• With a successful suborbital test flight of Starship under his belt, Elon Musk is turning his attention to the Starfactory.  (Space)
  
  Starfactory, already under construction, is planned to be able to build a Starship - the largest and most powerful rocket ever launched - every day.
  
  And keep in mind that both Starship and the Super Heavy booster with its 33 engines are fully reusable.  So that's multiple launches per day.
  
  He's the main character in an old-school Heinlein novel.

• A court-appointed administrator for failed fintech startup Synapse has found $85 million of customer funds aren't.  (CNBC)  (archive site)
  
  Aren't what?
  
  Just aren't.  Aren't funds.  Aren't there.  Aren't accounted for.
  
  Since Synapse was a middle-man between banks and other startups that needed financial services, its failure means that customers - both companies contracting Synapse and their customers in turn - currently have no access to funds even though the banks are solvent and the accounts are FDIC insured.
  
  But the fact that a third of the money simply seems to be gone makes things even more complicated.
  
  
  
• The DOJ has indicted the developers of a tool that let people spend Bitcoin without the government monitoring them.  (Reason)
  
  You know, like you can still do - for now - with cash.
  
  The government hates that.
  
  
  
• For 13 years, Siri has sucked.  Now with the AI bubble in maximum inflation mode, Apple is set to make it worse.  (The Verge)
  
  Okay.
  
  
  
• What Snowflake isn't saying about its massive data breach.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  What Snowflake is saying is that this is entirely the fault of its customers.
  
  For being silly enough to trust their data with Snowflake.
  
  
  
• Six people have been hospitalised after eating Diamon Shruumz brand chocolate bars.  (Ars Technica)
  
  Which contain - as you might have guessed - psychedelic mushrooms.

  The chocolate bars are still available for sale online but the FDA said that consumers should not eat, sell, or serve them, you idiots.

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, June 10 2024 12:52 AM (BMUHC)

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• Just in time for the weekend, there's a new critical security vulnerability in PHP.  (Ars Technica)
  
  Sysadmins worldwide panic.
  
  On Windows.
  
  Sysadmins worldwide go back to sleep.
  
  If you have Chinese or Japanese language packs installed and run PHP on Windows, Windows itself will helpfully slip unsafe characters past the normal security mechanisms and into database queries where they will wreak havoc.
  
  There are several fatal design flaws working together to make this a problem, and none of them are unique to PHP.
  
  Though PHP is still awful and nobody should use it for anything, ever.

• The twelve core Zen 5 Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 (yes, unfortunately that is its name) is only a little slower than the sixteen core Zen 4 Ryzen 7945HX3D.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  And that's with the Zen 5 chip running in the lowest power "silent mode".  In previous generations there were high and low power versions of laptop chips; with Zen 5 you can run the chip at anything from 15W to 54W - and even at the lowest setting it is very capable.
  
  This was tested in an Asus laptop; my own Asus also has silent mode and it really works.
  
  
  
• Civilization 7 is due out next year.  (WCCFTech)
  
  I clocked up a fair bit of time back in the day with Civilization II.  I got so good at it that even at higher difficulty settings I'd have nuclear weapons in the Middle Ages and launch my rocket to Alpha Centauri while my rivals were still messing about with sailing ships.
  
  
  
• Hackers breached a Disney Confluence server and stole confidential documents relating to the design and implementation of...  Club Penguin.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Keep being weird, guys.
  
  
  
• Adobe isn't stealing your content, says Adobe.  (Adobe)
  
  Adobe did change its license terms to grant itself permission to steal your content, but Adobe says Adobe would never do that except in certain very specific circumstances, such as if it really wanted to.

  To be clear, Adobe requires a limited license to access content solely for the purpose of operating or improving the services and software and to enforce our terms and comply with law, such as to protect against abusive content.

  Which terms are so broad you could launch a Boeing 737-800 from them without any risk of running out of runway.
  
  
  
• The Affinity suite (design, photo editing, and publishing) is half price right now.  (Affinity)
  
  Under $100 for the three applications on Windows, Mac, and iOS.  No subscription fees, free upgrades.
  
  
  
• Microsoft is planning to encrypt the Recall database.  (The Verge)
  
  Problem: Microsoft claimed in the product announcement that the data was encrypted.  They lied.
  
  They also plan to make it opt-in, just like Windows 11 upgrades, or ads on your desktop.

