Say Weeeeeee!
Ahhhhhh!

Saturday, September 14

Geek

Daily News Stuff 14 September 2024

Mermaids R Us Edition

Top Story


Tech News


Pixy Is Watching

Quality Assurance in Another World continues to shine.

Yes, it's another "trapped in a VR game" isekai - and we all saw how that would work in real life with ENReco* - but it once you swallow that pill (and it is at least a variation on the regular capsule) the story is handled with more intelligence and empathy than most such.

It's listed on MAL as 13 episodes, which means there's no way in hell it will reach the end of the story. 

I was thinking it was paced like a 24/26 episode run, but a quick comparison with the manga covers shows that episode 8 of the anime takes us no further than volume 3 of the manga - out of 13.  So we probably need three seasons just to catch up.




* ENReco - ENigmatic Recollection - is a Hololive production where all 19 of the Hololive EN girls are roleplaying as amnesiac versions of themselves transported to be heroes in another world.

They were all booted from the game server by technical glitches twice in the first thirty minutes.



Disclaimer: Do or donut, there is no fry.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:37 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 1330 words, total size 12 kb.

Friday, September 13

Geek

Daily News Stuff 13 September 2024

Big Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom Edition

Top Story



Tech News



Mu Mu Music Video of the Day



Disclaimer: Show me the man and I'll show you the 317-count indictment.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:45 PM | Comments (10) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 297 words, total size 3 kb.

Thursday, September 12

Geek

Daily News Stuff 12 September 2024

Freeze Dried Spam In A Bottle Edition

Top Story


Tech News



Disclaimer: There's a thing in the thing.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:26 PM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 232 words, total size 2 kb.

Wednesday, September 11

Geek

Daily News Stuff 11 September 2024

Splrrrrg Edition

Top Story



Tech News



Disclaimer: Blrrrrrrrgh.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:14 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 151 words, total size 2 kb.

Tuesday, September 10

Geek

Daily News Stuff 10 September 2024

Ame Mori Edition

Top Story

  • Apple's iPhone 16 is one more than the iPhone 15. (Ars Technica)

    One more button.

    After taking the buttons away, Apple put one back.


  • I've ordered the Calliope Mori and Amelia Watson Hyte Y40 Hololive Limited Edition cases that I've been chasing for the past year.

    Hyte now offers international shipping... By air. Which for something as large and heavy as a PC case costs as much as the case itself.

    And these are already expensive enough.

    The local distributor - there is only one supplier of Hyte cases in Australia - finally has them listed. Price is a straight conversion from USD to AUD, and the shipping cost is about 10% of what Hyte wanted to deliver by UPS.


Tech News

  • The MSI Prestige 13 AI+ Evo is almost a good laptop. (Liliputing)

    It has the mid-tier Intel Ultra 7 258V, 32GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD, a 13.3" 2880x1800 OLED display, two Thunderbolt 4 ports, one USB port, HDMI, a headphone jack, a microSD slot, and two of the Four Essential Keys.

    So close.

    Also, the upcoming Lunar Lake chips are basically all identical except for one thing. If the number ends with 6, it comes with 16GB of RAM; if it ends with 8, 32GB. (The RAM is soldered on to the CPU package, the same way Apple does with all of its chips.)

    They all have 8 CPU cores. The cheaper models have 7 GPU cores while the more expensive ones have 8. And they all have a 37W peak TDP.

    There's very little point in paying for a more expensive model; just make sure you get one with enough RAM.


  • Apache Cassandra 5.0 is here and it has indexes. (Datastax)

    It's a database. You might think that indexes are something a database should have long before it hits 1.0. You would be right.


  • API complexity is a lie. (API Changelog)

    Horseshit. You must be trying to sell me something.
    This article is brought to you with the help of our supporter: Speakeasy.
    Speakeasy provides you with the tools to craft truly developer-friendly integration experiences for your APIs: idiomatic, strongly typed, lightweight & customizable SDKs in 8+ languages, Terraform providers & always-in-sync docs. Increase API user adoption with friction-free integrations.
    No. I don't think I shall.


  • Crowdstrike hopes its customers won't sue it into oblivion. (The Register)

    I hope they will.


Disclaimer: If wishes were fishes, you could set a man on fire.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:09 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 416 words, total size 4 kb.

Monday, September 09

Geek

Daily News Stuff 9 September 2024

TikToking Along Edition

Top Story

  • Idiots who tried TikTok's viral "free money glitch" at ATMs are getting reported for fraud.  (Gizmodo)

    The "glitch" involved depositing a cheque that you wrote on your own account into your own account at an ATM, and then withdrawing the funds immediately before the cheque bounced.

    There is a term for this.

