• Couple more house notes:
  
  
• 9' ceilings. I'd forgotten to ask, though it was clear from things like the hanging kitchen lights and the amount of wall above doorways that they were more than 8'.
  
  My current place has 8' ceilings, and in the ensuite which is directly under the main bathroom upstairs, only 7'. A little less in fact because the floor is raised by the tiles. I can stand in the shower and place the palm of my hand flat against the ceiling, and I am not particularly tall.
  
  
• What the heck is going on with those power points in these photos? Zoom. Enhance. Aha, USB!
  
  Forgive me if I test those with my oldest and least favourite device first. Wonder if I can get a cheap USB power tester for that matter.
  
  Handy though.
  
  
• Chilled and boiling water on tap in the kitchen. Nice. Oh, and a digital shower temperature thingy in the ensuite. Which I expect will fail after a few years and cost a fortune to replace.
  
  There's a reason this one cost 10% more than the other house the same size: They filled it up with neat toys. And I don't dislike neat toys.
  
  
• Double glazing throughout. Never lived in a place with that before; never needed it before. But in May last year - not even winter - there were already six nights below freezing up in - well, it's not a huge secret; there aren't many towns in Australia above 3000 feet elevation. One of those few.
  
  Come to think of it, double glazing would be great where I am right now - not for thermal insulation but for noise. Why are there toddlers screaming in the driveway at 1am?
  
  
• All electric except for the stovetop, but with a big solar array to cut down on bills. Ducted HVAC and also underfloor heating, which again I've never had before.
  
  
  
• AMD's "Raphael" Ryzen 7000 desktop CPUs go into mass production this month. (WCCFTech)
  
  That would put them on track to be in retail in September or October, assuming no hiccups.
  
  New features to look forward to:
  
  
• Zen 4 core - about 25% faster than Zen 3
• DDR5 and PCIe 5 support
• Built-in USB 4 / Thunderbolt 3 with dedicated PCIe lanes
• Integrated graphics included on (all?) CPU parts as well as "APUs"
• Max TDP increased from 105W to 170W
  
  
That last item is important because the 16-core 5950X is clearly thermally limited on heavy multi-threaded workloads. There will still be low-power 65W models; you just won't have to exceed the rated specs to get maximum performance from the high-end models.

• From Lothar of the Hill People:

  Tech question; Hardware RAID Problem. Dell T1700 Workstation Service Tag JT1YB42 with Intel Premium RST Controller and BIOS.
  
  ISSUE: Win 10 64 bit 2021 2H update failed, leading to a very long automatic Windows system rollback / restore. The Intel Driver assistant also installed a different driver and at the same time dis-abled the desktop app used for managing the RAID Array (Raid 1 Mirror with 2 HDD). Worse, the failed update broke one drive in the array. I installed a new drive, and used the Intel boot BIOS to join the new HDD to the array. It joined but never rebuilt and because the Intel Raid Management App was then disabled, and is now not supported by Intel, I can't use any app to tell the RST controller to rebuild the array. I'm running on one HDD.
  I've bought 2 more drives, but cannot proceed until I find a compatible RST hardware driver and an associated Intel app that can be installed on this machine.
  
  My questions are: 1. How can I find the correct recent driver with it's desktop management app for this chipset? Intel has dozens, Dell hasn't helped.

  Well, that's certainly a question. I'd suggest posting on the Dell subreddit.
  
  An alternative that should be possible with Windows 10 - I think - would be to use Storage Spaces to mirror your existing drive. That doesn't care about the RAID controller or drivers or management software; it's all done by Windows itself.
  
  
  
• From Pixy Misa:

  Anyone have experience with Roombas and similar robot vacuum cleaners?
  
  This house is twice the size of my current house, and all on one level except the garage, so it seems like a reasonable thing to get, where it would be entirely useless where I live now.

  Your best bet is to - wait a minute.

• GitHub can now alert you to supply-chain vulnerabilities in the dependencies (third-party libraries) in your code. (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Well, that would just be an alarm that goes off all the time, so more relevant is that it can tell you where these issues are and what you can do about them.
  
  
  
• California is looking to regulate AI-based employee hiring systems. (The Register)
  
  At multiple levels, such that both the customers and the vendors could face legal liability if the software is found to unfairly discriminate.
  
