• To shuck or not to shuck?  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  With graphics cards still absurdly overpriced, it's tempting to get a prebuilt server from some place like Dell, pull the graphics card, and sell the rest on eBay.
  
  Dell did have an XPS desktop model with a 3070 that was good value for this, though the machine itself sucks.  But that model has disappeared and the best they offer in Australia right now is a 3060 Ti, and the pricing there is marginal at best.

• Windows on Arm sucks.  Qualcomm's chips for Windows on Arm suck.  Qualcomm has an exclusivity deal with Microsoft for Windows on Arm.  (XDA Developers)
  
  Two bad tastes that taste bad together.
  
  That's coming to an end soon which might mean Windows on Arm Macs.  (9to5Mac)
  
  Or not.
  
  
  
• The best Windows laptops for 2021.  (ZDNet)
  
  Four of them I wouldn't recommend - missing the Four Essential Keys, soldered RAM, Arm CPUs, or all of the above - and the fifth isn't sold anymore.
  
  The new Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen 4, though, is worth a look.  Not cheap, but worth a look.
  
  
  
• South Australia achieved energy sufficiency with just renewable power and small local generators.  (RenewEconomy)
  
  On a sunny spring day.
  
  For five minutes.
  
  

Disclaimer: Do as I do - but only if you're prepared to clean up afterwards.

Posted by: Rick C at Wednesday, November 24 2021 12:48 AM (Z0GF0)

Posted by: normal at Wednesday, November 24 2021 01:25 AM (LADmw)

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• Correction: The Wuhan Bat Virus Institute is not located a hundred yards from the Wuhan Bat Soup Market.  The Wuhan Center for Disease Control is located a hundred yards from the Wuhan Bat Soup Market.
  
  The Center for Disease Control is not rated for bat virus containment and any bat virus they had would likely escape immediately to any surrounding bat locations...  But I was still wrong.
  
  I think Google Maps showed the wrong lab if you looked it up early last year and has since been corrected.  Or I was just wrong.  Or possibly both, since there's a record of Google Maps being updated.
  
  
  
• What is Intel up to these days?  As it turns out, rather a lot.  (CNet)
  
  Yes, they're playing catch up with AMD, Apple, Nvidia, TSMC, and Samsung, after years of decisions that enriched the board of directors and senior executives at the expense of the long-term viability of the company.
  
  On the other hand, they're spending $3.5 billion to upgrade their New Mexico fab, $20 billion to build two new fabs in Arizona coming on line in 2024, and up to $100 billion at a new US location to be announced soon.
  
  They're also planning on rolling out 4nm, 3nm, 2nm, and 1.8nm process nodes over the next four to five years.  Where nm stands for "numbers for marketing".  But even though they are marketing numbers, they are the same kind of marketing numbers that label the current process as 7nm, so that's a huge improvement.
  
  

• Octopuses, crabs, lobsters, and politicians are set to be recognised as sentient beings under UK law.  (LSE)
  
  The move has been widely criticised, with an expert in the field saying Octopuses, sure, but there I draw the line.
  
  
  
• How to download a Windows 10 21H2 ISO from Microsoft.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  In eleven easy steps!
  
  
  
• Microservices architecture on Google Cloud.  (Hacker News)
  
  The consensus in the comments appears to be fuck microservices, fuck Google Cloud, and even Microsoft has done this better.
  
  
  
• Zebras are black with white stripes.  (Live Science)
  
  In case you were wondering. 
  
  
  
• In case you weren't wondering...
  
  
  
  

I've ordered 25 boxes of gluten free chicken nuggets over the past week.

I've received one.

I don't want 25 boxes, I want five or six. I keep ordering them and they keep telling me they're out of stock, when they show up as being in stock before, during, and after the order.

There's exactly one source of gluten free chicken nuggets hereabouts, and I'm not going there in person for another three weeks because they require you to check in with a government bat flu tracking app which I have refused to do through out this entire debacle. That ends on the 15th.

Gluten free bread? Also out of stock. Gluten free corn flakes? Out of stock.

I did order a few kilograms of rice, so I'm not about to starve, but it's annoying to have most of my staple diet disappear all at once.

Hollywood is united in mourning for a (checks notes) convicted child rapist.

Viva Frei (David Freiheit) is likewise unimpressed.

I think the word he was looking for is beatifying.

• That pointless 20TB torrent of NFTs?  Fake.  (Club NFT)
  
  99.95% of the 20TB file is zeroes.  They didn't even bother with the pointless scraping of already-public data.  They just lied.
  
