Saturday, June 12
Daily News Stuff 12 June 2021
Long Weekend Edition
Anime of the day is Kamichu! from 2005. It's the story of Yurie Hitotsubashi, who wakes up one morning to discover that she's become a god. That is, a kami in the Shinto tradition, a minor supernatural being, not the creator deity.
She doesn't know what she's the god of, though, so she tries some experiments with her friends, and soon finds out.
It's lovingly drawn and animated, almost Ghibliesque in its art style, and the story just follows Yurie's daily life as she navigates her new responsibilities and tries to avoid inadvertent natural disasters.
Interesting too is that the show is set in a very specific time and place, from 1983 to 1984 in the city of Onomichi on Japan's Inland Sea. The background illustrations of the city take great care to capture that particular period.
Not technically groundbreaking but I love the energy of this one.
Long Weekend Edition
Top Story
- The last two long weekends here marked the start and the end of the problems related to the datacenter fire, so I not only didn't get long weekends then, I didn't get weekends at all. This time it looks like I'll at least get the normal two days off.
I need to configure some new servers tomorrow, but they'll make my life a lot easier. And make our newly hired sysadmin's life a lot easier, which will make my life even more easier.
- Regular updates for Windows 10 will end in 2025. (Tom's Hardware)
This doesn't mean that support and bugfixes will stop then, but it does indicate that there's an entirely new version of Windows on its way.
We'll see what that brings. As long as they don't drop 32-bit application support like MacOS. I doubt that will happen, because there's still a 32-bit version of Windows and that can still run ancient 16-bit apps.
She doesn't know what she's the god of, though, so she tries some experiments with her friends, and soon finds out.
It's lovingly drawn and animated, almost Ghibliesque in its art style, and the story just follows Yurie's daily life as she navigates her new responsibilities and tries to avoid inadvertent natural disasters.
Interesting too is that the show is set in a very specific time and place, from 1983 to 1984 in the city of Onomichi on Japan's Inland Sea. The background illustrations of the city take great care to capture that particular period.
Tech News
- Intel's new 11900KB seems to be nearly as fast as the 11900K at half the power consumption. (Tom's Hardware)
That would be great if you could use it in your own desktop builds. But because this is Intel and we can't have nice things, that's not possible. It's a surface-mount BGA package and only useful to OEMs.
- HBM3 pushes data clocks to 5.2GT/s. (WCCFTech)
Think of it as 5.2GHz. Technically it's half that because all memory these days is DDR - double data rate, transferring two bits of data per clock - but it doesn't matter unless you're actually designing hardware yourself.
Since the idea behind HBM - high bandwidth memory - is that it would run at relatively low clocks but use very wide buses - 1024 bits for a single chip - pushing the clock up to 5.2GHz makes it very fast indeed.
GDDR6X can currently reach 19GHz, but those chips are only 32 bits wide.
- TSMC is looking to add a chip packaging plant to its planned expansions in Arizona. (WCCFTech)
The company has already expanded earlier expansion plans and is looking to build as many as six leading-edge fabs - chip factories - in the US, but those would produce raw silicon dies that would need to be shipped to another factory to be packaged. On this scale adding local packaging facilities makes sense.
Also, the first of the new buildings looks like a WiFi router. I mean, you can see the ventilation slots and the RJ-45 ports and everything.
- BuzzFeed has won a Pulitzer Prize. (BuzzFeed)
Before you scoff - I mean, go ahead and scoff anyway, just before that - they won the prize for documenting China's genocide of the Uyghurs. The New York Times won the same prize for covering up the Soviet genocide in Ukraine.
It's progress. It's not much progress, but its something.
- Hackers broke into Electronic Arts by social engineering internal tech support via their Slack channel. (Vice)
Rule One: Don't use Slack.
Rule Two: When someone asks for a password, tell them to fill out Form 404.
- The Avaddon ransomware gang has called it quits and released decryption keys for their remaining victims. (Bleeping Computer)
No, I don't know why. Water getting too hot with the recent spate of high-profile hacks? More profitable avenues to pursue? Government funding dried up? Don't know.
- The US Senate has just agreed on a $52 billion bailout for an industry currently making record profits. (ZDNet)
It's not the dumbest thing they've ever done, not even close, but the three big companies lobbying for this handout have a combined market cap over $5 trillion.
- Meanwhile the New York Senate has passed a right to repair bill. (IFixit)
Louis Rossman is currently in Florida, and could not be reached for - who am I kidding, here are his thoughts:
Basically it looks like one step forward and then take the rest of the year off. What a certain blogger calls failure theater.
- Proposed federal and state legislation would force online marketplaces like Amazon to publish direct contact information for their sellers. (Ars Technica)
Amazon hates this. Real companies that actually get sued for selling fake products are strongly in favour.
- Radeon 6800 and 6800 XT cards seem to be back in stock after going missing for several weeks. Supply is still limited, but they are there, and prices for the 6700 XT are heading back down into the troposphere with the higher-end cards trailing behind. The 6900 XT is still about 20% higher than it was a few weeks ago, but hopefully that will correct itself soon.
I might get a new PC this year after all. I'm currently running on a Ryzen 1700 and a Radeon 580; I'm looking at a 5900X and a 6700 XT for the new build. That would be about 2.5 times as fast.
Nvidia, as yet, need not apply. The RTX 3060 is currently priced as high as the 6700 XT despite being a much slower card.
Satellites Anime Music Video of the Day
Not technically groundbreaking but I love the energy of this one.
Disclaimer: The creator of that AMV said he just wanted to put some clips from his favourite anime together before his hard drive exploded. Mission accomplished.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
05:20 PM
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1
Buzzfeed "won" a pulitzer for sewing a figleaf to the crotch of journalism, and now we can go back to pretending that stuff other people did 200 years ago is far more worthy of attention than actual slavery and genocide going on right now.
Posted by: normal at Sunday, June 13 2021 01:13 AM (obo9H)
2
"At the same time, manufacturing capacity in the US has significantly declined. According to a recent report carried out by the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA),the US held 37% of the global chip manufacturing capacity in 1990– a number that has gone down to 12% today, mostly due to the stagnation of government subsidies to help the industry prosper."
This is more of that "Wet streets cause rain." level of tech journalism: 1. Journalist doesn't understand the term "capacity". 2. Journalist doesn't understand percentages. 3. Journalist thinks that a lack of subsidies caused something that never even happened.
Okay, I have to apologise for the use of the word "thinks" above. because that obviously isn't possible for one Daphne Leprince-Ringuet.
This is more of that "Wet streets cause rain." level of tech journalism: 1. Journalist doesn't understand the term "capacity". 2. Journalist doesn't understand percentages. 3. Journalist thinks that a lack of subsidies caused something that never even happened.
Okay, I have to apologise for the use of the word "thinks" above. because that obviously isn't possible for one Daphne Leprince-Ringuet.
Posted by: normal at Sunday, June 13 2021 03:33 AM (obo9H)
3
I found this last night: Beavis and Butt-Head dialog dubbed over an episode of some The Legend of Zelda cartoon probably from the 90s. It's genius, the amount of effort the person who made it went to to find dialog that fits.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDPRwLlpdTU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDPRwLlpdTU
Posted by: Rick C at Sunday, June 13 2021 04:04 AM (eqaFC)
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