They are my oldest and deadliest enemy. You cannot trust them.
If Hitler invaded Hell, I would give a favourable reference to the Devil.
If Hitler invaded Hell, I would give a favourable reference to the Devil.
Tuesday, October 18
Daily News Stuff 18 October 2022
Quantum Time Stereos And Other Strangeness Edition
Quantum Time Stereos And Other Strangeness Edition
Top Story
- A fire at a major datacenter in Korea wreaked havoc on the country's online infrastructure on Saturday. (Korea Times)
The fire at the fifteen acre datacenter just south of Seoul caught burned for eight hours before being fully extinguished, which is a long time for this sort of thing. The fire at OVH in Strasbourg didn't last much longer than that, and the building burned to the ground.
The disastrous effects were felt throughout the community:"I needed to receive a photo from my business partner through KakaoTalk. But I had to go through an inconvenient process to get the photo through email because of the KakaoTalk disruption," said a KakaoTalk user, asking for anonymity. "I should've used Telegram."
Well, okay, that's a minor thing, but:"I send some money to my parents every month automatically through Kakao Pay, but I can't verify it," said a user of the platform.
Well, I can see how that would be temporarily vexing. One more try?"After dinner last night, I tapped on the Kakao T app to call a cab, but it didn't work," said another user. "So I took the subway home."
It's almost as if these platforms aren't really that critical and people can cope fine without them.
- Apparently I ordered the new hifi system that was delivered by Amazon tomorrow, yesterday, twice. Except that I only paid for one and they only delivered one.
I think there's a time rift somewhere between Sydney and New House City.
Tech News
- Stability AI, the company behind the Stable Diffusion algorithm for generating AI art, has raised $100 million in funding. (Tech Crunch)
At a valuation of $1 billion, which used to be a lot of money, but given that I ordered $100 worth of groceries on the weekend and it came in two bags, isn't anymore. (Though the paper towels and soda were out of stock, otherwise it would have been three bags.)
- Want an 8k resin-based 3D printer? The Phrozen Sonic Mighty 8k is one. (Tom's Hardware)
Seems to produce good results as you'd hope with a 28 micron resolution, but resin printers are kind of fussy. I'll likely get one once I've got some furniture in the place, but not a fancy model like this to start with.
- Intel's 13th gen CPUs and AMD's Ryzen 7000 range are power hungry beasts - unless you tell them not to be. (WCCFTech)
The 13900K restricted to 80W is as fast as a 12900K running unlimited, and the 7950X running in 65W Eco mode is faster than a 5950X running at full throttle.
Again, this looks good for next-generation laptops.
- Shame then that I'm having trouble with my laptop right now. The best replacement is HP's Pavilion Plus 14, but I missed the sale last month.
The sale is back on... But there are only two models available in Australia (no build-to-order buffet for us) and only the most expensive one is in stock.
Update: Having checked the specs - it's an i7 12700H (6 P cores) rather than an i7 1260P (4 P cores), and the 12700H has Xe graphics unlike the 11th gen H models - and compared pricing with the US store - the Aussie dollar is in the toilet right now so that it's actually cheaper to buy it here with the current 20% discount - I'm going to order the more expensive model with the OLED screen.
It's much faster than my current laptop, has a better screen, and the four essential keys, and hasn't sustained damage during a protracted house move. The only problem is it still has 16GB of RAM, which isn't really enough. The Asus Zenbook 14X Space Edition has 32GB, but the specs are otherwise the same and it's twice the price.
- In a sign that supply chain shortages are finally easing lead times for chip delivery shrank in September from an average of 27 weeks, to just 26 weeks and 3 days. (Bloomberg)
That's much better.
- Last week, the Bitcoin blockchain did absolutely nothing for 85 minutes. (CoinDesk)
It is set to average one block every ten minutes, which is pretty terrible given that right now I am cursing the slowness of another blockchain that process a block every three seconds. Given the distribution, hour-long processing delays can be expected roughly once a month. Slightly more often if someone sets the datacenter on fire.
