There was an old bastard named Lenin
Who did two or three million men in.
That’s a lot to have done in
But where he did one in
That old bastard Stalin did ten in.

(c) Robert Conquest,

quoted from Christopher Hitchens’ memoirs (Hitch-22)

I just published the alpha version of FLAC encoder using CUDA.

I believe it’s faster than the reference flac encoder, and provides better compression. It is an opensource library under LGPL. You can download it here.

Readers who have modern NVidia graphics cards are encouraged to test it.

Awaiting your test results.

Evolution is a fact. Beyond reasonable doubt, beyond serious doubt, beyond sane, informed, intelligent doubt, beyond doubt evolution is a fact. The evidence for evolution is at least as strong as the evidence for the Holocaust, even allowing for eye witnesses to the Holocaust. It is the plain truth that we are cousins of chimpanzees, somewhat more distant cousins of monkeys, more distant cousins still of aardvarks and manatees, yet more distant cousins of bananas and turnips . . . continue the list as long as desired. That didn’t have to be true. It is not self-evidently, tautologically, obviously true, and there was a time when most people, even educated people, thought it wasn’t. It didn’t have to be true, but it is. We know this because a rising flood of evidence supports it. Evolution is a fact, and [my] book will demonstrate it. No reputable scientist disputes it, and no unbiased reader will close the book doubting it. Read more…

Read also: If the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Pope have no problem with evolution, why are our children being brainwashed and our science teachers under attack? In an exclusive interview, Richard Dawkins explains why his new book is here to prove once and for all that humans did not walk with dinosaurs. -

Conceived by Brian Eno as “visual music”, his latest artwork, 77 Million Paintings is a constantly evolving sound and imagescape which continues his exploration into light as an artist’s medium and the aesthetic possibilities of “generative software”.

He first created 77 Million Paintings to bring art to the increasing number of flat panel TV’s and monitors that often sit darkened and underutilized.

Amazon

There’s no race but the human race. Well, maybe there are cylons. So say we all.

It’s always nice when a work of fiction has enough detail to be not only entertaining, but thought provoking and educating. The latest installments of Daniel Silva’s Gabriel Allon spy novel series are definitely a good example of this case. Moscow Rules and The Defector have many accurate descriptions of actual, if sometimes renamed characters and places in Russia, which i found very interesting, even though i live in Russia myself. I’m afraid 95% percent of Russian population have a less clear picture of their country than the author of those books. For example, i was surprised that he mentioned the Yasenevo KGB headquarters, which are only several kilometers into the forest from my apartment on the edge of Moscow. Most of my neighbours probably don’t know about this place, but Daniel Silva’s readers now do.

I’ll post development news here. User-related questions will still be primarily discussed at hydrogenaudio forum, but here I’m going to share my thoughts on C#, lossless formats, and other stuff which might be interesting for fellow developers. If you are not yet familiar with CUETools, visit the wiki pages dedicated to this set of tools for lossless audio manipulation (AccurateRip verification, format conversion etc).