• The Australian Federal Police - our equivalent of the FBI - now have the authority to compel Australian social network providers (of which there are none) to hand over or even alter the details of your accounts.  (Tutanota)
  
  Of course this had strong bipartisan support as only the very worst legislation does.
  
  And of course the FBI does this already, even where they're forbidden to do so by law, but it doesn't help anything to grant such broad powers.  Basically all networks now need to be designed with the explicit expectation of faithless nodes.
  
  Now, that's not a news site - it's the blog of a company selling encrypted email - but it's an entirely legitimate concern.
  
  
  

Tech News

• A Node.js library that is downloaded 3 million times a week - and is used in Amazon's developer libraries - has a remote execution flaw.  (HTTPToolkit)
  
  An attacker that can convince you to read a malicious URL can run whatever code they like on your server.
  
  The problem is it uses the vm module to run untrusted code - when the vm module explicitly says not to use it to run untrusted code.
  
  
  
• If you're stuck at home in Australia waiting for one of (1) the 70% vaccination target to be met and things at least in NSW open up again, (2) the police kick your door down over a Facebook post that they posted for you, or (3) your package arrives in the mail don't bet too much on option 3.  (ZDNet)
  
  I understand they have staff out sick, can't easily hire more with this fucking lockdown going on, and are working to shift a much greater than usual volume, but I'm not sure how stopping accepting packages for three days is meant to help.
  
  
  
• Get your own Amiga!  (Apollo Core)
  
  In case you're too young to have joined in the fun back in the 80s and 90s, the Vampire V4+ has a Motorola-compatible "68080" chip implemented in an FPGA - not emulated - with 512MB of RAM and a new (but compatible) chipset.
  
  It's around eight times faster than the most powerful stock Amiga ever sold - the A4000 - and uses just 2W of power.  It has both Amiga-style mouse and joystick ports and USB, plus the usual things like Ethernet, don't-call-it-HDMI-and-we-don't-need-to-pay-royalties, and an internal CF slot and an external SD card slot for extra storage.  (Actually, that should also be a don't-call-it-SD slot.)
  
  About 600 Euros so it's not exactly a bargain unless you compare it with what those systems cost originally in which case it is absolutely dirt cheap.
  
  
  
• On the other end of the scale, if you're looking for an AMD motherboard with Thunderbolt 4 the Asus ProArt B550 Creator is one.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  One of exactly two such, in fact.
  
  It has dual Thunderbolt 4 ports, dual 2.5Gb Ethernet ports, dual M.2 slots, HDMI out, DisplayPort in - it's routed to the Thunderbolt ports - and otherwise the usual bits and pieces.  Oh, and a PS/2 combo keyboard and mouse port in case you have a 30 year old keyboard that you just can't bear to part ways with yet.
  
  I wonder how well it works if you just plug two of these together with a Thunderbolt cable.

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13 "Model M"
Ah, you're one of those ones who hates his co-workers.   My first mech had Cherry MX Blues, but after that I switched to tactiles.

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, September 03 2021 06:59 AM (eqaFC)

Posted by: J Greely at Friday, September 03 2021 12:33 PM (ZlYZd)

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• ARM China has hoisted the black flag and started slitting throats.  (ExtremeTech)
  
  SoftBank - owners of ARM - thought it was a good idea to form a joint venture with China where they only held 49% of the company.  The CEO of the joint venture was fired last year for running a business on the side, and went rogue, claiming he owns the company, and started firing any staff who wouldn't follow his instructions.
  
  The Chinese authorities are perfectly happy with this situation because it lets them walk away with a lot of ARM intellectual property.  Older designs - up to the A77 - but not garbage.
  
  Of course this means that no-one with any sense will enter a joint venture with China again, but it was a pretty dumb move to start with.
  
  
  
• Meanwhile China is working to scrub what's left of its internet of inconvenient truths.  (Bloomberg)
  
  It appears they've recently started heading back from fascism to communism, which means the oppression will remain the same but the economy will disintegrate.
  