Disclaimer: In case of fire, panic.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
05:48 PM
| Comments (53)
| Add Comment
| Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 747 words, total size 6 kb.
Monday, October 17
Daily News Stuff 17 October 2022
Return To The Future Edition
Disclaimer: Bees and custard? Who ordered the bees and custard?
Return To The Future Edition
Top Story
- Who is truly responsible for the $110 million loss at decentralised finance (DeFi) platform Mango Markets? Arguably, everyone except the guy who caused it. (Milky Eggs)
The attack, such as it was, was basically just everyday arbitrage. The problem was more than Mango Markets is an unlicensed and untested securities exchange that could be wiped out by things that happen in the normal course of market transactions, because it is built and run by idiots.
Or not necessarily idiots, because it's not the people running Mango Markets who lost money.
- After a five-day tour of the New South Wales countryside, my Amazon shipment arrived. I'll unpack it at some point; my new tablet is in there.
Also, it's listed on Amazon as having being delivered tomorrow, which is just slightly odd.
Tech News
- A dumb article on a dumb problem. (Substack)
Don't read that unless you want to be enraged by idiots building idiotic applications on top of idiotic frameworks built by other idiots.
- A smart article on the same dumb problem. (Luke Plant)
Money quote:Are the Etsy devs stupid? I suspect not. Etsy is clearly doing well, and I imagine they have enough money to hire top-notch developers. Some of their careers pages show they are happy using a variety of languages and technologies, and their engineering blog seems to be sane and competent. Even their security presentation showed considerable ingenuity and technical ability in dealing with security problems (in entirely the wrong way, unfortunately, but still impressive).
One bad decision made to get a product out the door can lead to years of mental - and financial - bleeding.
I doubt they are low quality developers. Rather, I suspect that use of PHP has addled their brains. They have become far too accustomed to working in an environment in which insanity reigns...
- Why are rents going up? An app named YieldStar. (Pro Publica)
It turns out if you increase your rents faster than the overall market, you make more money. Right up until it turns out that all your properties are mysteriously sitting vacant.
- Intel's other 4-bit CPU. (Substack)
There was the original 4004, built for desktop calculators, and the subsequent 4040, before Intel moved on to 8-bit chips and never looked back.
But there was also the 4005. You wouldn't know it, it lived in Canada.
Disclaimer: Bees and custard? Who ordered the bees and custard?
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
05:50 PM
| Comments (24)
| Add Comment
| Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 411 words, total size 3 kb.
Sunday, October 16
Daily News Stuff 16 October 2022
Shaggy Dog Edition
Shaggy Dog Edition
Top Story
- If you can't beat them, beat someone else: How Intel plans to take on AMD, Nvidia, Apple, and Qualcomm... As customers. (WCCFTech)
You know who has fabs? Intel.
You know who doesn't have fabs? AMD, Nvidia, Apple, and Qualcomm.
Currently they use mostly TSMC and Samsung, and Intel is seeking to lure them away. Intel's semiconductor technology was lagging behind in recent years, but they seem to be catching up again.
Intel did have one major foundry customer previously - leading FPGA designer Altera - but then they bought them so it doesn't count anymore.
Tech News
- All I want is a good, small Android tablet at a not too insane price.
The Razer Edge has the new Qualcomm G3x Gen 1 featuring a 3.2GHz Cortex X2 - the leading edge core from Arm, 8GB of RAM, 128GB of storage, a microSD slot, detachable gamepads kind of like the Nintendo Switch, and a 2400x1080 144Hz AMOLED display. (Liliputing)
$399, coming in January.
What's the catch? That's expensive, yes, but phones with those specs cost more.
The catch is that's a 6.8" screen. Huge for a phone, pretty damn small for a tablet.
Still, maybe. If I nudge up the magnification on my reading glasses prescription it will look the same size as an 8" tablet while being, whoa, maaan, my hands are huuuge.
