• Content advisory: You might not want to click on that Haachama Cooking video from yesterday.  I posted it before the stream went live based on the amusing and misleading thumbnail...  That turned out to be a terrifying and accurate thumbnail.
  
  
  
  
  
• Life Hack: Go to Domino's Australian website.  Select the three pizzas/three sides online coupon.  Swap the sides one-by-one for the gluten-free salted caramel mousse.  Then add regular pizzas, one at a time, and select half-and-half with the gluten-free sourdough base.  (Check their list of gluten free toppings to be safe.)
  
  There are no coupons for gluten-free pizzas or meals, but if you do this it works out to about half the normal price, and for some reason half-and-half is even cheaper than regular pizzas.
  
  
  
• Not so much.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Microsoft is reportedly working on custom Arm server CPUs for Azure.  The article cites their work co-developing the Qualcomm SQ2 chip used in the Surface Pro X.
  
  The SQ2 is literally the same chip as the 8cx gen 2, which is literally the same chip as the 8cx.  Microsoft didn't co-develop squat.
  
  
  
• Intel's Sapphire Rapids Xeon processors will support DDR5 and PCIe 5.0 in 2023 unless they don't.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Intel's roadmap says 2021, but that seems unlikely.  Their Ice Lake Xeons are supposed to be out right now but aren't even on the horizon.
  
  
  
• A Zoom executive has been charged with disrupting video meetings commemorating the Tiananmen Square Massacre.  (DoJ)
  
  The charges filed include a long litany of irredeemable bullshit, including identity theft and attempts to frame Zoom users for crimes.
  
  Friends don't let friends use Zoom.
  
  China ruins everything.
  
  
  
• A bug in the Magecart malware - which steals payment details from online stores - leaked a list of infected sites.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  The biter bit.
  
  
  
• Apple, Google, Microsoft and Mozilla have declared war on Kazakhstan.  (Engadget)
  
  The Kazakhstan government is forcing its serfs - can hardly call them citizens - to use a government-issued root certificate to access secure websites.  The browser makers are going to invalidate that certificate.  For the third time.
  
  
  

Posted by: Rick C at Sunday, December 20 2020 02:23 AM (eqaFC)

Posted by: normal at Sunday, December 20 2020 06:09 AM (obo9H)

Posted by: Mauser at Sunday, December 20 2020 09:45 AM (Ix1l6)

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• Gigabyte has a Threadripper Pro motherboard.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Threadripper Pro fixes the three issues with Threadripper for really high-end workstations: It enables all eight memory channels, supports registered memory, and has the full 128 PCIe lanes.
  
  While there's not a lot of detail yet, the picture shows that the motherboard has seven PCIe x16 slots and supports IPMI for remote management.  Four Ethernet ports - looks like two 10Gb and two 1Gb, four USB ports, what looks like VGA, serial, and HDMI for management, and a full block of six audio connectors which is somewhat unusual for a server board.
  
  AMD's Pro parts are only available to OEMs, but the existence of this board may indicate that smaller system builders will be getting access to Threadripper Pro.
  
  
  
• The new Ampere Altra Arm server processor competes well with even a 64 core Epyc.  (AnandTech)
  
  It takes 80 cores to match a 64 core Epyc, but then it has 80 cores and Epyc only has 64, so that's a fair test.
  
  It doesn't do as well in Java as it does in C and  Fortran, losing those specific test by a large margin, but overall it's a sign of real competition.
  
  
  
• MacOS Bug Sir has a bug that prevents updates to less buggy versions.  (MicroMDM)
  
  Nice one, Apple.  At least they can fix it in a future...  Oh.
  
  
  
• Twitter has apparently cut of web access to tweets.
  
  
  That embed is done by loading a bunch of Javascript.  If you access the URL via a tool such as curl, or your own code making an HTTP request, you simply get an error page.
  
  
  
• How to avoid getting bankrupted by cloud hosting bills.  (Bahr)
  
  Step 1: Use fixed-price cloud hosting.
  
  That's the one thing you need to do, and the one thing the article doesn't ever mention.
  
