• Gen Z isn't going to solve your tech skills crisis. (ZDNet)
  
  Our most recent hires have been Gen X because, yeah, Gen Z can't code for shit.

• Australia is preparing for the launch of two lunar rovers. (The Conversation)
  
  One in a partnership with Japanese and Canadian companies, for launch in 2024, and one in partnership with NASA, for launch in 2026.
  
  The automated rovers will be tasked with searching the lunar soil for indicators of water.  We know it's there, but we don't know much about how it is distributed.
  
  
  
• Minisforum has a new mini-PC based on the AMD 4700S. (WCCFTech)
  
  This chip is a recycled PlayStation 5 processor with failed graphics cores, and... It's not completely terrible.  Memory is soldered onto the motherboard though, because the PS5 has no provision for anything else.
  
  
  
• Start11 is out of beta. (Thurrott.com)
  
  You still probably don't want to upgrade to Windows 11, but if you buy a new system new may be stuck with it.
  
  
  
• AMD's Zen 4, Zen 4D, and Zen 5 are on their way. (WCCFTech)
  
  Zen 4 is the big update due at the end of next year, with the new socket, and DDR5 and PCIe 5 support.  Zen 4D is an alternate version of Zen 4 that packs 16 cores onto each chiplet rather than the current 8, at the expense of cache size. Which might mean a 32-core chip for standard desktops, but might also find its way only into servers.
  
  Zen 5 is the next big iteration after that, and will come in a mix-and-match configuration - one Zen 5 die and one Zen 4D die.  So 8 of the fastest cores available and 16 cores that are merely very good.
  
  Zen 5 is expected at the end of 2023 - a much shorter schedule than Zen 4.  There was originally planned to be a Zen 3+ out around now, but most versions of that got cancelled to focus resources on Zen 4 and Zen 5.
  
  
  
• The McRib is now an NFT. (Yahoo)
  
  Can't eat NFTs.  Well, I have celiac so I can't eat McRibs either, so for me there's not a whole lot of difference.
  
  
  

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, November 05 2021 12:50 AM (Z0GF0)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, November 05 2021 01:51 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, November 05 2021 06:36 AM (Z0GF0)

Posted by: Frank at Friday, November 05 2021 09:22 AM (rglbH)

Posted by: normal at Friday, November 05 2021 09:29 AM (obo9H)

Posted by: J Greely at Friday, November 05 2021 10:10 AM (ZlYZd)

7 Back in the '90s, a contractor submitted his code for a peer review - with all the test cases looking good....on paper.  I did something he probably never ran into before, I ran the code.  Or at least tried to, it blew up all over the place and never successfully ran.  That peer review was VERY short

Posted by: Frank at Friday, November 05 2021 03:03 PM (rglbH)

Posted by: J Greely at Friday, November 05 2021 03:22 PM (ZlYZd)

Posted by: Frank at Friday, November 05 2021 04:29 PM (rglbH)

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• Looks like congratulations are in order for the good people of the Commonwealth of Virginia, including my friend Brickmuppet.
  
  
  
• Mark Zuckerberg's goal is the world of Karl Schroeder's Permanence.  (Vice)
  
  When everything is monetised, only the monets will ever...  Wait, how does that go again?
  
  
  
• Zillow decided to use their price tracking data and clever AI to flip houses wholesale.  They lost their shirts.  (MarketWatch)
  
  In fact, they lost over half a billion dollars worth of shirts, which is a lot of shirts.
  
  What a shame.
  
  
  

Tech News 

• Facebook is shutting down its facial recognition project and deleting all the related data.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Also, I have a great deal to offer on beachfront timeshares in Wyoming.
  
  
  
• Over 30,000 GitLab servers have a serious unpatched vulnerability.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  GitLab is great.  It's one of the best pieces of open source software out there, and I use it every day.  You still need to keep it up to date.
  
  
  
• A deep dive into Google's new Tensor chip, powering the Pixel 6.  (AnandTech)
  
  It looks like this is similar to Samsung's Exynos 2100, but with a different CPU balance and a custom Google AI core.  Which is much faster than the similar cores found in chips from Samsung and Qualcomm, but mostly on things you don't do on a phone.

Posted by: PatBuckman at Thursday, November 04 2021 01:25 AM (r9O5h)

Posted by: normal at Thursday, November 04 2021 01:44 AM (LADmw)

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• An in-depth review of the Surface Pro8.  (Thurrott.com
  
  He judges it the best tablet PC you can buy, but there isn't that much competition right now.  Apple doesn't make one, Dell's attempts kind of suck, and HP has a nice model but seems to hide it away where customers won't find it.
  
  
  

Tech News

Posted by: J Greely at Tuesday, November 02 2021 11:53 PM (ZlYZd)

Posted by: Rick C at Wednesday, November 03 2021 05:26 AM (Z0GF0)

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• Microsoft insists on linking your Windows login to a cloud account.  Now those cloud accounts are under attack.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Unexpectedly.
  
