Top Story

• It is still not raining here in Sydney.  It's been three days.  Panic might set in soon, or as soon as the floodwaters recede enough that the panic shipments can get through.
  
  Meanwhile, it's the weekend and it's Question and Answer time.  Drop your vaguely tech-related questions in the comments today and I'll invent fake answers for them tomorrow.  Or maybe genuine ones.  Miracles happen.
  
  
  
• Russia continues to do what every sane country should do and has now banned Instagram.  (Bleeping Computer)

  "As you know, on March 11, Meta Platforms Inc. made an unprecedented decision by allowing the posting of information containing calls for violence against Russian citizens on its social networks Facebook and Instagram," the Russian Internet watchdog said.

  This is clearly communist propaganda and we shouldn't believe it for one minute.
  
  
  
• Facebook has temporarily allowed posts calling for violence against "Russian invaders".  (CNN)
  
  Oh.
  
  I'm not sure whose quotes those are because the claim that Russia is invading Ukraine is pretty well established.

  The social media company is also temporarily allowing some posts that call for death to Russian President Vladimir Putin or Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko in countries including Russia, Ukraine and Poland, according to internal emails to its content moderators.

  That's going to go down a treat.
  
  But dumb as this seems on the surface, down in the depths it is all much, much worse.

  "We are issuing a spirit-of-the-policy allowance to allow T1 violent speech that would otherwise be removed under the Hate Speech policy when: (a) targeting Russian soldiers, EXCEPT prisoners of war, or (b) targeting Russians where it's clear that the context is the Russian invasion of Ukraine (e.g., content mentions the invasion, self-defense, etc.)," it said in the email.

  1984 is a cookbook.

• Russian TikTok influencers are being paid to spread Kremlin propaganda.  (Vice)
  
  Our side would never do anything like that.
  
  
  
• TikTok stars receive White House briefing on Ukraine.  (Washington Post)
  
  Mostly because we're much too cheap to pay them for it.
  
  
  
• Axios is garbage.  (Axios)
  
  That's it.  That's the story.
  
  
  
• Intel has new Spectre v2 security issues.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  BIOS patches are available.  On some very specific benchmarks they can reduce performance by up to 35%, but more realistically desktop applications will run about 2% slower.  Those extreme cases are more of an issue with servers, and some companies run their servers without patches for precisely this reason.
  
  
  
• AMD meanwhile had a bug in one of its patches for Spectre v1.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  They already had a solution available - they offered three solutions to the original problem, and two of them work just fine.  If you chose the third one you just need to switch to one of the other two.
  
  
  
• If you buy a Lenovo Threadripper 5000 workstation - which is the only way to get a Threadripper 5000 - the CPU is locked to that hardware and can't be reused on a third-party motherboard.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Lenovo, stop doing this shit.
  
  AMD, stop enabling this shit.
  
  
  
• Why would you want a Threadripper anyway?  (CPU Benchmark)
  
  Apple's M1 Pro is 15% faster than the Threadripper Pro 5995WX on single-threaded tests.  But the M1 Pro has 10 cores, and the 5995WX has 64.  On multi-threaded tasks even the new 20-core M1 Ultra would be less than half the speed of the 5995WX.
  
  
  
• Intel is set to be the first CPU maker to offer 16 cores on laptops, apart from AMD, which already does.  (WCCFTech)
  
  With AMD those are 105W desktop parts configured down to 65W (which is something you can do with all of AMD's high-power parts).  That's a high-powered CPU for a laptop but not unmanageable.
  
  
  
• Speaking of AMD, there are new CPUs launching April 4.  (WCCFTech)
  
  These include the eight core 5700X and 5700, and the six core 5600 and 5500.
  
  These are all Zen 3 parts, but there's some differences.  The 5700X and 5600 are based on the desktop chips with 32MB of L3 cache, while the 5700 and 5500 use laptop dies with 16MB of L3 - and also only support PCIe 3.0.  Which might not be a problem, but it's something you should be aware of if you're thinking of buying one.
  
  
  
• Windows 11 can now be installed on Microsoft's Surface Duo.  (Liliputing)
  
  Not some Windows Phone OS, but actual Windows 11.  I don't know why you'd want to, but you can.
  
  
  
• Windows 10 can now be installed on Valve's Steam Deck.  (Thurrott.com)
  
  I can see potential reason to try this if the drivers work - currently most but not all of them do.  Windows 11 support is also on its way.
  
  
  
• Why Single Sign On sucks.  (Teleport)
  
  Because (a) it's complicated, (b) security is hard, and (c) every implementation of it is terrible.
  
  
  
• DuckDuckGo is downranking sites spreading Russian propaganda.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Okay, fine, but what exactly is Russian propaganda?  What is your algorithm for determining this?  How is this downranking applied?  Is this all transparent?  Can users disable it and compare the results?
  