Posted by: Frank at Saturday, June 08 2024 07:24 PM (HXB50)

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, June 08 2024 10:02 PM (BMUHC)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Saturday, June 08 2024 11:00 PM (PiXy!)

Posted by: normal at Sunday, June 09 2024 12:41 AM (bg2DR)

Posted by: cxt217 at Tuesday, June 11 2024 11:40 AM (ZLF73)

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• I was still kind of expecting an Earth-shattering kaboom: SpaceX's Starship's fourth test flight went without any serious mishaps.  (Ars Techica)
  
  A suborbital hop followed by splashdown of both the booster and second stage in the Indian Ocean about an hour apart.
  
  Even the Ars Commentariat couldn't whip itself into its usual love/hate mix on this one.
  
  
  
• And Boeing's Starliner has successfully docked with the ISS.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Good news all round.
  

• AI company Humane is up for sale at an asking price of $1 billion - that's $100,000 per customer.  (Engadget)
  
  The company sold just 10,000 of its massively hyped AI pins.
  
  Good luck in bankruptcy court, guys.
  
  
  
• HSBC believes that Indian edtech company Byju's is now worth approximately absolutely nothing.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Formerly valued at $22 billion, reduced to $250 million in a recent fundraising round, and HSBC believes that is still wildly optimistic.
  
  
  
• Intel has dropped hyperthreading in Lunar Lake.  (PC World)
  
  It's not clear if this is actually absent in the silicon or just disabled, but it makes sense.
  
  Hyperthreading was added to get a little more performance out of a limited number of cores - originally just one.  It can run two programs on one core, each at about 60% performance, so the total performance is a little better than it would be otherwise. 
  
  But now Intel CPUs come with "Efficiency" cores that run at about 50% of the performance of a full core, but use a quarter of the area and a quarter of the power of a full core, making them both more efficient and simpler than hyperthreading.
  
  
  
• Asrock has shown off its motherboards for Ryzen 9000.  (AnandTech)
  
  No 10G Ethernet, but 5G is present on the top 3 boards.  The problem is that 5G switches simply aren't a thing; you'll not only need to buy a 10G switch but make sure it supports the intermediate 5G speed.
  
  
  
• XPG's Nia handheld gaming device has upgradeable RAM using CAMM2.  (AnandTech)
  
  That's a change.  Every competing device has soldered RAM.
  
  
  
• The Chinese Hygon 8 core CPU matches multi-threaded performance of a three-generation old AMD CPU in Geekbench.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  A three-generation old 6 core AMD CPU.
  
  Still, not awful.
  
  
  
• Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 benchmarks put it 20% faster than the 8945HS.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Though the CPU clocks peak at 4.2GHz where the chip is rated at 5.1GHz, so that's not even close to full speed.
  
  Also, the chart lists 40 cores.  It's not a 40 core CPU.  I don't know what's going on here.
  
  
  
• GOG will start deleting excessive cloud saves soon.  (ExtremeTech)
  
  If you use more than 200MB for a single game for cloud saves, GOG will delete the older saves for that game.  Not sure what it will do if a game uses more than 200MB for a single save file.

Posted by: Bob in Houston at Friday, June 07 2024 11:26 PM (YBLgY)

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• Microsoft has effectively destroyed computer security altogether.  (Ars Technica)
  
  Not directly the subject of the article (which is about Microsoft Recall, again), but of the pinned comment.
  
  The point being that Recall is such a huge security risk, that even if you disable it (or never install Windows 11 in the first place), you have to assume that anyone you share a document with has been or will soon be hacked.
  
  Which is bad.

Tech News

• G.Skill has demonstrated DDR5-10600 RAM running on a Ryzen 8500G.  (AnandTech)
  
  Which is pointless because that pairs very expensive memory with one of AMD's cheapest CPUs and the performance gain would by minuscule.
  
  But it does work.
  
  
  
• They also showed off a 48GB DDR5-7800 CAMM2 memory module...  On a desktop motherboard.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Which is pointless because CAMM2 modules are designed specifically for laptops.
  
  
  
• How online privacy is like fishing.  (IEEE Spectrum)
  
  It isn't and the article is dumb.
  
  
  
• Micron has announced its GDDR7 memory for next-generation graphics cards.  (Serve the Home)
  
  Which we already knew about, but the article includes a chart of all the advances in computer graphics since 2016...  Which are all worthless.
  