  I'm of two minds about this, because on the one hand most of this software is complete crap, and on the other hand California.
  
  
  
• How does a high-end SSD from 2018 fare when reviewed in 2022? Not great. (Serve the Home)
  
  Though to be honest, this is still not a bad drive. If I had one in an working system I would not feel any burning need to replace it.
  
  
  
• I hate Windows 11. Can I downgrade to Windows 10? (ZDNet)
  
  This question came up here recently, and this is a fuller answer than I gave.
  
  You can't roll back from pre-installed Win 11 to Win 10, but the two releases use the same activation keys (at least so far). If Windows 11 works on your PC you can download and install Windows 10. It will still be supported with regular updates through 2025.
  
  
  
• Amazon is fighting its warehouse employees' plans to unionise. (The Washington Post / MSN)
  
  First time as tragedy, second time as farce. This is Microsoft's news site republishing a story by the Amazon-owned* far-left Washington Post about corporate-left Amazon fighting to destroy its working-class left employees.
  
  There is not enough popcorn.
  
  * Yes, Bezos rather than corporate, whatever.

Posted by: normal at Sunday, April 10 2022 11:39 PM (obo9H)

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, April 11 2022 01:23 AM (Z0GF0)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Monday, April 11 2022 02:35 AM (r9O5h)

Posted by: Richard Cranium at Monday, April 11 2022 03:02 AM (769ST)

Posted by: David Eastman at Monday, April 11 2022 10:59 AM (qSKtI)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, April 11 2022 11:12 AM (PiXy!)

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• It's the weekend again, meaning we survived the week, which is good, but also that there's another week coming up, which is less good.  Though I suppose if you tore the page off the calendar and the next page was blank - and it wasn't January first - that would also be reason for concern.
  
  Anyway, Question and Answer time.  You know what to do.
  
  
  
• The owner accepted my offer.  Contract is being prepared, deposit to be paid Monday.
  
  
  
• So now that I've found the house, I took the time to look at some details like a topographic map of the area.  This particular street is not 3000 feet up; it's more like 3400, well above the town center.  That's higher than all but a few of the peaks in the Blue Mountains region west of Sydney.
  
  Unlike random mountain peaks I can get gigabit internet (full 1000Mb up and down) at this address but yikes is that expensive.  I'll probably go for a business-grade 250/100 plan.  Which will be cheaper than the mobile bill I just paid from the time my internet was out and I blew my 4G data cap to smithereens.
  
  
  
• AMD currently makes the best CPUs for high-end workstations.  Shame that you can't get them anywhere.  (The Register)
  
  The new Threadripper Pro 5000 is only available through launch partner Lenovo, who, uh, don't have any.  Well, they say they have them, but they won't sell you one, which is odd.  Availability is expected to improve in Q3 of this year, jus before the new Zen 4 core launches and renders it obsolete.
  
  Meanwhile the older Zen 2 based Threadripper Pro 3000 parts have disappeared from the distribution channel so you can't get those either.
  
  But it's not like AMD is hurting financially - the company is selling everything it can produce.
  
  This is part of why you get such weirdly out-of-touch statements about the economy - rosy pronouncements delivered by the managerial class a working and middle-class population facing the highest inflation rates in - for many - their entire lives.  
  
  Select parts of the economy are overheated, while other parts are limping along.  If half your body is on fire and the other half is submerged in liquid nitrogen, on average you are perfectly comfortable.
  
  I work in the overheated part and I'm doing fine financially - much better than in recent years - but since I actually listen to people I know my experience is anything but universal.
  
  
  

Tech News

• Anyone have experience with Roombas and similar robot vacuum cleaners? This house is twice the size of my current house, and all on one level except the garage, so it seems like a reasonable thing to get, where it would be entirely useless where I live now.
  
  
  
• Do you need 8 full-speed USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 ports on a single compact PCIe card?  No?  Here's one anyway.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Just $400.
  
  The reason it's so expensive is that no-one makes an 8-port USB-C chip.  It has four two-port chips, plus a PCIe bridge chip to divide a x8 slot into four x2 connections on the board.
  
