• Chinese state hackers are targeting the Russian government.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Yes, and everyone else on the planet as well, but it's worth noting that China and Russia are not allies.  At best they momentarily share some of the same enemies.
  
  China has also been caught hacking Ukraine.  Not sure if Russia has been caught recently hacking China, but I have no doubt they are doing so.

• AMD has confirmed the rumoured Dragon Range laptop CPU due next year.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  This will be a Zen 4 chip for high-end gaming laptops - probably with 16 cores.
  
  Intel already has 16 core parts but those are 8 performance cores plus 8 much slower efficiency cores.  The AMD design will have 16 performance cores.
  
  
  
• Speaking of high-end gaming laptops the Gigabyte Aero 16 is one.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Well, sort of.  It has a Core i7 12700H and an Nvidia 3070 Ti (Max-Q) which are good but not top-of-the-line parts, but it also has a 3840x2400 OLED display, dual RAM slots, dual M.2 slots, dual Thunderbolt 4 ports, and the Four Essential Keys.
  
  It's about 20% faster single-threaded than my Dell Inspiron 16 Plus, but unfortunately costs twice as much in Australia.  I'm in no hurry to upgrade.
  
  (The Inspiron 16 Plus doesn't have dedicated keys for the FEK, but it has a numeric keypad which does double duty.)
  
  
  
• The 3080 Ti is selling at MSRP.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  A mere $1200.
  
  For a card that will be obsolete in a few months.
  
  
  
• Axios is garbage.  (Axios)
  
  In their why free speech is bad article, they note that without some moderation, social networks die.  But they also make it very clear that they are arguing in bad faith:

  Why it matters: Even much smaller social networks that aimed to minimize content moderation have found that an "anything goes if it's legal" policy quickly devolves into a miasma of violence, spam, fraud and bullying.

  Speech is violence and violence is speech.
  
  
  
• Overshooting the target: NASA requires the Artemis Moon lander to be able to deliver a payload of 865kg to the lunar surface; SpaceX's Starship can deliver 100 tons.  (Ars Technica)
  
  That completely changes what is possible for future Moon missions.  Just shove everything and the kitchen sink onto the rocket; it doesn't matter if it turns out you don't need it.

• AI helps scientists design novel plastic-eating enzyme.  (The Register)
  
  Hey, I've seen this one.  It's a classic.
  
  
  
• An illustrated guide to plastic straws.  (HWFO)
  
  Worth reading through to the conclusion, which points out that even the less insane environmental policies often provide perverse incentives: If you carefully recycle plastic waste, there's a good chance of it simply ending up dumped in the ocean.
  
  
  

Tech News

• HP has new scanners.  (Thurrott.com)
  
  I have a Canon scanner that looks and works like new except that there's no driver available for Windows or Mac.  Linux picks it up no problem at all.
  
  I need to figure out what equipment I want for my new home office.  My previous plans were space constrained - my desk is 8'6" x 3'.  My new office will only have 2' deep desks - since CRTs are no longer a thing - but I have room for 30' of desk in an L shape so all limits are off.
  
  
  
• AMD's RDNA 3 is going to have a lot more thingies than RDNA 2.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  The Navi 22 chip found in the Radeon 6700 XT has 2560 shaders.  Navi 32, presumably aimed at the 7700 XT, is expected to have 8192 shaders.
  
  It's also expected to run at higher clock speeds, which will make it very, very fast.
  
  
  
• Japanese video game juggernaut Square Enix has sold off all its western subsidiaries to focus on blockchain bullshit.  (Ars Technica)
  
  On the one hand, western game studios mostly produce poop.
  
  On the other hand, blockchain.
  
  
  
• Facebook is shutting down its podcast service to focus on blockchain bullshit.  (ZDNet)
  
  On the one hand, podcasts mostly produce pop.
  
  On the other hand, blockchain.
  
  

Posted by: normal at Tuesday, May 03 2022 09:03 PM (obo9H)

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• Noah Grey, the author of the first open-source blogging software back in the year 2000, was in danger of losing his home.
  
  Sometimes GoFundMe doesn't fuck up worthy causes.
  
  He now has three times the amount he needed to pay off the mortgage.
  
  Of course the IRS will have their day, but it should still leave some money over.
  
  
  
• On the other end of the shit scale, transfer fees for NFTs on Ethereum hit $3500.  (Mashable)
  
  At my day job we ditched Ethereum 18 months ago as being completely unworkable - when it cost less than 0.1% of that.
  
