• A lot is made of how the blockchain is distributed and decentralised and fault-tolerant and no one person can control it and then a hamster in Hong Kong sneezes and all your NFTs disappear.  (ZDNet)
  
  OpenSea's site went down around 6AM and was restored by 8:30AM.  And the blockchains themselves - Ethereum, Klaytn, and Polygon are the ones OpenSea support - were working as usual, or in the case of Polygon, completely fucked - again - but still technically alive.  
  
  But NFTs were missing from users' wallets another seven hours.  What was going on?
  
  Well, you have to understand that blockchain APIs are basically garbage.  Writing a wallet that can actually display a user's NFTs on an Ethereum-compatible network using the standard APIs is nightmarishly difficult.  It's the mobile app equivalent of making a chicken sandwich from scratch.

  It ultimately took him six months and $1,500 to make the final product using a thorough 16-step process that required him to grow a garden (step 1), harvest wheat (step 10) and even, yes, slaughter a chicken (step 14).

  But OpenSea has an API that makes it much easier.  So, not wanting to spend six months only to end up choking a chicken, every wallet developer uses the OpenSea API.
  
  Every wallet developer.
  
  When OpenSea hiccups, every NFT wallet in the world breaks.
  
  Because decentralisation.
  
  
  
  

Tech News

• C kind of sucks.  (Jean G3nie)
  
  Use Ada.
  
  Seriously.
  
  
  
• The Senate Judiciary Committee has approved a bill intended to curb the self-promotion of Big Tech.  (Thurrott.com)
  
  Basically the companies will be forbidden from promoting their own products over those over competitors.  Amazon can't push Amazon Basics higher up in the search results than Random Factory In China.
  
  Whether this will happen and whether it will have any effect remains to be seen.
  
  
  
• Twitter is stupid.  (ZDNet)
  
  It just is.
  
  
  
• The FAA says that 78% of planes can safely land and airports with 5G C-band.  (The Verge)
  
  By next year they hope to figure out which 78%.
  
  
  
• Samsung has new tablets on the way.  (Liliputing)
  
  Ranging from 11" to 14.6" with screen resolutions starting at 2560x1600, so small and cheap these are not, but all models will have Qualcomm's brand new Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 with an Arm X2 core.

House Like It's 2022 Video of the Day

Posted by: Karl at Friday, January 21 2022 07:03 PM (S0kTz)

Posted by: normal at Friday, January 21 2022 10:26 PM (obo9H)

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, January 22 2022 01:23 AM (Z0GF0)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Saturday, January 22 2022 06:54 PM (r9O5h)

Posted by: Mauser at Sunday, January 23 2022 02:13 PM (Ix1l6)

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• Disinformation is mostly bullshit.  (Harpers)
  
  If you read the article, note that much of it is biting satire.  The point is that most of the claims being made regarding disinformation are themselves disinformation - or more specifically, utterly baseless, pseudoscientific garbage.
  
  
  
• Not that this is going to stop anyone, or even slow them down much.  (ZDNet)
  
  Australia is demanding to know why Google and Facebook aren't censoring "disinformation" faster.
  
  While our government is as shitty as America's in this respect and unconstrained by our constitution, I have no sympathy whatsoever for the Big Tech companies that gleefully dug this hole for themselves.
  
  
  

Tech News

• Polygon implemented EIP-1559.  It did not go smoothly.
  
  
  
• Intel has announced 20 new mobile CPUs.  (AnandTech)
  
  Ranging from 5 to 14 cores (in various combinations of big and small cores) and 9W to 28W.  There's only one 14 core part though, and everything below 28W has only one or two big cores.  AMD meanwhile has eight big cores at 15W.
  
  
  
• AMD's RX 6500XT is an overpriced, underwhelming budget GPU.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  If it sold at MSRP it would be mediocre.  It doesn't.
  
  
  
• iMessage is a failure.  (MacWorld)
  
  If your measure of success is actually being a good app, sure.  If your measure is locking idiots into a walled garden, it's doing that quite well.
  