  
  
• Why everything is worse than the government is pretending.

  For their part, the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department say the weird, inflationary economy we're seeing right now is transitory. And they're probably right.

  Yeah, it's going to get much worse.
  
  
  

Tech News

• Everything you didn't want to know about Intel's new Alder Lake CPUs and still won't know after reading the article because they haven't been announced yet but here it is anyway and were afraid to ask because you might get an answer. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  A roundup of the announced facts pre-announcement.
  
  
  
• We still don't know what the hell is going on with neutrinos.  (Quanta)
  
  Devious little bastiches.
  
  
  
• Google Pixel 6 Pro: First impressions.  (Thurrott.com)
  
  
  
• Google Pixel 6 Pro: Second impressions.  (Thurrott.com)
  
  It's a good camera and an okay phone.  Sounds like the solution is Nova Launcher, which does for Android what Stardock does for Windows.

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, November 02 2021 12:45 AM (Z0GF0)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Tuesday, November 02 2021 03:19 AM (r9O5h)

Posted by: normal at Tuesday, November 02 2021 09:18 AM (obo9H)

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, November 02 2021 10:51 AM (Z0GF0)

Posted by: at Sunday, September 10 2023 11:12 PM (aW4rz)

Posted by: at Thursday, September 14 2023 10:57 PM (29rBv)

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• Of the four big projects of the Eternal October, three down, two to go.
  
  Yes, they added another pilot project at the very last minute, but sanity has prevailed and they're planning to use existing software for that and not try to do the custom launch they originally wanted.
  
  The one that required jamming six weeks of work into three days is also mostly done, thanks to an earlier outbreak of sanity.
  
  These posts should return to their earlier form, with the daily anime videos, some time in November, once I've had a chance to go to the bathroom and stuff like that.
  
  
  
• Key takeaways from the Facebook Papers.  (MSN / Washington Post)
  
  1. Somebody somewhere said something mean.
  2. So the government should have absolute control over all forms of human expression.
  3. If you disagree, you're a Nazi.

• New features in Python 3.10.  (Real Python)
  
  Better errors, case statements, better static typing, and various improvements to the standard library.
  
  Meanwhile PyPy has updated to Python 3.8.  Since I use PyPy - because it's four times faster on average - that means it will be at least a year before I get to use case statements in production code.
  
  
  
• The 11 worst features of Windows 11 and how to raise wolves.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Option 1: Don't install Windows 11 in the first place.
  Option 2: Start11 from Stardock.
  
  Start8 was essential with Windows 8.  Start10 was nice to have with Windows 10 but you could live without it.  Looks like Start11 is back to being essential.
  
  It's in beta right now, and will be $5 on release.
  
  
  
• Fuck Razer.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  At best they're being cynical and manipulative, raking in money from overpaid neurotic cretins.  At worst, they actually think they're doing something worthwhile.
  
  Either way, into the volcano.
  
  
  
  

Posted by: Mauser at Sunday, October 31 2021 06:56 PM (Ix1l6)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, October 31 2021 09:58 PM (PiXy!)

Posted by: normal at Sunday, October 31 2021 11:11 PM (obo9H)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, October 31 2021 11:51 PM (PiXy!)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Monday, November 01 2021 01:17 AM (r9O5h)

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• Good news, everyone!
  
  
  We've missed you, BEEG sis.
  
  
  
• Them: You know that job we needed done by Monday?  What if we do this instead.
  Me, thinking: That would reduce the work by 98.3%.
  Me: I like this plan.
  
  
  
• If you're planning a political dirty tricks campaign, maybe don't post your own photo to social media.
  
  
  
• The metaverse is bullshit.  (Outline)
  
  Because we already have it.  It's called the internet.  This is, as always, a land grab.
  
  
  

Tech News

• Can't find an Nvidia RTX 3080 on the store shelves?  You can now get one in the cloud.  (Hot Hardware)
  
  The problem with such cloud gaming efforts has always been that the latency is terrible.  The rendering throughput is fine - it's a real RTX 3080.  But the time between you hitting a control in your game and seeing the results has been more like playing with low-end integrated graphics than with a high-end card.
  
  Nvidia claims they've fixed this.  The article, uselessly, provides Nvidia's chart showing the performance.  Which doesn't include any comparison to any dedicated video card.  The reviewer didn't try to measure this, just frame rates, which were never going to be an issue in the first place.
  
  
  
• AMD's next-generation GPU has been taped out.  (WCCFTech)
  
  "Taped out" is a very old industry term, from when the first integrated circuits were designed using strips of tape on a sheet of glass.
  
  RDNA3 is expected to arrive in Q4 next year - it takes quite a while from tape-out to shipping product - and will bump performance up by two notches.  The planned RX 7700 XT has roughly the same hardware capabilities as the current high-end RX 6900 XT.  At the high end, things could get up to three times faster, but also more expensive.
  
  
  
• OpenWorm is an open worm.  (GitHub)
  
  It's an open source virtual C. elegans.  Because you know you needed a cyber nematode in your life.
  