  

Tech News

• The people behind Ugly Monkey JPEGs just launched a new scam/money laundering facility.  (The National / MSN)
  
  They sold off imaginary plots of land to imbeciles with too much money and/or narcotraffickers for around $5800 a pop, raising $320 million and burning $123 million in transaction fees.
  
  This is the future of finance.  We are screwed.
  
  
  
• How long before a scam steals some ludicrous valuation of this imaginary land?  Negative two days.  (Web3 is Going Great)
  
  $6 million has already gone up in smoke.
  
  I'm in the wrong business.  Well, in the wrong part of the right business.  Or something.  I did just buy a house more than twice the size of my current place so I can't complain too much.  Except about my back which is killing me at this point.
  
  
  
• Wikipedia has stopped accepting donations in cryptocurency.  (Mashable)
  
  The article doesn't say why - though given that it amounted to less than 0.1% of total donations last year, it might have just not been worth the trouble.
  
  
  
• My AirPods are stalking me.  (ZDNet)
  
  
  
  
  
• AMD's Radeon 7900 XT - due later this year - could deliver almost 100 TFLOPs.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Nvidia's RTX 4090 - due later this year - could deliver just over 100 TFLOPs.  (WCCFTech)
  
  I remember SGI running an advertising campaign boasting about how they scale "from desktop to teraflop".  Mobile phones can commonly exceed a teraflop these days.
  
  
  

Posted by: Avatar_exADV at Tuesday, May 03 2022 11:30 AM (NoOEO)

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• Intel sees chip shortages easing by the end of... 2024. (WCCFTech)
  
  Oh, good.
  
  
  
• But at least you can build an AMD gaming PC while you wait. (Tom's hardware)
  
  The new Ryzen 5800X3D CPU and the high-end Radeon 6900 XT are both selling at MSRP.
  
  
  

Questions and Answers

• From Another Anon:

  My understanding of BlockChain is that a new entry, or a Block, has to be calculated based on every other Block in the history of the Chain to validate that it is cryptographically correct and thus valid. Basically, do the math on previous blocks ("N") to confirm the next block ("N+1") is accurate and true.
  
  That said, does this mean that BlockChain is, by design, a victim of the "Schlemiel the Painter's algorithm"? IE: The painter paints X feet of lines on a road the first day, 4/5ths of X feet on day two, 2/5ths of X day, and then worse... because it takes him longer and longer to get to the paint bucket that he left at the very start of all the lines? (Joke being that said painter never picked up and carried the bucket with him, at all.)

  Every implementation I know of is smart enough to move the bucket - that is, it can verify new transactions based on previous verifications. Blockchains do rely on having multiple nodes verify transactions though - it's possible for a bad node to verify a transaction that later gets rejected, or vice versa.
  
  
  
• From MadItalian:

  Anyway to stop the link hijacking ads? I click on more info / read more and it opens in a new tab for the story at Ace Comments and then redirects the original tab to the ad.
  
  I know ad revenue is in the toilet but that action is frustrating.

  Anyone else seeing this? That's a pretty minimal piece of JavaScript that shouldn't be doing anything like that.
  
  
  

Tech News

• Snap has a new camera drone called Pixy. (ZDNet)
  
  I should sue.
  
  AIC: COUGH.
  
  Never mind.
  
  
  
• China, India, and Russia didn't sign on to that worthless declaration on the future of the internet. (ZDNet)
  
  Oh no.
  
  
  
• Support for EPUB format is coming to Kindle, finally. (Liliputing)
  
  But support for MOBI - the original native Kindle format - is ending, which means if you have a library of ebooks outside of Amazon you'll be forced to convert them all. Or just choose another reader.
  
  
  
• Sony Music Japan is taking over management and production for vtuber agency Prism Project. (Anime Corner)
  
  Prism is my favourite of the smaller agencies; they have some sold talent and a great fan community, but it's tough competing with the two giants (Nijisanji and Hololive). Sony already has its own roster of five vtubers under the VerseN label, so Prism's twelve agents will be a big expansion.
  
  They also have a big launch on the way for their Vee project but so far there's been nothing announced of what or who or when.

Possibly Not Totally Crap Notebook Review Video of the Day

Posted by: J Greely at Sunday, May 01 2022 06:50 PM (oJgNG)

Posted by: Friday Night Funkin at Thursday, April 25 2024 01:05 PM (h7vc5)

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• It's the weekend again and that means something, I don't remember what. Beer, maybe.  Do I like beer?
  
