What is that?
It's a duck pond.
Why aren't there any ducks?
I don't know. There's never any ducks.
Then how do you know it's a duck pond?

Wednesday, March 16

Geek

Daily News Stuff 16 March 2022

Twelve Pounds Of Snakes In A Five Pound Sack Edition

Top Story

  • Chinese CPUs could catch up with Intel by 2025.  (Tom's Hardware)

    Says an Intel exec - speaking at a gathering of the Chinese Communist Party who are not people who would appreciate being told the truth, that their home-grown CPU efforts are basically garbage.


Tech News

Party Like It's 1980-ish Video of the Day




Disclaimer: We apologise for nothing.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:40 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 395 words, total size 4 kb.

Tuesday, March 15

Geek

Daily News Stuff 15 March 2022

Stewed Worms Edition

Top Story

  • Taiwanese electronics giant Foxconn is in talks with Saudi Arabia to set up a new $9 billion factory in that country.  (9to5Mac)

    This makes total sense given Saudi Arabia's renowned pool of low-cost skilled workers.

    Um.

    Actually it does make total sense when you consider that both parties are hedging their bets.  Foxconn wants more factories outside of mainland China - it doesn't care so much where they are as long as they're not in China.  And Saudi Arabia wants industries other than oil - it doesn't care so much what those industries are, so long as they're not oil.

    Both have tons of money to invest.  Both want to invest somewhere other than where they have been investing so far.

    Downside is, Saudi Arabia kind of sucks.

    Upside is, they're not likely to actually launch a missile strike on Foxconn HQ.

Tech News

  • Microsoft is testing ads in the Windows 11 File Explorer.  (Bleeping Computer)

    Seriously, Microsoft, WHAT THE F*CK ARE YOU DOING?

    The desktop / laptop market is yours.  They only thing you need to do is not piss off your users too much.  And yet, and yet...


  • QNAP has another severe privilege escalation bug.  (Bleeping Computer)

    This time, though, it's not entirely their fault.  It's the "Dirty Pipe" bug that affects all recent versions of the Linux kernel.

    But mainstream Linux releases have already been patched.  QNAP's version has not.


  • Twitter has rolled back a change that tried to force users into their awful algorithmically-driven "Home" timeline.  (The Verge)




  • Speaking of privilege escalation bugs in Linux there's another one.  (The Hacker News, which is not the same site as Hacker News(

    Please not.


  • Google is being evil again.  (Ars Technica)

    In this case they have on online app for ordering food from restaurants.  They set up helpful pages for restaurants who join the program where customers can order food online.  And being Google, they preferentially link their own ordering pages from search results.

    Also, being Google, they create these online ordering pages even for restaurants that do not join the program.  And preferentially link to those pages rather than to the restaurant's own website.

    Google has responded to the lawsuit, saying:
    We are not doing what we are obviously doing.  We will vigorously defend ourselves from these baseless claims of malfeasance which are obviously true and which we completely deny.  We did not create the hundreds of thousands of web pages in our application we we run and  link to them from our search engine and we don't know who did, and in fact, they're probably not there at all.  Dave, can we scrub those, like, now?


  • There is something of a kerfuffle in the physics world right now over room-temperature superconductors.  (Science)

    One group published a paper claiming they had created a room-temperature (though not STP) superconductor.  Another researcher got hold of some of their raw data and, not mincing words, called it a case of "probable scientific fraud".  Then things started to get heated.

    Both parties have had papers removed from prepublishing site arXiv.
    Hellman says the superconductor controversy may stem in part from the ethos of physics, which has historically encouraged combativeness. "The culture of physics is one that is more aggressive and not very welcoming," Hellman says, which can lead to accusatory language ending up in papers. She would like to see that change. "I flinch at some of the language being used."
    Oh, grow up and quit whining.  If they're not actually calling for pistols at dawn, leave them to it.


Party Like It's 1980-ish Video of the Day



Disclaimer: I don't wanna go out before midnight.  People are out there, that doesn't seem right.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:20 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 621 words, total size 6 kb.

Monday, March 14

Geek

Daily News Stuff 14 March 2022

Well That's Just Peachy Edition

Top Story

  • In a move that experts say could affect supply chains, China has locked down tech industry hub Shenzhen.  (Tom's Hardware)

    I was reliably informed that there was no bat flu in China.