  
  
• Samsing is working to triple its chip foundry capacity over the next five years.  (WCCFTech)
  
  They also expect to enter mass production of 3nm in the first half of next year.
  
  It will still be at least a year before hardware availability returns to anything like normal.

• The blockchain is like a database server with a thousand-dollar-a-day crack habit.
  
  Some days it has flashes of brilliance, but most of the time its out with your car and your credit card trying to pick up tranny hookers.
  
  
  
• The HP Elite X2 G8 is very similar to my late(ish), lamented Spectre X2s, with updated hardware.  Same 3000x2000 display, silver finish instead of charcoal and copper, and with a 4 core 11th gen CPU rather than the 2 core 7th gen I had.
  
  Hopefully also the battery has been fixed so that it doesn't swell up and destroy the device.
  
  
  
• A trillion dollar company with the most feted industrial design team on the planet vs. a menu bar.
  
  
  
  
  Well, that's kind of shit.

• AMD's Zen 5 server chips could have up to 256 cores and burn 600W.  (WCCFTech)
  
  That's a lot, but the current 64 core parts go as high as 280W.  Four times the cores at a little over twice the power isn't so bad.
  
  They won't be here until 2024, but they'll go into the same socket as next year's Zen 4 server CPUs.  The Zen 4 parts will use a maximum of 400W, but the socket has been specified to go as high as 700W.
  
  
  
• MANGA is the new FAANG.  (Ayedot)
  
  Oh, yeah.  Facebook changed its corporate name to Meta.
  
  
  
• Speaking of manga, Amazon reported $111 billion in quarterly revenues.  (Thurrott.com)
  
  As a retailer they have fairly small margins, so net income of only $3.2 billion.
  
  Apple earned $20.6 billion on sales of $83.4 billion.
  
  Google pulled in $19 billion on $65 billion in sales.  Which is to say, ads.
  
  And Microsoft had a net income of $20 billion on revenues of $45 billion.  Nearly 40% of that revenue now comes from their cloud services, which are GARBAGE.
  
  
  

And Not the Good Kind Either Video of the Day

• Them: How long will that take?
  Me, thinking: Normally six weeks, can probably get something in two.
  Them: Because we promised it would be ready on Monday.
  
  
  
• Intel's 12th generation Alder Lake desktop CPUs arrive next week.  (AnandTech)
  
  Prices have been announced, and the 12600K costs 10% more than the 11600K.  It's 20% to 40% faster, so that's not a bad deal.
  
  No benchmark data yet except for the fluff from Intel and random leaks, but it's worth waiting a week to see.
  
  Laptop parts are expected to be announced at CES in January.
  
  
  

Tech News

• The best cheap tablets of 2021.  (ZDNet)
  
  Narrator: Actually, those all suck.
  
  
  
• Protonmail won a victory in court with a ruling that it is not covered by telco regulations.  (The Register)
  
  Which would have required it to log customer data, which it doesn't do.

Posted by: wheels at Friday, October 29 2021 01:13 PM (Zw3SN)

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• Somehow my day job and its largest customers conspired to schedule four major events in the space of ten days, all requiring different software.  Yay.
  
  I mentioned some time ago that I expected October to be insane.  At that time I only knew about one of these events.
  
  Two down, two to go.  Yeah, working late again tonight.  Eighteen hour day on five hours sleep, just what I like best.
  
  
  
• AMD reported another record quarter.  (AnandTech)
  
  Revenue up 54% year on year; net income up 137%.  Nice work if you can get it.
  
  
  
• There's a new Penric and Desdemona story out, Knot of Shadows.  I've been re-reading the series recently and just got up to the last volume, The Assassins of Thasalon, which came out in May.  Checked to see if there was a new story scheduled for publication and it turned out the answer was yes - six days ago.
  
  If you haven't already committed to buying each one as it comes out, the first six stories (they're each novella or short novel length) are collected in two volumes from Baen, Penric's Progress and Penric's Travels.
  
  Though I'd suggest starting at the beginning, with The Curse of Chalion.
  
  
  
  

Tech News

• Much to nobody's surprise, Ethereum 2.0 has been delayed.  Again.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Now expected in the first half of 2022.  Maybe.
  
  
  
• Intel's upcoming Core i5 12600K is supposedly quite fast.  (WCCFTech)
  
  If it actually delivers the goods and retains the mid-range price point of the previous x600K models, it could be quite an attractive chip.
  
  Launch is obviously close because motherboards are already showing up.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  If you don't want to go straight to DDR5 there are several boards that support DDR4, though none that support both as we sometimes saw in earlier cutovers.
  
  
  
• Microsoft is force-installing PC Health Check on Windows 10.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  This is the app that tells you you can't upgrade to Windows 11.  So...  Thanks, I guess?

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, October 28 2021 01:28 AM (Z0GF0)

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, October 28 2021 01:30 AM (Z0GF0)

Posted by: normal at Thursday, October 28 2021 09:07 AM (obo9H)

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