Posted by: J Greely at Monday, March 28 2022 02:47 AM (ZlYZd)

Posted by: JT at Monday, March 28 2022 04:10 AM (0EkmO)

Posted by: J Greely at Monday, March 28 2022 04:57 AM (ZlYZd)

4 Sorry 'bout that, J.  Meant that for Pixy...  My bad. 

Posted by: JT at Monday, March 28 2022 06:30 AM (0EkmO)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, March 28 2022 10:00 AM (PiXy!)

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• Microsoft has been accused of handing out bribes in Africa and the Middle East in order to secure new business deals.  (The Register)
  
  Compared to the totalitarian insanity we generally get from Big Tech, this sort of traditional petty corruption feels almost comforting.  It's like you come home from a day fighting off laser-equipped robot dogs and your own dog just wants to bite you.

• From Chi-Town Jerry:

  I want to upgrade my PC -
  Currently:
  AMD Ryzen 3 2200G with Radeon Vega Graphics 3.50 GHz
  8 GB RAM
  
  Not enough to run MS Flight Simulator which my kids bought me..
  Will a new MoBo with an AMD Ryzen 5 5600G (w/onboard graphics) be enough to run that and Windows 11?
  
  The price of graphics cards is insane here!

  Here's a CPU benchmark comparison between those two chips.
  
  The 5600G is miles faster on that front.
  
  On the graphics side that site doesn't have the 2200G listed, but the older chip has 8 graphic cores at 1.1GHz, and the newer one has 7 cores at 1.9GHz. So about 50% faster.
  
  However, the recommended minimum graphics card for the game is the RX 570, which is about three times faster again. So that hardware will certainly run better, but I don't know if it will be better enough to make the game enjoyable.
  
  
  
• From Caiwyn:

  I am still skeptical of crypto simply by default, but what exactly are the downsides other than current volatility?

  For the most part, crypto really does run as a combination MLM / Ponzi / pump-and-dump scam. The thing is, under all the bullshit it is actually useful. The other thing is, there's so much bullshit that the utility is being destroyed.
  
  I work in the crypto space - over the last few years it's gone from being 10% of my job to 90%.
  
  I hate it.
  
  As the technical lead at our small company I'd be a natural to send to a conference for a talk or panel discussion, but the CEO knows I'd stand up, look out at the expectant audience, and say LEARN TO CODE.
  
  
  
• From OSUsux:

  Hey, Pixy. After a recent harddrive crash I'm looking for a home RAID solution mostly for storing photos, media, etc. I'm tech adjacent, but I haven't ever done anything with RAID. So I'm looking for something that is easy to setup AND rebuild when an HDD goes bad.
  
  I probably don't need a ton of space - I have less than 1 TB of stuff now, would probably want at least 2, maybe 4 TB of space for room to grow. I would anticipate this being a long term (10+ years) storage solution. Also trying not to break the bank on this.
  
  Any suggestions?

  A low-end Synology box with two drive bays like the DS-220k would probably work fine, or one of Western Digital's dual-bay devices that come pre-populated with disks. Those come pre-configured with RAID-1 (mirroring) so you just need to plug it in and hook up your computer - and swap the failed drive if and when it starts blinking red. With those capacities you probably don't need anything bigger, just something that will save your bacon automatically when a drive fails.
  
  Just don't connect it to the internet.
  
  
  
• From J. Random Dude:

  NASs. I've thought about getting a QNAP or something similar but with their software updates occasionally being corrupted by virii, am I better off just rolling my own, ie adding more drives and such to the Windows box I'll be using to run Blue Iris surveillance camera software?

  QNAP is probably fine as long as you don't connect it directly to the internet. Same with the recent problems that have hit Asus, Western Digital, and Synology devices - though QNAP has had the worst run this past year.
  
  For a single application though you're probably fine just adding drives directly to your PC. Certainly cheaper that way.
  
  
  
• From Thing From Snowy Mountain: Dandolo Did Nothing Wrong:

  Late Question For Pixy: If I want to share some videos what's a good alternative to youtube?

  Rumble, probably. Seems to be getting more traction than the other startups right now.
  
  
  
• From Rodent:

  Pixy any comments on protecting corporate systems? Seeing a lot of cyber attacks and ransomware on municipal systems, food manufacturers, and others. Latest was H.P. Hood dairy based in Boston. Meat plants and cream cheese makers come to mind for past events. Apologies if you're posted on that previously and I missed it.