  
  
• Chinese researchers claim to have discovered a serious security issue in the RISC-V CPU design.  (South China Morning Post)
  
  RISC-V is an open-source CPU architecture that China was betting on because being ruled by lunatics means nobody else wants to play with you.
  
  The article is....  Let's check the comments on Slashdot where I found it:

  The natural reading of the headline is that this flaw is good for China--but it's not.
  
  Write better.

  And in reply:

  Did you read the article? It's somehow worse. Reading it will likely leave you less informed.

  
  
  
• Oral B has bricked its $230 Alexa toothbrush.  (Ars Technica)
  
  Anyone buying an Alexa toothbrush deserves to have this happen to them.
  
  
  
• In slightly less stupid news Spotify is refunding buyers of its Car Thing device, which it is also bricking.  (The Verge)
  
  Good.  Some people wanted Spotify to make it open-source, but the company probably ran the numbers and found it would be cheaper just to give everyone their money back.
  
  
  
• After several scrubbed launches, Boeing's Starliner is finally on its way to the ISS, with just one minor leak.   (Ars Technica)
  
  Two minor leaks.
  
  Three minor leaks.
  
  Ah ah ah.
  
  
  
• Google has acquired Cameo to let Windows applications run on ChromeOS devices except not.  (The Verge)
  
  As far as I can tell this is a remote desktop system, where you still need a Windows PC running the application but you can connect to it from a Chromebook.
  
  
  
• Humane has warned owners of its AI Pin - both of them - to immediately stop using the devices charging case because it might burn their house down.  (The Verge)
  
  Okay.
  
  
  
• Bluesky and Mastodon users can now talk to each other.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Can do.
  
  Won't.

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, June 07 2024 02:33 AM (BMUHC)

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, June 07 2024 02:42 AM (BMUHC)

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, June 07 2024 02:47 AM (BMUHC)

Posted by: Mauser at Friday, June 07 2024 01:50 PM (nk1Z+)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, June 07 2024 04:26 PM (PiXy!)

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• OpenAI's ChatGPT and Anthropic's Claude went down at the same time, following an earlier outage of Google's Gemini.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  And nothing of value was lost.
  
  
  
• Elon Musk sets back Tesla by billions of dollars in time value of autonomy related efforts by diverting chips to X and xAI.  (WCCFTech)
  
  And nothing of value was lost.
  
  
  
• First Rule of Online Publishing: A hate click is still a click.
  

• Here's a 2800W power supply for your new...  Arc welder, maybe?  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Exactly what power source that is supposed to plug in to is unclear.  An Australian 15A socket would work, but they're not common.  In the US maybe a 30A socket.
  
  
  
• Intel's 144 core Xeons are here.  (Serve the Home)
  
  Unfortunately these will be competing with AMD's 192 core chips, and AMD's cores are faster.
  
  
  
• There is nothing new under the Sun: Cable and telecom companies are suing the FCC over net neutrality...  Again.  (Ars Technica)
  
  I support net neutrality, because the cable and telecom companies cannot be trusted.
  
  I do not support the FCC creating this regulation, because it is a naked power grab.
  
  It requires standalone legislation from Congress, who can be trusted to do nothing.
  
  
  
• China's internet is disappearing.  (New York Times)  (archive site)
  
  One third of the Chinese web has shut down since 2017, and almost everything published online in the country between 1995 and 2005 is simply gone.
  
  Even major natural events like the 2008 Sichuan earthquake are being progressively erased.
  
  In the West, the internet is forever.  Everything is archived, particularly things we might wish to be forgotten.  When Ragtag Archive - more than a petabyte of vtuber streams, much of it from channels now closed - was facing closure last year, a swarm of volunteers came together to preserve it.
  
  Less so in China.
  
  
  
• Australia's Bookburner General has dropped her lawsuit against Twitter.  (Twitter)
  
  Never mind.  There will be another one along yesterday.

Posted by: Frank at Wednesday, June 05 2024 09:35 PM (HXB50)

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, June 06 2024 01:41 AM (BMUHC)

Posted by: David Eastman at Thursday, June 06 2024 01:56 AM (rmrII)

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, June 06 2024 08:18 AM (BMUHC)

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, June 06 2024 08:22 AM (BMUHC)

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• In addition to the Zen 5 desktop lineup, AMD has announced its first Zen 5 laptop CPUs, codenamed Strix Point.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  These are mainstream chips with integrated graphics.
  
