• Get your own POWER9 motherboard and CPU for just $999.
  
  Perfect for...  Perfect for...  Uh.  Honestly, 99.99% of people should just get a Ryzen 2700.
  
  Pretty good pricing for a fancy IBM RISC CPU though.
  
  
• The mantra of the major tech companies has become haha fuck you because you don't have any real alternatives.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  And they know it.  And you know it.  And they know you know it.
  
  
• Cyber Monday is a good time to buy actual real microSD cards.  (WCCFTech)
  
  I got two Sandisk 200GB cards last year at $50 a pop; this year they're just $30.  I don't need any more, but that's a great price.
  
  
• Australian's all let us rejoice for we can shop overseas.  Again.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  In other news, Amazon Australia still sucks.
  
  
• Which image moderation API works best?
  
  Just in case you were planning to launch your own social network in coming weeks and wanted to steer clear of that particular minefield as long as possible.
  
  
• How the fuck do you lose a quasar?  (Quanta)
  
  It's basically an exploding galaxy.  You can't exactly leave it in the back seat of a taxi.

• Speaking of 100 gigabit Ethernet and PCIe 4.0, Huawei announced a chip that provides both in a neat little package.  (Ars Technica)
  
  Along with up to 64 Arm Ares cores (this is a server version of the recently released Cortex A76), 64MB of L3 cache, and 8 memory channels, it has dual 100 GbE ports and 40 lanes of PCIe 4.0, plus interconnects to support up to 4 sockets per server.
  
  64 cores is the new 32 cores.
  
  Also, it probably steals all your data and sends it back to the People'S Liberation Army as part of their crackdown on... Marxism.  (NPR)
  
  Maybe stick with chips that only do that by mistake.
  
  
• Apple's brand new, long awaited Mac Mini is more or less adequate for some basic tasks particularly if you add a large, noisy, and expensive third-party external GPU.  (Ars Technica)
  
  In other words, completely pointless and no-one should buy it.
  
  
• Cards Against Humanity had their own little Black Friday sale.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  If you were looking for an eight foot long twenty-seven pound Gummy Python at 99% off YOU'RE TOO LATE because they just passed by sold out.
  
  
• To no-one's surprise if they've tried to buy memory lately the top three memory producers have hit record revenues in 2018  (Fudzilla)
  
  Memory prices are down 20% from their peak a year ago, but are still more than double their low point way back in 2013.
  
  On the other hand, that low point way back in 2013 is a large factor in why there are only three major memory manufacturers remaining today.
  
  
• Most of America is terrible at making biscuits?  (The Atlantic)
  
  No, all of America is terrible at making biscuits.  Those are fucking scones ya mad drongos.
  
  (Actually, it turns out to be the type of flour, and that depends on the type of wheat.  The right flour for making Southern-style scones isn't sold outside the region.)
  
  
• Why websites are so slow, and why HTTP/3.0 won't fix it.  (Ars Technica)
  
  One of the rare cases where it was worth reading the comments.
  
  With custom filters, the Ars Technica page took 1.48 seconds to load.  Without filters, 26.92 seconds.
  
  

Social Media News

• Facebook is facing prosecution and fines in Hong Kong because they refuse to release data on users accused of saying mean things, citing Irish privacy laws - the user data is stored in their datacenter in Ireland.  (South China Morning Post)
  
  I am with Facebook here.  Not something I say very often.
  
  
• The UK Parliament has seized internal Facebook documents as part of a key inquiry into Facebook's general shittiness.  (Axios)
  
  They've got you there, Facebook, you and your "we have detected suspicious activity on your account, please upload a photo of yourself to unlock".
  
  
• Twitter goes woker-than-thou, bans bradleynaming.  (Pink News)
  
  Fuck you, Jock Darcy, and your crappy excuse for a social network.  I'll get people's names wrong however I want.  As soon as my account is un-suspended again.
  
  
  

Posted by: Rick C at Sunday, November 25 2018 07:34 PM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, November 26 2018 02:04 AM (PiXy!)

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• 100GbE just not getting the job done any more?  Mellanox has a dual-port 200GbE card for you.  (Serve the Home)
  
  This is one of the factors behind the push for PCIe 4.0.  This card - which will not be at all expensive by enterprise standards - needs more bandwidth than a full PCIe 3.0 x16 slot can provide.
  
  As I've mentioned before, I mostly still work with 1GbE.  Current model servers might be twice as fast as what I have access to, but current model networking is playing an entirely different game in an entirely different stadium.
  
