Why did you say six months?
He's coming.
This matters. This is important. Why did you say six months?
Why did you say five minutes?
He's coming.
This matters. This is important. Why did you say six months?
Why did you say five minutes?
Thursday, August 11
Daily News Stuff 11 August 2022
Slowly Then All At Once Edition
Slowly Then All At Once Edition
Top Story
- Too many employees, but few work. (Business Standard)
Mark Zuckerberg:Realistically, there are probably a bunch of people at the company who shouldn’t be here. And part of my hope by raising expectations and having more aggressive goals, and just kind of turning up the heat a little bit, is that I think some of you might just say that this place isn’t for you. And that self-selection is okay with me.
Sundar Pichai:There are real concerns that our productivity as a whole is not where it needs to be for the head count we have. [We need to] create a culture that is more mission-focused, more focused on our products, more customer-focused
Maybe you should have thought of that before you spent ten years hiring communists and destroying your respective companies from the inside.
Tech News
- Intel's Arc A750 video card competes with Nvidia's RTX 3060. (Tom's Hardware)
Couple of caveats:
1. You can't get the A750 yet.
2. The 3060 is due for replacement soon.
3. The benchmarks were run by Intel.
4. To quote Gamer's Nexus:Intel's Arc GPU driver software is completely and utterly broken. Although the drivers work 'fine' for some gaming, as we showed in our initial review, the actual driver suite is a buggy and embarrassing mess that Intel should be afraid to even upload for use. Many of its features, like Intel Smooth Sync (which we tested here) and Intel Arc Control cause artifacting, flickering, crashes, or are just otherwise useless.
Avoid.
- LG's new 97" OLED TV needs no speakers. (Ars Technica)
Because the entire screen is a speaker. It allegedly supports 5.1 surround sound, which is odd because 5.1 means there are rear speakers which in this case means you'd need a rear screen.
- While Intel was losing money for the first time in decades, AMD posted a 70% year-on-year revenue increase. (Tom's Hardware)
Except that AMD just acquired Xilinx, as evidenced by the 10,538% growth of their embedded sector revenues, so the results aren't directly comparable.
They still made a profit, and grew market share in ever sector, so not a bad quarter.
- GM has made the OnStar subscription plan a mandatory option on many new models. (The Drive)
That will be an extra $1500, thanks. On top of your regularly scheduled price increases.
- If you want to spend far too much on a small Android tablet with a visible crease down the middle of the display which is uncomfortably wide in any case now is your chance. (Hot Hardware)
About A$2500 on pre-order though they do offer a free upgrade from 256GB to 512GB - which is good because this doesn't appear to offer any options for upgradeable storage.
Disclaimer: Wait, I actually am Marie of Roumania?
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Wednesday, August 10
Daily News Stuff 10 August 2022
Quick one today.
Quick one today.
- Nvidia looks to have tamed the power consumption of the upcoming RTX 4000 cards. (Tom's Hardware)
The RTX 4080 is now expected to use 320W rather than 450W. This probably comes with something like a 10% reduction in performance, because that power consumption goes up exponentially as you push any chip to its limits.
- AppLovin (who) has offered $17.5 billion for game development framework Unity. (Axios)
Unity would be stupid not to take it in this market.
In an all-stock deal.
Never mind.
- 10 Python packages on PyPI have been found stealing developer credentials. (Bleeping Computer)
- Twilio has disclosed a data breach following a phishing attack on employees. (Bleeping Computer)
- Cloudflare was hit by the same phishing attack. (Bleeping Computer)
This one apparently failed because Cloudflare uses company-wide hardware 2FA.
- Intel's SGX security module has been breached. (Ars Technica)
Again.
Disclaimer: Could it be when I was young, someone dropped me on my head?
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Tuesday, August 09
Daily News Stuff 9 August 2022
Frothy Water Edition
Frothy Water Edition
Top Story
- AMD's Threadripper Pro 5000 series is finally available in retail. (Tom's Hardware)
Five weeks before Ryzen 7000 launches.
If you need the memory capacity (Threadripper Pro supports up to 2TB of RAM) or the I/O bandwidth (7 full x16 PCIe slots with room left over) then these chips make sense. There's certainly nothing from Intel to compete right now.
If you just want a faster CPU they're less compelling. The 24 core 5965WX is likely only 10% faster than the 7950X will be, and much more expensive.
