• You won't believe what kids are into these days.
  
  
  
  
  Oh, they deleted it.
  
  This being The New Yorker, they do their best to blame anime on Donald Trump.

• The ultimate monitor?  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Maybe.  The Asus ROG Swift PG32UQX is a 32" 4K 144Hz monitor with G-Sync, 10 bit DCI-P3 color, HDR10, and an eye-searing maximum brightness of 1400 nits.
  
  Price is a wallet-searing $3000.
  
  Which is a lot for a 4K screen; you can get a decent IPS screen for $250.  Or for $4000 you can upgrade to 8K.  But a single 8K screen requires all the outputs of a high-end graphics card working together, and a low-end...  Wait.  This one does 144Hz and has 90% DCI-P3 coverage.
  
  That's not bad for $250.
  
  
  
• Intel's high-end multi-chip Xe graphics cards will potentially match Nvidia and AMD's middle-end cards.  (WCCFTech)
  
  If it eases the ongoing shortage at all, I'll take it.
  
  
  
• I'm going to sing the doom song now.  (New Atlas)
  
  2014 UN271 is an Oort Cloud object that is currently approaching perihelion.  It's closest approach will be around 11 AU - about a billion miles from the Sun - but its orbit takes it out as far as 60,000 AU - almost a light year.
  
  It's not small either; observations indicate it's around 100 miles in diameter.
  
  
  
• The three most important programming languages are Julia, Crystal, and Nim.  (Matecdev)
  
  Julia for scientific computing - it's the new Fortran, only even faster and much easier to use.  

Posted by: PatBuckman at Monday, June 21 2021 10:56 PM (6y7dz)

Posted by: normal at Monday, June 21 2021 10:58 PM (LADmw)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Tuesday, June 22 2021 12:12 AM (6y7dz)

Posted by: normal at Tuesday, June 22 2021 03:24 AM (LADmw)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Tuesday, June 22 2021 11:10 AM (6y7dz)

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• DDR5 RAM is here.  (WCCFTech)
  
  These are the first modules that actually have a price - $400 for 32GB - and a shipping date - end of this month.
  
  They're 4800MHz modules, and that price matches existing overclocked DDR4-4800 modules.  (That listing is for 16GB; I couldn't find any 32GB kits.)  It's about double the price of mainstream DDR4-3200 though.
  
  Also, these modules have a 40 cycle latency which is definitely not fast.  I'm not sure exactly how that relates to DDR4 latencies though.
  
  Also also, if you follow that link, don't read the comments.  WCCFTech is great for leaks and the very latest hardware news, but the comments are full of bored 14-year-olds.
  
  
  

• Qnap has a dual-port 100GbE network adaptor for their high-end NAS offerings.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Their high end NAS offerings are very high end, with AMD Epyc server CPUs, up to 256GB of RAM, and 24 NVMe SSDs.  That's enough I/O to flood even dual-port 100GbE.  But dual-port 100GbE uses most of the bandwidth of a PCIe 4.0 x16 slot, so right now it's the fastest practical server interface.
  
  There are faster versions of Ethernet - 200 and 400 gigabit, with 800 gigabit announced but not shipping yet - but those are reserved to high end switches with six digit price tags.  A 100GbE card can be found for a few hundred dollars.
  
  
  
• Some bright sparks have got the idea of pretending to be Russian hackers in order to shake down companies.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  I think mob hits should not only be legal under these circumstances, but required by law.
  
  
  
• North Korea hacked South Korea's nuclear research agency.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Not Russia for once.
  
  The same North Korean hacking organisation - which would be under government control because internet access in North Korea is under government control - also hacked several other South Korean government agencies and senior officials.
  
  
  
• Google is reportedly force-installing a Bat Plague tracking app on the devices of Massachusetts residents.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Without notification, let alone consent.
  
  The lawyers are going to make out like bandits on the class action suit for this one.
  
  
  
• %p%s%s%s%s%n  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  If you join a WiFi hotspot with that SSID from an iPhone, your WiFi will stop working entirely.  Turning your WiFi off and on again won't help, and nor will rebooting your device.
  
