• Discord is deploying age verification systems recently made mandatory in fascist dystopias.  (Soap Central)
  
  Like Britain.  And Australia.
  
  Fortunately they're being a lot more sensible about this than the governments that enforced the rules.  The verification pops up - once - when you want to see adult content.
  
  Which is not something I want from Discord, ever, so I don't see this as a huge problem.  And you can pass the verification check with a face scan by the app and not have to upload government ID.
  
  
  

Tech News

• Looks like there will be a 32GB variant of AMD's Radeon 9070 XT after all...  Sort of.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  AMD denied this a bit too strenuously.  Looks like the 32GB model is for the Radeon Pro range, for workstation users and not gamers.  It is the same card otherwise, though the clock speeds and power consumption will likely be trimmed back a little to make it more acceptable in an office environment.
  
  
  
• It's a four-inch cube and it's blue, but it doesn't say Cobalt on it.  (Liliputing)
  
  The Beelink Me Mini supports six M.2 drives, two 2.5Gb Ethernet ports, three USB ports, and one HDMI.  And an internal power supply so you don't have an inconvenient brick hanging off it.
  
  Also available in white and gray.  Or will be available.  Price and shipping date TBA.
  
  CPU is an Intel N200 which is a four core Atom CPU and delivers adequate performance for a NAS and only uses 6W of power.
  
  
  
• Resist eggheads!  (Ars Technica)
  
  Ars Technica has noticed that people have finally woken up to the communist takeover of the education system and is desperate to put them to sleep again, by force if necessary.
  
  
  
• Chinese APT IronHusky deploys updated MysterySnail RAT on Russia.  (HackRead)
  
  The Cold War proceeds apace, just now being fought between the Chinese and the Soviets.

• Vendors have voted to reduce the duration of SSL certificates from one year to 47 days.  (Computerworld)
  
  Fuck vendors.
  
  This is mostly driven by Apple, because...  Because nothing, really.  It's a bad solution to a non-problem.
  
  Apple has been pushing for this for some time.  Previously certificates were valid for up to five years, and then Apple got involved.
  
  And the certificate vendors have just committed suicide, because nobody is going to pay them for a certificate that has to be manually refreshed every few weeks, and if you are deploying an automated solution you might as well go all the way and implement a free automated solution using Let's Encrypt.
  
  So good work, assholes.
  
  
  
• It's true that SSL providers are stupid but you still can't use the certificate without hacking DNS.  (Bugzilla)
  
  And it's true that SSL is intended to be resilient to this sort of attack, but if you care about security you need to care about who is providing your DNS, and if you do then this attack doesn't work anyway.

• Intel says yes, our graphics cards kind of suck when used with older (and slower) CPUs.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Intel's graphics drives are somewhat inefficient.  This doesn't show up on recent CPUs, because they are fast enough to keep up anyway.  But if you pair an Intel graphics card with a CPU from five years ago, the performance bottleneck is now the CPU.
  
  This is a problem because Intel's graphics cards are cheaper than anything current from AMD or Nvidia, making them look like a good option for people with tight budgets...  Who would still be using older CPUs.
  
  
  
• Russia is seeding chatbots with lies.  Any bad actor could do the same, though of course the exercise would be redundant because feeding bullshit into a bullshit factory doesn't really change the output.  (Detroit News)
  
  What it we made it even more stochastic?
  
  
  
• Ordered the Lenovo Legion Tab Gen 3 to replace my dead Tab M8 FHD.  It's more than I wanted to pay, but I need a small tablet with a high-resolution display, and it is the only small Android model available with a resolution better than 1340x800.  Unless I buy from Aliexpress and risk having my Google and Amazon accounts hoovered up in the next OTA update exploit, as happened with Alldocube not long ago.
  
  Compared to the M8 FHD it's three times the price (with the current discount), but has four times the RAM, eight times the storage (no microSD slot, which messes that up, but 256GB is still decent), bumps the resolution up from 1920x1200 to 2560x1600, and is just astronomically faster.  The Cortex X4 is at least nine generations newer than the A53 in the M8 FHD depending on how you count, and on Antutu is ten times faster on multi-threaded tests comparing the two eight-core chips.  (It doesn't have an entry for the P22T, but that had the same cores and clock speed as the P35 which is on the list.)
  
  Which I'd like to say I don't care about but the M8 FHD was kind of a slug.
  
  Hope it's worth it.  Shame I really don't care about graphics performance on this thing, because there it scores 127 times faster than the old model.
  
