• Nothing has gone horribly wrong in the tech world in the last 24 hours.
  
  
  
• The NSW state government has gone full fascist, though.  And this is what passes for our conservative party; the other lot are even worse.
  
  So far the police have just said they may arrest people for buying things "we don't think they need" - like shoes.  In Victoria they were kicking down doors over Facebook posts.
  
  They actually did something similar - arresting people suspected of existing without a license - during the first outbreak early last year - but then the had the slim excuse of not knowing how severe it was or how fast it might spread, and there was no vaccine.
  
  But thin as that excuse was back then, it doesn't exist at all now.  I'll see these fuckers in Hell before they get my vote again.
  
  
  
• Samsung's 3nm GAA process will go into early production next year, with full commercial production in 2023.  (AnandTech)
  
  TSMC's 3nm process is expected to go into full production next year, but it's still what is known as FINFET - the transistor design introduced by Intel with their 22nm node.  Gate All Around, or GAA, is the next generation design, but TSMC have pushed it back to their 2nm node, which will probably appear in 2023 at the same time as Samsung's commercial ramp up.
  
  The early production next year probably means just Samsung's own chips, which could give their devices a competitive edge for a while.
  
  Samsung will also have a 4nm process in full production next year.  As a reference point, Nvidia's latest graphics chips are produced on Samsung's 8nm process, so there are some big upgrades in the pipeline if they ever get the pipeline under control.

Anime of the day is Noragami from 2014, the story of - essentially - a gig-work god.  Yato has no shrines dedicated to him, but is dedicated to accumulating one million subscribers, like Ayame of Hololive.

To that end he posts fliers offering to solve people's problems for five yen, which is working out about as well for him as you would expect.  His luck starts to change - in multiple directions - when he runs into a human girl named Hiyori who saves him from an oncoming car - at the expense of a herniated soul.  At which point she's kind of stuck with Yato because he's the only one likely to be able to fix it.

There's a second season in 2015 that follows directly on from the first, and twenty-odd volumes of manga that carry the story on a lot further.

Tech News

• Backblaze says that farming Chia  - the cryptocurrency, that is - isn't profitable.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Not even for them, and they have better economies of scale than anyone else in the world.
  
  They'll still let you pay to do it on their servers, they just point out that you're going to lose money.
  
  
  
• Intel's SSD D7-P5510 SSD is nearly as fast as that Optane drive from the other day, has ten times the capacity, and is 20% cheaper.  (Hot Hardware)
  
  There are reasons Intel and Micron's Xpoint storage technology - used in Optane - hasn't set the world on fire: It's too expensive to produce in bulk, and smart controllers and caches mean flash-based storage can keep up with Xpoint in almost all cases.
  
  Xpoint is also being targeted at non-volatile memory, but even there it's not much cheaper than RAM, so it's another niche market.
  
  Anyway, $1600 for a 7.68TB PCIe 4.0 enterprise SSD is pretty good value.  Still a lot of money, sure, but that's roughly the same price per GB as high-end desktop drives like the Samsung 980 Pro.  And the kind of server you'd put this drive in would probably have two CPUs in the $4000 to $8000 range.
  
  
  
• Tencent is spying on children.  (Bloomberg)
  
  Kids are staying up late playing games.  I know, lets monitor their activity using video cameras and secret AI.  That'll fix everything.
  
  
  
• Samsung's app to control their internet-connected washing machine requires access to your location, phone calls, media, contacts, bank account, voting record, last three payslips, and the contents of your fridge.  (Vice)
  
  I've noticed something similar with Japanese web apps - they just ask for a whole slate of permissions they can't possibly need because their audience just clicks okay.
  
  And there's an added problem that if you change the permissions requested you need to re-submit your app for authorisation.  Even if you require fewer permissions than before.
  
  I have an internet-enabled washing machine from LG.  I wanted a combination washer/dryer, and they all had that.
  
  The fact that it's internet-enabled doesn't mean it has internet access, of course.  It's a bit of a pain, though, because simple, obvious functions like remembering the wash cycle from last time are relegated to the LG Android app, and there is no way in Hell I'm going to use the app.
  
  
  
• Chrome for Android is always connected to Google Search.  (Ctrl Blog)
  
  This makes sense from a performance standpoint, because resolving DNS - particularly over a secure connection - and then establishing the secure connection for the website itself - takes long enough for a user to notice.
  
  And in theory Brave could arrange to do the same with Duck Duck Go.  Not without asking, though, because millions of unused connections that are permanently open would be rather a nuisance.
  
  

Vtuber of they day is Mooyü, one of Vyolfers' circle of friends.  She plays Minecraft on their server - known as Gwemshire - which is notable for its cottagecore aesthetics where Hololive Japan's server is a cross between WWIII and Disneyland.

She also does drawing streams - she designed and rigged her own Live2D avatar - and a weekly session playing through dating sims, starting with Hatoful Boyfriend - the one where all the romantic targets are birds.  Mostly pigeons.

I knew of Hatoful Boyfriend, but I didn't know exactly what it was about.  I thought it was just a weird quirky game where you date birds for a reason they never bothered to explain.  Well, it is a weird quirky game where you date birds, that much is true.

She got so deep into the plot in this morning's stream that she's doing Episode Three Part Two later this evening because she can't put it down.

Update: Episode Three Part Three tomorrow.

This is scheduled for the same time tonight as Mooyü's Hatoful Boyfriend Episode Three Part Two, but Risu is my favourite of HoloID and this game is perfect for her.

I guess I'll watch Mooyü live and then catch what I can of Risu.

There are just too many English-language vtubers streaming good content.  Something needs to be done.

Also, Calli / Gura Minecraft collab tomorrow, I think.  If Gura's still alive and sane after a nearly seven hour Minecraft collab today with Kiara.  I watched a bit, went back to sleep for three hours (it started at 5AM my time), and woke up expecting it to be over, but it wasn't even close.

And the Irys debut tomorrow as well.  She's still banned from Twitter, so that will be interesting.