RoccamOccam writes: The developers at Discord have seen success with Rust on their video encoding pipeline for Go Live and on their Elixir NIFs' server. Recently, they penned a post explaining how they have drastically improved the performance of a service by switching its implementation from Go to Rust. From the post, "Remarkably, we had only put very basic thought into optimization as the Rust version was written. Even with just basic optimization, Rust was able to outperform the hyper hand-tuned Go version. This is a huge testament to how easy it is to write efficient programs with Rust compared to the deep dive we had to do with Go."

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Worried about the security of Linux and open-source code, Google is sponsoring a pair of full-time developers to work on the kernel's security. From a report: The internet giant builds code from its own repositories rather than downloading outside binaries, though given the pace at which code is being added to Linux, this task is non-trivial. Google's open-source security team lead Dan Lorenc spoke to The Register about its approach, and why it will not use pre-built binaries despite their convenience. But first: the two individuals full-time sponsored by Google are Gustavo Silva, whose work includes eliminating some classes of buffer overflow risks and on kernel self-protection, and Nathan Chancellor, who fixes bugs in the Clang/LLVM compilers and improves compiler warnings. Both are already working at the Linux Foundation, so what is new? "Gustavo's been working on the Linux kernel at the Linux Foundation for several years now," Lorenc tells us. "We've actually been sponsoring it within the Foundation for a number of years. The main change is that we're trying to talk about it more, to encourage other companies to participate. It's a model that works, we're trying to expand it, find contributors that want to turn this into a full-time thing, and giving them the funding to do that." It is in the nature of open source that Google's funding benefits other Linux users, and it is also in the company's interests. How important is Linux to Google? "It's absolutely critical. Google started on Linux. We use it everywhere," says Lorenc. That being the case, why can Google only manage "Gold" membership of the Linux Foundation ($100,000 per annum), whereas others including Microsoft, Intel, Facebook, and Red Hat are "Platinum", which contributes $500,000 annually? "I'm not sure about that stuff. There are dozens of sub-foundations which we are also members of," he adds. Google is ahead of AWS, which is a mere "Silver" member ($20,000 a year).

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The Federal Reserve's system that allows financial institutions to send money back and forth electronically went down Wednesday morning. From a report: The "operational error," as the Fed described it, impacted multiple services, including its pivotal automated clearinghouse system, which connects depository and related institutions send electronic credit and debt transfers. There were no initial indications that foul play was suspected. Along with the Fed ACH service, other systems impacted included the Check 21, FedCash, Fedwire and the national settlement service. A statement from the central bank said it became aware of a problem around 11:15 a.m. ET. "Our technical teams have determined that the cause is a Federal Reserve operational error. We will provide updates via service status as more information becomes available," the Fed said. The statement further noted that the glitch impacted payment deadlines and said the Fed "will communicate remediation efforts to our customers when available."

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Jamie Hill said taking the stunning photos of the northern cardinal was "once in a lifetime".

Frosty P writes: The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) has removed Marko Rodriguez from the TinkerPop project he co-founded because his provocative Twitter posts were said to have violated the ASF Code of Conduct. "I was removed from the project I started 11 years ago for 'publishing offensive humor that borders on hate speech,'" Rodriguez explained in an email to The Register. "However, now that Big Tech has secured the ASF board, it is a way to 'shut me up' about the monopolistic practices of Big Tech." Rodriguez argues that "woke culture" is a creation of "Big Tech," and that it serves to protect the industry's economic monopoly "by monopolizing the ideology of the people." Asked whether he sees the problem in light of the content-moderation challenge faced by social media services, which police speech without clear, consistent rules or due process, he said not at all. "I like to tweet, so I tweet. If Apache likes to police tweets, then may they police tweets," Rodriguez replied. "The question becomes: do they really like to police tweets? Are they finding as much joy in policing tweets as I find in tweeting tweets? If so, then we are both happy and the world rejoices. If not, then how can we help Apache find joy ... For joyless people ultimately impede those that do find joy in what they do." In a subsequent message he noted he has received death threats demanding he apologize for his thoughts, and that those people always assume he's a Trump supporter. "I've never voted," he said. "I simply don't care."

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When Amazon made a unilateral decision in early February to stop accepting documentaries and short films via Prime Video Direct (a policy that also covers "slide shows, vlogs, podcasts, tutorials, filmed conferences, monologues, toy play, music videos, and voiceover gameplay"), the announcement also served as a quiet purge. Amazon also has been dropping long-running documentary titles from the service, with stakeholders receiving no warning or context for the decisions. From a report: Filmmakers and distributors are aghast, but Amazon Prime Video Direct seems to be egalitarian in how it treats its partners. Whether you're an individual filmmaker or an established specialty distributor, no one can ask an Amazon Prime Video Direct representative for more information; there's no one to ask. All inquiries are submitted via trouble tickets, and everyone receives the same boilerplate response via their Amazon Prime Video direct dashboards: "Unless otherwise indicated," the message says, "removed titles (or titles not selected for licensing) may not be resubmitted or appealed." "The selections are so random, it feels like a machine is doing this and not humans," said one executive working on films impacted by the decision. "The lack of any human response adds to the frustration. It reminds me of when politicians want to cut PBS funding." Despite Amazon's dystopian approach to customer service, Prime Video Direct has been in a process of evolution from the start. When it launched in May 2016, it was positioned to lure content creators away from YouTube with bonuses and a more premium experience. Anyone could upload content to Amazon either as titles included free with Prime subscriptions (and earn a royalty) or as digital purchases or rentals. Given Amazon's massive reach, and multiple ways to make money, it was positioned as a fierce competitor in the battle for video ad dollars.

