Michael Barnes lunchtime Halloween concert

Michael Barnes lunchtime Halloween concert

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The Old Church Concert Hall holds a Lunchtime Concert Series. Every year about this time, Michael Barnes does a Halloween themed organ concert. He’ll be playing this year tomorrow on Wednesday Oct 21st at noon.

Above is a video from his 2022 concert – which often has many of the same tunes:

  • FUNERAL MARCH OF A MARIONETTE CHARLES GOUNOD
  • TOCCATA AND FUGE IN D MINOR J. S. BACH
  • SCHERZO FROM GRAND SONATA IN E FLAT (1866) DUDLEY BUCK, JR
  • KOBOLD (PUCK) FROM LYRIC PIECES AND EDVARD GRIEG
  • MARCH OF THE DWARFS (1899)

He is then joined by Gina Piroli to sing along:

  • HALLOWEEN SONG TRADITIONAL
  • HAVE YOU SEEN THE GHOST OF JOHN? TRADITIONAL
  • MIDNIGHT RENDEVOUS ROBERT T. DAVIS
  • ADDAMS FAMILY THEMESONG (1964) VIC MIZZY
  • RONDO ALLA TURCA WOLFGANG A. MOZART
Arc-Pro driver allows up to 93 percent of system RAM as iGPU memory

Arc-Pro driver allows up to 93 percent of system RAM as iGPU memory

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Intel Panther Lake’s new Arc-Pro driver will let you set up to 93% of system ram as iGPU memory. This means if you have 64 GB of RAM – you can theoretically allocate up to 59.5 GB of memory. Since Intel Graphics Software 25.26.1602.2 and driver 32.0.101.6974, the old limit was 57%.

While this is really cool (and something that should have been done a decade ago when integrated graphics was first a thing), the reality is that the memory is the slower system clocked DDR4/DDR5/LPDDR memory with all the corresponding bandwidth and latency limitations. So, do not expect your models to run very fast – but they might actually run for a change.

Claude CLI alternatives

Claude CLI alternatives

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Xiaomi’s MiMo AI team has open-sourced MiMo Code, a terminal-native AI coding assistant that the Chinese electronics giant says outperforms Anthropic’s Claude Code on key agentic coding benchmarks. (Article)

MiMo Code is available now on GitHub under an MIT license, and installs with a single terminal command (curl -fsSL https://mimo.xiaomi.com/install | bash) on macOS and Linux or via npm (npm install -g @mimo-ai/cli) on Windows.

While supposedly beating Claude, on the official Terminal-Bench 2.0 leaderboard maintained at tbench.ai, OpenAI’s Codex CLI running GPT-5.5 scores 82.2% — roughly nine points above MiMo Code’s self-reported 73% — and OpenAI’s own GPT-5.5 announcement claims 82.7% on the same benchmark.

Marathon Nun

Marathon Nun

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Sr. Stephanie Baliga is famous for running the Chicago Marathon every year to raise funds for her order.

As a teen, she was a division I runner with the University of Illinois, and was one of the fastest in the country. She planned to become a professional athlete until a foot injury her sophomore year led her to discern another path. She joined the Franciscans of the Eucharist in Chicago in 2010 at age 22.

Sr. Stephanie completed her 15th consecutive year running the Chicago Marathon this past Sunday, October 11, raising funds for her order’s Mission of Our Lady of the Angels. She and the 192 runners on her marathon team (with another 30 running the half) brought in $579,589, setting a new record.

All funds go to her order’s mission, supporting its food pantry that feeds 3,000 to 4,000 families each month, as well as other outreach programs the sisters operate in an under-served Chicago neighborhood. She has raised more than $3.2 million since she founded the team in 2011.

This is how you get skynet

This is how you get skynet

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An Intel patent application published on August 6, spotted by Patentlyze, describes an orbital data center architecture that moves some of the computing used to operate massive satellite constellations off the ground and into space. The architecture proposes a two-tier satellite network in which a small number of more powerful satellites in higher orbits manage large constellations of relatively simple satellites in low-Earth orbit.

Link

Nogero Trail

Nogero Trail

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It’s no secret that Oregon is not doing the best right now. It currently has one of the worst performing school systems in the country (despite decades of plenty of funding they are looking to close up to 14 schools due to funding mismanagement and declining population). Oregon is now near the top in the country in unemployment rates. Add to this the livability problems of some of the highest rates of mental illness, homelessness, a failed legalization policy of drug use that turned parts of downtown into an open air drug dens that has resulted in massive spike in homelessness, deaths, and crime. Oh – and don’t mind the 2nd highest tax rate in the country.

So, maybe it’s time to leave – like a lot of their most important workers are doing.

Enter cracker_barrel_69 who created Nogero Trail – the Oregon trail backwards to Missouri. You load up at an REI garage sale of used equipment, and then maybe get robbed before you even leave town (car breakins are a pandemic in Portland). Perfect.

Hahaha this is amazing. 80% of my stuff got stolen while I was trying to load it up at REI

WE SURVIVED THE NOGERO TRAIL! We bought a big house for a fraction of the price in Missouri. That was fun thank you!

Microsoft’s uses almost 20% of an 8gb system’s ram – for a ad-bloated weather app

Microsoft’s uses almost 20% of an 8gb system’s ram – for a ad-bloated weather app

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The Weather app in macOS consumes five times less memory and isn’t riddled with ads, Windows 11’s app can sometimes reach 1.6GB of usage.

Memory prices are astronomical. Sales of new PC’s are down because people cannot afford systems configured with 32gb or 64gb of ram. Microsoft has been trying to say you can run Windows on systems as low as 8gb, but when your ad-chocked weather app uses up 20% of your system ram, it’s hard to believe any of their claims.

Ransomware targets the decisionmakers

Ransomware targets the decisionmakers

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More data on ransomware attacks. This time from Zscaler/ThreatLabz which tracked 351 victims across 334 organizations hit by one ransomware campaign over the course of a month:

The data suggests today’s ransomware crews have become oddly specific about their preferred victim profile: nearly two-thirds of victims held manager-level titles or above, the average victim was a 46-year-old Gen Xer, and three-quarters worked in accounting and finance, sales, operations, HR, or marketing. Half worked in the industrial or IT sectors.

Rather than blasting the same extortion email across an organization, attackers are doing their homework first. Zscaler says they combine information from compromised systems with publicly available data to map reporting lines and identify the employees most likely to influence a company’s response.

“The ransomware landscape has shifted from indiscriminate attacks to highly targeted extortion campaigns,” the security outfit wrote. “Rather than targeting executives directly, attackers are increasingly focusing on managers and other key personnel with the authority or influence to accelerate payment decisions.”

Everything is now open source

Everything is now open source

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With the advent of (admittedly mediocre quality) reverse engineered apps via claude coding and tools like Reverse Engineer Anything , you can now create your own version of anything – and people are.

The implications of this are pretty astounding. Is SAS completely dead? What does security look like when everyone makes their own apps? What if we don’t even buy or make traditional apps anymore – but generate whatever software we need on the fly?