• Looks like house #3 might be the one.  I've mentioned place a couple of times - it's a modern 4 bedroom place, with a garage the size of a small house and a house the size of two small houses.
  
  That garage is 23 x 42 feet, not counting a storeroom / workshop area off to one side and a small bathroom on the other.  That should suffice.  And it has windows on two sides so it's not a complete cave.
  
  
  
• The internet is not what you think it is  (Princeton)
  
  Oh?

  Many think of the internet as an unprecedented and overwhelmingly positive achievement of modern human technology.

  Who?

• Dell's new Inspiron 16 2-in-1 model has a 3840x2400 OLED touchscreen.  (Dell)
  
  (That price is Aussie dollars; it's not yet listed on the US site.)
  
  And a 12 core i7-1260P CPU and Nvidia MX550 graphics, which puts its gaming ability at roughly zero.
  
  
  
• Google says that Microsoft is a threat to national security.  (NBC)
  
  I mean, yes, but have you guys looked in a mirror lately?
  
  
  
• Facebook has been locking accounts for no reason.  (BBC)

  Your Facebook account was disabled because fuck you, that's why.  This decision could easily be revered but we won't because see above.

  Not sure why this is a news item though.

Posted by: normal at Monday, April 04 2022 09:45 PM (obo9H)

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Posted by: J Greely at Monday, April 04 2022 01:39 PM (ZlYZd)

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Tuesday, April 19 2022 07:25 AM (LZ7Bg)

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Posted by: Grumpy and Recalcitrant at Sunday, April 03 2022 11:11 PM (nRMeC)

Posted by: Mauser at Monday, April 04 2022 04:20 PM (gVjvf)

Posted by: normal at Monday, April 04 2022 09:41 PM (obo9H)

Posted by: normal at Tuesday, April 05 2022 10:11 AM (obo9H)

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• It's the weekend again - somehow - and that means it's Question and Answer time.  Take one of the bottles from the basket, put your question inside, and cast it into the waters.  It will probably just wash straight back up on the beach, but if it does make it here to PixyLab I will attempt to answer.
  
  
  
• No news on house #3 yet.  The one that was previously #4 on my shortlist has actually sold, but I wasn't actively pursuing that one because while the renovated interiors were first rate, the location (between an iron foundry and an artillery range) was less than ideal.
  
  
  
• 123qweQWE!@#0.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  GitLab had a default test password configured for accounts registered via external authentication providers.  They say no accounts have been compromised, but the bug affects not only the cloud service, but the paid on-premises version and the free open source edition, so if you run your own it's time to update.
  
  Also, put it behind a firewall.  At my day job your VPN account has to be configured to grant access the the GitLab server before you can do anything at all.
  
  
  

Tech News

• Sabrent's 8TB PCIe 4 M.2 SSD is now available at a mere $1499.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Which is about what I paid for three 4TB drives, but if you absolutely have to fit a ton of storage inside a laptop - maybe if your job involves video editing on the go with a film crew - then it's either that or $2200 for the 8TB option on a MacBook.
  
  
  
• Proposed EU regulations would require all blockchain transactions - all of them - to be registered with a verified account - on both ends - and the details made available to member governments at any time for any reason.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  And transactions valued at more than 1000 Euros would be automatically reported to the government.
  
  Note the both ends requirement.  If you want to transfer your crypto to someone - anyone - they also must register with the EU.
  
  Oh, and these registers, if implemented, are going to get hacked.  Count on it.
  
  
  
• Posting the full name and medical history of a patient in a reply to a Yelp review is a HIPAA violation.  (The Verge)
  
  Who knew?
  
  
  
• A Scottish Twitter user has been sentenced to 150 hours of community service for being a Twitter user.  (The Verge)

  Sheriff Adrian Cottam told Kelly he passed the "custody threshold” but there is a presumption against prison if there is an alternative.

  Which means that this haggis-humping bumblefuck was actually considering jail time for the crime of being a pretty normal Twitter user, which is to say, a loathsome mindless hate-filled tankie who would likely be shot by his own zampolit if their unit ever faced action.
  
  Hang on...
  
  Right, this is not Twitter, nor am I Scottish.  Just needed to check.
  
  
  
• Russia has banned purchases of foreign software for critical infrastructure.  (The Register)
  
  But at the same time has legalised theft of foreign software, so that's okay.

• Some of you expressed interest in the cover home of The Concise Dictionary of Regrettable Architecture (4th ed, Stodder & Houghton, 3716pp) as mentioned in yesterday's Pixy Goes House Hunting item.
  
  Well, here's one of the bathrooms:
  
  
  
  After looking at several late 19th to early 20th century homes that have been lovingly restored (and one that is a complete dump but is heritage listed and so frozen in time as a complete dump) this place comes across like a big bowl of curried corn flakes.
  
  Every single pixel asks the question why?  
  
  And that's the bathroom they they selected to show off the property.  If this was a modest three-bedroom place passed down in the family for 65 years and now on the market for the first time, sure.  Buy it, replace the kitchen, bathroom, and carpet, strip off the wallpaper and paint everything left white, and you'd have yourself a little gem.
  
