• Half the plots of the X-Files just got cancelled.
  
  
  
  
  Indeed, an awful lot of movies, TV episodes, and novels would be resolved instantly if someone could send one quick text message.
  
  Also real-world emergencies.  There's those too.
  
  
  

Tech News

• More details on Starlink V2.  (The Verge)
  
  
  
  
  
  
• The FBI got social media to quash a story inconvenient to Joe Biden - and the FBI - in the runup to the 2020 election.  (Legal Insurrection)
  
  We knew that, of course.  The only thing that's changed is Mark Zuckerberg has openly admitted it.
  
  
  
• If you're waiting for Nvidia's RTX 4000 series rollout, you might just need to keep waiting.  (PC Magazine)
  
  There are a lot of RTX 3000 cards still in stock, despite some pretty significant price reductions, and those cards will turn instantly into paperweights if RTX 4000 is as good as Nvidia has been hinting.
  
  Since the new chips are moving from an 8nm process to a 4nm one, they have a lot more transistors to play with and they should be a lot more power-efficient, so even if it's not quite as good as they want us to think this should be a significant upgrade.
  
  If you need a new computer - or just to replace your graphics card - now is probably the best time in the past couple of years because components are actually available to buy.  (Ars Technica)
  
  But also the worst time because whatever you buy today will be obsoleterated almost immediately.
  
  
  
• Sony is hiking prices of the PlayStation 5 everywhere in the world except the US.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  In Australia the price has increased by $50 - about 7% - which makes no difference at all because you can't get one anyway.
  
  
  
• Microsoft has said it will not be increasing the price on the Xbox.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Which makes no difference at all in Australia because you can't get aargh.
  
  It's in stock at my local electronics store right now.  Local to the old house, that is.  Rather a long way from New House City.
  
  Seems to also be in stock at Slightly Larger Country Town which is at least a much shorter trip than Sydney.  They're not offering delivery, and all the sites that do offer delivery don't have any.
  
  Well, not in any tearing hurry anyway.
  
  
  
• HP has a couple of new computers that look interesting.  (Engadget)
  
  The first is the Dragonfly Folio G3, a 13.5" convertible laptop with a hinge that lets the screen flip over and lie flat on top of the keyboard to turn it into a rather bulky tablet.  I very much liked the HP Elite X2 convertible I had - that one had a detachable keyboard - except for the part where it died of battery bloat.
  
  Hopefully the Dragonfly won't do that because where the Elite X2 was very cheap, this is definitely not.
  
  The other model of interest is the 34-inch All-in-One, which is a 34-inch all-in-one.  The screen is 5120x2160 which means that you get extra real estate over a 27" 4k monitor without sacrificing clarity.
  
  It has a 12th generation Intel CPU, Nvidia 3050 or 3060 graphics, dual Thunderbolt ports, and up to 128GB of RAM and 4TB of SSD.  A pretty solid competitor to the 27" iMac, at least on paper.  Not that that is hard, since Apple no longer sells the 27" iMac.