    This includes Foxconn factories making iPhones.  (9to5Mac)
    China placed the 17.5 million residents of Shenzhen into lockdown for at least a week on Sunday, seeking to halt a growing Covid-19 outbreak.  All bus and subway systems have been shut, and businesses, except those providing essential services, have been closed.
    Expect lead times on a lot of things to slip, if it's not in stock today.

    This is partly why I have two main laptops each with 64GB of RAM and 5TB of SSD.  I don't know when the supply chain is going to become unfucked, and I can't afford to not have a working laptop.

    I also can't afford not to have working internet, but here I am.


Tech News

  • At least once I move house I'll be able to upgrade from the 80Mbps I got before it stopped working to at least 500Mbps.


  • Veloren is a multiplayer voxel RPG written in Rust.  (Veloren)

    And open source.  Wait, it is open source, right?  Yep, there we go.

    Voxels mean that 3D objects are made up of little 3D cubes, rather than being a 2D texture printed over a 3D block the way Minecraft mostly is.  The 3D equivalent of pixel art.

    The game looks pretty neat.


  • Congratulations, you just invented upvote spam.  (DKB)

    Any time you use a proxy to measure something of value, you create a matching incentive to generate that proxy without generating any value.

    Google's PageRank algorithm created comment spam.  It simply wasn't a thing before that.

    And nobody seems to be learning the lesson.


  • You can't get the chips, you know: So Ford is just going to sell cars without them.  (The Verge)

    If it's something you can live without - like back seat climate control functions - they're just going to ship the damn things and give you a discount.  But probably not much of one.



Party Like It's 1980-ish Video of the Day




Disclaimer: Ceci n'est pas un rock star.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:13 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 369 words, total size 3 kb.

Sunday, March 13

Geek

Daily News Stuff 13 March 2022

Third Mortgage Edition

Top Story

  • AMD's new Threadripper Pro 5995WX is the fastest CPU in the world. (Tom's Hardware)

    I mentioned yesterday that AMD was losing ground in an area where it had total dominance a couple of years ago, but it has a lot of ground to lose. 24 of the 25 fastest CPUs available are made by AMD, with only Intel's Xeon Platinum 8380 making the rankings - and even then behind AMD chips at one third the price.

    Apple's brand new M1 Ultra should roughly match AMD's 5950X from 2020 at #36 on the list. The existing M1 Max is at #180.

    Now, this is one particular benchmark suite - PassMark - but it's one that I've found pretty reliable over the years, with results covering Intel, AMD, and various Arm chips, and going back to 2009.


Questions and Answers

  • From A Whole Bunch of Readers:
    The comments are showing "not secure" in my browser. Why are the comments showing "not secure"?
    Your browser is neurotic.

    Also, fixed.


  • From GWB:
    Single- vs multi-threaded? Where do I encounter each?
    Word/Excel/Powerpoint? gimp/Photoshop? Music mixer programs? Virtual reality games (Second Life)? Other games that aren't online? 3D building (Blender, all those inexpensive house plan-making apps)? Teams/Zoom/Skype?
    Good question.

    Blender is definitely multi-threaded. The better music mixer programs are multi-threaded. Most games are multi-threaded. (Because consoles have had multiple cores for years. Even the PlayStation 2, sort of.)

    Office applications are mostly single-threaded, same with meeting apps. Photoshop is I believe still mostly single-threaded, though some filters will make use of all your cores.


  • From Methos:
    Brave has the feature where it dings you with ads periodically and gives their inhouse currency thing which then gets distributed to the sites you use, and there's a listing for mu.nu there (rather than ace.mu.nu, like the other listings). Does that get to you or ace at all, and is it actually worth anything?
    It definitely doesn't get to us, and I doubt it's worth anything. I should check though.


