• Apparently puppy murder doesn't poll well because Australia's Prime Minister is pushing state governments to end their idiotic lockdowns.  (News.com.au)
  
  And yeah, the puppy murder was a real thing done in the name of Public Safety.  People are not impressed, and in fact a criminal investigation is under way.  You can get away with doing that to humans, maybe, but not to dogs.
  
  "Bat Flu Zero" is an idiotic fantasy we caught from New Zealand, and even the Island Kingdom of Sheep Hermits can't actually sustain that dream.
  
  
  
• "AI" tech that tracks noises that may or may not be gunshots landed an innocent man in jail.  (AP)
  
  Studies suggest that ShotSpotter, while expensive, is basically useless at reducing crime.  It's not entirely clear if it works at all.  Experts say that the system is perfectly designed - intentionally or not - to produce false positives.
  
  In this case, after Michael Williams had been in jail awaiting trial for eleven months, the prosecution shrugged and said they didn't have enough evidence to proceed.
  
  And David Chipman, Biden's nominee to head the BATF?  A former ShotSpotter executive.
  
  
  

Tech News

• Firecuda go whoosh. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  7.3GBps read, 6.9GBps write, 1 million IOPs.
  
  It's not cheap - you can get two WD Blue SSDs for the same price - but it's actually faster than two WD Blues in RAID-0.
  
  
• Samsung showed off 512GB DDR5-7200 modules for next-generation servers.  (AnandTech)
  
  The module layout suggests that 64GB desktop modules could also be on their way, as we saw earlier from...  Oh, the server just fell over again.  I think it was Team Group, while I wait for the database check to run.
  
  
  
• A new Mac Mini with an M1X is on its way.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Might be interested if Apple didn't spy on children.  That debacle has kind of fallen off the radar with all the other debacles going on, but I haven't forgotten.
  
  
  
• Stack 'em, pack 'em, and rack 'em: AMD discusses upcoming 2D, 2.5D, and 3D chiplet tech.  (WCCFTech)

  The interconnect uses a brand new hydrophilic Dielectric-Dielectric Bonding with Direct CU-CU bonding which was designed and co-optimized in deep partnership with TSMC.

  That's exactly what I was about to say.
  
  They're also looking at stacking CPU dies and stacking DRAM directly on the CPU.  With HBM3 you could have 32GB of RAM with 1TB per second bandwidth right in the CPU socket.
  
  The technology will appear first in Zen 3D late this year or early next.  This will have the same core design as current desktop Ryzen but triple the L3 cache - up to 192MB total - giving up to 25% better performance in Monster Hunter World.
  
  
  
• Which is just what Intel is doing with their new high-end Sapphire Rapids Xeons.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Only more so - they could go as high as 128GB of RAM directly on the CPU.
  
  
  
• The book The Honest Truth About Dishonest was based on fake data.  (The Economist)
  
  Article is truncated, but the gist is that the authors are either lying or grossly incompetent.
  
  
  
• Get admin access to Windows 10 with just a mouse.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Don't even need to click on it.  Just plug it in.
  
  
  
  
  Razer has responded, is preparing a bugfix, and has offered a bug bounty, so even though they screwed this up they are acting responsibly.

Posted by: Jay at Monday, August 23 2021 11:43 PM (mrlXS)

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, August 24 2021 12:23 AM (eqaFC)

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• Migrating the other sites to a new server.  So how do I switch over the shared filesystem from OpenVZ to LXD?  Read read...  Fuck.
  
  No shared filesystem for now then.
  
  Preparing to switch over today.
  
  
  
• No it doesn't.  Core i9-12900K outperforms 11900K on After Effects.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  The benchmark gives essentially identical results for 11th gen 8-core, 12th gen 8+8 core, and AMD 16-core CPUs, because it's a GPU benchmark.
  
  Sometimes the tech press are as bad as the mainstream press.

• How to beat Windows 11 into submission over your default browser choice.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Either follow the friendly 11-step guide or file a class-action lawsuit.  Either one works.
  
  
  
• Google paid game developers hundreds of millions to prevent another major defection like Fortnite.  (The Verge)
  
  This actually sounds like a defence for Google in antitrust proceedings.  Though they might have broken some other regulations in the process.
  
  Not for Apple, though, since they don't allow sideloading at all.
  
  
  
• A hacker has been sent to prison for three years for stealing nude photos from social media accounts.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Dude, set up your own social network.  What do you think they're created for?
  
  
  
• AT&T says thy definitely weren't hacked and 70 million customers' personal data wasn't stolen.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  "Who are you going to believe, us or the lying data files available on the Dark Web?" said an AT&T spokesdrone.
  
  
  
• Meanwhile add another 6 million to the T-Mobile breach.  (Bleeping Computer_
  
  A million here, a million there, soon you're talking about real users.
  