  On the other hand, that no-expense-spared design means that all 8 ports can handle 10Gbps in both directions simultaneously.  Exactly what you'd be doing to drive that much traffic I don't know, but if you're editing 8k video for a feature film, the last thing you need is for your cheap USB controller to get in the way.
  
  
  
• My first thought on seeing this article was, is Twitter planning to use this to censor conservatives, or to protect communists from well-deserved criticism?  Twitter is experimenting with "unmentioning" - the ability to remove yourself from a conversation.  (The Verge)
  
  Given the weird way Twitter handles "conversations" - a feature that doesn't actually exist but is cobbled together from a history of mentions, replies, quote tweets, and retweets - the ability to silence notifications for a conversation where you have been randomly tagged is definitely needed.
  
  But they already have that.  There's a menu option labelled Mute this conversation which does exactly this.
  
  So what is this new "unmentioning" feature?  I'll see if I can find out what they're doing - it's in a limited beta release right now - but it's a safe assumption it's bad.
  
  
  
• If your Snap-on spanner set is connected to the internet, unplug it now.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  I don't know that Snap-on actually makes WiFi-enabled spanners, but nothing would surprise me these days.
  
  
  
• It put on some weight during the lockdown, leave it alone.  (Quanta)
  
  Physicists have discovered that the W boson is 0.1% heavier than it should be.  This is not a new result; they've been checking and double-checking the data for ten years because it seemed more likely to be experimental error.  And it's not a one-off; it's based on four million individual observations.
  
  If borne out, that tiny one part in one thousand difference could be the biggest shakeup in particle physics in fifty years.
  
  
  

Posted by: Mauser at Saturday, April 09 2022 07:42 PM (gVjvf)

Posted by: Rick C at Sunday, April 10 2022 05:36 AM (Z0GF0)

Posted by: furball321 at Sunday, April 10 2022 06:10 AM (n+R81)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, April 10 2022 10:10 AM (PiXy!)

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• Made an offer today on house #4, the one with the built-in Pepsi fridge that's directly adjacent to a nature reserve, or as one commenter noted since this is Australia, a deadly hellscape.
  
  This one is "only" about twice the size of my current place, but that's what I need.  I'm kind of wedged in at the moment and don't have room to arrange things more efficiently, and with this house I can pile everything in to one half while leaving the other half free to set things up properly.
  
  Plus gigabit internet access, plus only two neighbouring properties instead of eight.  And up in the hills where this town is, they haven't been having F*CK ME IT'S POURING WITH RAIN AGAIN.
  
  
  
• Ahem.  Anyway it will be great to get off the rental treadmill and own something, not because I mind renting so much as I mind someone else getting to set my schedule like this.
  
  
  
• Update: They asked for $5k over my offer.  I said yes.
  
  So...  What's the next step?  Something involving money, I think.  I'm new to this game.
  
  
  
• AMD's new Ryzen 7 5800X3D is the fasted CPU in the world for playing Shadow of the Tomb Raider.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  16% faster than Intel's factory-overclocked Core i9-12900KS.
  
  Exactly why you need to see Lara Croft's boobs at 231 FPS I don't know.

• Gigabyte has a new motherboard for AMD's Threadripper 5000 Pro.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  A CPU which last I checked was only available via OEMs, and by OEMs I mean Lenovo.  Who lock the CPUs to Lenovo motherboards.
  
  I presume this is an indication that this will soon change.
  
  
  
• Meanwhile AMD's next-generation Epyc Genoa is getting close to launch.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  With 12 memory channels and up to 12TB of DDR5 RAM per system, it supports up to 96 cores per CPU in a new 6,096 pin socket.    Bergamo, to follow soon after, will go as high as 128 cores per socket.
  
  
  
• LG's Gram +View is a companion monitor to their LG Gram 16.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  LG's Gram series is noted for being amazingly light, and this 16" 2560x1600 monitor weighs just 660 grams, or 990 grams with the included cover/stand.
  
  Which means a Gram 16 and a second, matching screen together weigh just 2.35kg.
  
  Price is $349 which isn't bad for a portable monitor with 99% DCI-P3 colour.
  
  
  
• Crystal 1.4 is out.  (Crystal-Lang)
  
  It seems like only a year ago that we got Crystal 1.0.
  
  Oh, wait, it was.
  
