• In a speech at the National Counterterrorism Center, President Joe Biden named as America's greatest threats hackers from Russia and China and anyone who criticises the Democrats.  (Bleeping Computer)

  He named Russia and China as the USA's partners and "possibly mortal competitors down the road," saying that working together on existential threats such as climate change should prevent the US from keeping a "watchful eye on what the ultimate objective of the other team is."

  That makes no sense, but I'm not sure if it's Biden or the article who is confused there.

  "I think we also need to take on the rampant disinformation that is making it harder and harder for people to access — assess the facts, be able to make decisions," Biden added.  "The disinformation is coming from inside the House."

  
  
  
  
• A new US security memorandum bolsters critical infrastructure cybersecurity.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  A new Pixy memorandum bolsters critical Pixy is a 25 year old 6'4" blond billionaire security.
  
  
  

• Time to cut the cord?  (Six Colors)
  
  Already done.  I canceled all my streaming subscriptions and now throw my money at the girls from Hololive (and sometimes Nijisanji).  Many of the individual talents put out more and better content than the entirety of Hollywood.
  
  
  
• Google will require workers to be vaccinated.  (Thurrott.com)
  
  This is the thirty-seven thousand nine hundred and sixteenth worst thing they have ever done.
  
  
  
• Facebook too.  (Reuters)
  
  Why does anyone need to go into the office at Facebook?  I mean, people managing the physical server farms, yes.  Everyone else?  No.
  
  
  
• AMD's revenues are - again - double those of the same quarter last year.  (Thurrott.com)
  
  And that's with supply constraints on pretty much everything they make.  Their CPUs at least seem to be consistently in stock now.
  
  
  
• Anyone pushing back against right-to-repair is a lying sack of shit.  (ZDNet)
  
  And should be launched from a catapult directly into the Sun.
  
  
  
• Apple is closing down internal Slack channels where employees have been discussing unauthorised topics.  (Cult of Mac)
  
  Unionise.
  
  
  

Posted by: PatBuckman at Friday, July 30 2021 03:14 AM (DHVaH)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, July 30 2021 10:02 AM (PiXy!)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

• At my day job, the first of our big product launches for the quarter went live at 1AM - the joys of living in Australia but having customers all over the world.
  
  The phone didn't ring.
  
  I went to be fully expected to get maybe two hours sleep, but I slept right through until 7AM when the dickhead next door with the detuned sports car who is probably breaking several emissions laws leaves for work.  Even in lockdown.
  
  Anyway, the site did not melt down in the face of a massive marketing campaign, though we did shake loose a couple of bugs and a slow query on a secondary database.
  
  
  
• Thought I was going to get away with just a ten-hour day today, but no.
  
  
  
• Having ruined everything else, the commies are coming for gaming PCs.  (Hot Hardware)
  
  If you live in a third-world shithole like California, Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Vermont, or Washington, you are no longer permitted - get that, permitted - to buy a high-end gaming system.  Because fuck you, that's why.
  
  
  
• Closer to home:
  
  
  
  
  Go jump in a volcano you fascist fucks.
  
  Yeah, this is one of those bullshit proposals that pops up all the time, with slim to no chance of ever making it to a bill, much less becoming the law, but still, volcano.

• Microsoft says there's no getting around Windows 11's absurd minimum requirements.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Because fuck you, that's why.
  
  They've also said they'll be providing Windows 11 licenses without those requirements to certain hardware makers, so they're full of shit on this one.
  
  
  
• AMD is shipping is Instinct  MI200 compute cards.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  What they haven't shipped yet is a spec sheet, but the MI200 is believed to be as much as three times as fast as their current top of the line GPU, the RX 6900 XT - and has as much as 128GB of on-board RAM.
  
  
  
• Kioxia - formerly Toshiba's flash memory division - has demonstrated six and eight-level flash cells.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  The six-level cell can retain data for almost two hours when bathed in liquid nitrogen, so this one is not quite ready for production.
  
  
  
• Apache Cassandra 4.0 is out.  (Phoronix)
  
  And so is MongoDB 5.0.  Neither release seems to be overly burdened with shiny new features.
  
