• Xbox is was down.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  It looks like it came back online just minutes ago, after about 11 hours during which you couldn't play games you owned on the console you owned because the truth is, you don't.
  
  
  

Tech News

• QNAP.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Again.  Though this one seems specific to its security video systems and not to its generic NAS devices.
  
  
  
• I have 100,000 unread emails.  What do?  (ZDNet)
  
  The answer is "declare email bankruptcy" and archive all of them.
  
  
  
• Conjunction disfunction: These five magic words crash Google Docs.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  The five words were And.  Type that five times in a row - And.  And.  And.  And.  And.  And. - with grammar suggestions turned on, and and and and and splat.
  
  Sadly it seems to have been fixed now.
  
  
  
• Apple's M1 and A14 CPUs have a speculative prefetch bug similar to Spectre and Meltdown.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  In theory this could allow Javascript running in a hostile web page to read the entire memory contents of your Mac - and possibly your iPhone too.
  
  
  
• You wouldn't buy a book, would you?  (Ars Technica)
  
  Well, now you can't.  The Kindle app for Android currently allows you to purchase Kindle books right in the app with a single click - great if you're reading through a series, because it shows up when you get to the last page.
  
  That's going away because Google wants a cut.  Instead you'll have to open Amazon in your browser.
  
  
  
• Amazon is planning to spend $12 billion on five new datacenters in Oregon.  (The Register)
  
  This is expected to create 600 local jobs - which is not a lot.  Most of the complicated stuff is done remotely; the local staff are responsible for putting things in racks and then taking them out again a few years later.
  
  
  
• Intel will be bringing back high-end desktop systems with Sapphire Rapids.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Based on the current Alder Lake cores, but with more of them - up to 24 on the mainstream range, and up to 56 cores per socket - and two sockets - on the expert range.  Clock speeds up to 5GHz, DDR5 RAM, PCIe 5 I/O, and TDPs up to 500W.
  
  Time to get that 2000W power supply.
  
  Expected in Q3 this year, which is not that far off.

Posted by: madrocketsci at Saturday, May 07 2022 11:44 PM (hRoyQ)

Posted by: normal at Sunday, May 08 2022 03:30 AM (obo9H)

Posted by: Mauser at Sunday, May 08 2022 06:32 PM (gVjvf)

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, May 09 2022 01:47 AM (6oqhX)

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• Elon Musk is not going it alone on his buyout of Twitter - Larry Ellison of Oracle is among the takeover backers chipping in a few billion.  (Ars Technica)
  
  Ellison is of course just wildly popular with the kind of person panicking at the possibility of the wrong kind of people being permitted to speak, for example:

  Fuck all of those guys.

  Or:

  Funny how the most hated of Silicon Valley are in this deal. I wonder id they got trolled too much and are trying to get even.
  
  The only Twitter I read is from reporters so I have no idea first hand knowledge of how Musk and Ellison were treated.

  Clearly an expert opinion, as is this:

  Libertarian billionaires. Just the people we want controlling social media. /s

  This, but unironically.
  
  

• AMD has a new range of Ryzen 5000 chips for Chromebooks.  (AnandTech)
  
  How are these different from the Ryzen 5000 chips for regular laptops, you might ask.
  
  They're not.
  
  
  
• If you want 8TB of PCIe 4 TLC SSD in your laptop, there's not that many options.  Sabrent's Rocket 4 Plus is one.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  On the plus side, it's large and fast.  
  
  On the definitely not plus side, it's $1999.
  
  
  
• Please stop disabling zoom.  (Matuzo)
  
  It's my firewall and I'll disable whatever-
  
  In mobile web pages.
  
  Right, I knew that.
  
  
  
• New York state looks set to ban new crypto mining operations.  (CNBC)
  
  Okay.
  
  

• If you're running the brand new Chrome version 100 upgrade to 101 right now.  (TechSpot)
  
  Chrome 100 has 29 security vulnerabilities, six of them considered serious.
  
  
  

Tech News

• Heroku got hacked.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  A month ago.
  
  And is telling customers to reset their passwords now.
  
  
  
• Connie Willis, call your lawyers.  (Thurrott.com)
  
  Though in her novel Remake, the primary use of CGI was to edit out cigarettes and alcohol from old movies, not to edit in product placement for new ones.
  
  Casablanca, now sponsored by Red Bull.
  
  
  
• Script your web pages using Python.  (DevClass)
  
  Because what could go wrong using a language with significant indenting in an environment that eats indenting?
  
  
  
• The new Mushkin Delta is a mediocre QLC SSD hat you should probably avoid.  (Tom's Hadware)
  
  It's not DRAMless at least; it's not a complete disaster.  And if you're upgrading from a spinning drive it will be insanely fast.  But it can't keep up with its PCIe 4 interface, so you're better off going with a TLC PCIe 3 drive at the same price.
  