  
  
• SolidRun's LX2-Lite is an Arm development board like the Raspberry Pi but.  (Serve the Home)
  
  But this one has eight gigabit Ethernet ports, two 10Gb Ethernet ports, and two 25Gb Ethernet ports, plus up to 16 Arm A72 cores and 32GB of RAM.
  
  It's two inches square, so all those connectors are on a breakout board.  You drop your selected version of the module into it (8, 12, or 16 cores) and then plug in all your networks.
  
  
  
• Twitter has changed how deleted tweets look on the Web.  (Thurrott.com)
  
  Well good luck with that guys, because your embed code still includes the entire content of the tweet.

• Looking at yet another house.  About 10% more expensive than the one that got away, and a bit smaller overall, but  closer to the shops and with nicer fixtures - like a built-in wine fridge (I don't drink), a butlers pantry (I may buttle on occasion), and an ensuite bigger than my current bedroom.
  
  There are some brand new 4-bedroom houses that are 30% cheaper, but they're the type that are extruded by a machine and plopped down on a tiny block of land so there's a bare ribbon of grass on each side.  This one is at the end of a dead-end street adjacent a nature reserve, so while not my first choice - or my second - it has some good points.
  
  
  
• If I get this place I'm going to fill the wine fridge with Pepsi just because I can.
  
  
  
• Australia reinforcement data quantum priority roadmap.  (ZDNet)
  
  Verbing weirds language, doubly so when governments do it.

Tech News

• Atlassian went down.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  For two days.
  
  
  
  
  And for many users is still down.
  
  
  
  
  During their big annual conference.
  
  
  
  
  In Vegas.
  
  Priorities!
  
  
  
• MIT grad students have been de-ionised.  (WBUR)
  
  I think that's what happened.
  
  
  
• Canada wants to force Big Tech to compensate state media for linking to their propaganda.  (CBC)
  
  There aren't many cases where I'll take the side of Google and Facebook, but if against Fidel Castrato, sign me up.
  
  
  
• OpenSea is facing multiple lawsuits over mistakenly charging $80,000 for poorly-drawn monkey JPEGs.  (Motherboard)
  
  Not because the price was too high, mind you.  Not because it was too high.
  
  
  
• Google has banned apps that secretly harvest your personal data.  (WSJ)
  
  Okay.  Yes, I can see an argument for that.
  
  
  
• The Lenovo Yoga 9i Gen 7 is a 12th Gen P Series laptop with an OLED screen and the four essential....  Wait.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Fuck you Lenovo.  Next!
  
  
  
• The Asus ROG Zephyrus M17 does not have the four essential keys.  (Hot Hardware)
  
  What it does have is a 14 core (ish) i9-12900H, RTX 3070 graphics, a 16-inch 2560x1600 165Hz display with 100% of DCI-P3 colour, DDR5 RAM - half of it soldered in place just to be annoying - and a bunch of ports including three video outputs and wired 2.5Gb Ethernet.
  
  It's a gaming laptop that looks like a business laptop, which I do appreciate.
  
  
  

• Waiting for house news. 
  
  Update: There's a buyer for this one as well so I've upped their offer by $25k.  I'll be cross if this one gets away because I've already set up a shopping list at Ikea.
  
  Update: And now I'm probably going to be cross.  The other buyers lost their house in the floods, and they've already paid the deposit, so unless they can't exchange contracts tomorrow the owners are going to take their offer.
  
  Also, apologies are due to unknown real-estate agent #1 who I thought was playing games.  That property - which had been on the market for quite a while - has sold.
  
  
  
• Had a report that one of my (virtual) servers was port scanning someone.  I'm not sure if it was legit, and a scan of the server showed nothing untoward, but I have to take it seriously.
  
  First step was to block unwanted outbound traffic at the firewall.  The first thing I do with any server is to block unwanted inbound traffic, but everyone* does that these days so all the major exploits sneak unwanted data in on trusted connection. - like the huge Log4j mess a few weeks ago.
  
  Easy peasy because if you screw up the firewall settings on a virtual server you can get in via the virtual console.  I've done this on physical servers on the other side of the planet, with complex networking arrangements and no console, and that is nerve-wracking.
  