  
  
• Google has been sued by 38 US states over antitrust violations.  (Bloomberg)
  
  This is not a repeat story.  This is the third such lawsuit targeting Google over various breaches of anti-monopoly laws this month.
  
  
  
• Unfortunately after three days the cows explode.  (ABC)
  
  Adding a specific type of seaweed to the diet of cattle - just mixing a small amount in with their feed - reduces methane emissions by a factor of 1000, apparently by derailing one specific metabolic process in gut bacteria.
  
  Not sure what other effects that would have.  Cows don't need methane to function, but they do need those bacteria.
  
  
  
• Sony has pulled Cyberpunk 2077 from the Playstation Store and is offering refunds.  (The Verge)
  
  The game runs fine on the Playstation 5.
  
  You can't get a Playstation 5.
  
  And on the Playstation 4, it kind of sucks.

• I have all of next week off.  Just need to figure out how to upgrade my computers without having to get out of bed.
  
  
  
• Testing the best desktop APUs that you can't get.  (AnandTech)
  
  Ian Cuttress got his hands on some Ryzen 4000G OEM parts - Disguise 100 Trickery 100 - and put them through their paces.
  
  TL;DR: Need more bandwidth.  In laptops these chips can run with 4266MHz or even faster RAM; on the desktop there's not a lot of point in pairing a low-cost APU with expensive overclocked memory.
  
  DDR5 will solve this, but probably not until early 2022.
  
  
  
• The ASRock 4x4 NUCalike that Tom's Hardware tested recently has remote management.  (AnandTech)
  
  Not IPMI but a newer standard called DASH.  It provides basic management over a web interface, or full KVM with a suitable client application.  Both ASRock and AMD have clients available.
  
  Makes for a nice little mini-server.
  
  
  
• Smashing is a dashboard app.
  
  Open source.  Written in Ruby, but with Sinatra rather than Rails, so the code is likely to actually be sane.  I'm going to try running it here at PixyLab to monitor stuffs, because I have a lot of stuffs to monitor.
  
  
  
• Like, for example, this shit.
  
  
  Every time that happens, a key application at my day job breaks.
  
  
  
• Intel has new Optane drives for the datacentre.  (Serve the Home)
  
  PCIe 4.0 interface at up to 7.2GBps, 6µs access times, and 100 DWPD (drive writes per day) endurance.  Pricing not available just yet, but they won't be cheap.
  
  They also announced the 670p and H20 consumer drives.
  
  The 670P is an update to the QLC 660p and 665p, but from the sound of things not much of one. 
  
  The H20 is a weird split Optane/QLC device that requires driver support and only works on the latest Intel CPUs; it's really for laptop OEMS.
  
  HP uses these - you'll note that some of their laptops will have 8GB RAM, 512GB of SSD, and 32GB of Optane storage.  They don't have two NVMe devices, but one of these odd hybrids instead.  The Optane and flash storage on the H20 (and the existing H10) each have their own controller chip, and each connect to the CPU separately using two lanes of PCIe.
  
  A single integrated controller that used the Optane storage as cache for the QLC flash would make this far more interesting, but getting that 100% right does take time.  And I'd rather they got it right than shipped something that silently ate my data.
  
  
  
• Ten US states are suing Google and Facebook for colluding to control the online ad market.  (ZDNet)
  
  This is in addition to the existing lawsuits targeting Google and Facebook individually.
  
  
  
• The Orion crew capsule - which has flown exactly once, unmanned - has cost more than SpaceX has spent on every single thing they have done, combined.  (Planetary Society)
  
  The Orion capsule is designed for much longer missions than the Crew Dragon, but still.
  
  
  
• GOG has removed the indie game Devotion due to a hidden Winnie the Pooh reference.  (TechRaptor)
  
  China ruins everything.
  
  
  
• Fubuki from Hololive - the one with the Scatman video - had a sponsored collab stream with Asus lined up.  The Chinese division of Asus went anti and sabotaged the deal.  (Reddit)
  
  China ruins everything.

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, December 18 2020 01:15 AM (eqaFC)

Posted by: normal at Friday, December 18 2020 02:51 AM (obo9H)

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• I have a freezer full of gluten free lasagna and satay chicken.
  
