Well that's good. Fantastic. That gives us 20 minutes to save the world and I've got a post office. And it's shut!

Wednesday, October 02

Geek

Daily News Stuff 2 October 2024

Rat Attack Edition

Top Story

  • After Broadcom bought VMWare, there were numerous stories of smaller customers being pushed to the wayside.  Broadcom's general approach to marketing products is to have 600 customers and ignore everyone else.

    Broadcom now seems to be experimenting with pushing everyone to the wayside.  (The Register)

    Court filings in a suit from AT&T say that Broadcom sought to increase prices by 1050% while also blocking its reseller channel from doing business with AT&T at all.

    AT&T says that the proposed pricing makes the payoff time for moving from VMWare to literally anything else short enough that they see it as an investment rather than an expense.

Tech News

  • A Chicago lab scooped up $83 million in federal payments for fake COVID tests.  (Ars Technica)

    The DOJ gave the lab owner a deal where he pled guilty to a single count of wire fraud.

    I wonder who he knows.


  • AMD's Epyc 8004 embedded server family is here.  (Serve the Home)

    I'm not sure what makes these specifically embedded, as they're socketed and work just fine in conventional rackmount servers.

    These are lower-end and cheaper than the 9004 series, with 6 memory channels and 96 lanes of PCIe 5.0.

    The processors are only available configured with Zen 4c cores, which are slower and use less power than Zen 4.  Not a lot slower in a server CPU; these are clocked at 3GHz where Zen 4 chips run at up to 3.6GHz.

    Prices start at $409 for an 8 core chip, and range through $855 for 24 cores, up to $4950 for 64 cores.

    The 24 core model looks good if your needs lean more towards memory capacity or I/O bandwidth than CPU performance, since it would be slower than a 16 core desktop chip.

    Even the 64 core version only draws 200W, which is another advantage.


  • Microsoft Copilot can now read your screen and talk to you.  (Tech Crunch)

    Not if you uninstall it.


Disclaimer: It was the best of rats.  It was the other best of rats.

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Tuesday, October 01

Geek

Daily News Stuff 1 October 2024

Chiku Taku Edition

Top Story

Tech News

  • AMD has increased the performance of the Ryzen 9600X and 9700X models by increasing the TDP. (Tom's Hardware)

    These currently run at 65W by default, but with a new BIOS update will be configurable to run at 105W, with the 60% extra power giving that 10% extra performance.

    You could do the same thing with overclocking, of course, so the only real change is that this is fully supported under warranty.


  • AMD has also released two small language models. (Tom's Hardware)

    These are just like large language models, only small. With 135 million tokens, they will run on any functioning graphics card; you don't need an RTX 4090.


  • Star Wars Outlaws has sold a million copies. (WCCFTech)

    For a major game release, that's not good. Dwarf Fortress has sold a million copies, but that has two developers, not hundreds.

    Ubisoft needs to sell at least four million copies of this game to break even on the development costs, never mind the licensing costs. That won't happen.

    Their next big title, Assassin's Creed Shadows, is looking to be an even bigger failure. The company's shareholders are rioting.


  • Google has won a lawsuit against scammers who filed false DMCA takedown requests to remove their competitors from the search index. (TorrentFreak)

    Filing a false DMCA request is perjury, which is a felony, but I'm not aware of anyone ever being charged with that crime in such a case.

    Here Google was awarded a default judgement because the scammers never responded.


  • Epic Games is suing Google, again, and also Samsung. (The Verge)

    Epic Games got a court order forcing Google to allow third-party app stores on Android devices.

    So Google and Samsung collaborated to introduce new security features that effectively prevent users from installing unauthorised applications, while not providing any means for applications to become authorised.

    Again, I don't like Epic, but Google and Samsung need to be smacked down hard here.


Not At All Tech News


Hololive's Amelia Watson, who left the group today (mostly) as drawn by also Hololive's Elizabeth Rose Bloodflame. (Yes, the names sometimes get a little melodramatic.)

The flower represents the 20 members of Hololive's English branch - the colours and patterns match each of the talents' costumes.


Frieren Season Two Production Trailer of the Day


No date yet but production has started.


Not At All Tech News Video of the Day


I was watching this stream earlier on but had to switch because one of Ame's final streams was airing at the same time.  So I missed this pure Pippa moment.

No, I have no idea.


Disclaimer: Put your hands on your head and step away from the gerbils!

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Monday, September 30

Geek

Daily News Stuff 30 September 2024

Desert Bus Stop Edition

Top Story


Tech News

  • MSI has confirmed that CUDIMMs work with AMD as well as Intel processors.  (Tom's Hardware)

    These are memory modules with clock regenerator chips onboard, allowing them to run stably at higher speeds - up to 9.6GHz currently, with even faster speeds promised.

