• I mentioned that October was going to be a crazy month and the length, timing, and frequency of these posts might become erratic.
  
  It's now October.
  
  
  
• Windows 11 doesn't need TPM, Microsoft just requires it.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  <chorus>Because fuck you, that's why.</chorus>
  
  
  
• That's because if there's one Windows 11 machine out there without TPM, the whole house of cards collapses.  (Thurrott.com)
  
  That's not actually true, as far as I know, because it's a certainty that there will be Windows 11 systems out there without TPM and they'd be insane to set up security that requires perfect compliance from a billion people to function.
  
  
  
• Microsoft aren't that insane but the people creating Unicode certainly are.  (Hexops)
  
  ASCII sorting of course doesn't work.    Standard regular expressions don't work.  JavaScript sorting is inconsistent.  Go doesn't recognise your locale, and nor does Rust.
  
  Oh, and WebAssembly makes everything worse.
  
  
  
• Unicode 14.0 supports Toto, Cypro-Minoan - which no-one can read, Vithkuqi, Tangsa, and Old Uyghur.  (Unicode)
  
  Let's put every written language and every symbol together in a single huge character set, they said.  What could possibly go wrong, they said.  It's currently has 3633 emojis, they said.
  
  
  
• Binance has been refused licenses to operate in the UK, Japan, Germany, and Ontario.  (BBC)
  
  Binance is the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, handling a trillion dollars a day in...  I actually have no idea what their transaction volume is.
  
  But they're registered in the Cayman Islands, which should give you lots of warm fuzzies.
  
  
  
• Open offices suck and everyone hates them.  (Harvard Business Review)
  
  We've known this for at least 35 years; it was a major point in the book Peopleware, from 1987.  (Which I still recommend.)

Posted by: normal at Monday, June 28 2021 09:30 PM (obo9H)

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, June 29 2021 02:58 AM (eqaFC)

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Tuesday, June 29 2021 05:34 AM (5iiQK)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

Hide Comments | Add Comment

• You know what else also can't run Windows 11?  Microsoft's $3499 Surface Studio 2.  (The Verge)
  
  Yesterday's recommended CPU list has overnight become a mandatory CPU list.
  
  Which excludes Microsoft's own current flagship desktop system.
  
  Oh, and all Windows 11 mobile hardware must have a camera, says Microsoft.  Because fuck you, that's why.
  
  Well, Microsoft, I have a roll of black electrical tape.  Because fuck you too.
  
  
  
• Windows 11 recommends a TPM 2.0 module, but will install with a warning on older systems with TPM 1.2, right?  Because TPM 2.0 only came out a few years ago.  That would make sense.
  
  No.  Again, that was yesterday.  (CRN)
  
  Microsoft - with its two trillion dollar market cap - changed the hardware requirements for its biggest product announcement in five years THE DAY AFTER THE ANNOUNCEMENT and consigned hundreds of millions of perfectly functional computers to landfill.
  
  
  
• Even some three year old computers may not be able to run the OS.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  I bought this one - named Rally, after Rally Vincent from Gunsmith Cats - on the 4th of July 2018.  So check.  I might be able to fiddle with something in the BIOS settings.  Now multiply me doing that by a couple of hundred million people, many of whom don't know BIOS settings from a hole in the ground.
  
  If you have a nice modern system with a 7700K or even a 16-core Threadripper 1950X you've just been unpersoned.
  
  And apart from TPM 2.0 and CPU requirements you'll also need UEFI secure boot active.  Which means if you have Windows 10 installed using a conventional BIOS boot mode, you also can't upgrade without first converting your boot record, an operation that itself may or may not work.
  
  
  
• And you will - at least officially - need Windows 11 Pro to upgrade without locking yourself to an online account.  (Ars Technica)
  
  Not clear what that means for free upgrades from existing Windows 10 systems.
  
  Though since it's possible that none of my computers can run Windows 11 given today's update to the hardware requirements, that point is slightly moot.
  
  Long live Windows 10, or something.
  
  
  
• Literally top story - The Assassins of Thasalon is the tenth story in the Penric and Desdemona series from Lois McMaster Bujold.
  
  These are mostly novella length - around a hundred pages each - but this one is a short novel by itself at 240 pages.  The stories are being collected into print volumes but if you want them on Kindle you'll need to buy them individually.
  
  If you haven't read Bujold before you're seriously missing out.  If you like science fiction you should check out the Vorkosigan series, starting with either Shards of Honor or The Warrior's Apprentice.  Either entry point works fine.  (I actually entered with Weatherman, the first part of the fourth novel in the series, and then backtracked.)
  