  Which I must admit is a lot less effort.  If you're doing something with no identifiable value or purpose, might as well take the easy way.

• An in-depth review of Intel's Alder Lake Core i7-12700K.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  All you really need to know is that a 12700K with DDR4 RAM is - on average - as fast as a 12900K with DDR5, and a lot cheaper.
  
  If you don't do things like video processing or compiling massive software suites you can probably get by just fine with the cheaper still 12600K.
  
  
  
• Or wait for the Pentium.  (WCCFTech)
  
  There's an Alder Lake Pentium chip - and a Celeron too - on the way.  No official details yet but most likely these will be entry-level dual-core parts priced under $100.
  
  
  
• Upgrading the RAM on a Dell XPS13.  (GitHub)
  
  Life Pro Tip: Don't even think about trying this.
  
  
  
• Well, that clears everything up.
  
  
  
  
  
• The Wuhan Bat Flu totally broke out in the Wuhan Bat Market and not the Wuhan Bat Flu Lab because the earliest cases the Chinese government will admit to cluster around the Bat Market.  (CNN)
  
  Couldn't possibly be linked, since the market is separated from the lab by a distance of nearly a hundred yards.
  
  
  
• Lenovo's ThinkPad X1 Extreme has the four essential keys.  (Hot Hardware)
  
  And an 8 core Intel 11800H, a 16" 16:10 screen at 2560x1600 or 3840x2400, up to RTX 3060 graphics, two SODIMM slots for up to 64GB RAM, two full-size M.2 2280 slots, two Thunderbolt 4 ports, two USB-A ports, HDMI, a full-size SD Card slot, and a headphone jack.
  
  It's in the same class as my Inspiron 16 Plus, but with a couple of advantages - a full 4K display instead of 3K, two full size M.2 slots instead of one full-size and one short, and an 95W version of the 3060 instead of 60W.  And it's about 10% lighter.
  
  Downside is that it costs - current retail price, not list - about twice as much.

I've never seen the video for this before.  Not sure how it managed to escape from 1959.  I expect Sam Beckett was involved.

Party Like It's 1959 Video of the Day

Disclaimer: Freeze!  I'm Korone Baker.  Put your money in the air and gimme all your hands.

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, November 22 2021 07:03 AM (Z0GF0)

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• Amazon doesn't rouse my ire as often as the other big tech companies.  I order stuff from them - though not gluten-free jelly beans, because those seem to be perpetually out of stock - and they drop it on my doorstep.  Quick, cheap, no fuss, and a life-changer during the lockdown when many smaller stores were closed (or closed to the unvaxed) and I needed something that I couldn't get in my weekly grocery delivery.
  
  It's only very recently that Amazon Australia has become useful.  When they first launched down under, they only sold digital goods - Kindle books and things like that - which was worse than useless because it required you to change your Kindle account which would lose all the content from the US store.  Still does, so far as I know, so I don't use it for that.
  
  But they are, quietly behind the scenes, amoral scumbags.  (Reuters)
  
  Amazon lobbyists have scuttled dozens of state privacy bills.

  In a statement, Amazon said: "The premise of this story is flawed and includes reporting that relies on early, incomplete drafts of documents to draw incorrect conclusions.” The company said it protects consumers’ privacy and doesn’t sell their data. "We know we must get privacy right in order to meet our customers’ high expectations.”

  Which is another way of saying, Yes, we did all those things, but we corrected some typos before the email went out.
  
  
  
• Meanwhile, twelve ordinary men and women, picked at random and fed lies by their own government, once again showed more wisdom and courage than all the nation's self-appointed elites put together.
  
  Consider me grey-pilled for the rest of the day.
  
  
  

Tech News

Party Like It's 1979 Video of the Day

Disclaimer: Hand over the nugs and no-one gets hurt.

Posted by: normal at Sunday, November 21 2021 01:35 AM (obo9H)

Posted by: Rick C at Sunday, November 21 2021 01:57 AM (Z0GF0)

Posted by: Rick C at Sunday, November 21 2021 02:07 AM (Z0GF0)

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• Never broken a bone.
  Never broken a major bone.
  Ow.
  
  
  
• Mediatek has announced its Dimensity 9000 smartphone chip, the first to be produced on TSMC's 4nm process.  (AnandTech)
  
  They got a jump on Apple there because 4nm won't ship until after Christmas and Apple wasn't willing to wait.