  • From SSR:
    I despise anything cloud based, always connected software, and subscription fees. I purchase stand alone versions of Microsoft Office and Acrobat Pro and the a-holes still force log in. And don't get me started on operating systems. The only thing I think should be connected is software that you are actively using and know is connected (i.e. email client, web browser) and user requested OS check for updates. I have an iPhone (I refuse everything Google) and probably have 7/8 of everything turned off. I realize there is no getting around being connected without completely disconnecting but then your life is made difficult. Ranting over, what can you recommend to be as minimally connected as possible on a personal laptop/PC?
    So far I am leaning toward Mint and Softmaker Office but need replacements for Acrobat Pro and iTunes to transfer music, photos, and bookmarks.
    Mint or Ubuntu would be my choices there. There are free Linux apps to create and edit PDFs and mage music and photos. They may not be as pretty as iTunes but given that the last time I checked, iTunes still stored all its metadata in a single huge XML file, they pretty much have to work better.


  • From Daniel Ream:
    Continuing on with my media server project: I'm looking at Plex as a media server/organizer but I will need transcoding support because reasons. The i3-10105 CPU doesn't have an integrated GPU; are there other single CPU options that can do cool, quiet, and just enough GPU to transcode to h.264 8 bit with subtitles or should I look at a dedicated GPU with the i3?
    Hmm. The i3-10105 is listed as having UHD 630 integrated graphics, which should work with Plex. Normally only Intel CPUs ending with F lack the integrated graphics. (Well, and high-end workstation and server chips.)


  • From Found the libertarian, boss!
    Just how bad is the Samsung Galaxy Tab A8, anyway?

    It was the cheapest 10" available at officeworks. I use it for chrome and YouTube.
    Roast my tablet.
    Full specs here. (GSM Arena)

    It has two A75 cores and six A55 cores. Not high-end but perfectly adequate and definitely faster than the Lenovo M10 I have.


  • From LeastinID:
    I am often having trouble when I try to view AoS on my iPhone ( - it starts loading, seems to hiccup and starts reloading, hiccups again and then displays a black page with this text: " A problem has repeatedly occurred on'HTTP://http ace.mu.nu/' " This has happened with different browsers.
    It seems as if it's an IOS problem, 'cause it doesn't happen on my MacBook.
    Most likely your phone ran out of memory, because the main page here is filled with stuff. Let me know which model it is, because if it's an older one we might not be able to do much, but if it's a newer model it definitely shouldn't be running out of memory and we need to fix the site.


  • From the last to post:
    This is probably a dumb question: Is there a way to download Youtube videos for later viewing?

    (Google has not been my friend when trying to find this out... ;-)
    Yes, one of four ways:

    1. In the Android and iOS apps, some videos have a download button.
    2. If you have YouTube Premium, this works for most videos and is also supported in Chrome (possibly other browsers, definitely in Chrome).
    3. A variety of dubious free and paid apps.
    4. YouTube-dl. (GitHub)


  • From Retired, thank God:
    My question concerns Kaspersky - I have used them for my internet security and anti-virus protection for several years without a problem. With the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the potential for collateral damage, do you think that I should switch to another company for this? If I should switch, which company do you recommend for Windows 10? Thanks.
    My recommendation at this point - unless you have specific security needs - is to stick with the built-in Windows Defender. It's actually pretty good.


  • Sorry if I missed anyone, busy weekend.


Tech News

  • The Raspberry Pi Pico is now available as a Commodore 64 cartridge. (Tom's Hardware)

    Because... Because it's cool. That's because.


  • AMD CPUs See Less Than 10% Performance Drop From Revised Spectre-v2 Mitigations (Tom's Hardware)

    AMD Strategy For Spectre V2 Vulnerability Noted As "Inadequate", Up To 54% Drop In CPU Performance (WCCFTech)

    The Performance Impact Of AMD Changing Their Retpoline Method For Spectre V2 (Phoronix)

    Three sites reporting the exact same story. Phoronix ran the benchmarks that Tom's Hardware and WCCFTech linked in their respective articles.


  • A short conversation with a bank. (Things That Have Caught My Attention)

    Fortunately I have someone assisting me with my upcoming conversation with a bank.


  • Kali Linux is adding operating system snapshots to bare-metal installs. (Bleeping Computer)

    With BTRFS rather than ZFS, but same basic idea.

    If your computer doesn't boot after you install some updates, you can just tell it to boot from the version before you installed your updates. The snapshots are created automatically on every boot and every software update.


