• I had it in my cart, again.
  
  This time it was an Orico 5-bay USB-C RAID storage box.  I just got one, noticed they were getting scarce, and added a second one to an order I was placing with a different online store.
  
  As soon as I placed my order the lead time went from 2 days to 2 months.
  
  Went back to the store where I got the first one, added it to my cart, didn't get time to check out, and when I looked the next morning it was gone.
  
  Not so much of a drama this time because (a) I was buying a second one just in case it went out of stock and I needed one, and (b) I got an 8-bay non-RAID model for the same price.  Hoping to set up software RAID on that.
  
  
  
• Also grabbed an HP Pavilion Aero 13 as a spare laptop, since the two big ones are going to be cabled in to monitors and storage and networks and not readily lappable.
  
  A$1199 with Windows 11.  Exact same specs with Windows 10, A$1049.  Not exactly a difficult decision.
  
  
  
• Twitter fell over.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  The site was still up but gave not-very-reassuring errors any time you tried to do anything.
  
  I felt a great disturbance in the force, as if millions of users wondered if they'd suddenly been banned.

• Learn what metaverse is and how you can profit from it with this $20 course.  (ZDNet Academy)
  
  The headline does rather give the game away.
  
  (ZDNet Academy is not news, but advertising for the worst tech products that ever existed.)
  
  
  
• Cisco has made a $20 billion cash bid to buy Splunk.  (Reuters)
  
  It's not a bubble.
  
  
  
• Early benchmarks of Intel's Raptor Lake have leaked, confirming a 24-core (8+16) design.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Bleh.
  
  

Posted by: normal at Saturday, February 12 2022 10:09 PM (obo9H)

Posted by: Rick C at Sunday, February 13 2022 04:44 AM (Z0GF0)

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• Russia has sentenced three teenagers - one to five years in a penal colony - over a plot to blow up an FSB building.  (Moscow Times)
  
  In Minecraft.
  
  No, literally.  There's a virtual copy of the building on a Minecraft server and they planned to Pekorise it.
  
  They also made fireworks.
  
  
  
• Meanwhile back in the USA same old, same old.  (Washington Post)
  
  Yes, the CIA is still illegally spying on American citizens.

  "CIA recognizes and takes very seriously our obligation to respect the privacy and civil liberties of U.S. persons in the conduct of our vital national security mission,” Kristi Scott, the agency’s privacy and civil liberties officer, said in a statement. "CIA is committed to transparency consistent with our obligation to protect intelligence sources and methods.  LOL.”

  
  
  
  

Tech News

• France has found that Google Analytics breaches the GDPR.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Also, the original link to that article was https://techcrunch.com/2022/02/10/cnil-google-analytics-gdpr-breach/?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucmVkZGl0LmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAADOr6euOPAb-NTYK9eKpVKFO8xDY-n_4uo3vAZOYBY_qQjQFgxnVyBTUz6vju3_M7dI0e_8MR-Sjr4V2VFo6zjyBdHzr2eDY4V6nGipk63MuUGua3S1XMO7lQKv19P9HTFtY3dhz-tgrpxoxffP4fmJr_k4UgmBGnDmYchN4Je3w
  
  It's GDPR violations all the way down.
  
  
  
• SpaceX is planning to launch a million tons of cargo  into orbit per year.  (WCCFTech)
  
  To put that into perspective, there's currently about 15,000 tons of artificial stuff in orbit right now.
  
  The goal is to get a million tons of equipment to the surface of Mars to create a self-sustaining colony, and there's about a ten-to-one ration between mass launched to orbit and mass landed safely on Mars.
  
  
  
• Ryzen 7000 could be announced at Computex in May for a July launch.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Or not.
  
  
  
• Alder Lake N is on its way too.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  This is the flip side: No performance cores, only efficiency cores, for ultra-low-power products.  But with up to 8 cores that don't completely suck, these will blow older Atom chips out of he water.
  
  
  
• AMD's acquisition of Xilinx has regulatory approval, and is expected to close on Monday.  (AnandTech)
  
  Intel bought Xilinx's main competitor, Altera, back in 2015.
  
  
  

Party Like It's 1980-ish Video of the Day

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, February 12 2022 01:35 AM (Z0GF0)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Saturday, February 12 2022 05:50 PM (r9O5h)

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• SpaceX lost 40 newly launched satellites due to a geomagnetic storm.  (The Register)
  
  Have they checked down the back of the sofa?  Last time I looked I found a fully armed and operational battlestation.
  
  
  
• Western Digital and Kioxia (Toshiba) lost at least 6.5 exabytes of flash memory due to contamination.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Have they checked down the back of the sofa?  Last time I looked I found the Dead Sea scrolls.  Or possibly a whole bunch of unpaid parking tickets; hard to tell once they pass the thousand year mark.
  