  If you like fantasy, The Curse of Chalion - together with its sequel / conclusion Paladin of Souls - is one of the best constructed and most intelligently written fantasy novels of the past twenty years.
  
  The Penric stories are set in the same world as Chalion but 150 years earlier than the events in that novel, but there's no need to read them first.  Just proceed in publication order.
  
  

• Google's plan to roll out a new totally-not-tracking-anyway tracking system called FLoC has been delayed by two years.  (Ars Technica)
  
  Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Mozilla, and all the smaller browser providers have come out against Google's new scheme, which would replace all the current privacy-destroying tracking mechanisms on the web with a brand new privacy-destroying tracking mechanism controlled entirely by Google.
  
  
  
• Intel's DG2 GPU performs similarly to the GTX 1050.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  On the one hand, that's an entry-level gaming card from five years ago.
  
  On the other hand, the DG2 may be the secondary integrated graphics on Alder Lake mobile parts, which should be enough to compete with AMD's upcoming Rembrandt parts.
  
  
  
• Speaking of AMD APUs the 4700S Desktop Kit is now officially a thing.  (WCCFTech)
  
  These are rebadged Xbox Series X (or S) dies with faults in the integrated graphics.  That leaves you with a perfectly good 8 core Zen 2 CPU.  Even so, in normal times they'd likely just get scrapped as a cost of doing business.
  
  The kit includes the CPU, a mini-ITX motherboard, and...  16GB of high-performance GDDR6 RAM.  Because that's what the Xbox chip is designed to use.
  
  There are only two SATA ports for storage, and the PCIe slot runs at x4...  At 2.0 speeds.  I don't know why it's limited like that; the Xbox supports PCIe storage at higher speeds.
  
  It officially only supports low-end graphics like the Radeon RX 580 - which is what I have.
  
  If have no idea whether it comes bundled with a TPM report for Windows 11 Annoying Edition
  
  
  
• Genocide, schmenocide, says YouTube.  (Reuters)
  
  A human rights organisation highlighting abuses by China in Xinjiang province was blocked by YouTube because - this is amazing - they were flagged for "cyberbullying and harassment".
  
  YouTube prohibits personally identifying information of third parties in videos, including, it turns out, proof that your family has been the victim of government-sponsored mass murder.
  
  The channel was reinstated, but individual videos continue to receive strikes and get taken offline by YouTube's fascist algorithm of death.
  
  
  
• Huawei sus.  (Phoronix)
  
  The tech arm of the PLA has proposed putting a transactional database inside the Linux kernel.
  
  The Linux maintainers are skeptical.
  
  
  
• WhyNotWin11 gives you a detailed report of why Windows 11 won't run on your computer.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Which is helpful because all the official Microsoft tool says is NOPE.  This utility checks your boot mode and security, CPU architecture and version, core count and frequency, DirectX support, disk partitioning mode, memory size, available storage, and TPM report.
  
  Source code and binaries are available on GitHub.
  
  Chrome doesn't want you to download it.
  
  Windows 10 doesn't want you to run it.
  
  
  
• Because, you see, it's not signed by a recognised publisher, unlike, oh, the Chinese Netfilter rootkit that received the official blessing of Microsoft themselves.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Oops, as Dr Gregory House would say.
  
  
  
• The new Arm-based MacBook Air makes a suitable replacement for an Intel iMac - if the iMac is from 2013.  (ZDNet)
  
  My late 2015 iMac is holding up pretty well.  Hardware wise.  MacOS has been rather a disappointment and I regret the purchase.  It was not cheap, between Apple being Apple and the Aussie dollar being dead in a ditch at the time.  
  
  The two dekstops and two laptops I've bought since then came to about the same total price as that iMac.
  
  Okay, true, I got those laptops from HP when they had two overlapping 50% sales at the same time, only they sold out and gave me a free upgrade to a higher-end model.  About a $4500 system for $1100.
  
  
  
• You might not be able to upgrade to Windows 11 but NASA can at least do a software update on a robot helicopter on Mars.  (CNN)
  
  That's actually pretty cool.