Tech News
- I replaced all our blog thumbnails using DALL·E 2 for $45: here’s what I learned. (Deephaven)
DALL-E lets you describe what you want a picture of, then generates it. The results are interesting. (Reddit)
- A review of the new HP Pavilion Plus. (Thurrott.com)
I mentioned this as potentially the best small laptop, and the review agrees on many points. Where it falls down is not so much the hardware as the crapware - the review uses that term - HP chose to shovel onto it, some of it difficult to remove. You should be able to do a reinstall with plain Windows, but you shouldn't need to.
- Another candidate is the Lenovo ThinkPad P14s Gen 3. (Liliputing)
This is lighter than the HP, has an option for a higher-resolution screen, still has the Four Essential Keys, has an 8 core Ryzen 6850U, and wired ethernet, as well as all the other bits.
I doubt it's cheap though. The previous model is on sale right now at 45% off, and still costs A$2499 for a pretty meh configuration.
- Crypto lender Hodlnaut is the latest to steal all its users' money. (CoinDesk)
I wish I could steal half a billion dollars and blame it on "difficult market conditions".
Disclaimer: Up up down down left right left right B A START.
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Monday, August 08
Daily News Stuff 8 August 2022
The Menace From Earth Edition
Yep, it was the ice cream truck scene.
Disclaimer: Do not taunt happy fun owl.
The Menace From Earth Edition
Top Story
- If you absolutely need an RTX 3090 Ti This is your lucky day. (Tom's Hardware)
EVGA has slashed the prices on two models by close to 50% to a merely exorbitant $1149 and $1199.
This sort of price cut does suggest the RTX 4000 range are (a) close and (b) a significant upgrade over current cards - enough that existing inventory will be dead weight once the new cards ship.
Tech News
- The best thing we can do with JavaScript is retire it. (Dev Class)
Well, the second best thing we can do with JavaScript is retire it. The best thing is to take it out the barn and kill it with an axe. And a chainsaw. And ten gallons of kerosene and a box of matches.
What the person saying this - Douglas Crockford, inventor of JSON - wants to replace the world's most popular programming language with is E:The E language provides a convenient and familiar notation for the ELib computational model, so you can program in one model rather than two. Under the covers, this notation expands into Kernel-E, a minimalist lambda-language much like Scheme or Smalltalk.
Yeah, I suspect you may have your work cut out there.
Objects written in the E language are only able to interact with other objects according to ELib's semantics, enabling object granularity intra-process security, including the ability to safely run untrusted mobile code (such as caplets).
- Do not disturb is no longer enough. (The Register)
We need a STFU mode for computers and mobile devices.
- Build your own Windows tablet. (Instructables)
A large, heavy, power-hungry Windows tablet, based on laptop gizzards, but still.
The True Story Video of the Day
Yep, it was the ice cream truck scene.
Disclaimer: Do not taunt happy fun owl.
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Sunday, August 07
Daily News Stuff 7 August 2022
Bordered In Black Edition
Bordered In Black Edition
Top Story
- Amazon is acquiring Roomba maker iRobot for $1.7 billion. (Ars Technica)
Given Amazon's habit of handing out Ring doorbell video footage without the tedious drudgery of asking or telling the owners, my inclination to buy a Roomba has abruptly evaporated. At least a doorbell is - by design - on the front of the house facing outwards, not roaming around inside.
Tech News
- Twitter has confirmed that hackers collected email addresses and phone numbers of 5.4 million accounts. (Bleeping Computer)
The only reason Twitter has those phone numbers in the first place is that they would suspend your account to force you to hand it over.
- AMD has a new range of Ryzen 5000 embedded CPUs, including the first 10-core Ryzen model. (WCCFTech)
I didn't think there was anything preventing a 10-core Ryzen chip, just no perceived market niche.
These are just Ryzen 5000 parts, with lower clock speeds and fewer cores, but with long-term support for hardware manufacturers who need to be able to replace parts five or ten years from now.
- Netflix's The Sandman is "a dream adaptation of a classic". (The Verge)
In other words, it's a self-indulgent mess of a TV series based on a self-indulgent mess of a comic series. Neil Gaiman is good when he's good, but when he's not, he's very much not.
FAQ
- Why did you get a variable rate mortgage? Are you stupid or something?
Long-term fixed-rate mortgages are almost unknown outside the US, and certainly don't exist in Australia. If you think about it, there's no way a bank would offer a long term fixed rate loan when interest rates are at historic lows, because they can only lose on the deal... Unless something is propping them up on the other end.
- Are blockchains / cryptocurrencies / NFTs / stablecoins / decentralised finance a scam?
Mostly, yes. Not entirely, but it's the way to bet.
