While I also like 7z a lot and use it all the time, it's really not a better format that RAR. Higher compression ratios? Sure, marginally. But for archival RAR is still the better choice as it supports recovery records, which 7z still does not. I also found it more difficult to restore data from a partial 7z file (i.e. trailer data is missing) compared to an incomplete RAR file.
Yeah, zstd is awesome. I built a webapp that uses it via wasm and the decompression speed is incredible, so much so that I store everything in zstd and decompress it on the app load. My wasm binary also does advanced search and tag insertion and stuff in addition to zstd but it's only 38kb. I wish zstd was supported natively by web browsers. The 8kb implementation of zstd is only half as slow as wasm, so even that is still viable.
zstd is a good default for e.g. filesystem compression, but if you're making an archive file, presumably you're looking for higher compression and LZMA would be a better fit.
On a more realistic note: few years back, I've added zstd compression to our log subsystem (hand written direct buffers, native code, in-process, java). For the same CPU utilization if provides twice dense compression compared to regular [-6] gzip (the topic in the title). Zstd is =much= faster on decompression as well, and it this case - unparalleledly better as it uses twice less disk.
zstd is 'silicon valley' (the tv show) - life imitates fiction, except entirely open source
There is 2 softwares I will buy for myself if I still use Windows: WinRAR and Internet Download Manager. In fact, I will buy them in the future regardless the Windows usage.
I read GP more as "sure they're profitable, but they didn't exactly have many expense to cover so it's not a very useful comparison to make at this point" than doubt in the profitability itself.
E.g. when SpaceX started designing the Falcon 9 the losses were astronomical (pun intended) but a car dealership running more of a profit at the same time doesn't have much to say about which business is doing better.
Culonavirus (GGP from the original? Dunno how to refer to that)? Yeah - you could make a good guess of that even just by looking at the username they chose :D. Doesn't mean wolfi1, shezi, or myself can't have a serious discussion stemming from it as well.
Who knows though - maybe I missed that German company financials are also funny :p. Wouldn't be the first time something flew well over my head.
The original author and also creator of the RAR format, Eugene Roshal, is Russian. I think he moved to the US way back in the day, but not sure about that. He has been very private with his life.
The company doing the software distribution, is located in Berlin. The Managing Directors for that company seem to have Turkish names, but I don't know if they're Turkish.
BTW, Looking for some info I just found a website [0], clearly AI generated (but not necessarily meaning the content is false) claiming Eugene Roshal had severe kidney failure this past month, and he's waiting for surgery. They're asking for donations. There are some names on who's theoretically behind it [1] but they don't link to any LinkedIn profile or personal site. I can't find any other references. The BTC wallet they're using for donations hasn't seen any traffic ever. BE WARY, SMELLS FISHY.
WHOIS information for the domain shows it's registered in the Philippines. The name of the owner does not show up in any of the about section people. So I think those are fake.
In addition to what the other comments said ("WHOIS information for the domain shows it's registered in the Philippines"[0] etc), the "hospital bed" picture is blatantly AI-generated. If you zoom on his face, you can see that it looks extremely unnatural.
I suspect that someone's running a script that looks for public (-ish, Eugene has a Wikipedia page at least) figures without active social media presence and creates fake donation websites with AI-generated texts and pictures.
If my suspicion is correct, this is one of the most evil scams I can imagine.
A donation site that takes only bitcoin as payment is very suspicious, surely there are alot of services like GoFundMe who would accept him if it was genuine. I think this is a fake scam
edit: can you write in brackets after the URL that it may be scam. I think alot of people may just go to the URL without reading your warning
the problem is rather to automate this and upscale this and I'm not sure how safe this method is. generally speaking if the EU makes battery recycling mandatory it definitely would benefit from a method where you don't have to grind the battery. I see this more as a PoC which can be further explored
Oldschool lead-acid batteries need not be destroyed to be recycled. They can, and are, easily disassembled and refurbished. For all the lithium hype, lead-acid remains a valid option for non-mobile applications where storage density is not relevant.
The process of dying and rejuvenation would be somewhat analogous chemically.
In this case the electrode is metallic lead and the electrolyte is water containing sulfuric acid.
The electrode-electrolyte "interphase" is a solid coating based on lead sulfate, that forms on the lead plates after extended recharge cycles. This doesn't redissolve very well during use after a while when the electrolyte has become oversaturated with lead ions, and the electrodes have been "replated" so many times. Especially when recharged from near-death.
One antique way of restoration without disassembly was to agitate the battery using an industrial vibrator to loosen up the solids, then dump out the (highly toxic lead-containing) electrolyte to physically remove as much sludge as possible. Followed by repeated filling using distilled water, agitation, and dumping until the waste water looks OK. One final fill with DI water (which acts as a very weak electrolyte at this point) and a reverse charge until an amp or two has been reached for a bit, to deplate as much oxidized coating as possible into a virgin solvent.
More agitation, dumping, rinsing, and finally replace with fresh acid.
Desperate measures for desperate times, not too economical today unless similar wastewater is already being handled in a scale that dwarfs a single battery, and fresh acid is obtained surplus or purchased at bulk pricing as well.
This sounds more complicated than the existing processes to recycle the acid and the electrodes separately and make new batteries from the raw materials.
It would be much easier if lead acid batteries were designed to allow flushing them easily. The biggest problem is the fill holes are absolutely terrible access for flushing and cleaning.
If they were easier to reuse like that and it was done more often then disposal for that lead saturated acid would likely be more available.
Yep, a big similarity to remanufacturing lithium batteries may be having more physical than chemical renewal, where the recycling process focuses on dismantling old and rebuilding new from reclaimed materials.
Restoring the functioning of the original electrodes in situ is a bit of a different ordeal. But they're working on it :)
Where can I get cheap recycled lead acid batteries?
I like them more the li-ion because they’re more forgiving to temperature changes and have a much lower chance of catching on fire
The recycling process isn’t direct battery-to-battery. The lead from old batteries is removed, purified, dried into ingots, then sold back to battery manufacturers to make new batteries. In other words, it’s likely that every lead acid battery you buy is made from recycled batteries.
RISC desktop computers were common-ish in UK schools by then.
Of course if you count the 6502 as a RISC chip (if you squint a bit, Page Zero RAM sure does look like 256 8-bit registers to me!) then UK schools had RISC desktops for over a decade before then!
there is a quote from Pauli about Dirac : 'There is no God and Dirac is his prophet' Heisenberg and Dirac had different opinions on the existence of a god and Pauli, asked for his opinion, had the former to say
concerning backups, when it comes to disaster recovery you need a strategy for restoring as well, sometimes it's not only the data you would need but the systems as well
well, if you happen to be in a 'rm -Rf /' situation (which with agentic AI seems to be more often the case) to know how to operate in a chroot environment could be helpful
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