• I just got a blast of monitoring alerts for my day job, but it turns out that every single one of them was related to HubSpot, which seems to be down.
  
  HubSpot is down because Cloudflare is down (again).
  
  Looks like Cloudflare is down because someone fucked up the internet again.  I also got a notification from DigitalOcean that basically things are fucked all over the world.
  
  It seems to be getting fixed very quickly - the status page is clearing red to green at a gratifying rate.  But maybe get a second basket for your eggs, guys?
  
  
• The 2070 Super and 2060 Super are (almost) here.  (AnandTech)
  
  The 2060 Super looks like a much more capable card than the original 2060, though it's also more expensive.  More shaders, more memory, more ROPs, and a higher base clock.
  
  The 2070 Super is a nice bump but not as significant, but so far it looks like enough to fend off AMD's Navi, which is all they needed.
  
  
• Need to drive four 4K displays?  Only have room for a single-slot half-height half-length card?  Also only have $199 and need workstation-quality drivers?
  
  Radeon Pro WX 3200.  It's basically an RX 550, so not exactly high end, but given the constraints it was never going to be.
  
  
• Boris Johnson plays 12-dimensional chess.  (TechDirt)
  
  Look, if he can outsmart the entire news media and Google, isn't he someone you'd want as prime minister?
  
  
• This seems like a good deal oh wait never mind.  (HP)
  
  A 15.6" HP laptop, Ryzen 2500U, 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD, $509.  What's the catch?
  
  The catch is the screen is garbage - 1366x768 TN panel.  HP does that a lot - they have amazing screens on their high-end models and 2002-era crap on the cheaper ones.
  
  Though if you need something compact and plan to mostly use an external monitor, you could do worse.
  
  
• Jony Ive's Legacy: Beautiful Garbage.  (IFixit)

  Nobody, to our knowledge, has gotten Ive to explain how gluing batteries into products is useful and respectful to the buyer.

  
  
• The damage that Ive caused extended beyond hardware.  (Stratechery)
  
  He did create the original Bondi Blue iMac, though.  I still have a second generation one somewhere (lime green).
  
  
• Tweetdeck also fell over.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Tweetdeck users complained that they were forced to use Twitter instead.
  
  Cloudflare said, "See, it's not just us!"
  
  
• Health sites report Google is censoring their content.  (One Angry Gamer)
  
  What health sites?
  
  Mercola.com.
  
  Oh.
  
  Carry on, Google.

  Ji lists various examples of auto-complete search terms for "vaccines cause” and none of the auto-complete terms included "autism”

  Yes, because that nonsense is getting children killed, you shitheads.

Posted by: Rick C at Wednesday, July 03 2019 01:03 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Rick C at Wednesday, July 03 2019 01:08 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Jay at Wednesday, July 03 2019 01:40 AM (vuQH5)

Posted by: Kristophr at Wednesday, July 03 2019 09:25 AM (Yrvu5)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, July 03 2019 01:40 PM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Rick C at Wednesday, July 03 2019 02:37 PM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Kristophr at Thursday, July 04 2019 10:04 AM (cys8N)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, July 04 2019 02:20 PM (PiXy!)

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• A firmware update for the Raspberry Pi 4 looks to have significantly improved heat and power consumption.  (CNX Software)
  
  Benchmarks that were thermally throttled before on a stock Pi 4 can now run 15% to 20% faster, close to the performance with an added heatsink.
  
  
• There's a line in Snow Crash about - no, let me find the quote.