  
  
• The FBI searched the data of millions of Americans without warrants. (Bloomberg)
  
  I am shocked, shocked, to find that the FBI is the largest organised criminal gang in the country.
  
  Even the ACLU is against it. Probably because they got searched, but whatever.

• Huawei's new Mate Xs 2 has a neat flexible screen that wraps around three sides of the phone. (Liliputing)
  
  Only problem is (1) it costs $1500, (2) you can't get one, (3) because Huawei is a spy agency.
  
  
  
• Guess 16 states just aren't going to get any mail then. (Ars Technica)
  
  So long, suckers.  Rarely a good idea to sue the people who provide you with essential services.
  
  
  
• There's not just a shortage of good employees - companies are actively hiring the wrong people. (ZDNet)
  
  Communists. They mean communists.
  
  
  
• Arm has re-established control of its rogue Chinese joint venture, maybe. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  The former CEO of Arm China was fired for using the company as his personal plaything... And simply refused to leave. He had a lot of loyal staff because they were making out like bandits looting the company.
  
  The moral of the story is fuck China.
  
  
  
• Which is also the moral of my day. Woke up to an abuse ticket on one of my servers. Someone had sent a spam report because they got a bounce message because a Chinese spammer had sent, well, spam to my server with a fake sender address and it got rejected, a trick referred to as a Joe job.
  
  At least it didn't take me long to figure out and the hosting company accepted the explanation.
  
  Oh yeah. The spam came from China, which is not a country I would trust with food products of any kind.

Did Elon Musk Disparage Twitter?  No, You're All Idiots Video of the Day

Sort of Anime Music Video of the Day

Posted by: Frank at Saturday, April 30 2022 09:59 PM (rglbH)

Posted by: normal at Saturday, April 30 2022 10:18 PM (obo9H)

Posted by: normal at Saturday, April 30 2022 10:19 PM (obo9H)

Posted by: SMM HEART at Monday, January 22 2024 03:37 PM (/QKaT)

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• The US and 60 other countries today announced A Declaration for the Future of the Internet and it is bilge. (Access Now)
  
  You can read the full document here (PDF) though it's a waste of your time.
  
  The First Amendment is just 45 words, was written 230 years ago, and covers much more than this useless Declaration.
  
  
  
• Of course, the US government just ignores the First Amendment when it is inconvenient. (Law Enforcement Today)
  
  The new Disinformation Governance Board - part of the DHS, which has absolutely no authority to do this - is intended to address the number one threat facing the world today: Reality.

• Synology. (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Not QNAP for once.
  
  
  
• The EU set up a Mastodon node. (PC Magazine)
  
  Congratulations Europe! There's no limit to what 450 million idiots can do if they put their minds to it.
  
  Maybe next year you could start a blog.
  
  
  
• Weibo is going to attach your location to the comments you post. (Asia Financial)
  
  You can expect the people behind the Declaration and the Disinformation Board to jump on this right away.
  
  
  
• Qualcomm is promising to release new Arm-based laptop chips that don't suck - next year. (Ars Technica)
  
  These are intended to compete with Apple's M1 chips from 2020.
  
  
  
• Amazon's latest quarterly results are in and they made a loss of $3.8 billion. (Thurrott.com)
  
  Probably on the free shipping on all the boxes they've been sending me.
  
  
  
• Samsung's 3nm process is scheduled to start mass production in Q2. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Judging from the specs it is not a much denser process than TSMC's 5nm, but should be faster and use less power.

Posted by: normal at Saturday, April 30 2022 07:39 AM (obo9H)

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• Quick one today because I worked until 1:30 AM because we have two major customers launching at the same time and then got woken up at 3:00 AM because I made an error in change management because a normally non-critical function is critical today only. Yay.
  
  
  
• Well, someone's enjoying himself.
  
  

Tech News

• The quicker picker upper.  The quicker putter downer too, if you drank the whole thing.
  
  
  
  
  
• Google has launched its new Media CDN. (Tech Crunch)
  
  This is a regular CDN only with built-in AI, machine learning, and ad insertion, all very sound reasons to avoid it like the plague.
  
  
  
• Dell's latest XP3 13 Plus has everything but the 4 Essential Keys and decent I/O. (Liliputing)
  
  3840x2400 OLED display, 14 core (6P + 8E) i7-1280P CPU, 32GB of LPDDR5 RAM, 2TB of SSD. I/O is just two Thunderbolt 4 ports - not even a headphone jack or microSD slot.
  