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, June 28 2021 12:18 AM (2Mei2)

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, June 28 2021 12:19 AM (2Mei2)

Posted by: normal at Monday, June 28 2021 01:40 AM (obo9H)

Posted by: normal at Monday, June 28 2021 01:43 AM (obo9H)

Posted by: J Greely at Monday, June 28 2021 10:15 AM (ZlYZd)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

• You know what also can't run Windows 11?  Macs.  (9to5Mac)
  
  Intel Macs run Windows 10 pretty well under Bootcamp.  But no Mac supports TPM, the security module now required by Windows 11.
  
  Of course all the new Arm-based Macs are restricted to only running MacOS 11.  Windows and (thus far) Linux need not apply.
  
  
  
• Speaking of MacOS 11, if you want to use a corporate VPN from your shiny new Mac, you're going to have a really bad day.
  
  We ran into it with Array Networks (which is what our hosting provider provides, since I didn't feel like maintaining OpenVPN anymore), but also affects Cisco and OpenVPN and others.
  
  Windows, no problem.  Linux, no problem.  MacOS 10.x, no problem.  MacOS 11, unmitigated disaster.
  
  I stopped updating MacOS a couple of years ago because every single update broke critical functionality.
  
  
  
  

• There are four new flaws in Dell's SupportAssist software, similar to bugs found in 2015, 2018, 2019, 2020, and last month.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  The bugs don't directly expose your computer to the internet, but if you visit a website hosting an attack it can potentially call the insecure code on your PC.
  
  That's actually a know class of vulnerability: Services running on and only accessible from localhost (your own computer) still need to be secured from attacks by JavaScript.
  
  
  
•  Guess what's not on Microsoft's list of supported CPUs for Windows 11?  Any of my systems for a start.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  I have two Ryzen 1700 systems - Dells, so yeah, I'm patching those now - and an iMac with an i7 6700K.  I was planning on getting a new PC anyway, but still.
  
  The first release of Windows 11 will require TPM 2.0, but later this will be relaxed to the older TPM 1.2.
  
  You will also be required to have a graphics card supporting DirectX 12.  I think all my systems actually have that though.
  
  
  
• There's now a shortage of TPMs.  (Tom's Hadware)
  
  It went from something nobody really cared about to the hot item overnight.  Prices jumped instantly from around $15 to $100.
  
  
  
• Kids these days.
  
  There's a new Dungeons and Dragons computer game out.  (WCCFTech)
  
  It sounds like the release was rushed; it has mixed reviews on Steam where "mixed" means "bad".  But this struck me in WCCFTech's own review:

  It is near impossible to bridge the gap between Dungeons and Dragons (or any other tabletop RPG, for that matter) and video games.

  Bioware and Obsidian bridged that gap a couple of decades ago.  And SSI did pretty well a decade earlier though those games really haven't aged well.
  
  The fact that current developers are flailing around trying to solve problems that have already been solved doesn't mean those problems can't be solved.  It means those developers are idiots.
  
  
  
• WCCFTech also had this to say on the Windows 11 TPM report question:

  There are also going to be several users who could be running TPM 2.0 / TPM 1.2 / fTPM 1.2 CPUs but failing to pass the Windows 11 requirement check.

    Several, yes.  A couple of hundred million probably qualifies as several.
  
  
  
• A look at Intel's 16 core, 256 EU Alder Lake parts that don't really have 16 cores or 256 EUs.  (WCCTech)
  
  They have 8 large cores and 8 smaller Atom cores, like phones do.  They definitely do not have 16 cores the way AMD's Ryzen 5950X does.
  
  As for the graphics, they seem to have two levels of integrated graphics: The existing on-chip graphics found in the current chips, and what sounds like two separate Xe graphics dies packaged onto the same module.
  
  Since this is leaked data it's not entirely clear what's what, but this multi-chip design is what Intel has been working on in recent years so it's entirely plausible.
  
  
  
• Mozilla has announced Rally, a "novel privacy-first data sharing system".  (Mozilla)
  
  The announcement is vapid garbage, partly because they haven't actually released anything you can use, and partly because Mozilla is itself vapid garbage.
  
  
  
• Testing the Radeon 6700 XT on stuff other than games.  (Serve the Home)
  
  This is the most readily available and most reasonably priced of the current generation of video cards, so it's worth taking a look for stuff you might normally want a different card for, like OpenCL or CAD software.
  
  If you're doing CAD professionally you're going to want a professional-level card - Quadro or Radeon Pro - which is a shame because the 6700 XT scores extremely well on CATIA.
  
  
  
• Some good news on the Windows 11 front: There will only be one feature update per year.  (ZDNet)
  
  That is almost enough reason to upgrade.  Except that soon enough Windows 10 will get only zero feature updates per year.
  