  
  

• Movie companies want VPNs to lose the P.  (TorrentFreak)
  
  In essence - given the way a VPN works - they want to ban arithmetic.  That's what it all comes down to - all the laws on end-to-end encryption and backdoors for law enforcement and VPN logging are attempts to ban arithmetic.
  
  
  
• The best consumer hard drives.  (AnandTech)
  
  While I'd love to go SSD-only, it still costs at least three times as much per gigabyte, and doesn't really make sense if you just want a big storage array where you dump copies of everything in existence.  
  
  Since there are now only three makers of hard drives - Seagate, Western Digital, and Toshiba - the roundup is relatively straightforward, and they helpfully highlight the best bargains in green.
  
  
  
• Which reminds me: I recently said there are no good small Android tablets.
  
  I was incorrect.  There's the Lenovo Tab M8 FHD.  (Lenovo)
  
  It's the smaller cousin to the 10" model I got recently.  Same 8-core CPU, but with just 3GB RAM and 32GB of built-in storage.  But it does have a 1920x1200 screen, which is what I see as the minimum for good typography at that screen size (which matters if you read a lot), and it would be a hell of a lot faster than my ancient Nexus 7.
  
  And for $120 you can't go too far wrong.  Except that it's completely unavailable in Australia.  Even eBay turned up empty.  I could order it from AliExpress and keep my fingers crossed for six weeks.
  
  Lenovo also seems to have released four new 11" tablets - the P11, P11 Plus, P11 Pro, and Yoga Tab 11.  Those are rather more expensive (and a lot bigger and heavier) but the P11 Pro has a 2560x1600 OLED display, which would be great for watching TV and movies.
  
  
  
• A bug in the latest version of the Google Search App prevents some models of Android phones from making or receiving phone calls.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  I understand that there are people who still do that.

Posted by: Rick C at Wednesday, September 01 2021 12:00 AM (aQ0eC)

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• Disk prices are coming back down now that the Chia mining craze has started to fizzle out, but graphics card prices are on their way back up.
  
  I've also notice that supplies of higher-end AMD cards have dried up again, though supplies of the 6600 XT and 6700 XT seem good.
  
  
  
• 40% of code suggestions made by GitHub's new AI tool Copilot contain security vulnerabilities.  (TechRadar)
  
  That's, uh, not good.

• AMD's new Threadripper Pro 5995WX is up to 40% faster than the current 3995WX.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  That's a huge jump in performance because these two CPUs have the same number of cores (64) and the same power consumption (280W).
  
  I would have expected these high-end chips to be limited by the power budget and/or heat and not a lot faster than existing models, but it looks like AMD has been busy the last few months.
  
  
  
• The Gigabyte Radeon RX 6600 XT Eagle is a graphics card.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  It's one of the cheapest cards available from the current generation and it works, and it's avail...  Well, I can't find it in stock in Australia, but it exists.
  
  
  
• Google Play turned a profit of $8.5 billion in 2019 on $11.2 billion in revenue.  (Thurrott.com)
  
  I assume that's net revenue - their 30% cut - and not gross payments. But I do have to wonder how you spend $2.7 billion to run a website.
  
  
  
• I'm tempted to build my new PC in one of these.  (Thermaltake)
  
  It supports two XL-ATX motherboards, dual power supplies, and at least 21 disk drives (I had to look at the parts list to figure that out).
  
  You can increase that to 31 with a couple of hot-swap SSD cages, but those cost extra.  I could have Windows on one side and Linux on the other, and stuff it full of cheap disk drives in a RAID-Z3 config.  Bigger and cheaper than any NAS, if you were going to buy a Linux box as well.

Posted by: PatBuckman at Monday, August 30 2021 10:14 PM (DHVaH)

Posted by: normal at Tuesday, August 31 2021 11:44 AM (obo9H)

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• I have a copy of the mee.nu system up and running on the new server.  I do need to test more before switching over, since we're upgrading the versions of Python and the database server at the same time - but we're certainly getting there.  
  