  
  
• DevToys is a desktop app for developers.  (DevToys)
  
  Not an IDE, but a collection of little utilities for formatting and converting data - that runs locally on your own computer.
  
  What a novel concept.
  
  And it's open source.
  
  
  
• Google is upset about potential legislation that might not permit them to do whatever the hell they want.  (Thurrott.com)
  
  Oh no.
  
  Anyway...
  
  
  
• Intel meanwhile has told the US government never to let a crisis go to waste.  (Bloomberg)
  
  CEO Pat Gelsinger used almost those exact words when asking for a bigger handout in a time when is company is raking in record profits.
  
  
  
• The EU wants to build its own DNS that will block naughty content.  (The Record)
  
  Sure.  You do that.  That will work perfectly.
  
  Morons.
  

Posted by: normal at Thursday, January 20 2022 09:01 PM (obo9H)

Posted by: Mauser at Friday, January 21 2022 03:05 PM (Ix1l6)

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• Microsoft is buying Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion.  (PC Perspective)
  
  In cash.
  
  Activision has been around since 1980 and is the publisher of classic titles such as Build-A-Bear Workshop: Welcome to Hugsville and Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare - Jackal Assault VR Experience.  Blizzard was for years a license to print money with Warcraft, Starcraft, Diablo, and World of Warcraft, then they got woke and went broke.
  
  I don't know if Microsoft can turn the beleaguered company around, but if anyone can do it, it's them, because they are still motivated by good old-fashioned greed - they don't even bother to pretend they are doing things for your own good.
  

• Intel is unveiling its own custom Bitcoin mining chip because I have no idea why.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Seriously, what the hell?
  
  
  
• AMD, Intel, and Nvidia are all planning major price hikes this year.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Due in part to TSMC raising prices for silicon production and in part to money printer go brrrr.
  
  
  
• In place of a legal notice, here is a blessing.  (GitHub)
  
  SQLite is about as good as it gets.
  
  
  
• Facebook and Twitter have told Australian regulators that they shouldn't be regulated.  (ZDNet)
  
  Yeah, that'll work.
  
  
  
• Apple and Google have told the US Senate that antitrust legislation will harm the privacy and security of users.  (Bloomberg)
  
  "We'll make sure of it", they said.
  
  
  
• Open source developers have have a powerful new tool at their disposal: Blackmail.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  I mean, when you come right down to it...
  
  
  

Posted by: normal at Thursday, January 20 2022 03:26 AM (LADmw)

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• You have thirty seconds to comply with Google Play Policies.  (Sylvia van Os)
  
  This is a story that is repeated everywhere, every day, a story I am dealing with myself right now: Big Tech handing down ultimatums to independent developers demanding that they immediately fix their apps but not providing any way to actually comply.
  
  In this case it's an app originally in Dutch which Google itself mistranslated and then rejected from the Play Store on the basis of their own mistranslation.  The app itself has translations by native speakers but Google is using machine translation, getting it wrong, and banning the app on the basis of its own mistakes.
  
  They rejected the same app because the developer didn't provide a test login when the app doesn't have logins at all.
  
  I'm personally dealing with another Big Tech company that insists I investigate an incident but is unable to provide me with any information about the incident.
  
  Other people simply get their accounts locked with no recourse, even though they followed the rules every step of the way.  (Reddit)
  
  Or get told there's no recourse and their account is permanently deleted beyond any home of recovery and then two weeks later everything is back again and the explanation is Oh yes, that happens.
  
  As Lois McMaster Bujold wrote in Shards of Honor:

  Put all the rotten eggs in one basket - and then drop the basket.

• Intel is giddy with delight at (checks notes) not being hopelessly behind AMD for the first time in five years.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Specifically on desktop CPUs.  In the lucrative server market Intel is still operating on pure inertia.
  
  
  
• Celerons can overclock by 50% again.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Way back when, Celerons overclocked extremely well because they didn't have an off-die L2 cache; there was just one chip with a "northbridge" interface running at an independent clock.
  
  That's basically still true, plus the latest Celeron is only clocked at 3.4GHz on an architecture known to reach 5.2GHz at stock speeds, so it bloody well should overclock by 50%.
  