    Though doing it from and to your own bank account is an artistic touch of idiocy I had never considered.
    It's not entirely clear how many people may have tried this scheme, but the Journal describes it as "thousands." The viral meme got so popular that tens of millions of people have watched TikTok videos about the "glitch" at this point, according to the Journal.
    People haven't gotten dumber, it's just that technology allows them to do more dumb things faster.


  • Though considering that many of these people posted video of themselves committing grand larceny in a manner where the bank also has video of them, maybe they really are getting dumber.


  • Though again, considering that criminal mastermind Frank Abnagale, the subject of the movie Catch Me If You Can, only managed to make off with $1448.60 in his own cheque fraud scheme before being caught and sent to prison, maybe not.


Tech News

Disclaimer: Port out, starboard home...

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:15 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 431 words, total size 4 kb.

Sunday, September 08

Geek

Daily News Stuff 8 September 2024

Baked Beans Are Off Edition

Top Story



Tech News



Pixy Is Watching

The only anime I've watched in the past week is ENreco.

To be fair, they streamed about 40 hours of it per day.*




* Seriously.  Here's the playlist for Day One.  23 streams totaling nearly 70 hours.

Update: Total running time was 394 hours over eight days.  Or about the same length as One Piece, which has been airing continuously for 25 years.



Disclaimer: Maybe he could bring back...  Wait, Stargate is MGM.  Never mind then.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:47 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 211 words, total size 3 kb.

Saturday, September 07

Geek

Daily News Stuff 7 September 2024

Apple Pie And Mice Cream Edition

Top Story

  • College grades have become a charade.  It's time to abolish them.  (MSN)

    The colleges?  Sounds good to me.
    If everyone outside hard-core engineering, math or pre-med courses can easily get an A, the whole system loses meaning. It fails to make distinctions between different levels of achievement or to motivate students to work hard on their academic pursuits. All the while, it allows students to pretend—to themselves and to others—that they are performing exceptionally well. Worse, this system creates perverse incentives. To name but one, it actively punishes those who take risks by enrolling in truly challenging courses.
    All true, if somewhat less daring than I had hoped.

    The proposal is that every course be reduced to pass/fail.  Which is better than the current situation, but doesn't actually fix the problem.

    I like my plan better.


Tech News

  • Threads is full of exactly the sort of tiresome idiots you mute on Twitter.  (Werd)

    Full of them.

    Thank you for your service, Facebook.  You truly took one for the team.


  • Cisco has warned that there is a backdoor admin account in its own license managing tool.  (Bleeping Computer)

    The tool Cisco provides to manage your software licenses for the hardware you bought from Cisco also allows anyone nearby to break into your network.  If you're dumb enough to leave the license manager open to the internet, you're toast.

    (And there are lots of people who are exactly that dumb.  They post on Threads.)


  • Godot - an open source library for game developers - desperately hoped that Unity wouldn't commit suicide.  (Game Developer)

    As we covered at the time, Unity did indeed commit suicide, implementing a new payment structure that could easily cost more than 100% of a game's revenue.

    Godot is one of Unity's main competitors, but it is a less polished library built by a smaller team, so taking on all those developers fleeing Unity was going to be a struggle, and they knew it.

    Makes me like the Godot team all the more.

    (Also, it's officially pronounced however you want.)


  • Lenovo's latest Thinkpad Carbon X1 (Gen 13) is almost a good laptop.  (Liliputing)

    Well, it is a good laptop (though not a cheap one).  Intel's latest Lunar Lake CPU, up to 32GB of RAM and 2TB of SSD, dual Thunderbolt 4 ports, and a 14" 2880x1800 OLED display.  Those screens are great.

    And it has the Four Essential Keys.  Not in my preferred arrangement, but they are all there.

    And it weighs less than 1kg.

    What's not to like?

    Two things: First, pricing starts at $1999.  This is not in the same ZIP code as cheap.

    Second, Lunar Lake.  Apart from the fact that you cannot upgrade the RAM, ever, it is not all that fast.  We haven't seen the numbers yet, but with just four P cores and four E cores, and no hyper-threading, even if its single-core performance is extraordinary it is unlikely to outperform a four year old Ryzen 5800U for multi-threaded tasks.

    And I already have a four year old Ryzen 5800U.  Well, the very slightly updated 7730U, but it's the same silicon.


  • Google is now facing another antitrust case, this time in the online advertising market.  (The Verge)

    This is the gold standard of "let's you and him fight".


  • An AI company's misconfigured server exposed 5TB of patient mental health records.  (HackRead)

    This includes full patient identification - names, addresses, drivers licenses, insurance information; medical records including health conditions, family histories, and traumatic experiences; test results and prescription medications; and audio and video recordings of therapy sessions.

    All sitting on a server connected directly to the internet without a password.

    This is the worst security fuckup I have ever seen.  Whether the data was stolen is unknown - it was discovered by a security researcher - and will not be known unless or until the data starts circulating on the Dark Web.


