Posted by: Lump the Chump at Sunday, December 04 2022 04:15 PM (1WyDN)

Posted by: David Eastman at Sunday, December 04 2022 05:49 PM (D6Mju)

Posted by: David Eastman at Sunday, December 04 2022 05:56 PM (D6Mju)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, December 04 2022 07:33 PM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, December 05 2022 01:33 AM (PiXy!)

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• Kanye West is not buying Parler after all.  (Axios)
  
  Bullet dodged.  For both parties, but after today, particularly for Parler.

  Ye has just around 55,000 followers on Parler, compared to 18.5 million on Instagram and zero on Twitter.

  Oops.
  
  
  
• The Ikea desk legs I needed for my main office, that were out of stock for weeks, came back in for days, and then went out of stock again, are back in stock.
  
  I ordered 35.  I think I need 31 - maybe fewer if I use fixed drawers rather than the mobile ones, since you can mount the desktop directly onto the drawer units.  Since the legs are $4 each and they've been blocking my plans for thousands of dollars worth of furniture, I don't exactly mind if I end up with a few spares.
  
  (The longer desks - they come in 120, 140, and 200 cm lengths - recommend an extra leg in the middle, hence the odd number.)

• How much slower does automatic bounds checking make your Rust code?  (ReadySet)
  
  Rust is designed to make it hard to write unsafe code - the sort of code that causes security nightmares for sysadmins around the world because one line in one library from 20 years ago didn't check the size of the input and now everyone is mining Monero on your production servers.
  
  Anyway, the answer is none.  None slower.
  
  
  
• Google has halved the number of memory safety issues with Android since they started using Rust for some of the code.  (9to5Google)
  
  And it's none slower.
  
  
  
• Cloudflare is raising its prices by 25% starting from May.  (The Register)
  
  There's going to be a lot of that about.  Computers have been one of the few things consistently getting cheaper, but there's only so much you can do when real inflation is well into double digits.
  
  (I also switched my Amazon Prime subscription from monthly to annual to lock in the current low price - A$59 for a year, about US$40.  Given the cost of shipping stuff to New House City it's gone from being a nice-to-have to essential.)
  
  
  
• Apple blocked a new feature in the Coinbase wallet that allowed users to transfer NFTs to other wallets.  (MacRumors)
  
  Apple said that the "gas fee" - a small amount of cryptocurrency that you need to pay to perform any transaction - had to be purchased using Apple's own payment platform for the new feature to be approved.
  
  You can't purchase crypto using Apple's payment platform.
  
  
  
• The relaunch of Twitter Blue is delayed because Twitter doesn't want to give Apple 30% of everything it earns.  (WCCFTech)

  Twitter is planning on finding a way to circumvent the 30% fee that Apple charges, but so far, we don't see a way out. I mean, remember what happened to Epic Games and Fortnite when they refused to circumvent the in-app fee?

  Yes.  Epic launched an entire new online games store and now has over two thousand staff and half a billion users.
  
  It doesn't seem like much of a threat, to be honest.
  
  
  
• Stable Diffusion - the AI image generator - now runs on Arm-based Macs.  (9to5Mac)
  
  While this is new, I was under the impression that it only ran on Nvidia graphics cards.  Not true, as it turns out; with a little fiddling it runs on most AMD cards from the last six years as well.
  
  
  
• The Kindle Scribe is absolutely adequate.  (The Verge)
  
  If you want a large (10.2") high resolution (300dpi) e-ink reader with a pen, this is that.  And some clunky software aside, it works exactly as it says.
  
  I'm getting a Kindle Paperwhite while I wait for somebody - anybody - to release a good, small Android tablet that I don't have to order from AliExpress.

Posted by: normal at Friday, December 02 2022 07:39 PM (obo9H)

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, December 03 2022 02:24 AM (BMUHC)

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• Here's everything that went wrong with FTX. (The Verge)
  
  Yeah, it just "went wrong".  By accident.
  
  
  
• FTX’s Collapse Was a Crime, Not an Accident. (CoinDesk)
  
  That's more like it.

  In the weeks since Sam Bankman-Fried’s cryptocurrency empire was revealed to be a house of lies, mainstream news organizations and commentators have often failed to give their readers a straightforward assessment of exactly what happened.  August institutions including the New York Times and Wall Street Journal have uncovered many key facts about the scandal, but they have also repeatedly seemed to downplay the facts in ways that soft-pedaled Bankman-Fried’s intent and culpability.