  
  
• If you want something a bit cheaper you can get an RP2040 for 70 cents.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  That's the chip on the Raspberry Pi Pico.  It's a very capable little device - little being the operative word, because even on an old 40nm process they get over 20,000 chips from a single wafer - and they are churning out millions of them.
  
  So that's one thing that's not in short supply right now.
  
  
  
• Gluten free frozen food not so much.  A third of such products listed for sale by the local supermarket are out of stock, even before you place the order and then don't get them.  I may be forced to start actually cooking my food.
  
  
  
• Samsung has announced their Exynos 2200, with the same core layout as the flagship Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 but Radeon graphics licensed from AMD.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Exactly how much Radeon graphics has not yet been unveiled, but is likely to come out when they launch the Galaxy S22 in February.
  
  
  
• China has announced that any stupid bullshit Western governments can do, they can do better.  (Business Insider)
  
  In this case claiming that the Omicron strain arrived in the country by mail.

Posted by: PatBuckman at Wednesday, January 19 2022 05:30 AM (r9O5h)

Posted by: jonymarry6 at Wednesday, November 29 2023 09:12 PM (i8w4Z)

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• We were down for a few hours overnight my time.  I blame volcanic activity in the server room.  Or possibly the server burped at 2AM and when I fixed it I forgot to restart the cache service and then it filled all its RAM with Sendmail instances trying to notify me of this failure.
  
  Sigh.
  
  
  
• The main internet link to Tonga went down for a very good reason - it got blown up by a volcano.  (ZDNet)
  
  The country's satellite links are also being blocked by the volcanic ash cloud meaning that communication with the rest of the world currently consists of SPEAKING VERY LOUDLY.
  
  Australia and New Zealand sent survey planes today to assess the damage and work out the best way to deliver aid - particularly tricky given that the volcano is still active. The first relief flight out of Australia is planned for tomorrow.
  

Tech News

• Businesses have started to notice that Democrats are not their friends.  (Inside Track)
  
  The Big Tech of the 19th century has just now noticed that socialism has failed every time it was tried:

  "Criminals are caught and arrested, turned over to local authorities for booking, arraigned before the local courts, charges are reduced to a misdemeanor or petty offense, and the criminal is released after paying a nominal fine," said the letter. "These individuals are generally caught and released back onto the streets in less than 24 hours. Even with all the arrests made, the no-cash bail policy and extended timeframe for suspects to appear in court is causing re-victimization to Union Pacific by these same criminals."

  At some point, when a person or a state is utterly determined to self-destruct, you have to be prepared to walk away.
  
  
  
• Don't buy Lenovo PCs.  (Serve the Home)
  
  This isn't an issue with laptops or tablets, but on their servers, workstations, an desktops, they are locking the CPUs so that they can't be used in anything but Lenovo hardware.
  
  Someone should sue them under California law for creating avoidable e-waste.
  
  
  
• NPM dependency hell link of the day.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  If you're using Node.js in the first place, you deserve this.
  
  
  
• Emulating the Sega Genesis.  (Jabberywocky)
  
  This is the sort of thing we should be doing more of, and less of all the other nonsense.
  
  
  
• Nvidia's RTX 3090 Ti could cost between $3500 and $4500 if you can find one at all.  (WCCFTech)
  
  And we complained when the 3090 was originally priced at $1499.
  
  
  

• Newly unsealed documents allege that Sundar Pichai and Mark Zuckerberg personally signed off on a secret - and illegal - advertising deal.  (BuzzFeed)
  
  Wow, it's totally unlike Google to do that.
  
  
  
• A California court has ruled that Google's confidentiality agreements break labour laws.  (Washington Post / MSN)
  
  Wow, it's totally unlike Google to do that.
  
  

• From Filthy Lurker:

  If I'm looking to purchase a desktop to be used primarily for playing the occasional game on the intertubes with intertube (nothing demanding on a system) friends in a different state, but need it to have the ability to do some serious video editing, and have a budget of less than $1000, what would you recommend?