  
  
• Prism's Sara Nagare got 45,000 viewers watching her watch villagers wander around in a standalone Minecraft server unless she didn't.  (Reddit)
  
  I was watching for a bit while I worked early this morning.  Don't know what happened, but her usual 80 or so viewers shot up into the tens of thousands and stayed there, and the video got over 5000 likes while it was live.
  
  
  

Posted by: normal at Thursday, May 05 2022 09:37 PM (obo9H)

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• Chinese state hackers are targeting the Russian government.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Yes, and everyone else on the planet as well, but it's worth noting that China and Russia are not allies.  At best they momentarily share some of the same enemies.
  
  China has also been caught hacking Ukraine.  Not sure if Russia has been caught recently hacking China, but I have no doubt they are doing so.

• AMD has confirmed the rumoured Dragon Range laptop CPU due next year.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  This will be a Zen 4 chip for high-end gaming laptops - probably with 16 cores.
  
  Intel already has 16 core parts but those are 8 performance cores plus 8 much slower efficiency cores.  The AMD design will have 16 performance cores.
  
  
  
• Speaking of high-end gaming laptops the Gigabyte Aero 16 is one.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Well, sort of.  It has a Core i7 12700H and an Nvidia 3070 Ti (Max-Q) which are good but not top-of-the-line parts, but it also has a 3840x2400 OLED display, dual RAM slots, dual M.2 slots, dual Thunderbolt 4 ports, and the Four Essential Keys.
  
  It's about 20% faster single-threaded than my Dell Inspiron 16 Plus, but unfortunately costs twice as much in Australia.  I'm in no hurry to upgrade.
  
  (The Inspiron 16 Plus doesn't have dedicated keys for the FEK, but it has a numeric keypad which does double duty.)
  
  
  
• The 3080 Ti is selling at MSRP.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  A mere $1200.
  
  For a card that will be obsolete in a few months.
  
  
  
• Axios is garbage.  (Axios)
  
  In their why free speech is bad article, they note that without some moderation, social networks die.  But they also make it very clear that they are arguing in bad faith:

  Why it matters: Even much smaller social networks that aimed to minimize content moderation have found that an "anything goes if it's legal" policy quickly devolves into a miasma of violence, spam, fraud and bullying.

  Speech is violence and violence is speech.
  
  
  
• Overshooting the target: NASA requires the Artemis Moon lander to be able to deliver a payload of 865kg to the lunar surface; SpaceX's Starship can deliver 100 tons.  (Ars Technica)
  
  That completely changes what is possible for future Moon missions.  Just shove everything and the kitchen sink onto the rocket; it doesn't matter if it turns out you don't need it.

• AI helps scientists design novel plastic-eating enzyme.  (The Register)
  
  Hey, I've seen this one.  It's a classic.
  
  
  
• An illustrated guide to plastic straws.  (HWFO)
  
  Worth reading through to the conclusion, which points out that even the less insane environmental policies often provide perverse incentives: If you carefully recycle plastic waste, there's a good chance of it simply ending up dumped in the ocean.
  
  
  

Tech News

• HP has new scanners.  (Thurrott.com)
  
  I have a Canon scanner that looks and works like new except that there's no driver available for Windows or Mac.  Linux picks it up no problem at all.
  
  I need to figure out what equipment I want for my new home office.  My previous plans were space constrained - my desk is 8'6" x 3'.  My new office will only have 2' deep desks - since CRTs are no longer a thing - but I have room for 30' of desk in an L shape so all limits are off.
  
  
  
• AMD's RDNA 3 is going to have a lot more thingies than RDNA 2.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  The Navi 22 chip found in the Radeon 6700 XT has 2560 shaders.  Navi 32, presumably aimed at the 7700 XT, is expected to have 8192 shaders.
  
  It's also expected to run at higher clock speeds, which will make it very, very fast.
  
  
  
• Japanese video game juggernaut Square Enix has sold off all its western subsidiaries to focus on blockchain bullshit.  (Ars Technica)
  
  On the one hand, western game studios mostly produce poop.
  
  On the other hand, blockchain.
  
  
  
• Facebook is shutting down its podcast service to focus on blockchain bullshit.  (ZDNet)
  
  On the one hand, podcasts mostly produce pop.
  
  On the other hand, blockchain.
  
  

Posted by: normal at Tuesday, May 03 2022 09:03 PM (obo9H)

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• Noah Grey, the author of the first open-source blogging software back in the year 2000, was in danger of losing his home.
  
  Sometimes GoFundMe doesn't fuck up worthy causes.
  
  He now has three times the amount he needed to pay off the mortgage.
  
  Of course the IRS will have their day, but it should still leave some money over.
  
