• Life hack: You can get Japanese products sooner (often by months) and cheaper by simply ordering them from Amazon Japan.
  
  The Pop Up Parade figures for Kiara and Ayame which I had on pre-order through Amazon US, with estimated shipping dates in March and February respectively, are in stock at Amazon Japan right now.
  
  
  
• The Telescreen (Amazon $499) was in front of the painting (Etsy $299).  Marketing companies aren't actually listening in on your private conversations.  Probably.  (Ars Technica)
  
  Even if they say they are.
  
  A marketing team within Cox Media Group claimed it had a tool it called Active Listening, which involved, not to put too fine a point on it, illegally spying on other companies' customers, with the tag line "It's true.  Your devices are listening to you."
  
  If it were actually true, the resulting lawsuits would burn the entire company to the ground.  Fortunately it seems to be marketing, or in other words, a complete lie.
  
  
  

Tech News

• Regular desktop motherboards now support 256GB of RAM.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  You can't get the necessary 64GB memory modules yet, but those are coming next year.
  
  Which is not very far away.
  
  
  
• The updates from Asus and ASRock for 256GB memory support also leaked details of AMD's upcoming Ryzen 8000G chips.  (Notebook Check)
  
  These are laptop chips retargeted for desktop use.  That means they have much better onboard graphics - up to six times faster than the existing desktop chips from AMD - but are limited to eight cores and probably have fewer PCIe lanes.
  
  These will probably be legitimately announced at CES.
  
  
  
• Nvidia has a "Super Hot Run" of chips in the ovens at TSMC for new AI cards to be delivered to China.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  The urgency is because (a) Nvidia's mainstream AI cards have been banned from export to China, including cards that were previously assembled in China, and (b) if they don't get the new, legal cards shipped and fulfil orders quickly, they will likely get banned too.
  
  
  
• The Utah Supreme Court has ruled that police cannot force you to provide the unlock code for your phone.  (Ars Technica)
  
  This is pretty obviously protected under the Fifth Amendment, but even so some state courts have ruled otherwise (looking at you, New Jersey) so it is likely to head to SCOTUS.
  
  
  
• Twitch has cleared up its confusing content guidelines, and allows some nudity and sexual content so long as it is clearly labeled as adult material.  (Engadget)
  
  Okay.  Good for them I guess.
  
  

• The square ones in the middle always get me.  (XKCD)
  
  I only managed 57.
  
  
  
•  That lasted two whole days.  (Engadget)
  
  "We didn't realise that if we said you could post porn, you would actually post porn.  That is not okay, even if we said it was okay."
  
  
  

Posted by: normal at Saturday, December 16 2023 09:11 PM (bg2DR)

Posted by: wheels at Sunday, December 17 2023 11:11 AM (DTsuO)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, December 17 2023 11:38 AM (PiXy!)

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