  When it gets down to it — talking trade balances here — once we've brain-drained all our technology into other countries, once things have evened out, they're making cars in Bolivia and microwave ovens in Tadzhikistan and selling them here — once our edge in natural resources has been made irrelevant by giant Hong Kong ships and dirigibles that can ship North Dakota all the way to New Zealand for a nickel — once the Invisible Hand has taken away all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani brickmaker would consider to be prosperity — y'know what? There's only four things we do better than anyone else:
  music
  movies
  microcode (software)
  high-speed pizza delivery

  Which always bothered me because that is not remotely how economics works.  Anyway, how the iPhone helped save the planet except of course it's mostly cheaper Android phones that are saving the planet because by sheer numbers iOS is an also-ran; globally Android outsells iOS by 6:1, and in markets like India the ratio is 10:1.  (Wired)
  
  Where was I?  Oh, yeah.  Accepting the iPhone as a stand-in for all modern low-cost high-performance devices from the first-generation iPod to the Kogan L500 laptop, the point Wired is making is valid and Neal Stephenson's view of economic is not.  You don't need to print, bind, and ship billions of books, vinyl records, VHS tapes, and whatnot.  Squirt it over the air for about a cent, or over a wire for one hundredth that cost, and it's on your magic device.
  
  You don't need cameras and film processing, clock radios or CB radios, camcorders or CD players, and it's getting to the point where you won't need a desktop PC either, unless you're a software developer or video editor.
  
  The result is that while standards of living continue to rise, the resources required to produce those standards are falling.  America's electricity consumption is flat and use of minerals, timber, water, and land is actually down.
  
  Pakistani bricklayers had higher goals than Stephenson gave them credit for.
  
  
• Telstra (Australia's largest, oldest, and most irritating phone company) has upgraded its network to 100Gbit and cancelled 99% of its mobile plans including all unlimited data plans.  (ZDNet)
  
  I almost went for one of those while waiting for the NBN to reach me, but mobile coverage at PixyLab is, how to put it...  Absolutely fucking terrible.
  
  
• Brave says "screw you Google", introduces its own engine for ad-blocker developers.  (ZDNet)
  
  Oh, and it's 69x faster than Google's code.
  
  I assume this will be open source like the rest of Brave, though I couldn't find it at a quick glance.
  
  Full details on Brave's own site.
  
  
• The h Programming Language.  (christine.website)

  h is a project of mine that I have released recently. It is a single-paradigm, multi-tenant friendly, turing-incomplete programming language that does nothing but print one of two things:
  
   - the letter h
   - a single quote (the Lojbanic "h”)

  
  It is not so much a programming language as the Platonic Ideal of programming languages.

Video of the Day

Posted by: cxt217 at Tuesday, July 02 2019 10:40 AM (LMsTt)

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• AMD's Navi is out on the 7th of July.  Nvidia's RTX Super range will launch on the 9th.  (Tech Report)
  
  Not a huge upgrade, but probably enough to compete with Navi - albeit at a higher price.
  
  
• The US has partly unbanned Huawei, effective...  At some point.  (Thurrott.com)  
  
  Huawei will be able to buy components and software from US suppliers, and to sell consumer products, but US carriers will not be allowed to use Huawei 5G equipment in their networks.
  
  This actually seems reasonable.
  
  
• Prominent YouTuber defends Google against banned YouTube exposé of search and recommendation censorship.  (One Angry Gamer)
  
  Using false information.
  
  It's all rather a mess.
  
  
• But you can use a Raspberry Pi to block Google from your network.
  
  Also Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft, but currently there's not a pre-built filter list for Amazon.
  
  
• If the page says "Google Sing in" maybe thing twoce about antering your pissword.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  
• The ASRock X570 Taichi officially supports up to 128GB of RAM, including ECC.
  
  16 cores and 128GB of ECC RAM on a consumer motherboard - admittedly a high-end consumer motherboard.
  
  
• A preview of MSI's X570 boards provides details of the X570 chipset itself.  (AnandTech)
  
  Looks like an AMD slide but I haven't found a clean copy yet.  Update: Thanks Reddit!
  
  8 USB 10 ports (a.k.a USB 3.2 Gen 2), 4 SATA ports, and 8 PCIe 4.0 lanes are the core.
  
  In addition there are two sub modules that can each deliver either 4 more PCIe 4.0 lanes (in various configurations) or 4 more SATA ports.
  