  
  
• Twitter plans to let you log in with your Google account, if you are crazy enough to try it.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  So you can lose access to Twitter, YouTube, and email the next time you mildly insult some left-wing cretin.
  
  
  
• 10% of Apple's revenue comes from the Mac division.  (Six Colors)
  
  And 71% from shiny toys.  Small wonder they're focusing on turning the Mac into another shiny toy.
  
  
  
• The EFF has sued to Post Office to force them to disclose details of their program to spy on social media.  (EFF)
  
  Good.  I've donated to the EFF before, and will do so again.

Posted by: normal at Thursday, July 29 2021 01:34 AM (LADmw)

Posted by: J Greely at Friday, July 30 2021 03:55 AM (ZlYZd)

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, July 30 2021 06:01 AM (eqaFC)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

• If you can't beat 'em, rename 'em: Intel's second-generation 10nm process is now simply called Intel 7.  (AnandTech)
  
  That's not entirely unreasonable; Intel's 10nm is closer in density to TSMC's 7nm than to their 10nm.  Still, TSMC is in mass production on 5nm right now and preparing to roll out 4nm.
  
  Intel 7 will be followed next year by Intel 4 - their 7nm process - and then by Intel 3 in 2023 and Intel 20A the year after that.
  
  20A is the new 5nm.
  
  
  
• The integrated graphics in Meteor Lake, the followup to Raptor Lake, which will follow Alder Lake, will have 192 EUs.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  And will likely require yet another new motherboard.
  
  Double the number of graphic cores might keep it from losing too horribly compared to AMD's Raphael, which will arrive rather sooner.
  
  
  
• Meanwhile AMD's 7900 XT could have three times the shaders of the current top-of-the-line 6900 XT.  (WCFTech)
  
  Using two chiplets to do so.  Even at 5nm that would be unfeasibly large for a single chip.  And between 256MB and 512MB of cache - probably using the die stacking they recently showed off on Ryzen CPUs.
  
  
  
• Executives of the Tether stablecoin are reportedly being investigated for possible bank fraud charges.  (Bloomberg)
  
  Just throw them all in a volcano.  Faster, less painful, better for the environment.
  
  
  
• The EU is seeking to sue Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Greece, Spain, Finland, France, Croatia, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Latvia, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Sweden, Slovenia and Slovakia over failure to implement incomprehensibly tortuous new copyright laws.  (TorrentFreak)
  
  Why yes, that would be every single member state other than Germany.

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, July 27 2021 11:49 PM (eqaFC)

Posted by: Gmac at Wednesday, July 28 2021 12:40 AM (qZdIZ)

Posted by: Rick C at Wednesday, July 28 2021 01:26 AM (eqaFC)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, July 28 2021 08:56 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Rick C at Wednesday, July 28 2021 11:20 AM (eqaFC)

Posted by: cxt217 at Wednesday, July 28 2021 12:34 PM (MuaLM)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

• Whose stupid plan was this anyway?
  
  
  
• Never look a duck bearing lemons in the mouth.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  The duck is probably mining Monero, or something equally unwelcome.
  
  
  
• There will be a new iMac next year.  Probably.  (WCCFTech)
  
  In the meantime if you want a Mac with more than 16GB of RAM, your only option is to buy a system that is explicitly marked for the dustbin.
  
  
  
• Of the top 30 Google hits on registering a user in PHP 16 contained SQL vulnerabilities.  (Warit Schlager)
  
  The other 14 caught fire.
  
  
  
• If it sounds too good to be true, check your wallet.  (Daniel is a Dev)
  
  Freenom, a site that gives you free domains, is basically set up to hold users to ransom.
  
  Of course, you can just register lots of domains for free and bankrupt them.
  
  
  
• Nuclear power's reliability is dropping as extreme weather increases.  (Ars Technica)
  
  Reducing output efficiency by, um, an estimated 0.5% over 30 years.
  
  Doom.
  
  
  
• Someone - probably Russia - was looking to bribe YouTubers to spread anti-Bat-Flu-vaccine propaganda.  (BBC)
  
  Not clear exactly why.  There are enough real issues with the Bat Flu vaccines that it's unnecessary, but this sort of pointless malice is a Russian specialty.
  