  Expect things to be about twice as fast as before as well.
  
  
  
• Is Microsoft hiring State Department spokescritters to handle its communications?
  
  You can't upgrade old hardware to Windows 11.  Well, no, you can, but you have to do it manually rather than using the automated upgrade tool.  Well, no, you can do it manually, but then you won't get any updates, ever.  (PC World)
  
  Wait...
  
  No updates.
  
  No updates.
  
  Wrap it up, I'll take it.
  
  

• You can't get the chips, you know: All sorts of integrated circuits are in short supply, not just huge expensive ones like GPUs. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  I noticed recently that the new Asus Ryzen-based NUCs lack the headphone jack found on the old model. Today I discovered that so do recent units of certainy QNAP NASes.
  
  It's not that they decided users no longer wanted audio output. They can't get the chips - or rather, the chips are prioritised elsewhere.
  
  
  
• Beware the benchmarks, they will lie: Upcoming Alder Lake desktop parts from Intel can draw up to 350W if the motherboard unlocks the power limits.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Motherboard makers like to do just that because it's an easy way to win benchmarks.  Downside is it runs very hot and very loud.
  
  AMD is not innocent of this trick but is not guilty to nearly the same degree.
  
  
  
• How Microsoft, Google, Apple, and IBM will help the US improve its cybersecurity.  (Info Security)
  
  Well, IBM hasn't been in the headlines with a giant security catastrophe in the past week, so they've got that going for them, which is nice.
  
  
  
• Microsoft's Cosmos DB security bug has been described as "the worst cloud vulnerability you can imagine".  (Ars Technica)
  
  Don't use cloud databases.  Cloud servers, yeah, okay, though I still prefer to run my own.  Cloud services, maybe.  Cloud databases, hell no.
  
  
  
• What's Facebook been up to lately?  I've been busy kicking Apple, Google, Twitter, Microsoft, Amazon...  Oh, there we go: Facebook Messenger silently censors links in private messages.
  
  
  
  
  I'm ready for my closeup, Mr Skynet.  Just get it over with.
  
  
  

Unsolved Mythteries: The Hole In HoleEN Video of the Day

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• Microsoft is standing firm on the hardware requirements for Windows 11.  (ZDNet)
  
  Computers sold as recently as 2018 will likely be unable to upgrade, abandoning hundreds of millions of users.  Because - as the article analyses Microsoft's reported statistics - the newer hardware reduces the likelihood of a user encountering hardware-related system crashes from 0.3% to 0.2%.
  
  They did update their list of supported hardware to include the five year old i7-7820HQ....  Because they are still using it themselves in the Surface Studio 2.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  
  
• Firm like custard.  (ZDNet)
  
  Got an older PC and want to install Windows 11?  Go right ahead, says Microsoft.
  
  ...
  
  You can't upgrade, but you can download and install Windows 11 using your Windows 10 license key.  It will work fine.  They just hate you.
  
  I do now have one computer that will run Windows 11 without fussing around, and another is on its way.  Still don't care though, so not much has changed.

• Fractal Design's new Torrent case - featuring 180mm fans and called the best case of 2021 by some reviewers - has been recalled because the fan controller can short out and burn your house down.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Well, very unlikely to actually burn your house down since case fans only run at 12V, but still a problem.
  
  
  
• There's a 20GB version of the RTX 3080 Ti on the way.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Since everything is dumb it will likely cost more than the 24GB RTX 3090.
  
  
  
• If you add more than 16777216 items to a JavaScript map you get a truly helpful error message.  (search(void*))
  
  Uncaught RangeError: Value undefined out of range for undefined options property undefined
  
  
  
• Which Android tablet is right for you?  (ZDNet)
  
  There are no good small Android tablets available.  It's not even that they're overpriced; there just aren't any.  At 10" and up there are some options, mostly from Samsung.  I'm pretty happy with my Lenovo but I'm not sure it's still available.  With things going randomly out of stock all the time in Australia anyway it's hard to say.
  