  Next step was to rebuild that server entirely since all it runs is a proxy server (Caddy) and it's needed an update for a while.  Before doing that I checked on the backups to make sure if anything went wrong I could easily restore and, well, f*ck.
  
  The backup drive on the backup server is not responding at all.  The syslog is full of ZFS deadman events.  And the load average is a personal record, and I've worked on some pretty big servers.
  
  
  
  That is not a happy 10-core bunny.
  
  The backups run A->B->C where A is the active server and C is a an archive server that can collect lots of daily backups and B is broken.  Which means that for, uh, ten weeks, no backups were going off site from that origin server to anywhere.
  
  So, I arranged three off-site backups and then rebuilt the proxy server with the latest software and the new firewall rules and basically tweaked the config file at random and kept restarting it until it all worked.  I don't know why that was necessary, but it was.  At least I could flick the routes back and forth internally and didn't need to wait for DNS to update.
  
  Then back to the backup server.  Look at the I/O stats.  It's written how much data?  18 petabytes?  No wonder it's not working, the SSD must be fried.
  
  Wait...  Insert commas manually.  18 terabytes.  That's not much at all.
  
  Kill the stuck processes (all 24,000 of them).  Load average goes up.  Kill the parent process...  Load goes up even more.
  
  Guess it's reboot time.
  
  And...  It sits there with ping working but no other sign of life for ten minutes.  (This one doesn't have a remote console either.  I grabbed it during the datacenter fire last year and took what I could get.)
  
  It does have a button to remotely power cycle the server but the page asks you not to do that if the server can ping because they'd rather have a technician look at it before the evidence of whatever the problem was disappears.
  
  So I start writing a tech support ticket and just as I'm about to submit it the server comes back up and is working perfectly as if there was never anything wrong.
  
  Okay.
  
  How was your evening?
  
  * Not everyone.
  
  
  
• Twitter is adding an edit button, maybe.  (The Verge)
  
  
  
  
  "Protecting the integrity of that public conversation" is of course Newspeak for eradicating dissent.

• Over $50 billion worth of video cards were sold in 2021.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  That's up 30% by value and 20% from 2020, and with 50 million cards sold last year that means the average retail price was $1000.
  
  Which is far too much.
  
  
  
• The US government - which plans to replace its vehicle fleet with electric models - has nearly 1% of the charging stations it needs to do that.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Sounds about right.
  
  
  
• Elon Musk is joining the board of directors of Twitter.  (CNBC)
  
  That's going to put the honey badger among the stool pigeons.
  
  
  
• Fire Toolbox turns your Kindle Fire into an Android tablet.  (Liliputing)
  
  Ish.  Some things remain locked down - like the app launcher, which can't be entirely replaced - but it provides a lot of customisation options.
  
  
  

• Elon Musk bought a 9.2% stake in Twitter, making him the largest individual shareholder.  (CNN Business)
  
  The share price rose 27% on the news that someone who isn't a braindead doctrinaire liberal might be involved at some level in the company's decision-making process.

• AMD's Ryzen 5500 and 5600 are finally here and they are great value for money.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  While slower than the 5600X they are not a lot slower, and the 5600X until recently sold at $299, while the 5600 is priced at $199 and the 5500 at $159.
  
  The 5600 is pretty close in gaming performance to Intel's i5-12400 as well, and in 3d rendering benchmarks there's less than 0.3% difference between the two.  Intel does currently have a single-threaded lead, but AMD chips scale better in multi-threaded work and catch up.
  
  
  
• There's also the 5700X.  (Hot Hardware)
  
  This is a cheaper, lower-power, 8 core CPU, and depending on the benchmark is either nearly as fast as the more expensive 5800X or nearly as slow as the 6 core 5600X.
  
  Not a bad chip, but not ground-breaking.
  
  
  
• GitHub can now prevent you from accidentally committing code that contains API keys and passwords.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  The way GitHub works, once a key or password is in there, it's very hard to remove entirely.  It's out in the wild and you just have to go change the password.
  
  So having it smack you with a ruler when you slip up like that is a very good thing.
  
  
  
• Hackers used MailChimps internal customer management tools to directly target crypto users receiving email notifications through the service.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  This is not a very good thing.
  
  
  
• The Realme Pad Mini is a new 8.7 inch Android tablet with ugh.  (Liliputing)
  
  Decently fast A75 CPU but a disappointing 1340x800 screen, barely better than the 2012 model Nexus 7.