  • Amazon is closing all its brick and mortar stores because - basically - they suck. (ZDNet)

    Amazon knows how to disrupt traditional retail. It does not know how to fix it.


  • Are Apple customers particularly stupid? Signs point to yes:

    How to rearrange the icons in your MacOS dock. (ZDNet)

    The answer is, drag and drop, just like for the last fifteen years.

    Everything you needed to know about the new Mac Studio. (9to5Mac)

    We copied Apple's website and put ads in it because our readers are dumb.


  • Open up! LPD! (Input)

    This is all kind of dumb.


  • I have one of those little laser measury things. My house is 30cm longer than I guess just by standing back and looking at it.


  • Walgreens replaced some fridge doors with screens. And some shoppers absolutely hate it. (CNN)

    You know the ones - they prevent you from seeing what is actually in the freezer which is the entire reason you are standing in front of the freezer in the first place.
    "Why would Walgreens do this?" one befuddled shopper who encountered the screens posted on TikTok. "Who on God's green earth thought this was a good idea?"
    Good question, TikTokMan.
    "I hope that we will one day be able to expand across all parts of the store," said Cooler Screens co-founder and CEO Arsen Avakian in an interview with CNN Business.
    How about no?
    But beyond the confused social media posts, the tech has also attracted misinformation and conspiracy theories. Politifact last month debunked a viral Facebook video that claimed "Walgreens refrigerators are scanning shoppers' hands and foreheads for 'the mark of the beast.'"
    Do tell.
    The post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed.

    But while the question of whether COVID-19 vaccines are the "mark of the beast" may be open to religious interpretation, another question remains. Are the Cooler Screens at Walgreens meant to detect markings and prevent people who lack those markings from shopping? No.

    The Cooler Screens doors are "equipped with a camera, motion sensors, and eye tracking," according to a 2019 Fast Company article. "The doors can discern your gender, your general age range, what products you’re looking at, how long you’re standing there, and even what your emotional response is to a particular product."
    I am monumentally reassured that the supermarket freezer is merely assessing my emotional state and social credit score and not scanning for literal Biblical insignia.


Party Like It's 1980-ish Video of the Day





Disclaimer: I didn't do it! The freezer framed me!

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:42 PM | Comments (10) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 1594 words, total size 13 kb.

Saturday, March 12

Geek

Daily News Stuff 12 March 2022

Sleeping Through All The Alarms Edition

Top Story

  • It is still not raining here in Sydney.  It's been three days.  Panic might set in soon, or as soon as the floodwaters recede enough that the panic shipments can get through.

    Meanwhile, it's the weekend and it's Question and Answer time.  Drop your vaguely tech-related questions in the comments today and I'll invent fake answers for them tomorrow.  Or maybe genuine ones.  Miracles happen.


  • Russia continues to do what every sane country should do and has now banned Instagram.  (Bleeping Computer)
    "As you know, on March 11, Meta Platforms Inc. made an unprecedented decision by allowing the posting of information containing calls for violence against Russian citizens on its social networks Facebook and Instagram," the Russian Internet watchdog said.
    This is clearly communist propaganda and we shouldn't believe it for one minute.


  • Facebook has temporarily allowed posts calling for violence against "Russian invaders".  (CNN)

    Oh.

    I'm not sure whose quotes those are because the claim that Russia is invading Ukraine is pretty well established.
    The social media company is also temporarily allowing some posts that call for death to Russian President Vladimir Putin or Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko in countries including Russia, Ukraine and Poland, according to internal emails to its content moderators.
    That's going to go down a treat.

    But dumb as this seems on the surface, down in the depths it is all much, much worse.
    "We are issuing a spirit-of-the-policy allowance to allow T1 violent speech that would otherwise be removed under the Hate Speech policy when: (a) targeting Russian soldiers, EXCEPT prisoners of war, or (b) targeting Russians where it's clear that the context is the Russian invasion of Ukraine (e.g., content mentions the invasion, self-defense, etc.)," it said in the email.
    1984 is a cookbook.

Tech News



Party Like It's 1980-ish Video of the Day



Disclaimer: More than this what, though?  More than this what?!

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:12 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 1185 words, total size 12 kb.