  
  
• Microsoft's Cosmos DB cloud database had a tiny flaw.  (ZDNet)
  
  That flaw being that anyone else could take over your entire database and you'd never know.
  
  Oops.

Posted by: Grumpy and Recalcitrant at Saturday, August 28 2021 09:30 PM (nRMeC)

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• Western Digital has confirmed that it swapped the flash in the Blue SN550 SSD for cheaper parts.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Under continuous write load performance eventually drops to 390MB/s, where the original model had a baseline of 610MB/s.  It's not terrible but...  If you're just playing games and doing regular office tasks, you won't notice at all.  You'd only see it if you're doing things like editing video or high-resolution camera raws.
  
  In which case, buy a Samsung 970 Evo Plus.
  
  
  
• Even Samsung was caught in the act.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  They quietly replaced the controller in their well-regarded 970 EVO Plus range with a newer and better one.  The new version is 10% slower in one test - unqueued sequential reads - but as much as 50% faster on random reads.

• AMD's mid-gen upgrade Milan-X server CPUs have broken cover with a list price of $10,746.99.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  That's for the new top of the line 64 core part, now with 768MB of L3 cache instead of 256MB.  The existing version costs $9424.99 so it's not that much of a markup.
  
  Desktop versions with the new and larger cache - and an average 15% better gaming performance - are expected by the end of the year.
  
  
  
• Zen 3 Threadrippers are also starting to leak out.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Zen 3 arrived on the desktop last year, and is already out for servers and laptops, but the workstation lineup has been stuck on Zen 2.  Threadripper is expected to be updated in November and Threadripper Pro by February.
  
  Though Zen 3+ and Zen 4 are both expected next year, which will put workstation users behind the curve again.
  
  
  
• Apple appears to have weaseled its way out of a class action suit over their App Store restrictions.  (Axios)
  
  They don't appear to have given up much at all.  Developers will now be permitted to email their uses about payment options other than Apple, and Apple won't deliberately cheat the search results.
  
  And those are the highlights of the deal.
  
  
  
• There's a big bad bug in Synology networking gear.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Ugh.
  
  
  
• Moderators of some of the largest forums on Reddit demanded that the site do more to clamp down on free speech.  Reddit said no.  (Motherboard)

  Dissent is a part of Reddit and the foundation of democracy.  Reddit is a place for open and authentic discussion and debate.  This includes conversations that question or disagree with popular consensus.  This includes conversations that criticize those that disagree with the majority opinion.  This includes protests that criticize or object to our decisions on which communities to ban from the platform.

  Reddit isn't quite Big Tech but it's no longer a plucky little startup, and even this mild defense of free speech is good to see.
  
  Motherboard - owned by those shitheads at Vice - is of course deeply offended.

• I've been working crazy hours lately but it's not without its benefits.  I hadn't even gotten through explaining why I was asking for them to buy me two laptops in the space of a month when my boss approved the request, passed it to accounts, looked up the tech specs and asked if I thought he should get one himself to replace his MacBook.
  
  And accounts ordered it an hour later.
  
  It's the Dell Inspiron 16, a pretty solid desktop replacement laptop.  3072x1920 screen - exactly the same as the 16" MacBook Pro, 8-core CPU, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD, and an RTX 3060.  It matches or beats my desktop system on everything except screen resolution, but I can just plug it into the desktop monitor to fix that.
  
  I'll probably upgrade it to 64GB of RAM and 2TB of SSD if I'm happy with it, because until I have more free time I don't need a faster CPU or graphics card than that.
  
  
  
• Google is paying Apple $15 billion to remain the default search engine for iOS.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Just build your own universe.
  