  My comments in this area are mostly along the lines of STOP THAT YOU IDIOTS! WERE YOU RAISED IN A BARN?
  
  Which while well-deserved are not really actionable advice.
  
  
  
• From m0lr4k:

  I am tired of hardware devices that dictate when their usefulness ends for me. I have had a co-branded Google / Asus router for a number of years. Well now Google has said it won't work past the end of the year, because Google.
  
  Any recommendations for a home router for a medium-sized home, preferably one that allows FOSS firmware to be flashed on it? I've looked at a few (and even the option of using a Raspberry Pi Compute Module as a router), but I don't see a clear leader like the old Linksys 54g (or whatever model) was 15 years ago. Extra options like support for mesh networks and home automation would be cool, but I'm now in the camp of rolling it myself if I add much to those sorts of things.

  I'm not sure what exact model to recommend, but what you are looking for is OpenWRT. They maintain a huge list of supported devices and matching software versions. Might be worth checking your current hardware if you haven't already.
  
  
  
• From AshevilleRobert:

  Question. Is it possible to build a PC with none of the major components coming from china (Processor, memory, motherboard, case, power supply and video card)? I understand that discrete components will be, just wanting to avoid the finished items being so.

  Maybe. The chips for CPUs are made in the US and Taiwain, GPUs in Taiwan and South Korea. RAM chips and flash have major factories in the US and South Korea. The leading motherboard and graphics card manufacturers are based in Taiwan - but they all operate some of their production in mainland China so it would be tricky proposition to make sure nothing comes from there.
  
  
  
• From Squints:

  I'd love some elaboration on this from last week:
  
  >>enter ! and one or more letters at the end of your search query and it will use a different search index - and there are thousands supported
  
  Not for all thousands, of course, but a couple of examples. Thanks muchly.

  This one is in relation to DuckDuckGo search.
  
  The simplest one is that by adding !g to the end of your search, you get results from Google. Similarly, !a searches Amazon and !w searches Wikipedia. !/. searches Slashdot - and so does !./ in case you fumble it. There are currently 13,565 of these "bangs" available.
  
  
  
• From Braenyard:

  Question - I need a portable HD that is independent of the internet. I bought a Seagate 1T and the first thing it wanted to do was connect, in fact, I could go no further unless I connected. The opposite of what I want.
  
  I have a WD Word Book 3T and would like a portable to use all the time and back it up to the WD Word Book. Reviews don't cover my connectivity concern.
  Any recommendation, please?

  Format that sucker. Show it who's boss. While a new external hard drive might want you to connect to the internet, once you format it it will become raw storage and won't demand anything.

• PCIe 5 SSDs will require active cooling.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  As in, a fan, right on your disk drive.
  
  Although the actual quote is slightly different:

  But for sure, the SSDs are going to be hotter, in the same way that CPU and GPU got hotter in the 1990s. As we move to Gen5 and Gen6, we may need to consider active cooling.

    (My italics.)
  
  Still, there's a reason I went for PCIe 3 SSDs for my laptop upgrades.  (Also price.)
  
  
  
• Baldur's Gate 3 Will Be the Benchmark Incarnation of D&D 5th Edition in a Game, Says Larian
  
  This is going to suck, isn't it? 
  
  (Checks Steam Early Access.)
  
  44,000 scores averaging Very Positive, despite being a full-price title in Early Access for three years.
  
  Maybe...  Not?
  
  
  
• Ubuntu Finally Switches to Rolling Releases.  (Slashdot)
  
  Oh no-
  
  
  
• Ubuntu becomes a rolling release with Rolling Rhino.  (Neowin)
  
  Wait, R?  The upcoming release is Jammy Jellyfish.  We won't loop back around to R until 2026.
  
  
  
• Rolling Rhino Remix is an un-official Ubuntu flavour.  (GitHub)
  
  So...  Nothing.

Posted by: StargazerA5 at Sunday, March 27 2022 11:17 PM (AZtuZ)

Posted by: normal at Sunday, March 27 2022 11:46 PM (obo9H)

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• It seems we have somehow made it through another week and that means it's Question and Answer time.  Fling your answers into the comments using the provided working miniature trebuchet (some assembly required) and tomorrow I will fart in your general direction attempt to answer them.
  
  
  
• The Latecomer's Guide to Crypto.  (New York Times Paywall)
  
  I literally can't read this.
  
  
  
• The Annotated Latecomer's Guide to Crypto.  (Molly White)
  
  Fifteen crypto skeptics, computer scientists, and researchers take the New York Times apart and then - because I know some of these people are dedicated lefties - immediately relapse into Gell-Mann Amnesia Syndrome.
  