  That's not an easy one.  If you build your own you're going to pay 50% to 150% over MSRP for a video card.  If you buy a prebuilt desktop system it's likely going to suck.  (Gamers Nexus / YouTube)
  
  I like my Dell Inspiron 16 Plus but that's a laptop and if you want one with dedicated Nvidia graphics you're looking at about $1280 which is rather more than $1000.
  
  
  
• From Sam Adams:

  Pixy Misa, could you please give a few new browser recommendations, with a brief explanation why you like them? I would really love to get the hell away from Google, Microsoft, etc.

  Sure.  It's not a long list though.
  
  1. Brave.  It doesn't spy on you - much - and it's highly compatible with Chrome other than the spying parts, being built on the same open source Chromium project.  The built-in ad blocker seems to work fairly well.
  
  Downside is that it likes to inject little crypto buttons into certain websites.  You can turn that off easily enough, but it's turned on by default.  I understand that they want to present a way to keep independent websites alive while blocking ads, but a browser should never alter the contents of a website without you explicitly requesting that.
  
  2. Vivaldi.  Also based on the Chromium project, so you can switch over and expect sites to work as before.
  
  If you like choosing exactly how you want your browser to behave, this is the one to go for.  It has twenty tabs full of settings for you to play with.  I'm not sure if there's anything that's not customisable.
  
  Plus it has built-in email and RSS support.  Not news (Usenet / NNTP) alas, but a pleasant reminder that the internet didn't always consist largely of walled gardens controlled by communists.
  
  
  
• From mong:

  You mentioned Lenovo today. My understanding is that the company is owned by the Chinese which, let's face it, means the CCP. Is there any indication that their computers come preloaded with viruses or other malware to make it easier for them to spy on you?

  Good question.
  
  It's worth noting that Huawei didn't get banned for putting spyware on their consumer devices.  They got banned for putting spyware on their high-end telecommunications equipment.
  
  Why spy on your own customers and risk getting caught because every security researcher with a couple of hundred bucks can get their hands on one of your phones, when you can put the spyware in a 5G cell tower and spy on an entire country?
  
  That said, Lenovo did get embroiled in a scandal back in 2014, not for spying on customers directly but for inadvertently sabotaging customer security in a deal that might have netted them all of  $1 per system sold.
  
  The other two companies involved, Superfish and Komodia, went out of business in 2015 and 2018 respectively.
  
  People have been keeping a close watch on Lenovo since then.
  
  
  
• From Inquiring Minds:

  Why does it take 900 network requests and one minute for ace.mu.nu to load (using the Brave browser on Linux)?

  You know how there are lots of long articles posted here every day?  You know how you can click to instantly show the full content of any post?
  
  That's because all that content and the embedded content behind the posts is right there in the main page.  Once the visible content has loaded your browser continues to load all the invisible stuff.
  
  There's JavaScript that can be used to lazy load it all, but it's not entirely seamless.  We should look into doing that anyway.
  
  
  
• From CppThis:

  I like my current PC but it's probably going to start giving trouble in a few years. If I start sourcing components for a new build this year, including a GPU, will they all become available and make it through the supply chain by 2026?

  Given that the RTX 2060 from 2018 is the hot new card for 2022, that sounds about right.

• AMD could be raising prices of Epyc server CPUs by as much as 30%, while the launch of Intel's new Sapphire Rapids server CPUs is delayed until Q3.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Sapphire Rapids is supposed to be competitive with AMD's 3rd generation Epyc CPUs.  4th generation Epyc will be out later this year and is expected to blow current chips out of the water, with 25% better performance core and 50% more cores.
  
  So Intel's delay puts their new 56-core parts squarely in front of the bulldozer, since AMD has three server updates in the pipeline: Milan-X with up to 64 cores and 768MB of cache, Genoa with 96 cores, and Bergamo with 128 cores.
  
  
  
• The RTX 3050 showed up early in Japan and sold out instantly.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  At 60% over MSRP.
  
  
  
• Intel's Celeron C6900 struggles with the latest AAA games.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  That's hardly surprising since it costs less than a single current game title and runs at a modest 46W.  If you want to play current games you should be looking at the i3-12100 at least.  It's more expensive, still just 60W, and will run much faster.
  