  I also have a new washing machine, because yeah.
  
  Fortunately it was at least a dark-coloured shirt.
  
  
  
• LG has a 32" 1440p 144Hz monitor for under $300.  (AnandTech)
  
  I prefer a 27" 4K monitor, but then I mostly use my PC for work, and I wear prescription computer glasses.  For gaming and watching movies this is pretty clearly a better choice.
  
  (In the comments: Apple fanboys complaining that it's only 2560x1440.  Apple sells exactly one monitor, and it costs $6000.)
  
  They also have a 32" 4K monitor for $350.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  If your video card is very fast - or kind of slow - or you use your computer mostly for work, that's a great option.  It's only 60Hz so not the first choice for FPS or online gaming, but looks like a good all-rounder.
  
  
  
• I might plug in my other 4K display - an older Samsung TN model, one of the first cheap 4K monitors - after I finish upgrading Tohru and Rally.  I swapped it for Rally two years ago and have had each system running as a second screen for the other, but if I'm also running virtual KVM I can add a third screen.
  
  I'm off work next week, which is why I wanted to get the upgrade parts before Christmas.
  
  
  
• My USB drives arrived in Sydney half an hour ago.  Those are the last thing I need.
  
  
  
• Gmail fell over again.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  I'm having trouble with one site because it tried to send a notification to my email account, but it bounced because Gmail was down, and now it wants me to confirm my email address again, but I'm not getting the confirmation email because the mail service has marked my email address as bad because Gmail was down.
  
  I run the servers for that site - this is one of the apps at my day job - and I could just log in, find the right record in the database, and flip the status flag - but this has to be a huge pain for people who can't do that.
  
  
  
• For once it actually was Russian hackers.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  SolarWinds, a network management and monitoring tools provider, got hacked.  They got very hacked.  They've been distributing hacked software for months.
  
  Unless there are mitigating factors, the most serious security breach I know of in recent years.  And a very good reason to use open-source software for this.
  
  And not crap like Node.js, which basically comes pre-hacked.
  
  
  
• Twitter has been fined €450,000 over a bug in their Android app.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  If you "protected" your account - that is, made it so that only followers could read your nonsense - and then changed your email address in the Android app, it would switch off the protection flag.  Probably because it's a REST API and not an RPC-style one.  REST APIs are bad for that.
  
  Twitter was notified of the bug on December 26 2018, fixed it on January 3, and forwarded details to the European Commission for Fucking Everything Up on January 8, but got fined anyway.  Which will totally make companies more open to admitting fault.
  
  
  
• Another review of the Western Digital Blue SN550.  (PC Perspective)
  
  If you can't get a WD Black SN750 on sale, this is still the go-to drive at the low end of the NVMe market.
  
  
  
• A look at the new Arm-based 13" MacBook Pro.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Performance is good - but they only compared it to Intel-based laptops, and AMD is the clear leader there.
  
  Battery life is good - but not outstanding; 16 hours vs. 13 on a cheaper Acer Swift 5.
  
  Display is good - Apple has been shipping good displays for a long time now.
  
  Port selection is garbage.
  
  Price is steep.
  
  Upgrades are zero.  And configurations max out at just 16GB.
  
  
  
• Australia's consumer watchdog is suing Facebook for spying on users.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  In 2016.
  
  
  
• You can now watch HBO Max in full screen mode on an Arm-based Mac.  (Mac Rumors)
  
  That is, if your Arm-based Mac has a 4:3 screen and you're watching a really old TV show.
  
  
  
• Chaos as a service.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Amazon is offering a new fault injection simulator for testing.  You can dial it up anywhere from Sora to Ame.  Setting it to Haachama requires signing a waiver and notifying your next of kin.
  
  
  

Posted by: normal at Thursday, December 17 2020 11:06 AM (obo9H)

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• RAM arrived.  1/8" audio jack to dual RCA cable arrived (to replace Multiplicity's crappy audio streaming).  Two 32GB USB thumb drives arrive tomorrow so I can create recovery images for Tohru and Rally.
  