  
  

Tech News

• The EU is bringing in new regulations that will force Big Tech to support open APIs and interoperability.  (Ars Technica)
  
  The initial focus is on messaging platforms but it seems to extend well beyond that, and the fines go as high as 20% of gross annual revenue.
  
  Apple and Google are objecting strenuously, but I don't much care because at this point they are even more thoroughly infiltrated by communists than Europe itself.
  
  The rules only apply to very large companies - with a market cap of $75 billion or revenues of $7.5 billion - so it leaves the field open for new competitors.
  
  
  
• Following the Willie Horton rule, a group of filmmakers sued hosting provider Quadranet for providing services to some of the endpoints to some of the VPN providers used by some of the people who downloaded pirated copies of their films.
  
  Quadranet said this was bullshit and filed a motion to dismiss, and last December a Florida judge agreed and tossed the case.
  
  The plaintiffs filed a motion for reconsideration arguing that they had new evidence that would sustain the case and now the judge has ruled that it is still bullshit and tossed that too.  (TorrentFreak)
  
  Sometimes to good guys win.
  
  
  
• Don't make your Redis servers publicly accessible.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Problem solved.

Posted by: David Eastman at Saturday, March 26 2022 08:08 PM (qSKtI)

Posted by: normal at Saturday, March 26 2022 10:48 PM (obo9H)

Posted by: normal at Sunday, March 27 2022 07:58 AM (obo9H)

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• Yesterday word got out that a British teen was believed to be the leader of the Lapsus$ hacking group.  Today London police arrested seven people  aged 16 to 21 in relation to, well, exactly this.  (BBC News)
  
  Apparently they got doxxed by rival hackers.
  
  Technical skills: 9/10.
  Opsec: 0/10.
  
  Lapsus$ announced they are taking a break until March 30.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  
  

Tech News

• Meanwhile anonymous, who have been quiet lately, claimed to have hacked Nestle and leaked 10GB of proprietary data.
  
  Nestle denies this happened for a rather unique reason: they accidentally leaked that data themselves months ago.  (Gizmodo)
  
  
  
• Google still thinks Android tablets are a thing.  (The Verge)
  
  Guys, you haven't updated the Nexus 7 range since 2013.
  
  
  
• Nvidia GPU prices are down by about 40% here in Australia, but AMD prices are moving much more slowly...  At least at the mid range.  At the high end, they're also down sharply.  Which has led to an absurd compaction of price brackets:
  
  
  
  Just $40 separates the 6800 from the 6900 XT.
  
  
  
• Which makes the 6900 XT relatively good value but it's probably not time to buy one.  (Hot Hardware)
  
  The next generation's mid-range cards, due later this year, could beat current top-of-the-line cards while being much cheaper and more efficient.

• Hololive Indonesia Gen 3 was announced today, to debut, well, today.  I think they've figured out that if they launch the same day it doesn't give YouTube time to ruin things.
  
  All of the Hololive Indonesia girls speak fluent English, something I wasn't originally aware of, though now that Hololive English is larger they spend more time speaking Bahasa for their local audience.
  
  Holostars Gen 4 debuts right after that - Holostars is the male branch of the all-female Hololive.

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, March 26 2022 12:22 AM (Z0GF0)

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• I have a local lawyer in the town I'm looking to move to checking on some things for me, and one of the things she was checking was whether there might be any council restrictions on any of the properties and yep, the house built in 1877 which is probably my preferred choice is heritage listed. So any renovations or improvements would not only have to pass by the town council but also the heritage council.  Two sets of hoops and one of them on fire.
  
  Which helps explain why such a great property has been sitting on the market for so long.  For my needs it's laid out pretty well (except for the original corner fireplaces which take up a ton of space and don't even work though there is a newer combustion stove in the living room) and it has been renovated fairly recently so there's not a lot of work that needs doing.  The one thing that could do with an upgrade is the bathroom and that I could probably manage.
  
  
  
• Meanwhile far away from sensible bricks and mortar Solana-based stablecoin Cashio had a minor bug and lost 99.995% of its value overnight.  (Decrupt)
  
  Oops.
  
  
  
  
  It's the crypto equivalent of your parents answering a call from "Windows Support".
  
  Put not your trust in stablecoins.  Or anything else, really.

