to provide it to services, since these days, they’re probably already handing it over if they’re getting a Google account or something.
All this is assuming that the kid has a cell phone with service. I suspect that it’d be easier, from a technical standpoint, to keep a kid from cell service — which actually costs something and is harder to share — than Internet access.
Not a hard link, but first grade is normally 6-7 years old, so eighth grade is 13-14.
On timing, I’d say that unless you plan to live in wilderness somewhere and limit connectivity options, that it’s going to happen pretty quickly regardless of your position. Even if you don’t provide access to the Internet, once kids start going to school, I expect that they’ll make friends, and at least some of those friends are going to have Internet access, probably in a mobile form.
And phone-based WiFi hotspots and Bluetooth tethering means that if someone’s friends have some sort of cell service with unlimited data, as long as they’re around them, they can share an Internet access link, so can use their own WiFi-capable device, don’t need to share devices. I expect that used WiFi-capable devices are not going to be hard to come by, though I guess that a parent could try to forbid their kids to have one.
And once a kid’s location isn’t restricted to being around their parents all the time, for anyone in an urban setting, there are going to be foot-accessible places that provide WiFi access — like, everyone at school knows the local Starbucks password or whatever.
EDIT: On consideration, I don’t think that Starbucks actually passwords their WiFi service, but even for restaurants or shops or whatever that do and have guest WiFi, not a super high bar.
considers
I guess it’s because of the fact that a lot of their stuff is retold fairy tales from societies with monarchies, but Disney does have quite a lot of royal characters.
“Disney princess” is a thing, but I can’t really think of other examples of royalty in American pop culture.