  Plan is to swap the the 16GB RAM for 32GB, the 256GB NVMe drive for the new 1TB WD Black, and the 1TB 2.5" hard drive for a 1TB SATA SSD.  I already have those - they were a late upgrade for my previous system, and are currently running as external drives.  Might as well move them inside.
  
  First Rally, which mostly runs Linux VMs.  Just back up the VMs, clean install on the new SSD, copy the VM back again DO NOT TRY THIS WITH COMPRESSED VOLUMES OR YOU WILL DIE HAVE A REALLY MISERABLE DAY and then install everything I need to work before moving on to Tohru.
  
  Since they're cross-linked via HDMI - each has HDMI in and out - either one can in theory take over all duties while the other is just a second screen.
  
  
  
• Woolworths delivered my groceries today.  Nothing was missing.  I now have a freezer packed full of gluten-free satay chicken and lasagna, because I kept adding more to my order each time they lost them.
  
  
  
• To speed up you must first slow down.  (AnandTech)
  
  Interesting analysis of an external NVMe drive, tested first on Thunderbolt, which provides a direct PCIe connection, then on USB 3.1 at 10Gbps.
  
  Thunderbolt provided better burst performance but worse consistency and slower sustained writes.  I'm guessing that this last isn't by design, but rather than the USB interface throttled writes just enough that the drive controller itself never throttled.
  
  
  
• The FTC has finally woken up from its fifteen year nap and asked social networks to explain themselves.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  They've sent notices asking details of what the companies are doing with users' personal data.  Targets include Amazon, TikTok, Facebook, WhatsApp, Discord, Reddit, Snap, Twitter, and YouTube, which is pretty much all of them.
  
  Given that Google and Facebook are both facing anti-trust action already, this is likely to ruffle some feathers that damn well need a good ruffling.
  
  
  
• Google went down across the entire world yesterday because they ran out of disk space.  (Google)
  
  Oops.
  
  
  
• The MacOS Bug Sir 11.1 update is out.  (Mr Macintosh)
  
  If you have a 2014 MacBook Pro and didn't already kill it with the initial release, this one is supposed to actually work.
  
  
  

Freedom of the Hydraulic Press Video of the Day

Posted by: Rick C at Wednesday, December 16 2020 01:42 AM (eqaFC)

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• Ordered the RAM upgrade for my two PCs today.  There are finally some good deals on Amazon...  Except it's Amazon UK and delivery might be by Friday or it might be three weeks from Friday.
  
  So I ended up ordering two 16GB Crucial modules - since Amazon AU helpfully have a 3 per customer limit - and two slightly more expensive Kingston modules.  Should have them tomorrow.
  
  (I decided not to try messing about with 32GB modules, at least for now.)
  
  Update: It's here already, already.
  
  
  
• Third-generation Epyc can hit 4GHz unless it can't.  (WCCFTech)
  
  We're running a cluster of Threadripper servers at work because they had significantly better single-threaded performance than Epyc did when we got them.  Downside is they don't support registered memory, so the limit is 256GB per system.
  
  The higher-clocked members of the new Epyc lineup should perform better even on single-threaded workloads and support up to 2TB of RAM.
  
  Of course, a new generation of Threadripper parts will also be arriving soon and will be even faster again.
  
  
  
• Working in pyjamas doesn't hurt productivity.  (ZDNet)
  
  Guess I'll need to fins a new excuse then.
  
  
  
• Google is forging ahead with Chrome changes that will cripple ad blockers.  (CNet)
  
  Google is an advertising company, not a tech company.
  
  
  
• It's not me, it's You(Tube).
  
  Just went down.  Worldwide, apparently.  Embedded videos still play but the site itself is dead as a doornail.
  
  
  
• Gmail too.  Oh, good.  Well, since pyjamas are out, there's my excuse.
  
  
  
  
• Wait.  Gonna try something.
  
  
  
  Make that some embedded videos still play.
  
  
  
• Some sites using Google services also got side-swiped by the outage.
  
  
  
  
  We use Google Cloud for one of our apps at work, but just cloud servers, nothing fancy.  That has continued to run without a blip, as has their DNS.