• Apple's brand new M1 Ultra processor has shown up in the PassMark benchmark list.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  The top-of-the-line 20-core CPU is listed just behind - oh, that's gotta hurt - just behind AMD's new 12-core Threadripper Pro 5945WX.
  
  Most powerful CPU ever, except for all the others.
  
  
  
• TSMC is expanding the expansion of its 5nm and 4nm (really, they're the same thing) production lines to meet highly demanding demand.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Nvidia's new enterprise (Hopper) and consumer (Lovelace) graphics cards, and AMD's Zen 4 CPUs and RDNA 3 GPUs will all be heading to TSMC's 5nm and 4nm production lines this year, joining Apple and Qualcomm who have been producing mobile chips on the new nodes for some time.
  
  
  
• Why exactly would you buy an IronWolf Pro?  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Comparing two models of Seagate 20TB drives, the IronWolf NAS model is 20% more expensive than the Exos enterprise model, but has half the lifetime and workload ratings, with all other specs being the same.  Okay, in sequential reads the IronWolf averaged 6% faster but even four of these in RAID can flood 10Gb Ethernet, so that's not likely to be an issue.
  
  
  
• This person doesn't know what they're doing.  (Spaced Out and Smiling)

  Given i develop on a ARM Mac, i’d like to deploy to an ARM server.

  You program in Node.js.  Node.js itself is a crime against humanity, but that's not your fault.  But unless you are doing something spectacularly horrible, there is no technical reason to deploy to an Arm-based server.
  
  
  
• Russia has banned Google News for "unreliable information".  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Sure.  Okay.
  
  
  
• Australia's NBN is opening upgrade orders for FttC customers.  (ZDNet)
  
  Starting at the end of May, by which time I will be in a new house with FttP (one way or another).
  
  
  
• Old and busted: Don't be evil.
  
  New hotness: Adding legal.  (Ars Technica)
  
  Like your annoying 12-year-old cousin who figured out that broken goblin berserker character build in 3.5e and is now ruining your campaign some bright spark at Google decided that if you copy one of the corporate lawyers on your internal communications everything is protected by attorney-client privilege and can't be examined by antitrust regulators which is brilliant except for the two key points that first it doesn't work that way and second that sort of bullshit is exactly what antitrust regulators are looking for.
  
  Good work, genius.  Rocks fall, everyone gets broken up.
  
  
  
• Instagram now lets you see the posts of people you follow in the order they were posted.  (Bloomberg)
  
  A remarkable innovation.
  
  
  
• GitHub no longer does.  (The Register)
  
  Microsoft, you idiots.
  
  
  
• Lapsus$ might have accessed user data in their Okta hack.  (The Register)
  
  Okta, uh, handles logins for other customers.  Mostly small customers.  Like Apple, Amazon,  Google, and Microsoft.
  
  This could be nothing or it could be the biggest hack in recent history.  We're not sure yet.
  
  
  
• Lapsus$ might be led by some sixteen-year-old kid.  (Bloomberg)
  
  This would explain a lot.  Their work so far has been technically proficient but basically pointless, and they don't really cover their tracks.

• Reuben Hick said yesterday:

  I'm fascinated by the four considerations:
  * Internet speed
  * House Size
  * Price /m²
  * transportation
  
  Nothing about aesthetics, floorplan, neighborhood, structure condition, crime rate... all of the stuff normal people consider.

  Guilty as charged.
  
  I'm moving to a mid-sized country town (about 25,000 people) so there's not that much variation in neighbourhoods and crime rates.  There's basically the parts with wide streets and lots of trees, and the parts with really wide streets and really lots of trees.
  
  Internet speed (and stability) is a key concern because I live online, and I chose this town because apart from being pretty nice - I've visited a few times and stayed overnight at least twice - the whole place has fiber internet.
  
  As for house size, also yes.  I work from home, and my job requires multiple computers, so I need a big office on top of the usual space.  And all my accumulated technical junk also takes up a lot room, so I either have to throw it out or find a place with plenty of storage.  
  
  The one with a garage the size of a small house and a house the size of two and a half small houses is probably overkill but is priced right in the middle of other places half the size.  I can just tell the movers to shove everything into the truck at one end, and shove everything into the garage at the other end except for the dining table, fridge, and washing machine, which I would not want to drag up the stairs myself.  And the rest I can unpack whenever.

Posted by: StargazerA5 at Thursday, March 24 2022 08:22 PM (aP5Yo)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, March 24 2022 11:36 PM (PiXy!)

