• Declining cryptocurrency prices mean that GPU and storage prices are also dropping.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  There's still a component shortage so don't expect magic, but things are improving.  I just took a quick look around and the Nvidia 3070 Ti is in stock and cheaper than the base 3070 was two weeks ago.  The Nvidia markup is down to around 100% over retail, with AMD between 40 and 50%.
  
  

• Don't plug your shiny new Western Digital SN850 into your shiny new X570 chipset.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  It won't explode.  It will run 40% slower than it should.
  
  It's not a problem with AMD X570 motherboards per se; plug it into the first M.2 slot, the one connected directly to the CPU, and it will work great.  There's something odd going on here because the X570 chip is the exact same chip used to provide I/O on the CPU itself.  And I haven't heard of this affecting any other SSD.
  
  
  
• Meanwhile Z690 motherboards for Intel's 12th generation chips are expected in Q4.  (WCCFTech)
  
  There may even be CPUs to go in them.
  
  AMD's socket AM5 motherboards are expected in Q2 next year.  Zen 4 won't arrive until late next year, so the first chip destined for AM5 is likely the new generation Raphael - I think it's Raphael - APU with updated integrated graphics.
  
  
  
• Tim Cook has claimed that giving users freedom to install apps themselves would weaken the company's monopoly position.  (ZDNet)
  
  Well, yes, Tim.  That's the point.
  
  
  
• Karl Schroeder, call your agent.  It's time for a sequel to Permanence.
  
  Facebook will be embedding ads into Oculus Quest VR apps.  (The Verge)
  
  In the world of Permanence, these ads are omnipresent, and ad blockers are illegal.  It's good to see Big Tech experimenting with new dystopias, though, beyond the big three of 1984, Brave New World, and Fahrenheit 451.
  
  
  
• President* Biden has said that maybe some Russian attacks on America should be off-limits.  (Reuters)
  
  Maybe, Joe.  Maybe.
  
  
  
• Amazon has blamed everyone and everything except its own shitty site for the plague of fake reviews found therein.  (The Guardian)
  
  They didn't even address the plague of fake products.
  
  
  
• The Alienware M17 R4 has the Four Essential Keys.  (Hot Hardware)
  
  And an option for a 4K display covering 100% of Adobe RGB, plus an 8 core Intel CPU, Nvidia RTX 3070 graphics, NVME RAID, wired 2.5Gbps Ethernet, Thunderbolt 3, and 32GB of RAM.
  
  Price is...  Well, it ain't cheap.  Comes to A$6000 when configured with all those options, 4TB of RAID-0 SSD and a 3 year on-site repair contract.  But that's not actually insane compared with other high-end laptops, or even desktops right now.
  
  
  
• Server monitoring platform Datadog has an agent you can download and install that will forward system stats to their collector so it can plot neat graphs for you.
  
  It's 731MB.  It seems to include a complete Python install, and possibly a complete Linux install.
  
  I happen to know how big something like this should be because I've written one myself, and it's 324kB.  The problem is not that the Datadog agent is slow, or that it uses 20 cents worth of space on my enterprise SSDs.  It's that it is literally impossible to audit something like that, and you're expected to install it on every single server.
  
  The code I wrote is 141 lines.  Any competent programmer could read through it even without knowing the language I chose (Crystal).

Posted by: normal at Thursday, June 17 2021 10:59 PM (LADmw)

Posted by: cxt217 at Friday, June 18 2021 10:25 AM (4i7w0)

Posted by: QC at Friday, June 18 2021 02:14 PM (8nxoP)

Posted by: mikeski at Friday, June 18 2021 04:12 PM (P1f+c)

Posted by: normal at Saturday, June 19 2021 10:58 AM (obo9H)

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, June 19 2021 11:32 AM (eqaFC)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Saturday, June 19 2021 01:35 PM (PiXy!)

Posted by: normal at Sunday, June 20 2021 12:09 AM (obo9H)

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