  
  

Tech News

• Cloud lock-in vs the multi-vendor approach.  (Tim Bray)

  Here’s an example: Last year, AWS dramatically reduced data egress charges, under pressure from CloudFlare, Oracle, and of course their customers.

  Yeah we've covered that story here.
  
  They didn't.  They didn't reduce data egress charges at all, let alone dramatically.
  
  
  
• How we optimised Python API code 100x.  (Towards Data Science)
  
  They rewrote it in C.
  
  
  
• A review of the Asus USB-C2500 2.5Gb USB Ethernet adaptor.  (Serve the Home)
  
  They pronounce it good, which is nice because I bought three of them last month.
  
  
  
• Samsung's Galaxy Tab S8 range is here.  (ZDNet)
  
  If you were waiting for a small, reasonably priced Android tablet with solid overall specs...  You can keep right on waiting.
  
  These do have good overall specs but are a little lacking in the small and reasonably priced categories.
  
  
  
• 4TB SSD just showed up.
  
  
  
• Hulu has order 20 new episodes of Futurama.  (Variety)
  
  I have concerns.  I love Futurama and it ended about as well as any western cartoon series has ever ended - back in 2013, before the Great Woke Cloud had destroyed everything.
  
  
  
• There are now a thousand startups with a market valuation over a billion dollars.  (Bloomberg)
  
  Totally not a bubble.

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, February 11 2022 01:02 AM (Z0GF0)

Posted by: normal at Friday, February 11 2022 01:23 AM (LADmw)

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• I've mentioned that my new desktop setup is a pair of laptops - two Dell Inspiron 16 Pluses.  They're pretty capable systems, with 8 core 11th gen Intel CPUs, 32GB of RAM (now upgrade to 64GB), Nvidia RTX 3060 GPUs, and 1TB of SSD.
  
  The SSD they ship with is a tiny 2230 model, and there's room for another full-size 2280 model.  In the first one I've added a 4TB Corsair MP400, and I was set to buy another one today.  I even had it in my cart.
  
  Loaded up the site this morning and it disappeared from the cart.  Out of stock.
  
  Okay, there's another store that has it, just at a somewhat higher price.  Out of stock.
  
  Check Amazon.  Out of stock.
  
  Check Amazon for any 4TB M.2 drive that's available to ship, and up pops the Corsair MP510, a much better model, for basically the same price.
  
  Add to cart, check out, get confirmation that it will be delivered tomorrow.
  
  And then the price goes up by more than $400.  Which is why I didn't buy that model in the first place.  Don't know why it was so cheap right when I needed it, but I'm not going to complain.
  
  
  
• The circle has finally been squared.  (Quanta)
  
  This ancient problem asked if it was possible to construct a square with the same area as a given circle using just a compass and straight-edge.  We now know that the answer is no.
  
  What has now been shown is that it is possible with a compass, a straight edge, and a very, very sharp knife.
  
  
  

Tech News

• Two people have been arrested and $3.6 billion in Bitcoin seized in the largest crypto theft bust to date. (Washington Post)
  
  Except... They only stole $71 million; the rest is inflation. I wonder what will actually get returned to the victims, if anything.
  
  
  
• RAID-Z expansion is now available in the latest FreeBSD kernel.  (FreeBSD Foundation)
  
  Speaking of which, I also bought 40TB of disk to go with the 4TB SSD.  That's just going in a RAID-5 USB box, not anything fancy.
  
  
  
• The Netherlands has fined Apple another 5 million euros over their bullshittery with payments.  (Reuters)
  
  And intends to keep fining them five million every week until they stop bullshitting.
  
  Which is nice work if you can get it.
  
  
  
• Everything we know about this year's Zen 4 desktop CPUs.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Grain of salt time though because the diagram shows PCIe 4 but the table lists PCIe 5.
  
  Anyway, the new chips have an extra 4 PCIe lanes, but those are likely to be dedicated to delivering USB4 (which can run PCIe over a cable) so you won't have any more than current models for slots and drives.
  
  But if the chipset connection is upgraded to PCIe 5 that means double the bandwidth for drives on the chipset - if you weren't satisfied with the current 7GB per second.
  