  
  
• RNA demethylation can increase yields of staple crops like rice and potatoes by up to 50%.  (Nature)
  
  Club of Rome hardest hit.
  
  
  
  

Posted by: PatBuckman at Monday, July 26 2021 10:15 PM (DHVaH)

Posted by: normal at Monday, July 26 2021 11:15 PM (LADmw)

Posted by: Mumberthrax at Wednesday, July 28 2021 04:02 AM (YVq1I)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Wednesday, July 28 2021 05:16 AM (DHVaH)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

Posted by: Bathroom Renovations Sydney at Tuesday, October 17 2023 10:40 AM (WUOhQ)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

• Yesterday's post came with bonus typos thanks to lack of sleep and interruptions from work even on a Saturday afternoon.  I have spell check turned on of course, but on these posts it's a sea of red squiggles anyway so it doesn't help as much as you might expect.
  
  But I didn't have as bad a day as some poor Google engineer who pushed an update to the login routine for ChromeOS that prevented anyone from logging in.  (Ars Technica)
  
  On the downside, ChromeOS updates itself automatically, so it automatically downloaded and installed the bug and prevented you from logging in.  On the upside, ChromeOS updates itself automatically even if you can't log in so the patch will find its way to you...  Sometime in the next week. 
  
  
  
  

Tech News

• Nvidia's next generation of graphics cards will be built on TSMC's 5nm process.  (WCCFTech)
  
  The current generation - which are great cards, you just can't buy them - is built on Samsung's 8nm process, a couple of steps behind the leading edge, but what was available for mass production.  So the new cards, when they arrive, and when you are actually able to purchase them, which are not the same thing, should be a significant advance.
  
  
  
• At the other end of the graphics scale AMD's 5600G and 5700G desktop APUs are starting to show up at retail.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Official launch is still a couple of weeks out, I think.  Early August.
  
  Ryzen motherboards have HDMI and DisplayPort outputs but there's been a shortage of good processors with integrated graphics to actually drive them.
  
  
  
• China's new Loongson 3A5000 is quite competitive - for 2010.  (Phoronix)
  
  Or about one tenth the speed of a modern low-end desktop CPU.
  
  
  
• Apple fixed the WiFiDemon bug that soft-bricked iOS devices if you joined a network called .  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  And also another bug that could instantly hack your phone if you joined a network called DDDD%x%x%x%@.
  
  I seem to recall this was an episode of Doctor Who.  Ah, right, The Bells of Saint John.  That was the first time Clara survived to the end of a story.
  
  
  
• On the other side of the hilarious mess that is operating system security these days you know where you are with a PetitPotam.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  An NTML relay attack allowed hackers to compromise Windows domain controllers.
  
  No, I don't know what that means either.
  
  
  
• Apple's mantra, as always, is Fuck Developers.  (Litchie.com)
  
  iDOS - a DOS (and Windows 3.1) emulator for the iPad - has been banned because it potentially allow for very old software to be installed on an Apple device without Apple getting its 30%.
  
  
  
• Amazon wants the key to your apartment building.  (PennLive)
  
  Which they will hand to delivery drivers who are so overworked they have to pee in bottles.
  
  Nothing bad could possibly come of this.
  
  
  
• Amazon says the number of $2000 graphics cards destroyed by its new turkey-smashing simulator New World is relatively small.  (GameSpot)
  
  Oh.  Well, that's good to know.
  
  
  
• A new bullshit study of an old bullshit study that predicted that everyone was going to die has predicted that everyone is going to die.  (LiveScience)
  
  Fifty years on the infamous Limits to Growth is back and we're double-doomed this time unless we all eat bugs and live in pods.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Sunday, July 25 2021 11:02 PM (5iiQK)

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, July 26 2021 03:48 AM (eqaFC)

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, July 26 2021 04:07 AM (eqaFC)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

• Deploying a new blockchain - I hate those things - for an urgent project.  Everything goes swimmingly in test.  It's complicated, but doesn't require an entire new programming language the way Ethereum does.
  