  Compared to the previous generation, the CPU cores increase from 8 to 12, and the graphics cores from 12 to 16.
  
  Eight of the twelve CPU cores are the smaller, slower, Zen 5c, so the 12 core model is probably equivalent to a 10 core Zen 5 CPU - or as fast as a 12 core Zen 4.
  
  The model I'm really waiting for is Strix Point Halo, with more than 16 CPU cores - we don't know exactly how many - and 40 graphics cores.  That hasn't been announced yet.
  
  
  
• Asus has announced several laptops based on the new AMD chips.  (Liliputing)
  
  None of them have the Four Essential Keys.
  
  No release dates yet but this particular model is listed for pre-order at Best Buy for $1399.
  
  
  

Tech News

• Intel also announced new laptop chips.  (AnandTech)
  
  Lunar Lake is due out by September, aimed at mainstream laptops.  Intel says that the new Performance cores offer 16% better IPC than the previous generation - exactly the same increase as AMD claims for Zen 5.
  
  Intel also claims that the Efficiency cores can provide 70% better single-threaded performance and 3x better multi-threaded performance than the previous E-cores in Meteor Lake.
  
  If that's accurate, it's a huge improvement, taking the E-cores (which were adequate but not good) to a level where they are directly comparable to Zen 5c.
  
  Lunar Lake will be followed up by Arrow Lake before the end of the year, by while Arrow Lake will have the new Performance cores, it might still have the older, slower Efficiency cores.
  
  So go for Lunar Lake?  Not so fast.  Lunar Lake will only be available with memory soldered directly onto the CPU, a maximum of 32GB.
  
  
  
• New York plans to restrict the use of social media recommendation algorithms for teenage users.  (CNBC)
  
  I...  Yeah.  Okay.  Good luck.
  
  
  
• If you have a third-party repair on your Google phone and send it in to Google for additional repairs...  They will just keep it.  (Android Authority)
  
  Because fuck you, that's why.
  
  
  
• After raising $100 million in capital, "AI fintech" startup LoanSnap is being sued, fined by federal and state authorities, and evicted.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Well, it's a start, but let me know when it escalates to prison time. 
  
  
  
• Australia's "e-Safety Council" is now openly protecting pedophiles.  (Twitter)
  
  The tweet banned from view in Australia reports on an "LGBTQIA+ club" in a public school in Melbourne...  For children aged 8 to 12.
  
  The video and screenshots of the banned tweet have now been posted by an Australian senator, so the attempted silencing has had its usual effect.

• The rumors were correct, and at Computex Taipei today AMD announced new CPUs due in stores next month.  (AnandTech)
  
  The Zen 3 based eight core 5800XT (a minor speed upgrade over the 5800X) and sixteen core 5900XT (a major upgrade over the twelve core 5900X) will refresh the AM4 platform.
  
  
  
• Oh, and Zen 5 will also be out next month.  (AnandTech)
  
  These will arrive in the form of the 9600X, 9700X, 9900X, and 9950X, with TDPs ranging from 65W for the first two, to 170W for the 9950X.
  
  The 9600X and 9700X use 40W less than their Zen 4 predecessors, and the 9700X uses 50W less.  
  
  At the same time they're an average of 16% faster on real tests, and twice as fast in some specific cases.
  
  
  
• Server CPUs are coming soon as well, with up to 192 cores.
  
  
  

Tech News

• Snowflake is at the center of the world's largest data breach.  (Double Pulsar)
  
  Snowflake is saying that they weren't breached, it's just that multiple customers were breached, all at the same time, without them noticing or doing anything about it.
  
  
  
• How the new Microsoft Recall feature fundamentally undermines Windows security.  (Double Pulsar)
  
  Surely it's not that bad?
  
  
  
• Stealing everything you ever type or viewed on your Windows PC is now possible - with just two lines of code.  (Double Pulsar)
  
  It is that bad.
  
  
  
• The Asus ROG Ally X is what the Asus ROG Ally should have been.  (The Verge)
  
  It's not an upgrade in terms of screen or CPU, but it improves a whole host of small mechanical issues, increases RAM from 16GB to 24GB, doubles the storage, and doubles the battery life, while only adding two ounces to the weight.
  
  
  
• Quake in 13k of JavaScript.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Well, sure, why not?
  
  
  
• AI is a secret octopus playing connect the dots.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Pretty much, yeah.