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, December 15 2020 12:57 AM (eqaFC)

Posted by: normal at Tuesday, December 15 2020 02:53 AM (LADmw)

Posted by: normal at Tuesday, December 15 2020 03:24 AM (LADmw)

Posted by: StargazerA5 at Tuesday, December 15 2020 02:08 PM (PducE)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, December 15 2020 02:56 PM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Rick C at Wednesday, December 16 2020 01:26 AM (eqaFC)

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• Blue on Blue: Intel's Core i9 11900K will feature eight cores and sixteen threads unless it won't.  (WCCFTech)
  
  The i7 11700K will also feature eight cores and sixteen threads.
  
  In 10th generation the i9 had 10 cores, giving it some reason to exist.  In the 11th generation, while the core itself has been updated, the count has gone backwards, so the i9 is at best 4% faster than the cheaper i7.
  
  Both use 125W at base clock and up to 250W at boost clock, compared to 105W and 150W respectively for a 16 core 5950X.  On the other hand, you can't get a 5950X right now.  On the third hand, you also can't get any 11th generation desktop chips because they haven't even launched yet.
  
  
  
• Green on Green: Nvidia told hardware reviewers to kiss the ring.
  
  
  Hardware reviewers were unimpressed, to say the least.
  
  
  This is one of the more moderate responses.  Other Linus was pissed.
  
  Under the glare of having every tech journalist in the world angry with them, Nvidia has since backed down.  (TechSpot)
  
  I'm not sure that will be enough.
  
  
  
  
  
• Guess my next system will be all AMD after all.  Whenever that might be.
  
  
  
• Virtual events suck.  (AParker)
  
  So do real-world events, but this post at least discusses some ways to fix virtual events.
  
  
  
• Windows 10 on ARM now has 64-bit x86 emulation.  (Thurrott.com)
  
  Or at least the preview release does.  And it seems to work, at least if the application you want to run is Photoshop Elements.
  
  
  
• A long awaited new RPG is finally available to play: Nox Archaist is out for the Apple II.  (Vintage is the New Old)
  
  You do need a hard drive on your Apple II to run it, as it doesn't fit on a floppy.  And at least 128k of RAM.  Or you can use the included emulator to run it on Windows or Mac, that works too.
  
  
  
• Kiara did an in-person collab with Matsuri from Hololive JP - despite being part of Hololive EN, she and Calliope Mori are currently living in Japan.
  
  In the stream she mentioned that they originally planned to meet at her house, but decided at the last minute to go to Matsuri's house rather than introduce Matsuri to Casper.
  
  It turns out that Casper is a rat.  Not a pet rat, a rat rat.  It has a name, but it lives in her ceiling.
  
  
  
• The version of Multiplicity included in Object desktop turns out to be limited to two computers, so scratch what I said.  Also, the audio streaming sucks for some reason.
  
  
  

Not At All Tech News

Triumphant Returns

• I've been running Stardock's Start8 and Start10 since two days after I first installed Windows 8, and Fences nearly as long.  Lately I've also been running Multiplicity to share my keyboard and mouse (and clipboard) across machines and Groupy to group windows together.
  
  All work well and are recommended.  If you do have multiple PCs and need a solution like Multiplicity, I suggest picking up Object Desktop which is a license for all of Stardock's utility software for five systems.
  
  In theory it's an annual license; in practice the way it works is pretty generous.  Anything you install in the first year not only keeps right on working but keeps getting updated, as far as I can tell, indefinitely.
  
  
  
• The Corsair MP400: A zoom, followed by a splat.  (AnandTech)
  
  If you're looking for a cheap NVMe SSD, your choices are DRAMless TLC models or QLC models.  I don't think anyone makes DRAMless QLC drives for reasons that will become apparent in a moment.
  
  Both of these options work fine for reading data.  They typically have slower, cheaper controllers than high-end drives, but this is 2020 and a slow, cheap controller means speeds over a gigabyte per second.
  
  On writes, each design has its own problems.  DRAMless designs have inconsistent write latency, running just fine most of the time but occasionally spiking up into territory held by the fastest spinning disks.  QLC on the other hand depends on a large pseudo-SLC cache for write performance, and when that runs out, write speeds drop by as much as 95%.
  