  Switch over to production.  Discover production network is significantly slower than test and the timeout is hard-coded in the API library, so ever transaction fails.
  
  Hack a sensible timeout into the library.
  
  Now only 25% of transactions fail.  We issue them and they disappear without trace.
  
  Contact the blockchain developers directly.
  
  "Yeah, 25% sounds about right."
  
  Never mind the commies, we need to throw the blockchain people into a volcano.
  
  
  
• Get an urgent ticket from hosting provider at 4AM.  I missed the previous ticket because it arrived two days ago - also at 4AM - when I got to sleep at 3AM, and by the time I woke up I had fifty other emails to go through.
  
  Report that a domain is hosting malware.  Ask for details.
  
  Get back a link with - literally - 77 virus checkers reporting it clean and one reporting a problem.  No information at all as to what the problem is, or why one positive outweighs 77 negatives.
  
  
  
• If Amazon's game New World killed your EVGA RTX 3090, it will be replaced under warranty immediately and without question.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Problems with the game have now been reported on multiple cards from both Nvidia and AMD, though, so it might be safest just to play Minecraft until this all blows over.
  
  

• A 14 core Alder Lake (Intel's upcoming 12th gen chip) mobile CPU is slower than a current 8 core AMD 5800H.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  On the other hand a 16 core desktop Alder Lake is reportedly faster than a 16 core Ryzen 5950X.  (Tech Radar)
  
  Something is sus here.
  
  
  
• Crappy GPUs assemble!  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  When good cards are overpriced or unavailable, which is the least crappy of the crappy alternatives?  Intel's DG1 is likely a non-starter anyway since it's an OEM cart that won't run on most motherboards.  It can outperform Nvidia's bottom-of-the-barrel GTX 1030 on some games, though.  It's not complete garbage.
  
  
  
• The Radeon 6600 XT ain't gonna be cheap.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Expected retail pricing is close to recommended pricing for the much faster 6800 XT - which has 72 cores vs 32 on this new card.  You can't get for the 6800 XT for anything like recommended price, so this just reminds us how screwed up the market still is.
  
  
  
• The Framework laptop is now shipping.  (Frame.Work)
  
  This is the one with four tiny swappable I/O modules.  If you want a laptop with four HDMI ports, you can get it.  The modules start at $9 for USB so it's cheap to get extras if you want to swap it around.
  
  It doesn't currently come with the Four Essential Keys, but the keyboard is designed to be replaceable, so that could change.
  
  
  
• If you're a law-abiding citizen in a country where the government isnotlaw abiding and also hates your guts you have nothing to worry about. (Apple Inside)
  
  Fuck you, asshole.
  
  
  
• Eric Schmidt - Google's former token adult - says the US shouldn't break up the fascist Big Tech companies because that would weaken the US against fascist China.*  (Financial Times)
  
  He doesn't seem to have considered to option of not being fascist.
  
  * You can see on a chart the exact year when China switched from communism to fascism.  The famines stopped but the oppression kept right on going.
  
  
  
• 2% of Twitter users are deluded enough to think it's worth using two-factor authentication to protect their nonsense.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Actually, if you use Twitter for OAuth to sign into other sites, it definitely is worth enabling 2FA.  But given that Twitter bans users without review or recourse you might want to rethink that.
  
  
  
• Journalists for Censorship strike again.  This fucker got suspended from Facebook for what looked to the low-IQ crowd like a death threat as opposed to a quote from a terrible movie.  (ZDNet)
  
  Rather than learning the lesson that censorship is bad, we wants everyone he disagrees with censored.  Just not him.  Because he's the good guy here.
  
  
  
• The Jehovah's Witness's attempt to sue a stop-motion Lego animation YouTube channel out of existence has gotten stuck.  (TorrentFreak)
  
  They don't know who runs the channel and the court is uninclined to assist them.  Google has - quite correctly refused to hand over the user's personal information without a court order.

O Fuck Canada Video of the Day

That Ryzen Alienware R10?  Yeah, Nah Video of the Day

Posted by: Rick C at Sunday, July 25 2021 03:01 AM (eqaFC)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

Top Story

Tech News

• Global Foundries is doubling the capacity of its Fab 8 facility in upstate New York.  (AnandTech)
  
  And also building additional fab nearby.
  
