• Google is an open-source ClusterFuzz.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Wait.  That might not be entirely correct.
  
  Fuzzing is a testing technique that automatically generates random inputs for your program - or carefully designed evil inputs, or some combination.  There are lots of tools for this already, but another one is welcome.
  
  
• Pikazon, I ChooseCo you!  (TechDirt)
  
  
• Abandoning Google Analytics for Fathom.
  
  Hmm.  What is Fathom written in?  Go?  Fine.
  
  Go, I've often said, is hipster COBOL.  But COBOL ran banks and insurance companies for decades.  A new COBOL is not inherently a bad thing.  I think people should have gone with Ada instead - it's a much better designed language than Go.  Or even Apple's Swift.  But Go is fine.
  
  (Fathom GitHub)
  
  

• Spotify will squish you if you use an ad blocker.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  I'm okay with that.  Spotify has a direct external cost for every song you listen to.  If they don't recoup that somehow
  
  
• California's disingenuous Attorney General is at odds with their incompetent legislature over the meaning of the state's new public records law.  (TechDirt)
  
  Given what we've seen with with Bill of Rights over the year, you would think that legislators would adhere to what I call the This means you, shithead rule.  That is, if anything in a bill could possibly be subject to weaselry, you add very specific text to the effect that This means you, shithead.
  
  
• Under the guise of preventing human trafficking, Hawaii wants to force ISPs to filter porn.  (TechDirt)

• Motorola announced the g7 series.  (AnandTech)
  
  Intentionally this time.
  
  I'll have to see what the Australian prices are, because even the bottom of the line g7 Play has a 1.8GHz quad-core A73.  My g4 Play has a 1.4GHz A53, which isn't even half as fast, and the last-gen g6 Play still has that same chip.
  
  Nanosim though, so I'll need to get a new sim.
  
  
• Unicode 12.0 has an otter, now Python 3.8 has a walrus.
  
  Basically, rather than the old
  
  
  for entry in sample_data:
      title = entry.get("title")
      if title:
          print(f'Found title: "{title}"')
  
  you can now write
  
  
  for entry in sample_data:
      if (title := entry.get("title")):
          print(f'Found title: "{title}"')
  
  just like in Algol 60.
  
  
• SoftBank shares soared today as it sold off its stake in Nvidia and invested instead in...  SoftBank.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Ouch, Nv.
  
  
• Apple says disclose or remove screen recording stuffs or get booted.  (Ars Technica)
  
  This is actually a fair and appropriate response.
  
  
  Just here to break up the text.  Nice wheels tho'.
  
  
• Need a passively-cooled industrial Mini-STX system?  Here's one.  (Serve the Home)
  
  Peak system power consumption under load is 17W.  It's quite a capable little beast.
  
  
• How does the new Radeon VII fare under Linux with open source drivers?  Pretty darn well actually.  (Phoronix)
  
  The review covers both gaming and OpenCL compute performance.  The Radeon VII handles 4k games without trouble even on Linux.
  
  
• Australia's parliament averages one network "incident" per day.  (ZDNet)
  
  That's comforting.  The fact that they actually know that.
  
  
• Online shopping in India is suddenly a mess thanks to well-meaning idiots in government.  (ZDNet)
  
  Except possibly for the well-meaning part.
  
  
• The Young Idiot Caucus  of the Democratic Party posted a summary of their astoundingly stupid Green New Deal, got roundly mocked, and took it down.
  
  What's that Lassie?  The internet is forever?  (PDF)
  
  Good dog!
  
  To summarise the summary:
  
  
• Zero emissions by 2030.  Yes, zero emissions.
  
  
• No nuclear power.
  
  
• No planes.  Catch the train everywhere.
  
  
• Cow corks.
  
  
• Newly fabricated human rights include guaranteed employment, guaranteed paid time off, free education, free health care, subsidised housing, free money for those unwilling to work.
  
  
• Upgrading or replacing every building in the United States.
  
  
• It will all be paid for by printing money.
  
  
• Shut up about hyperinflation already.
  
  
• GEG dejected after game rejected by GOG.  (One Angry Gamer)
  
  GOG said the game is too niche.  Has GOG actually looked at GOG lately?
  

Social Media News

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, February 09 2019 03:28 AM (Q/JG2)

Posted by: J Greely at Saturday, February 09 2019 10:23 AM (tgyIO)

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• AMD's Radeon VII has landed.  (AnandTech)
  
  That DP floating point number that was all up in the air will-they-won't-they came down as mostly will-they; it's 1/4 SP, where the much more expensive professional cards are 1/2 SP.
  