  Only option is to go into Settings and reset all the network settings, and then have the fun of entering all your details again.
  
  
  
• Journalists - even tech journalists sometimes - are turning mental illness into performance art.  (ZDNet)
  
  Don't bother with the article; it blames Windows 11 on Donald Trump.
  
  
  
• Speaking of Windows 11, if you wanted to get the leaked preview it's being taken down.  (TorrentFreak)
  
  Unsurprising, and you probably didn't wat it anyway.
  
  Microsoft has left reviews alone as long as they didn't link directly to download sites.  In the US they wouldn't have a legal basis for a takedown anyway.  Not that this tends to stop the DMCA notices.

Not Exactly Tech News

• There's a weird ripple effect going on in Hololive.  Not a bad thing, but interesting.
  
  Coco recently announced her retirement to pursue her indie career.  If you know where to find her, she has another YouTube channel with half a million subscribers.
  
  Anyway, the usual suspects from China hate Coco because she referred to Taiwan as a country live on stream and then refused to back down in the face of their delusional outrage.  That debacle led to the shuttering of Hololive China, which was a troubled venture from the start because YouTube is banned in China.
  
  Anyway, in the weeks before her departure Coco is taking the opportunity to collab with as many members as possible. 
  
  The nutcases follow her to each collab stream and flood that channel with spam.
  
  The girl running that channel sets chat to members only to stop the spam.
  
  Then they get a flood of new paid members because people want to join in the chat.
  
  Right now Reine is teaching her how to swear in Indonesian.

Posted by: PatBuckman at Sunday, June 20 2021 09:28 PM (6y7dz)

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• How many inconsistent user interface designs are there in Windows 10?  (NTDev)
  
  Eight.  
  
  The oldest thing that has survived completely unchanged is the Management Console which appeared in Windows 2000, but there are elements from Windows 95 / NT 4 that are the same except for a quick coat of paint.
  
  On the other hand, MacOS has UI features that have stubbornly remained intact since 1984 when there was only one model and it had a 9" monochrome screen.

• The US Senate has proposed a 25% tax credit for US companies building silicon foundries in the US.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  They point out that most of the cost difference between US and overseas production is due to subsidies provided by other countries, and not direct costs.
  
  This is in addition to the recent $52 billion incentive program.  As I said before, while the plan isn't ideal, of all the things the Senate has done recently this is one of the least idiotic.
  
  The article notes that South Korea's government is pushing a $450 billion plan to support its own chip industry - which accounts for 15% of the country's exports.
  
  
  
• You can now get anime RAM.  (WCCFTech)
  
  It's DDR4-3600 with decent timings - CL18 - but the modules only go up to 16GB.
  
  It's also not particularly cheap, even allowing for the price increases on RAM from the lows last year.  It would be more cost effective to buy brand-name RAM with the same specs, and a sheet of printable stickers, and a printer, and stick your favourite anime characters on the heatsink yourself.
  
  
  
• Handy HTML tricks.  (Marko Denic)
  
  Many of them genuinely handy and some of them I didn't know about.
  
  
  
• How does Intel's new 32 core Ice Lake server CPU compare to AMD's Rome chip of the same size?  (Serve the Home)
  
  The parts are roughly the same price, so it's a level playing field.  Only problem is that the AMD chip beats Intel on every benchmark, by between 20 and 45%.  AMD also has a much cheaper 28 core model with less cache that would likely still beat the Intel part.
  
  
  
• Wegmans suffered a security breach due to a misconfigured server.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  The leaked data included names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, birth dates, and hashed passwords, but not - it is important to note - your mother-in-law's maiden name.
  
  
  
• Russia has banned Opera VPN and VyprVPN.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  This is a good indication that those networks are secure.  If Russia could hack them they'd have no interest in banning them.
  
  The company that is now behind Opera has engaged in some remarkably scummy practices - like offering high-interest loans in impoverished regions of Africa - so I still wouldn't trust them, but I haven't heard of any out-of-the-ordinary security issues.
  