- You keep mentioning gluten-free stuff. Isn't that also a scam?
Unless you have celiac disease, yes.
If you do have celiac disease, gluten-free meals are the difference between living a relatively normal life and being a hermit subsisting on boiled rice and carrot sticks.
- Who is that vtuber you referred to obliquely the other day?
If I referred to them obliquely it would only be a retired Hololive member, and there's only four of those (not counting Hitomi Chris, who no-one remembers): Aloe, Coco, Rushia, and most recently Sana. And the reason for the obliquity is that all four have other online personas kept separate from Hololive for privacy / contractual reasons. On my non-technical posts I will sometimes be less oblique - or a quick Google search will probably tell you more than you ever wanted to know.
I Survived, Bishes Video of the Day
Disclaimer: Read Stardust instead, or The Ocean at the End of the Lane.
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Saturday, August 06
Daily News Stuff 6 August 2022
Stockholm Syndrome Anonymous Edition
Disclaimer: I expect to arrive in orbit in December too.
Stockholm Syndrome Anonymous Edition
Top Story
- Right to jail, right away: How a crypto developer faked an ecosystem. (CoinDesk)
Using eleven different names, one programmer built a multi-layered financial platform on top of the Solana blockchain. At its peak the Saber stablecoin exchange and the services built on top of it had a "total value locked" - TVL - around $7.5 billion, but that involved a lot of double counting.
And no-one knows how much because one of those services - Cashio - got hacked and the whole thing imploded.Seven Saber ecosystem users told CoinDesk they felt abandoned by the Macalinao brothers. Some lost money in CASH tokens (the erstwhile stablecoin went to zero). Others say their crypto is stuck in derivative tokens issued by Sunny. One pseudonymous user, Brad_Garlic_Bread, said he lost around $300,000 across Sunny and Saber – "there's a lot of people worse off than me."
There is a time to ask questions, and there is a time to file lawsuits and press criminal charges. If these idiots can't work out what time it is, I have little sympathy for them.
The community assumes Ian is running the show "but no one knows for sure," Brad_Garlic_Bread said.
He’s still trying to get Ian’s attention. On July 16, Brad asked if Ian "can pretend to be Surya [one of the fake identities] for like a day" to help Sunny Aggregator's investors recover locked tokens. Ian was answering questions in the Saber Discord; he skipped Brad’s.
Other SUNNY token-holders asked Ian for clues about the yield aggregator's future. Saber is moving to Aptos – will Sunny do the same? They asked what became of Sunny's lead developer.
More generally, though: If someone offers you an investment opportunity in a "stablecoin", it's a scam. If they promise 17% returns per month, as some of these ventures have done, then it's your own fault if you fall for it.
Tech News
- More people who deserve what they got: Audiophiles are in an uproar after it turned out their precious vinyl was pressed from high-quality digital recordings rather than lower-fidelity analog master tapes. (Washington Post)
They just forgot to mention that part. And their best customers are - unfortunately for them - crazy:"One of the reasons they want to excoriate MoFi is for lying," says Howarth. "The other part that bothers them is that they’ve been listening to digital all along and they’re highly invested in believing that any digital step will destroy their experience. And they’re wrong."
If someone charges you thousands - or tens of thousands - of dollars for a hi-fi system that is audibly worse than a $500 shelf system, then it's your own fault if you fall for it.
- Did the NSA and NIST deliberately sabotage cryptography standards? (Cr.yp.to)
The post is rather rambling, but the upshot is they are not responding to FOIA requests and the author has filed suit to uncover what is going on with current efforts to establish quantum cryptography standards.
- That's no moon. That's a kielbasa. (Vice)
Actually in this case it was Proxima Centauri, or rather, not Proxima Centauri but a slice of chorizo.
- Speaking of moons South Korea launched a lunar orbiter yesterday. (Nature)
Using a SpaceX rocket and launching from Florida, but why keep a cow in the kitchen when you can get... I don't know where I'm going with that analogy.
The Korean Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter will take a very leisurely trip the the Moon, arriving in orbit in December.
Disclaimer: I expect to arrive in orbit in December too.
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Friday, August 05
Daily News Stuff 5 August 2022
Bats In My Face Edition
Bats In My Face Edition
Top Story
- AMD's Ryzen 7000 range looks set to go zoom. (WCCFTech)
The new top of the line 7950x has a base clock speed of 4.5GHz and a maximum speed of 5.7GHz. The current 5950X has a much more sedate base speed of 3.4GHz and a top speed of 4.9GHz.