  
  

Musical Interlude

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, April 21 2025 07:22 AM (1zWbY)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Monday, April 21 2025 08:12 AM (rcPLc)

Posted by: David Eastman at Monday, April 21 2025 12:55 PM (aAyxl)

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• TSMC is planning to produce 30% of its 2nm and newer chips in its US fabs.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Currently US production is only at 4nm, with 3nm only active in Taiwan and 2nm still ramping up.  The new plans will boost output at the company's Fab21 site in Arizona and bring to it the newer N3, N2, and the 1.6nm A16 lines.
  
  N3 equipment is being installed right now, and construction of new buildings for N2 and A16 is set to begin next year.

• If you're looking forward to the next-generation Nova Lake chips from Intel with their rumoured extraordinary core counts, now is not the time to buy a motherboard.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Because they're changing sockets again.  Arrow Lake will be the only chip running on the current Socket 1851, with new boards with Socket 1954 arriving next year.
  
  Because Intel.
  
  
  
• The hashing algorithms in Python have been replaced with a library that has been verified.  (Jonathan Protzenko)
  
  That is, not merely tested, but mathematically proven to be correct.
  
  And hopefully tested as well.
  
  
  
• OpenAI's latest generation of stochastic garbage generators generate more stochastic garbage than before and the company doesn't know why.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Not only will they make up answers that are completely wrong, when asked how they came up with those answers, they will make that up as well.
  
  
  
• A federal judge has ruled that dumping the entire database from a cell tower in order to find a single individual is an unconstitutional search under the Fourth Amendment.  (404 Media)
  
  Well, yes.
  
  
  
• Those damn railroads are putting stage coaches out of work.  (The Register)
  
  Why, back in my day, we walked from London to New York and back again, and you didn't catch us complaining about it.
  
  
  
• Blue Origin's all-girl space stunt is Elon Musk's fault.  (The Verge)  (archive site)
  
  Elon Musk has nothing to do with it, has saved the day when things went south, and generally speaking has done nothing wrong at all, but Elizabeth Lopatto has to rant.
  
  
  
• The Gorilla God's Go-to Girl is retro romance anime gold.  (Notebook Check)
  
  What?
  
  I mean, the anime is okay, nothing amazing, but it's also remarkably free of computer hardware.
  
  
  
• So, amid all the to-ing and fro-ing, a certain Speaker of Space collabed with a certain Warden of Time today.  I was thinking, that sounds exactly like, and it sounded exactly like because it was.
  
  (If you don't follow vtubers, you probably just said Wait, what?  If you do follow vtubers, you probably just said, Wait, what?!)
  
  Things go on.
  
  
  

Musical Interlude

Posted by: cxt217 at Sunday, April 20 2025 05:52 AM (ZLF73)

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• A federal judge has ruled that Google is operating an illegal monopoly - again.  (Associated Press)
  
  Google's search engine was found in violation of antitrust laws last August, and the company's ad division has now joined it on the naughty list.
  
  This doesn't mean that either one is an absolute monopoly, and they're not.  But companies with a dominant market position are restricted from certain business practices that are no in themselves illegal, and that's where Google has run aground.
  
  Now the DOJ will be arguing for specific penalties (most likely forcing Google to spin off a small number of products into separate businesses) and Google will be trying to tie this up in appeals until the Sun goes out.
  
  
  

Tech News

• AGI is still thirty years away, like nuclear fusion.  (Dwarkesh Podcast)
  
  (There's a full transcript; you don't need to listen.)
  
  The host makes the point that we've had rapid advances in AI technology over the past decade; the guests respond that this progress has come at the expense of, well, expense.  The AI supercluster at xAI cost upwards of $2.5 billion to create, and similar installations exist at the other major AI companies.
  
  And we can't replicate that over the next ten years because nobody has $2.5 trillion to build a computer a thousand times more powerful, or 35,000 methane-powered generators to provide the hundreds of gigawatts needed to power the city-sized cluster.
  
  Now things get hard.
  
  
  
• There's a new Framework Laptop 13 in town, with a Ryzen 370 and up to 96GB (and probably 128GB) of SO-DIMM memory.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Still no Four Essential Keys though.
  
  
  
• A new GPS alternative from Australia is 10 to 50 times more accurate than existing alternatives.  (Interesting Engineering)
  
  When I first saw this it seemed to be claiming to be 10 to 50 times more accurate than GPS itself, but that's not it.  If GPS is unavailable for any reason - something that happens a lot more often than you might think - this system based on existing maps of the Earth's magnetic field is essentially impossible to jam and doesn't rely on any other systems being active.
  