  Russia insisted in 2019 that VPNs provide access to the government to allow the automated blocking of websites.  Kaspersky complied.  Everyone else told the Russians to pound sand.
  
  The previously banned ProtonVPN and ProtonMail.  I don't know that much about ProtonVPN, but ProtonMail has a solid track record.
  
  
  
• Meanwhile, Russia invaded Poland...  's email servers.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  That's as far as it went because right now they have no convenient Nazis to stage a joint operation.
  
  
  
• XPG is planning to launch DDR5-7400 RAM and is targeting overclocks to DDR5-12600.  (VideoCardz)
  
  DDR5 is likely to launch at around 4800MHz and go up to 8400MHz.  You can get DDR4 RAM at speeds over 4800MHz right now, but that's a big overclock and what you actually get depends on your CPU and motherboard and, in a large part, your luck.
  
  
  
• Ageing process is unstoppable, finds scientifically illiterate journalist.  (The Guardian)
  
  To be fair, there was a scientist only too eager to provide a money quote to support the headline.  Only problem is the study is online and that's not what it says at all.  (Nature)
  
  What the study does show is that there is no significant variation in ageing in healthy individuals within any particular primate species, once other variables are controlled.  Increases in human life expectancy are due to drastically reduced early death rates and to better overall health, and not to reduced aging rates.
  
  Which doesn't imply that we can't change ageing rates.  It just means that we don't have a convenient natural model.  There's no rare tribe of monkeys that lives for 300 years.
  
  But we - meaning not the idiots who write for The Guardian - knew that already.
  
  
  
• Oregon has legalised human composting.  (Motherboard)
  
  A good friend will help you move, but a true friend will help you move a body.  Across state lines.

Not At All Tech News

• Auditions are open for a second wave of Nijisanji EN.  (Reddit)
  
  I mostly watch Hololive, but I also mostly watch Minecraft, and while Hololive streamed 25 hours of Minecraft in the last day, it was all in Japanese.
  
  The Nijisanji EN girls - who debuted this time last month - have been playing a lot of Minecraft since it's an easy and popular game and doesn't require special permission to stream, so I checked them out and have come back to report that we are all Pomu.
  
  
  
  Anyway, they're looking for four new female streamers - they have four characters designed, though they also have the option to audition as an entirely new character - and for an unspecified number guys as well.  That will mean a big and rapid expansion for Nijisanji EN, which currently has just 3 members.
  
  Nijisanji Indonesia has 17 members, and Korea 16, so they're not shy about adding lots of new channels quickly.
  
  Work and life and the world generally has been pretty blah the past year or so, and vtubers have helped keep me sane.  While I like Hololive they do have an enormous following and it's basically a crapshoot whether they see your messages or not.  When things get crazy $100 superchats zoom by and disappear.  So it's nice sometimes to check out a stream with 30 viewers online rather than 30,000.
  
  
  
  
  
• In indie Vtuber news, Mooyü from what I call VMN* had her own debut today.
  
  
  
  I almost missed this one but was able to catch it in time and suggest that her fanbase should be called mootuals.
  
  * VMN is the Vyomoonym Media Network - they don't call it that, but I do - of Vyolfers, Mooyü, and Nymroot, three English-language streamers from Indonesia.  Vyolfers caught attention early on because she did artwork for every single member of Hololive - one a day for nearly two months.  Mooyü and Nymroot are artist friends of hers who have done Minecraft collabs with her and are now launching their own channels.

Posted by: Jay at Saturday, June 19 2021 10:26 PM (0jVI9)

Posted by: normal at Sunday, June 20 2021 12:12 AM (obo9H)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, June 20 2021 12:03 PM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, June 21 2021 11:24 PM (eqaFC)

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• If you're one of the 3.3 million people whose data was potentially exposed in the Audi / Volkswagen breach you can stop worrying and start panicking.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Your data is now for sale at disreputable online stores everywhere.