  
  
• Windows 11's Android support isn't via an emulator but via an integrated instance of Android.  (ZDNet)
  
  This works similarly to the existing Windows Subsystem for Linux, which gives you a complete working Linux install on Windows, with shared file access.
  
  You can sideload Android APKs too.  (Android Authority)
  
  
  
• A Microsoft customer service agent got hacked in the SolarWinds debacle and was used to further attempt to hack some Microsoft customers.  (Reuters)
  
  Microsoft says this was a state actor, not an ordinary hacking group, but didn't say which state.
  
  
  
• When the government and the media are both blabbering about UFOs you know there's something they don't want you paying attention to.  (ABC News)
  
  Or many things.
  
  
  
• SpaceX plans a Starship orbital flight next month.  (CNBC)
  
  I haven't seen the currently lineup but SpaceX isn't just sitting around.  At any time they have on prototype being prepped for launch and several more under construction.
  
  
  
• TikTok employees say the company is controlled by a shadowy organisation called ByteDance.  (CNBC)
  
  Oh, wait, that's the corporate parent.
  
  They also say that ByteDance has access to all TikTok data.
  
  Yeah, no shit.
  
  And that the Chinese government might even be using the platform for propaganda.
  
  Which seems redundant.
  
  
  
• You can hack certain ATMs by waving a phone at them.  (Ars Technica)
  
  Well done, guys.  That's a truly impressive level of screwup.
  
  
  
• Microsoft shareholders are pushing the company to adopt right-to-repair.  (Motherboard)
  
  Good luck guys.  Microsoft hasn't commented, unsurprising since their hardware products these says are 90% glue.

Posted by: normal at Saturday, June 26 2021 11:23 PM (obo9H)

Posted by: J Greely at Sunday, June 27 2021 01:08 AM (ZlYZd)

Posted by: Mauser at Sunday, June 27 2021 03:20 AM (Ix1l6)

Posted by: cxt217 at Monday, June 28 2021 01:30 PM (4i7w0)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

• To everyone's surprise, Microsoft has announced Windows 11.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  It's mostly a theme pack for Windows 10, with a bunch of mandatory features you don't want.  Teams integration, for example, and Widgets, which Microsoft has been failing at since Vista.
  
  It does have some new features like the ability to run Android apps, so I can run all my Kairosoft games on my Windows desktop.  Except that it integrates with the Amazon app store and not Google Play, so I'd have to buy them all again.
  
  And it sidelines Cortana and Skype, so that's good.
  
  
  
• You will need to fill out the TPM report before you can install it, though.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Do you have TPM 2.0 enabled on your PC?  If not, you won't be able to upgrade to Windows 11.
  
  And to give you an idea just how much of a mess this is going to create, I have absolutely no idea if it's enabled on any of my PCs.  I have a very nice laptop with a 4K display, but it's seven years old and I think that's older than TPM 2.0.
  
  Microsoft has an upgrade checker, but it just gives me a big fat NOPE with no details whatsoever.
  
  
  
• Windows 11 also requires 64-bit hardware.  That shouldn't be a problem; the Athlon 64 came out in 2003, so any PC fast enough to run Windows 11 in the first place is going to be 64-bit.
  
  
  
• I've noted that the state of Victoria accounts for 90% of Australia's Bat Flu deaths and 99% of the insanity, but 99% is not 100%.  Four local council areas within Sydney are currently in a week-long lockdown after an outbreak of new cases.*
  
  Including the CBD.
  
  Small mercies; there's no curfew.  You can go out at any time to buy groceries.  You can freely exercise outside and gather in small groups.  But a lot of stuff is closed down again.
  
  Not where I live, fortunately, not that I go outside anyway.
  
  * Not deaths.  Cases.
  
  

• My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined. The ICY DOCK device that shoves a dozen M.2 drives into a 5" drive bay is SATA.  (Serve the Home)
  
  I wondered how it worked.  At the price I suspected a PCIe card that split out a bunch of x1 connections, but no, just SATA.
  
  It does look cool, though, because each tiny drive has its own indicator LED, so it looks like a 1:4 scale rack mount server.
  
  
  
• Older Western Digital MyBook NASes are doing factory resets.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  It sounds like this is an attack, but a factory reset at least doesn't wipe the drive.  It just...  Looks exactly like it's wiped your drive.  You can pull the drive out, stick it in a Linux system, and recover everything.  If you're a wizard.
  