  
  
• New One Piece episodes have been delayed after Japanese animation company Toei was hit by a cyberattack.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  One Piece is still going?  There's like a trillion episodes.  Just rewatch the old ones.

  Anime giant Toei suffered a weekend cyberattack causing delays in airing new episodes of popular anime series, including ONE PIECE and Delicious Party Precure.

  Okay, now you're in trouble.  Precure* is an industry in itself.  You deprive little girls of their wish-fulfilment fantasies and you're going to have millions of angry parents looking for your scalp.
  
  * Pretty Cure.  I watched the first season and it was genuinely good - it's on my recommendation list - but after that first year they focused on a younger age group and a tried-and-tested formula.  It's been a massive success and has now been running twice as long as most of its audience has been alive, but there's much less reason for an adult to watch it.
  
  
  
• Hedge Fund Fir is shorting the Tether stablecoin.  (Decrypt)
  
  I have looked at Tether before and they are seriously shady and I would not be surprised if it all suddenly implodes.  They were fined $41 million by the US CFTC last year for lying about their cash reserves.
  
  
  
• Where's the new 27" iMac?  Nowhere.  (9to5Mac)
  
  There will be a new 24" model because the current one is crippled by its limitation of 16GB of RAM - even the 2015 iMac that I have could go up to 64GB.
  
  A Mac Studio with the new 27" monitor wouldn't cost much more than I paid for my iMac back then, but is even less upgradeable.
  
  
  
• Bitcoin ATMs are illegal in the UK.  (Gizmodo)
  
  Because?  Because fuck you, that's why.
  
  
  
• Speaking of because fuck you, that's why, Twitter is making it harder to choose the standard show me the people I follow timeline.  (The Verge)
  
  Twitter is all-in on its new new Home timeline, which focuses on showing you things you actively hate.
  
  
  
  

Posted by: normal at Sunday, March 13 2022 12:51 AM (obo9H)

Posted by: Rick C at Sunday, March 13 2022 01:54 AM (Z0GF0)

Posted by: J Greely at Sunday, March 13 2022 04:53 AM (ZlYZd)

Posted by: Rick C at Sunday, March 13 2022 06:53 AM (Z0GF0)

Posted by: J Greely at Sunday, March 13 2022 10:01 AM (ZlYZd)

Posted by: Rick C at Sunday, March 13 2022 10:09 AM (Z0GF0)

Posted by: normal at Sunday, March 13 2022 12:43 PM (obo9H)

Posted by: J Greely at Sunday, March 13 2022 01:08 PM (ZlYZd)

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• The Polygon blockchain has been down for more than 12 13 hours after a routine software upgrade didn't go entirely according to keikaku.*  (Coin Telegraph)
  
  Shut 'er down, ma.  She's suckin' mud.
  
  * Keikaku means flan.

• Apple is planning a new Mac Mini with the new M2 chip later this year.  (9to5Mac)
  
  This will have similar CPU performance to the current M1 Max but probably a smaller GPU.  Could be out as soon as June.
  
  
  
• Screw you guys.  We're going to make our own internet.  With blackjack, and hookers guaranteed insecure encryption.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  With sanctions limiting Russian companies' ability to purchase new SSL certificates, Russia has created its own root certificate.  This is of course not recognised by any real software, only shady Russian versions.  And it means that the Russian government can spy on, basically, anything.
  
  
  
• Need a Thunderbolt 3 dock with a 16TB SSD?  Got $2900 that you were thinking of wasting on a tank of gas?  Sabrent has you covered.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Why Thunderbolt 3 and no Thunderbolt 4 I don't know.
  
  
  
• Transparency organisation Distributed Denial of Secrets has released an 800GB dump of data leaked from the Bashkortostan branch of Rozkomnadzor.  (Motherboard)
  
  That's not a real place.
  
  
  
  

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

Disclaimer: This big glowing ball in the sky?  I don't like it.

• I've found the home I want, it's well within my price range, and most importantly given the situation in eastern Australia right now, it's 3000 feet above sea level.
  
  Only thing I'm concerned about is noise since it's close to the center of town and not off on a quiet side street.  But it's old solid brick construction (13' ceilings and all that) and it's not going to be anything like where I am right now where neighbours' cars drive in and out directly outside my bedroom window.
  
  
  
• The NSF is going to be funding open source projects.  (OpenSource)
  
  Just $21 million, but given that some critical pieces of software used by basically the entire internet are maintained by some guy in his spare time, some carefully allocated cash could go a long way.
  
  I expect most of this to go straight down the drain.

• Some more realistic benchmarks of Apple's new M1 Ultra CPU.  (WCCFTech)
  
  (Not MKUltra.  That's something different.  Probably.)
  
  This puts it about 10% slower than Intel's i9-12900k on single-threaded tasks, but 25% faster on multi-threaded tasks, because it has 16 large cores compared to just 8.
  