• Chrome has fixed its seventh actively-exploited vulnerability for the year.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  That's not actually that bad given the complexity of modern browsers.  The attack surface is huge.  And I'm not sure where to start on paring back that complexity, so I can't complain too much.
  
  
  
• Carnival was hit with multiple ransomware attacks.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  One last August that we knew about, and another in December that they are still cleaning up.
  
  
  
• The pandemic panic didn't help.  (ZDNet)
  
  Moving millions of workers out of the office and into their own homes essentially overnight left vulnerable access gateways and cloud servers strewn all over the landscape.  As in, hundreds of thousands of insecure corporate servers connected to the internet.
  
  
  
• A Ukrainian ransomware gang has actually been arrested.  (NBC)
  
  Unlike the Russian ones, who just seem to quietly cease activities with no decline in the overall rate of attacks.
  
  
  
• AMD has a new high-end liquid cooled version of their Radeon 6900 XT.  (WCCFTech)
  
  It's only a minor bump over the specs of the existing cards, but water cooling is nice to have if you need a computer that is both fast and quiet.
  
  
  
• You can't buy it.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Because of course you can't.

• Declining cryptocurrency prices mean that GPU and storage prices are also dropping.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  There's still a component shortage so don't expect magic, but things are improving.  I just took a quick look around and the Nvidia 3070 Ti is in stock and cheaper than the base 3070 was two weeks ago.  The Nvidia markup is down to around 100% over retail, with AMD between 40 and 50%.
  
  

• Don't plug your shiny new Western Digital SN850 into your shiny new X570 chipset.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  It won't explode.  It will run 40% slower than it should.
  
  It's not a problem with AMD X570 motherboards per se; plug it into the first M.2 slot, the one connected directly to the CPU, and it will work great.  There's something odd going on here because the X570 chip is the exact same chip used to provide I/O on the CPU itself.  And I haven't heard of this affecting any other SSD.
  
  
  
• Meanwhile Z690 motherboards for Intel's 12th generation chips are expected in Q4.  (WCCFTech)
  
  There may even be CPUs to go in them.
  
  AMD's socket AM5 motherboards are expected in Q2 next year.  Zen 4 won't arrive until late next year, so the first chip destined for AM5 is likely the new generation Raphael - I think it's Raphael - APU with updated integrated graphics.
  
  
  
• Tim Cook has claimed that giving users freedom to install apps themselves would weaken the company's monopoly position.  (ZDNet)
  
  Well, yes, Tim.  That's the point.
  
  
  
• Karl Schroeder, call your agent.  It's time for a sequel to Permanence.
  
  Facebook will be embedding ads into Oculus Quest VR apps.  (The Verge)
  
  In the world of Permanence, these ads are omnipresent, and ad blockers are illegal.  It's good to see Big Tech experimenting with new dystopias, though, beyond the big three of 1984, Brave New World, and Fahrenheit 451.
  
  
  
• President* Biden has said that maybe some Russian attacks on America should be off-limits.  (Reuters)
  
  Maybe, Joe.  Maybe.
  
  
  
• Amazon has blamed everyone and everything except its own shitty site for the plague of fake reviews found therein.  (The Guardian)
  
  They didn't even address the plague of fake products.
  
  
  
• The Alienware M17 R4 has the Four Essential Keys.  (Hot Hardware)
  
  And an option for a 4K display covering 100% of Adobe RGB, plus an 8 core Intel CPU, Nvidia RTX 3070 graphics, NVME RAID, wired 2.5Gbps Ethernet, Thunderbolt 3, and 32GB of RAM.
  
  Price is...  Well, it ain't cheap.  Comes to A$6000 when configured with all those options, 4TB of RAID-0 SSD and a 3 year on-site repair contract.  But that's not actually insane compared with other high-end laptops, or even desktops right now.
  
  
  
• Server monitoring platform Datadog has an agent you can download and install that will forward system stats to their collector so it can plot neat graphs for you.
  
  It's 731MB.  It seems to include a complete Python install, and possibly a complete Linux install.
  