  
  
• Yikes: Safari 15 is leaking your browser activity.  (FingerprintJS)
  
  If a site uses the IndexedDB API to store local data in your browser, every other site you visit can see that you visited the first site.  Every embedded frame can see that you visited the first site.  If you're using private mode, it doesn't matter, every site can still see it.  If you're on an iPhone or iPad and using a different browser it doesn't matter, every site can see your browser activity.
  
  That's because there aren't really any other browsers on iOS, just Safari in drag.
  
  
  
• Intel has launched its new Atom-based Atlas Canyon NUCs.  (Serve the Home)
  
  These don't entirely suck.  Over time Atom has reached the point where it's fine for basic tasks.  You'd still want the quad core and not the dual core, but single-threaded performance is actually better than the i7-5500U that I still use as a spare laptop, and multi-threaded performance with the quad core Atom is a lot better.
  
  
  
• QNAP devices are under attack again.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  This seems to be existing vulnerabilities and not new ones, but there are a lot of existing vulnerabilities.
  
  
  
• A year with a crappy MacBook.  (ZDNet)
  
  As always, what a journalist considers a heavy workload is laughable, so take the comments on 8GB being adequate with a a kiloton of salt.  More importantly:

  This is something that pros especially should be aware of: bootable backups are possible, but if your internal SSD completely dies, that bootable backup will fail too.

  So...  Your backups work a long as you don't need them, and die the instant you do?
  
  How very Apple.
  
  
  
• Is open source really free if we aren't allowed to break it?  (The New Stack)
  
  No.
  
  Fortunately GitHub has restored the account of the developer who most recently blew up the entire Node.js ecosystem and allowed him once again to access the code that he created.  With any luck this whole drama will soon be forgotten and then immediately repeated.

Posted by: normal at Monday, January 17 2022 12:30 AM (obo9H)

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, January 17 2022 09:56 AM (Z0GF0)

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• Russia says it has "neutralised" the REvil hacker gang.  (Ars Technica)
  
  This is being reported straight by multiple sites, and the commenters aren't having it.  Even at Ars Technica where the commenters are mostly insane, they are pointing out that at most Russia switched from condoning the group's activities to controlling them, and most likely just switched them temporarily from attacking Western targets to attacking Ukraine.
  
  Ars Technica has a feature that lets the author of the story promote a comment - and naturally the comment they promoted is one of two not openly contemptuous of this bullshit.
  
  An unnamed White House official said an unnamed individual behind the Colonial Pipeline hack was among those arrested.  (ZDNet)
  
  That doesn't make me more willing to believe it.
  
  It appears that Krebs on Security swallowed this crap too.
  
  
  
• Weekends are question and answer time.  Drop your questions in the comments  today and I'll attempt to answer them tomorrow.  And yes, Etsy.

• Lenovo Tab M8 FHD 4/5
  
  I basically chose the M8 FHD for its 1920x1200 screen, with everything else being secondary.  Fortunately it turns out the the screen is genuinely good - bright, sharp, and colourful without being oversaturated - with everything else being adequate.
  
  The CPU (a Mediatek P22T with eight A53 cores) is fast enough for most things - I opened up Final Fantasy III and there was no noticeable delay and the opening video was glitch-free even when I rotated the tablet by 180 degrees to make it rotate the video as well.  The Kindle and Audible apps bog down when installing lots of content, but I think that's just because those apps are garbage.  The tablet is otherwise responsive when those apps are glitching.
  
  Almost everything is installing neatly to the microSD card, with the exceptions being Google stuff and browsers, which are probably tied to internal storage for security reasons.
  
  Sound is, well, it's there.  There's only one speaker and it's adequate, but no more than that.  There's a headphone jack though if you want something better - no awkward USB dongles needed.
  
  Software is Android 10 with the November 2021 updates.  Given the limited improvements in Android in recent years that's fine.  I installed Nova Launcher as always so I'm not sure what Lenovo might have done with the default UI.  Nova Launcher erases such nonsense.
  