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In 2017, I wrote about the (then new) Scripts menu in LO2. I've been spending the last few weeks working with that functionality because we solved a big problem with JavaScript, how to make it work like an actual scripting language. This menu/script editor idea goes back to the early days of Frontier, and menu sharing, which was a feature adopted by Netscape, Microsoft and Apple, and then basically everyone else, in the early days of the web on the Mac. People say blogging is coming back, I hope so, and blogging came from scripting, and vice versa. The two technologies are very intertwined. That's why this blog is called Scripting News, btw, which is a pun.

Starlink broadband speeds will double to 300Mbps "later this year," SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wrote on Twitter this week. SpaceX has been telling users to expect speeds of 50Mbps to 150Mbps since the beta began a few months ago. From a report: Musk also wrote that "latency will drop to ~20ms later this year." This is no surprise, as SpaceX promised latency of 20ms to 40ms during the beta and had said months ago that "we expect to achieve 16ms to 19ms by summer 2021." It sounds like the speed and latency improvements will roll out around the same time as when Starlink switches from beta to more widespread availability. Two weeks ago, Starlink opened preorders for service expected to be available in the second half of 2021, albeit with limited availability in each region. Reader xonen writes: Starlink has become available in my country, The Netherlands. I verified pricing -- it's the same prices in Euros as in the USA in dollars, which was to be expected due to sales taxes being about equal the difference in value between dollars and euro's, so 99 euro monthly, and 499 up front for the hardware. From the email: Starlink is now available for order to a limited number of users in your coverage area. Placing your order now will hold your place in line for future service. Orders will be fulfilled on a first-come, first-served basis. During beta, users can expect to see data speeds vary from 50Mb/s to 150Mb/s and latency from 20ms to 40ms in most locations over the next several months as we enhance the Starlink system. There will also be brief periods of no connectivity at all. As we launch more satellites, install more ground stations and improve our networking software, data speed, latency and uptime will improve dramatically. The Starlink team will provide periodic updates on availability as we launch more satellites and expand our coverage area. Depending on your location, some orders may take 6 months or more to fulfill. To check availability for your location, visit Starlink.com and re-enter your service address. Thank you for your interest in Starlink and your continued support!

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It's all up from here.

Are you addicted to the feeling the world is about to end every day. I found that I had a mild addiction to it, but I have been able to give up the drug now that Biden is president and the Dems are in charge in DC. I am happy to be a citizen, very tired of being a pundit.

UnknowingFool and scores of other readers have shared this report: Fry's Electronics, the decades-old superstore chain with locations in nine American states, appears to have gone defunct. Bay Area TV station KRON-4 was the first press outlet to confirm the news late Tuesday, saying that Fry's will shut down all 30 of its American locations. The retailer will reportedly make an announcement at some time on Wednesday via the Fry's website. Rumors began flying on Tuesday in the form of anecdotes from alleged Fry's employees, who all reported that they'd been summarily fired earlier in the day with zero notice. One anonymous report posted at The Layoff alleged that every remaining Fry's store in the US was "permanently closing tomorrow," and that statement was repeated hours later at a Fry's-related Reddit community. The Reddit post included the allegation that one store's staffers were tasked with shipping any remaining merchandise back to suppliers during their final day at work. Sacramento freelance journalist Matthew Keys followed these posts by citing an unnamed source -- someone who had worked at Fry's up until "this week" -- who claimed that the electronics chain would make a formal announcement "this week" about closing all of its stores and liquidating any remaining assets. As the wave of rumors exploded, the official Fry's website began serving failure notices -- yet some of its subsite content, particularly years-old press releases, remained active through Frys.com subdomains. As Tuesday wore on, the Fry's retail site flickered in and out of normal service, even letting customers buy products after KRON-4's report went live.

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BTW, that might be the first time the term President Biden have appeared on this blog. Oops it has appeared once before.

Listening to President Biden's schmaltzy speech about the 500,000 Americans who died of Covid, I was sobbing in tears through practically the whole thing. I don't have any family or friends, that I know of, who have died of the virus. But the words reach inside this American's heart. Love of country and family live in the same place. We've lost a lot, but we're still America. You could argue, factually whether or not it's the greatest country in the world, but to the heart of this American, whose family found refuge here, who simply wouldn't exist if it weren't for America, there is no argument. We are great, when we choose to be great.

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