• South Korea has set up its own Little Firewall.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  They are blocking websites using SNI and forcing search engines to filter results.  Not nasty dark web stuff like drug sales, but ordinary adult content.
  
  
• IBM has a cloud platform.  (The Next Platform)
  
  Who knew?
  
  
• Singtel lost 40 million mobile customers.  (ZDNet)
  
  Have they looked down the back of the sofa?  I found $2.40 last time I pulled the cushions out.
  
  
• Hardkernel's Odroid N2 is a wee bit more powerful than the Raspberry Pi.
  
  It has A73 cores instead of A53 cores.  The A5x series is low power; the A7x series is high performance.  Not that the A53 is terrible, but the A73 is more than twice as fast.
  
  Which means it uses more power, of course, so it won't fit everywhere you might want to put a Pi, and it's more expensive as well.  But choice is good.
  
  Boards will ship in April, $63 with 2GB RAM, $79 with 4GB.
  
  There was to be an Odroid N1 last year, but it was cancelled because the memory chips became unavailable without warning.
  
  
• DigitalOcean introduces managed databases, starting with PostgreSQL.
  
  Because...  Just because.
  
  Pricing starts at $15 for a database node with 1 CPU and 1GB of RAM, which is three times the cost of a regular VPS of that size.
  
  PostreSQL is better than MySQL in every way except for actually using it.
  
  Full-text indexing in MySQL: Put a full-text index on the desired fields.
  
  Full-text indexing in PostgreSQL: Take your text fields, and create a new field that is a doubly-inverted flip list of the communitised k-terms.  Then simply apply a Queequeg-Moravec hash-trie index to the denormalised wave function of the tetragrammaton.  The search operator is &*==!=? and the match terms take the form of a sonnet.  In Flemish.  You may experience database outages if your Flemish is not period-accurate to the late 16th century.

• The British Thoughtcrime Brigade is at it again, wanting to make clicking on a link deemed "terrorist" in nature a crime.  (ZDNet)
  
  Until proven innocent.
  
  
• The EU's own plague zombies are back in the form of the nightmarishly awful EU Copyright Directive.  (TechDirt)
  
  It's even worse than it was before.
  
  Under the revised Article 13, sites that allow user-posted content (which is basically every site) must license everything.  What do they mean, everything?
  
  EVERYTHING.
  
  Before users post it.  
  
  Under Article 11, citing news items will require a license.  No exceptions.
  
  Julia Reda is still fighting this crapfest.
  
  
• The Verge filed baseless takedown notifications against YouTubers analysing their terrible PC build video.  (One Angry Gamer)
  
  The Verge is owned by Vox.
  
  Vox is a dumpster fire.

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, February 15 2019 01:28 AM (Q/JG2)

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, February 15 2019 01:34 AM (Q/JG2)

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Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, February 15 2019 03:59 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, February 15 2019 06:21 AM (Q/JG2)

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, February 15 2019 06:24 AM (Q/JG2)

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• An underground cable fire at the local electricity substation serving 26,000 homes and business can really put a crimp in your productivity.
  
  
• Google and IBM are still trying to get their respective cloud offerings out of the dreaded "other" pie slice.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  IBM, call me.  Been using your services (or those of companies you have since acquired) since 2006.  I also use Amazon, Google, and DigitalOcean.  I can tell you exactly what to do.
  
  
• Xiaomi scooters can be remotely hijacked.  (ZDNet)
  
  Take this scooter to the corner store!
  
  
• Don't leave dirty socks lying around.  (ZDNet)
  
  Oh joy, another stupid goddamn Linux daemon and another stupid goddamn privilege escalation vulnerability.

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, February 14 2019 01:10 AM (Q/JG2)

Posted by: J Greely at Thursday, February 14 2019 01:48 AM (tgyIO)

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, February 14 2019 03:17 AM (Q/JG2)

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• Google will start censoring its search results in Russia too.  (TechDirt)
  
  Oh good.
  
  
• Google Docs gets an API.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Wait, it didn't already have one?
  
  
• Amazon bought Eero.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  This is part of Amazon's push into home automation.  Eero makes some good products, but it's a tiny company with some big competitors, and the two product lineups have more synergy than conflict, so the deal makes sense.
  
  Some customers are taking this less than entirely calmly.  (Also Tech Crunch)
  
  
• AMD's Radeon VII had no UEFI support for several hours.  (Tech Powerup)
  
  The internet outrage machine was just getting into gear when a new BIOS was released that fixed the problem.  You could actually hear the air leaking out.
  
  
• PyPy 7.0.0 is out.  (PyPy Tech)
  
  This includes production-ready support for Python 2.7 and 3.5, and alpha support for Python 3.6.  3.5 is just fine for most things.
  