  
  
• Unsafe at any voltage: GM is spending $1.8 billion to recall and fix 73,000 faulty Bolts.  (CNBC)
  
  Chevy bolts, that is.
  
  
  
• A Hawaiian judge has ruled that California's Gig Worker ballot initiative is unconstitutional because - and I am not making this up - the voters infringed upon the rights of the legislature.  (Yahoo Finance)
  
  Like Karens, Hawaiian judges can be found anywhere, even among other species.
  
  
  
• I found the exact monitor I wanted - 27" 4K, 95% DCI-P3, 2x HDMI, DisplayPort, and USB-C, HDR, FreeSync, height adjustable stand with tilt and pivot, USB hub, speakers that might not entirely suck...  And two days later it's out of stock.
  
  I'm going to get that Dell setup through work - the sales continue - and then get my real system piecemeal however long that takes.

• Apple has proudly announced that they "are the greatest platform for distributing child porn".  (9to5Mac)
  
  That's a direct quote.  They're putting satirists out of work.
  
  This is one of dozens of items to come out of discovery in the Epic v. Apple lawsuit.  (The Verge)
  
  Also revealed is Apple explicitly documenting that they do whatever they hell they feel like from one moment to the next when it comes to the App Store, and Epic...  Offering people money for games.
  
  
  
• Google collects your location data and then hands it all to the police.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  At issue are "geofence" warrants, which are blatantly unconstitutional in the first place.  With these, the police demand Google cough up a list of all the people in a given area at a given time.
  
  There were 982 of these warrants in 2018, and 11,554 in 2020.  It's a growing industry.

• Collaborative filtering doesn't work for...  Chatroulette?  (Chatroulette)
  
  Not surprised given the nature of the service, but the article actually goes to some lengths to examine why, which makes it worthwhile even if I personally have no use whatsoever for Chatroulette itself.
  
  
  
• After Royal Core, Intel's Lunar Lake could bring 30% IPC improvement over Meteor Lake using Lion Cove cores.  (WCCFTech)
  
  What does any of that mean?  Well, future Intel processors will be faster than current ones.  The article is talking about Intel's 15th, 16th, and 17th generation parts, where current chips are 11th generation.  So we're looking at 2025 and 2026 before these chips finally arrive.
  
  It also mentions 40 core desktop parts - but that's still 8 large cores and 32 small ones.  AMD will give you 16 large cores today.  Just plunk down your money.
  
  
  
• On the other hand AMD's initial socket AM5 parts will have DDR5 support but no PCIe 5.0.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Intel's support for PCIe 5.0 seems useless at this point - it only applies to the video card, and not only do video cards not need PCIe 5.0, they don't support PCIe 5.0.
  
  When they do appear, at least you'll be able to run two cards because a x8 PCIe 5.0 slot is as fast as a x16 4.0 slot.  But Nvidia no longer supports SLI so that's basically pointless too.
  
  AMD's Raphael - the initial AM5 part - has 28 PCIe 4.0 lanes, up from 24 on current AM4 parts.  It looks like the additional 4 lanes are intended to provide two USB 4 sockets, which in addition to 40Gbps USB, support DisplayPort 2.0 video and PCIe connections.  The chip can also provide two HDMI ports for a total of four displays.
  
  Like Intel, AMD really needs to get just a few lanes of PCIe 5.0 for the chipset connection.  At the moment their high end chipsets (Threadripper) use 8 lanes of PCIe 4.0 to get the needed bandwidth.
  
  
  
• Hackers stole $90 million from the "most secure" crypto exchange.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Oops.
  
  
  
• Tesla's D1 AI chip can deliver 362 teraFLOPs - albeit at FP16, so useful for AI but not for scientific work generally.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  This is intended for use in servers that analyse data and train less powerful systems in autonomous vehicles.
  
  
  
• Asus have updated their PN50 Ryzen-based NUCs.  The PN50-E1 adds 2.5Gb Ethernet, which is welcome, and yanks the 3.5mm audio jack, which is not.
  

Posted by: PatBuckman at Sunday, August 22 2021 02:13 AM (DHVaH)

Posted by: normal at Sunday, August 22 2021 04:06 AM (obo9H)

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• Intel spoke about their Alder Lake 12th generation desktop parts.  (AnandTech)
  
  It supports DDR5 RAM up to 4800MHz, which we've seen is not much faster than DDR4 at 3200MHz (except when it is), an 16 lanes of PCIe 5.0 and 4 lanes of PCIe 4.0.  Plus from the chipset up to 12 lanes of PCIe 4.0 and 16 lanes of PCIe 3.0.
  
