It was a bad day. A lot of bad stuff happened. And I'd love to forget it all. But I don't. Not ever. Because this is what I do. Every time, every day, every second, this: On five, we're bringing down the government.

Wednesday, December 04

Geek

Daily News Stuff 4 December 2024

Battlemist Edition

Top Story

  • As expected, Intel's second-generation "Battlemage" graphics cards are here.  (Tom's Hardware)

    The B580 comes with 12GB of VRAM and costs $249, while the B570 comes with 10GB and costs $219.

    The B580 will be on sale next week, while the B570 will wait until next month, though for $30 you might as well go with the faster model.

    Intel has released a lot of updates for it's graphics drivers since the rather shaky launch of the previous generation "Alchemist" cards and now looks like a viable alternative to Nvidia or AMD at the low end.


Tech News



Disclaimer: You put a what in the what?

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Tuesday, December 03

Geek

Daily News Stuff 3 December 2024

Redecentralisation Edition

Top Story



Tech News

  • AMD's fastest CPU, the recently announced 192 core Epyc 9965, just received a 33% price cut.  (MSN)

    It still costs $10,000, but that's not a bad price for that powerful a chip.

    No scores on CPUBenchmark for this chip just yet; the fastest chip they have listed is the 96 core Epyc 9655P.


  • We don't need to fear Skynet.  Just mention Jonathan Turley and the whole system will reboot.  (Tech Crunch)
    Users of the conversational AI platform ChatGPT discovered an interesting phenomenon over the weekend: the popular chatbot refuses to answer questions if asked about a "David Mayer." Asking it to do so causes it to freeze up instantly. Conspiracy theories have ensued - but a more ordinary reason may be at the heart of this strange behavior.
    This was circulating on Twitter, but Tech Crunch actually did a bit of digging:
    Which brings us back to David Mayer. There is no lawyer, journalist, mayor, or otherwise obviously notable person by that name that anyone could find (with apologies to the many respectable David Mayers out there).

    There was, however, a Professor David Mayer, who taught drama and history, specializing in connections between the late Victorian era and early cinema. Mayer died in the summer of 2023, at the age of 94. For years before that, however, the British American academic faced a legal and online issue of having his name associated with a wanted criminal who used it as a pseudonym, to the point where he was unable to travel.

    So that's why there are restrictions on ChatGPT disseminating information about these individuals; they're victims of various types of identity fraud.  But why does it crash?

    Because AI is itself a fraud:
    The whole drama is a useful reminder that not only are these AI models not magic, but they are also extra-fancy auto-complete, actively monitored, and interfered with by the companies that make them. Next time you think about getting facts from a chatbot, think about whether it might be better to go straight to the source instead.
    ChatGPT behaves like nightmare hodgepodge of nonsense held together by duct tape and an inflated share price, because that's precisely what it is.

  • AMD's upcoming Radeon 8800XT might be dramatically more powerful than the current 7800XT.  (WCCFTech)

    Claimed numbers put it 45% faster on ray tracing.  But 45% faster than the 7900XTX, a much more expensive card.

    And it's also claimed to compete on non ray traced gaming with the RTX 4080, another much more expensive card.

    But the question of how much the 8800XT itself will cost is open.  If it is also a much more expensive card, none of that means anything.


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Monday, December 02

Geek

Daily News Stuff 2 December 2024

For The Emperor Edition

Top Story

  • The most valuable gemstone on Earth is not blue diamond, or Padparadscha sapphire, or imperial jadeite.  It's a little-known mineral called kyawthuite.  (ScienceAlert)

    Composed of an unusual formulation of bismuth antimonite and formed in cooling magma flows, it gets its value from its scarcity.

    There's exactly one stone, and it's less than a quarter of an inch long.


Tech News



Disclaimer: Can't say rarer than that, then.

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Sunday, December 01

Geek

Daily News Stuff 1 December 2024

Crumbudgeon Edition

Top Story

Tech News



Disclaimer: Right.  I tried that before.  No.