  Against AMD it's 40% faster single-threaded and a little slower multi-threaded than the previous-generation 32-core 3970X.  There's no regular Threadripper with the newer Zen 3 cores and the new Threadripper Pro is only available from OEMs, so AMD is falling behind in a market it dominated very recently.
  
  Of course, unless you want to run MacOS and Mac applications, the M1 Ultra is basically useless.
  
  
  
• cPanel 102 will bring with it support for Ubuntu 20.04.  (Phoronix)
  
  cPanel has been CentOS-only since forever, and IBM has killed CentOS, so it's about time this happened.  cPanel is doing its best to kill its own product with price increases, though, so it might all be a bit late.
  
  
  
• Australia's Orwellian anti-trolling bill has drawn fire from human rights advocates for...  Not being abusive enough.  (ZDNet)
  
  Fuck.
  
  
  
• Congress has gotten serious about returning to the Moon, adding literally dozens of dollars to NASA's funding.  (The Verge)
  
  Elon Musk, just go ahead and do whatever.  If the EPA complains, drop rocks on their heads.
  
  
  
• Apple's new 5k display will work with Thunderbolt-equipped Windows PCs too.  (9to5Mac)
  
  Including the built-in high-resolution webcam.  And hopefully with decent software brightness and colour controls.
  
  Given how few 5k displays there are on the market, this is at least something.
  
  
  

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

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, March 11 2022 12:44 AM (Z0GF0)

Posted by: furball321 at Friday, March 11 2022 09:24 AM (n+R81)

Posted by: normal at Friday, March 11 2022 11:10 AM (obo9H)

Posted by: J Greely at Friday, March 11 2022 04:17 PM (ZlYZd)

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• Apple's Mac Studio is here with the new M1 Ultra chip.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  It's essentially a Mac Mini Pro.  Or a Mac Pro Mini.  Either way, it replaces the regular M1 chip with your choice of the faster M1 Max, or the much faster M1 Ultra.
  
  Which is two M1 Max chips glued together.  (AnandTech)
  
  While Apple's benchmark numbers are, let's just say, selective, these are pretty good chips.
  
  The Mac Studio is good, but it's not cheap, and it is entirely soldered in place.  What you buy is what you are stuck with.  You can configure it with up to 128GB of RAM (at about 3x market prices) and 8TB of SSD (at 4x market prices).
  
  Apple as a company still sucks, of course.  They make nice hardware but terrible policies.
  
  
  
• Threadripper Pro 5000 is also out.  (AnandTech)
  
  From 12 to 64 Zen 3 cores.  And no, you can't get one.  Just as they did initially with the Threadripper Pro 3000 family, you can only buy it through OEMs, and when they say OEMs they mean Lenovo.

• Cloudflare and Akamai are not leaving Russia.  (ZDNet)
  
  Both companies provide content distribution networks and protection against DDOS attacks, which is certainly needed.
  
  What they have done though is set their servers in Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine to do a sort of soft self-destruct if they are tampered with.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  
  
• Twitter has launched a Tor access site.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  So that only they can ban you.
  
  
  
• There's a new iPad Air as well.  (Liliputing)
  
  
  
• And an iPhone SE.  (Liliputing)
  
  
  
• It is not currently raining here in Sydney.  Expected to start up again on Monday but much lighter falls than we've been having recently.
  
  
  
• Oh, and Apple's new monitor is $1599, not $2499.  (Apple)
  
  So about the same price as the four monitors I just bought, rather than being much more expensive.
  
  
  

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

To celebrate the fact that it is, finally, not.

Posted by: normal at Thursday, March 10 2022 02:55 AM (obo9H)

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• Oh great, another one.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Local privilege escalation bug on Linux, that is.  Good argument for running unprivileged containers.  Good argument for giving it all up and taking up potato farming.  You know where you are with a potato.
  
  More details on the Dirty Pipe vulnerability.  (DirtyPipe)
  
  Fixed in kernels 5.16.11, 5.15.25, and 5.10.102, so yay, everyone gets to reboot their servers.
  
  
  

Tech News

• Russia has banned walkie-talkie app Zello.  (ZDNet)
  
  Because that is the most crucial thing to Russian opsec, which currently involves using unencrypted radio to transmit critical information because they blew up all the Ukrainian cell towers that their encrypted phones would rely on.
  
  
  
• Google has released Android 12L, a variant designed for tablets....  On phones.  (Liliputing)
  
  It will actually show up on tablets later this year.
  
  
  
• The Asus Vivobook Pro 15 OLED is, frankly, kind of meh.  (AnandTech)
  
  It has 100% of DCI-P3 colour, which is great, but only at 1920x1200.  Apart from that it's last year's AMD 5600H or 5800H, 16GB of soldered RAM, and an RTX 3050.
  