  The interesting thing here is that AMD actually listened to customers and at the last minute before release adjusted firmware and drivers to improve DP performance.  By 300%.
  
  Thats leaves a gap between this card and the professional Instinct MI50 of 3.5 TFLOPS vs. 6.7 TFLOPS.  But the Nvidia RTX Titan, their fastest consumer/prosumer card, only delivers 0.5 DP TFLOPS.  If you need double precision on a budget, the Radeon VII wins by a mile.
  
  It's around 5% slower than the RTX 2080 on most games, winning by small margins on a couple.  And it runs hotter - 300W vs 225W.  But it's the same price and has twice the memory (16GB vs. 8GB).
  
  So it turns out to be a fairly attractive offering after all.  Depends on whether you value double precision and tons of video RAM and memory bandwidth over ray tracing and dedicated AI cores.
  
  
• Two SSDs with identical hardware but different firmware get compared.  You won't believe how different they are!  (AnandTech)
  
  Not very.  Almost exactly the same actually.  Don't buy the 2TB model.
  
  
• Many iPhone apps record everything you do.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  In the app.  Which you are using.
  
  It's for customer support.  It's an amazing customer support tool.
  
  Just (a) tell your users - note that you do this in download page / login screen / splash screen / whatever and (b) don't store screenshots of people's credit card information on a public server, okay?
  
  
• Google and Apple should just replace the app permissions request page with a default Allow us to violate your privacy in ways we believe fall just short of criminal liability Yes/No? (TechDirt)
  
  Would save a lot of time and confusion for everyone.

• Adobe - oh, it's Axios.  Never mind.  95% chance it's wrong anyway.
  
  
• Unicode 12.0 has an otter.
  
  Unicode is a semantic train wreck that just keeps getting worse.  But it has an otter.
  
  
• Need more cores?  Supermicro has new servers with up to 224 of them.  (Serve the Home)
  
  Yeah, the CPUs alone would cost you $80,000, and you could buy 1088 AMD EPYC cores for that price, but you couldn't put them all in one box.
  
  Well, you could, but that box would also be expensive.
  
  
• Smishing?  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Ah.  Usual spam email scam tactics, just on SMS.
  
  
• Centralise everything that's decentralised and decentralise everything that's centralised and they'll call you a genius.  (The Next Platform)
  
  
• Mathematicians have uncovered an unexpected connection between addition and multiplication.  (Quanta)
  
  No, not that.  Well, that too.  But it's actually an interesting emergent property of the way integers behave.  And the article has pictures.
  
  
• Cat pictures considered harmful.  (ZDNet)
  
  A bug in Android's image libraries allows it to be hacked by a malicious PNG.
  
  If you're still using an old, unsupported device like the Nexus 7, which is stuck on Android 6, maybe now is the time to...  Oh.  It doesn't affect Android 6?  Only newer devices with 7 and up?
  
  Lol, as the kids would say.
  
  
• It would seem that Warner Bros got caught asking reviewers how much they charged for favourable articles.  (One Angry Gamer)
  
  The person reporting this is Jim Sterling, who is a jackass and a half, but he actually provides a screenshot of the relevant parts of the email.

Social Media News

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Posted by: Rick C at Friday, February 08 2019 04:22 PM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, February 08 2019 11:27 PM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, February 09 2019 04:24 AM (Q/JG2)

Posted by: Mauser at Saturday, February 09 2019 12:08 PM (Ix1l6)

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• Google is making the blockchain searchable.  (Forbes)
  
  Two points: One, this is not hard.  Every transaction on the Ethereum blockchain (including the testnets) can be packed into a half-terabyte MySQL database.  (Don't ask me why I know this.)  Two, someone needs to remind them what has been found lurking at the bottom of Bitcoin.
  
  
• An overview of DDR5.  (Rambus)
  
  Oh, those jerks.  They're still around?
  
  Anyway, worth reading if you're interested; DDR5 is more than just a speed upgrade.
  
  
• Western Digital has cheap 10TB external drives out.  (Serve the Home)
  
  Currently $200 at Best Buy including a free 32GB flash drive.  The drive alone is $290 on Amazon so that seems like a good price.
  
  I prefer LaCie external drives because their aluminium cases look great, are nice and solid, and above all sit flat on the desk so you can't knock the damn things over.
  
  
• Melbourne University professor tells Canberra politicians that they're a bunch of stupid-heads.  (ZDNet)
  
  She's right.

