Cucker Tarlson receives the much deserved John Oliver treatment.

Yeah, pi calculations entered the realm of hot dog eating contests a while ago...

I did the update to 20H2 last night (it took forever). Just check your hardware settings when you get back because for some reason it reset all my audio settings in my sound blaster app.

20H2 is fine but you will notice a lot of older control panel shortcuts disappearing into the hidden "kidified" windows 10 settings. Networking is one example (why is it so hard to find out if you are connected to 2.4 or 5ghz in windows 10? Why do you need to run to the old networking to see what rate you are actually running at?)

If you are smart, you can still craft shortcuts that open the old screens such as "printers" -> %SystemRoot%\explorer.exe shell:::{A8A91A66-3A7D-4424-8D24-04E180695C7A}

Prez wrote on Mar 15, 2021, 03:02:
I wonder how far out Google's easter egg calculates pi...

If I remember right didn't some massive super computer calculate it out to trillions of decimal places?

Someone at Google arranged to do it with 25 virtual machines from their cloud a couple years ago, targeted 31.415 trillion digits and completed the calc in 121 days, just in time to promote it for Pi Day 2019. But that wasn't the record for long, turns out some random IT guy was planning to go for a new record around that same time. He chuckled and said "that's cute" to the Google record announcement and proceeded to spend 303 days calculating 50 trillion digits on his own home server. I'm sure someone else is working on the next record attempt right now... Google or Amazon or whoever could smash it quickly if they wanted to, but there's not much for them to gain from it.

It's not even that the calculation takes an insane amount of CPU power, the 50 trillion record was done on 4x Intel Xeons (total 60c/120t @ 2.5GHz). I mean, it did take almost a year, but that's no supercomputer. The bigger issue is memory and storage -- his server had 320GB of DDR3-8500, 72TB disk space for the swap files (calc required about 280TB of total data), then another 40TB disk space just to store the results, the actual 50 trillion digits saved as compressed text. The transfer speed of the disks being used for the calculations is the real bottleneck for how long the whole thing takes, the numbers are way too big for it all to be done in even that much RAM. He started out being limited to 3Gbps SATA throughput for 12x 7200 RPM drives, but upgraded midway to 6Gbps and they say he shaved a couple months off of the total duration.

The program everyone uses for this is called y-cruncher, it's like a souped-up version of that SuperPi program people used to use for benchmarking, but this one supports all sorts of different algorithms for various mathematical constants. They keep track of the records on this page here, with links to verification files and other proofs, blog posts from the record holders, etc. It's very popular nowadays for stress testing and benchmarking CPUs, but for that it's just about how fast you can do smaller amounts like 1-10 billion digits, since that's how much a gaming rig would be able to fit into RAM (and so your disk space isn't totally crushed by writing larger results).

This comment was edited on Mar 15, 2021, 04:23.

I wonder how far out Google's easter egg calculates pi...

If I remember right didn't some massive super computer calculate it out to trillions of decimal places?

MeanJim wrote on Mar 14, 2021, 19:39:
Anyone on Windows 10 version 20H2? Any problems? I'm still on Windows 10 version 1909. Yesterday I got an icon on my task bar telling me that my version of Windows will be reaching end of life soon and to click it to get the latest version. Clicking that just opens Windows Update where it says I'm up to date. Manually checking for updates still doesn't offer me the newest version. My other PC isn't showing the message, but it doesn't have the option to update to the newest version either.

The last time I saw the option to update to a newer version was sometime last year with version 2004. This PC had the option to update, but my other one showed that it wasn't ready yet. I like to keep both PCs on the same version, so I didn't update. Eventually the option to update this PC went away and the message that it wasn't read on the other went away while never getting the option to update, so I've stayed on 1909.

I hope I don't have to manually install it. I've already downloaded media creation tool and made a USB installer just in case, but I'd rather do it through Windows Update. The last couple of major updates installed quick, but the other PC didn't get the 1909 update and I had to do it manually with the media creation tool and it took take forever compared to doing it through Windows Update.

Oddly, I updated it today, but the icon is still in my task bar.

Scheherazade wrote on Mar 14, 2021, 21:29:
In place upgrades tend to be a dice roll, and I don't need the uncertainty.

That hasn't been necessary for a long time. The new version upgrades install just like any other monthly cumulative update, just a small download and a simple reboot.

1badmf wrote on Mar 14, 2021, 21:41:
i already updated on both my desktop and surface. i can't tell any difference.