  The upside is that if the drive is cheap you can buy a huge model with a ton of cache.  If you have a 4TB drive with 1TB of cache you're not likely to run out quickly.  Problem with the MP400 is the larger models cost as much per gigabyte as a high-end TLC drive.
  
  
  
• An 8TB MP400 gives you about 2TB of high-performance space - about 1.75GB per second - at a cost of $1500.
  
  The 2TB Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus gives you 2TB of high-performance space at $400.  (Serve the Home)
  
  High-performance in this case meaning 7GB per second reads, 4.6GB per second writes.  So if you need serious performance and don't want to fuss around with NVMe RAID, that price is not bad at all.
  
  
  
• The Hackboard 2 is a tiny Atom based single-board computer.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  At $99 with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage it's more expensive than the Raspberry Pi ($55 with 4GB RAM and no storage) but on the other hand it can run standard Linux distributions or even Windows.
  
  The Celeron N4020 is a low-end 6W dual-core part, but single-threaded performance is decent, about 60% of a Ryzen 1700, or 35% of a 5600X.
  
  
  
• Oracle is following Tesla and HPE and abandoning California for Texas.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Like ships leaving a sinking rat.
  
  
  
• The FDA has given emergency authorisation for the first Wuhan Bat Soup Death Plague vaccine.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  An independent review board unanimously recommended approval earlier this week, so the FDA only required several days and repeated kicking by the president to actually do their jobs.
  
  
  
• What's four orders of magnitude here and there?  (The Register)
  
  Well, when it's a cloud hosting bill, that means your free plan costs you $72,000 per day.
  
  
  
• A new species of whale has been discovered.  (The Vast)
  
  Whales notably being small and easy to miss.
  
  They took DNA samples to determine the new whales' place in the whale family tree, though they didn't discuss exactly how.
  
  
  
• Hey Rocky, watch me pull a Linux distro out of my hat!  (ZDNet)
  
  Rocky Linux is a new fork of CentOS, created by one of the founders of the CentOS project, and named in memory of another project founder.  In the first 48 hours, 650 contributors have signed up to work on it.
  
  
  
• Ryzen 5600X servers are starting to show up at hosting providers.  (Webhosting Talk)  Not many of the higher-end Ryzen 5000 models yet.
  
  The six core 5600X matches Intel's ten core W-1290 in both single and multi-threaded benchmarks.  (Passmark)
  
  
  
• Risu (of HololiveID) - who I've been watching because my regulars Coco, Haachama, and Pikamee are all on holiday at the moment - streams Minecraft with subtitles enabled, so that she  can keep the audio turned down but still know when a creeper is creeping up on her.  The subtitles are mostly descriptions of sound effects, and produce some curious combinations.

Posted by: normal at Sunday, December 13 2020 02:20 AM (obo9H)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, December 13 2020 02:22 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: sahige4797 at Wednesday, August 09 2023 05:06 PM (VCj7i)

Posted by: at Tuesday, November 07 2023 01:06 AM (Plm+S)

Posted by: SimonWhitehead at Monday, November 27 2023 09:37 PM (GSyLA)

Posted by: SimonWhitehead at Sunday, January 14 2024 06:36 PM (QWmeB)

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• A look at the Supermicro X12SAE and Intel's W-1200 workstation platform.  (AnandTech)
  
  The W-1200 range of CPUs are the workstation versions of Comet Lake - the 10th generation desktop range, with the top of the line W-1290P being a Core i9 10900K.
  
  In other words, high clock speeds and high power consumption, but good single-threaded performance.  Unfortunately for Intel, the W-1290P barely beats a Ryzen 3700X on mult-threaded server workloads, and that's AMD's, what, seventh or eighth fastest mainstream desktop processor?  And available for half the price of the W-1290P.
  
  
  
• A look at the Western Digital Black SN850.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  The one I just got is the SN750.  The new model brings better latency and bandwidth numbers, support for PCIe 4.0, and about twice the price.
  
