• Hosting company WebNX's facility in Ogden, Utah, had some problems after a backup generator caught fire during a power outage.  (The Register)
  
  Well, that happened.
  
  All the servers at my day job are back online, but not my own server that would normally host Ace's site.  That will likely be a couple more days.
  
  I was planning on moving everything over there.  Good thing I haven't had the time to do that.
  
  We're not the only ones affected.  The very popular EEVBlog forum is currently cactus.
  
  
  
  He had redundant servers, but they're both down.
  
  
  
• Intel's Ice Lake Xeons offer up to 40 cores and 60MB of L3 cache.  (AnandTech)
  
  More importantly, they've had massive price cuts across the entire range.  Previously the 28-core Xeon Gold 6258R was the standout, offering the same performance as the $10,000 Platinum 8280 at 40% of the price.
  
  While it runs at a somewhat slower clock speed, the new 28-core Xeon Gold 6330 cuts that price by another 50% to $1900.
  
  I'm sure it's pure coincidence that last month AMD introduced their own 28-core Epyc model, the 7453, at under $1600.
  
  Single-threaded performance of the new chips is competitive with AMD and the latest Arm server parts.  Multi-threaded performance is good enough to get them into 10th place.
  
  More details at Serve the Home.
  
  Including a discussion that this will be the only CPU range from Intel to use this socket.  It's been delayed so long that their next hardware platform is due out before they could reasonably update this one.
  
  
  
• 7% of Americans don't use the internet.  Who are they?  (Pew)
  
  Short answer: Old people.
  
  
  
• Speaking of which, the average age of COBOL programmers is 50.  (GovTech)
  
  Not only that, but it is remaining constant at 50.
  
  
  
• Australia may be getting protection for online platforms similar to CDA Section 230.  (ZDNet)
  
  I think this is probably a good thing.  I would enjoy seeing Section 230 repealed and social media as we know it burned to the ground, but that's because it's run by communists.
  
  
  
• Bitcoin mining could produce 130 million tonnes of CO₂ per year by 2024 - in China alone.  (New Scientist)
  
  That's more than the whole of Italy.
  
  
  
• Apparently there's music on Twitter.  Who knew?  (TorrentFreak)
  
  The RIAA is going after them for...  Oh.  Ahahahaha.  Idiots.
  
  
  
• Wuffs' PNG decoder is faster than libpng and memory safe.  (GitHub)
  
  What the hell is Wuffs?  Turns out it's a programming language specifically for handling untrusted binary data.
  
  It can compile to C so you can build libraries with it and then use them in real programs, but it is very, very picky about your code.  All the usual nonsense like buffer overruns, integer overflows, and null pointer dereferences simply won't compile.
  
  
  
• The manager of Google's AI research has resigned following the very public firing of two insufferable lunatics in his department.  (The Verge)
  
  Note that he was their manager, but was not involved with or even aware of their firings until they happened.  Whatever his abilities as a researcher, he's a lousy manager.
  
  
  
• A long thread on why PC joysticks were terrible at a time when even the Commodore 64 got it right contains this gem:
  
  
  
  
  
  

Posted by: normal at Thursday, April 08 2021 10:33 AM (obo9H)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

• Oracle has lost its copyright suit against Google over the latter's use of the Java API.  (ZDNet)
  
  This was a hugely important case; a win here for Oracle would have destroyed the US software industry, which has its problems but doesn't deserve to be wiped out.
  
  Interesting to note that the 6-2 split had Thomas and Alito dissenting.  I'll need to read their opinion because they are not idiots.
  
  The full decision is here.
  
  The decision doesn't sound particularly decisive according to commenters at Hacker News.
  
  
  
• Microsoft Edge has grown its userbase by 1300% in the past year to become the second most popular browser.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Get wrecked, Mozilla.  You pissed in your boat and tried to eat it too.
  
  
  
• The ErdÅ‘s-Faber-Lovász conjecture has been settled after 50 years.  (Quanta)
  
  It's true.  Which they don't mention until the sixth paragraph, because it's all about the clicks baby.
  
  Pikamee offers her expert opinion.
  
  
  
  
  
• The new Razer Book 13 lacks the Four Essential Keys.  (Thurrott.com)
  
  It's not just me.  Paul Thurrott specifically highlights this deficiency in an otherwise positive review.
  
  
  
• It was DNS.  (ZDNet)
  
  When a traditional datacenter goes offline, it's power.
  
  When a cloud datacenter goes offline, it's DNS.
  
  In this case it was Azure, and it was self-inflicted.
  
