• The US government is attempting to fund its infrastructure bill with crypto regulations.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Now, I'm not entirely against crypto regulations - some days I'd be delighted to see the entire industry suffer a sudden spontaneous existence failure - but just one part of the infrastructure bill will run to $1 trillion and the regulations are expected to generate $28 billion over ten years.
  
  They did the math.  And ignored the answer.
  
  
  
• In related news a study - apparently of, by, and for idiots - says more people would use crypto if they understood it.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  I understand crypto.  This claim seems...  Inaccurate.
  
  
  
• I was logged into the server right as it crashed tonight.  Load average 60 and climbing.  I've blocked some IPs - well, about a quarter of a million IPs - and I'll see if constraining the CPU on this container makes things more stable.
  
  Update: Oops.  That's not the CPU limit.  That setting breaks things.  Anyway, the application and database containers are now each limited to 3 virtual cores, out of 8 (quad core + hyperthreading).  Not sure if that will be enough, but right now it's perfectly fine.
  
  
  

Tech News

• Apple has new video cards - for use only in the Mac Pro - but faster than any individual card you can get anywhere else.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  The Radeon PRO W6800X Duo is a 400W card with two Radeon 6800 chips connected over AMD's Infinity Fabric, and 64GB of GDDR6 RAM.
  
  Perfect for playing Minecraft.  At 16K resolution on a video wall.
  
  
  
• Apple also has a new keyboard, and this one only works on M1 Arm-based Macs.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Yes, a keyboard that doesn't even work on other Mac models.
  
  
  
• Build your own CDN in 5 hours.  (Fly.io)
  
  Give or take five weeks, really.  Not a bad article overall:

  We have choices.  We could use Varnish (scripting! edge side includes! PHK blog posts!).  We could use Apache Traffic Server (being the only new team this year to use ATS!). Or we could use NGINX (we're already running it!).  The only certainty is that you'll come to hate whichever one you pick.  Try them all and pick the one you hate the least.

  It do be like that.
  
  
  
• I used to link to stories from Tech Crunch.  I stopped because of shit like this.
  
  
  
  
  Oh no, free speech!  Whatever shall we do?
  
  
  
• Note to self: Do not use DRAMless SSDs for Linux servers.  (Phoronix)
  
  I was actually planning to do just that - I'm building out a new development lab, and I'm going to deploy a small stack of Intel NUCs for cluster testing.  Plan was to use some existing WD Black SSDs and add WD Blues when those ran out.
  
  The WD Blue looks great on Windows-oriented benchmarks, but it's DRAMless.  The Samsung 980 is similar, and on the benchmarks on that page it's as much as eight times slower than the WD Black.  It's definitely not eight times cheaper.
  
  
  
• I'm getting a Dell.  I mentioned to my boss that I was going to be setting up a new home lab - the Linux cluster of NUCs and so on - and he said the company would pay for some of it.  I want to be free to do whatever the hell I want with the desktop stuff, so I suggested a laptop.
  
  Dell Inspiron 14 7000.  Core i7-1165G7, 2560x1600 screen, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD, 2GB Nvidia MX350 which isn't fast by any means but is there, 1.25kg.  Two of the Four Essential Keys at least; the others double up with F11 and F12 which I can live with.   
  
  HP have the perfect laptop with a 4K OLED display and the FEK in their proper place, but it costs a lot more than the Dell.  More than two Dells.
  
  My old Dell laptop still works - I'm typing on it right now - but it's developed some weirdness.  Sometimes the trackpad will click but not track, and sometimes it won't do anything at all.  And the battery stopped working entirely for a couple of months - and you can no longer get replacements.
  
  The new one is 80% faster single-threaded, 300% faster multi-threaded, and 40% lighter.  And presumably doesn't die the instant you unplug the charger.  Oh, and the screen on the new one covers 100% of sRGB.  Not sure what the gamut of this one is, but it's fairly muted.  Incredibly sharp - I chose it for the 4K screen - but the colours don't pop.
  
  
  
• Microsoft ran out of servers.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  They offered a free trial of Windows 365 - basically a Windows desktop running in the cloud.  Uptake was great.  Supply not so great.
  
  
  
• Microsoft accidentally leaked the latest redesign of MS Paint.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  It actually looks less crappy.
  
  
  
• Supply chain attacks are getting worse and you are not ready for them.  (ZDNet)
  
  The problem with the world today is that there are not enough grumpy old bastards saying You're not putting that shit on my servers.  Back when I was a very young Pixy they were already a dying breed, and we need to find a new supply somehow.
  
  
  
• AMD's 5600G and 5700G APUs have finally launched as retail parts.  (Hot Hardware)
  
  Can you get them anywhere?
  
  No.
  
  That might change, though.  All of AMD's other CPUs are now in stock and selling at MSRP.
  