Posted by: normal at Thursday, March 24 2022 11:38 PM (LADmw)

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, March 24 2022 11:42 PM (Z0GF0)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Friday, March 25 2022 01:27 AM (r9O5h)

Posted by: J Greely at Friday, March 25 2022 05:25 AM (ZlYZd)

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, March 25 2022 05:47 AM (oPg+d)

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• Latest house I've looked at has a garage as large as my entire current house including the garage.  The rest of the house is about two and a half houses.  And it's half the price of my current house.  And has gigabit internet available.
  
  Not that you actually get gigabit speeds on gigabit internet here, but if you sign up for the half-gigabit plan you can come pretty close to that.
  
  
  
• Nvidia today announced its new Hopper GPU architecture which can deliver a petaFLOPS sort of on a single chip.  (AnandTech)
  
  I say sort of because that's measuring 16-bit floating point which is fine for neural networks but useless for computational fluid dynamics.  With 64-bit values the vector unit delivers 30 TFLOPS which is very good but doesn't sound as impressive.
  
  It's not shipping yet and you won't be able to buy one when it does - this is for servers and supercomputers.  In fact, this architecture might not be coming to the desktop at all, since there's another product announcement coming for that later this year.

• Nvidia also announced a 144-core Arm CPU that you also can't get.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  The Grace CPU Superchip (that's its name) is based on Arm's latest N2 core and is made up of two 72 core chips with a 900GB/s interconnect.  Nvidia say it is 1.5x faster than AMD's current 64 core chips which is not all that impressive when it has 2.25x as many cores and won't actually ship until next year by which time AMD's Zen 4-based 96 and 128 core CPUs will likely be available.
  
  
  
• The great promise of Web 3 is decentralisation.  The great promise is a lie.  (Neel Chauhan)

  Blockchain Sucks, Period

  Pretty much, yeah.
  
  
  
• New Browser-in-the-Browser attacks are nearly undetectable to idiots.  (The Hacker News which is not the same site as Hacker News)
  
  Basically the attack pops up a fake login window within your web page.  The thing is, if you use a password manager - including the one built in to your browser of choice - it will refuse to have anything to do with the fake login window because it is obviously fake.
  
  Also the fake window can't be moved outside your current browser tab.
  
  Also the fake window will ignore any theme settings you might have configured on your computer.
  
  Also if you drag it around it won't behave like a real window.
  
  
  
• The goal of crypto is not to play games with million dollar pictures of monkeys.  (Benzinga)
  
  That's a quote from the creator of Ethereum.
  
  
  
• Nvidia's new Jetson AGZ Orin is a robotics development board for hobbyists with too much money.  (Hot Hardware)
  
  Ranging in price from $899 to $1999 you might be better off with a Pi Pico.

• My internet is back.
  
  Which is good because both my wireless backup connections crapped out this morning.
  
  
  
• Speaking of which Australia's NBN is spending $750 million to upgrade fixed wireless connections.  (ZDNet)

  As part of the upgrade, all users will be able to get up to 100Mbps speeds with 85% of the network capable of 250Mbps, have busy hours at minimum speeds of 50Mbps, 120,000 homes will shift from satellite to fixed wireless coverage, and those left on satellite will see off-peak quota-free window expanded from midnight to 4pm each day by mid-year.

  I've rejected some very nice houses over the past couple of weeks because they were on fixed wireless rather than fiber, but if this upgrade is going to be completed in the next couple of years then that's not going to change one bit because I don't believe anything they say.
  
  I've seen ping times as high as 120 seconds.

• Innovative experiments looking for dark matter have discovered absolutely nothing.  (Quanta)
  
  We know that there's something going on, because galaxies (including our own) don't move the way they should based on what we can see.  But the stuff we can't see is really good at hiding.
  
  
  
• Apple's new monitor has an A13 CPU and 64GB of flash storage.  (9to5Mac)
  
  It's basically an oversized iPhone 11.
  
  
  
• Why you should buy an iPad Air 5 and not an iPad Pro.  (WCCFTech(
  
  
  
• Why you should buy an iPad Pro and not an iPad Air 5.  (9to5Mac)
  
  Many years ago I bought the original Nexus 7.  It wasn't really a great tablet, but I didn't have a tablet, and there's a big difference between no tablet and tablet.
  
  I loved it.
  
  Convinced that tablets were great, I spent a lot more money on the brand new Retina iPad.
  
  Hated it.  It turned out to be a very expensive paperweight.  It worked fine, it just didn't work the way I wanted it to.  I tried again with an iMac which at least I still use because it just keeps working, but I'm really not interested in Apple products anymore.