  For this one, the owner would have to be someone prepared to drop an additional half a mil to gut it and rebuild from the inside out.
  
  In other words, not me.

Posted by: ahd at Saturday, April 02 2022 09:56 PM (6vszb)

Posted by: normal at Saturday, April 02 2022 10:12 PM (obo9H)

Posted by: normal at Saturday, April 02 2022 10:14 PM (obo9H)

Posted by: Rick C at Sunday, April 03 2022 12:39 AM (Z0GF0)

Posted by: J Greely at Sunday, April 03 2022 07:54 AM (ZlYZd)

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• I have my agent checking the contract on my first alternate now.  Assuming there's no major issues and no-one has already grabbed it (and there's no indication of that so far), I'm prepared to go over asking price if needed, because this one has the right combination of being ready to move right in and have the potential for improvement - because you could park a freight train in the garage.
  
  Speaking of which, the craziest damn house popped up in my tracker just now.  Seven bedrooms, three bathrooms, four living rooms, two kitchens, two laundries, nine car spaces, five minute easy walk through the park to the shops, and in my price range.
  
  Except (a) it's for auction at at the end of the month so who knows what the final price will be, and (b) it was built in 1957 and could grace the cover of a James Lileks book with the word "regrettable" in the title.
  
  
  
• CNN+, the new pre-failed streaming service from the former news network, is planning to sell NFTs of its first half hour of content.  (Ace of Spades)
  
  If this doesn't kill NFTs I think they might be immortal.
  
  What are NFTs, you ask?
  
  Well, think of a baseball card.  It doesn't have any special intrinsic value - it's just a piece of cardboard.  It doesn't give you any influence over the player, of course, or let you attend a game.  It's just a piece of cardboard.
  
  Now, imagine a digital baseball card - it's just a file on a computer somewhere.
  
  An NFT is like a digital version of a photocopy of a 3x5" index card that lists the address of the locker at the bus station containing the baseball card, so that if you remember the locker combination you can take it out and, um, put it into another locker, with the added bonus that eight billion people with hacksaws and power drills have easy 24x7 access to the bus station, and even so, there are people willing to spend six figures on these damn things.
  
  I can only sleep at night by telling myself that it's probably mostly money laundering and what these people really do for a living is something relatively wholesome like smuggling heroin or land mines or endangered monkeys or maybe all three each nested inside the other like so many addictive explosive hyperactive Russian dolls.
  
  Because, yes, my job is mostly NFTs these days.
  
  Which is why I can afford a seven bedroom house - albeit in a country town; this thing would be eight figures easy if it was in an upmarket suburb in Sydney - but I'd almost sooner live in a cardboard van by a cardboard river.
  
  
  

Tech News

• Quis scamodiet ipsos custodes?  (Lupinia)
  
  In which a scam prevention expert gets scammed - partly because she expects customer service from her bank to be incompetent, and it takes a while for the scammer to raise sufficient red flags.
  
  She is an expert and she manages to keep the scammer on the line while she calls the real customer service line of her bank so that they can watch in as the scammer tries to steal her money, but it's a valid if rare example of how you can be too cynical for your own good.
  
  
  
• Not with NFTs though.
  
  
  
• In case you've missed this one it's fortunate that it's harder to block Chesapeake Bay than the Suez Canal.  (gCaptain)
  
  Same shipping line, different ship.
  
  
  
• Ubuntu 22.04 is in beta.  (Phoronix)
  
  I'm looking forward to this; 20.04 had a surprisingly smooth launch; I think I first deployed it at the beginning of May that year and have had very little trouble with it.  (That's on servers.  I run lots of servers on Ubuntu, but I've had less experience with it on the desktop.)
  
  
  
• Google is bringing a new advertising API to Chrome.  (Ars Technica)
  
  If you don't like it, you can simply opt out.
  
  Of Chrome.
  
  Because you sure can't turn the new Topics API off.
  
  
  
• Samsung will sell parts and tools needed to repair the Galaxy S20 and S21 and Tab S7+.  (Fast Company)
  
  And provide detailed repair guides in partnership with iFixit.
  
  But Pixy, you say, aren't those all prior year models?
  
  Why yes.  Yes they are.
  
  
  
• Russia's Great Firewall isn't working and could be headed for collapse.  (Torrent Freak)
  
  Oh no.
  
  Anyway...
  
  
  
• The Hubble Space Telescope has spotted Earendel.  (CNN)
  
  I wondered where he'd gotten to.
  
  The star (because that's what Hubble spots, after all) is 28 billion light years away, which means since the Universe is only 14 billion years old that light effectively travelled at twice the speed of light in order to reach us.
  
  Because space is not only really big, but very weird.
  
  
  
  

Posted by: Horn wearing Anon at Friday, April 01 2022 07:53 PM (9GEPh)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Friday, April 01 2022 10:25 PM (r9O5h)

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