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Saturday, November 30

Geek

Daily News Stuff 30 November 2024

Blursed Edition

Top Story

  • When you read about million dollar bananas, expect money laundering, not conceptual art.  Cryptocurrency entrepreneur Justin Sun eats $9.5 million banana artwork Comedian by Maurizio Cattelan.  (ABC / MSN)
    A cryptocurrency entrepreneur has eaten a $US6.2 million ($9.5 million) banana artwork he purchased.
    This is the Australian ABC, so it's really only a $6 million dollar banana, not a $9 million dollar banana.
    The debut of the edible creation at the 2019 Art Basel show in Miami Beach sparked controversy and raised questions about whether it should be considered art - Mr Cattelan's stated aim.
    And no, the banana wasn't five years old.  The banana wasn't part of the "art".  There was merely the concept of a banana:
    The artwork owner is given a certificate of authenticity that the work was created by Mr Cattelan as well as instructions about how to replace the fruit when it goes bad.
    This is banana.  Is taped to wall.  Replace when become drippy.
    The 34-year-old crypto businessman was last year charged by the US Securities and Exchange Commission with fraud and securities law violation in relation to his crypto project Tron.
    Yeah, no shit.

Tech News

Disclaimer: Sitri needs to be put on a list.  Possibly several lists.  It's always the nice ones.

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Friday, November 29

Geek

Daily News Stuff 29 November 2024

Tea Bean Edition

Top Story


Tech News

  • Need a faster network connection on your Thunderbolt / USB4 equipped laptop or mini-PC?  The RaidenDigit LightONE might be what you need.  (Serve the Home)

    It is a general-purpose dock, with four USB-C ports (plus a fifth one purely for power), four USB-A ports, full-size and micro SD card slots, and a DisplayPort port.  Where it stands out is that it also offers two 25Gbit Ethernet ports.

    Yes, they're SFP, but while 25Gbase-T is a recognised standard using Cat-8 cables, there are approximately zero devices supporting it, so I can't really fault the designers there.

    Only problem is that if you don't already have one of these you apparently can't get one.  There was a Kickstarter, they delivered, the product worked, and then they disappeared.


  • Microsoft is not using your Word and Excel data to train AI.  (Bleeping Computer)

    Okay.


  • Australia has passed a law to ban children from social media.  (The Register)

    The government was repeatedly asked how this was supposed to work, and it had no idea.  The legislation nonetheless passed with bipartisan support, because our nominal opposition party is as useless as our nominal government.


Disclaimer: You said the highest difficulty level was 4.  You lied.

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Thursday, November 28

Geek

Daily News Stuff 28 November 2024

Givethanksing Edition

Top Story

  • Do not squeeze the lime.  (Ars Technica)

    A man who did squoze the lime developed a nasty case of phytophotocitrolimeodimeodermatititis.
    Specifically, the toxic chemicals are furocoumarins, which are found in some weeds and also a range of plants used in food. Those include celery, carrot, parsley, fennel, parsnip, lime, bitter orange, lemon, grapefruit, and sweet orange. Furocoumarins include chemicals with linear structures, psoralens, and angular structures, called angelicins, though not all of them are toxic.
    Avoid all of these things.  Stick to safe inorganic ingredients, like arsenic.


Tech News

Disclaimer: Yeah, there really is no tech news right now.

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Wednesday, November 27

Geek

Daily News Stuff 27 November 2024

Disavowed Edition

Top Story

  • Intel has received a $7.9 billion grant from the US government under the CHIPS Act.  (Notebook Check)

    This is not a different grant to the previous $8.5 billion grant though.  That one had not been completed, and has been reduced by $600 million due to the $3 billion contract Intel has received to produce secure chips for the Pentagon.

    Which when compared to the nonsense the government so often gets up to - this grant goes to pay Americans working at American companies in America - seems almost quaint.


  • I am reminded as I am every couple of years that Perth exists.

    That USB storage device I bought was in stock and shipped just hours after I placed my order with Amazon...  From the far edge of the asteroid belt.


Tech News



Disclaimer: Coffee is just bean tea.