  I happen to know how big something like this should be because I've written one myself, and it's 324kB.  The problem is not that the Datadog agent is slow, or that it uses 20 cents worth of space on my enterprise SSDs.  It's that it is literally impossible to audit something like that, and you're expected to install it on every single server.
  
  The code I wrote is 141 lines.  Any competent programmer could read through it even without knowing the language I chose (Crystal).

Posted by: normal at Thursday, June 17 2021 10:59 PM (LADmw)

Posted by: cxt217 at Friday, June 18 2021 10:25 AM (4i7w0)

Posted by: QC at Friday, June 18 2021 02:14 PM (8nxoP)

Posted by: mikeski at Friday, June 18 2021 04:12 PM (P1f+c)

Posted by: normal at Saturday, June 19 2021 10:58 AM (obo9H)

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, June 19 2021 11:32 AM (eqaFC)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Saturday, June 19 2021 01:35 PM (PiXy!)

Posted by: normal at Sunday, June 20 2021 12:09 AM (obo9H)

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• Windows 11 has leaked.  (Thurrott.com)
  
  Microsoft has adopted a MacOS style application dock but kept the Start button, which makes no sense.  Fortunately you can change a setting - somewhere - to make it go back to normal.
  
  More screenshots.
  
  It does look pretty, for the most part.  You will be shocked to learn that the computer management interface still hasn't been updated from NT 4.
  
  Essentially the Windows 10 UI has been refreshed but all the older stuff - Windows 8 holdovers, Windows 7, 2000, NT, whatever - hasn't changed at all.
  
  That said, this is a leaked preview build and not the final product, so maybe something will be fixed before release.

Tech News

• Amazon has joined Microsoft in blocking Google's FLoC on its servers.  (DigiDay)
  
  Looks like Google is going it alone on this one.  Not only have the Big Tech companies assured they have no friends in the outside world, they also hate each other.
  
  
  
• The US has warned the EU over their increasingly sensible reluctance to trust the lunatics running American Big Tech.  (Ars Technica)
  
  The EU has assigned the warning to the circular file, and is looking at their next round of billion-dollar fines for whatever they can think of. Fortunately, Big Tech is very helpful when it comes to doing stupid shit on a massive scale.
  
  
  
• RAID expansion is coming to ZFS.  (Ars Technica)
  
  ZFS is little short of miraculous compared to other filesystems, but RAID expansion has been a notable missing feature for fifteen years.
  
  And likely will remain missing for another year, because they do a lot of testing before releasing new features like this.
  
  
  
• Google is extending its craptastic phishing protection to documents.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  We use this at my day job.  The way it works is when it detects a malicious email, it will delete it from all recipient mailboxes, and then send you a notification that it's been deleted.  With no details whatsoever about the content, so you have no way of checking anything.
  
  
  
• A vulnerability in Peleton devices let hackers take complete control of....   An exercise bike.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Oh no.  Anyway...

Posted by: StargazerA5 at Thursday, June 17 2021 12:54 AM (hh530)

Posted by: normal at Thursday, June 17 2021 08:52 AM (obo9H)

Posted by: normal at Thursday, June 17 2021 09:27 AM (obo9H)

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Thursday, June 17 2021 11:21 AM (5iiQK)

Posted by: Jay at Thursday, June 17 2021 12:18 PM (0jVI9)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, June 17 2021 07:36 PM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, June 18 2021 05:07 AM (eqaFC)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, June 18 2021 09:37 AM (PiXy!)

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• Apple: You can't run any sort of dynamic code on iOS.
  Also Apple: If you don't like it, use a web app.
  Also also Apple: You can't bring your own browser to iOS.  They're all just skins over Safari.
  Also also also Apple: Safari is broken.
  
  
  
  
  You're holding it wrong.

• Razer has a new 4-port USB charger that delivers 130W from a device not much larger than the typical 20W models you get for $20 or less.  (AnandTech)
  
  This one has two major differences: It uses GaN - gallium nitride - semiconductors rather than regular silicon, and the USB ports are green.
  