- Speaking of which, Qualcomm has the worst product briefs in the industry. (Qualcomm) (PDF)
I wanted to check the specs of the new G3x chip, so I went to Qualcomm's site. Basically, it says the chip has a CPU and a GPU. And that's it.
- Why we're moving away from Firebase. (K-Optional)
Short answer: Google.
Long answer: Goooooogle.
- From Firebase, but where to? Supabase. (GitHub)
It's a scalable online database / application platform like Firebase, except that the entire platform is open source. You can pay a subscription fee and they run it for you, or you can download it and run it yourself.
- If you run Fortinet security appliances with remote management enabled, well, first, you are dumb. (Bleeping Computer)
Second, the time to panic and unplug those devices was a week ago.
- The 0x64 from Pine Computing looks like a Raspberry Pi Pico. (Liliputing)
Starting at $6 it's priced similarly to the Pi Pico too. And it's mostly pin-compatible.
But where the Pi Pico has 264k of RAM, the 0x64 has 64M.
That's a lot for a tiny embedded board like this. A lot less than a full-size Raspberry Pi, which starts at 1GB, but that is a fair bit bigger and also cost more than $6.
Disclaimer: No, that's too shaggy.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
05:30 PM
| Comments (3)
| Add Comment
| Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 448 words, total size 4 kb.
Saturday, October 15
Daily News Stuff 15 October 2022
Scratch Monkey Edition
Scratch Monkey Edition
Top Story
- Everyone going to the World Cup (a soccer thing) needs a burner phone. (NRK)
The apps you are required to install to enter the country and attend soccer games are, well, problematic, in the traditional sense that they have and/or cause problems:When you download these two apps, you accept the terms stated in the contract, and those terms are very generous. You essentially hand over all the information in your phone. You give the people who control the apps the ability to read and change things, and tweak it. They also get the opportunity to retrieve information from other apps if they have the capacity to do so, and we believe they do.
Always carry a burner phone when entering an authoritarian country, which is to say, a country, and always mount a scratch monkey.
Tech News
- Alaska has declared a state of emergency due to the threat of invasion by a billion invisible crabs. (CBS News)
I think that's the story. Too long, didn't read.
- The FDA has declared a shortage of Adderall. (NPR)
Nice work, bozos. Should have mounted a scratch monkey like I told you.
- The White House is forging ahead with a plan to plunge the Earth into perpetual icy darkness. (CNBC)
Will save on my air conditioning bill, I guess.
- The FDA has declared a shortage of Adderall. (NPR)
Bozos. Scratch monkey. Told you.
- Lufthansa has banned/unbanned Apple AirTags in checked luggage. (Ars Technica)
They will/won't cause the plane to crash and kill everyone on board.
Delete where applicable/not applicable.
- Zoetop (who?) the parent company of Shein (who?) and sister brand Romwe (who?) has been fined $1.9 million by New York for failing to properly notify its 39 million users of a data breach. (Tech Crunch)
It's funny that there are companies out there with 39 million users that I've never heard of, but then I've run individual projects with five million users. The internet is a big place. Also stupid.
- Speaking of which, I upgraded my internet (finally) to 250/100 from the default 100/40. I'm getting 150Mbps down and 80Mbps up, but that's on a poky laptop, in a web browser, over wifi. Still double what I got in Sydney, though ping times are slightly worse.
- No Adderall. (NPR)
Scratch me, bozo monkeys.
- Ryzen 7000 mobile is going to be a big pile of monkey dung. (WCCFTech)
The article points out that, for example, the upcoming 7520U will be an 8W Zen 2 part with 4 CPU cores and 2 graphics cores, while the 7530U will be a 15W Zen 3 part with 6 CPU cores and 6 graphics cores.
You won't be able to buy anything without your secret decoder ring.
Although that's already true with Intel, where the 1265U has two P cores and the 1280P has six.
- Abort! Abort! Abort! There will be no 12GB RTX 4080! (AnandTech)
Instead there will probably be a 12GB 4075 or something with exactly the same configuration at exactly the same price.