  It's not as good as GPS, but it's better than other options when you don't have GPS.

Posted by: PatBuckman at Friday, April 18 2025 08:09 PM (rcPLc)

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, April 19 2025 02:07 AM (1zWbY)

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• Nvidia's RTX 5060 Ti 16GB edition is here and it's eh.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  The other two cards announced today, the 5060 Ti 8GB edition and the 5060 non-Ti, are nowhere to be found.
  
  If you're not using ray tracing, it's about 10% slower than my Radeon 7800 XT and costs about 25% more at retail.  Retail prices may settle down eventually, but they haven't been great so far in Nvidia's 5000-series launch.
  
  If you are using ray tracing, it's about 5% faster than my Radeon 7800 XT - but still 25% more expensive.
  
  That retail price places it just 10% cheaper than AMD's new 9070 (non-XT) card, which averages 50% faster at 4k resolution.
  
  It does better at Stable Diffusion (AI image generation) and runs acceptably cool and quiet, but you should definitely wait to see what the Radeon 9060 delivers if you're in the market.
  
  
  

Tech News

• Some Synology consumer NAS models now require Synology-branded drives for full functionality.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  This applies to the 2025 Plus series - it was already true for recent enterprise NAS models.
  
  Allow me to take this moment to heartily unrecommend Synology.
  
  
  
• Charles Darwin's children drew vegetable battles on the manuscript of The Origin of Species.  (The Appendix)
  
  Most of the original manuscript is lost, but what remains is...  Colourful.
  
  
  
• CISA didn't end funding for CVE.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  I'm sure you will all find that comforting.
  
  
  
• Automattic, owner of blogging software WordPress, has been deploying watermarks on internal websites to catch leakers.  (404 Media)
  
  Which, I mean, sure, Automattic sucks and WordPress sucks and CEO Matt Mullenweg is a lunatic, but if you're leaking internal documents to the press you should expect to get caught.
  
  
  
• China's restrictions on rare earth element exports are a problem.  (The Register)
  
  Of course everyone has known for years that China was going to do this, because they've already done it, but nobody did anything about it.
  
  
  
• Spotify went down.  (The Verge)
  
  But it came back up.
  
  
  
• Zoom went down.  (The Verge)
  
  But it came back up.
  
  
  

Musical Interlude

• OpenAI is now building its own social network.  (The Verge)  (archive site)
  
  Prediction: This will work out just like Bluesky, only with even more deranged screeching.
  
  Might be a cool gig for the developers, as long as you have another job lined up for when the whole thing burns down, falls over, and sinks into the swamp.

• Nvidia has announced its new RTX 5060 Ti starting at $379 and RTX 5060 starting at $299.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  With the teeny tiny drawback that actual retail prices start at $529 and you won't be able to buy one at all.
  
  Even hardware review channels with 16 million followers can't get hardware to review.
  
  Play
  
  About the only thing this launch does is put a cap on the price AMD can charge for its 9060, and it doesn't even do a good job of that.
  
  
  
• 4chan got hacked.  (Ars Technica)
  
  It sounds like it got hacked a lot.
  
  
  
• Figma sent a cease-and-desist letter to no-code startup (don't ask) Lovable (seriously, don't ask) demanding that the latter company remove the term "dev mode" from its product, because somehow Figma has a trademark on that term.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  What.
  
  
  
• Just a reminder: Nanashi Mumei is Shachimu, and Gawr Gura is Senzawa.
  
  In both cases their old channels have over a million subscribers already so they won't have any problems if they decide to pick up where they left off.  Though Shachimu has already said not to expect such a thing, at least not any time soon.  Chronic health issues do not resolve themselves with a change of avatar.

Posted by: Joe Redfield at Thursday, April 17 2025 03:27 AM (KOtXO)

Posted by: normal at Thursday, April 17 2025 08:54 AM (bg2DR)

Posted by: normal at Thursday, April 17 2025 09:00 AM (bg2DR)

Posted by: normal at Thursday, April 17 2025 09:01 AM (bg2DR)

Posted by: cxt217 at Thursday, April 17 2025 02:24 PM (ZLF73)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, April 17 2025 08:42 PM (PiXy!)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Friday, April 18 2025 12:55 AM (rcPLc)

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• AMD is moving to TSMC's N2 process (2nm) for its Zen 6 cores next year, jumping straight over 3nm.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  This rumour comes from...  AMD and TSMC during an official announcement that AMD has the first Zen 6 silicon in house for testing.
  
  So probably legit.
  