  
• Calmira adds the Start Menu to Windows 3.1.  (Toasty Tech)
  
  Which puts it ahead of Windows 8.

Posted by: J Greely at Wednesday, February 13 2019 01:13 AM (tgyIO)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, February 13 2019 09:57 AM (PiXy!)

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• Huh is a universal word.  (Ideophone.org)
  
  We present today's news in this spirit.
  
  
• The role of channel cobblers in the server market.  (Serve the Home)
  
  
• Windows 95 has been ported to JavaScript.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  
• The harmonic convergence of HPC and AI.  (The Next Platform)
  
  
• Artificial intelligence finds ancient ghosts.  (Quanta)
  
  
• Samsung will sell three out of a total of five 8K televisions this year.  (ZDNet)
  
  
• SJWs outraged over gashapon squidwashing incident.  (One Angry Gamer)
  
  
• Always mount a scratch monkey.  (Wired)
  
  
• Micron is not going to release OLC flash.  (WCCFTech)
  
  
• QuadrigaCX left their wallet on the bus.  Or did they?  (CoinDesk)
  
  
• Using AI to fix China's healthcare problems starting with STOP EATING TIGER DICKS YOU BARBARIANS.  (Tech Crunch)

• Knife Children by Lois McMaster Bujold is a new novella set a few years after the events of the Sharing Knife series.

  From the Author
  
  Just as a point of information, "Knife Children" is not a children's story, despite the confusion the title has apparently caused Amazon's classification.
  
  bests, Lois.

• Shadow Captain by Alastair Reynolds is a welcome sequel to Revenger.
  
  
• Humble Spawn Bundle contains Spawn.
  
  
• Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid is getting a second season.  This was leaked yesterday ahead of the official announcement but then hurriedly pulled down, so I marked it as a rumour.  Now confirmed.
  
  
• Tomorrow sees the Japanese release of Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid volume 8, Kanna's Daily Life volume 6, and Elma's Office Lady Diary volume 2.  I didn't know of all the spinoffs.  It's gone franchise.

Picture of the Day

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, February 12 2019 03:45 AM (Q/JG2)

Posted by: StargazerA5 at Tuesday, February 12 2019 05:39 AM (bz2EX)

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, February 12 2019 06:33 AM (Q/JG2)

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• QtNotepad is a 50KB notepad app written using the Qt toolkit.
  
  I've tinkered with Qt a little, but didn't realise you could get a standalone GUI app that small.
  
  Source code is a 3KB zip file.
  
  
• ELVM is a trans-compiler that takes C code and turns it into...  Other things.
  
  Here's an example.
  
  You're welcome.
  
  
• A closer look at the Xeon W-3175X Bandito vs. the Threadripper 2990WX Instigator.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Conclusion?  It's basically a tie.  The Intel chip is faster on tasks other than rendering, but that's one of the most common uses for this class of CPU.  And the Xeon is 60% more expensive, and requires a motherboard that is 200% more expensive than the AMD equivalent.

• If Facebook is outlawed only outlaws will have Facebook.  (Wired)
  
  This is an analysis of the German antitrust ruling against Facebook's advertising model.  Facebook is toast in Germany if they don't win on appeal, and that seems unlikely.

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, February 11 2019 08:00 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: StargazerA5 at Tuesday, February 12 2019 05:37 AM (bz2EX)

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Posted by: Ed Hering at Sunday, February 10 2019 11:13 AM (/cXdK)

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Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Sunday, February 10 2019 01:32 PM (gxCG3)

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• Google is an open-source ClusterFuzz.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Wait.  That might not be entirely correct.
  
  Fuzzing is a testing technique that automatically generates random inputs for your program - or carefully designed evil inputs, or some combination.  There are lots of tools for this already, but another one is welcome.
  
  
• Pikazon, I ChooseCo you!  (TechDirt)
  
  
• Abandoning Google Analytics for Fathom.
  
  Hmm.  What is Fathom written in?  Go?  Fine.
  
  Go, I've often said, is hipster COBOL.  But COBOL ran banks and insurance companies for decades.  A new COBOL is not inherently a bad thing.  I think people should have gone with Ada instead - it's a much better designed language than Go.  Or even Apple's Swift.  But Go is fine.
  
  (Fathom GitHub)
  
  

• Spotify will squish you if you use an ad blocker.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  I'm okay with that.  Spotify has a direct external cost for every song you listen to.  If they don't recoup that somehow
  
  
• California's disingenuous Attorney General is at odds with their incompetent legislature over the meaning of the state's new public records law.  (TechDirt)
  
  Given what we've seen with with Bill of Rights over the year, you would think that legislators would adhere to what I call the This means you, shithead rule.  That is, if anything in a bill could possibly be subject to weaselry, you add very specific text to the effect that This means you, shithead.
  