  Oh, and it costs $180.
  
  
  
• They also have a new 14" AMD-based laptop.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  All models have an 8 core 5900HX, 16GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD; the choice is between a 1920x1080 or 2560x1440 screen, and Nvidia RTX 3060, 3070, or 3080 graphics.
  
  They don't have the four essential keys, though, so they're crap.
  
  
  
• US nuclear weapons contractor Sol Oriens got hit by ransomware.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  
  
• So did Fujifilm.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  
  
• So did the Teamsters, though they had the culprits whacked refused to pay.  (NBC News)
  
  
  
• The G7 quote-leaders-unquote asked that nice Mister Putin if he could please have a word with the criminal gangs that seem to operate out of his house without his permission.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Also, guys, your new National Security Advisor is a complete fucking wanker.
  
  

Posted by: PatBuckman at Tuesday, June 15 2021 10:16 PM (6y7dz)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Wednesday, June 16 2021 04:09 AM (6y7dz)

Posted by: cxt217 at Wednesday, June 16 2021 09:12 AM (4i7w0)

Posted by: normal at Wednesday, June 16 2021 10:56 AM (obo9H)

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Tech News

• Clarke's Corollary to Hanlon's Razor states that Any sufficiently profound incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.
  
  And the new owners of Freenode are acting as a test case.  (Ned Batchelder)
  
  They claim that all the missteps since the takeover are mistakes and not deliberate attacks on their own users, but in the end it doesn't matter.  If you're constantly under attack by your supposed allies, the reason why is of secondary importance.  You have to ditch them.
  
  The Free Software Foundation, Linux, GN, and Python have joined BSD and other major projects in ditching Freenode.  (FSF)
  
  Only real question is what took them so long.

• Turf invaders: Amelia Watson and Gawr Gura of Hololive did a watchalong of the Microsoft / Bethesda announcements at E3.  Well, not the whole thing, it appears that the E3 stream ran for nine hours altogether, but the major announcements from the first 90 minutes or so.
  
  
  
  E3 livestream is here.  It's age-restricted so I can't embed it - though the gremlin commentary above is not.
  
  
  Because of the risk of copyright strikes - Hololive has a lot of trouble with YouTube, from shadowbanned streams to accounts with a million subscribers being summarily deleted - they don't show any of the content.  You watch the live stream in one tab and their commentary in another.  Bit of a pain to watch later because you have to sync the streams by trial and error, but better than having your entire channel scrubbed.
  
  Or you can just watch the Hololive side and they seem to be baked.
  
  The funny thing is, a huge chunk of the audience of the E3 stream was also watching the Hololive commentary - something like 80% of the YouTube audience - and they were posting references to the commentary in the main chat.  And the girls were roasting the game announcements.
  
  
  
• Ryzen 5800X vs Intel 11700K: Battle of the 8 core mainstream CPUs.  Again.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Both are readily available now, and are pretty close on performance, but at least in Australia the 11700K is 20% cheaper.  On the other hand, it uses twice as much power, and if you need to upgrade Intel provides you with nothing where AMD has a 16 core part available today.
  
  
  
• Be careful what you wish for: You might just get it.  It's the 21st century.  Where's my flying car?  (MSN)
  
  Though with a single-seat model costing $300,000 to build and government red tape being thicker these days than molasses in Boston in January of 1919, it could well be the 22nd century before we actually see these things.
  
  
  
• There is apparently a movie called 2:22.  I've never heard of it and the IMDB ratings give me little reason to look closer.
  
  But exactly as you'd expect, automated takedown notices of pirated copies targeted every web page with the digits 222 in the URL.  (TorrentFreak)
  
  Medium articles?  Linux distros?  IRC chat logs?  Dr Phil episodes?  Japanese porn?
  
  They will put you on the list, kiddo.
  

Hamster Duality Anime Music Video of the Day

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, June 15 2021 12:50 AM (eqaFC)

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• Even the greatest of players can fumble the ball on occasion.  It's how they recover that sets them apart.
  
