• 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.

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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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Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, August 26 2021 02:06 AM (eqaFC)

Posted by: cxt217 at Thursday, August 26 2021 11:38 AM (MuaLM)

Posted by: normal at Friday, August 27 2021 04:13 AM (obo9H)

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• Now that I've got that raise and can look at buying nice new PC it seems that video card prices are heading back up.  I'm tempted to say fuck it and just get a 3090 so I don't have to worry about it for five years.
  
  On the other hand, the 4TB Seagate Firecuda 530 is in stock locally, so I can quit pricing RAID configurations of WD Blue SN550s.  Which - well, see below.
  
  
  
• Over 1000 apps built with Microsoft's Power Apps tool have been busy leaking private data.  (Thurrott.com)
  
  Including minor things like job application forms, employee databases, and Bat Flu contact tracing apps, for everyone from Ford and American Airlines to the New York public school system.
  
  Because someone forgot to tick a box to keep the data private.
  
  Oops.

• Trust no-one: Western Digital appears to have silently swapped the flash chips used in their popular Blue SN550 SSDs.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  There's just one site reporting the benchmark data and I'll post an update if more news comes in either way, but it looks like the new version suffers from read speeds as much as 50% lower than the original once you fill the 12GB SLC cache.
  
  
  
• In stark contrast to the GPU situation, AMD CPUs are now selling below MSRP.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Only 10% below MSRP, but a deal is a deal.
  
  
  
• IBM's new Z-series mainframe CPU is a big chip with a lot of stuff.  (Serve the Home)
  
  Short on sleep and my eyes kind of glazed over reading the details, but the gist is that this is am 8 core chip with a base clock of over 5GHz (server CPUs usually run much slower than that) supporting up to 32 CPU chips in a single system.
  
  An interesting design trick is that there is no L3 cache - as you would find on most chips - nor the L4 cache on previous IBM mainframes.  Instead, each individual core has a huge 32MB L2 cache.  (AMD's current CPUs by comparison share 32MB of L3 cache across 8 cores.)
  
  And that 256MB of total L2 cache across the 8 cores per chip act as a virtual L3 cache.  On an 8-socket system that scales out to 2GB of virtual L4 cache.
  
  
  

Since Someone Asked

• Hololive debuted six new talents in their English branch yesterday, after delaying it for a day due to one of their PCs triggering its self-destruct just hours before launch.  This was a minor surprise because they had only announced five. 
  
  The sixth announcement was buried in a video played during the last of the debut streams.
  
  
  
  Two of the five talents who have streamed so far are Australian.
  
  
  
  Very, very Australian.
  
  
  
  I haven't heard that flavour of the Aussie accent in twenty years.  Where did they find her?
  
  Update: Someone on the Hololive Subreddit says Queensland.  Could be, I haven't been up to Queensland for tw...  Yeah, I guess that checks out.
  
  
• VOMS (home of Pikamee and Tomoshika) is preparing to launch their second generation next month.
  
  
• PRISM Project (home of Pina Pengin and Araka Luto, another Aussie) just announced auditions for their Gen 4.
  
  
• Cyberlive (home of Kaneko Lumi) just announced auditions for Gen 2.
  
  
• Nijisanji is already holding auditions for Wave 3 and Wave 4 of female English-language talents, and the first wave of male talents as well.  They have huge branches in Japan, Korea, and Indonesia, but their English-language push is new after their earlier attempts in India failed to gain traction.
  
  
• What I call VMN - a loose affiliation of indies started by Indonesian artist and streamer Vyolfers - continues to grow, with three new talents joining their Minecraft server today.

Posted by: PatBuckman at Wednesday, August 25 2021 04:42 AM (DHVaH)

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• Apparently puppy murder doesn't poll well because Australia's Prime Minister is pushing state governments to end their idiotic lockdowns.  (News.com.au)
  
  And yeah, the puppy murder was a real thing done in the name of Public Safety.  People are not impressed, and in fact a criminal investigation is under way.  You can get away with doing that to humans, maybe, but not to dogs.
  
  "Bat Flu Zero" is an idiotic fantasy we caught from New Zealand, and even the Island Kingdom of Sheep Hermits can't actually sustain that dream.
  
  
  
• "AI" tech that tracks noises that may or may not be gunshots landed an innocent man in jail.  (AP)
  
  Studies suggest that ShotSpotter, while expensive, is basically useless at reducing crime.  It's not entirely clear if it works at all.  Experts say that the system is perfectly designed - intentionally or not - to produce false positives.
  
  In this case, after Michael Williams had been in jail awaiting trial for eleven months, the prosecution shrugged and said they didn't have enough evidence to proceed.
  
  And David Chipman, Biden's nominee to head the BATF?  A former ShotSpotter executive.
  
  
  

Tech News

• Firecuda go whoosh. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  7.3GBps read, 6.9GBps write, 1 million IOPs.
  
  It's not cheap - you can get two WD Blue SSDs for the same price - but it's actually faster than two WD Blues in RAID-0.
  
  
• Samsung showed off 512GB DDR5-7200 modules for next-generation servers.  (AnandTech)
  
  The module layout suggests that 64GB desktop modules could also be on their way, as we saw earlier from...  Oh, the server just fell over again.  I think it was Team Group, while I wait for the database check to run.
  
  
  
• A new Mac Mini with an M1X is on its way.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Might be interested if Apple didn't spy on children.  That debacle has kind of fallen off the radar with all the other debacles going on, but I haven't forgotten.
  
  
  
• Stack 'em, pack 'em, and rack 'em: AMD discusses upcoming 2D, 2.5D, and 3D chiplet tech.  (WCCFTech)

  The interconnect uses a brand new hydrophilic Dielectric-Dielectric Bonding with Direct CU-CU bonding which was designed and co-optimized in deep partnership with TSMC.

  That's exactly what I was about to say.
  
  They're also looking at stacking CPU dies and stacking DRAM directly on the CPU.  With HBM3 you could have 32GB of RAM with 1TB per second bandwidth right in the CPU socket.
  
  The technology will appear first in Zen 3D late this year or early next.  This will have the same core design as current desktop Ryzen but triple the L3 cache - up to 192MB total - giving up to 25% better performance in Monster Hunter World.
  
  
  
• Which is just what Intel is doing with their new high-end Sapphire Rapids Xeons.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Only more so - they could go as high as 128GB of RAM directly on the CPU.
  
  
  
• The book The Honest Truth About Dishonest was based on fake data.  (The Economist)
  
  Article is truncated, but the gist is that the authors are either lying or grossly incompetent.
  
  
  
• Get admin access to Windows 10 with just a mouse.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Don't even need to click on it.  Just plug it in.
  
  
  
  
  Razer has responded, is preparing a bugfix, and has offered a bug bounty, so even though they screwed this up they are acting responsibly.

Posted by: Jay at Monday, August 23 2021 11:43 PM (mrlXS)

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, August 24 2021 12:23 AM (eqaFC)

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