  The 1280P is welcome - it's a slightly lower power form of the 12700H which absolutely demolishes Intel's previous generation chips for thin-and-light laptops and competes well with AMD's 5000-series and 6000-series chips except in graphics.
  
  
  
• All the chemical bases in DNA and RNA have now been found within meteorites. (ScienceNews)
  
  Which is a hint that if we find life elsewhere in the galaxy it will be edible.
  
  
  
• QNAP. (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Again.
  
  
  

• "Fear" is not the word I'd use here: Under Musk, some fear Twitter's moderation progress could unravel.  (NBC News)
  
  Twitter's moderation stance was generally sound through to 2016, mostly tolerable from then until 2018, and on an oscillation cycle between Orwell and Kafka since then.
  
  And the star of this article is none other than Brianna Wu:

  Brianna Wu knows firsthand how bad the harassment on Twitter can get. A software engineer and game developer, Wu was targeted with death and rape threats during GamerGate, an online harassment campaign against women in the gaming industry that started in 2014.

  Everything in this opening paragraph is not only wrong but a direct lie.

  Wu, who has more than 100,000 Twitter followers and has used the platform throughout her career, said she consulted with the company’s trust and safety team in an unofficial, unpaid capacity from 2014 to late 2021.

  Apparently this is true though - Wu has been working as an informant for Twitter's corporate mutawa.
  
  
  
  
  Follow US law, ban the spambots, and give users the tools to block the trolls and lunatics.
  
  Oh, and Elon?  Close any offices Twitter has in Europe.
  
  
  

Tech News

• Yes.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• History didn't repeat for once: The Erie Railroad War of 1869 has eerie parallels with the Twitter board's poison pill.  (ThoughtCo)
  
  That time, Cornelius Vanderbilt - the richest man in America - failed in his takeover bid and the board looted the company, which went bankrupt in 1878.  And 1893.  And 1938.  And today is part of the Norfolk Southern Railway, railroads having some intrinsic utility unlike social networks.
  
  
  
• Lucid group has an order for 50,000 electric vehicles from...  Saudi Arabia?  (WCCFTech)
  
  The company is not a major player in the field so far, but just announced a new 1050hp model with a 0-60 time of 2.6 seconds.  This deal follows on the back of a February agreement to build a manufacturing facility in Saudi Arabia.  That's not something the country is known for, but the oil isn't going to last forever.
  
  
  
• You wouldn't download a Mac, would you?  Not when you can run it right in your browser.  (MacOS8.app)
  
  It has Civilization installed, and SimCity, and Photoshop alongside Kai's Power Tools, and Claris Works and Microsoft Word.  It's actually pretty functional.
  
  
  
• Sorry, I can't come in to work on the pyramid today.  A scorpion bit me while I was brewing beer.  (Open Culture)
  
  Which is probably a good excuse if you live in Texas today.  And are working on a pyramid.
  
  
  
• The Ugly Monkey JPEG Instagram group got hacked, and $0 worth of ugly monkey JPEGS were stolen.  (ZDNet)
  
  The article claims $3 million, but journalists will say anything for clicks.
  
  
  
• With memory prices steady SK Hynix has doubled its profits against the same quarter a year ago.  (ZDNet)
  
  This is good news for memory manufacturers - and for the rest of us too, because there aren't many of them left.  Memory prices are cyclic, and a lot of the companies exited the business one way or another in the last two bust cycles, leaving just Korean SK Hynix and Samsung, and US-based Micron.
  
  
  
• Who is Risa Hoshino, Instagram MD?  (Sarah Burwick)
  
  Unusually it turns out she genuinely is a medical doctor.  The rest of it is a mishmash of half-truths and apparent fabrications - mostly relating to COVID, which an offense that would get your account terminated if you weren't pushing falsehoods in the service of the "consensus" viewpoint.
  
  
  
• Why not just sell NFTs?  (BuzzFeed)
  
  That way at least everyone knows you're lying.

  Some doctors tried to refrain from giving out medical advice in the Ask a Doc channel. In April, one user posted: "Sometimes I'll wake up with my kidney area in bad pain from sleeping on my side, is this normal?” A lead MetaDocs doctor identifying as Dr. Fayez Ajib, a "Part-time doctor, full-time gamer,” according to their Discord bio — advised the user to see their physician.

  Huh.  Even NFT doctors are more ethical than Risa.
  
  
  
• The Dell XPS Desktop 8950: Not complete trash.  (Hot Hardware)
  
  They weren't testing it as a high-end gaming machine, and noted that the included water cooling solution is designed for quiet and not maximum performance.  But given Dell's reputation of unnecessarily loud air cooling, that in itself is an advance.
  