The problem was the planned 12GB model of the 4080 was about 20% slower than the 16GB model, which again, you had no way of knowing without the magic decoder ring. (Four easy payments of $19.99!)
- Alaskan ghost crabs devour nation's Adderall supply, film at 11. (NPR)
Pope seen ice skating on the Tiber.
- Is a software engineer an engineer? Only if they pay us, says Alberta regulator. (The Globe and Mail)
"This is not about a money grab," Mr. McDonald said. "Just hand over the cash and nobody gets hurt. Wait, is that a monkey?"
Disclaimer: Here's to Mabel and all the other possibly apocryphal monkeys who gave their lives in the name of poorly planned hardware upgrades.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
05:48 PM
| Comments (2)
| Add Comment
| Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 625 words, total size 6 kb.
Friday, October 14
Daily News Stuff 14 October 2022
Post-Soviet Russia Edition
Post-Soviet Russia Edition
Top Story
- In Amazon dream home, appliance tours you. (Washington Post / MSN)
Two thirds of American Amazon customers also own a telescreen, though some of them hide it behind the painting. "I never thought of having people pay for the privilege of being spied upon", said George Orwell, sitting bolt upright in his grave and feverishly hunting for a pencil and notepaper.
The most complicated Amazon-branded device I own is a pillowcase.
Tech News
- PostgreSQL 15 is here. It has stuff. (PostgreSQL)
Postgres was already a thing when I was studying databases at university, back in the chalcolithic era. They added the "SQL" sometime later.
- Take two, they're small: The Falcon Northwest Talon 7950X edition. (Serve the Home)
Small but shiny. This is very close in spec to the system I want to build in my Bae case. They note as I did that the Asus ROG X670E Crosshair Hero motherboard has every feature you could possibly want - except 10Gb Ethernet. Given its stratospheric price, that's a bit of a let down, particularly with the Bae case where there is only one full-height PCIe slot available.
- Want to squeeze an RTX 4090 into two slots? Water cooling is the way. (Hot Hardware)
Of course it's even more expensive than the regular models.
- Want to build a latter-day Cobalt Qube? Topton's NAS MOBO has everything you need. (Liliputing)
On a standard ITX motherboard it includes a quad core Intel Atom CPU (one of the good recent Atoms, not a crappy old one), up to 32GB of RAM in two SO-DIMM slots, two M.2 NVMe slots, six SATA ports, HDMI and DisplayPort outputs, four USB ports, four 2.5Gb Ethernet ports, and a meker buruner.
No, I don't know either.
- Want a Linux tablet? Plain Linux rather than Android? Juno has one of those. (Liliputing)
Also with an Intel Atom CPU so it should be easy to run any standard Linux distro on it.
Disclaimer: Meker? I hardly buruner!
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
06:06 PM
| Comments (25)
| Add Comment
| Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 337 words, total size 3 kb.
Thursday, October 13
Daily News Stuff 13 October 2022
All Out Of Legs Edition
All Out Of Legs Edition
Top Story
- Microsoft had its big Surface product announcement and there's never been a better time to buy a Surface Laptop 4. (Tom's Hardware)
Which is a bit awkward because they just announced the Surface Laptop 5.
Not only did Microsoft drop the AMD option, they went with U-series 12th generation chips. Intel has two main ranges of 12th gen laptop chips: The H series for full-size laptops which has six Performance cores, and the P series for smaller laptops which has four Performance cores (except for the high-end 1280P which has six again).
Microsoft went for the 15W U series chips, which have just two Performance cores, and are, despite also having eight Efficiency cores, the same speed on multi-threaded tasks as the two generations old Ryzen 4680U in some Surface Laptop 4 models, and 20% slower than the Ryzen 4980U in the 15" Surface Laptop 4.
Pfeh.
