Ambient Irony

Sunday, October 23

Daily News Stuff 23 October 2022

Petarded By Their Own Hoist Edition

Top Story

A federal judge has set aside the DOJ's $2.5 billion settlement with Boeing and ruled that the company is to face criminal charges over two fatal crashes of the 737 MAX in Indonesia and Ethiopia. (Reuters)

The 737 MAX had significant operational differences over the regular 737, but pilots were not properly retrained for the new systems. If the allegations of management negligence are accurate - and it's documented that Boeing pushed the FAA to certify the MAX as just another 737 - then this ruling is warranted.
New South Wales is getting flooded again. (The Guardian)

Yes, I'm 3400 feet above sea level, so this doesn't affect me directly (except that we've been getting about an inch of rain per day for the past week and the weeds are growing like weeds) but it's a factor of why, when moving out of Sydney (where I was 600 feet ASL) I chose New House City and not a pleasant coastal town like Bikini Bottom Lismore.

Tech News

British farmers are fighting government plans to prevent them from planting fields of solar cells. (The Guardian)

The now ex-prime minister had planned to re-designate marginal farmland as prime agricultural real estate to make it harder for farmers to seek alternate sources of income. For some, the solar cells bring in more cash than their crops.
Social networks are being dragged into the Supreme Court over whether Section 230 of the DMCA grants immunity to lawsuits over their recommendation algorithms, as it does for their censorship. (The Guardian)

The case is weak, claiming that YouTube video recommendations were a major recruitment mechanism for ISIS, but the underlying point is interesting. If you can't be sued for publishing a letter to the editor, does that change if you choose to make it a front page story?
The RTX 4090 is making its way to laptops - sort of. (Tom's Hardware)

The chip used for the mobile 4090 is the one from the desktop 4080, with half the number of graphics cores, and will be clocked lower as well. Similarly the mobile 4080 Ti will use desktop 4070 hardware, the mobile 4070 will be a lower-clocked desktop 4060, and the mobile 4060 a 4050.

They've done this in prior generations but the gap is even larger than usual given the massive power requirements of the latest desktop cards.
Some people in comas... Aren't. (Scientific American)

It can be hard to tell if a patient with a brain injury is legitimately unconscious or if they are at least partially aware but unable to respond. Directly monitoring the firings of neurons in different sections of the brain can tell the difference even when there are no outwardly visible signs - and can lead to treatment changes and recovery.
Corsair's HX1000i 1000W power supply is all set to run your new build with an i7 13900K and RTX 4090. (Tom's Hardware)

Except that it doesn't have the new power cable the 4090 uses, so don't buy that one. And don't plan on a lot of other hardware in your system because the CPU and GPU together will draw 800W.