  It's not terrible, but even my 13" laptop has a 2560x1600 display, so it's not wonderful either.
  
  
  
• Russia is shelling a damaged nuclear research facility, says Ukraine.  (Motherboard)
  
  Ukraine of course says this will doom us all, even though it's just a neutron source for research and too small to have any sort of meltdown.
  
  The Russian spin on this is even wilder, claiming that the Azov Battalion fighting Russian-backed separatists has seized the reactor and is threatening to blow it up and cause an environmental disaster big enough to draw NATO into the war...  Even though it's just a neutron source for research and too small to have any sort of meltdown.
  
  
  
• Britan has started regulatory approval for the new Rolls-Royce small modular reactor.  (Reuters)
  
  These are not mini reactors, but ones made of compact modules, prefabricated and assembled on site, where they probably will not explode.
  
  
  

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

• TikTok is exiting Russia.  (ZDNet)
  
  Alongside a lot of other companies, yes, but TikTok is owned by China.

  According to the Moscow Times, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a new law on Friday that bans what the country calls "fake" news about the military. This law will target any statements referring to the invasion of Ukraine as an "invasion", any attempt to discredit the armed forces, or calls for sanctions on Russia. Those found to be spreading so-called fake news could face up to 15 years in prison.

  The enemy of my enemy may or may not be my friend, but he ain't gonna go to prison for 15 years just to let me post Bayraktar memes.

• At $480 the WD Red SN700 is the cheapest 4TB NVMe drive I've seen so far.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  It's only PCIe 3, but it's TLC and has a DRAM cache, so it's still a solid performer.  Unfortunately the 4TB model and only the 4TB model has an 80% markup in Australia.  Fortunately I already have two 4TB SSDs...  Three 4TB SSDs...  So I don't need any more.
  
  
  
• Nvidia is launching its RTX 3090 Ti - again - on March 29.  (WCCFTech)
  
  And the 16GB model of the 3070 Ti is reportedly dead.  Again.
  
  
  
• Apple is expected to announce a new, affordable 27" monitor tomorrow.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Where by affordable they mean $2500, which is significantly more than I paid for all four of my new monitors.
  
  
  
• Windows Defender is enough, if you configure it right.  (0ut3r Space)
  
  Having looked over those recommendations, I'd say just turn it on and hope for the best.  That is way too much effort.
  
  
  
• Australia's new anti-trolling legislation is Orwellian garbage.  (ZDNet)
  
  Facebook, Twitter, and Google all agree with me on this, which is an unusual situation to find myself in.
  
  
  
• Shut off from advanced technology from the US, Europe, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea, can Russia build home-grown supercomputers?  No.  (The Register)
  
  "We're basically fucked," says Andrei Sukhov, professor and head of the CAD lab at HSE University in Moscow.
  
  
  

How It Started

Disclaimer: Where is all this water coming from?  [Opens door.] [Closes door.]  Oh.

Posted by: normal at Monday, March 07 2022 10:13 PM (obo9H)

Posted by: normal at Tuesday, March 08 2022 10:40 AM (obo9H)

Posted by: normal at Tuesday, March 08 2022 10:45 AM (obo9H)

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, March 10 2022 12:28 AM (oPg+d)

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Posted by: PatBuckman at Monday, March 07 2022 02:53 PM (r9O5h)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, March 07 2022 06:11 PM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Peter the Not-so-Great at Tuesday, March 08 2022 12:07 PM (yCp8E)

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Posted by: Wonderduck at Wednesday, March 09 2022 03:11 AM (bHHXR)

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You keep mentioning and linking this Hololive and related stuff. I'm out of the loop. What is that, and what's the background on it?

Some background from my personal perspective might help. I spend long hours alone at home at my desk, sometimes late at night, and I find that having something playing on the second monitor can help prevent me from getting even more distracted and wasting time on Twitter or wherever.

For a few years I was a dedicated listener to a long list of podcasts, including networks like This Week in Tech and The Incomparable. But as we moved into 2020 a lot of the stuff I was listening to on ostensibly tech or geek culture topics was becoming unpleasantly political, and by "unpleasantly political" I mean batshit crazy communism. The same stuff that had wrecked Twitter by 2018.

But around that time, this surfaced in my recommendations on YouTube, the only time Google has gotten anything right since about 2013.



It's only a 20 second clip but it was enough to make me sayWhat the heck?and take a closer look. And then I found there's no escaping the rabbit hole.

This is Hololive:



Yes, there's a lot of them. (That's seven videos edited together by a fan, which explains why some of the transitions aren't perfect.)

Basically Hololive is a 24/7 international all-girl improv comedy channel. Unwoke, unpolitically correct, irreverent and chaotic. They even have their own Bugs Bunny character - you see her for a couple of seconds in that video, her name is Usada Pekora and she has 1.8 million YouTube subscribers.