  
  
• If you have Altice cable for internet - I don't know exactly who Altice is, but they apparently have over four million customers - your upload speeds are about to get wrecked.  (Ars Technica)
  
  Because fuck you, that's why.  Altice says they have no trouble maintaining current speeds, but because other providers are slower they've decided they have to make their own service worse to compete.
  
  
  
• The House Judiciary Committee has put forward tough new legislation aimed at kneecapping Big Tech.  (Ars Technica)
  
  On the one hand, Apple and Google hate the proposed legislation.
  
  On the other hand, the House Judiciary Committee has an aggregate IQ in the low single digits.
  
  On the third hand...  Look at the definition for companies covered by the bill:

  Democrats define "covered platform" as one that has at least 50 million US-based monthly active users and at least 100,000 US-based businesses using the platform, is owned or controlled by an entity with net annual sales or market capitalization greater than $600 billion

  Pretty sure we don't have annual sales over $600 billion here just yet.  I'll keep you posted when it exceeds zero.
  
  
  
• Hong Kong newspaper Apple Daily, shuttered for daring to be a newspaper, is being backed up to the blockchain.  (Reuters)
  
  You can look forward to China shutting down any and all cryptocurrency activity.  They'll be giving away video cards with cornflakes shortly.
  
  
  
• NASA can't figure out what's wrong with the the computer on the Hubble Space Telescope, which was built in the 1980s and has been in space for more than thirty years.  (NPR)
  
  Scientists suspect that it has something to do with having been built in the 1980s and having been in space for more than 30 years.  "It's probably just fucked", one said.

Not At All Tech News

• The counter-revolution has begun: Anime Expo (which is virtual this year because California) will be featuring HoloMyth, LazuLight, and Vshoujo.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  I don't watch Vshoujo, since they're mostly on Twitch and I don't have time for another platform, but Hololive has kept me sane...  Well, helped keep a lid on my insanity, this past year, and particularly HoloMyth which is the first generation of English-language talents from Hololive.  (There's a zeroth generation as well.)
  
  LazuLight is the name for the first generation of English-language talents from Nijisanji, the other big Vtuber agency in Japan.  They've only been around for a month so they're a lot smaller - 100,000 subscribers each vs. HoloMyth's 1,000,000+ - but they've been playing a lot of Minecraft and that's what I like to watch.  (And today, Terraria).

Let Them Eat Tumblr Video of the Day

Hide Comments | Add Comment

• The Radeon 6600 XT is on its way.  (WCCFTech(
  
  It's not super-fast; it amounts to a low-mid-range card by today's standards.  It has 32 compute units compared to 40 on the 6700 XT - pretty close - but only 32MB of cache compared to 96MB on the 6700 XT.
  
  But the advantage of that part is that it makes for a smaller chip that will still fly through games at 1080p and might actually be available at a reasonable price.
  
  

Tech News

• A couple of kids in South Africa made off with $3.6 billion in Bitcoin.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  That's the biggest in a series of massive scams that have looted billions of dollars in cryptocurrencies.  It's notable that the two directors of this particular scam are aged 20 and 17.
  
  
  
• Speaking of which - on a much smaller scale and less direct, and also unproven and maybe pure bullshit - John McAfee has been found dead in his cell in a Spanish prison.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Kind of a weird guy.  May have actually killed himself.  Not saying he did.  Not saying he didn't.  
  
  I'll miss him being a thorn in the side of the feds.
  
  
  
• NewsBlur got hacked and their data held to ransom.  (NewsBlur)
  
  If you go to that site you won't notice anything amiss.  That's because they had backups.  It took them a few hours to re-sync their database but after that everything came right back up.
  
  
  
• The Microsoft Store is crashing on Windows, affecting literally dozens of people.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Actually I don't know how many people use the Microsoft Store to download apps.  With the number of Windows PCs out there it's probably not insignificant.
  
  
  
• VMWare has fixed another bug that let anyone on the management network simply take over servers.  (Bleeping Compute)
  
  There are no workarounds, so if you're running the affected software it's upgrade time right now.
  
  
  
• LinkedIn is blocking people in China.  (WSJ)
  
  You know what you did.
  
  Most such sites don't have the problem of having to block particular accounts because they - Facebook, Twitter, YouTube - are banned outright in China.  LinkedIn isn't, yet.
  
  What they should do is tell the Chinese government to shove a pumpkin up its ass and sing Lili Marlene.  What they are doing is blocking individual accounts from being accessed from China.
  
