They are my oldest and deadliest enemy. You cannot trust them.
If Hitler invaded Hell, I would give a favourable reference to the Devil.

Monday, December 11

Geek

Daily News Stuff 11 December 2023

What Does The Friend Say Edition

Top Story

  • CAMM2 is now an official JEDEC standard.  (Tom's Hardware)

    Originally invented by Dell, this is a replacement for the SODIMM laptop memory modules that have been around for 25 years.

    While not smaller in area - it still needs to accommodate the same memory chips - it is a lot thinner, and one module can fit 128GB of memory on a 128-bit bus.

    It also supports faster LPDDR5 memory - the stuff that is normally soldered directly onto the motherboard - and optionally even GDDR6 graphics memory.

    I really hope this sees market acceptance.


Tech News

  • World of Warcraft is powered by invisible bunnies.  (Kotaku)

    This article from six years ago is almost interesting; it's a peek into an era when game journalism was just lazy, corrupt, and incompetent, before the writers actively hated their own readers.


  • Want a 27" 8k monitor?  TCL will be shipping one next year.  (WCCFTech)

    I'm waiting for 8k prices to crash the way 4k prices did.  I want one - several, really - but they're not justifiable right now.

    There will be a 16k standard after this, but you won't ever need that.  Unless you're particularly fussy about display details - and either have very good eyesight or prescription computer glasses - you don't need 8k either.


  • The first tomato ever grown in space has been found.  (CBS)

    It was at the back of the fridge, on the bottom shelf, behind that jar of plum jam that nobody liked.


Disclaimer: I'm gonna eat it.

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Sunday, December 10

Geek

Daily News Stuff 10 December 2023

Migraines R Us Edition

Top Story

Tech News



Disclaimer: Only 14 Amazon delivery days left before Christmas!

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Saturday, December 09

Geek

Daily News Stuff 9 December 2023

Duck And Cover Edition

Top Story


Tech News


Disclaimer: Duck season!

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Friday, December 08

Geek

Daily News Stuff 8 December 2023

Minhiriath Network News Edition

Top Story


Tech News


Disclaimer: And Tom Bombadil.

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Thursday, December 07

Geek

Daily News Stuff 7 December 2023

Web Scale Edition

Top Story

  • Short one tonight, rebuilding a failed 8TB MongoDB cluster.  Fortunately this is a new system, so customers are waiting for it to be deployed rather than panicking because their sites are down.


  • AMD's Ryzen 8000 mobile CPUs are here.  (AnandTech)

    They are AMD's Ryzen 7000 mobile CPUs.

    Literally.

    The new AI core introduced last year has had a clock speed bump, but CPU cores, graphics, memory, and everything else are identical to last year's models.


Tech News



Disclaimer: And we're starting from the industry that created Node.js, so "worse" really means something.

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Wednesday, December 06

Geek

Daily News Stuff 6 December 2023

I'll Drink To That Edition

Top Story



Tech News


Disclaimer: Rabbit season!

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Tuesday, December 05

Geek

Daily News Stuff 5 December 2023

Smoke Gets In Your Lungs Edition

Top Story

  • US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo has called out Nvidia for selling advanced AI chips to China in compliance with her own regulations.  (Fortune)

    The Department of Commerce blocked sales of Nvidia's most powerful graphics cards to China, so Nvidia sent less powerful cards that complied with the regulations.

    The department blocked those sales, so Nvidia sold even less powerful cards...  That were assembled in China in the first place.
    "It matters not if you obey the rules I have set forth.  If you endeavour to design a chip around a particular line that enables the forces of evil to explore AI, I shall move to control it the very next day," Raimondo said.  "And now at last it comes.  You will give me the chips freely!  In place of the Dark Lord you will set up a Queen.  And I shall not be dark, but beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night!  Fair as the Sea and the Sun and the Snow upon the Mountain!  Dreadful as the Storm and the Lightning!  Stronger than the foundations of the earth.  All shall love me and despair!"

Tech News

Disclaimer: If duck then...  Potatoes?

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Monday, December 04

Geek

Daily News Stuff 4 December 2023

Shuba Diver Edition

Top Story


Tech News


Disclaimer: Orange sauce.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:16 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Blog

OopSSL

Oops.