  • Sony's $100 million woke flop Concord is now deceased, having failed to reach 1000 players in the entire world in the ten days since release.

    Meanwhile Valve's competing game Deadlock, which you cannot buy, has had zero advertising, and has not even been announced yet, has over 170,000 players.  (Tweaktown)

    All you need to do is not actively hate your customers.



Disclaimer: Or even put up a good pretense.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:42 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 729 words, total size 7 kb.

Friday, September 06

Geek

Daily News Stuff 6 September 2024

Hail Beringia Edition

Top Story



Tech News

  • The Windows 11 23H2 Ryzen patch is here.  Does it deliver performance as promised by the preview?  Yes.  Maybe.  Sometimes.  (YouTube)

    Interestingly this video tests Windows 10 alongside Windows 11 2023 and 2024 versions with and without the patch, and Windows 10 often runs faster than unpatched Windows 11.

    The problem is that there is a 10% variance in performance between two installs of the same patch version of Windows 11 on the same computer.

    That's the kind of thing that leads to bald hardware reviewers.


  • There's a live action Minecraft movie coming.  (YouTube)

    If you know of the fuss about the original design of Sonic for the Sonic the Hedgehog movie, this looks worse.

    If you don't know of that fuss, simply put, this movie is going to bomb.  Hard.  With a 350 million crazed Minecraft fans in the world, there is no way this is going to break even.

    There's already a gold standard in this kind of thing, in the form of the Lego Movie.

    Everything the Lego Movie did right (which is a lot), this does wrong.


  • China's 7nm chips are close in performance and size to Taiwan's 5nm chips.  (Nikkei Asia)

    Only problem is that Taiwan is now ramping up 2nm production.  And it will take China a decade to get there.

    China's 7nm chips are produced using 14nm equipment with multi-patterning, carefully writing over the chip repeatedly using optical effects to produce a smaller feature size than can be achieved directly.

    The problem is that this is rather like saving on painting a car by buying half-price paint...  That requires twelve coats to provide an acceptable finish.


  • Meanwhile Russia has been dodging sanctions and buying up spare parts for its own chipmaking facilities.  (Tom's Hardware)

    Which operate on the 90nm node.  Some of them.  Others are all the way back at 200nm, which is the same process used for Stonehenge.


  • My most downvoted StackOverflow answer.  (GitHub)

    If you're not interested in the fine details of C vs. C++ arrays, at least scroll down the the quoted Reddit post at the end.  It is a thing of beauty.


  • It is truly an exciting time to be buying a new PC.  (WCCFTech)

    Intel's upcoming desktop Core 7 265K is 2% faster than the current 14700K.

    But at least it probably won't commit suicide.


Disclaimer: Probably.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:09 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 496 words, total size 5 kb.

Thursday, September 05

Geek

Daily News Stuff 5 September 2024

Not Just Anyone Edition

Top Story

  • Ilya Sutskever, former chief scientist at OpenAI, has raised $1 billion for his new company, Safe Superintelligence.  (Reuters)  (archive site)

    What is the company planning?
    "It's important for us to be surrounded by investors who understand, respect and support our mission, which is to make a straight shot to safe superintelligence and in particular to spend a couple of years doing R&D on our product before bringing it to market," [CEO Daniel] Gross said in an interview.
    Okay, but what is the company planning?
    Sutskever said his new venture made sense because he "identified a mountain that's a bit different from what I was working on."
    Okay, but what-
    Gross said they spend hours vetting if candidates have "good character", and are looking for people with extraordinary capabilities rather than overemphasizing credentials and experience in the field.
    What-
    "One thing that excites us is when you find people that are interested in the work, that are not interested in the scene, in the hype," he added.
    Yes, but-
    Sutskever was an early advocate of scaling, a hypothesis that AI models would improve in performance given vast amounts of computing power. The idea and its execution kicked off a wave of AI investment in chips, data centers and energy, laying the groundwork for generative AI advances like ChatGPT.
    Okay, but-
    Sutskever said he will approach scaling in a different way than his former employer, without sharing details.
    Great.
    "Everyone just says scaling hypothesis. Everyone neglects to ask, what are we scaling?" he said.
    WHAT ARE YOU SCALING?
    "Some people can work really long hours and they'll just go down the same path faster. It's not so much our style. But if you do something different, then it becomes possible for you to do something special."
    Scaling investors' money into your pockets, apparently.
     
     

Tech News


Disclaimer: Multi-track drifting!

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:50 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 446 words, total size 4 kb.

<< Page 1 of 661 >>
116kb generated in CPU 0.0203, elapsed 0.233 seconds.
59 queries taking 0.2186 seconds, 395 records returned.
Powered by Minx 1.1.6c-pink.
Using http / http://ai.mee.nu / 393