Posted by: Karl at Tuesday, March 22 2022 08:04 PM (S0kTz)

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, March 22 2022 11:22 PM (Z0GF0)

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, March 22 2022 11:45 PM (Z0GF0)

Posted by: normal at Wednesday, March 23 2022 02:21 AM (LADmw)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Wednesday, March 23 2022 09:18 AM (r9O5h)

Posted by: Mauser at Wednesday, March 23 2022 05:17 PM (gVjvf)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, March 23 2022 10:31 PM (PiXy!)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Thursday, March 24 2022 03:26 AM (r9O5h)

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• Now that the floodwaters have receded there's a technician coming out to repair my internet.  Again.
  
  
  
• Studies show that sleeping with the light on will probably kill you.  (Northwestern)
  
  On the other hand studies show if you sleep with the light off, the monster under the bed will bite off your hands and feet if they hang over the edge of the bed.
  
  
  

Tech News

• Western Digital's new Green SN350 SSD is a DRAMless QLC budget model.  Don't buy it.  (Serve the Home)
  
  There are two reasonable ways to make SSDs cheaper: Use slower but denser QLC flash, or leave out the DRAM buffer and rely on the host computer and pseudo-SLC flash to handle that.  Either option is reasonable for the average consumer workload.
  
  If you do both, though, the results are going to suck.  At $86 for the 1TB model you are only saving $12 over the much better SN570 and it's just not worth it.
  
  
  
• Everything we know about the upcoming 27" iMac refresh.  (9to5Mac)
  
  Wait, didn't you just say there is no upcoming 27" iMac refresh?
  
  Why yes.  Yes you did.
  
  
  
• Shenzhen is leaving lockdown.  (The Register)
  
  Or half of it anyway.  Or half of half of it.  Five of the ten districts in the city are reopening at 50% capacity.
  
  
  
• Go gets generics.  (Go.dev)
  
  After fifteen years of telling you you don't need generics.
  
  
  
• The Radeon RX 6500 XT is selling below MSRP in Germany.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Not clear if this is a sign of better things to come or just because the RX 6500 XT kind of sucks. 
  
  
  
• The Elegoo Jupiter Resin Printer is a large volume high-resolution printer that doesn't exist yet.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  And may irradiate you.
  
  You can preorder now for $1300.

Posted by: Jay at Monday, March 21 2022 10:07 PM (mrlXS)

Posted by: Mauser at Tuesday, March 22 2022 09:11 AM (gVjvf)

Posted by: QNE Software Philippines at Tuesday, November 29 2022 08:37 PM (Ohjqn)

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• Now that the Mac Studio is actually selling to customers we don't need to rely on Apple's own benchmark results anymore and it's not all that pretty for Apple. (WCCFTech)
  
  On the CPU side it does very well on Geekbench if you spend a lot of time running Geekbench. On Cinebench R23 the very expensive M1 Ultra comes in behind Intel's 12900K and AMD's 5950X. Intel's latest mobile chip, the 12900HK, is faster than the M1 Max.
  
  On OpenCL benchmarks the M1 Ultra is technically something that can run OpenCL. it comes in somewhere after AMD's 5700 XT and the Max-Q (low-power) version of the RTX 2070 Super mobile.
  
  And if you want to play a less graphics-intensive game like Civilization 6, the M1 Ultra is slower at 1440p than a ThinkPad P1 Gen 4 is at 4k. (Tom's Guide)
  
  Markedly slower. In fact, it may be slower on that than my own laptop, which only has an RTX 3060.

• From Brickmuppet:

  I've often heard it said that "All the chips not made in China are made in Taiwan", but how true is that?

  Taiwan's TSMC is the world's largest chip manufacturer, but there are major factories operated by various companies in Japan, South Korea, Germany, and the United States. In fact, China produces 0% of leading-edge chips - their latest production lines are at 14nm where TSMC and Samsung are already at 4nm.

  Can anyone recommend a good pre-built gaming/streaming PC?

  I'd suggest checking out Gamers' Nexus series of reviews on YouTube. At least they weed out the worst pre-builts. Some of them aren't terrible.

  However, the tech sector logistics problems seem to be continuing and have multiple second order effects. Does anyone see any light at the end of the tunnel this year regards things like appliances and cars?

  I don't expect things to return to normal until 2024. Some particular areas are improving - DDR5 RAM, for example, and Nvidia graphics cards - but overall everything is still in short supply and all the factories are running 24/7.
  