  
  
• If you've manage to nurse your 2011-era unpatched Android device all this time, congratulations and farewell.  (Ars Technica)
  
  You'll lose access to Google services by the end of September.
  
  Later but still very old Android devices will continue to work because sometime around Android 4 they added a modular update architecture, but the very early versions can't be fixed any more.
  
  
  
• South Korea is looking to blow a hole in Apple and Google's walled payment gardens.  (Mac Rumors)
  
  Proposed legislation would force their respective app stores to accept and allow third-party payment processors.
  
  
  

Posted by: normal at Thursday, August 05 2021 12:14 AM (LADmw)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, August 05 2021 09:27 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Jay at Thursday, August 05 2021 11:55 PM (0jVI9)

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• Huawei has set up an entirely Arm-based datacenter in Moscow.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Free pen-testing with every server!

• Need a motherboard with up to 128 cores and 4TB of RAM?  Gigabyte has you covered.  (AnandTech)
  
  At just over $1000 the board itself isn't that expensive as things go.  A pair of 64 core CPUs could set you back fifteen grand, though, and 4TB of RAM gets expensive fast.
  
  
  
• Google has teased pictures of the upcoming Pixel 6.  (AnandTech)
  
  With its mismatched colours it looks like a $79 Vietnamese knock-off.
  
  
  
• Windows 10 will soon start automatically blocking PUPs.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Potentially unwanted programs - that is, programs that aren't explicitly viruses but that you don't want running.
  
  Whether this is a good or bad thing depends on how well it is implemented.  MacOS has the same feature, and when a server at Apple went down no Mac users anywhere in the world could run anything for a couple of hours.
  
  
  
• China is now hacking phone companies throughout Southeast Asia.  (ZDNet)
  
  And by "is now" we probably mean "always has been but just got caught at it".
  
  
  
• The Pentagon believes its new AI system can predict events days in advance.  (Engadget)
  
  The examples given are spectacularly unimpressive.

Posted by: PatBuckman at Tuesday, August 03 2021 08:44 PM (DHVaH)

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, August 03 2021 11:35 PM (eqaFC)

Posted by: normal at Wednesday, August 04 2021 12:02 AM (LADmw)

Posted by: normal at Wednesday, August 04 2021 12:05 AM (LADmw)

Posted by: Rick C at Wednesday, August 04 2021 12:58 AM (eqaFC)

Posted by: Mauser at Thursday, August 05 2021 02:07 PM (Ix1l6)

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• Its propaganda efforts failing, despite having all the newspapers, all the television networks, all of social media, and all of academia on its side the US federal government is now enlisting children.  (New York Times)
  
  That'll work.
  
  
  

Tech News

• Thunderbolt 5 is trinary.  (AnandTech)
  
  Rather than using just two voltage levels - 0 and 1 - it uses -1, 0, and 1, and then composes two trinary digits into three bits, with the sequence 00 being unused and treated as an error.
  
  This isn't the first time it's been done, but the more common approach these days is what is called PAM-4, using four levels which maps easily to two bits.  PCIe 6.0 - coming soon at least to the server market - uses PAM-4.
  
  Thunderbolt 5, when it ships, will deliver speeds up to 80Gbps bidirectionally.  The length and price of the cable that will support that speed is not mentioned, but you can expect it to be short and expensive.
  
  
  
• Google scrapped Google Reader, and that was bad.  (The Ringer)
  
  Now you don't need to read the article, which is insufferable.
  
  
  
• How to get admin access on any Windows machine where you have a login.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Yes, it's yet another print server problem.
  
  
  
• There are two big red things in the asteroid belt.  (New York Times)
  
  They're named 203 Pompeja and 269 Justitia, and they're not supposed to be there.  Or they're supposed to be there, but they're not supposed to be that colour.  One of those.
  
  
  
• There will be a new Mac Mini by November....  2022.  (9to5Mac)
  
  Well, that's exciting.
  
  I'm probably going to end up with some kind of Mac to do support for work.  It won't be my main system, but when there's a Mac-related issue I need a Mac so I can fix it, or at least see it.  We run into a lot of problems with Safari, but we have an entire team of UI developers so I mostly don't have to get involved.
  
  
  
• Paul Hansmeier, of the infamously infamous Prenda Law, will not be getting time off for good behaviour.  (TorrentFreak)
  
  Because, as it turns out, he has been continuing the schemes that earned him a 14 year prison sentence from prison.
  
  
  

Posted by: normal at Monday, August 02 2021 11:08 PM (LADmw)

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, August 02 2021 11:23 PM (eqaFC)

Posted by: cxt217 at Tuesday, August 03 2021 09:15 AM (MuaLM)

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, August 03 2021 11:09 AM (eqaFC)

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, August 03 2021 11:10 AM (eqaFC)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Tuesday, August 03 2021 08:14 PM (DHVaH)

Posted by: Stefanie at Thursday, November 16 2023 10:37 PM (7rliY)

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Posted by: normal at Tuesday, August 03 2021 11:31 AM (obo9H)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Tuesday, August 03 2021 08:16 PM (DHVaH)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, August 04 2021 10:34 PM (PiXy!)