- Microsoft also announced the $4299 Surface Studio 2, with a quad-core 11th gen CPU that is barely faster than the laptop I am using right now, which rest assured, did not cost me $4299. (Tom's Hardware)
The mechanical design of the Studio is great. It has a 28" 3:2 screen - 4500x3000 pixels - which is hinged so you can lie it almost flat as a drawing surface. Which is a good thing because it's not much use for anything more demanding than that.
It does have RTX 3060 graphics, which this laptop definitely does not have.
Tech News
- Intel plans to launch new server CPUs. Lots of them. (WCCFTech)
The much-delayed Sapphire Rapids chips with up to 60 cores are now expected in Q1 of next year, just in time to compete with AMD's 96 and 128 core Epyc Genoa and Bergamo ranges. In Q3 Intel will introduce an 8 socket platform - up to 480 cores per server - which will in theory put it ahead of Epyc which only supports dual socket configurations.
Following this will be Emerald Rapids, Granite Rapids pushing the core count to 120 per socket, and Diamond Rapids introducing PCIe 6.0. Those will likely be competing against 256 core Zen 5 monsters using 600W per socket - but able to replace a dozen or more older servers.
- How do other companies (like the hosting provider here) offer bandwidth so much cheaper than AWS? Amazon is making a 98.75% gross margin on bandwidth charges, that's how. (Cloudflare)
In the US, Canada, and Europe, Amazon marks up bandwidth costs approximately 8000%. Lowest markup was an estimated 350% in South Korea, which apparently has higher prices for commercial internet connects than even Australia.
- Honda (a Japanese company) and LG (Korean) are building a joint venture battery factory in Ohio. (CNBC)
There's been a lot of this recently. China has become self-destructively unfriendly to foreign investment, to the point that it is simply toxic and companies are willing to spend whatever it takes to build elsewhere.
- Speaking of which Taiwan says it no longer needs to destroy its chip fabs in the event of a Chinese invasion, because they'd be useless anyway. (Tom's Hardware)
The fabs rely on equipment and supplies from multiple Western sources, many of which are already on the restricted list for China. They'd have captured the very latest equipment, but it would be $100 billion worth of paperweights.
- My latest Amazon delivery made it to New House City in record time - and has now been wandering around the countryside in a courier van for two days. The local depot for this particular courier is 70 miles away, and I doubt they're taking the most direct route.
I do kind of miss same-day delivery, but not a million dollars worth of miss.
Disclaimer: Not that there's anything wrong with $100 billion worth of paperweights, if you have $100 billion worth of paper, and there's a breeze or something.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
06:01 PM
| Comments (5)
| Add Comment
| Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 655 words, total size 5 kb.
Wednesday, October 12
Daily News Stuff 12 October 2022
Hating On Butterflies Edition
Hating On Butterflies Edition
Top Story
- Nvidia's RTX 4090 is here and it's every bit as expensive as we were promised. (Tom's Hardware)
Is it fast, though?
Yes. If you play games at 4K, it's 50% faster than the 3090 Ti and 60% faster than AMD's 6950 XT. If you play games at 4K with ray tracing and AI upscaling - which you don't, because that would have been a miserable experience with any existing card - it averages four times the speed of the RTX 3080.
And for compute workloads like Blender rendering it's about 80% faster than the 3090 Ti, which was previously the fastest card available for that task.
The Founders' Edition would fit in my case, as it turns out - it's a triple slot card, not a four-slot monstrosity like some of the custom versions.
Question is do I want to drop a monthly mortgage payment on a graphics card when I rarely play anything more demanding than Minecraft? I can justify a fast CPU because my CPU basically runs flat out fifteen hours of every day, but I think I can dial back on the GPU a notch or two. Or four, honestly.
Tech News
- What exactly is stochastic terrorism? (Substack)
Short answer:
1. Person A said something I don't like.
2. Person B did something I don't like.
3. This is Person A's fault even though there is literally no imaginable causal connection between the two.
Long answer - very long answer - is that article.
- Hackers stole $100 million worth of imaginary mangoes from the Solana blockchain. (P2E Analytics)
Or something like that. I don't know anymore. Imaginary money went poof.