  
  

Tech News

• Intel's i9-12900K "destroys" the Ryzen 5950X on both single and multi-threaded benchmark.  (WCCFTech)
  
  I say benchmark because it is just one, and that one is Geekbench.  The problem is that Geekbench already says that the 11900K is faster that the 5950X, and that is laughably untrue.
  
  
  
• CanIUse is a site that tracks which browsers support which features so you don't accidentally build something that works only on Safari.  CanIStillUse tracks features so that you know when something is going to break because Google deleted it in the next Chrome release.  (Jim Nielsen)
  
  Which they do rather a lot.
  
  
  
• OnlyFans has adopted antidisentumblrarianism.  (Variety)
  
  This is where you plan to drop porn from your site to make it more acceptable - like Tumblr - only to realise just in time that porn accounts for 98% of your gross revenue and doing that would lead to disintegration and your ashes being sold off to the guys who run Wordpress.
  
  
  
• There's a major bug in the Go version of Ethereum, which is the one everyone uses.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Unpatched it could lead to the Ethereum blockchain splitting into shards that no longer communicate with each other.
  
  This was discovered before it happened, at least.  An audit of a new blockchain confirmed that it precisely matched the behaviour of Ethereum - as intended - but also revealed that the behaviour of Ethereum was wrong.  (In certain very specific cases.)
  
  
  
• Maths can help you escape a hungry bear.  (Quanta)
  
  Hungry bears being relatively uncommon in the classroom.
  
  

• The increasingly aptly named Hot Chips conference is on again, and though I haven't had time to do more than scan the headlines, a couple of talks stood out.
  
  The Cerebras CS-2 is the largest - and probably the most expensive - computer chip in the world.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Clocking in at 70 square inches - where one square inch is already very large - it features 850,000 cores and 40GB of cache built with 2.6 trillion transistors.
  
  Its TDP is a very modest 15kW, as much as an entire rack full of regular servers.
  
  
  
• Meanwhile the Esperanto ET-SoC-1 has a mere 1092 cores and measures slightly less than one square inch.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  That's 1088 minions and 4 maxions in their terminology, all sharing the open-source RISC-V architecture.  The entire chip uses around 20W in its default configuration.
  
  
  

Tech News

• If you control language, you control thought.  (Zyppy)
  
  Google employees think antitrust issues are absurd because Google forbids any meaningful discussion of antitrust issues.
  
  This is spectacularly unhealthy.
  
  
  
• Google has said staff have no right to protest the company's choice of clients.  (Bloomberg)
  
  Which as a matter of employment law is not entirely correct given Google's base of operations.
  
  
  
• A hacker stole over 600,000 private photos and videos from iCloud without Apple noticing.  (LA Times)
  
  By the highly sophisticated trick of pretending to be from Apple tech support.
  
  
  
• And fake OpenSea support staff are stealing NFTs.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Never trust anyone with anything.
  
  
  
• If you need to break into a Windows 10 computer and don't have a Razer gaming mouse a SteelSeries keyboard will do the trick nicely.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  I actually have one of these.  It's the size of a '54 Caddy Coupe DeVille and has literally dozens of programmable keys.  Unfortunately it's kind of mushy to type on and I'm using a Dell Bluetooth model instead.
  
  
  
• If you unlock the bootloader on the incredibly expensive Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3, all the cameras stop working.  (XDA Developers)
  
  Right to repair?  Never heard of it.
  
  
  
• Another day, another generation: Hololive Indonesia has opened auditions for a third generation of talents.  (Twitter)
  
  Something I didn't know early on is that all of the Indonesian girls are mutli-lingual, speaking at a minimum Indonesian, English, and Japanese.  Iofi from Gen 1 also speaks Korean and German, and Risu of course speaks fluent Squirrel.
  
  Meanwhile YouTube is still unsubscribing tens of thousands of people daily from HoloEN Gen 2, thanks to their infallible fucking algorithm.  Might as well just send up the puffs of smoke and make it Pope.

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, August 26 2021 12:36 AM (eqaFC)

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