  
• Under the guise of preventing human trafficking, Hawaii wants to force ISPs to filter porn.  (TechDirt)

• Motorola announced the g7 series.  (AnandTech)
  
  Intentionally this time.
  
  I'll have to see what the Australian prices are, because even the bottom of the line g7 Play has a 1.8GHz quad-core A73.  My g4 Play has a 1.4GHz A53, which isn't even half as fast, and the last-gen g6 Play still has that same chip.
  
  Nanosim though, so I'll need to get a new sim.
  
  
• Unicode 12.0 has an otter, now Python 3.8 has a walrus.
  
  Basically, rather than the old
  
  
  for entry in sample_data:
      title = entry.get("title")
      if title:
          print(f'Found title: "{title}"')
  
  you can now write
  
  
  for entry in sample_data:
      if (title := entry.get("title")):
          print(f'Found title: "{title}"')
  
  just like in Algol 60.
  
  
• SoftBank shares soared today as it sold off its stake in Nvidia and invested instead in...  SoftBank.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Ouch, Nv.
  
  
• Apple says disclose or remove screen recording stuffs or get booted.  (Ars Technica)
  
  This is actually a fair and appropriate response.
  
  
  Just here to break up the text.  Nice wheels tho'.
  
  
• Need a passively-cooled industrial Mini-STX system?  Here's one.  (Serve the Home)
  
  Peak system power consumption under load is 17W.  It's quite a capable little beast.
  
  
• How does the new Radeon VII fare under Linux with open source drivers?  Pretty darn well actually.  (Phoronix)
  
  The review covers both gaming and OpenCL compute performance.  The Radeon VII handles 4k games without trouble even on Linux.
  
  
• Australia's parliament averages one network "incident" per day.  (ZDNet)
  
  That's comforting.  The fact that they actually know that.
  
  
• Online shopping in India is suddenly a mess thanks to well-meaning idiots in government.  (ZDNet)
  
  Except possibly for the well-meaning part.
  
  
• The Young Idiot Caucus  of the Democratic Party posted a summary of their astoundingly stupid Green New Deal, got roundly mocked, and took it down.
  
  What's that Lassie?  The internet is forever?  (PDF)
  
  Good dog!
  
  To summarise the summary:
  
  
• Zero emissions by 2030.  Yes, zero emissions.
  
  
• No nuclear power.
  
  
• No planes.  Catch the train everywhere.
  
  
• Cow corks.
  
  
• Newly fabricated human rights include guaranteed employment, guaranteed paid time off, free education, free health care, subsidised housing, free money for those unwilling to work.
  
  
• Upgrading or replacing every building in the United States.
  
  
• It will all be paid for by printing money.
  
  
• Shut up about hyperinflation already.
  
  
• GEG dejected after game rejected by GOG.  (One Angry Gamer)
  
  GOG said the game is too niche.  Has GOG actually looked at GOG lately?
  

Social Media News

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, February 09 2019 03:28 AM (Q/JG2)

Posted by: J Greely at Saturday, February 09 2019 10:23 AM (tgyIO)

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• AMD's Radeon VII has landed.  (AnandTech)
  
  That DP floating point number that was all up in the air will-they-won't-they came down as mostly will-they; it's 1/4 SP, where the much more expensive professional cards are 1/2 SP.
  
  The interesting thing here is that AMD actually listened to customers and at the last minute before release adjusted firmware and drivers to improve DP performance.  By 300%.
  
  Thats leaves a gap between this card and the professional Instinct MI50 of 3.5 TFLOPS vs. 6.7 TFLOPS.  But the Nvidia RTX Titan, their fastest consumer/prosumer card, only delivers 0.5 DP TFLOPS.  If you need double precision on a budget, the Radeon VII wins by a mile.
  
  It's around 5% slower than the RTX 2080 on most games, winning by small margins on a couple.  And it runs hotter - 300W vs 225W.  But it's the same price and has twice the memory (16GB vs. 8GB).
  
  So it turns out to be a fairly attractive offering after all.  Depends on whether you value double precision and tons of video RAM and memory bandwidth over ray tracing and dedicated AI cores.
  
  
• Two SSDs with identical hardware but different firmware get compared.  You won't believe how different they are!  (AnandTech)
  
  Not very.  Almost exactly the same actually.  Don't buy the 2TB model.
  
  
• Many iPhone apps record everything you do.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  In the app.  Which you are using.
  