- The worst is yet to come for the global economy, says the IMF. (DevEx)
"We're here to make sure of that", they added.
- Intel is looking at laying of thousands of workers due to the world economic poopage. (Bloomberg)
Can't entirely blame Intel here; they've been doing better technically lately than they have for years. And AMD could be facing a similar situation.
- The SEC is investigating Ugly Monkey JPEG company Yuga Labs for printing funny money. (Decrypt)
Or funny bond certificates, I guess. Unregistered securities.
You can kind of expect the SEC to come calling when you sell seven billion dollars worth of chimp pics.
Disclaimer: Do not taunt sad trash bear.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
05:45 PM
| Comments (2)
| Add Comment
| Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 398 words, total size 4 kb.
Tuesday, October 11
Daily News Stuff 11 October 2022
Edition Edition
Edition Edition
Top Story
- Micron is planning to spend $100 billion on fab facilities in New York state over the next 20 years. (AnandTech)
Is that a lot? That sounds like a lot.
This is in addition to the $15 billion factory they recently started building in Idaho.
- Samsung meanwhile is spending $30 billion a year on new chip production capacity. (AnandTech)
And plans to be shipping 1.4nm by 2027.
Do I even have any 7nm computers? The Xbox is 7nm if you count that, but this laptop is 10nm.
Anyway, while 1.4nm is a made-up number, it will be better than the other, larger, equally made-up numbers.
Tech News
- Speaking of made-up numbers, Intel's 24 core 13900K is slower than AMD's 16 core 7950X because two thirds of Intel's cores run at half speed. (Tom's Hardware)
On the other hand, the 13600K can be faster than AMD's 8 core 7700X, because while the Intel chip only has 6 fast cores, it also has 8 half speed cores, so an effective 10 cores worth of cores.
I understand why Intel did this - the same reason every mobile CPU does - I just wish they hadn't.
- VirtualBox 7 is out. (VirtualBox)
Somehow Oracle doesn't appear to have ruined it yet.
- 43% of PCs still can't upgrade to Windows 11. (The Register)
I do have one Windows 11 laptop, though I ordered it with Windows 10, because that was the old model and was on clearance. They sent me the new model at the clearance price, so I won, I guess?
I did use the kill your WiFi trick to set it up without using an online account, so it's mostly working like Windows 10 with new paint.
- It might not run Crysis yet, but Notepad can run Doom. (Tom's Hardware)
Pixy, when you say "Notepad can run Doom", what do you mean?
This.
Disclaimer: But can Doom run Notepad?
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
05:51 PM
| No Comments
| Add Comment
| Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 325 words, total size 3 kb.
Monday, October 10
Daily News Stuff 10 October 2022
640GB Should Be Enough For Anybody Edition
640GB Should Be Enough For Anybody Edition
Top Story
- The PC market needs another reinvention. Is Microsoft's Surface up for it? No. (The Verge)
Microsoft has a Surface event this week, and given the discounts on offer for the Surface Pro 8 and Surface Laptop 4 right now, we can be pretty sure new models of both will be arriving.
New-ish, anyway. The current models offer 11th gen Intel CPUs or AMD's Ryzen 4000 range. It looks like the new models will focus on 12th gen Intel chips, in the same month that Intel launches 13th gen parts. Microsoft's launch cycle is badly out of sync with that of it's key suppliers.
That said, it turns out that the Surface Laptop has the Four Essential Keys... Ish. They're the default mappings for F9 through F12, which is better than not having them at all but not a particularly convenient location. Understandable on the 13" model where there's no much room for extra keys; less so on the 15".
- Breaking: PayPal will still steal your money if you say something they disagree with. They only removed the "misinformation" clause. (The Volokh Conspiracy)
If you engage in speech that PayPal believes - in their sole discretion - "discriminatory" or promoting "intolerance", they will steal $2500 from your account or any connected accounts. Per offence, where they also have sole discretion in determining what counts as an offence.