  More October institutions, possibly November, but yes.

  It is now clear that what happened at the FTX crypto exchange and the hedge fund Alameda Research involved a variety of conscious and intentional fraud intended to steal money from both users and investors.  That’s why a recent New York Times interview was widely derided for seeming to frame FTX’s collapse as the result of mismanagement rather than malfeasance.  A Wall Street Journal article bemoaned the loss of charitable donations from FTX, arguably propping up Bankman-Fried’s strategic philanthropic pose.  Vox co-founder Matthew Yglesias, court chronicler of the neoliberal status quo, seemed to whitewash his own entanglements by crediting Bankman-Fried’s money with helping Democrats in the 2020 elections – sidestepping the likelihood that the money was effectively embezzled.

  This is the straight shit.  If you're interested in the real story behind this latter day love child of Charles Ponzi and Bernie Madoff, read most of the thing.
  
  
  
• Elon Musk met with Tim Cook and announced that the war is cancelled.  (Yahoo Finance)
  
  Build your own war.

• Samsung's GDDR6W memory doubles capacity and performance by the clever trick of, um, being two chips.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  It's literally two chips.  One device to surface-mount, which might make assembly simpler and cheaper, but two slivers of silicon inside it, with twice as many leads and twice the power consumption.
  
  
  
• Laspass says hackers breached its systems and accessed customer data.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Again.
  
  They're probably running Elasticsearch on QNAP.
  
  
  
• The hackers got GoTo too.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  GoTo - formerly LogMeIn - apparently shares the same QNAP device as Lastpass.
  
  
  
• Security researchers at Akamai left a space out of a command line and accidentally murdered a botnet.  (Bleeping Computer)

  "In our controlled environment, we were able to send commands to the bot to test its functionality and attack signatures," Akamai vulnerability researcher Larry Cashdollar - we swear we are not making this up - explained in a new report.
  
  "As part of this analysis, a syntax error caused the bot to stop sending commands, effectively killing the botnet."

  Mission failed successfully.
  
  
  
• Autonomous trucking company Embark has silently evaporated.  (Crunchbase)
  
  The company's market cap has dwindled from $5 billion to $110 million, even though it still has $190 million in cash reserves.
  
  If that's not a show of confidence, I don't know what is.
  
  And they did it without any splashy fraud or missed earnings - they don't have any earnings yet.  Investors just decided, yeah, not so much.
  
  Autonomous vehicles are hard, and with interest rates up sharply investors are looking for returns in this lifetime rather than the next.
  
  
  
• Anker lied about the security of its security cameras.  (The Verge)
  
  There isn't any.

• Apple's App Store is an ad-ridden mockery of its former self.  (Business Insider)
  
  If you're working on a good an useful app, you have to jump through flaming hoops to get it in the App Store.
  
  If you're producing worthless garbage that makes Apple money, no problem at all.
  
  
  
• The same Ikea desk legs that were out of stock before are out of stock again.  Should have ordered them when I had the chance, even if I'm not planning to put those desks in place right away.
  
  That only affects the main office; the desks in at least four of the other five rooms use different legs that are still in stock and which I am going to order right now before those also disappear.
  
  Ordering the legs for ten desks gives me a delivery fee of $29.  One small desktop, $599.  That's why I didn't place an order sooner.
  
  
  
• Speaking of ordering stuff, I bought some books.  I buy books all the time - every time there's a Humble Book Bundle that isn't rubbish I'll throw some money at it, so I average about 100 new books a month.
  
  But those are digital.  I stopped buying paper books a few years ago because (a) I mostly read on my tablet and (b) my old house was completely and utterly out of room.
  
  Now I have room.  Lots of.  Have to buy all the books before they stop printing them.

• If you've been around the Web for a long time this page should give you an attack of nostalgia, and possibly epilepsy.  (NeoCities)
  
  
  
• MineCity 2000 converts SimCity 2000 save files into Minecraft maps.  (GitHub)
  
  That's one way to do it, I guess.  
  
  Where is that video of the Hololive fan Minecraft server?  They did it the hard way.
  
  
  
• Mastodon privacy: Who actually holds your data?  (Privado)
  
  The answer makes sense: The server you log in to holds details like your email address and password, all servers hold your public data, and any server hosting a user you send a private message holds that private message.
  