They sing, they dance - they have live concerts using full motion tracking and 3D models, they draw - at least two are successful commercial artists, they play an awful lot of Minecraft, and they don't take any shit from anyone.



Hololive's own background is also interesting. Parent company Cover Corp was working on a new AR device, that replaced expensive motion tracking with a regular iPhone and clever software, but they weren't having a lot of success breaking into the market.

Then in 2017 two Japanese girls fresh out of high school approached them and said what they needed was their own virtual spokeswoman. One of them is now Tokino Sora with 900,000 subscribers, and the other is referred to as A-chan, and is a senior manager overseeing activity across the entire company.



The pivot was spectacularly successful, and Hololive is basically a money factory. Their smallest channel - and they have dozens - has close to 300,000 subscribers, and the largest is approaching 4 million.

I think a lot of people are sick of hypocritical woke crap and are looking for entertainers who will simply tell it like it is. The 2D characters they use and the stage names (and a very strict corporate policy protecting their privacy) give them enough distance that they don't need to maintain a pretense in their opinions.

They don't get explicitly political but in this benighted age that itself is a profound political statement.

And beyond the official content - and there's so much of that that it's impossible to watch it all - there's an absolute avalanche of fan content, from cute video clips:



To entire virtual worlds:



So forget Hollywood, forget Netflix, forget podcasts, I really don't care anymore. I'll be over here in the corner juggling hedgehogs.

Also, Hololive is the main reason I bothered to get back on Twitter. They post their stream announcements there.

This is Gawr Gura of Hololive EN, the most successful virtual YouTube of all time:



Okay, yeah, she's a bit of a ditz on some things. But she can maintain both sides of a conversation for four hours at a time, every day, without ever repeating herself, and for the most part while doing three other things at the same time, and that's a rare talent.

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Top Story

• Visa and Mastercard have cancelled Russia's credit cards. (CNBC)
  
  All of them.
  
  On the one hand, yes, Russia is run by a nuclear-armed despotic thug.
  
  On the other hand, this is a totally reasonable move that won't hit innocent bystanders or have massive long-term blowback.
  
  On the third hand, this is a way to crush nuclear-armed states without kicking off World War III.
  
  On the fourth hand, we know - we know - that now that this has been weaponised, it will not stop here. We know because we've been here before.
  
  And on the fifth hand, none of this happened when Trump was president.

Questions and Answers

• Not phrased as a question, but deserving of an explanation.
  
  From Fisht:

  There is nothing worse than the Gluten people. The anti Gluten Cult signaled the end of America. No basis in fact and no ability to stop talking about it. JP did a great episode on this millennial virtue scam.

  It's absolutely true that 95% of the people eating gluten-free, and all of the most vocal ones, are doing it as a fashion accessory.
  
  But that leaves the other 5% who will spend two days trapped in the bathroom if they accidentally nibble on the wrong brand of breadstick.
  
  I'd much rather not have to limit myself to eating out maybe once a year. I'd love not to have to view the words Ingredients: Wheat flour the same way I would Front towards enemy. I don't particularly enjoy paying twice as much for food and having one tenth the range to choose from.
  
  But I don't have a lot of say in the matter.
  
  
  
• From Mel Pinto:

  If we use gab in our URL when commenting, the comment will not go thru and you get:
  Your website (gab.com) has been banned. If you feel this is in error, please contact the blog owner by email, or tech support at help@mu.nu

  Not intentional. It's probably tripped the automated spam filter. I'll remove it, but I might need to explicitly whitelist it.
  
  
  
• From 40 Miles North:

  Pixy, I asked a couple days ag if you thought graphics card prices would drop. In the last two days, the price on the XFX Speedster Radeon RX 6600 XT dropped 20%! I hope to buy one shortly. It should be a decent jump from my XFX Radeon RX 460. Let me know if you think I should wait.

  If the price is right, buy it. It's a decent card and as you say, much much faster than the RX 460.
  
  Chip supply remains uncertain so I wouldn't hold off on something you need.
  
  
  
• From Mrs Whatsit:

  I am running video processing (enhancing) software on two PCs. Same version of the software. PC's identical except one is Win 10 and the other Win 11.
  
  Processing the exact same video file, the Win 11 machine is significantly slower (by several hours).
  
  Is it possible to take a PC that came with Win 11 preloaded and roll back to Win 10?

  You can't roll back, but you should be able to download Windows 10 from Microsoft and install it on your Windows 11 system. (How-To Geek)
  
  Windows 11 uses the same activation keys as Windows 10 so any system authorised to run 11 is able to run 10. Some systems running 10 aren't officially supported on 11, but you won't have that problem.
  