• Mike Masnick takes a look at Gavin McInnes' suit against the SPLC and gets it completely wrong.  (TechDirt)
  
  Mike instinctively falls on the side of free speech and against libel suits, but let's make no mistake, the SPLC defames people for money, and what they do deliberately skirts the edge of libel per se.  That's the entirety of their business model.  They need to be sued into the ground, then bulldozed over, then sold off to someone who really hates them.
  
  Like Gawker, only doubled and squared.
  
  
• YouTube CEO Susan Wojciehowicz admits that their 2018 Rewind video was a piece of crap that deserved every single one of the 15 million dislikes.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  She promises that over the course of 2019 the company will continue to avoid addressing issues, ignore user complaints, and generally blunder about making a bad situation worse.  What are you going to do, use Vimeo?

Anime Op/Ed of the Day

Picture of the Day

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, February 07 2019 02:25 AM (Q/JG2)

Posted by: cxt217 at Thursday, February 07 2019 04:43 AM (LMsTt)

Posted by: cxt217 at Thursday, February 07 2019 04:45 AM (LMsTt)

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• Liquid cooling isn't just for overclockers anymore and never was.  (Ars Technica)
  
  It's a weird article, desperately trying to credit a fringe activity among hardware enthusiasts for a technology that existed before any of them were born.
  
  
• How long will a 64-bit PostgreSQL transaction ID last?
  
  292,000 years.  Oops, spoilers.
  
  
• Slack files for IPO, says don't tell anyone.  (Bloomberg)
  
  
• The developers of the Electron app framework are hard at work ensuring that no-one, anywhere, will ever have any free memory ever again.
  
  
• Firefox 66 will block auto-play audio and video.
  
  It will probably get blocked by injunction from a Hawaiian judge though.
  
  They are also working on blocking cryptomining and fingerprinting.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Fingerprinting allows web sites to match your computer across different browsers.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Turns out browsers are, by default, more chatty than they need to be.  They don't leak private information, but they do leak unique information that can be cross-referenced against a sufficiently large dataset - the sort of dataset we would find in the hands of the usual suspects.
  
  
• Do you really miss the Windows 3.0 file manager?  Me neither.  But it's available on GitHub anyway.  (ZDNet)
  
  
• The Australian copyright protection racket (APRA) is now going after sites that allow you to download videos from YouTube.  (ZDNet)
  
  Note: YouTube allows you to download videos from YouTube.
  
  
• Russia has put similar rules into place. How did that work out for them?  (TechDirt)

  In 2017, the number of torrent sites offering content to the Russian market sat at around 1,300. However, last year – in the face of overwhelming blocking measures – that number grew to around 2,000.

  Oh.

Anime Op/Ed of the Day

Picture of the Day

Posted by: Mauser at Wednesday, February 06 2019 02:24 PM (Ix1l6)

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• The iPhone XR maybe isn't not a hit?  (Tom's Guide)
  
  Also, Apple made it clear that it got the pricing right on the new models, no matter what the actual sales figures might say, and any future adjustments you might see are entirely due to solar eclipses foreign currency fluctuations.
  
  
• When does AWS break through $100 billion?  (The Next Platform)
  
  When they get a dashboard that doesn't look like the new intern hacked it together over the weekend.
  
  
• New Zealand is trialling 10Gbps consumer and small business broadband.  (ZDNet)
  
  Meanwhile in Australia  I am STILL waiting on 100Mbps, ten years in, and six months after I was told it would be connected.
  
  
• It's all on the website.  (ZDNet)
  
  
• The Linux 5.0 production release is fast approaching.  (Phoronix)
  
  I'm still maintaining a bunch of servers on 2.6.

• YouTube is going to mess with the dislike button after creating the worst video in the platform's storied history of utter garbage.  (One Angry Gamer)
  
  It's widely speculated that they have already been doing so, and just not admitting to it.  However, large-scale social media platforms often don't have the direct granularity users expect - counters are often cached and don't necessarily update in real time - so it may just be that the software doesn't work.
  
  

Video of the Day

Other Linus discovers that you can't drop software.

Picture of the Day

Tiny footsteps.

• Intel's Xeon W-3175X has shown up in retail. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  $2979 for the CPU and $1800 for the Asus motherboard. You'll also need a 500W water cooler. Dual power supplies and external 1hp chiller are optional. (Yes, the motherboard really supports dual power supplies.)
  
  
• RustPython is a Python interpreter written in Rust.
  
  Or as I like to call it, Rupy.

• Snopes and AP are out at Facebook's fact checking program.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Given the clear alignment of political biases among these entities, it's not entirely obvious what led to this breakup.
  
  
• YouTube's terrible community guidelines system is being used in a Mafia-style protection racket.  (BleepingComputer)
  
  Nice channel you have here.  Shame if anything happened to it.
  