  Which means you can get two NVMe ports and up to 12 SATA ports straight from the chipset. 
  
  And this is the same chip as found on the CPU, so in theory you could get 8 USB 10 ports and 12 SATA ports there as well.  If the AM4 package had the pins for that, which it doesn't.  You do get 4 USB 10 ports, so 12 total for an X570 motherboard, with no pin conflicts.
  
  I wonder if it still has 10Gb Ethernet built in, like first-generation Ryzen.  That doesn't seem to have gained much market adoption but they might need to retain it for the embedded market.
  
  
  
  
  
  (Click for full-size versions.)

Posted by: Mauser at Wednesday, July 03 2019 11:40 AM (Ix1l6)

Posted by: J Greely at Wednesday, July 03 2019 05:19 PM (ZlYZd)

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• DMs everywhere wince in sympathy.
  
  
  
  
  
• Is the budget Google Pixel 3a the Pixel to get yes. (Ars Technica)
  
  What about the Google Pixel 3a XL also yes.  (AnandTech)
  
  Headphone jack - ding.  Expandable storage - rude buzzer sound.  64GB is it.  So there's no way I'd even consider getting one, but YKMMV.
  
  
• I warned you about those 128TB micro SD cards.  (AnandTech)
  
  Toshiba just lost 6EB of flash - six million terabytes.  They had a power failure at their facility in Japan that brought five fab buildings to a crashing halt.
  
  These factories draw enormous amounts of power, so backup generators just aren't feasible.  They have dedicated redundant feeds from the grid, and huge battery banks to smooth out voltage drops and brief interruptions.
  
  Unfortunately in this case the power failure lasted 13 minutes longer than the batteries, and most of the wafers in the production line - which is a month's worth of chips at any given time - will have to be scrapped.
  
  
• Thankfully, Micron and other manufacturers are churning out flash as fast as the market can soak it up.  (AnandTech)
  
  This might stabilise prices for a while, but there's enough supply that it's unlikely to provoke price increases.
  
  
• Google says just because you're paying a monthly fee and don't really own anything and can't take your games anywhere else and are restricted to a very limited library doesn't mean you should expect a discount hey why isn't anyone using our new Stadia service did we tell you about Stadia EOL June 2022 no refunds sorry read the fine print.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  I might have elaborated on official statements there slightly.
  
  
• How the DOJ scapegoated Backpage.  (TechDirt)
  
  Though...  Is this story any more accurate than the ones TechDirt gets so obviously wrong, or is it just tickling my personal biases?
  
  
• Like this one: Trump administration considers outlawing encryption.  (TechDirt)
  
  First, no, they didn't.  Second, they can't; it would have to go through Congress.  Third, it's impossible.
  
  First Rule of Online Publishing: A hate click is still a click.
  
  
• The Radeon RX 5950, 5900, 5850, and 5800 graphics cards have not leaked the headline is a lie.  (WCCFTech)
  
  What happened was a range of model numbers were registered as trademarks, from RX 5500 up to RX 5950XT.  No shader counts, memory sizes, bandwidth numbers, clock speeds, dates, prices, nothing.
  
  
• Slack fell over.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Productivity skyrocketed.
  
  
• YouTube's demonetisation rampage has now hit ClownFish TV, a small and completely inoffensive pop culture channel.  (One Angy Gamer)
  
  We apologise unreservedly to neurally impoverished muskrats everywhere for unfairly comparing them with social network management.
  
  
• 24G SAS is a thing.  (Serve the Home)
  
  Has it been out for a while and I missed it because all the noise was about NVMe?  Apparently not; the article ends with "24G SAS is still not here yet."  Oh, good.
  
  It's nearly as fast as a standard PCIe 3.0 x4 connection but with better switching and backplane support.  Of course, consumer drives are still stuck at SATA 3 despite low-end SSDs having been able to saturate that link for years.  I still say that USB is the way to go in the consumer space, particularly now that USB 4 is on its way.
  