  
  
• From Caiwyn:

  Pixy, can you explain how you got into VTubers and what the appeal is? I watched the KFP video you posted a couple of weeks ago, and I found it very amusing, but I felt like I was missing some context. Do you have a place to start for someone interested in going down that rabbit hole? Is there any kind of connection to the politics that drives this site, or is it completely disconnected?

  Oy, there's a question.
  
  To tackle the last part first, vtubers originated in Japan and are still heavily influenced by Japan. The two largest agencies - Hololive and Nijisanji - are Japanese, as are many of the smaller ones like Prism and Phase Connect and VOMS. Japanese culture leans conservative, mostly, and vtubers are for the most part the polar opposite of the screaming campus garbage babies that infest so much of online media.
  
  Pipkin Pippa - Phase Connect's resident Bugs Bunny character, because apparently every agency needs a resident Bugs Bunny character - has a standing invitation to go on Nick Rekieta's livestream and no-one thinks this is odd. Precisely zero pushback.
  
  As to where you should start.... Um. In mid-2020 when I got into it, that was easy. There was Haachama and Coco with Hololive Japan, Pikamee with VOMS, and the three girls from the newly launched Hololive Indonesia, though I didn't know at the time that they all spoke fluent English.
  
  And that was about it. Almost everything else was in Japanese.
  
  Now, there's 11 members of Hololive English and 6 in Hololive Indonesia, both with more on the way, 11 members in Prism Project who all speak fluent English, 14 (last I counted) 20 in Nijisanji's English-speaking branch, plus Phase Connect, Tsunderia, Cyberlive, MyHoloTV, VOMS, major indies like Kson, mid-rank indies like Shizukou, Vyolfers, and Reiny, and small indies like Nymroot and Mooyü.
  
  So... Kind of depends what you like.
  
  Someone fighting the meme wars on the side of righteousness and/or chaos? Pipkin Pippa of Phase Connect.
  
  The nicest person you could possibly imagine but with a weakness for terrible, terrible puns? Ninomae Ina'nis (Ina) of Hololive or Pina Pengin of Prism Project.
  
  Salty gamer girl with a heart of gold? Amelia Watson and Gawr Gura of Hololive.
  
  
  
  Manic chaos fairy? Pomu Rainpuff of Nijisanji.
  
  Dark Overlord of All and honorary Aussie? Haachama of Hololive Japan.
  
  As Australian as Vegemite on toast? Luto and Sara of Prism Project, and Baelz and Sana of Hololive.
  
  Classic RPGs and weird dating sims? Mooyü.
  
  Be prepared to be totally lost as far as the "lore" goes. It doesn't matter what "bottom left" means, or why Pekora's name comes up alongside the Geneva Community Guidelines, why all the penpals want to jump in the bioreactor, or who Pomura and Ayunda are, and you'll pick up Japanese terms like yabe and ponkotsu quickly enough from context. There will be plenty of context.
  
  And be prepared to drop in and out of streams. Hololive alone puts out a hundred hours of content a day, though only a quarter of that is in English.
  
  
  
• From DaveX64:

  Do you have a favorite Keyboard - Video - Mouse (KVM) solution when you need to control more than one computer from the same place or do you favor more of a Remote Desktop type solution?
  I would like to control a Windows and a Linux box from the same dual monitors, keyboard and mouse without a lot of hassle. They're desktop computers in tower cases, not laptops.

  I haven't used one for a while, but the one I did have was an Aten unit that supported dual PCs with dual monitors, and it worked pretty well. They still make those.
  
  
  
• From Catherine:

  Pixy, I'm no longer up on tech or computers. But my kid in college is looking into buying a laptop for school. She will study at least some computer programming as a math major and computers minor, and I would not be surprised if she ends up with two degrees. She could spend what I consider to be a mint on a laptop ($3k would not break her financially). What is in stock and capable if computer science is her plan? We have ordered Dells in the past and they've held up well. I'm so sick of buying from woke companies, but it doesn't seem like there is hope not to pay foreigners or woke idiots. We try to buy American, but we're also realistic . . . and we are in the Midwest US but would order too. Feel free just to drop a link and not spend much time. I'm sure you get this often.

  I have a Dell Inspiron 16 Plus and I quite like it. Fast, mostly quiet, great screen, half the price of an equivalent MacBook. It's not a gaming system but more than capable for stuff like Minecraft. Plus you can pop it open with a screwdriver and upgrade the memory and storage yourself - it's not soldered in place on that model, and Dell provides a detailed service manual.
  
  
  
• From Dudeman:

  My kid is looking for a laptop when he begins college next year. He wants a Framework laptop. Is this a good option? What is a better option?

  If you want something you can do basic upgrades and repairs on yourself, there is no better option than the Framework right now. A single screwdriver (provided) is all you need and everything is labeled and replaceable. The four I/O ports are swappable to whatever you need - USB-A, USB-C, HDMI, DisplayPort, and little storage modules up to 1TB. And it runs well under Linux.
  