Friday, March 11

Geek

Daily News Stuff 11 March 2022

Courtyards R Us Edition

Top Story

Tech News

Party Like It's 1980-is Video of the Day




Disclaimer: This big glowing ball in the sky?  I don't like it.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:59 PM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 236 words, total size 3 kb.

Thursday, March 10

Geek

Daily News Stuff 10 March 2022

Be Vewy Vewy Qwiet, We're Hunting Homes Edition

Top Story

  • I've found the home I want, it's well within my price range, and most importantly given the situation in eastern Australia right now, it's 3000 feet above sea level.

    Only thing I'm concerned about is noise since it's close to the center of town and not off on a quiet side street.  But it's old solid brick construction (13' ceilings and all that) and it's not going to be anything like where I am right now where neighbours' cars drive in and out directly outside my bedroom window.


  • The NSF is going to be funding open source projects.  (OpenSource)

    Just $21 million, but given that some critical pieces of software used by basically the entire internet are maintained by some guy in his spare time, some carefully allocated cash could go a long way.

    I expect most of this to go straight down the drain.

Tech News

Party Like It's 1980-ish Video of the Day




Disclaimer: Nobody here but us frogs in damp socks.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:55 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 435 words, total size 4 kb.

Wednesday, March 09

Geek

Daily News Stuff 9 March 2022

Tammy Mae Edition

Top Story

  • Apple's Mac Studio is here with the new M1 Ultra chip.  (Tom's Hardware)

    It's essentially a Mac Mini Pro.  Or a Mac Pro Mini.  Either way, it replaces the regular M1 chip with your choice of the faster M1 Max, or the much faster M1 Ultra.

    Which is two M1 Max chips glued together.  (AnandTech)

    While Apple's benchmark numbers are, let's just say, selective, these are pretty good chips.

    The Mac Studio is good, but it's not cheap, and it is entirely soldered in place.  What you buy is what you are stuck with.  You can configure it with up to 128GB of RAM (at about 3x market prices) and 8TB of SSD (at 4x market prices).

    Apple as a company still sucks, of course.  They make nice hardware but terrible policies.


  • Threadripper Pro 5000 is also out.  (AnandTech)

    From 12 to 64 Zen 3 cores.  And no, you can't get one.  Just as they did initially with the Threadripper Pro 3000 family, you can only buy it through OEMs, and when they say OEMs they mean Lenovo.


Tech News

Party Like It's 1980-ish Video of the Day



To celebrate the fact that it is, finally, not.


Disclaimer: Don't knock on the wood too hard.  You could go right through.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:53 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 353 words, total size 4 kb.

Tuesday, March 08

Geek

Daily News Stuff 8 March 2022

Let Them Eat Eevees Edition

Top Story

  • Oh great, another one.  (Bleeping Computer)

    Local privilege escalation bug on Linux, that is.  Good argument for running unprivileged containers.  Good argument for giving it all up and taking up potato farming.  You know where you are with a potato.

    More details on the Dirty Pipe vulnerability.  (DirtyPipe)

    Fixed in kernels 5.16.11, 5.15.25, and 5.10.102, so yay, everyone gets to reboot their servers.


Tech News

Party Like It's 1980-ish Video of the Day




Disclaimer: I can't stand the rain.  Or sit the rain.  Or lie down the rain.  

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:46 PM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 358 words, total size 4 kb.

Monday, March 07

Geek

Daily News Stuff 7 March 2022

Born From An Egg On A Mountaintop Edition

Top Story

  • TikTok is exiting Russia.  (ZDNet)

    Alongside a lot of other companies, yes, but TikTok is owned by China.
    According to the Moscow Times, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a new law on Friday that bans what the country calls "fake" news about the military. This law will target any statements referring to the invasion of Ukraine as an "invasion", any attempt to discredit the armed forces, or calls for sanctions on Russia. Those found to be spreading so-called fake news could face up to 15 years in prison.
    The enemy of my enemy may or may not be my friend, but he ain't gonna go to prison for 15 years just to let me post Bayraktar memes.


Tech News

How It Started



How It's Going




Party Like It's 1980-ish Video of the Day





Disclaimer: Where is all this water coming from?  [Opens door.] [Closes door.]  Oh.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:36 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 381 words, total size 4 kb.

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