  
• If you need PCIe 4.0 RIGHT NOW TODAY well, tough, but you can pre-order the Raptor micro-ATX POWER9 motherboard for $799.  (Phoronix)
  
  One PCIe 4.0 x 16 and one x8 slot, dual GbE ports, 5.1 channel sound (?), two memory slots (?!) and supports up to an eight core POWER9 CPU.
  
  
• AMD's Ryzen 2600X MAX and Ryzen 2700 MAX are exactly the same CPUs with the bigger Wraith Max cooler.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  For...  I don't know who these are for.  But they only cost a little more than the standard edition.  The 2600X MAX is a good budget overclocking bundle.
  
  
• How the Paris Accords are destroying the planet.  (New York Times)
  
  In case you were having a good day.

Posted by: J Greely at Sunday, November 25 2018 01:48 AM (tgyIO)

Posted by: Kayle at Sunday, November 25 2018 02:49 AM (mFklD)

Posted by: Mauser at Sunday, November 25 2018 03:13 AM (Ix1l6)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, November 25 2018 05:13 PM (PiXy!)

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• If you have too much money and want to run Minecraft at 5000 fps Nvidia has just the thing.  (AnandTech)
  
  Just $399,000.
  
  It does have 512GB of video RAM, though, so there's that.
  
  
• I think the entire computer industry is in a food coma.
  
  
• Speaking of which, I switched off Tohru for the first time in I don't know how long, maybe a year.  Her Bluetooth controller had disappeared (which is slightly irksome since I have Bluetooth keyboard) and she had audio hiccups.
  
  Powering off for five minutes fixed both problems, so whatever.  This is actually a posted solution for the Bluetooth problem.

Posted by: Wonderduck at Saturday, November 24 2018 11:32 AM (k1bsf)

Posted by: J Greely at Saturday, November 24 2018 01:22 PM (tgyIO)

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• Now if you want to take a picture of the fascinating witches who put the scintillating stitches in the britches of the boys who put the powder on the noses on the faces of the ladies of the harem of the court of King Caractacus or order that ODROID-H2 board from yesterday YOU'RE TOO LATE because they just passed by.  (Fanless Tech)
  
  
• The FreeTail EVOKE Pro microSDXC UHS-II memory card sounds like one of those fake items you find on Amazon where a 1GB card has been programmed to pretend to be a 256GB card but isn't.  (AnandTech)
  
  Just...  Just buy Sandisk or Samsung, okay?  A Sandisk 128GB card is cheaper than the FreeTail 64GB card, nearly as fast, and is made by a real company that actually exists.
  
  
• Tame Apple press drone says calls for the breakup of Apple are nonsensical.  (Six Colors)
  
  No, they're not.  Which is not to say that I think it's a good idea, just that calling such calls nonsensical is nonsensical.
  
  
• Australia's crappy Prime Minister wants his crappy internet insecurity legislation passed pretty promptly so that the government can continue ignoring all the problems with it.  (ZDNet)

• Apple and Amazon have teamed up to "Enhance Customer Experience" by banning second-hand products.  (TechDirt)
  
  Unless the second-hand reseller can

  prove they spend at least $2.5 million dollars every 90 days buying Apple products "directly from a national wireless carrier or retailer with over $5 billion in annual sales”

  Or in other words, haha fuck you.
  
  
• Google just pulled the plug on Android malware apps with an aggregate of 580,000 downloads.  (TechCrunch)
  
  Google pulled 700,000 malicious apps from their store in 2017 alone.  Not downloads, apps.
  
  
• The ODROID-H2 is a Gemini Lake Atom board with everything you might want for a latter-day Cobalt Qube.  (Liliputing)
  
  Well, almost.  It has a quad-core CPU, supports up to 32GB RAM, has an M.2 slot and two SATA ports, two USB 3.0 and two USB 2.0 ports, HDMI and DisplayPort, two gigabit ethernet ports, two 1/8" audio jacks and an S/PDIF optical port.  And it's passively cooled, and completely silent.
  
  It also has an eMMC socket if you want to have a dedicated boot drive and a proprietary expansion header for, um, proprietary expansion header things.
  
  It's a pretty small board - just 4.3" square - so the M.2 and SO-DIMM sockets are on the bottom.
  
  The one thing it lacks is WiFi, but they do have a USB WiFi adaptor for $6.  The board itself is available for pre-order for $111.
  
  
• I used that Humble Bundle bulk download button.  Now I have 50GB of Fairy Tale manga.  Be warned.