  N2 is 15% faster than the current N3 node, only AMD's CPUs and GPUs are all still on the N4 node which is older again.
  
  Also mentioned during the announcement is that AMD has qualified TSMC's fabs in Arizona to start manufacturing its current 4nm chips.

• Apple doesn't upload all your data to the cloud to feed it into their AI systems like pretty much everyone else.  Instead they download their AI onto your phone where it can feast on your data directly and send the results home.  (MSN)
  
  Yes.  That's much better.
  
  
  
• Silver Lake has bought a majority stake in Intel's Altera FPGA division.  (Serve the Home)
  
  Altera - along with Xilinx - was one of the leading players in the FPGA space, producing chips where you can redesign the hardware on the fly in software.
  
  Intel bought Altera and has now sold off half of it.
  
  AMD bought Xilinx and seems to be having a better time of things.
  
  
  
• AMD's upcoming 9060 has half the hardware of the current 9070 XT but reportedly clocks around 20% faster.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  It all depends on price.  The 16GB model with 60% of the 9070 XT's performance and 100% of the VRAM is unlikely to leave you change from $400.
  
  
  
• Meanwhile the 16GB model of Nvidia's upcoming 5060 Ti looks set to have an MSRP of $429 and a street price of $529 - if you can find one at all.  (Notebook Check)
  
  It's not supposed to work like that but it do.
  
  If AMD can come in below that MSRP and actually have cards in stock, they will cement their GPU-comeback-in-progress.

Posted by: cxt217 at Wednesday, April 16 2025 03:47 PM (ZLF73)

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• Facebook recently announced its new Llama 4 AI platform, with industry-leading scores.  They lied.  (Neowin)
  
  The test results were from an unreleased experimental version.  The actual scores put Llama 4 in 32nd place.

• You can now melt your power cable and destroy your video card cheaper than ever before.  (Notebook Check)
  
  Latest victim was an RTX 5070.
  
  This problem is predictable with the RTX 5090, which draws 575W over a connector rated for a maximum of 600W.  5% out of tolerance and your card is fried.
  
  It shouldn't happen on the 250W 5070 though.
  
  
  
• Meanwhile the upcoming 5060 Ti could be better than the 4060 Ti.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  The 4060 Ti was held back because the relatively powerful chip was being throttle by the 128-bit memory bus.  The 5060 Ti still has a 128-bit bus, but appears to use 28Gbps GDDR7 memory rather than 21Gbps GDDR6.
  
  This should also give it a lead over AMD's upcoming 9060, which still uses GDDR6.
  
  
  
• Bungie's new shooty-game Marathon (no relation to Bungie's old shooty game Marathon) looks set to be Sony's next $400 million write-off.  (Hot Hardware)
  
  It looks remarkably unappealing.
  
  
  
• Jack Dorsey is an idiot.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  That's it.  That's the message.

Posted by: bob in houston at Tuesday, April 15 2025 12:01 AM (YBLgY)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Tuesday, April 15 2025 03:20 AM (rcPLc)

Posted by: normal at Tuesday, April 15 2025 11:12 AM (bg2DR)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, April 15 2025 07:05 PM (PiXy!)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Tuesday, April 15 2025 10:41 PM (rcPLc)

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• President Trump has once again scrambled the plans of the Chinese Communist Party and Democrat prophesiers by temporarily waiving the new 125% tariff on selected goods from that country.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  The 20% basic tariff remains in effect, but the new tariff will not be applied to electronic components or devices like phones and laptops.
  
  Everything else gets whacked with a 145% impost which has small businesses in China in a panic.  Deliveries already booked and produced are now being refused, and there is simply no substitute market to turn to.
  
  And while it takes time to ramp up a mobile phone production line, products like clothing and homewares are already produced in dozens of countries like India, Pakistan, Vietnam, and Indonesia, who will be only too happy to produce more.
  
  
  

Tech News

• Oh, and you know all those attacks China has launched on American infrastructure over the past few years?  Turns out China was behind them.  (WSJ / MSN)
  
  Who knew?
  
  
  
• The Asus X870 Max Gaming Wifi7 motherboard is, well, a motherboard.  (WCCFTech)
  
  An X870 motherboards, meaning AMD.  With four full-length PCIe slots, only one is PCIe 5.0 x16, with the others being 4.0 x4, 4.0 x1, and 3.0 x1.
  
  I don't know where those 3.0 lanes come from, but my motherboard has a PCIe 3.0 x1 slot as well.
  
  It also lacks optical audio output and USB 4.0, but it does seem to have three HDMI ports.
  