Posted by: J Greely at Thursday, August 05 2021 09:36 AM (ZlYZd)

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, August 05 2021 10:48 AM (eqaFC)

Posted by: J Greely at Thursday, August 05 2021 12:54 PM (ZlYZd)

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• So I went out to the shops last night here in occupied Sydney and...  Yeah, nothing.  Number of soldiers sighted: Nil.  Number of police sighted: Nil.  Number of bored security guards: One.  Mask compliance: 50%.
  
  Which doesn't mean that I'll ever vote for these fascists again, just means they're lazy fascists.
  
  Yeah, I'm gonna need you to arrest yourself tomorrow.  So if you could arrange that for, mmm, 9AM, that'd be great.
  
  
  
• The SolarWinds hackers - which is to say, the Russian government - also hacked at least 27 US Attorneys' offices.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Which is just more evidence that it was always a state actor and not a criminal gang.  And that it was Russia and not China in this case, because China simply buys the people it needs.
  
  More details at AP:

  The department said 80% of Microsoft email accounts used by employees in the four U.S. attorney offices in New York were breached. All told, the Justice Department said 27 U.S. Attorney offices had at least one employee’s email account compromised during the hacking campaign.

  
  
• The Darkside hacking group - the one behind the Colonial Pipeline attack - has rebranded itself BlackMatter.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  They're easily identified because they use home-brewed encryption.
  
  And, again, it's Russian government.
  
  
  
• Meanwhile Chinese hackers - by which of course we mean the Chinese government - are hacking insecure home routers to build a mesh network from which to attack everything else.  (The Record)
  
  Do us all a favour.  Skip the small stuff and just breach Amazon's mesh network so they'll be forced to shut it down.

• Physicists have built the first time crystal, a device that oscillates perpetually without consuming energy.  (Quanta)
  
  It's only a handful of atoms, it has to be kept at cryogenic temperatures inside a diamond inside a quantum computer, it doesn't do anything useful, and if you look at it too hard it breaks - literally - but it's still better than Wish.Com.
  
  
  
• Chromebook sales grew 75% in Q2.  (Thurrott.com)
  
  I understand the appeal, but you're handing complete control of your data to crazy people.
  
  
  
• Virtual contact is worse than no contact for people over sixty in locked down cities.  (The Guardian)
  
  I'm in the latter but not the former category, but I can confirm my life would be vastly improved if Skype stopped ringing at two in the morning.
  
  
  
• The GAO has told Jeff Bezos to fuck off.  (CNBC)
  
  He sued over the award of a lunar lander contract to SpaceX, and the ruling affirms that everything about the contract followed regulations.  Also that SpaceX actually gets shit done.
  
  
  
• GitHub now provides free legal assistance to projects hit by DMCA takedown notices.  (VentureBeat)
  
  That...  Sounds good.  Waiting for it to go horribly wrong somehow.
  
  
  
• The Asus ProArt Studiopro Pro 16 Pro leaked on Amazon China.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Wait, Amazon China?
  
  Anyway, it has a top-of-the-line Ryzen 5900HX (actually I think there's a 5950HX that is the tiniest smidgen faster), Nvidia RTX 3070 graphics, a 16" 3840x2400 OLED display, 32GB of RAM, 2TB of SSD, and probably the Four Essential Keys.  The current 15" and 17" models have them.
  
  Around $3000, so not cheap, but there's literally nothing wrong with it.
  
  
  
• Samsung will be producing 24Gb DDR5 chips.  (WCCFTech)
  
  One thing I noted immediately in the DDR5 spec was support for 24Gb memory sizes.  Generally only powers of 2 are supported, and current chips are all either 8Gb or 16Gb.
  
  Problem is memory technology hasn't been shrinking as fast as processors, and 32Gb chips aren't quite economical yet.  So the committee planned ahead and fitted in a half-node increase.
  
  So in a year or so you'll start seeing 12GB, 24GB, and 48GB modules.  The spec allows for modules up to 128GB - and up to 512GB total on a typical DDR5-enabled desktop CPU - but those sizes will take a lot longer to arrive.
  
  
  
• Exactly 20 years later, Intel's Itanium is dead.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  This was Intel's attempt to lock up the server market, by designing a brand new 64-bit architecture and not licensing it to anyone.
  
  It ran headlong into the torpedo of AMD's own 64-bit chips, which were faster, much, much cheaper, and could run all existing software.  Intel had to license AMD's architecture but had long-term contracts and were stuck supporting Itanium as well.
  
  
  

Hololive Teaser Trailer of the Day #1

Posted by: normal at Monday, August 02 2021 12:03 AM (obo9H)

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