  
  
• Colorado has denied its people the right to repair devices they own.  (Motherboard)
  
  Stuck with a broken wheelchair and can't get an approved tech out to repair it for two months even though you have the parts and tools to do it yourself?  You can sit at home and rot, says the Colorado state legislature.
  
  
  
• It's a bubble.  (CNN)
  
  No shit, Sherlock.  There are real uses for NFTs, but none that are worth $69 million.
  
  
  
• Meanwhile the combined market cap of cryptocurrencies has passed $2 trillion.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  That's not entirely a bubble; it's largely fueled by governments trying to shut them down.  If it were still legal and easy to launch your own cryptocurrencies they wouldn't be nearly as valuable.
  
  
  
• Yahoo Answers is shutting down.  (Motherboard)
  
  We'll have to find new idiots to make fun of.
  
  
  
• Amazon acted illegally in firing commies, says the NLRB.  (New York Times)
  
  One would need a heart of stone not to gigglesnort.
  
  
  
• Lenovo is vendor-locking the Threadripper Pro parts used in their workstations.  (Serve the Home)
  
  This is sucky behaviour, but Lenovo did arrange to be the exclusive launch partner for Threadripper Pro, so maybe there was some reason behind it apart from just being annoying.
  
  
  
• The Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus can hit 6.6GBps on sequential writes, 7.1GBps on reads, and up to 700k IOPs.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Those used to be seriously high-end enterprise numbers, now they're available for $200 per terabyte.
  
  
  
• You can upgrade the RAM and storage in your Mac Mini M1.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  All you need is a reflow station and a very steady hand, because it's all soldered-on surface-mount parts.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• The Asus ROG Strix does have the Four Essential Keys.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Also an eight-core Ryzen 5900HX and Radeon 6800M graphics with 12GB of GDDR6.
  
  
  
• Want a Core i9-11900K?  Try $1100 on Amazon.  (WCCFTech)
  
  That's a high price for a CPU that reviewers have described thus:
  
  
  
  Lower-end parts still seem to be selling at their recommended prices, but that might change.
  
  
  
• It's not just high-end brand name chips that are in short supply.  (Bloomberg)
  
  Display drivers, the chips found in everything with a display, are also hard to get.
  
  And there are very few electronic devices these days that do not include a display.  At least my washing machine only has a basic segmented LCD.  I think it's an LCD.
  
  
  
• Kallithea is an open source alternative to GitHub.  (Kallithea)
  
  So is GitLab, more or less.  But all of Kallithea is open source, and only parts of GitLab.
  
  
  
• I'm fine with this.
  
  
  
  
  

Posted by: J Greely at Wednesday, April 07 2021 12:43 AM (ZlYZd)

Posted by: Rick C at Wednesday, April 07 2021 01:20 AM (eqaFC)

Posted by: Rick C at Wednesday, April 07 2021 01:30 AM (eqaFC)

Posted by: cxt217 at Wednesday, April 07 2021 09:32 AM (4i7w0)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, April 07 2021 11:58 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, April 08 2021 12:01 AM (eqaFC)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

• Hosting company WebNX had a power outage.  (Facebook)
  
  Then their backup generator kicked in and things got worse.
  
  On the good side, they have a working fire suppression.
  
  Less good side, it could be a day or two before Ace is back on his main site, and  a handful of our servers at work are offline as well.  They need a safety inspector to give them the all clear before they can power everything back up.
  
  
  
• LG is exiting the smartphone market.  (WCCFTech)
  
  It's not an unexpected move.  They have a lot of profitable business divisions, but that was not one of them.
  
  
  
• If you disable PSF to avoid that potential Zen 3 security flaw, you lose less than 0.5% in average performance.  (Phoronix)
  
  Might as well do it if you might be at risk.
  
  

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, April 06 2021 12:02 AM (eqaFC)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, April 06 2021 12:08 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, April 06 2021 12:43 AM (eqaFC)

Posted by: normal at Tuesday, April 06 2021 01:12 AM (LADmw)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

Posted by: creeper at Wednesday, April 07 2021 12:03 AM (XxJt1)

Posted by: phoenixgirl at Wednesday, April 07 2021 12:26 AM (CqHIp)

Posted by: Lance Walker at Wednesday, April 07 2021 02:57 AM (rwGLm)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

• Intel vs. AMD: Who wins?  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Comparing the 11900K and the 5900X it's a pretty easy win for AMD if you can actually find one anywhere which you can't.  Of all the Ryzen 5000 range the 5900X is the hardest to get.
  
  
  
• Nvidia vs. AMD: Who wins?  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Comparing he 3070 and the 6700XT the 3070 performs a little better overall and significantly better in ray tracing, but you can't get one.  The 6700XT is, so far, still available.
  