  
• The Covington story: What really happened.  Sort of.  (The Atlantic)
  
  The article is a terrible pile of garbage and at the same time some of the best reporting I've seen on the event.

Posted by: cxt217 at Monday, February 04 2019 05:36 AM (LMsTt)

Posted by: Mauser at Tuesday, February 05 2019 07:56 AM (Ix1l6)

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• Samsung Vietnam (which apparently is a thing that exists) accidentally leaked a sneak peek of the Galaxy F which may or may not be an upcoming foldable phoneblet.  (AnandTech)
  
  Other leaks have suggested it will be making its debut in March - at a price of US$1770.  (ZDNet)
  
  Or you can just buy a phone and a tablet.
  
  Meanwhile, the Galaxy S10 is expected to drop February 20.  (ZDNet)
  
  
• Even Google's diversity hires can see that Google is falling apart.  (Bloomberg)
  
  Of course, they blame everyone but themselves for the problems they are creating.
  
  
• Engadget seems to think that porn has disappeared from the internet.
  
  I...  No, pretty sure it's still there.  Wait let me check - ugh - yep, still there, and now I need to Bleach Bit my brain.
  
  
• Google's Play Store now accepts progressive web apps.
  
  Cue the rapid decline of custom app development, and good riddance.
  
  
• Researchers have demonstrated a working 3d printer using the light-activated resin polymer technique.  (Nature)
  
  But, you ask, when will this become a real product that can be purchased and put to practical use?
  
  Already done.
  
  I'm not entirely sure what the point of the Nature article is.
  
  
• That law in India regulating online stores has resulted in Amazon and Flipkart pulling an estimated 30 trillion products off the shelves.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Well, 400,000 in the case of Amazon, and one quarter of all products sold by Flipkart, which is approximately 30 trillion.
  
  
• My calculator may need new batteries.
  
  
• A security vulnerability affecting 3G, 4G, and 5G mobile networks should be fixed by the end of...  End of the year?!  (ZDNet)
  
  I ragged on Apple for their FaceTime spy bug, but once they realised what was going on they took immediate action - they shut off the problematic service the same day.
  
  The traditional carriers are struggling to fix bugs the same year.

Picture of the Day

• Intel has discontinued Itanium.  (AnandTech)
  
  So if you were planning on buying one, get your order in before the middle of 2021.
  
  
• Humble has some book bundles for you:
  
  Programming Cookbooks - 15 O'Reilly cookbook titles for $15.
  
  Fantasy Manga - 89 volumes of manga for $20, including Battle Angel Alita 1-3, Re:Slime 1-4, Mushishi 1-10, Cells at Work 1-4, and Flying Witch 1-4.
  
  Numenera - 28 volumes of games rules, campaign settings, and adventures for $15.  Numenera is the game system used for the Planescape: Torment sequel Torment: Tides of Numenera.  It's set on Earth, but a billion years in the future, where technology has changed to the point that few people even recognise it as technology any more.
  
  Also Computer Music - 16 titles on computer sound and music for $15.
  
  
• If a $3000 chip on a $1700 motherboard is a wee bit pricy for you, you might want to consider a $250 to $500 on a $400 motherboard.  (AnandTech)
  
  The board in question is the Supermicro AlphabetSoup - sorry,  C9Z390-PGW - and it's a regular socket 1151 Z390 motherboard but with a PLX chip (a PCIe switch) for extra PCIe lanes and built-in 10G Ethernet.  Also WiFi 5 (802.11ac), two M.2 slots, two U.2 ports, five USB 3.1 ports, two DisplayPort ports, one HDMI port port, and the usual audio port ports.
  
  
• Fuck Oracle.  (Forbes)
  
  They are doing licensing compliance audits on companies using Java for development.  Everyone knew this was coming when they bought Sun, and now it's here.
  
  
• The Raspberry Pi 4 is not coming in 2019.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  It's a slow news day.  They wrote it, I linked it.  Sue us.  Wait, don't do that.  See disclaimer.  We have trebuchets.

• Fixing Facebook needs a trust score.  (ZDNet)
  
  I'd prescribe a shovel, but you do you ZDNet.
  
  
• Facebook and Google got whacked and then unwhacked by Apple.  (Thurrott.com)
  
  Reporting is unclear, but this may have been Apple revoking their enterprise certificates and then issuing new ones, to force-kill the offending apps immediately.
  
  
• Larry Correia issues an antipology.  (Monster Hunter Nation)

Posted by: Mauser at Saturday, February 02 2019 11:56 AM (Ix1l6)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, February 03 2019 12:39 PM (PiXy!)

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