  Global Foundries doesn't currently have a leading-edge process node - they're still at 12nm - but with all capacity booked out worldwide it's a good time to expand.
  
  
  
• The One Plus Nord 2 comes with a Dimensity 1200.  (AnandTech)
  
  That's one step behind current flagship phones, at 400 Euros.  I'm not sure if these models make it to the real world.
  
  
  
• The new Dell XPS 17 is a great system with a crappy keyboard.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Lot of that going around.  HP gets it right.
  
  
  
• The Washington Post accidentally published worthwhile material today.  (Motherboard)
  
  Long-defunct ad and video site Vid.me let its domain expire and it gone snapped up by a porn network.  And so broken embeds in old articles suddenly started working again - with brand new content.
  
  
  
• If you got hit with the Kaseya ransomware attack, you can now unlock your stuff for free.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Of course, you'd have been offline for three weeks by this point, which would have been awkward.
  
  
  

Not At All Tech News

• HoloEN defeated the Ender Dragon today.  Due to equipment mixups during the battle they ended up beating it to death with random bits of equipment - a bow, used as a melee weapon, a shovel, I think, and a bucket.
  
  But it worked.
  
  Update: Linked to an artist's impression.  Calli was indeed beating the Ender Dragon over the head with a shovel.
  
  
  
  They did some prep work last stream, but from starting the hunt for the Stronghold to the victory photo positioned around the dragon's egg was under two hours.
  
  Since that was the goal they'd set for themselves, they'll now be installing a mod to link their server to the JP server.  Let chaos reign.
  
  
  
• Vtubers might look like anime girls but they're real people.  Without going into details, I hope things improve soon for Iofi, Pomu, and Vyolfers, who are each going through a personal rough patch.
  
  
  
• Fuck off Gareth.  (news.com.au)
  
  And when you get there, fuck off from there too.
  
  The lockdown is not working, so the solution is more lockdown.
  
  
  

Miscellaneous Videos of the Day

• Don't use biometric ID if you live somewhere with 4th and 5th Amendment protections.
  
  
  
  For the rest of us, it might not matter a whole lot.
  
  
  
• Sounds like a 70s comedy: 18 conspirators, at least 12 of whom were FBI informants.
  
  
  
  
  
• He's running.  And his little dog too.
  
  
  
  
  
• CarAMElldansen.
  
  
  
  HoloEN doesn't have 3D models yet, so she made her own.
  
  
  
• GPU prices are...  A little less fucked.
  
  
  
  Down by about 5%, which is at least movement in the right direction.
  
  
  
• New York, New York, it's a wonderful town.  The mayor is a commie and the governor's a clown.
  
  
  
  On the other hand, they're not confined to their own homes.

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, July 23 2021 11:03 PM (eqaFC)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Saturday, July 24 2021 12:23 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Saturday, July 24 2021 12:34 AM (DHVaH)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Saturday, July 24 2021 12:36 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: normal at Saturday, July 24 2021 01:33 AM (LADmw)

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, July 24 2021 01:50 AM (eqaFC)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Saturday, July 24 2021 02:02 AM (PiXy!)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

• Short one today because my yesterday sucked.  Twelve hours at work followed by another six fixing my own servers.
  
  
  
• Razer's new Blade 14 has a top-of-the-line Ryzen CPU, an RTX 3070, and a terrible keyboard.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Not just my opinion on the keyboard, though it is also my opinion on the keyboard.
  
  
  
• Intel's new Beast Canyon NUC stretches the definition of NUC.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  What the hell is the definition of NUC, anyway?  I know what the letters stand for, but what is it supposed to mean?
  
  
  
• A 16 year old bug in HP's printer drivers could threaten 2400 million computers.  (Threatpost)
  
  That's 300 million real computers but with variable intensities.  Printer joke.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, July 22 2021 07:45 PM (PiXy!)

Posted by: normal at Thursday, July 22 2021 10:08 PM (obo9H)

Hide Comments | Add Comment