  Note sure of battery life under normal use yet, since I've been busy installing about 200GB of content.  That drains the battery pretty fast, but I have fibre internet now (well, FTTC), so it's installing the content pretty fast too.  If it's draining the battery 3x faster than my old tablet but installing content 6x faster - which is my guess - that's not really a problem.
  
  Overall it gets a 4/5.  It was on sale as low as $89 over the holidays, so keep that in mind if you're looking to buy one - the regular price is $159.
  
  
  
• If you want something a little upmarket and don't mind waiting Lenovo is also bringing their Legion Y700 gaming tablet to market.  (Liliputing)
  
  This is a little larger - 8.8" rather than 8" - with a 120Hz 2560x1600 screen and 100% of DCI-P3 colour.  The CPU is a Snapdragon 870 (A77 core) which is much faster than the P22T - on GeekBench single-threaded test it's between four and five times faster.
  
  If this is made available in Australia and the price isn't insane I'll consider it, but it's certainly going to cost a lot more than the M8 FHD.
  
  
  
• Lenovo's P12 Pro also has a 120Hz 2560x1600 display and a Snapdragon 870 CPU, and costs $630.  (Liliputing)
  
  Well, it did but it's out of stock right now.  
  
  That's a 12.6" model and includes a pen, so I'm hoping the Y700 comes in a bit cheaper.
  
  
  
• If you want a mid-size Android tablet Samsung's new Tab A8 is one.  (Liliputing)
  
  Priced starting at $230 (3/32GB) up to $330 (4/128GB).  The CPU on this one has A75 cores so it's more than twice as fast as cheaper A53-based tablets, and the 1920x1200 display should be fine.
  
  
  
• Blockchains suck.  (Molly White)
  
  True, but the alternative also sucks.
  
  
  
• A former official in the DHS OIG has pleaded guilty to stealing personal information on government employees.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  It sounds like this was for commercial gain and not sold to Russia or China, so that's fine I guess.
  
  
  
• FedEx wants to deploy laser missile-defense systems on its planes.  (Gizmodo)
  
  Everything is going swimmingly.
  
  
  
• John Deere has been hit with a class action lawsuit over right-to-repair.  (Motherboard)
  
  John Deere absolutely sucks in this area.  Everything on their modern equipment is locked down and impossible to repair independently.  They're the Apple of tractors.  The only upside is a booming market for second-hand farm equipment.
  
  
  
• Newly released documents from the Google antitrust lawsuit allege that the company engaged in outright fraud in setting ad prices.  (Wired)
  
  Google denies the allegations.  And Google wouldn't lie, would they?  Their corporate motto after all is "...".
  
  
  
• Asus has some new portable display / drawing tablets that look interesting.  (Liliputing)
  
  At the high end this includes a 15.6" 4K screen that includes a pressure-sensitive pen.  At $799 it's not exactly cheap, but there are also three 1080p models, including one with WiFi and an internal battery that are likely more budget-friendly.

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• Pixy's First Law of Personal Responsibility: Once you choose Node.js, everything that happens subsequently is your own damn fault.
  
  When open source developers tell you to go fuck yourself go bad.  (ZDNet)

  While open-source developers should be fairly compensated for their work, wrecking your code isn't the way to persuade others to pay you.

  Yes it is.
  
  
  
• My new tablet is set up and installing stuff.  The one significant quirk is that it thinks the 400GB Sandisk microSD card is a 512GB card with a bunch of space already used.
  
  I'm not sure why; I think they've monkeyed with Android's adoptable storage mechanism and screwed it up.  I don't have a recent stock Android device with expandable storage to compare it with, but I don't think Google is that dumb, even now.
  
  I wondered if it was a fake card, but I've bought a dozen Sandisk microSD cards in recent years and the packaging and card looked genuine, and I've installed 54GB to it so far without a hiccup.*  I think Lenovo just messed this up.
  
  * Mostly my Audible library.  Being a member for 10 years times two books a month equals about 400 audiobooks.  Somehow.
  