  
  

Posted by: aaa at Saturday, November 04 2023 07:52 PM (WDuVA)

Posted by: aaa at Tuesday, November 07 2023 09:02 PM (IzgbO)

Posted by: aaa at Tuesday, December 05 2023 11:53 PM (7OeWV)

Posted by: Motivational Self-esteem Quotes at Wednesday, December 06 2023 11:55 PM (5BV8B)

Posted by: qqkuda at Saturday, December 23 2023 03:58 PM (oIWO5)

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Posted by: Rick C at Wednesday, February 09 2022 01:09 PM (Z0GF0)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, February 09 2022 01:26 PM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Rick C at Wednesday, February 09 2022 03:10 PM (Z0GF0)

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, February 10 2022 11:52 AM (Z0GF0)

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• Dissent is the highest form of terrorism.  (DHS)

  The United States remains in a heightened threat environment fueled by several factors, including an online environment filled with false or misleading narratives and conspiracy theories, and other forms of mis- dis- and mal-information (MDM) introduced and/or amplified by foreign and domestic threat actors.  These threat actors seek to exacerbate societal friction to sow discord and undermine public trust in government institutions to encourage unrest, which could potentially inspire acts of violence.

  I have a question.
  
  Get fucked, you dime-store Stalin wannabes.
  
  Well, I guess technically that's not a question.
  
  
  
• Meanwhile with that story about protestors trying to burn down an Ottawa apartment building...
  
  
  
  
  Uh huh.  Do go on.
  
  
  

• Gigabyte's new Aero laptops are on their way with Alder Lake chips.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  The current models are interesting because they combine solid CPUs and graphics options with 4K AMOLED displays.  A lot of the time laptops with solid graphics go for low-resolution high-refresh display panels.  Since I spend far more time working than gaming I'd much rather have a high-res low-refresh screen.
  
  The 16" model has a 3840x2400 60Hz AMOLED panel or an optional 2560x1600 165 Hz LCD - still pretty good, up to a 12900HK CPU and 3080 Ti graphics, up to 64GB of RAM, and two M.2 slots so in theory a maximum of 16TB of SSD though that gets pretty expensive.
  
  Where the old models had a broad range of ports, the new ones are simplified: Two Thunderbolt 4 ports, one USB-C port with DisplayPort support - so three outputs that can drive monitors without needing a dock, and a headphone jack.  Wired Ethernet seems to have disappeared.  On the other hand, it looks like they have the Four Essential Keys.
  
  
  
• Intel lost half a billion dollars on its Optane business last year.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Optane is a technology similar to flash, but about ten times faster and ten times more expensive.  Since flash storage can already be very fast, and is much, much cheaper, that leaves only a small and stagnant market for Optane.  Which is a shame because on a purely technical basis it's kind of neat.
  
  
  
• Nvidia's plan to purchase Arm has fallen in a heap.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Current owner, Japanese investment group Softbank, will proceed with an IPO instead.
  
  
  
• The IRS has decided that maybe you don't need to sign up as a Twitch streamer just to file your taxes.  (Krebs on Security)
  
  Every organisation needs a grumpy old bastard whose job it is to tell people why what they're doing is a bad idea.  I try to fill that role but to my chagrin I am not grumpy enough.
  
  
  
• The EU announced plans to throw $48 billion at expanding chip production in Europe.  (Apple Insider)
  
  Unfortunately it seems that they don't actually have $48 billion, which is actually something of a surprise given how much they've fleeced US Big Tech companies for.
  
  
  
• Congress set aside $1.9 billion to pay for ripping Chinese spyware out of US communications networks.  Turns out the amount needed is $5.6 billion.  (The Register)
  
  Maybe they can fine European Big Tech companies....  Oh, wait.
  
  
  

Posted by: Tim at Wednesday, February 09 2022 11:30 AM (n+R81)

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• Not directly tech-related but it played out on Twitter so I'm going to snipe it.  (Also there's not that much tech news today.)
  
  Overnight all sorts of awful crimes broke out at the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa...  Unless they didn't.
  
  
  
  
  And suddenly the person tweeting out his tale of attempted mass murder went very, very silent.
  
  
  

Tech News

• Also the head of government-funded Antihate.ca got caught, well, making shit up.
  
  
  
  
  His "friend" said he saw the flyer in Ottawa...  And then downloaded an existing photo from Twitter and sent it to him because, um, he didn't have access to Twitter to post it himself.  Or a phone to take a picture, apparently.
  
  But although that one was fake, he definitely has others that are real.  Except he doesn't because he's not there, but trust him.
  
  Story checks out.
  
  
  
• The Freedom Convoy fundraiser on GiveSendGo has passed $4 million, despite an ongoing DDOS attack.  Their servers are still kind of broken but clearly some people are getting through.
  
  
  
• The CEO of Spotify is still trying to split the baby.  (Today)
  
  He apologises to the haters of Joe Rogan and to his own staff, says that Spotify is keeping Rogan anyway, and offers to pour $100 million down the drain of "marginalised" artists.
  