• The first launch of the Boeing Starliner has been scrubbed - again - this time due to a computer problem.  (CBS)
  
  The launch is controlled by three independent computers that for safety reasons have to agree at all times.  Four minutes before launch one appears to have gotten into an argument with the other two and decided it wasn't going to talk to them until they apologised.
  
  Engineers on site seem to be resigned.  "I'm married with four kids", said one.  "This might take a while."

Tech News

• TSMC is preparing both 12nm and 5nm versions of its controller chips for HBM4 modules.  (AnandTech)
  
  Smaller than a postage stamp, HBM4 will store up to 64GB and have transfer rate of 2TB per second, which is a lot.
  
  
  
• The implosion of an EV startup.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  "Elon Musk is an idiot.  If he can do it, I can do it."
  (Fails miserably.)
  Rinse and repeat.

• Create, along with a number of add-ons
  
• Chipped, which alone adds about seven thousand new decorative blocks - and seven new workstations for creating and modifying them
• Chisels and Bits, which lets you use a chisel to carve Minecraft blocks into any shape you fancy
• Domum Ornamentum, which lets you take two Minecraft blocks (including blocks from other mods) and a pattern, and create a new block combining them
  
  

Dimensions

• The Aether (with add-ons)
• The Bumblezone
• The Everbright
• The Everdawn
• The Feywild
• The Twilight Forest
• The Undergarden

• Bugs Aplenty
• Cane's Wonderful Spiders
• Creeper Overhaul
• Critters and Companions
• Enderman Overhaul
• Exotic Birds
• Grimoire of Gaia, which includes a number of hostile mobs so they are set to only start showing up after 28 days in game
• More Mob Variants, which includes all the new wolf types coming in 1.21
• Nether Depths
• Nether Overhaul
• Productive Bees
• Unusual Fish
• What the Gecko

• Villages and villagers have received a major upgrade combining about thirty different mods and resource packs - though they're still kind of dumb because the AI upgrade I tried made the game crash
• Food and drink are completely overhauled, with Aquaculture, Croptopia, Farmer's Delight giving a huge range of crops and cooking options, and the Let's Do series bringing wine, beer, spirits, tea and coffee, and candlelit dinners
  
• New measures to protect and enhance your pets - plus a lot of new pets to find
  
• Easier travel with Small Ships, Immersive Aircraft, and from Tameable Beasts several new steeds to ride - some of which can fly

Posted by: cxt217 at Sunday, June 02 2024 01:21 AM (ZLF73)

Posted by: Rick C at Sunday, June 02 2024 04:02 AM (BMUHC)

3 Not hassling, but your upcoming modpack has an increasingly impatient audience over here

Posted by: Andrew Horn at Sunday, June 09 2024 04:09 PM (uEGFG)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, June 10 2024 03:18 PM (PiXy!)

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• Xbox is was down.  (Reddit)
  
  Pixy, your Xbox and Xbox 360 are sitting in a box in the garage, and your Xbox Series X is sitting in its original box in the closet because you still haven't opened it.  What do you care?
  
  I can't log in to Minecraft.
  
  I have Minecraft installed.  I have my own server.  I can't play it because a service I don't use and don't care about is down.

  You may not be able to sign-in to your Xbox profile, may be disconnected while signed in, or have other related problems. Features that require sign-in like most games, apps and social activity won't be available.

  This apparently includes offline single-player games that you have already installed on your console.  And Minecraft.
  
  
  
• Live Nation has confirmed earlier reports of a data breach.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  The company itself wasn't hacked, but:

  A spokesperson for Ticketmaster, who would not provide their name but responded from the company’s media email address, told TechCrunch that its stolen database was hosted on Snowflake, a Boston-based cloud storage and analytics company.

  I hate cloud storage.

  Snowflake said in a post on Friday that it had informed a "limited number of customers who we believe may have been impacted" by attacks "targeting some of our customers' accounts." Snowflake did not describe the nature of the attacks, or if data had been stolen from customer accounts.

  The problem there is that when Snowflake says "a limited number of customers", they mean "a handful of the largest corporations in America", not "a small number of individual people".
  
  And just one of Snowflakes customers had half a billion customers of its own.
  
  As always with security, it's only as strong as the Post-it note on the intern's desk at your cloud storage provider.
  
  
  

Posted by: cxt217 at Sunday, June 02 2024 01:18 AM (ZLF73)

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