Coupled with a 15% improvement in performance per clock that should result in some speedy chips.
Tech News
- Ryzen 7000 may have limited overclocking potential. (Hot Hardware)
They're already going to 5.7GHz. What do you want?
- Motherboard makers are showing off their upcoming motherboards for Ryzen 7000. (Tom's Hardware)
Which seems like a sensible thing to do.
- Speaking of chips they just doubled in price in Australia. (MSN)
Seriously. I bought a couple of bags last week at $2.20, and when I went to get more they were $4.30. Apparently the same floods that sent the market here in New House City soaring right when I was looking to buy also wiped out much of Australia's potato crop.
- Oh, and interest rates are up again, so I have that going for me, which is nice.
- GitLab is not going to delete projects that aren't updated for a year. (The Register)
Which is good, but you have to wonder how such an obviously stupid decision got off the ground in the first place.
- Chinese crapware makers Tencent are looking to buy a majority stake in Ubisoft. (Hot Hardware)
Not sure if that will make Ubisoft better or worse.
Not At All Tech News
- How it started:
- How it's going:
- If you watch the video in that first one, then yes, that's who you think it is.
Disclaimer: Unless you think it's someone other than who it is, in which case it's not.
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Thursday, August 04
Daily News Stuff 4 August 2022
So this server crashed while I was standing in line for security. Fortunately I had the audible alarm switched off and didn't have to explain why my bag was beeping.
Meanwhile:
- GitLab is planning to delete projects that are not updated for a year, which everyone agrees is insane.
- Robinhood is firing a quarter of its staff. If you have the option, take it, because the company is probably doomed anyway.
- My flight is boarding.
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Wednesday, August 03
Daily News Stuff 3 August 2022
Short one today because I have finally lost my marbles.
Short one today because I have finally lost my marbles.
Tech News
- Axie Infinity, the blockchain game that was eventually hacked and looted of $600 million in Monopoly money, sucked long before that happened. (Time)
Pretty much everyone lost money except for the people running the company.
- You might ask why people running scams like this aren't charged under laws governing Ponzi and pyramid schemes. Well, eleven executives of another crypto company, Forsage, just have been. (CBS)
Good. And many more to come, I hope.
- An advanced new cryptography scheme designed to be save even against quantum computes just got hacked using a single-core conventional PC - in an hour. (Ars Technica)
Oops.
Disclaimer: It's like a regular oops, only quantum.
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Tuesday, August 02
Daily News Stuff 2 August 2022
Coat Of Arms Edition
Coat Of Arms Edition
Top Story
- Just on that "best small laptop" from yesterday: It's a great deal in the US ($1029) but crazy expensive in Australia ($2699).
By comparison the Dell Inspiron 16 Plus - the top of the line model - is... Oh. Well, I guess they've fixed that then. I'll wait for that to go on sale as well. At US$1949 vs. A$3399 it's pretty close to what I'd expect (the Australian price includes sales tax) but it was A$2499 last week.
- Congress has said the CHIPS Act is not a $50 billion cash grab for semiconductor companies. (The Register)
"Yeah, sure" say the semiconductor companies standing in line with their hands out.
Tech News
- If you want a Radeon 6900XT now might be the time. I'm seeing them cheaper than the 6800XT, 6800, 6750XT, and some models of 6700XT. Of course there will be new cards coming along soon but pricing and availability of those is a big unknown right now.
It's one of the cheapest cards around relative to recent prices. (Tom's Hardware)
Not cheap in absolute terms though.
- Intel's Sapphire Rapids server CPUs are reportedly on their 12th revision ("respin") already and aren't even shipping yet. (Tom's Hardware)
It's completely normal for a new chip to require a couple of hardware revisions before launch - expensive, but normal. Twelve is unusual.
- Is Winamp back to whip the llama's ass? (Bleeping Computer)
Maybe. The project has been migrated from Visual Studio 2008 to VS 2019 so that they can actually compile it for modern operating systems, and there's a new release available to download. Not a lot of new features yet though.
- China's new 7nm chips aren't. (The Register)
All those numbers are marketing bullshit anyway, but this is a double helping. China doesn't have access to the EUV (extreme ultraviolet) lithography equipment, or the components for that equipment, or the machines to make those components, so what they've done is applied older DUV processes and used multi-patterning to produce chips that they then slap a 7nm label on.
Basically, what they have is Intel's 14nm+n, for some value of n that doesn't matter because increasing n doesn't change anything.
Disclaimer: I must go, my planet needs me. Again. Useless, the lot of them.
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