  
• That'll do, Ars Technica.  That'll do.
  
  They A/B test headlines, so if you don't get the good one, it's Florida LAN.

Posted by: Rick C at Sunday, June 30 2019 06:10 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Rick C at Sunday, June 30 2019 06:17 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Rick C at Sunday, June 30 2019 06:19 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, June 30 2019 01:10 PM (PiXy!)

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Tech News

• In the latest reminder that the senior management of all the major social networks have the introspective capacity of a Texas armadillo after it has had an unsatisfying encounter with an 18-wheeler, Twitter plans to annotate tweets by major political figures that violate their terms of service, but leave the tweets up.
  
  
  
  
  If Twitter were a company run by functional adults, this might be a reasonable compromise.  Since it's actually a day-release program for neurally impoverished muskrats, the chance that this is going to turn out well for Twitter is somewhat less than the chance that you will win every lottery in the world, tomorrow, including those that have already been drawn and awarded to other people.
  
  
• Jony Ive has left Apple to go fuck up some other company.  (Apple)
  
  That is to say...  No, I'll stick with that.
  
  
• With impeccable timing rarely seen since the John Sculley years, Apple has moved production of the new Mac Pro to China.  (CNBC)
  
  I mean, sure, why not?
  
  
• Google are locking down the Gmail API and will likely kill some apps in the process.  (Ars Technica)
  
  While a pain, this is, unusually for Google, unambiguously the correct thing to do.
  
  
• However, Gmail's confidential mode isn't.  (Forbes)
  
  Confidential, I mean.
  
  Well, no.  It's email.  That's not how it works.  That's not how any of this works.
  
  
• This is the web that was.  (The Old Net)
  
  Pick a year and a website and keep your epilepsy meds handy.
  
  
• NPM 6.9.1 is broken due to .git folder in published tarball
  
  Most of those words are redundant.
  
  
• Finally, some decent Twitter content.
  
  

Anime Music Video of the Day

Picture of the Day

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, June 29 2019 03:16 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: cxt217 at Saturday, June 29 2019 11:50 AM (LMsTt)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Saturday, June 29 2019 05:51 PM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Avatar_exADV at Saturday, June 29 2019 06:12 PM (v29Tn)

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• Well, so much for the New Internet then.  (Medium)
  
  I've actually built Ethereum apps.  It.  Does.  Not.  Scale.  Anyone talking it up as "the backbone of the new internet" is either on drugs or trying to sell you some.

  The solution is obvious — these applications will need to be split up across multiple blockchains.

  Well, that solves one of the problems of using Ethereum.  It also solves the benefits of using Ethereum.
  
  Oh, and the tools the article praises are complete garbage.  I've used them.  I'd rather program COBOL using punched cards.
  
  
• YouTube responsible for the destruction of countless BS meters worldwide.
  
  
  
  
  
• VESA announced the DisplayPort 2.0 standard which delivers three times the bandwidth of DisplayPort 1.4 over cables made of powdered moonbeams.  (AnandTech)
  
  Over real cables it has about 50% more bandwidth than 1.4.
  
  As for the resolutions it supports, and refresh rates, and the number of displays, well, it depends.  Up to 16k, at least 3 screens, and 144Hz, but you only get to pick one of those, and the higher numbers require display stream compression (DSC).
  
  
• Taking a leaf from Twitter's moderation team, Microsoft is telling users they can't upgrade to Windows 10 - but not why.  (ZDNet)
  
  At least they don't have to pass a captcha and verify their phone number every couple of days.  That was not a suggestion, Microsoft.
  
  
• It doesn't help to be on multiple platforms if their CEOs all play golf on Sunday.
  
  
  
  
  The video has apparently been taken down from every service except Bitchute.
  
  
  
  
  I'm not sure if it's golf, exactly, but they're sure playing something
  
  
• Twitter is garbage.