  It will soon be slightly out of date - it's 11th generation and 12th generation laptops are starting to appear - but if you're not buying for a while there might be a newer model out by then.
  
  
  
• From RayG:

  Pixy, I get the "secure" lock icon when I enter https://ace.mu.nu on my desktop Chrome. I don't get it on my iPad no matter what I do. Also, on my desktop, when I follow the link for Comments at the end of the "above the fold" part of your post on the main page, I do not get the lock icon. I can enter "https://" in front of the URL myself and get it.
  
  Why is the site not always secure by default? Why can't I get the lock icon on my iPad?

  I can certainly force it the HTTPS by default. I'm not sure why there's an issue on your iPad, but I can try Safari on my iMac and see if it does the same thing.
  
  
  
• Also from RayG:

  Another question: when I use the "Continue reading" link instead of the "Comments" link on the main page, I get a page with a link that says "Access Comments" but it goes to e.g. http://minx.cc/?post=398108 when never opens, browser says "minx.cc took too long to respond." Is this a bug or what?

  Yeah, we need to update the templates and rebuild all the pages to get rid of that link.
  
  
  
• From Daniel Ream:

  My existing cobbled-together whitebox RAIDZ server needs updating. I've got 4x3TB drives plus a 500GB HDD for the OS. i7-875K CPU, 8GB RAM. It's moderately loud and produces a fair amount of heat. it just holds media and some personal files, no need for much performance.
  I'd like something cooler and quieter in some kind of non-rackmount form factor; haven't decided yet whether I'm going to add more drives to the pool or just buy a set of newer, bigger drives but I'd like both options, which means more than 4 3.5" HDD bays. Any recommendations for CPU/mobo/case?

  Even the new Core i3-12100 ($124) should do fine for that; modern CPUs are amazingly fast. Motherboard I'm not sure of, best to browse around for something reasonably priced with lots of SATA ports.
  
  As for the case, there is something that came out just recently: The AeroCool Cipher. It's a fairly standard ATX tower case, matte black with a mesh front and zero RGB nonsense, but it has room for 15 drives - 11 3.5" and 4 2.5".
  
  Supposed to be $75 plus tax but I couldn't find it on Amazon or Newegg to confirm.
  
  
  
• And from rd:

  MS Edge says AOSHQ is unsecure. No httpS, just http.
  
  Is there a missing certificate? How do I fix this?

  Click here. The server is not forcing HTTPS on new connections, so if your browser has remembered the old HTTP URL it will keep defaulting to that.
  
  All browsers now try HTTPS first, so this doesn't happen for new users.
  
  
  

Tech News

• The Asus Flow Z13 gaming tablet is heavy, ugly, expensive, and... Slow? (Tom's Hardware)
  
  It has the latest Core i9-12900H CPU, on-board RYX 3050 Ti graphics, and an optional 16GB RTX 3080 dock, so how can it be slow?
  
  Well, the 3050 Ti is noticeably slower than the 3060 (which is what I have, so I'm glad I paid the extra for that), and the 3080 is external running over Thunderbolt, so despite being a high-end card is slowed down by only having 4 lanes of PCIe.
  
  I guess if you want a gaming tablet the answer is, don't want a gaming tablet.
  
  
  
• A year late and a dollar short, Threadripper Pro 5000 is close to launch. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  But with up to 64 cores at 4.5GHz there is still no competition.
  
  
  
• Everything you need to know about Intel's 13th generation Raptor Lake CPUs. (WCCFTech)
  
  Wait, didn't 12 generation just come out? Isn't 12th generation mobile still just coming out?
  
  Yes, and yes.
  
  
  
• My oven is full of eels.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• The same hackers who hit Nvidia recently appear to have done the same to Samsung. (Bleeping Computer)
  
  The leaked data includes source code for the firmware of a lot of Samsung devices, which is not entirely a bad thing.
  
  
  
• The same hacking group is using certificates stolen from Nvidia to sign malware as trusted driver updates. (Bleeping Computer)
  
  This is entirely a bad thing.
  
  
  
• At least they're not solar freaking roadways. (Fast Company)
  
  Covering canals in California with pergolas of solar panels is not entirely a stupid idea. The land is not otherwise in use, there are access roads, and the shade will save enough water from reduced evaporation to irrigate an extra 50,000 acres.
  
  Which is not a lot but I wouldn't want to mow it.
  
  
  

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

Disclaimer: The peeps don't like it! Drop the gas price! Drop the gas price!