When Namecheap says "FINAL NOTICE" for an expiring SSL cert, they mean it.

Back now.

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Sunday, December 03

Geek

Daily News Stuff 3 December 2023

Journalistic Wellness Check Edition

Top Story

  • Rule One of Online Publishing: A hate click is still a click.

    How are things going for the boys and girls over at Tech Crunch?

    Not great, it seems.  The article - by the managing editor - on Tesla shipping the Cybertruck to customers is titled The end of Elon.  (Tech Crunch)

    The comments at Tech Crunch are heavily censored, but even so 95% are asking if the writer needs a bottle and a nap.


  • How are things going for the boys and girls over at Kotaku?

    Never mind, it's Kotaku.  (Tech Crunch)

    After a solid decade of autistic screeching over breast physics in computer games (life tip: breasts do move if you are jumping around) the site is absolutely giddy over, uh, dick physics.


Tech News

  • How are things going for the boys and girls over at The Verge?

    The Ember Tumbler is overpriced, over-teched garbage that nobody should buy.  (The Verge)

    Oh.  Good.

    It's a $199 electrically heated cup that keeps your coffee at the perfect temperature - but does a worse job at it than a $30 brand name insulated mug.

    And The Verge actually tested that, measuring temperatures over the course of an entire day, both before and after the Ember's battery ran out.


  • Google is escalating its war on ad blockers.  (Ars Technica)

    The coming "Manifest V3" update to Chrome is already planned to cripple adblock extensions.

    What Google has done now is to change the rules further so that updates to adblock filter rules have to go through the Chrome Web Store - and be approved by Google every time - instead of downloading directly from the adblock developer or a public repository.

    I recommend Brave and Vivaldi. 


  • A former Wall Street banker paid $2 million for an old coal mine with the hope of reopening it.  Then he conducted a study of the mine's potential with the Department of Energy and discovered an estimated $37 billion worth of rare earth elements.  (Yahoo Finance)

    The trick here is that rare earth elements aren't actually rare.  They're just expensive and messy to extract, so we allowed China to take on that job.

    With increasing use of electrical vehicles we need a source that isn't asshole, the same thing that is driving lithium mining in Australia.

    This mine - the Brook Mine in Wyoming - originally operated from 1914 to 1940.  Apparently it still contains a billion tons of coal as well as the rare earths.  (These details aren't in the article, but it's amazing what you can find on the internet.)

    Mining operations for both coal and rare earths are planned to commence in Q4 of 2023.  (Mining Technology)

    Which is now.


  • ChatGPT is successful at convincing people it is human 14% of the time.  (Ars Technica)

    ELIZA, a chat bot written in 1964, is successful 27% of the time.

    Humans meanwhile are successful 63% of the time.  Don't knock it, it's a passing grade.


  • Amazon's new AI platform, Q, has severe "hallucinations" - that is, it lies constantly - and also leaks confidential data.  (Platformer)

    That's a pretty solid combination.

    Great subhed to the article:
    Some hallucinations could "potentially induce cardiac incidents in Legal," according to internal documents
    Amazon, of course, denies everything.


  • Google has released the Android studio hedgehog.  (Thurrott)

    I hope it can survive in the wild with winter coming - wait, that's a version name?

    Never mind.


  • ChatGPT isn't coming for your coding job, because it's shit.  (Wired)

    ChatGPT - LLMs in general - are very good at form but absolutely terrible at function.  That's because they are supercharged autocorrect engines; they know only what words fit where, statistically.

    They can make a legal filing that looks correct, but it will reference laws and decisions that don't even exist.

    They perform slightly better at coding - because it's easy to run the generated code to see if it at least compiles - but not much.

    Where they genuinely are transformative is in visual art, because there form largely is function.  In a remarkably short time AI image generation has progressed from putting too many fingers on hands - or attaching hands at the elbow - to putting the hinges on the wrong side of the door.  (As in, adjacent to the doorknob.)

    I haven't had time to play with AI art much lately but I'd like to get back into it.  Last time I tested it it fell apart when you tried to put more than one character in a scene, and I'm hoping for some progress there.


Disclaimer: New slow cooker arrived.  I'm going to test it out next week with a duck.  That was not the plan but somehow the supermarket is out of chickens.

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