• Google has joined the People's Front for Punching Nazis where by "Nazi" they mean, apparently, conservative Jewish podcasters and Canadian academic psychologists.  (One Angry Gamer)
  
  This seems like a rather broader definition of "Nazi" than the one I am used to.
  
  Google hastened to explain that they didn't mean that Ben Shapiro was a Nazi, just that he was "Nazi-adjacent-adjacent", like Portugal in WWII.
  
  
• There's a vulnerability in AMD's secure virtualiz- oh it's fixed already.  (AnandTech)
  
  They screwed up the elliptic curve parameters and ended up with a balloon animal instead of an encryption scheme.
  
  
• Mike you idiot.  (TechDirt)
  
  Apparently there is no intellectual property in the fashion industry.  Now, the tweet and the movie Mike was attacking were indeed stupid and invited harsh criticism, but for Dog's sake get your facts straight for once.
  
  
• AMD's Ryzen 5 3600 breaks cover as a Spanish site bobbles the embargo and it looks pretty good for the most part.  (Tech Powerup)
  
  For example, it beats the much more expensive 8 core i7-9700K in Cinebench.  Multithreaded.
  
  One oddity is slow write performance to RAM.  Read and copy are normal - only limited by the RAM itself, and within a couple of percent of the i9-9900K - so this might be an error in the benchmarking tool, or it might be something that needs a BIOS patch.
  
  
• Do not write your own libc.
  
  I mean, seriously.
  
  
• SK Hynix has entered production on its 128-layer 4D NAND flash the fourth dimension being, of course, marketing.  (Tech Powerup)
  
  
• Worried that bullshit codes of conduct would stifle honest discussion between software developers?
  
  Turns out that developers will be developers regardless of the bullshit codes of conduct with which they are expect to comply.  (ZDNet)
  
  
• GitLab 12 is out.
  
  It has a pancake-sorting algorithm.  No, wait, that was a different article.
  
  
• That guy who got his entire life stolen via a bogus SIM swap got most of it back.  (ZDNet)
  
  No surprise: His bank was the most responsive and responsible, preventing a transfer of $25,000 from ever leaving his account.
  
  No surprise: Twitter was the worst; without a direct contact inside the company he would have been unable to recover his account, and anyway, his entire history is gone.
  
  He offers some useful - if inconvenient - tips to prevent this happening to you.
  
  
• They're back!
  
  
  
  Since both games are headed for PC I give it about 30 seconds before someone patches the character model.
  
  
• Where's Waldo Mike?
  
  

What the Heck Video of the Day

Posted by: Mauser at Thursday, June 27 2019 06:31 AM (Ix1l6)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, June 27 2019 09:09 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, June 27 2019 02:27 PM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, June 27 2019 04:04 PM (PiXy!)

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• What if we protected half the websites in the world behind a single CDN...  And then broke that CDN?  (Cloudflare)
  
  Maybe try not doing that.
  
  
• As mentioned yesterday the Raspberry Pi 4 is out.  (AnandTech)
  
  Read the comments, just this once.
  
  Tom's Hardware has a lot of coverage, including a detailed review with benchmarks and an overclocking guide including how to not void your warranty.  (There are specific overclock settings that will and won't void your warranty, so as long as you don't do the bad ones you're fine.)
  
  
• Mike you idiot.  (TechDirt)
  
  
• Because JavaScript is garbage.
  
  If you use map on JavaScript always provide explicitly named parameters or it may do...  Things.
  
  
• Ubuntu says oh, yeah, uh, about that...  (Phoronix)
  
  Short story: 32 bit is back for at least two more releases while they get packaging straightened out for apps like Steam, Wine, and, um, Ubuntu Studio.
  
  
• Apple's iOS 13 beta is out and it's not pretty.  (ZDNet)
  
  
• Unexpectedly YouTube has censored a video about parent company Google's election meddling.  (One Angry Gamer)
  
  It's Project Veritas again.  I find their exposés interesting but their analyses dubious; they are worth paying attention to but not uncritically.  Oh, and Reddit suspended them.
  