  This is gonna end well.
  
  Spotify was never a good company, and I'm assuming Rogan got his money and can walk if the house of cards collapses.  I hear CNN is going have a whole lot of vacancies soon.
  
  
  
• Meanwhile the big advantage of Web3 is that it's decentralised and no-one has control and you can't cancel people oh wait.
  
  
  
  
  Apparently for the crime of suggesting that it would be nice if people didn't murder quite so many babies.
  
  
  
• Intel's i5-1240P is faster than an i7-1195G7.  (WCCFTech)
  
  By quite a good margin.  Which is to be expected, because the 1240P is a 12-core (4 fast cores + 8 slow cores) 12th generation chip and the 1195G7 is a 4-core 11th gen chip.
  
  The 14-core 1280P meanwhile (6+8 ) comes in just behind AMD's new 6900HX in multi-threaded tests.  But the 6900HX is an eight-core part, so that's not exactly a win for Intel.
  
  On single-threaded tests Intel's 12th gen leads by 10% over AMD and 20% over their own 11th generation.
  
  Also, the 1280P is a 28W part, and Intel's prior 28W lineup only went to 4 cores.  So there should be some much more capable thin-and-light laptop models this year.
  
  
  
• Largely pointless benefits aren't going to keep tech workers happy.  (ZDNet)
  
  75% of managers want to work from the office.  34% of staff do.  That's a problem in an industry struggling to find skilled workers.
  
  We're 100% remote at work, and it makes it a lot easier to find and retain staff.
  
  
  
• Will remote tech workers tolerate being monitored?  No.  (ZDNet)
  
  Betteridge's law never fails.
  
  
  
• What will keep tech workers happy then?  (ZDNet)
  
  1. Money.
  2. A company that isn't run by idiots.
  
  American Big Tech is in for a world of hurt.
  
  
  

Posted by: Frank at Monday, February 07 2022 06:25 PM (rglbH)

Posted by: MadRocketsci at Monday, February 07 2022 09:43 PM (hRoyQ)

Posted by: normal at Tuesday, February 08 2022 12:24 AM (LADmw)

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, February 08 2022 12:49 AM (Z0GF0)

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, February 08 2022 12:51 AM (Z0GF0)

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Posted by: normal at Monday, February 07 2022 12:46 PM (obo9H)

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, February 08 2022 12:53 AM (Z0GF0)

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• Question and Answer time is back!  Drop your questions in the comments today and I'll attempt to answer them tomorrow.  I did just get woken up in the middle of the night by work emergencies two days in a row so the answers might not be entirely coherent, but I will answer nonetheless.
  
  
  
• The Freedom Convoy has upended Canadian politics, launched similar protests in other countries, and raised $10 million on GoFundMe so...
  
  
  
  
  That's not entirely accurate - they're not stealing the money and giving it to other charities of their own choosing, they're stealing the money and giving it to charities selected by the Freedom Convoy organisers from a shortlist created by GoFundMe.
  
  You may wonder how this is legal, and the answer is it may not be.
  
  
  
  
  There's a new fundraiser up and running at GiveSendGo that has received $336,000 $390,000* in the last few hours.  And that's despite the fact that their site was down for half that time.
  
  * They got the site back up and have pulled in $54,000 while I was writing this post.  CSS is busted as I write this though.**
  ** $432,000 and the CSS is fixed.
  
  
  

Tech News

• Apple, facing legal moves that would abolish its forced 30% cut of every payment it processes, has announced a new plan: It will take  a forced 27% cut of every payment it doesn't process.  (Apple)
  
  Also it will have the right to audit you any time and in any manner it sees fit and ban you if it is not appeased.
  
  
  
• Apple's privacy changes will cost Facebook $10 billion this year.  (The Economist)
  
  It's not that Apple is protecting your privacy, it's that they won't let anyone else violate it.
  
  
  
• Meanwhile Facebook is focusing on critical issues like enforcing social distancing in virtual reality.  (The Guardian)
  
  We swear we are not making this up.
  
  
  
• Which might help explain why their stock price plunged by 25% in a single day.  (The Guardian)
  
  Also because no-one needs Facebook.
  
  
  
• Four of Cisco's small business router lineup have code red critical vulnerabilities.  (The Register)
  
  The combination of remote code execution bugs and privilege escalation bugs mean anyone, anywhere, can completely take over your router.
  
  Not good.

Posted by: normal at Sunday, February 06 2022 03:19 AM (obo9H)

Posted by: Rick C at Sunday, February 06 2022 10:19 AM (Z0GF0)

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Sunday, February 06 2022 11:27 AM (5iiQK)

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