  
  
• GitHub is being used to mine cryptocurrency.  (The Record)
  
  It's not a security breach though.  You can set up automated processes to test your code, and you can get those automated tests to mine cryptocurrencies for you.  It's comically inefficient and GitHub will terminate your account, but if you have nothing else to do with your time you might earn a few bucks before they shut you down.
  
  
  
• A reasonably priced 2.5GbE switch?  (Serve the Home)
  
  Yes.  Albeit one designed by an idiot.
  
  The indicator lights are on the back.
  
  
  
• Personal details for half a billion Facebook users are floating around on the internet.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  I mean, on Facebook too, but in this case as a single huge dataset.
  
  I've never given Facebook my phone number, but Twitter will lock your account and force you to cough up your phone number to unlock it again.

• Tried my hand at fishing in Minecraft.  This is great in theory because fish let you tame cats and cats scare off creepers and creepers suck, and also because you can fish up certain types of enchanted items - bows, books, and fishing rods - that are otherwise hard to get.
  
  Wasn't having much luck with that part, until I fished up this item:
  
  
  
  It has every enchantment it is possible to have on a Minecraft fishing rod and all maxed out.  I could have done without the curse, but since getting that one I have fished up a ton of other goodies.
  
  No books of Fortune or Silk Touch yet, but I do have Unbreaking III to apply to my diamond pickaxe.
  
  Update: Well, I forgot I had it with me, went to feed the animals at my ranch, got jumped by pillagers, and the fishing rod is gone.  But it lasted long enough for me to get a replacement.  I just need to be level 24 to combine two of the other fishing rods it found for me and I'll have all the same enchantments but without the curse.  Only I just got killed by pillagers so my levels got reset...
  
  
  
• SK Hynix is investing $106 billion in new fabs.  (AnandTech)
  
  That's still a lot, but it sounds like this is over a longer period than TSMC's similarly-sized investment.
  
  
  
• Rocket Lake Xeons are coming.  (WCCFTech)
  
  I don't know why, but they are.
  
  
  
• Zen 3 has a potential security vulnerability like Spectre.  (Phoronix)
  
  It's a side-channel attack and there's no proof-of-concept yet, but they're taking it seriously - and there's already a flag that can be set in the CPU to disable the specific feature, called Predictive Store Forwarding, that may be vulnerable.
  
  AMD's suggestion is to set this flag on applications that run untrusted code (e.g. web browsers) or at the kernel level if you can't do that.  It doesn't need a microcode or BIOS update.
  
  
  
• Rust leaks your username.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  The absolute path used when compiling Rust programs is baked into the binary code.  This has been known for a while, but the Rust team seems to have bee struggling with the concept of don't do that then.

Posted by: normal at Sunday, April 04 2021 04:25 AM (obo9H)

Posted by: Rick C at Sunday, April 04 2021 08:26 AM (eqaFC)

Posted by: normal at Sunday, April 04 2021 10:01 AM (obo9H)

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, April 05 2021 01:18 AM (eqaFC)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, April 05 2021 02:14 AM (PiXy!)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

• Tohru (my main desktop PC) had decided that it will now shut down if I play two YouTube videos at once.  I discovered this because Reine (from HoloID) had a unscheduled collab in Minecraft with Pekora (who has a new costume - old-fashioned prison pyjamas, making her look even more like Bugs Bunny) and...
  
  Anyway, realised that Pekora was streaming and I could watch both viewpoints, and I did - for about two minutes.
  
  I need a new PC.
  
  
  
• Which is a problem at the moment, particularly if I want something fancy, like any graphics card whatsoever.
  
  But: Intel has a partial solution for that.
  
  The high-end 11th gen desktop parts - the 11700K and 11900K - have been solidly panned, but the lower-end parts fare much better.  They're relatively cheap, still have six cores, and unlike the 5600X, have integrated graphics.
  
  The 11400 is somewhat slower than the Ryzen 5600X but only by 10% single-threaded and 20% multi-threaded, and it is roughly 50% cheaper at retail.  (Because the 5600X is selling for well above its recommended price.)
  
  And, as I said, it has integrated graphics so I could use the computer for work while I wait a year for my video card to arrive.
  
  
  
  
  
• AMD is increasing production of Ryzen CPUs by 20%.  (WCCFTech)
  
  That's not enough, but they're limited by wafer allocation at TSMC, who are running at 100% across all their fabs right now.
  
  
  
• Microsoft is making Xbox fridges for real.  Apparently.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Okay then.
  
  Where's that KFC console?
  