Posted by: J Greely at Sunday, March 06 2022 09:45 PM (ZlYZd)

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Monday, March 07 2022 07:11 AM (5iiQK)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, March 07 2022 09:24 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: normal at Monday, March 07 2022 09:47 AM (obo9H)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Monday, March 07 2022 03:08 PM (r9O5h)

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Monday, March 07 2022 09:55 PM (5iiQK)

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• Weekends are Question and Answer time, unless I have to work, or I just worked two 18 hour days back-to-back, or I need to pack up and move house to a house I don't have, or my internet is down again, or my entire state is under flood and storm warnings, or every gluten-free foodstuff I normally eat is out of stock at the same time (possibly related to eastern Australia being underwater right now), or it's freaking World War III, but if it's all of those they cancel out somehow so Q&A is on.
  
  
  
• In the first sensible move of any of the participants in this whole debacle Russia has banned Twitter and Facebook.  (CBS / MSN)
  
  And over 140 other domains including the BBC.  Sadly we are not on the list, but this is just new additions and we may have been blocked previously.
  
  The BBC has responded by restarting its shortwave news broadcasts.  (The Verge)
  
  Everything old is new again.
  
  
  
• Russia doesn't have anything like China's Great Firewall but US companies are stepping up to help with leading provider of bad internet backbone connections Cogent cutting off access to Russia.  (ZDNet)
  
  They're justifying this by a broad reading of new EU regulations, but the regulations never actually say Russia has to go back to acoustic couplers and hope.
  
  
  

Tech News

• One moment, need to reboot my keyboard...
  
  
  
• With many of Ukraine's existing communication systems offline the new shipment of Starlink satellite dishes could become a target.  (Ars Technica)
  
  They're small and low-power and not easily spotted in the normal soup of radio waves, but if everything else has been knocked out one way or another they're much easier to detect.
  
  
  
• Speaking of the normal soup of radio waves the FCC is looking to crack down on crappy wireless avionics.  (Ars Technica)
  
  There's long been a fight between mobile carriers who say their operations don't infringe upon frequencies used in aircraft and aircraft makers and operators who say your phone will make their plane crash.
  
  It seems they're both correct - and the fault is with the aircraft, or rather wireless receivers used in some instruments.  They're so poorly designed that they pick up signals hundreds of megahertz outside their designated band.
  
  
  
• Yandex, Russia's version of Google only even more obnoxious about its web crawling efforts may be technically bankrupt.  (CNN)
  
  While the parent company is based in the Netherlands, most of its operations are in Russia, and recent sanctions act as a network partition event in an improperly balanced cluster.
  
  
  
• Microsoft meanwhile has blocked all new sales to Russia.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Microsoft has also been providing assistance to Ukraine to defend against hacking attempts, so whether you agree with their decision or not, they are actually doing more than just virtue signalling.
  
  
  
• Major cryptocurency exchanges are very pointedly not blocking Russia.  (CNN)
  
  Whatever you thing of cryptocurrencies generally, the underlying point is that there's no central control, and no-one can block your access to the blockchain.  So again, they're operating based on principles rather than profit, or rather, a little of one and a lot of the other.
  
  
  
• Similarly, ICANN is not intending to revoke Russian domain names.  (Ars Technica)
  
  That one was never on the cards.  The old .su TLD is still active.
  
  
  
• The US Space Force is planning to start patrolling the far side of the Moon.  (Ars Technica)
  
  Because that is civilisation's chief area of concern right now.
  
  
  
• Firefly's ITX-3588J is a high-end alternative to the Raspberry Pi.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Can you get it?
  
  No.
  
  
  
• Oh, and one more thing?  Half the world's supply of ultra-pure neon used in chipmaking comes from Ukraine.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  This was highlighted in 2014 when spot prices for neon shot up 600% during the invasion of Crimea, but then everyone went right back to sleep.
  
  
  
• Belarus is now on the tech industry shitlist too.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
  
  
  
• The great thing about paying twice as much to get a Mac is that it just works.  (Derek Seaman)
  
  After trying three different docks and three different Thunderbolt to DisplayPort adaptors, it just works.
  
  
  
• More on the suckage of Western Digital's new high-capacity NAS drives.  (Serve the Home)
  
  Base on their ratings, having a ZFS pool of 20TB drives with a weekly data scrub would exceed the annual workload rating after four months, even if nobody was accessing the data.
  
  
  
• Speaking of which, have a drive failure already on my new ZFS server.  Good thing I configured RAID-Z3.
  
  
  
• Apple is reportedly preparing to release the new Mac Studio.  (Liliputing)
  
  This is either a smaller version of the Mac Mini, or a larger one, or something else entirely.
  
  

Posted by: normal at Sunday, March 06 2022 06:54 AM (obo9H)

Posted by: furball321 at Sunday, March 06 2022 08:14 AM (n+R81)

Posted by: J Greely at Sunday, March 06 2022 08:27 AM (ZlYZd)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, March 06 2022 11:40 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Sunday, March 06 2022 12:15 PM (r9O5h)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, March 06 2022 04:40 PM (PiXy!)

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