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Tuesday, November 26

Geek

Daily News Stuff 26 November 2024

Potat Edition

Top Story



Tech News

  • I bought myself a Terramaster D8 which is a small, cheap, and fairly dumb hybrid storage box.

    It holds 4 x 3.5" drives and 4 x M.2 NVMe SSDs, attached over 10Gb USB.   So it's much faster than my old Synology boxes, but it only does RAID-0 and RAID-1 and even that only on the first two drives.  You want to configure that on the system it's attached to.

    But it is cheap; I paid about $250 including tax and shipping, and you are not getting an 8-bay 10Gb Synology solution for that.


  • On the other hand, QNAP.  (The Register)

    They issued a timely software update.

    It bricked users' devices.


  • Amazon's new Kindle Colorsoft is kind of good except kind of not.  (The Verge)

    It's a 7" colour e-ink device with a resolution of 300 dpi, which is pretty good, and 4096 colours, which is tragic for an LCD but again pretty good for e-ink.

    But in colour mode the resolution is cut in half taking it from pretty good territory to pretty bad.

    And while Amazon claims a battery life of 8 weeks on a charge, that assumes that you barely use the device; the reviewer estimated it will last for 20 hours of actual reading.  Which again, is not bad, but is a lot less than 8 weeks.

    Also it doesn't seem to be available in Australia.


  • Teamgroup has announced a 16TB external SSD.  (Tom's Hardware)

    It's basically the size of a 2.5" external hard drive, probably because it's a 2.5" SSD in a metal box, only it stores more, runs ten times faster, is a lot more robust, and costs an estimated $2000.


Disclaimer: No, seriously, duck.

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Monday, November 25

Geek

Daily News Stuff 25 November 2024

396 Shopping Days Until Christmas Edition

Top Story

  • RFC 35140: The Do-Not-Stab flag in the HTTP Header.  (5SNB)

    An idea whose time has come.
    Over the last 50 years, advancements in peripherals have allowed websites to stab users. A number of industries have popped up to provide SaaS (Stabbings as a Service). Some users have expressed discomfort when a knife is plunged into their chest, and this header allows those users to express their personal preferences.

    A user preference can, of course, be ignored by bad actors. However, most stabbings are not done by malicious actors, they are simply law-abiding companies which will gladly stop stabbing you if you ask. This standard provides a method for a user to easily opt-out of all stabbings, except those mandated by law, and ones that the company wants to do anyways.

    Seems entirely fair.  Who could possibly object to this?
    Syntax

    The header has only one form, Do-Not-Stab: 1.  This is because the lack of a header indicates a clear preference that the user wants to be stabbed.

    Understandable.
    Defaults

    A user-agent MUST NOT adopt Do-Not-Stab: 1 as the default preference. If a user-agent were to do this, web services SHOULD ignore the preference and stab the user anyways.

    This is of course a parody of...  Well, pretty much everything the big tech companies do these days.

    Or is it?



Tech News

  • This website is hosted on Bluesky.  (Daniel Mangum)

    Well, not this one.  And not the one linked above, either.  But the one linked in the article linked above.

    I mean, sort of.  It requires jumping through several flaming hoops and is entirely pointless, but...  Not sure there is a but.


  • Outlandish recursive query examples with SQLite.   (SQLite)

    Like solving Sudoku with a database query.  Or plotting the Mandelbrot set...  With a database query.


  • Yes, we seem to have run out of tech news.


Disclaimer: As it turns out, I did not accidentally throw out the fruit cake.  I was cleaning the kitchen yesterday and there was some fruit loaf sitting on the counter - or so I thought - and I realised that it had to be stale since I haven't bought fruit loaf for two or three weeks.  So I threw it out.  Then later on I went to get a slice of fruit cake and there wasn't any because I had thrown it out.  Though I couldn't understand how I had done that since they don't look that much alike.  And this was a problem because gluten-free fruit cake is available for about three weeks of the year and the window has already closed, so there wouldn't be any more until October next year.  But then I was in the kitchen today and I found the fruit cake and it turns out that I did in fact throw out stale fruit loaf which is available year-round.  So I had some.

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