• The NFT Bay makes 20TB of NFT data available to download.  (TorrentFreak)
  
  So do the original NFTs.  The data is public.  That's the entire ppint.
  
  
  
• Developers reject new technology today and miss opportunities tomorrow.  (Medium)
  
  Good.
  
  
  
• SpaceX is planning an orbital test flight of their Starship in January.  (CNBC)
  
  Also good.   Where's a headline I can get really angry about?
  
  
  
• Twitter has rolled back its support for Google's AMP and is planning to shut it off entirely by the end of the year.  (Search Engine Land)
  
  No, still good.
  
  
  
• 25 people have been poisoned and one person has died after drinking bullshit "alkalized water".  (Ars Technica)
  
  If you want to drink water, fine, drink water.  Don't alkalize it, acidize it, ionize it, deionize it, or oxygenate it.  Just drink it.

It's just wrong that this came out in 1979.  It's distilled Essence of 80s.

Posted by: normal at Saturday, November 20 2021 02:40 AM (LADmw)

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Something Unprecedented: Well, hello there!

• AMD and Qualcomm are looking to Samsung's 3nm process which is expected to start production next year.  (WCCFTech)
  
  TSMC currently has a technology lead over Samsung with its 5nm process, but that doesn't matter for anyone except Apple because no-one else has had a chance to buy it.
  
  Even if Samsung's 3nm node again lags behind TSMC's 3nm technically - it looks like it will ship sooner - if that situation repeats and customers like AMD can't get space on the 3nm production line, Samsung is likely to pick up their business.
  
  In this case Samsung may also have a better product, since it is using the new GAAFET design at 3nm where TSMC is holding of until 2nm before switching.
  
  One of the big advantages Apple has with its M1 chips is that they're at 5nm when AMD and Intel are at 7nm, so you can bet the latter companies are looking to level that playing field.
  
  
  

Tech News

• What the hell is going on with that keyboard?  (ZDNet)
  
  Seriously, Asus?  The Amstrad CPC 464 was a nice computer for 1984 but I don't think there's any pressing need to reproduce it in 2021.
  
  
  
• Blink if you're under duress.  (The Verge)
  
  One of the founders of YouTube has likened a recent video trying to put a positive spin on the removal of the dislike counter to Jeremiah Denton blinking out torture in Morse code.
  
  I don't think anyone currently working for YouTube is even aware that such a thing happened.
  
  
  
• Live by the online subscription, die by the online cancellation.  (Nieman Lab)
  
  The FTC has ruled that if customers can sign up for a subscription by clicking a button, companies must allow them to cancel that subscription the same way.  
  
  
  
• Miramax is suing Quentin Tarantino over NFTs.  (TorrentFreak)
  
  The director wants to cash in on the booming marketplace of rich idiots.  The movie company naturally wants its cut of the money, which is to say, all of it.
  
  
  
• Minecraft 1.18 is due out on November 30.  (Windows Central / MSN)
  
  This is the second part of the Caves and Cliffs update, containing caves and cliffs.  The first part didn't have any caves or cliffs.
  
  It also apparently makes axolotls harder to find.  Since I only have one so far, I might need to look around for some more before I update.

Party Like It's 1979 Bonus Video of the Day

I posted this on my blog previously but not in one of the regular daily updates, so here it is for everyone.



Disclaimer: Objects in the time mirror are later than you think.

Posted by: normal at Thursday, November 18 2021 10:33 PM (obo9H)

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• I will pay you cash to delete your NPM module.  (Drew DeVault)
  
  NPM - the package manager for Node.js, which is the premier server-side solution for JavaScript programmers - is the single worst thing ever created by the human race.  It needs to be destroyed before it destroys us.
  
  Case in point: The isArray module, which is four lines of code that checks whether an arbitrary object is an array by converting it to a string and checking the contents of the string gets 51 million downloads per week.
  
  In any real programming language that would get you horsewhipped, if not dipped in honey and staked out on an anthill.  In Node.js this is considered best practices.
  
  Drew's solution is to pay people to delete their packages.  isArray disappears and millions of apps fail.  Repeat a few hundred times - because Node.js developers are fucking idiots and need to be bludgeoned over the head - and they might eventually stop doing this shit.
  
  
  
• Oh, also, anyone could publish anything to NPM.  (GitHub)
  
  Wanted to upload your own code and overwrite a popular package with, basically, anything at all?  You could.  
  