  Software development platform Codecov got hacked at the end of January, an event not discovered for two months, leaving their users exposed that entire time.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  The vulnerability was via a Docker configuration flaw, and the attackers modified the shell script Codecov used for uploading files to be tested.  That meant that everything in the customers' code or the test scripts used with it could be stolen by the hackers.
  
  So that one hack potentially meant that every single one of Codecov's customers also got hacked.
  
  The thing is, complete retards also fumble the ball on occasion, and it's clear now which category Codecov falls into: They replaced their shell script with a 43MB binary-compiled Node.js application using 579 third-party libraries.
  
  This is the equivalent of Ford apologising for a critical safety failure in brakes manufactured cheaply in China and replacing them with brakes made for one quarter that price in Burkina Faso using radioactive recycled hamster bedding from North Korea as lining material.
  
  Do not use Codecov.  They are morons.
  
  
  
• Audi / Volkswagen got hacked, if the term hacked is relevant when you connect a database directly to the internet.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  The hack includes loan and lease applications, which would contain all sorts of sensitive financial and identity information.
  
  They don't know how exactly many people are affected, but at least 90,000 had financial data leaked and millions more had personal data leaked.
  
  
  
• Intuit did not get hacked - they say - but they've been notifying customers of individual accounts that appeared to have been hacked after a security breach at another company.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Assume that everything you put online passes immediately into the hands of your worst enemies.
  
  
  
• McDonalds got hacked too.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Not sure how much that matters.  Who gives personal information to fast food franchises?
  
  I know, probably a hundred million people.

• Blockchain ruins everything, Part 378: The free plan at Docker Hub no longer includes Autobuild.  (Docker)
  
  Because people have found a way to write build scripts that mine cryptocurrencies.  It's astounding inefficient, but that doesn't matter because they're not paying for it.
  
  Docker has been suspending thousands of free accounts each week, and has now decided to stop playing whack-a-mole.
  
  
  
• China's ban on cryptocurrency mining is also expanding.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  China was mining about half the Bitcoin in the world, and is the home to the Chia plague.  The growing restrictions have caused the price to sink, at least temporarily.  I have no idea what will happen longer term.
  
  
  
• PLC flash is years away. thank goodness.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Flash memory comes in four densities at the moment - SLC (1 bit per cell), MLC (2 bits), TLC, the most common (3 bits), and QLC (4 bits), used in SD cards and low-end SSDs.
  
  For each additional bit they try to pack in, the circuitry needs to be twice as sensitive.  Single-bit cells have two electrical levels, two-bit cells have four, three-bit cells eight, and so on.
  
  QLC seems to be okay so far, but a major feature of newer drives is being able to switch storage blocks between SLC mode and TLC or QLC.  A drive that is mostly empty could actually be running entirely in SLC mode, and will gradually switch over - and slow down - as it fills up.
  
  PLC - 5 bits per cell, with 32 electrical levels - sounds like a bridge too far to me. The cost savings are minimal - they're already pretty small for QLC vs TLC - and the lifespan would be at best a quarter of current mainstream TLC drives.
  
  
  
• Click on this link.  (BBC)
  
  Yeah, login required.  Never mind that.
  
  See that stock photo of a programmer sitting a laptop?  Try selecting the text on the laptop screen.
  
  
  

When In Doubt Bribe the Reviewer Video of the Day

I May Have Already Used This Anime Music Video of the Day

Posted by: Rick C at Sunday, June 13 2021 05:26 PM (eqaFC)

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• The last two long weekends here marked the start and the end of the problems related to the datacenter fire, so I not only didn't get long weekends then, I didn't get weekends at all.   This time it looks like I'll at least get the normal two days off.
  
  I need to configure some new servers tomorrow, but they'll make my life a lot easier.  And make our newly hired sysadmin's life a lot easier, which will make my life even more easier.
  