  
  
• Our hosting company found the payment - it fell down behind the sofa cushion.  So we're safe for another month unless the IP address falls off the proxy server and how likely is it for that to happO*_$%#*#@ NO CARRIER
  
  
  
  

Tech News

• TSMC has increased its CapEx for 2022 to $44 billion.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  That's three times what they spent in 2019.  It will take a while for this to resolve the chip shortage but you certainly can't say they're not working on it.
  
  
  
• AMD's new 5800X3D is likely to be in short supply.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Sounds like AMD is prioritising its $10,000 Epyc CPUs over its $400 Ryzen CPUs for the limited amount of 3D cache dies available.  Which makes sense, but also means the fastest readily available gaming CPUs will remain Intel until Zen 4 arrives in the second half of the year.
  
  
  
• QNAP has released patches for three critical security vulnerabilities and how to breed wolves.  (Serve the Home)
  
  If you run your QNAP NAS behind a firewall you're probably safe, except that -
  
  
  
• Chrome is introducing a new security measure to block an entire underexamined class of attacks.  (Ars Technica)
  
  When you load a web page - this one, for example - JavaScript can make requests to other resources on the internet.  Including your own private network.
  
  So if you have an insecure QNAP NAS locked away safely behind your firewall, and then you browse to a malicious website, guess what happens to your safe, secure, locked-away NAS?
  
  If you guessed "something bad" you win a goldfish with an extremely short life expectancy.
  
  
  
• Android phones can now mostly disable 2G.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Stingray devices used to intercept phone calls often use old, insecure 2G, so blocking it will help keep the feds out of your business.
  
  
  
• China is doing the impossible: Making NFTs worse.  (SCMP)
  
  It's not clear exactly what they think they're doing, since the Chinese government has banned cryptocurrencies and public blockchains, so these will be government-approved NFTs on government approved blockchains that you can't buy or sell, and can only trade with government approval.
  
  And the government are communists.

• My Lenovo Tab M8 FHD arrived, and despite some listing weirdness (Amazon has it as a "business laptop" running ChromeOS) it is actually the right thing.
  
  Since it's currently the only small Android tablet with a high resolution screen, and at A$234 including international shipping and taxes it's reasonably priced - less than a third of the cheapest iPad Mini - if it works well I'll buy a second one.
  
  Lenovo has an 8.8" gaming tablet in the works, but nothing showed up at CES so it could be some way off.  Samsung's latest small tablet only has a resolution of 1340x800 which is barely better than the 2012 Nexus 7.
  
  
  
• Why you can't hire engineers.  (GitHub)
  
  Probability 1: Your company sucks.
  
  Probability 2: Everything else sucks, so even though they are actively looking for a new job because their current company sucks, you need to work twice as hard just to convince them that your company might suck less.
  
  Probability 3: Someone at your company installed Node.js without your knowledge, and now it looms over your headquarters like a great looming thing.
  
  
  
  

Tech News

• Plausible Analytics is an alternative to Google.  (GitHub)
  
  Uses 1k of JavaScript on your website, and the server-side code is written in Elixir, which while not quite a mainstream language is miles ahead of garbage like PHP or Node.js.
  
  Free to download and run yourself, or available as cloud service from $9 per month.
  
  Not a paid ad, just that any solid alternative to Big Tech is worth a mention.
  
  
  
• Intel's new Celeron runs single-threaded tasks as fast as the Core i9-10900K.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Meaning if you only need  computer for light use - email, word processing, spreadsheets, web browsing, YouTube - a $42 CPU might be all you need.
  
  
  
• A little upmarket, Intel's i5 12400 makes a good Linux CPU.  (Phoronix)
  
  No low-power cores so no performance weirdness, and it's pretty solid on both single-threaded and multi-threaded tasks while keeping power consumption under control.  
  
  
  
• Apple fixed a bug that would kill your iPhone if it detected an IoT device with a bad name.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Add Cthulhu to your network Y/N?
  
  
  

Posted by: PatBuckman at Friday, January 14 2022 03:40 AM (r9O5h)

Posted by: Wonderduck at Friday, January 14 2022 04:24 AM (bHHXR)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, January 14 2022 04:40 AM (PiXy!)

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