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• It is still not raining here in Sydney.  It's been three days.  Panic might set in soon, or as soon as the floodwaters recede enough that the panic shipments can get through.
  
  Meanwhile, it's the weekend and it's Question and Answer time.  Drop your vaguely tech-related questions in the comments today and I'll invent fake answers for them tomorrow.  Or maybe genuine ones.  Miracles happen.
  
  
  
• Russia continues to do what every sane country should do and has now banned Instagram.  (Bleeping Computer)

  "As you know, on March 11, Meta Platforms Inc. made an unprecedented decision by allowing the posting of information containing calls for violence against Russian citizens on its social networks Facebook and Instagram," the Russian Internet watchdog said.

  This is clearly communist propaganda and we shouldn't believe it for one minute.
  
  
  
• Facebook has temporarily allowed posts calling for violence against "Russian invaders".  (CNN)
  
  Oh.
  
  I'm not sure whose quotes those are because the claim that Russia is invading Ukraine is pretty well established.

  The social media company is also temporarily allowing some posts that call for death to Russian President Vladimir Putin or Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko in countries including Russia, Ukraine and Poland, according to internal emails to its content moderators.

  That's going to go down a treat.
  
  But dumb as this seems on the surface, down in the depths it is all much, much worse.

  "We are issuing a spirit-of-the-policy allowance to allow T1 violent speech that would otherwise be removed under the Hate Speech policy when: (a) targeting Russian soldiers, EXCEPT prisoners of war, or (b) targeting Russians where it's clear that the context is the Russian invasion of Ukraine (e.g., content mentions the invasion, self-defense, etc.)," it said in the email.

  1984 is a cookbook.

• Russian TikTok influencers are being paid to spread Kremlin propaganda.  (Vice)
  
  Our side would never do anything like that.
  
  
  
• TikTok stars receive White House briefing on Ukraine.  (Washington Post)
  
  Mostly because we're much too cheap to pay them for it.
  
  
  
• Axios is garbage.  (Axios)
  
  That's it.  That's the story.
  
  
  
• Intel has new Spectre v2 security issues.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  BIOS patches are available.  On some very specific benchmarks they can reduce performance by up to 35%, but more realistically desktop applications will run about 2% slower.  Those extreme cases are more of an issue with servers, and some companies run their servers without patches for precisely this reason.
  
  
  
• AMD meanwhile had a bug in one of its patches for Spectre v1.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  They already had a solution available - they offered three solutions to the original problem, and two of them work just fine.  If you chose the third one you just need to switch to one of the other two.
  
  
  
• If you buy a Lenovo Threadripper 5000 workstation - which is the only way to get a Threadripper 5000 - the CPU is locked to that hardware and can't be reused on a third-party motherboard.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Lenovo, stop doing this shit.
  
  AMD, stop enabling this shit.
  
  
  
• Why would you want a Threadripper anyway?  (CPU Benchmark)
  
  Apple's M1 Pro is 15% faster than the Threadripper Pro 5995WX on single-threaded tests.  But the M1 Pro has 10 cores, and the 5995WX has 64.  On multi-threaded tasks even the new 20-core M1 Ultra would be less than half the speed of the 5995WX.
  
  
  
• Intel is set to be the first CPU maker to offer 16 cores on laptops, apart from AMD, which already does.  (WCCFTech)
  
  With AMD those are 105W desktop parts configured down to 65W (which is something you can do with all of AMD's high-power parts).  That's a high-powered CPU for a laptop but not unmanageable.
  
  
  
• Speaking of AMD, there are new CPUs launching April 4.  (WCCFTech)
  
  These include the eight core 5700X and 5700, and the six core 5600 and 5500.
  
  These are all Zen 3 parts, but there's some differences.  The 5700X and 5600 are based on the desktop chips with 32MB of L3 cache, while the 5700 and 5500 use laptop dies with 16MB of L3 - and also only support PCIe 3.0.  Which might not be a problem, but it's something you should be aware of if you're thinking of buying one.
  
  
  
• Windows 11 can now be installed on Microsoft's Surface Duo.  (Liliputing)
  
  Not some Windows Phone OS, but actual Windows 11.  I don't know why you'd want to, but you can.
  
  
  
• Windows 10 can now be installed on Valve's Steam Deck.  (Thurrott.com)
  
  I can see potential reason to try this if the drivers work - currently most but not all of them do.  Windows 11 support is also on its way.
  
  
  
• Why Single Sign On sucks.  (Teleport)
  
  Because (a) it's complicated, (b) security is hard, and (c) every implementation of it is terrible.
  
  
  
• DuckDuckGo is downranking sites spreading Russian propaganda.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Okay, fine, but what exactly is Russian propaganda?  What is your algorithm for determining this?  How is this downranking applied?  Is this all transparent?  Can users disable it and compare the results?
  
  
  
• New One Piece episodes have been delayed after Japanese animation company Toei was hit by a cyberattack.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  One Piece is still going?  There's like a trillion episodes.  Just rewatch the old ones.

  Anime giant Toei suffered a weekend cyberattack causing delays in airing new episodes of popular anime series, including ONE PIECE and Delicious Party Precure.

  Okay, now you're in trouble.  Precure* is an industry in itself.  You deprive little girls of their wish-fulfilment fantasies and you're going to have millions of angry parents looking for your scalp.
  
  * Pretty Cure.  I watched the first season and it was genuinely good - it's on my recommendation list - but after that first year they focused on a younger age group and a tried-and-tested formula.  It's been a massive success and has now been running twice as long as most of its audience has been alive, but there's much less reason for an adult to watch it.
  
  
  
• Hedge Fund Fir is shorting the Tether stablecoin.  (Decrypt)
  
  I have looked at Tether before and they are seriously shady and I would not be surprised if it all suddenly implodes.  They were fined $41 million by the US CFTC last year for lying about their cash reserves.
  
  
  
• Where's the new 27" iMac?  Nowhere.  (9to5Mac)
  
  There will be a new 24" model because the current one is crippled by its limitation of 16GB of RAM - even the 2015 iMac that I have could go up to 64GB.
  
  A Mac Studio with the new 27" monitor wouldn't cost much more than I paid for my iMac back then, but is even less upgradeable.
  
  
  
• Bitcoin ATMs are illegal in the UK.  (Gizmodo)
  
  Because?  Because fuck you, that's why.
  
  
  
• Speaking of because fuck you, that's why, Twitter is making it harder to choose the standard show me the people I follow timeline.  (The Verge)
  
  Twitter is all-in on its new new Home timeline, which focuses on showing you things you actively hate.
  
  
  
  

Posted by: normal at Sunday, March 13 2022 12:51 AM (obo9H)

Posted by: Rick C at Sunday, March 13 2022 01:54 AM (Z0GF0)

Posted by: J Greely at Sunday, March 13 2022 04:53 AM (ZlYZd)

Posted by: Rick C at Sunday, March 13 2022 06:53 AM (Z0GF0)

Posted by: J Greely at Sunday, March 13 2022 10:01 AM (ZlYZd)

Posted by: Rick C at Sunday, March 13 2022 10:09 AM (Z0GF0)

Posted by: normal at Sunday, March 13 2022 12:43 PM (obo9H)

Posted by: J Greely at Sunday, March 13 2022 01:08 PM (ZlYZd)

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