  Which means they've done something really dumb.  The one place that needs more bandwidth, and that Intel has total control over, is the interface between the CPU and the chipset.  Make that 4 lanes of PCIe 5.0 and you can actually use all those downstream lanes.
  
  But that's exactly what they didn't.
  
  Oh, and it has 8 fast cores and 8 slow cores, which is basically useless on a desktop.
  
  But they are also promising a 19% improvement on IPC, which if real is definitely not useless.
  
  
  

Tech News

• Intel's GPU team has gone chuunibyou.  (WCCFTech)
  
  It's a Japanese term literally meaning "second year disease", referring to kids in their second year of middle school who get a little too into their hobbies.
  
  I mention this because the upcoming generations of graphics chips from Intel are named Alchemist, Battlemage, Celestial, and Druid.
  
  
  
• More collisions in Apple's NeuralHash, both artificial and natural.  (Roboflow)
  
  If you look at the photos that Apple thinks are the same, you'll understand why people are worried.  They say that Apple's "1 in a trillion" number for false matches is close to the mark, but that's a long way from saying there's a 1 in a trillion chance of someone being falsely accused.  That number is closer to 1 in 1.
  
  
  
• Anyone can post a job opening on LinkedIn as any company.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  But that company can't take the offer down.
  
  
  
• OnlyFans is Tumblrising itself.  (Bloomberg)
  
  Don't ask me.  I don't know and don't want to know.
  
  
  
• TikTok plans to collect biometric data on its users.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Because of course they do.
  
  

Posted by: StargazerA5 at Friday, August 20 2021 10:29 PM (ZiV6b)

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, August 20 2021 11:36 PM (eqaFC)

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• Researchers have taken a closer look at Apple's Neural Hash - the one they'll use to throw you in jail for child porn - and have already generated a hash collision.  (GitHub)
  
  A hash collision is where two totally different sets of data produce identical results when run through a particular algorithm.
  
  This is the 1-in-a-trillion chance Apple was talking about.
  
  Apple now says this is not the real algorithm, which totally doesn't have this problem, and that they'll also use a second algorithm to double-check before throwing you to the wolves.  You wouldn't know the second algorithm, it lives in Canada.
  
  
  
• Looks like no product launches at work this weekend, so I'm going to stay in bed doing server updates and watching anime girls play Minecraft.
  
  On Saturday Prism Project is doing a Minecraft collab with all 9 members, and Hololive is doing a relay stream to celebrate linking the EN and JP servers.  HoloID is getting their own server as well, but they'll probably go the same route as EN and not link it until they reach the End on their own.
  
  Plus there's the whole EN Gen 2 debut on Sunday.  YouTube doesn't seem to be doing them any favours; they all lost at least 30,000 subscribers today.  I'm sure that will get rectified, but along with getting their accounts locked by Twitter is a rocky start.
  
  Where HoloMyth consists of an ancient Atlantean, the priestess of a mysterious cult, a phoenix, Death's apprentice, and a British chick, the new generation consists of the incarnations of Space, Time, Nature, and Civilisation, and a rat.
  
  
  

Tech News

• Do you people want consent decrees?  Because this is how you get consent decrees.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Microsoft is fucking around in Windows making it harder to change your default browser.  In fact, there no longer even is a default browser; there's a different selection of each file type and protocol, and you have to change them all individually.
  
  
  
• Intel's next-next-gen Raptor Lake desktop CPUs will have up to 24 cores.  (WCCFTech)
  
  8 real ones and 16 low-power and low-performance cores.
  
  I don't know why, but it's plausible they can't currently add more high-performance cores and stay within their power budget.  The last two generations of Intel desktop parts have been notoriously power-hungry and it doesn't sound like the new chips will improve on that.
  
  Their laptop parts aren't such a problem.
  
  
  
• The US Census Bureau got hacked-ish in January of last year.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Only ish, because an investigation has showed that the hackers were able to exploit a bug in Citrix to gain access, but the system is such a bureaucratic nightmare to use that they gave up at that point and went away.
  
  
  
• 48.6 million current and former T-Mobile users are going to have a bad day.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  No phone numbers, passwords, or financial data.  Just your full name, date of birth, SSN, and driver's license.
  
  So that's alright then.
  
  
  
• TSMC is now the most valuable company in Asia.  (CNBC)
  
  With China hell-bent on destroying its own economy and demand for chips at record highs, TSMC's market cap has remained solid while Tencent and Alibaba  have gone into sharp decline.
  
  TSMC is unusual in this field in that they make stuff themselves, and they are very, very good at it.

Posted by: PatBuckman at Friday, August 20 2021 12:22 AM (DHVaH)

Posted by: normal at Friday, August 20 2021 01:58 AM (LADmw)

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Posted by: Decking Sydney at Tuesday, October 17 2023 10:41 AM (WUOhQ)

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