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, November 22 2018 12:47 AM (Q/JG2)

Posted by: StargazerA5 at Thursday, November 22 2018 04:40 AM (Q7Wqc)

Posted by: StargazerA5 at Thursday, November 22 2018 04:49 AM (Q7Wqc)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, November 22 2018 09:30 AM (PiXy!)

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Posted by: Rick C at Wednesday, November 21 2018 12:41 AM (Q/JG2)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, November 21 2018 09:54 AM (PiXy!)

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• Original Linus says maybe it's not a great idea to add a default Meltdown mitigation to the Linux kernel to prevent security bugs arising from hyperthreading that is worse for system performance than simply disabling hyperthreading in the first place.  (Phoronix)
  
  
• If you need a motherboard with twenty PCIe 3.0 x16 slots this is one. (AnandTech)
  
  
• Yeah, not a whole lot.  The tech industry is going into hibernation.  All the holiday season products are already out, and nothing much is likely to happen before CES, unless it's bad.
  
  

• CherryPy 18 has dropped support for Python 2.x.  Fortunately (a) Cherrypy 17 has been made an LTS release and will continue to receive bugfixes, and (b) PyPy 3 is solid enough for production use now.
  
  (Minx, both current and new versions, uses CherryPy.)
  
  
• Speaking of LTS, Ubuntu 18.04 has been announced as an XLTS release with 10 year support instead of the usual 5 years.  (ZDNet)
  
  Some commenters have pointed out that extended support is already available on LTS releases if you pay for it and it hasn't been made explicitly clear that this is free XLTS.
  
  (Our new server runs Ubuntu 18.04, so this will be nice.)
  
  
• Do not fold, spindle, or mutilate your iPad Pro.  (TechSpot)
  
  Particularly do not fold.
  
  
• The original author of AMOS is working on AMOS 2.
  
  Ack.  JavaScript.
  
  
• Gmail allows other people to send you email and have it show up in your Sent folder.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  This is not good.  Expect a tsunami of new targeted spam if this is not fixed quickly.
  
  
• The FCC has granted SpaceX permission to launch 11,943 satellites.  (Ars Technica)
  
  The vast constellation will provide broadband coverage to the entire planet, transmitting in the millimetre band between 37GHz and 52GHz.
  
  The satellites will be in low-Earth orbit and relatively short-lived, so that they won't sit around forever and present a hazard to future launches.

• China, apparently upset that Europe is getting all the totalitarian nutcase points lately, has clamped down on economic reporting.  (Financial Times)
  
  They wouldn't be doing this if things were going well.  No news is bad news.
  
  
• Australia's terrible internet insecurity legislation keeps finding new ways to be terrible.  (ZDNet)

• If I were to invent a programming language for the 21st century.
  
  This guy should take a look at the Progress 4GL.  Wait, he's talking about COBOL, and about programming in general.
  
  And he's not wrong.
  
  
• Huawei's Mate 20 and Mate 20 Pro are out.  (AnandTech)
  
  Both have Huawei's own Kirin 980 CPU with the new Arm Cortex A76 core, 128GB of storage, and 4GB or 6GB RAM.  The Mate 20 has a 2244x1080 LCD, while the Pro has a 3120x1440 OLED screen.
  
  The other big difference is in the cameras.  Both have three rear cameras - main, zoom, and wide-angle, but the main camera on the Mate 20 is 12MP while the Pro has a huge 40MP main camera.
  
  Also, for some insane reason, the Pro doesn't have a headphone jack.
  
  They are also very expensive - from €799 to €1049.
  
  Oh, and if you wanted to upgrade that 128GB internal storage, haha fuck you, Huawei just invented "nanoSD" (The Verge) which is not a thing that exists anywhere (Amazon).
  
  
• Nvidia has a hangover.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  The crypto mining bubble left a lot of unsold inventory and also dumped a lot of second-hand cards on the market.  This is why AMD didn't move to increase supply of cards last year when you couldn't get a card for love or money.  (Which is how I ended up with a Dell system rather than building my own.)
  
  Nvidia had a great quarter, but their stock price dived anyway because they have a lot of unsold inventory of old mid-range cards which is blocking their release of next-generation mid-range cards, which is blocking widespread uptake of their new RTX architecture, which is blocking widespread use of RTX features, which is blocking uptake of high-end RTX cards.
  
  Oops.
  
  They're not going anywhere, though; this is just a fumble, not a disaster.

Posted by: Rick C at Sunday, November 18 2018 12:50 PM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, November 18 2018 01:03 PM (PiXy!)

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