  Which means the admin of any server hosting a user you send a private message can read that private message.  No end-to-end encryption.
  
  There are reasons for that, and the former staff of Twitter were little better than a random nobody running an anonymous Mastodon node, but it's something to be aware of.
  
  
  
• Apple looks set to fall short by 20 million units on iPhone sales this quarter.  (Reuters)
  
  Due to the global recession that dare not speak its name and the ongoing higher-order fuckery in China.  Not sure how much each element is contributing, but neither is good.
  
  
  
• Snap - as in Snapchat - has told its employees to show up at the office or consider themselves ex.  (CNN)
  
  Four days a week, at least.
  
  And since the company has already announced layoffs of 20% of its staff, I expect that threat of being exed is perceived as real.
  
  
  
• Sam Bankman-Fried says he couldn't possibly have been using his technical skills to steal billions of dollars from customers because he doesn't have any.  (Coin Telegraph)
  
  Technical skills, that is.  Well, customers too at this point.
  
  Who the fucking fuck thought it was a good idea to give this sociopathic retard ten billion dollars in the first place?  And why hasn't anyone been arrested yet?
  
  
  
• Distributed crypto exchange Serum, formerly backed by FTX, is toast.  (The Block)
  
  "Here's the code.  Build your own exchange.  We're done with this bullshit." said lead developer - I swear we are not making this up - Mango Max.
  
  
  
• Amazon has announced a "Zero ETL" integration between Aurora and Redshift.  (The Register)
  
  This is what we in the olden days used to call an integration.  ETL stands for extract, transform, load, meaning you dump the data out of one application, painstakingly convert the file format, and load it into the new one.  
  
  Which is not an integration at all.
  
  
  
• Why streaming service subscription rates keep going up.  (The Verge)
  
  Because they spend billions of dollars on crap nobody watches.

Posted by: David Eastman at Thursday, December 01 2022 04:04 AM (D6Mju)

Posted by: Frank at Thursday, December 01 2022 09:08 AM (rglbH)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, December 01 2022 05:36 PM (PiXy!)

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• In a rare win for sanity and freedom Britain is abandoning legislation that would have banned "legal but harmful" speech online.  (Reuters)
  
  The proposed law was so twisted that it included criminal charges for executives of social platforms for the entirely legal speech of other people.
  
  This unsurprisingly provoked some pushback from said social platforms.
  
  The government - the nominally conservative government - is planning to return with more of the same but with a tasty won't somebody think of the children sauce on top.
  
  
  
• I think everything I want from Ikea is in stock right now.  I could just set fire to my credit card and order a houseful of furniture in one go.
  
  Probably best not to.  Would save on delivery fees but leave my living room filled with flat packs when I've only just got it free of boxes.
  
  Going to end up with 90 feet of desk space.
  
  

• The Merriam-Webster Word of the year is gaslighting.  (Merriam-Webster)
  
  In other news, monkey pox has been renamed piss party pox to remove the stigma associated with fucking monkeys.
  
  
  
  
  
• Mice use calculus.  (Quanta)
  
  Are you pondering what I'm pondering?
  
  
  
• Candian crypto exchange Coinsquare has suffered a breach of customer data.  (CoinDesk)
  
  Customer funds are safe with the encryption keys stored offline.  
  
  They say.
  
  
  
• Epson has ditched laser printers for inkjets, saying inkjets are better for the environment.  (The Register)
  
  While I view such claims with suspicion on general principle, Epson does make the Ecotank line of inkjets, which have ink tanks, that you simply fill up with a bottle of ink when you need to.  It's hard to improve on that unless you can synthesize ink directly from the air.

Posted by: three-humped camel at Wednesday, November 30 2022 01:14 AM (x8H4m)

Posted by: Rick C at Wednesday, November 30 2022 01:46 AM (BMUHC)

Posted by: normal at Wednesday, November 30 2022 03:10 AM (LADmw)

Posted by: Any Mouse at Wednesday, November 30 2022 03:26 PM (FMxtE)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, November 30 2022 06:51 PM (PiXy!)

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• Private data for 5.4 million Twitter users has been leaked online.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Twitter had a bug - fixed back in January - that let you look up a phone number or email address and get the corresponding account, if one existed.  Patient hackers crawled their way through millions of numbers and addresses - probably stolen from somewhere else - to match them up, and then offered it all up for sale for $30k.
  