  
  
• Three people have been arrested in Japan for summarising movies.  (TorrentFreak)
  
  They squish movies down to 10 minutes or so, add narration, and upload them to YouTube.  The movie studios are claiming that each view of these squishies constitutes a lost sale, totalling about a billion dollars in the past year.
  
  Which is unmitigated bullshit, but even in the US this likely wouldn't pass the fair use test.
  
  
  
• West Taiwan is ramping up production of 14nm chips.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  This is new for the backwards province, which sees most of its production at much older processes - 28nm and larger.  
  
  Mainland Taiwan meanwhile is ramping up production at 4nm.

Posted by: PatBuckman at Thursday, June 24 2021 11:55 PM (6y7dz)

Posted by: normal at Friday, June 25 2021 01:56 AM (LADmw)

Posted by: J Greely at Friday, June 25 2021 06:07 AM (ZlYZd)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

• AMD's FidelityFX upscaling solution is here and it kind of works.  (Hot Hardware)
  
  The way this works is you select your target resolution - say, 3840x2160, if that's the native resolution of your display - and your desired quality level ranging from Performance to Ultra Quality - and it renders at a lower resolution and does intelligent upscaling.
  
  Downside is that it's not an automatic feature of the drivers; it needs to be implemented in games.  Upside is that games can use the upscaling for 3D content and render menu overlays at native resolution.
  
  Performance gains can be better than 50% even at the highest quality settings, and it works on older cards like the Radeon 5500XT - and even older Nvidia cards like the GTX 1650, both of which are benchmarked here.
  
  It also works with integrated graphics, providing a health performance boost with minimal impact to image quality.
  
  
  
  
  

Tech News

• It you want a TV that doesn't spy on you - because it physically can't - you might want to get a gaming monitor.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  You can get computer monitors in sizes up to 55", with no WiFi, no Ethernet, no smart features at all.
  
  
  
• SiFive has a new high performance core - where high performance is equivalent to an Arm A75.  (SiFive)
  
  Which is not bad at all, but is four generations behind Arm's latest designs.
  
  On the other hand, four of these SiFive cores are the same size as one A75 core, which is already pretty small.
  
  
  
• Brave now has its own search engine.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Sort of.  They say they run their own engine for common queries, and have links to Google, Bing, and Mojeek (who?) if they don't find many (or any) hits.  That works, probably.
  
  
  
• A bug found last year in 800,000 firewalls only got partly fixed.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Oops.
  
  
  
• The beatings will continue until the smiles improve.  (PetaPixel)
  
  Canon deployed AI cameras in the offices of a Chinese subsidiary that will only unlock the doors if you smile.
  
  What could possibly go wrong?
  
  
  
• Microsoft has reached a market cap of $2 trillion.  (GeekWire)
  
  Money printer continues to go brrr.
  
  
  
• Iran is claiming that the US State Department seized the websites of some of their state-run propaganda media outlets.  (Bloomberg)
  
  Presumably because the content was insufficiently inflammatory.

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, June 24 2021 07:21 AM (eqaFC)

Posted by: normal at Thursday, June 24 2021 10:08 AM (obo9H)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

• Leaks ahoy!
  
  
  
  
  Okay, so this is AMD's next-generation embedded processor.  Looks nice for people working on mid-range embedded systems, but doesn't do a whole lot for the rest of us.
  
  Except that advanced chip design is expensive.  A large chip like a CPU or GPU at modern nodes - 7nm, 6nm in this case, 5nm, costs in excess of $100 million to develop.  AMD simply doesn't have the scale to drop that much money just on an embedded design.
  
  This is Rembrandt, the fill-in between current Zen 3 chips and the Zen 4 chips set to arrive late next year.
  
  CPU performance will be basically the same as current generation - it's still Zen 3 - but with a bit of a boost from the 6nm process and the DDR5 memory.
  
  PCIe 4.0 is new for AMD mobile parts.  So is USB 4.0.
  
  The dual 10G Ethernet ports are interesting, but those might not survive in the consumer models.  Every first-generation Ryzen chip has 10G Ethernet support built in, but it's not wired up to anything.  There's a crossbar switch inside the chip that connects various on-chip I/O devices - USB, SATA, PCIe, and Ethernet - to the pins on the package.  All generations of desktop Ryzen parts have 32 PCIe lanes internally, but only 24 are available because the other pins are used for SATA and USB.
  
  Same deal is likely here - the consumer version will likely have more PCIe lanes but no 10G Ethernet.
  