  
  
• Regular updates for Windows 10 will end in 2025.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  This doesn't mean that support and bugfixes will stop then, but it does indicate that there's an entirely new version of Windows on its way.
  
  We'll see what that brings.  As long as they don't drop 32-bit application support like MacOS.  I doubt that will happen, because there's still a 32-bit version of Windows and that can still run ancient 16-bit apps.

• Intel's new 11900KB seems to be nearly as fast as the 11900K at half the power consumption.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  That would be great if you could use it in your own desktop builds.  But because this is Intel and we can't have nice things, that's not possible.  It's a surface-mount BGA package and only useful to OEMs.
  
  
  
• HBM3 pushes data clocks to 5.2GT/s.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Think of it as 5.2GHz.  Technically it's half that because all memory these days is DDR - double data rate, transferring two bits of data per clock - but it doesn't matter unless you're actually designing hardware yourself.
  
  Since the idea behind HBM - high bandwidth memory - is that it would run at relatively low clocks but use very wide buses - 1024 bits for a single chip - pushing the clock up to 5.2GHz makes it very fast indeed.
  
  GDDR6X can currently reach 19GHz, but those chips are only 32 bits wide.
  
  
  
• TSMC is looking to add a chip packaging plant to its planned expansions in Arizona.  (WCCFTech)
  
  The company has already expanded earlier expansion plans and is looking to build as many as six leading-edge fabs - chip factories - in the US, but those would produce raw silicon dies that would need to be shipped to another factory to be packaged.  On this scale adding local packaging facilities makes sense.
  
  Also, the first of the new buildings looks like a WiFi router.  I mean, you can see the ventilation slots and the RJ-45 ports and everything.
  
  
  
• BuzzFeed has won a Pulitzer Prize.  (BuzzFeed)
  
  Before you scoff - I mean, go ahead and scoff anyway, just before that - they won the prize for documenting China's genocide of the Uyghurs.  The New York Times won the same prize for covering up the Soviet genocide in Ukraine.
  
  It's progress.  It's not much progress, but its something.
  
  
  
• Hackers broke into Electronic Arts by social engineering internal tech support via their Slack channel.  (Vice)
  
  Rule One: Don't use Slack.
  Rule Two: When someone asks for a password, tell them to fill out Form 404.
  
  
  
• The Avaddon ransomware gang has called it quits and released decryption keys for their remaining victims.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  No, I don't know why.  Water getting too hot with the recent spate of high-profile hacks?  More profitable avenues to pursue?  Government funding dried up?  Don't know.
  
  
  
• The US Senate has just agreed on a $52 billion bailout for an industry currently making record profits.  (ZDNet)
  
  It's not the dumbest thing they've ever done, not even close, but the three big companies lobbying for this handout have a combined market cap over $5 trillion.
  
  
  
• Meanwhile the New York Senate has passed a right to repair bill.  (IFixit)
  
  Louis Rossman is currently in Florida, and could not be reached for - who am I kidding, here are his thoughts:
  
  
  
  Basically it looks like one step forward and then take the rest of the year off.  What a certain blogger calls failure theater.
  
  
  
• Proposed federal and state legislation would force online marketplaces like Amazon to publish direct contact information for their sellers.  (Ars Technica)
  
  Amazon hates this.  Real companies that actually get sued for selling fake products are strongly in favour.
  
  
  
• Radeon 6800 and 6800 XT cards seem to be back in stock after going missing for several weeks.  Supply is still limited, but they are there, and prices for the 6700 XT are heading back down into the troposphere with the higher-end cards trailing behind.  The 6900 XT is still about 20% higher than it was a few weeks ago, but hopefully that will correct itself soon.
  
  I might get a new PC this year after all.  I'm currently running on a Ryzen 1700 and a Radeon 580; I'm looking at a 5900X and a 6700 XT for the new build.  That would be about 2.5 times as fast.
  
  Nvidia, as yet, need not apply.  The RTX 3060 is currently priced as high as the 6700 XT despite being a much slower card.

Posted by: normal at Sunday, June 13 2021 01:13 AM (obo9H)

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