Tech News
- United Airlines plans to use electric planes for routes of less than 200 miles. (Futurism)
Which makes sense. The problem with electric planes is not that they don't work, or that they're expensive, or unreliable; it's that they're not feasible for long distances. So just don't use them for long distances.
Still means your plane will be running on coal, but whatever. Wonder if they're quieter than the conventional prop aircraft they'd be replacing.
- TSMC is expected to spend $40 billion on new factories next year, and the chip industry as a whole $185 billion. (WCCFTech)
The chip shortage is now a mixed story. Lots of critical components that cost one dollar or one cent each are impossible to find, while $1000 CPUs and GPUs are lining store shelves. My brother works in short-run electronics design and manufacturing, and the rule right now is if you find a component in stock today, you buy it - because it could be gone tomorrow.
- I ordered a Samsung Galaxy Tab A7 Lite to replace my Lenovo Tab M8 FHD, which has problems charging. The A7 Lite is cheap and basically adequate but has a 1340x800 screen, which is pretty meh - barely better than my 2012 Nexus 7. Except that the Nexus 7 doesn't work at all any more and is currently in the bottom of a box at the bottom of the garage. Would have bought another Lenovo except of course they don't make it any more, though they have about 17 10" and 11" models.
I'll see if I can deal with that or if it's annoying enough to drive me to the Apple side of the Force.
- The BIOS source code for Intel's 12th generation Alder Lake chips has leaked onto the internet. (Tom's Hardware)
Which doesn't mean that Intel was hacked, because a lot of other companies need access to the BIOS source code, some of which we know have been hacked.
This may or may not be a major problem.
Disclaimer: To be or not be, that is the problem.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
05:59 PM
| Comments (2)
| Add Comment
| Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 586 words, total size 5 kb.
Sunday, October 09
Daily News Stuff 9 October 2022
0.14% Efficiency Edition
0.14% Efficiency Edition
Top Story
- PayPal now says it won't steal all your money for "misinformation" and that the very detailed Acceptable Use Policy the company sent to users was released by "mistake". (National Review / Yahoo News)
The mistake being that they got caught.
Tech News
- Apple's Stasi image filter that runs directly on the hardware you "own" is totally cool and inevitable so just bend over. (Apple Insider)
The article gets roasted in the comments.
- HP's Envy 16 is a 16" laptop with a 4K OLED display and a QHD webcam. (PC Magazine)
And the Four Essential Keys - just the Four Essential Keys, not a full numeric keypad as you often find on laptops.
Only problem is HP's pricing in Australia, if you live in Australia, which I do. The model with a 2560x1600 screen and RTX 3060 graphics costs an eye-watering A$4399. That's about A$2000 more than I paid for my similarly specced Dell Inspiron 16 Plus at the start of the year - though that was an 11th gen model - and A$1200 more than a Gigabyte system with a 4K OLED display and a much faster GTX 3070 Ti.
- Speaking of the Four Essential Keys: Some laptop models from Dell and MSI have four keys in the place where the FEK should be but aren't those keys.
Enter Windows PowerToys. The Keyboard Manager function lets you remap any key to any function. I tried it out on my (slowly dying due to physical abuse during the long process of moving house) Inspiron 14 7000, which does sort of have the FEK but also has a completely useless Print Screen button.
Remapped that without any difficulty.
That makes the Framework Laptop more palatable. Really it's the only drawback of the system for me, given its easy upgradeability and modular I/O. Apparently the battery life isn't stellar, but with USB C charging and tiny GAN chargers that's not the end of the world if you're not on the road all the time.
Disclaimer: And what is going on with the left Ctrl key? Nothing good.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
06:12 PM
| Comments (6)
| Add Comment
| Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 355 words, total size 3 kb.
169kb generated in CPU 0.0796, elapsed 0.3279 seconds.
59 queries taking 0.2977 seconds, 498 records returned.
Powered by Minx 1.1.6c-pink.
59 queries taking 0.2977 seconds, 498 records returned.
Powered by Minx 1.1.6c-pink.