  Price TBA but somewhere in the $200-ish range.
  
  
  
• Google's Chrome team is planning to fix a bug that's been around for 23 years.  (The Register)
  
  By feeding your browser a list of links, and then checking what colour each one is, a web site can figure out which other sites you have previously visited.
  
  They're not supposed to be able to do that.
  
  
  
• If you want an Asuka Langley from Evangelion themed mini-laptop, you can now get one starting at $1650.  (Notebook Check)
  
  And also ending at $1650.
  
  That gets you an Intel 255H CPU (6 P-cores, 10 E-cores), 64GB of RAM, 2TB of SSD, and a keyboard.  Screen is a 10.95" 2560x1600 "gaming display", so a reused tablet model.
  
  
  

Musical Interlude

Posted by: furball321 at Monday, April 14 2025 06:53 AM (As8gg)

Posted by: Mauser at Monday, April 14 2025 08:59 AM (QE7eq)

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• Never get involved in a land war in Asia: Adobe tried to promote its services to artists on Bluesky.  They promptly deleted their posts after realising that everyone on Bluesky is insane.  (PetaPixel)
  
  I could have told you that, Adobe.
  
  Also, you suck.  Just...  Less than Bluesky.  Like you're diptheria and they're anthrax.

• The Pentagon is cancelling $5.1 billion in IT contracts with the big IT contractors.  (Reuters)  (archive site)
  
  These contracts are almost always vastly overpriced and incredibly unproductive.
  
  
  
• If you're a racist, Marxist, screaming lunatic, South of Midnight might just be the game for you.  (The Verge)  (archive site)
  
  The game is doing better than Dustborn, but not a whole lot.  And it looks good and sounds good, it's just written by people who should not be permitted with 500 yards of a keyboard.
  
  And yes, Sweet Baby Inc was deeply involved in this one, with utterly predictable results.
  
  It's also apparently quite short, but I won't knock it for that.  Not every game needs to last 80 hours.  Gris is only a few hours long and it's a masterpiece.
  
  
  
• You don't need websockets if you're not doing anything that needs websockets.  (Hunter Lovell)
  
  Uh, thanks?
  
  Cool Shuba Duck though.
  
  
  
• xAI is not using illegal generators to power its datacenter.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  xAI has 420MW of generator capacity, but only 40% of it has long-term permits.  The rest of it is using a short-term rule that allows a temporary generator to operate for 364 days without that permit.
  
  I think the company will likely be able to get those permits if it needs them later this year, so the article is a nothingburger.
  
  
  
• Ubisoft cancelled online services for its game The Crew.  And removed the game from users' libraries.  And deactivated physical copies.  And issued nothing even slightly resembling refunds.
  
  And now that it's facing lawsuits the company is pointing out that customers don't own what they buy.  (TechSpot)
  
  Ubisoft seems to have violated specific laws in California in all of this.  Of course that's true of everyone on the planet and most people not on the planet, but it doesn't particularly help the company's defense.
  
  
  
• I wasn't particularly planning to spend any more money on my new PC but I accidentally bought a QNAP QM2-4P-384.
  
  The motherboard I have supports up to four M.2 slots, though two share bandwidth with the PCIe 5.0 x16 slot, reducing it to x8, and one shares bandwidth the the PCIe 4.0 x4 slot, reducing it to PCIe 4.0 xnothing.
  
  You can get cheap four-slot M.2 cards but they require a full x16 slot to work, because they are wired up logically as just four four-lane devices and rely on the CPU figuring that out.  If you have a graphics card in your x16 slot, or you have M.2 cards sharing its bandwidth, they're basically useless.
  
  You can also get more expensive four-slot (or even eight-slot) M.2 cards that will work even if you only have a single PCIe lane left over, because they have hardware onboard to split up whatever PCIe you have and divide it among the M.2 slots on the card.  But those are full-height cards and the Hyte Y40 and Y60 cases only have full-height space for the graphics card.
  
  But the QNAP QM2-4P-384 is a half-height card because it's built for smaller NAS devices - though it also works on PCs.  It's PCIe 3.0 x8 which is not something my motherboard has, but with the onboard chip it will still work just fine.
  
  So now I can have 28TB or even 32TB of internal SSD (if I use that fourth motherboard slot).
  
  And then another 16TB of SSD in my external storage array.  Oh, and four SATA SSDs in my PC.  And four 3.5" hard drives (or again SATA SSDs) in the storage array.
  
  So I'll probably run out of money before I run out of space to put drives.