  With a 12600K and a 3060 Ti it's not a terrible power hog: 469W in their torture test but a more reasonable 300W with a normal gaming load - and idle power levels are excellent at just 43W.  The included power supply is 750W so it could easily cope with an upgrade to a faster graphics card later.
  
  Single-threaded performance is great, multi-threaded is decent, and gaming is solidly mid-range - about the same as a previous generation RTX 2080.
  
  I'd like to see Gamers Nexus' take on it, but from this review it seems like a decent prebuilt.  It does use a non-standard motherboard - all of Dell's desktop systems do - so keep that in mind.
  
  
  
• On iOS, all browsers are really just Safari in varying degrees of fancy dress.  Apple forbids any other browser on their platform.  The EU's new Digital Markets Act appears to make that illegal.  (The Register)
  
  Explicitly so.  While not calling out Apple by name, it does call out the imposition of specific browser engines on a software platform.
  
  Given that Safari causes more swearing from our UI team than all other browsers combined, forcing Apple to compete on a level playing field seems like a good thing, even if it comes via massively overbearing regulation from a grossly engorged Pan-European superstate, like a gargantuan blood-sucking tick that coughs up the occasional bit of ambergris.

• Elon Musk bought Twitter.  (Sydney Morning Herald)
  
  For a lefty rag, a not entirely terrible article.
  
  
  
• Elon Musk bought Twitter: Here's five things he needs to take care of.  (The Guardian)
  
  1. Fire everyone.
  2. Edut buten.
  
  
  
• Elon Musk bought Twitter: The neurosyphilitic communist canary in the free speech coal mine is having a stroke.  (Mashable)
  
  Aww, they look so sad.  Can I troll them just a little?
  
  
  
• Elon Musk bought Twitter: Free speech experts worried about the prospect of free speech.  (SBS)

  "For him to say he's doing this for free speech is just a fallacy. It's just wrong. This is not about free speech, if it were there would be a completely different approach needed," said Professor Katherine Gelber, Orwell Professor of Political Science at the University of Queensland.

  
  
• Elon Musk bought Twitter: Sadly he will not immediately begin cleaning house with flame and sword.  (Daily Mail)
  
  The deal could take up to six months to finalise - requiring a shareholder vote that won't take place until May 25 at the earliest - and there are no layoffs planned "at this time".
  
  Whatever you think of the Daily Mail, this is one of the most detailed articles I've seen so far - they've rolled all their previous content on the takeover bid into one huge thread.
  
  
  

• The EU has unveiled its plan for the largest ever ban of "dangerous chemicals".  (The Guardian)
  
  Allegedly including PVC plastics and all flame retardants, the ban could hit a quarter of all chemical production in Europe.
  
  Which sounds great until an apartment building burns down and turns two hundred voters into so much illicit bacon.
  
  
  
• The crypto industry - which is awash with money - can't find enough lawyers.  (WSJ)
  
  Call me crazy but I somehow think there's a solution to this problem.
  
  
  
• Social networks will be required to publish and explain their content recommendation algorithms under the EU's new Digital Services Act.  (The Verge)
  
  It's not all good news, but at least it makes life progressively more difficult the larger a social platform is, which correlates closely with those most needing a kick in the teeth:

  The DSA will, like the DMA, distinguish between tech companies of different sizes, placing greater obligations on bigger companies. The largest firms — those with at least 45 million users in the EU, like Meta and Google — will face the most scrutiny. These tech companies have lobbied hard to water down the requirements in the DSA, particularly those concerning targeted advertising and handing over data to outside researchers.

  
  
• Speaking of making life difficult the lockdowns in China are leading to a growing shortage of laptop components.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Fortunately inflation has taken a bite out of discretionary spending and laptop sales are down 10% over last year, so the component shortage hasn't immediately cleared the shelves of stock.
  
  
  
• Just following pre-orders.
  
  

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, April 26 2022 11:28 PM (6oqhX)

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, April 26 2022 11:31 PM (6oqhX)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Wednesday, April 27 2022 03:07 AM (r9O5h)

Posted by: Mauser at Wednesday, April 27 2022 03:28 PM (gVjvf)

Posted by: Rick C at Wednesday, April 27 2022 11:03 PM (6oqhX)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, April 28 2022 04:39 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Mauser at Thursday, April 28 2022 02:52 PM (gVjvf)

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, April 28 2022 11:23 PM (6oqhX)

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