  Which means that some parts of the economy are working, and if you're in one of those parts you're doing great (so long as you don't need to work 100 hours a week yourself).
  
  
  
• From sock_rat_eez:

  What are your thoughts on the whole search - engine thing ?
  
  Do you have a preference ? Which one do you use ?

  I use DuckDuckGo, and it's mostly okay. Learning how to use the custom search extensions helps (enter ! and one or more letters at the end of your search query and it will use a different search index - and there are thousands supported).
  
  
  
• From Legion of Boom:

  I am looking for a 12 to 16 port 2.5 GB ethernet switch for a central residential. PoE not needed, but would be useful.

  The most cost-effective option I know of would be to use two TP-Link SG-108 8-port 2.5GbE switches. But it might be worth looking at the Ubiquiti - they have a 26-port model (12 x 2.5GbE, 12 x 1GbE, 2 x 10Gb SFP+) with 400W of PoE and Layer 3 management that's about twice as much as the two cheap unmanaged TP-Links.
  
  I'll take a closer look at that one for my new house.
  
  
  
• From flounder, wrecker, hoarder, saboteur:

  Modern (mostly for newer OS releases) Android smartphone with decent size screen and decent enough memory size and CPU speed, SD card, and headphone jack.
  
  Can be a few years old. Does such exist?

  I recently got the Samsung A52S which ticks all those boxes. The just-announced A53 model removes the headphone jack, because of course it does.
  
  
  
• From Honkeysuckapigheadedjiveturkeyfool:

  I have a 1050 Ti. Is there a newish significant upgrade for $200-$250ish USD?

  Maybe the RTX 3050? I tried to check US pricing on Newegg but the site is not talking to me right now - more the fault of my internet than Newegg, I think.
  
  Update: Nope, not even close. You might find a GTX 1650 in that price range if you are lucky.
  
  
  
• From Ex-CopyEditor:

  I have a TP-Link AC1900 router at home, purchased in 2016. No firmware updates released since mid-2016. It works fine and I have no WiFi 6 devices yet. Upgrade or not? New router or reasonable hardware firewall, if such a thing exists? And does any soho company actually patch firmware after the device is sold?

  I have a TP-Link AC1600 provided by my ISP. Wasn't using it except to provide the basic wired internet connect until my own Asus router caught fire. I've replaced it with a Netgear model, though when I say replaced I mean the new one is currently sitting in a box.
  
  As to the hardware firewall - one popped up in the roundup today.
  
  
  

• Good news: It's a convenient and fairly powerful four-port 2.5GbE hardware firewall running pfSense at a not too crazy price. (Serve the Home)
  
  Bad news: It's a guessing game as to who actually makes it. Some small company in China.
  
  
  
• Why America can't build quickly anymore. (Full Stack Economics)
  
  In 2080, the average - the average environmental impact study takes longer to complete than the original 1904 28-stop New York Subway.
  
  
  
• The RTX 3090 Ti will be 10% faster than the current 3090 for just 50% more money. (WCCFTech)
  
  Sure, sounds great.
  
  Probably not the best time to buy massively expensive graphics cards with both Nvidia and AMD promising next-generation hardware this year.
  
  
  
• Belarusian rail workers allegedly cut off rail links to Ukraine. (Deutsche Welle / MSN)
  
  Which is an interesting article because it tells you absolutely nothing about what actually happened. There's no rail traffic between Belarus and Ukraine, but that was already true because the Ukrainians aren't idiots and cut the lines on their side of the border.
  
  
  
• Dark matter and cosmic inflation could be explained by an evil twin universe running backwards in time. (Live Science)
  
  This explanation also works for CNN and Twitter.
  
  
  

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, March 21 2022 02:49 AM (Z0GF0)

Posted by: normal at Monday, March 21 2022 07:19 AM (obo9H)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, March 21 2022 09:54 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: J Greely at Tuesday, March 22 2022 02:15 AM (ZlYZd)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, March 22 2022 05:05 AM (PiXy!)

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• Weekends are Question and Answer time.  Skip your questions gaily across the comment section like a stone across a pond full of frogs, and I'll serve up what answers I can tomorrow.
  
  
  
• When are we likely to see graphics cards at anything approaching reasonable prices again?  (WCCFTech)
  
  Well, here in Australia, the answer seems to be today:
  
  
  
  
  I've confirmed this with a couple of retailers here; prices are down close to 40% since last week.  If I wasn't in the middle of buying a house I'd be buying a new desktop.  (Despite the fact that I already have two laptops with RTX 3060 graphics.)
  