  
  
• The Orange Pi R1 Plus is a simple, cheap single-board computer suitable for firewall / router tasks.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  I'd prefer three Ethernet ports rather than just two, but at $20 and just 2" square, you can simply use two of them.  Well, and a DMZ switch.
  
  Compared to the original R1 it upgrades the RAM from 256M to 1G, and the CPU from a 32-bit A7 to a 64-bit A53.  That's plenty to route even gigabit internet.
  
  
  
• We can have democracy or we can have Facebook.  (The Ink)
  
  Facebook doesn't cross my radar screen as much as Twitter and YouTube, but they too are a metastatic cancer and need to be burned out rather than broken up.
  
  
  
• Need a single-chip 32-port 800Gb Ethernet switch?  (Serve the Home)
  
  Yes, 25.6Tbps of switching fabric can be yours for the low price of...  Hmm.  Wonder why they left that detail out?
  
  
  
• Microsoft is planning to start forcing upgrades of Windows 10 1903 and 1909 versions.  (The Redmond Cloud)
  
  This has happened before, of course.  One of my older computers cannot succesfully upgrade and has bricked itself twice.  Soft-brick - being a PC, you can always reinstall from a current ISO.
  
  Unlike, say, a 2014 MacBook Pro meeting Bug Sir.
  
  
  
• Wait, passwords?  (Tech Crunch)

  the music streaming giant said the data exposed "may have included email address, your preferred display name, password, gender, and date of birth only to certain business partners of Spotify.”

  That it was even possible to accidentally share passwords is an enormous red flag.
  
  
  
• Then they came for Dilbert.
  

Posted by: normal at Saturday, December 12 2020 03:54 AM (LADmw)

Posted by: normal at Saturday, December 12 2020 04:04 AM (LADmw)

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, December 12 2020 08:43 AM (eqaFC)

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• My 11 PM finish last night turned into a 1:30 AM finish, so that was fun.
  
  
  
• YouTube is banning any video questioning the processes or outcome of the 2020 US election.  (Victory Girls)
  
  Google's corporate motto: If you're going to be evil, be all the way evil.  No half measures.
  
  
  
• Turns out every detail of the last story Big Tech buried was true.  (CNBC)
  
  CNBC now notes that Hunter Biden is being investigated over his taxes.  Because he didn't pay state income tax in Delaware on kickbacks from a Chinese company implicated in the Uyghur genocide.
  
  And even then spends most of the article whining about Trump's tax returns, when we already know everything that was in those as well.
  
  Burn them all to the ground.
  
  
  
• Speaking of burning them all to the ground: The FTC - along with the attorneys generalses of 48 states and territories - is suing to break up Facebook. (Tech Crunch)
  
  Sow their fields with salt.  Just swing by video game journalists tweeting about Cyberpunk 2077 and you'll find all you could possibly need.
  
  
  
• SpaceX ran a 95% successful test of their Starship prototype.  (Space.com)
  
  That last 5% got a little bumpy though.
  
  
  
• The CentOS project just committed suicide.  (FOSSPost)
  
  An opinion piece on yesterday's news of CentOS 8 being thrown in the woodchipper, but a correct opinion piece.
  
  
  
• Ducks can swim.  (Quanta)

  Imagine a circular fence that encloses one acre of grass. If you tie a goat to the inside of the fence, how long a rope do you need to allow the animal access to exactly half an acre?

  The answer of course is that the goat will eat the rope, then eat all the grass, and then start in on the fence.
  
  (My brother got tired of mowing the lawn - he has an acre on the outskirts of Melbourne - and got a couple of goats.  Later he got tired of stepping in goat poop, but that's a story for another day.)
  
  
  
• Google CEO Sundar Pichai noted that his company had made the correct call in the Timnit Gebru case and vowed to investigate and make sure it never happens again.  (Axios)
  
  Forget anything I said about "one healthy sign".  Google is fucked.
  
  
  
• Speaking of which, YouTube will suspend your account, lie about notifiying you, and never once give you a reason.
  
  
  
  Reddit thread.  No love lost here.
  
  YouTube is working overtime to create an entire generation of antitrust litigators.

Posted by: normal at Friday, December 11 2020 06:37 AM (LADmw)

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