  And finally, 12 RDNA2 compute units.  It's a bit hard to say how that will perform since it's a combination of the number of compute units, clock speeds, memory bandwidth, and on-chip cache.  For comparison the Xbox Series S - the cheaper one - has 20 RDNA2 compute units, but according to WCCFTech the graphics cores on this chip are clocked about 30% faster than the Xbox Series S.
  
  Still not a replacement for an RTX 3090, but probably capable of playing Minecraft even at 4K.
  
  
  
  

Tech News

• China is ruining the cryptocurrency mining ecosystem with shutdown orders - and that's a good thing.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  China ruins everything.  Crypto mining ruins everything.  So what if China ruins crypto mining?
  
  
  
• Well, graphics card prices come back down, for a start.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Slowly but steadily.  I haven't seen a 6700 XT for under $1000 just yet.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Rocky Linux 8.4 is here.  (Rocky Linux)
  
  Rocky Linux is a replacement for the late lamented CentOS project, recently killed-ish by IBM.  It's led by one of the founders of CentOS and named after another (actually late and lamented) founder.
  
  8.4 is the first version because the version numbers are synchronised to RedHat Enterprise Linux, for which it is a drop-in replacement.  Except free.
  
  
  
• Of course, being a drop-in replacement means copying all the design flaws too.  (DoltHub)
  
  Dolt - why the hell did they choose that name? - is a MySQL-compatible database that supports Git operations like cloning, branching, and merging data.
  
  Those aren't things you'd want to do in your conventional OLTP environment, but for development and research they are amazing tools.  Want to try out some new code?  Just branch the database and run it on the branch.  Want an up-to-date local copy?  Just clone the remote database to your computer.
  
  Merge is likely to be a problem though.  It always is.
  
  Anyway, the article is about how if you want to be truly compatible you have to be compatible with all the weird shit a platform does as well as all the sane, documented shit, because no matter how screwy a feature might be, someone, somewhere, has written code that will break if you fix it.
  
  Microsoft understands this.
  
  Apple also understands this but doesn't care.
  
  
  
• Eight cheap M.2 SSDs compared.  (Serve the Home)
  
  Not everyone needs a RAID array of 15TB enterprise drives.  Sometimes you just need something better than your seven year old hard drive.  These are that, though if your motherboard is also seven years old it won't have an M.2 slot.
  
  
  
• ADATA - a memory and SSD maker included in the review above - got hit by ransomware.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  They told the hackers to go fuck themselves and restored from backup.
  
  
  
• Apple is designing a whole new MacBook Air.  (MacRumors)
  
  It will increase the count of graphics cores from 8 to 10 and have a new style of rubber feet.  On the underside, the article takes care to note.  I'm not sure where else Apple puts rubber feet, and not sure I want to know.
  
  
  
• Sony has won an order from a court in Germany forcing DNS provider Quad9 to block lookups to an unnamed "popular pirate site".  (TorrentFreak)
  
  Quad9 is based in Switzerland, which is not (hang on) yes, not part of Germany.  Or the EU for that matter.
  
  The court order carries fines of €250,000 per infringing lookup - which could easily run to a trillion dollars a day - and two years in prison.

Posted by: Mauser at Friday, June 25 2021 01:23 PM (Ix1l6)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

• You won't believe what kids are into these days.
  
  
  
  
  Oh, they deleted it.
  
  This being The New Yorker, they do their best to blame anime on Donald Trump.

• The ultimate monitor?  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Maybe.  The Asus ROG Swift PG32UQX is a 32" 4K 144Hz monitor with G-Sync, 10 bit DCI-P3 color, HDR10, and an eye-searing maximum brightness of 1400 nits.
  
  Price is a wallet-searing $3000.
  
  Which is a lot for a 4K screen; you can get a decent IPS screen for $250.  Or for $4000 you can upgrade to 8K.  But a single 8K screen requires all the outputs of a high-end graphics card working together, and a low-end...  Wait.  This one does 144Hz and has 90% DCI-P3 coverage.
  
  That's not bad for $250.
  
  
  
• Intel's high-end multi-chip Xe graphics cards will potentially match Nvidia and AMD's middle-end cards.  (WCCFTech)
  
  If it eases the ongoing shortage at all, I'll take it.
  
  
  
• I'm going to sing the doom song now.  (New Atlas)
  
  2014 UN271 is an Oort Cloud object that is currently approaching perihelion.  It's closest approach will be around 11 AU - about a billion miles from the Sun - but its orbit takes it out as far as 60,000 AU - almost a light year.
  