    The problem is that they are otherwise still standard DDR5 modules, so to hit those speeds they have to run at much higher than normal voltages.


  • Kia's online dealer portal could be used to steal with the click of a button.  (Bleeping Computer)

    This has reportedly been fixed but who the hell thought that was a good idea?


  • Are software developers gaining from the miracle of generative AI?  No.  (CIO)

    Productivity has not improved, bugs have not been reduced, and developer burnout is as bad as ever.

    If anything, unfamiliar AI-generated code is making the situation worse.


  • Lenovo's 2024 Legion Y700 tablet is here.  (Liliputing)

    This is the only good small Android tablet on the market.  And when I say "on the market" I mean not on the market, because it is almost impossible to buy outside of China.

    Why?  I have no idea.

    Anyway, this model appears to remove the microSD card.  The previous update removed the headphone jack.

    Why?  Because fuck you, that's why.


  • After Unity committed suicide with its overbearing and larcenous new licensing terms, open-source competitor Godot had its moment in the sun.

    It just committed suicide in a very messy and public way.

    Godot's community manager went psychotically woke on Twitter, not just affirming LGBTQIA+ bullshit over everything else, but blocking users and hiding replies from anyone who dared to question this in even the most polite terms.

    Hundreds of people.  It just keeps going.

    And the CEO of Godot has gone into hiding.


Disclaimer: Fork Godot.

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Sunday, September 29

Geek

Daily News Stuff 29 September 2024

Virtual Aquarium Edition

Top Story

  • In the ongoing legal dispute between Apple and Epic Games over Apple's theft of 30% of everything, Apple was ordered to produce a million documents relating to changes to the App Store.

    Apple asked for an extension to that deadline, following its habit of dragging out unfavourable cases forever.  (Tech Crunch)

    The judge was not having it.
    As Epic constantly points out, this document production is all downside for Apple because it relates to Apple’s alleged lack of compliance with the Court’s injunction. It is not in Apple’s interest to do any of this quickly. This is a classic moral hazard, and the way Apple announced out of the blue four days before the substantial completion deadline that it would not make that deadline because of a document count that it had surely been aware of for weeks hardly creates the impression that Apple is behaving responsibly.

    Apple’s request for an extension of time is DENIED. The deadline for the substantial completion of document production is Monday, September 30. It’s up to Apple to figure out how to meet that deadline, but Monday is indeed the deadline.
    Good to see.  I have no particular love for Epic Games, but Apple acts like a classic monopolist, constantly skirting the edge of open illegality.

Tech News



Pixy Was Watching

Quality Assurance in Another World.

The season ended as I expected, with nothing really resolved, but at least with most of our reluctant heroes reunited and Nikola taking a well-earned level in Badass.

No announcement of a second season, just a "To be continued?" card at the very end.

Fortunately, there is the manga, which apparently runs to about three seasons worth of material.




Disclaimer: No, there is no CharybdisDB.  I checked.

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Saturday, September 28

Geek

Daily News Stuff 28 September 2024

Scorched Almond Edition

Top Story

  • What is going on in the WordPress war, from a former WP Engine employee.  (Josh Collinsworth)

    Matt Mullenweg is a co-founder of WordPress, and now heads up both WordPress.org, the open-source foundation that creates the WordPress application, and WordPress.com, the company that commercialises blog hosting.

    WP Engine is a competitor that also offers blog hosting, and has done for nearly fifteen years.  This is entirely legal because WordPress is open source.

    So Matt, fed up with a competitor existing at all, has used his position as head of the open-source project to benefit his position has head of the commercial operation by carpet-bombing that competitor:
    Matt had a problem with the landlords, so he carpet bombed the neighborhood.  He didn’t like Alderaan’s leaders, and so he fired the Death Star.  And now it doesn’t really matter what his original point was; he’s made himself the bad guy.
    And I do mean carpet-bombing:
    That post, crucially, went up on WordPress.org, which on its own seems questionable. WordPress.org is ostensibly the website for the nonprofit foundation; it’s supposed to exist topreventany one for-profit company from having too much power over the WordPress ecosystem. It’s supposed to be agnostic.

    Not only was that boundary ignored, but since the post was published as WordPress news, it was then syndicated to each and every WordPress admin dashboard in the world.

    Now, the WordPress software is garbage - not as much as it used to be, but still terrible - but until recently they weren't notably a garbage organisation.

    Now they've fixed that, and there are growing calls for Mullenweg to be tossed overboard before he sinks the ship.



Tech News



Disclaimer: Fire the Ripper Ray!

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Friday, September 27

Geek

Daily News Stuff 27 September 2024

Ghost Of Ghost Edition

Top Story



Tech News


Disclaimer: "; DROP TABLE user;

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Thursday, September 26

Geek

Daily News Stuff 26 September 2024

Island Economy Edition

Top Story

Tech News 

  • Facebooks current smart glasses have everything you might want in a pair of smart glasses, except a display.  The company's new glasses codenamed Orion, do.  (The Verge)

    They're rather chunkier than the current model, but they're still at the prototype stage, and they look like you're wearing ugly glasses rather your head being eaten by a robot crab.