  
  
• On the other end of the shit scale, transfer fees for NFTs on Ethereum hit $3500.  (Mashable)
  
  At my day job we ditched Ethereum 18 months ago as being completely unworkable - when it cost less than 0.1% of that.
  
  

Tech News

• The people behind Ugly Monkey JPEGs just launched a new scam/money laundering facility.  (The National / MSN)
  
  They sold off imaginary plots of land to imbeciles with too much money and/or narcotraffickers for around $5800 a pop, raising $320 million and burning $123 million in transaction fees.
  
  This is the future of finance.  We are screwed.
  
  
  
• How long before a scam steals some ludicrous valuation of this imaginary land?  Negative two days.  (Web3 is Going Great)
  
  $6 million has already gone up in smoke.
  
  I'm in the wrong business.  Well, in the wrong part of the right business.  Or something.  I did just buy a house more than twice the size of my current place so I can't complain too much.  Except about my back which is killing me at this point.
  
  
  
• Wikipedia has stopped accepting donations in cryptocurency.  (Mashable)
  
  The article doesn't say why - though given that it amounted to less than 0.1% of total donations last year, it might have just not been worth the trouble.
  
  
  
• My AirPods are stalking me.  (ZDNet)
  
  
  
  
  
• AMD's Radeon 7900 XT - due later this year - could deliver almost 100 TFLOPs.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Nvidia's RTX 4090 - due later this year - could deliver just over 100 TFLOPs.  (WCCFTech)
  
  I remember SGI running an advertising campaign boasting about how they scale "from desktop to teraflop".  Mobile phones can commonly exceed a teraflop these days.
  
  
  

Posted by: Avatar_exADV at Tuesday, May 03 2022 11:30 AM (NoOEO)

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• Intel sees chip shortages easing by the end of... 2024. (WCCFTech)
  
  Oh, good.
  
  
  
• But at least you can build an AMD gaming PC while you wait. (Tom's hardware)
  
  The new Ryzen 5800X3D CPU and the high-end Radeon 6900 XT are both selling at MSRP.
  
  
  

Questions and Answers

• From Another Anon:

  My understanding of BlockChain is that a new entry, or a Block, has to be calculated based on every other Block in the history of the Chain to validate that it is cryptographically correct and thus valid. Basically, do the math on previous blocks ("N") to confirm the next block ("N+1") is accurate and true.
  
  That said, does this mean that BlockChain is, by design, a victim of the "Schlemiel the Painter's algorithm"? IE: The painter paints X feet of lines on a road the first day, 4/5ths of X feet on day two, 2/5ths of X day, and then worse... because it takes him longer and longer to get to the paint bucket that he left at the very start of all the lines? (Joke being that said painter never picked up and carried the bucket with him, at all.)

  Every implementation I know of is smart enough to move the bucket - that is, it can verify new transactions based on previous verifications. Blockchains do rely on having multiple nodes verify transactions though - it's possible for a bad node to verify a transaction that later gets rejected, or vice versa.
  
  
  
• From MadItalian:

  Anyway to stop the link hijacking ads? I click on more info / read more and it opens in a new tab for the story at Ace Comments and then redirects the original tab to the ad.
  
  I know ad revenue is in the toilet but that action is frustrating.

  Anyone else seeing this? That's a pretty minimal piece of JavaScript that shouldn't be doing anything like that.
  
  
  

Tech News

• Snap has a new camera drone called Pixy. (ZDNet)
  
  I should sue.
  
  AIC: COUGH.
  
  Never mind.
  
  
  
• China, India, and Russia didn't sign on to that worthless declaration on the future of the internet. (ZDNet)
  
  Oh no.
  
  
  
• Support for EPUB format is coming to Kindle, finally. (Liliputing)
  
  But support for MOBI - the original native Kindle format - is ending, which means if you have a library of ebooks outside of Amazon you'll be forced to convert them all. Or just choose another reader.
  
  
  
• Sony Music Japan is taking over management and production for vtuber agency Prism Project. (Anime Corner)
  
  Prism is my favourite of the smaller agencies; they have some sold talent and a great fan community, but it's tough competing with the two giants (Nijisanji and Hololive). Sony already has its own roster of five vtubers under the VerseN label, so Prism's twelve agents will be a big expansion.
  
  They also have a big launch on the way for their Vee project but so far there's been nothing announced of what or who or when.

Possibly Not Totally Crap Notebook Review Video of the Day

Posted by: J Greely at Sunday, May 01 2022 06:50 PM (oJgNG)

Posted by: Friday Night Funkin at Thursday, April 25 2024 01:05 PM (h7vc5)

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• It's the weekend again and that means something, I don't remember what. Beer, maybe.  Do I like beer?
  
  
  
• The FBI searched the data of millions of Americans without warrants. (Bloomberg)
  
  I am shocked, shocked, to find that the FBI is the largest organised criminal gang in the country.
  
