Tuesday, November 24

Geek

Daily News Stuff 24 November 2020

Swings And Roundabouts Edition

Tech News

  • In the end it turns out that the net hole in my budget is only around $500, so I could in fact get myself a new PC if I cut the specs down a bit.

    And now there are no Ryzen 5000 CPUs in stock at all.

    Oh, wait, there's a 5600X at another store I've used before.  I'll spec something out.

    Update: RAM prices have finally returned to the low they reached back in, what, 2013?  A$300 for 64GB of DDR4-3200.  And while Radeon 6000 cards basically don't exist at present, a placeholder RX 580 can be had for relative peanuts.  

    I can afford something that would be 70% faster than my current system for single-threaded tasks and 50% for multi-threaded, have 4x as much memory, 8x as much space on the C drive if I can get it to RAID-0 two M.2 devices, be just as fast for gaming, and be a whole lot quieter while it does it.  Even if it does make noise it will do it under my desk and not directly in front of me.


  • PayPal is still screwing up payments for Coles and Woolworths.  The order from Kmart (part of the Coles group here) got paid, then cancelled, then refunded, then I placed it again by credit card, then they cancelled the items I particularly wanted because they were out of stock even though they still list them as in stock though that part is not PayPal's fault.

    Then Woolworths dropped part of my grocery order - again - so I tried to place a second order with Coles and PayPal bounced it - again.

    Update: Wait.  The only thing Woolies entirely dropped from my order was the paper towels.  The gluten-free bread was out of stock but they replaced that with two smaller gluten-free loaves; the specific toilet paper I ordered was out of stock but they replaced that with a larger 24-pack of the same brand.  So worst case I just need to duck out and pick up some paper towels, or just try not to make a mess until next week.


  • Speaking of Ryzen 5000 AMD now supports undervolting and overdriving.  (AnandTech)

    This is entirely automated, requiring just one click to optimise your CPU for the active cores, and voids your warranty because of course it does.


  • MyNOR is a homebrew CPU with an ALU consisting of a single NOR gate.  (MyNOR)

    It takes 2600 cycles to perform an 8-bit addition.


  • Apple's head of security has been indicted.  (Morgan Hill Times)

    This is security as in making sure people don't walk off with the laptops, not as in bypassing your firewall settings because fuck you anyway.

    Allegedly the Santa Clara Sheriff's Department was holding out for bribes before issuing CCW licenses, and Apple just happened to donate a couple of hundred iPads to the department out of a sense of community something something.

    Two senior officers in the department were also indicted.


  • Maddy is a mail server.  (GitHub)

    It's designed to replace Postfix, Dovecot, OpenDKIM, OpenSPF, and OpenDMARC with a single binary.

    And if you've ever configured an even slightly complicated mail server you'll know what a blessing this is.  Configuring the standard mail services on Linux these days is like configuring Node.js to run PHP applications, only worse.


  • Many smart doorbells for sale on Amazon come pre-installed with vulnerabilities.  (CyberScoop)

    On the other hand, Amazon's own smart doorbells catch fire, so the choice is up to you.


Quack Like A Duck, Sing An Angel Video of the Day



Give it a couple of minutes for her to really get into the song.  It's worth it.


Disclaimer: My Squirrel Buddha Can't Sing In Duet...  With Herself.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:46 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 628 words, total size 5 kb.

1 IoT doorbells don't have vulnerabilities.  They have "smart features". "One device made by a company called Victure, for example, sent a user’s wireless name and password, unencrypted, to servers in China" QED

Posted by: normal at Wednesday, November 25 2020 02:39 AM (LADmw)

2 Also, why would you need paper towels when you have poisonous spiders?  Unless you're one of those racist homophobes who believes that venomous spiders can't clean up messes.  Holy cow, I'm commenting on a far-right, spider-hating website.  I'll put myself in a re-education camp, post haste.

Posted by: normal at Wednesday, November 25 2020 02:44 AM (LADmw)

3 Poisonous spiders aren't as absorbent as you might think.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, November 25 2020 11:05 AM (PiXy!)

4 Finally got around to listening to that music . . . thing.  Holy cow, that person has one hell of a range.  And the alto is really gorgeous, with perferctly natural tone, no push, just warm.  (though the deliberate 1990s grrl-singer "pubescent boy voice cracking" near the end was pretty painful)

Posted by: normal at Wednesday, November 25 2020 01:00 PM (obo9H)

5 I had heard her doing the different voices before just talking, but to be able to sing in all those different voices and have it come off naturally is real talent.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, November 25 2020 02:39 PM (PiXy!)

Hide Comments | Add Comment




Apple pies are delicious. But never mind apple pies. What colour is a green orange?




54kb generated in CPU 0.0176, elapsed 0.7055 seconds.
58 queries taking 0.6949 seconds, 343 records returned.
Powered by Minx 1.1.6c-pink.