  Because, GitHub helpfully explains, microservices.

• Brave browser now includes a crypto wallet that supports NFTs.  (Engadget)
  
  It works with any EVM-compatible blockchain - Ethereum, Polygon, xDAI, and so on, and will soon support Solana.
  
  I've worked with Solana.  I'd sooner eat a bowl of cristal rotos rancheros.  Their team might be technical geniuses at the pure blockchain stuff but they have the same sense of API design and data presentation as a dead muskrat does of quantum chromodynamics.
  
  
  
• Kioxia - pronounced kosher - has a new lineup of PCIe 4 M.2 2230 SSDs.  (AnandTech)
  
  That might not mean much to you, but the new Microsoft Surface Pro range has upgradeable storage, and being compact devices they require compact SSDs - to be specific, M.2 2230.
  
  My Dell Inspiron 16 Plus also has one of these, alongside a full-size M.2 slot.
  
  
  
• Qualcomm claims the transition of PCs to the Arm architecture is inevitable.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Yeah, not if Qualcomm has anything to do with it.  Their current solution for Arm-based PCs, the 8cx. was unimpressive when it first appeared three years ago, hasn't been updated, and won't be until the end of 2023.
  
  
  
• Windows 10 21H2 is here.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Major new features include an end to this bullshit of updating twice a year.
  
  
  
• Australia has prioritised 63 key technologies including quantum and blockchain.  (ZDNet)
  
  Other items on the list include electric, build, and number.

Posted by: normal at Wednesday, November 17 2021 10:34 PM (obo9H)

Posted by: normal at Wednesday, November 17 2021 10:40 PM (obo9H)

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, November 18 2021 12:34 AM (Z0GF0)

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Top Story

• If the facts are on your side, pound on the facts.  If the law is on your side, pound on the law.  If neither is on your side, sweep the jury with an AR-15.
  
  
  
• If you don't have an AR-15 just blow up one of your own satellites.  (Ars Technica)
  
  Russia appears to have tested an anti-satellite weapon and in the process created an entire cloud of anti-satellite weapons, with over 1500 pieces of high-velocity shrapnel being tracked and innumerable smaller pieces posing a hazard to everything in low Earth orbit. 

• New York City has passed a bill requiring bias audit of AI technology used in making hiring decisions.  (Protocol)
  
  This is actually a good move.  Most of this stuff is worthless, trivial algorithms dressed up as AI.  If all this does force people to stop claiming AI when there is none, good enough.
  
  
  
• Perfecting the New York street.  (Curbed)
  
  By making absolutely every aspect of it worse.
  
  To be fair, they're not attempting to make the perfect street, or even a passable street, they want to make the perfect New York street, which is to say, Cthulhu in pavement.
  
  
  
• Want to get a new Intel 12th generation CPU but don't want to move to Windows 11?  Wondering how much performance you will lose by sticking with Windows 10?  Turns out for gaming the answer is around -2%.  (Tech Powerup)
  
  That is, Windows 10 is on average slightly faster than Windows 11.  Also, DDR4 memory is - currently - slightly faster on average than DDR5 in gaming benchmarks.
  
  That will change over time, but for now the biggest advantage of DDR5 is that it provides lots of memory bandwidth for high-performance integrated graphics, which is not noticeably something Intel's desktop CPUs possess.  I'll take another look in January when the 12th gen laptop chips are expected to launch.
  
  
  
• More leaked benchmarks show that the upcoming 12800H mobile chip is both faster and slower than the 12700H.  (WCCFTech)
  
  I think we should ignore these benchmarks until the parts actually ship.  They're garbage.
  
  
  
• Hackers are taking over Alibaba cloud servers to mine cryptocurrencies.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Which is illegal in China in the first place.
  
  
  
• Air is the new surface.  (American Shipper)
  
  Ocean freight is so screwed up at this point that air freight is looking attractive.  Costs are up 150% compared to before the Bat Flu, but costs for surface freight have increased as much as tenfold.  And air freight is much faster and bypasses the need for long-distance trucking or rail transfers to and from port locations.
  
  
  
• Intel's 4004 turns 50.  (WCCFTech)
  
  The first microprocessor was designed for calculators and only supported 4 bit data.  It was followed by the 8008 in 1972, and the much more successful 8080 in 1974, which launched the microcomputer industry.
  
  It's been all downhill from there.
  
  
  

Party Like It's 1979 Video of the Day

This is practically the Hololive anthem, it comes up so often.