Were you able to get the update from Windows Update? I'm wondering why the option for version 2004 disappeared, and why I can't get the update to 20H2 through WU on either machine. I've got 4 weeks, I guess I'll wait and see if it eventually gives it to me before trying anything.

Apple π

Cutter wrote on Mar 14, 2021, 19:50:
Ahh yeah, Marv and Sugar Ray and the boys. When boxing was still good.

Only ever saw one fight live, but it was a memorable one. Mike Tyson vs. Buster Douglas. I was in the USAF and a couple of buddies were from New York and were huge Tyson fans, so they laid out the money for the pay per view. We were still razing them about it more than a year later.

But overall, I've never cared much for boxing. It just seemed way too exploitative, corrupt, and vicious. Hagler and Leonard were rare examples which made the sport actually seem reasonable. But most of the time it isn't. I'll watch Olympic boxing, it is the "sport" version of professional boxing. I'm not sure what you should call professional boxing, but I don't feel "sport" is accurate.

MeanJim wrote on Mar 14, 2021, 19:39:
Anyone on Windows 10 version 20H2? Any problems? I'm still on Windows 10 version 1909. Yesterday I got an icon on my task bar telling me that my version of Windows will be reaching end of life soon and to click it to get the latest version. Clicking that just opens Windows Update where it says I'm up to date. Manually checking for updates still doesn't offer me the newest version. My other PC isn't showing the message, but it doesn't have the option to update to the newest version either.

The last time I saw the option to update to a newer version was sometime last year with version 2004. This PC had the option to update, but my other one showed that it wasn't ready yet. I like to keep both PCs on the same version, so I didn't update. Eventually the option to update this PC went away and the message that it wasn't read on the other went away while never getting the option to update, so I've stayed on 1909.

I hope I don't have to manually install it. I've already downloaded media creation tool and made a USB installer just in case, but I'd rather do it through Windows Update. The last couple of major updates installed quick, but the other PC didn't get the 1909 update and I had to do it manually with the media creation tool and it took take forever compared to doing it through Windows Update.

i already updated on both my desktop and surface. i can't tell any difference.

20H2 here.
Runs fine for me.

I did a format and clean install.
In place upgrades tend to be a dice roll, and I don't need the uncertainty.

-scheherazade

Home and Pro 1909 are close to send of service. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/announcements/windows-10-1909-end-of-servicing

Ahh yeah, Marv and Sugar Ray and the boys. When boxing was still good.

Anyone on Windows 10 version 20H2? Any problems? I'm still on Windows 10 version 1909. Yesterday I got an icon on my task bar telling me that my version of Windows will be reaching end of life soon and to click it to get the latest version. Clicking that just opens Windows Update where it says I'm up to date. Manually checking for updates still doesn't offer me the newest version. My other PC isn't showing the message, but it doesn't have the option to update to the newest version either.

The last time I saw the option to update to a newer version was sometime last year with version 2004. This PC had the option to update, but my other one showed that it wasn't ready yet. I like to keep both PCs on the same version, so I didn't update. Eventually the option to update this PC went away and the message that it wasn't read on the other went away while never getting the option to update, so I've stayed on 1909.

I hope I don't have to manually install it. I've already downloaded media creation tool and made a USB installer just in case, but I'd rather do it through Windows Update. The last couple of major updates installed quick, but the other PC didn't get the 1909 update and I had to do it manually with the media creation tool and it took take forever compared to doing it through Windows Update.

Yeah. A common complaint about permanent Daylight Savings is "the children will have to wait in the dark for the school buses in winter!" While I might have a small amount of sympathy for safety concerns around children, it isn't sufficient to force everyone into the twice yearly time changes.

I learned recently that in 1974 the US attempted to do Daylight Savings Time year round. It was unsuccessful because what was once a uniform schedule change to accommodate changing daylight hours, became an ad hoc schedule change as some institutions had to move start and end times (because they really did need to operate in daylight hours) but others did not. For example, schools and construction sites would have later starts but indoor offices would not. This caused a lot of scheduling problems and everyone hated it, ending the experiment after 9 months. It turns out that having a uniform schedule change, rather than an ad hoc one, makes society run smoother. But the grass is always greener, it's pleasant to pretend that trade-offs don't exist, and people love to complain.

RedEye9 wrote on Mar 14, 2021, 16:34:
Hagler vs Hearns
One of the best boxing matches of all time.

Came here to say the same thing.

Worth a watch if they show it on a classic boxing matches show or stream. Some of the most strategic non stop slug fests you will ever see.

Hagler vs Hearns
One of the best boxing matches of all time.