  Now it's apparently available for free.
  
  
  

Tech News

• The CBC tried to get Libs of TikTok banned from Shopify (it's a Canadian company).
  
  The CEO told them, very politely - he's Canadian - to shove it.
  
  
  
  
  And then blocked them.
  
  
  
• When they said the compiler could make monkeys fly out of your butt, they meant it.  (PKH)
  
  Integer overflow in C is undefined behaviour.  That means that if you put a check in your code to catch that a value has overflowed and fix the problem, the compiler is entirely within the C standard if it removes your check and then crashes when the value overflows.
  
  Use a real language.
  
  
  

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, November 29 2022 10:08 AM (kbV78)

Posted by: normal at Tuesday, November 29 2022 10:46 AM (obo9H)

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, November 29 2022 12:40 PM (BMUHC)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, November 29 2022 12:49 PM (PiXy!)

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• Elon Musk just decided to bring the worst people on the internet back to Twitter. (The Verge)
  
  People who weren't banned from Twitter:
  
  
• Chinese genocide apologists
• Hitler-worshiping Hindu nationalists
• Iran's terrorist leadership
• Antifa goons actively planning assaults
• Pedophiles
• People illegally distributing puberty blockers to children (who were also pedophiles, strange coincidence there)
• People running mass-reporting schemes (who were - yes - also pedophiles)

People who were banned:


• The New York Post for news stories inconvenient to Democrats
• James Lindsay and the Babylon Bee for accurately identifying an adult male
• Nick Rekieta for being the victim of a mass-reporting scheme
• Me for suggesting a certain politician "needs to resign, or be thrown in a volcano, whatever works"


And it's only with those people being reinstated that the news media, which is all - mainstream and technology together - intensely pro-censorship, is getting itself worked up.



• Hoping that particular politician will soon be out of office, but it's Melbourne and they're all insane down there.

Tech News

• Europe is threatening to frown at Twitter if Elon Musk closes all the company's European offices and tells the tiny-minded fascists of the EU to take a hike.  (Tech Crunch)

  For "appropriateness of the expertise and resources allocated" read: "Shuttering local offices and canning EU staff will be frowned upon - hard."

  That idiocy is Tech Crunch's own wording, but it's understandable because EU officials actually said this:

  For those platforms that the Commission will designate as very large online platforms, the risk management obligations also include a strong component on the appropriateness of the resources allocated to managing societal risks in the Union. Among other matters, the Commission will scrutinise the appropriateness of the expertise and resources allocated, as well as the way they organise their compliance function.

  The appropriate thing to do is for Musk to close down all operations in Europe and direct users at a US-based portal to pay their $8.
  
  It's not like Europe is going to create its own social network.
  
  
  
• Turning and turning in the widening gyre
  The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
  Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
  Mere amnesty is loosed upon the world.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Twitter has announced it is granting amnesty to all accounts previously banned for reasons other than actually breaking the law or persistent spam.
  
  I strongly suspect that the records of the former Bureau of Censorship and Intimidation contain so much bullshit that they can't even begin to selectively undo the damage of the past four years.
  
  The mass reinstatements start next week; no indication yet how long it will take to complete.
  
  The usual suspects say that this is the three hundred and seventeenth sign of the Apocalypse which seems to be running seriously behind schedule at this point.

• The PlayStation 6 could launch in 2028.  (WCCFTech)
  
  The PlayStation 5 meanwhile will be in stock in retail stores no later than 2030.
  
  
  
• The FTC meanwhile is frowning at Microsoft's acquisition of Activision.  (Ars Technica)
  
  Which in my opinion is good news for Microsoft.
  
  
  
• Now that's a name I've not heard in a long time: IBM is suing Micro Focus for allegedly reverse-engineering CICS to create its own Enterprise Server product...  Close to 20 years ago.  (The Register)
  
  CICS was first released in 1969.  Micro Focus was founded in 1976, and while I couldn't find exactly when the first version of their Enterprise Server was released, it has been quite a while.  Not sure if this sort of suit has any de facto expiry on it the way trademarks do.

Posted by: StargazerA5 at Saturday, November 26 2022 02:00 AM (5cxJU)

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, November 26 2022 08:16 AM (BMUHC)

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, November 26 2022 08:16 AM (BMUHC)

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