  
  
• isEven as a service.  (isEven API)
  
  Given the mess that NodeJS made out of this, it almost makes sense.
  
  
  
• When upper case doesn't get your point across adequately why not try uppest case?  (Tom7)
  
  Why not indeed?
  
  
  
• Has anyone checked the Prime Minister?  (The Guardian)
  
  Would explain a lot.

Posted by: normal at Saturday, April 03 2021 03:44 AM (LADmw)

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, April 03 2021 06:33 AM (eqaFC)

Posted by: Sam P at Saturday, April 03 2021 08:47 AM (magRz)

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, April 03 2021 10:35 AM (eqaFC)

Posted by: normal at Saturday, April 03 2021 11:05 AM (+Kfbd)

Posted by: normal at Saturday, April 03 2021 11:08 AM (+Kfbd)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

• The ASRock Z590 Taichi has a thing that spins.  (AnandTech)
  
  Not a fan.
  
  
  
• TSMC is investing $100 billion on fabs and R&D over the next three years.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  That's, uh, rather a lot.
  
  
  
• The EmDrive, which can't possibly work, doesn't.  (GreWi)
  
  Surprise.
  
  
  
• Taking the world's fastest mainstream server out for a test drive.  (Serve the Home)
  
  It's actually not much faster than the one I just got to play with at work.  Which I need to set up over the Easter long weekend, but it will make my life so much easier that I'm willing to do that.
  
  
  
• YouTube is giving me about one frame per minute right now.  What the actual fuck, guys?
  
  Hmm.  Just on the one stream I actually want to watch.  Everything else - even other Hololive streams - is fine.
  
  

Posted by: normal at Friday, April 02 2021 03:14 AM (LADmw)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Friday, April 02 2021 03:41 AM (6y7dz)

Posted by: David Eastman at Friday, April 02 2021 08:57 AM (t/97R)

Posted by: normal at Saturday, April 03 2021 12:55 AM (LADmw)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

• Rocket Lake is here and it's crap.  (AnandTech)
  
  They previously got their hands on the i7-11700K and it was decidedly underwhelming, but also not the top of the line part.  Now they have the i9-11900K and...  Yeesh.
  
  What do you think, Steve?
  
  
  
  Steve's unimpressed.  What about you, Aussie Steve?
  
  
  
  Not ones to mince words, are Steve and Steve.
  
  The 8-core 11th-gen die is 25% larger than the 10-core 10th-gen die, and slower at multi-threaded and often at single-threaded tasks, while using more power.  It's not bad, not on the level of Bulldozer, but it's not better than its predecessor or its competition.
  
  Performance is not objectively bad, but it doesn't provide a reason not to simply buy AMD.
  
  In fact, given availability and pricing, the Ryzen 3900X is looking pretty good right now.  Particularly since you can upgrade later to a 5900X or 5950X, and there is no upgrade path at all for the 11900K.
  
  
  
• Let's find out what mongod --repair does, shall we?
  
  
  
• Arm has announced Armv9.  It has stuff.  (AnandTech)
  
  Notably it has support for some kind of micro-hypervisor architecture that can protect VMs running on Arm hardware even if the host node is hacked.  To an extent, anyway; if you have root access to the host you can shut it all down and maybe delete all the data; what you can't do is access the data within the VMs.  I believe that Epyc also supports this.
  
  They also discussed the next two generations of mobile cores, which will bring 30% total IPC improvements, presumably over the current high-end X1 core.
  
  The first of these cores will arrive this year, with consumer devices early in 2022.
  
  
  
• Dimgrey Cavefish is on its way.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  This is probably the Radeon 6600 XT.  It seems that this will have just 32MB of inifinity cache, which will make for a much smaller die - cache is about 1mm² per MB on TSMC's 7nm node.  Not much less on 5nm either; that scales well for logic but not for memory.
  
  
  
• Speaking of which, TSMC plans to ship 4nm parts this year.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Production was originally scheduled for next year, but they're ahead of schedule.  3nm is on track for late next year.
  
  If they don't run out of water.  They can have some of ours, frankly.  We're full.  For now, Taiwan is praying for typhoons.  Yurie, your country...  Another country needs you.
  
  
  
• The Ubiquiti breach was bad.  (Krebs on Security)
  
  Intruders gained access to Ubiquiti's AWS account, set up their own VMs on the network, installed backdoors on the servers, and basically had full access to everything.
  
  
  

Hololive Minecraft Stream No Video of the Day

Posted by: normal at Friday, April 02 2021 01:00 AM (LADmw)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, April 02 2021 02:27 AM (PiXy!)

Hide Comments | Add Comment