  AMD prices have not adjusted nearly as much, so instead of the 6700 XT competing against the RTX 3060, it's now facing the RTX 3070 Ti.  Which is not a good matchup for Team Red.
  
  Pricing on the top-of-the-line RTX 3090 has also barely moved, still marked up by about 100% over MSRP.  But from the RTX 3060 up to and including the RTX 3080 there's been a seismic shift.  (Which also leaves the recently re-introduced RTX 2060 more expensive than the much better 3060.)

• How Zillow lost $881 million investing in real estate.  (Full Stack Economics)
  
  They fucked up.  They trusted Zillow.
  
  
  
• More on the latest Node.js / NPM debacle.  (Krebs on Security)
  
  Node.js programmers are mostly young and stupid.  Being young is a problem that cures itself, one way or another.  I'm not sure what the direction of causality is on Node.js programmers and stupidity, but the significance of the correlation is undeniable.
  
  Even if Node.js hadn't thrown away sixty years of computer science because someone wanted to scale up a chat server - which is precisely what it did, even if NPM wasn't the worst package manager in human history - which it is, the very idea that we should write server software the same way we write client software is fundamentally retarded, and has led to an avalanche of retarded code written by retarded programmers.
  
  This wasn't a case of somebody doing something that was obviously stupid and dangerous to anyone with more than a casual understanding of software development methodology, this was deliberate malice amplified by years of people doing things that were obviously stupid and dangerous.
  
  Stop it.
  
  
  
• The Vue.js CLI was directly affected by this nonsense.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Because they didn't pin the versions of their dependencies despite a long list of Node ecosystem catastrophes.
  
  Fortunately you can use Vue.js perfectly well without the CLI tools, without venturing into Node.js at all, and that is how I would recommend you use it.
  
  
  
• A look at the passively-cooled 48GB Nvidia A40 server GPU.  (Serve the Home)
  
  This one has not come down by 40% overnight; it's still selling for A$9499 if you can find one at all.
  
  
  
• The OSI secured a win for open source software in the Ninth Circuit case of Neo4j vs ONgDB.  (The Register)
  
  
  
• No it fucking didn't.  (/dev/lawyer)
  
  Having read both articles the lawyer seems to be correct.
  
  
  
• Brazil has banned Telegram for - basically - completely ignoring Brazilian court rulings.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Which seems reasonable on both sides.
  
  
  
• Chinese state hackers are now targeting Ukraine.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  And Europe.  And, uh, basically everyone else.  So this might be aid to Russia, or it might just be the ongoing low-level warfare we've come to expect from them.
  
  
  
• Tech company executives could face jail time under the new UK Online Safety Bill.  (ZDNet)
  
  Good.
  
  
  
• A proposed Minnesota law bans the use of recommendation algorithms by social networks for users under 18.  (Ars Technica)
  
  Mike Masnick of TechDirt who I have mostly stopped linking because he spends half his time of his meds thinks this is bad.
  
  This is part of YouTube Kids.
  
  
  
  I mean, that one is relatively innocuous (the video, not the food, which is apparently what she regularly ate when she was stranded in Australia for a year due to travel restrictions), but Haachama doesn't stop at cooking and eating tarantulas; she has a lengthy and hugely popular psychological horror series and, um, reviews porn fan art of herself.
  
  
  
• Anti-piracy outfit MarkMonitor requested leave to file evidence under seal specifically to keep piracy news website TorrentFreak from reporting on it.  (TorrentFreak)
  
  Which is kind of like being name-dropped by Victor Davis Hanson.
  
  
  
• Android 13 has a desktop mode.  (Liliputing)
  
  This and other recent updates (the ability to run Linux VMs, for example) would make Android a very promising operating system - year of Linux on the desktop and all that - if Google were not run by the clinically insane.
  
  
  
• Internet Explorer ends in June.  (Liliputing)
  
  It will no longer be supported, and a subsequent Windows update will kill it if you already have it installed.
  
  IE compatibility mode for Edge will continue to be supported through 2029.

Posted by: PatBuckman at Sunday, March 20 2022 12:14 PM (r9O5h)

Posted by: Mauser at Monday, March 21 2022 08:09 AM (gVjvf)

Posted by: normal at Monday, March 21 2022 11:05 AM (obo9H)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, March 21 2022 02:05 PM (PiXy!)

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