  It's for customer support.  It's an amazing customer support tool.
  
  Just (a) tell your users - note that you do this in download page / login screen / splash screen / whatever and (b) don't store screenshots of people's credit card information on a public server, okay?
  
  
• Google and Apple should just replace the app permissions request page with a default Allow us to violate your privacy in ways we believe fall just short of criminal liability Yes/No? (TechDirt)
  
  Would save a lot of time and confusion for everyone.

• Adobe - oh, it's Axios.  Never mind.  95% chance it's wrong anyway.
  
  
• Unicode 12.0 has an otter.
  
  Unicode is a semantic train wreck that just keeps getting worse.  But it has an otter.
  
  
• Need more cores?  Supermicro has new servers with up to 224 of them.  (Serve the Home)
  
  Yeah, the CPUs alone would cost you $80,000, and you could buy 1088 AMD EPYC cores for that price, but you couldn't put them all in one box.
  
  Well, you could, but that box would also be expensive.
  
  
• Smishing?  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Ah.  Usual spam email scam tactics, just on SMS.
  
  
• Centralise everything that's decentralised and decentralise everything that's centralised and they'll call you a genius.  (The Next Platform)
  
  
• Mathematicians have uncovered an unexpected connection between addition and multiplication.  (Quanta)
  
  No, not that.  Well, that too.  But it's actually an interesting emergent property of the way integers behave.  And the article has pictures.
  
  
• Cat pictures considered harmful.  (ZDNet)
  
  A bug in Android's image libraries allows it to be hacked by a malicious PNG.
  
  If you're still using an old, unsupported device like the Nexus 7, which is stuck on Android 6, maybe now is the time to...  Oh.  It doesn't affect Android 6?  Only newer devices with 7 and up?
  
  Lol, as the kids would say.
  
  
• It would seem that Warner Bros got caught asking reviewers how much they charged for favourable articles.  (One Angry Gamer)
  
  The person reporting this is Jim Sterling, who is a jackass and a half, but he actually provides a screenshot of the relevant parts of the email.

Social Media News

Posted by: Mauser at Friday, February 08 2019 10:58 AM (Ix1l6)

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Friday, February 08 2019 12:39 PM (LZ7Bg)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, February 08 2019 01:01 PM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, February 08 2019 04:22 PM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, February 08 2019 11:27 PM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, February 09 2019 04:24 AM (Q/JG2)

Posted by: Mauser at Saturday, February 09 2019 12:08 PM (Ix1l6)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Saturday, February 09 2019 01:04 PM (PiXy!)

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• Google is making the blockchain searchable.  (Forbes)
  
  Two points: One, this is not hard.  Every transaction on the Ethereum blockchain (including the testnets) can be packed into a half-terabyte MySQL database.  (Don't ask me why I know this.)  Two, someone needs to remind them what has been found lurking at the bottom of Bitcoin.
  
  
• An overview of DDR5.  (Rambus)
  
  Oh, those jerks.  They're still around?
  
  Anyway, worth reading if you're interested; DDR5 is more than just a speed upgrade.
  
  
• Western Digital has cheap 10TB external drives out.  (Serve the Home)
  
  Currently $200 at Best Buy including a free 32GB flash drive.  The drive alone is $290 on Amazon so that seems like a good price.
  
  I prefer LaCie external drives because their aluminium cases look great, are nice and solid, and above all sit flat on the desk so you can't knock the damn things over.
  
  
• Melbourne University professor tells Canberra politicians that they're a bunch of stupid-heads.  (ZDNet)
  
  She's right.

• Mike Masnick takes a look at Gavin McInnes' suit against the SPLC and gets it completely wrong.  (TechDirt)
  
  Mike instinctively falls on the side of free speech and against libel suits, but let's make no mistake, the SPLC defames people for money, and what they do deliberately skirts the edge of libel per se.  That's the entirety of their business model.  They need to be sued into the ground, then bulldozed over, then sold off to someone who really hates them.
  
  Like Gawker, only doubled and squared.
  
  
• YouTube CEO Susan Wojciehowicz admits that their 2018 Rewind video was a piece of crap that deserved every single one of the 15 million dislikes.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  She promises that over the course of 2019 the company will continue to avoid addressing issues, ignore user complaints, and generally blunder about making a bad situation worse.  What are you going to do, use Vimeo?

Anime Op/Ed of the Day

Picture of the Day

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, February 07 2019 02:25 AM (Q/JG2)

Posted by: cxt217 at Thursday, February 07 2019 04:43 AM (LMsTt)

Posted by: cxt217 at Thursday, February 07 2019 04:45 AM (LMsTt)

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