  • Samsung's new 990 Evo Plus SSDs are 45% faster than the existing 990 Evo models.  (Tom's Hardware)

    Because the existing models were slow.  "Only" 5GB per second.


  • Intel's Lunar Lake is here and it's not terrible.  (Ars Technica)

    Battery life is solid, and performance is not terrible.  It is just an eight-core chip though, and on heavy workloads like video editing and 3d rendering AMD's current twelve-core chips leave it in the dust, completing tasks around 60% faster.


  • Speaking of AMD the company's 9900X3D desktop chip is expected next month.  (Tom's Hardware)

    That's a pretty fast follow-up to the launch of the mainstream versions of Zen 5, but sales of those have been slow.  They're not bad chips, but AMD is competing with itself as well as Intel.

    An eight core 9700X is the same price as the previous generation's twelve core 7900X, while being significantly slower.


Disclaimer: May her rest be long and placid, she drank fluoroantimonic acid.

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Wednesday, September 25

Geek

Daily News Stuff 25 September 2024

Launchtime Doubly So Edition

Top Story

Tech News

Disclaimer: I for one welcome our new radioactive AI overlords.

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Geek

Woof

Had a data error on one of the SSDs (non-redundant) on this server, causing ZFS to freak out and take everything offline.

Including all local snapshots.

At least the operating system is on a different drive, so the server kept running and I could just log right in and fix it.

I'm moving everything over to the new servers now before this one gives me another heart attack.  Those don't have redundant SSDs either, but there are two servers plus a separate backup server on a 10Gb VLAN.

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Tuesday, September 24

Geek

Daily News Stuff 24 September 2024

Flu-Ridden Cow Leavings Edition

Top Story

  • AI superintelligence will be here in 20 years says Sam Altman who would never ever lie about such a thing.  (Ars Technica)
    "It is possible that we will have superintelligence in a few thousand days (!); it may take longer, but I’m confident we’ll get there," he wrote.
    Wanna bet, Sam?
    It's easy to criticize Altman's vagueness here; no one can truly predict the future, but Altman, as CEO of OpenAI, is likely privy to AI research techniques coming down the pipeline that aren't broadly known to the public.
    No.  He's not.
    So even when couched with a broad time frame, the claim comes from a noteworthy source in the AI field-albeit one who is heavily invested in making sure that AI progress does not stall.
    No.  It doesn't.
    Elsewhere in the essay, Altman frames our present era as the dawn of "The Intelligence Age," the next transformative technology era in human history, following the Stone Age, Agricultural Age, and Industrial Age. He credits the success of deep learning algorithms as the catalyst for this new era, stating simply: "How did we get to the doorstep of the next leap in prosperity? In three words: deep learning worked."
    The problem with that is that "deep learning" hasn't worked, and can't.  There's no point making ever larger and more expensive models - if there ever was - because we've run out of data to feed them.
    Not everyone shares Altman's optimism and enthusiasm. Computer scientist and frequent AI critic Grady Booch quoted Altman's "few thousand days" prediction and wrote on X, "I am so freaking tired of all the AI hype: it has no basis in reality and serves only to inflate valuations, inflame the public, garnet [sic] headlines, and distract from the real work going on in computing."
    Yes.


Tech News

  • Redis users are considering jumping ship.  (The Register)

    Redis used to be open source.  Now it isn't.

    Which is a problem for Redis.


  • Because now Valkey exists.  (Valkey)

    It only exists because Redis used to be open source, but Redis did use to be open source.

    Meaning that Valkey could take the last open source version of Redis, and create its own version.

    And then add features that Redis never had (like multi-threading) and then ship it as open source.

    The only thing Valkey can't do is stop being open source, which is a feature rather than a bug.


  • The Arc browser: Why you need a better browser than Chrome.  (The Verge)

    Chrome used to be the best.  Now it's...  Meh.

    Arc is designed to be an operating system for web applications.  Should you try it?
    So, the origin of The Browser Company is I was a political appointee in the Obama White House and after the 2016 election, I was personally devastated by the result. I felt like technology and the technology industry had an impact on the things I didn’t like, and I was very motivated to try to do something about it.
    No.


  • Intel's Razer Lake CPUs will follow after Nova Lake now that the Arrow Lake Refresh has been cancelled.  (Tom's Hardware)

    Look, I follow this stuff every single day, and if you told me that Veronica Lake was now set to follow Swan Lake because Rose Madder Lake had been cancelled I would have no idea whether that was real or not.


Disclaimer: Oh you'll take the high lake and I'll take the low lake...

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