  Even the ACLU is against it. Probably because they got searched, but whatever.

• Huawei's new Mate Xs 2 has a neat flexible screen that wraps around three sides of the phone. (Liliputing)
  
  Only problem is (1) it costs $1500, (2) you can't get one, (3) because Huawei is a spy agency.
  
  
  
• Guess 16 states just aren't going to get any mail then. (Ars Technica)
  
  So long, suckers.  Rarely a good idea to sue the people who provide you with essential services.
  
  
  
• There's not just a shortage of good employees - companies are actively hiring the wrong people. (ZDNet)
  
  Communists. They mean communists.
  
  
  
• Arm has re-established control of its rogue Chinese joint venture, maybe. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  The former CEO of Arm China was fired for using the company as his personal plaything... And simply refused to leave. He had a lot of loyal staff because they were making out like bandits looting the company.
  
  The moral of the story is fuck China.
  
  
  
• Which is also the moral of my day. Woke up to an abuse ticket on one of my servers. Someone had sent a spam report because they got a bounce message because a Chinese spammer had sent, well, spam to my server with a fake sender address and it got rejected, a trick referred to as a Joe job.
  
  At least it didn't take me long to figure out and the hosting company accepted the explanation.
  
  Oh yeah. The spam came from China, which is not a country I would trust with food products of any kind.

Did Elon Musk Disparage Twitter?  No, You're All Idiots Video of the Day

Sort of Anime Music Video of the Day

Posted by: Frank at Saturday, April 30 2022 09:59 PM (rglbH)

Posted by: normal at Saturday, April 30 2022 10:18 PM (obo9H)

Posted by: normal at Saturday, April 30 2022 10:19 PM (obo9H)

Posted by: SMM HEART at Monday, January 22 2024 03:37 PM (/QKaT)

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• The US and 60 other countries today announced A Declaration for the Future of the Internet and it is bilge. (Access Now)
  
  You can read the full document here (PDF) though it's a waste of your time.
  
  The First Amendment is just 45 words, was written 230 years ago, and covers much more than this useless Declaration.
  
  
  
• Of course, the US government just ignores the First Amendment when it is inconvenient. (Law Enforcement Today)
  
  The new Disinformation Governance Board - part of the DHS, which has absolutely no authority to do this - is intended to address the number one threat facing the world today: Reality.

• Synology. (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Not QNAP for once.
  
  
  
• The EU set up a Mastodon node. (PC Magazine)
  
  Congratulations Europe! There's no limit to what 450 million idiots can do if they put their minds to it.
  
  Maybe next year you could start a blog.
  
  
  
• Weibo is going to attach your location to the comments you post. (Asia Financial)
  
  You can expect the people behind the Declaration and the Disinformation Board to jump on this right away.
  
  
  
• Qualcomm is promising to release new Arm-based laptop chips that don't suck - next year. (Ars Technica)
  
  These are intended to compete with Apple's M1 chips from 2020.
  
  
  
• Amazon's latest quarterly results are in and they made a loss of $3.8 billion. (Thurrott.com)
  
  Probably on the free shipping on all the boxes they've been sending me.
  
  
  
• Samsung's 3nm process is scheduled to start mass production in Q2. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Judging from the specs it is not a much denser process than TSMC's 5nm, but should be faster and use less power.

Posted by: normal at Saturday, April 30 2022 07:39 AM (obo9H)

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• Quick one today because I worked until 1:30 AM because we have two major customers launching at the same time and then got woken up at 3:00 AM because I made an error in change management because a normally non-critical function is critical today only. Yay.
  
  
  
• Well, someone's enjoying himself.
  
  

Tech News

• The quicker picker upper.  The quicker putter downer too, if you drank the whole thing.
  
  
  
  
  
• Google has launched its new Media CDN. (Tech Crunch)
  
  This is a regular CDN only with built-in AI, machine learning, and ad insertion, all very sound reasons to avoid it like the plague.
  
  
  
• Dell's latest XP3 13 Plus has everything but the 4 Essential Keys and decent I/O. (Liliputing)
  
  3840x2400 OLED display, 14 core (6P + 8E) i7-1280P CPU, 32GB of LPDDR5 RAM, 2TB of SSD. I/O is just two Thunderbolt 4 ports - not even a headphone jack or microSD slot.
  
  The 1280P is welcome - it's a slightly lower power form of the 12700H which absolutely demolishes Intel's previous generation chips for thin-and-light laptops and competes well with AMD's 5000-series and 6000-series chips except in graphics.
  
  
  
• All the chemical bases in DNA and RNA have now been found within meteorites. (ScienceNews)
  
  Which is a hint that if we find life elsewhere in the galaxy it will be edible.
  
  
  
• QNAP. (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Again.