  
  
  
  
• The Outer Worlds will be available at launch on Xbox...
  
  ... Game Store for Windows.
  
  So not an Epicsclusive after all.
  
  I'd still prefer Steam - or better yet, GOG - but At Least It's Not Epic!â„¢
  
  
  
  
• "For all its faults, collectivist order may be preferred to individualist chaos."  (Human Events)
  
  Scratch a liberal, find a fascist.
  
  
• Falcon Heavy had a successful launch and a two-thirds successful landing.  (Ars Technica)
  
  SpaceX warned that the chance of recovery of the core booster was only 50/50, and indeed it was forced to abort landing and splash into ocean at the last moment.

Picture of the Day

Posted by: cxt217 at Wednesday, June 26 2019 10:09 AM (LMsTt)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, June 26 2019 10:15 AM (PiXy!)

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• Raspberry Pi 4 is out.  (RaspberryPi.org)
  
  The CPU has been bumped up to a 1.5GHz quad-core A72, which is not slow.  My Mediapad is a quad A72 at (I think) 2.2GHz, and it zooms through stuff.  It should be at least twice as fast as the current Pi 3B+ which has a quad-core 1.4GHz A53.
  
  The Pi 4 also has up to 4GB RAM, WiFi 5, Bluetooth 5, full gigabit Ethernet, two USB 3.0 ports, two USB 2.0 ports, and two (micro) HDMI ports.  It can run two 4K monitors at 30Hz, or one a 60Hz and a second screen at 1080p.
  
  $35 with 1GB, $45 with 2GB, $55 with 4GB.
  
  
• If WiFi isn't doing it for you anymore why not try LiFi.  (The Verge)
  
  Since it uses visible light, its ability to pass through solid objects is limited, and by limited I mean zero.  Unless they're made of glass.  On the other hand, since it uses visible light there's no RF interference, because it's not RF.
  
  
• Knitting community Ravelry has gone full Oberlin, banning anyone supporting the President of the United States.  (One Angry Gamer)
  
  Apparently RPG.net did the same thing last year.
  
  Never go full Oberlin.

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, June 25 2019 12:29 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Jay at Tuesday, June 25 2019 01:51 AM (mrlXS)

Posted by: J Greely at Tuesday, June 25 2019 06:32 AM (ZlYZd)

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• There is no cloud, there's just someone else's computer.  Possibly yours if you're running Wordpress.  (ZDNet)
  
  A commercial proxy service turns out to consist entirely of hacked Wordpress sites.  Thousands of them.
  
  
•  How AMD's Rome pricing compares with Intel at every level.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Intel is most competitive at the 24-core point, where their cheapest processor costs only 80% more than AMD's most expensive part.  Intel's cheapest 24-core server CPU will save you nearly 5% over AMD's cheapest 48-core CPU.
  
  Ouch.
  
  
• Reddit's new design is now the default.  On my monitor, browsing /r/programming I could previously see 14 headlines and an ad on one page.  Now it's 4 headlines and an ad.
  
  This is not an improvement.
  
  
• TSMC has shown off a chiplet-based ARM server CPU.  (WikiChip)
  
  This is just a tech demo so far - the chiplets are tiny, each containing four A72 cores and the interconnect hardware.  On the other hand, they can hit 4.2GHz, which is pretty fast for an Arm core.
  
  
• How to get 32-bit games running on Ubuntu 19.10.
  
  Step 1: Use a different distro.
  
  
• Three products Apple needs to make but doesn't.  (MacWorld)
  
  A monitor, a router, and an external disk drive, basically.
  
  
• Coming soon from Toho Studios: Rogue Slug.  (BBC News)
  
  Followed by Godzilla vs. Rogue Slug and Rogue Slug One: A Train Wars Story.

Anime Preview of the Day

Posted by: J Greely at Monday, June 24 2019 09:53 AM (ZlYZd)

2 Hence the external hard drive. 

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, June 24 2019 02:12 PM (PiXy!)

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