  It's not small either; observations indicate it's around 100 miles in diameter.
  
  
  
• The three most important programming languages are Julia, Crystal, and Nim.  (Matecdev)
  
  Julia for scientific computing - it's the new Fortran, only even faster and much easier to use.  

Posted by: PatBuckman at Monday, June 21 2021 10:56 PM (6y7dz)

Posted by: normal at Monday, June 21 2021 10:58 PM (LADmw)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Tuesday, June 22 2021 12:12 AM (6y7dz)

Posted by: normal at Tuesday, June 22 2021 03:24 AM (LADmw)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Tuesday, June 22 2021 11:10 AM (6y7dz)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

• DDR5 RAM is here.  (WCCFTech)
  
  These are the first modules that actually have a price - $400 for 32GB - and a shipping date - end of this month.
  
  They're 4800MHz modules, and that price matches existing overclocked DDR4-4800 modules.  (That listing is for 16GB; I couldn't find any 32GB kits.)  It's about double the price of mainstream DDR4-3200 though.
  
  Also, these modules have a 40 cycle latency which is definitely not fast.  I'm not sure exactly how that relates to DDR4 latencies though.
  
  Also also, if you follow that link, don't read the comments.  WCCFTech is great for leaks and the very latest hardware news, but the comments are full of bored 14-year-olds.
  
  
  

• Qnap has a dual-port 100GbE network adaptor for their high-end NAS offerings.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Their high end NAS offerings are very high end, with AMD Epyc server CPUs, up to 256GB of RAM, and 24 NVMe SSDs.  That's enough I/O to flood even dual-port 100GbE.  But dual-port 100GbE uses most of the bandwidth of a PCIe 4.0 x16 slot, so right now it's the fastest practical server interface.
  
  There are faster versions of Ethernet - 200 and 400 gigabit, with 800 gigabit announced but not shipping yet - but those are reserved to high end switches with six digit price tags.  A 100GbE card can be found for a few hundred dollars.
  
  
  
• Some bright sparks have got the idea of pretending to be Russian hackers in order to shake down companies.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  I think mob hits should not only be legal under these circumstances, but required by law.
  
  
  
• North Korea hacked South Korea's nuclear research agency.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Not Russia for once.
  
  The same North Korean hacking organisation - which would be under government control because internet access in North Korea is under government control - also hacked several other South Korean government agencies and senior officials.
  
  
  
• Google is reportedly force-installing a Bat Plague tracking app on the devices of Massachusetts residents.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Without notification, let alone consent.
  
  The lawyers are going to make out like bandits on the class action suit for this one.
  
  
  
• %p%s%s%s%s%n  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  If you join a WiFi hotspot with that SSID from an iPhone, your WiFi will stop working entirely.  Turning your WiFi off and on again won't help, and nor will rebooting your device.
  
  Only option is to go into Settings and reset all the network settings, and then have the fun of entering all your details again.
  
  
  
• Journalists - even tech journalists sometimes - are turning mental illness into performance art.  (ZDNet)
  
  Don't bother with the article; it blames Windows 11 on Donald Trump.
  
  
  
• Speaking of Windows 11, if you wanted to get the leaked preview it's being taken down.  (TorrentFreak)
  
  Unsurprising, and you probably didn't wat it anyway.
  
  Microsoft has left reviews alone as long as they didn't link directly to download sites.  In the US they wouldn't have a legal basis for a takedown anyway.  Not that this tends to stop the DMCA notices.

Not Exactly Tech News

• There's a weird ripple effect going on in Hololive.  Not a bad thing, but interesting.
  
  Coco recently announced her retirement to pursue her indie career.  If you know where to find her, she has another YouTube channel with half a million subscribers.
  
  Anyway, the usual suspects from China hate Coco because she referred to Taiwan as a country live on stream and then refused to back down in the face of their delusional outrage.  That debacle led to the shuttering of Hololive China, which was a troubled venture from the start because YouTube is banned in China.
  
  Anyway, in the weeks before her departure Coco is taking the opportunity to collab with as many members as possible. 
  
  The nutcases follow her to each collab stream and flood that channel with spam.
  
  The girl running that channel sets chat to members only to stop the spam.
  
  Then they get a flood of new paid members because people want to join in the chat.
  
  Right now Reine is teaching her how to swear in Indonesian.

Posted by: PatBuckman at Sunday, June 20 2021 09:28 PM (6y7dz)

Hide Comments | Add Comment