• Looks like house #3 might be the one.  I've mentioned place a couple of times - it's a modern 4 bedroom place, with a garage the size of a small house and a house the size of two small houses.
  
  That garage is 23 x 42 feet, not counting a storeroom / workshop area off to one side and a small bathroom on the other.  That should suffice.  And it has windows on two sides so it's not a complete cave.
  
  
  
• The internet is not what you think it is  (Princeton)
  
  Oh?

  Many think of the internet as an unprecedented and overwhelmingly positive achievement of modern human technology.

  Who?

• Dell's new Inspiron 16 2-in-1 model has a 3840x2400 OLED touchscreen.  (Dell)
  
  (That price is Aussie dollars; it's not yet listed on the US site.)
  
  And a 12 core i7-1260P CPU and Nvidia MX550 graphics, which puts its gaming ability at roughly zero.
  
  
  
• Google says that Microsoft is a threat to national security.  (NBC)
  
  I mean, yes, but have you guys looked in a mirror lately?
  
  
  
• Facebook has been locking accounts for no reason.  (BBC)

  Your Facebook account was disabled because fuck you, that's why.  This decision could easily be revered but we won't because see above.

  Not sure why this is a news item though.

Posted by: normal at Monday, April 04 2022 09:45 PM (obo9H)

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Posted by: Grumpy and Recalcitrant at Sunday, April 03 2022 11:11 PM (nRMeC)

Posted by: Mauser at Monday, April 04 2022 04:20 PM (gVjvf)

Posted by: normal at Monday, April 04 2022 09:41 PM (obo9H)

Posted by: normal at Tuesday, April 05 2022 10:11 AM (obo9H)

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• It's the weekend again - somehow - and that means it's Question and Answer time.  Take one of the bottles from the basket, put your question inside, and cast it into the waters.  It will probably just wash straight back up on the beach, but if it does make it here to PixyLab I will attempt to answer.
  
  
  
• No news on house #3 yet.  The one that was previously #4 on my shortlist has actually sold, but I wasn't actively pursuing that one because while the renovated interiors were first rate, the location (between an iron foundry and an artillery range) was less than ideal.
  
  
  
• 123qweQWE!@#0.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  GitLab had a default test password configured for accounts registered via external authentication providers.  They say no accounts have been compromised, but the bug affects not only the cloud service, but the paid on-premises version and the free open source edition, so if you run your own it's time to update.
  
  Also, put it behind a firewall.  At my day job your VPN account has to be configured to grant access the the GitLab server before you can do anything at all.
  
  
  

Tech News

• Sabrent's 8TB PCIe 4 M.2 SSD is now available at a mere $1499.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Which is about what I paid for three 4TB drives, but if you absolutely have to fit a ton of storage inside a laptop - maybe if your job involves video editing on the go with a film crew - then it's either that or $2200 for the 8TB option on a MacBook.
  
  
  
• Proposed EU regulations would require all blockchain transactions - all of them - to be registered with a verified account - on both ends - and the details made available to member governments at any time for any reason.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  And transactions valued at more than 1000 Euros would be automatically reported to the government.
  
  Note the both ends requirement.  If you want to transfer your crypto to someone - anyone - they also must register with the EU.
  
  Oh, and these registers, if implemented, are going to get hacked.  Count on it.
  
  
  
• Posting the full name and medical history of a patient in a reply to a Yelp review is a HIPAA violation.  (The Verge)
  
  Who knew?
  
  
  
• A Scottish Twitter user has been sentenced to 150 hours of community service for being a Twitter user.  (The Verge)

  Sheriff Adrian Cottam told Kelly he passed the "custody threshold” but there is a presumption against prison if there is an alternative.

  Which means that this haggis-humping bumblefuck was actually considering jail time for the crime of being a pretty normal Twitter user, which is to say, a loathsome mindless hate-filled tankie who would likely be shot by his own zampolit if their unit ever faced action.
  
  Hang on...
  
  Right, this is not Twitter, nor am I Scottish.  Just needed to check.
  
  
  
• Russia has banned purchases of foreign software for critical infrastructure.  (The Register)
  
  But at the same time has legalised theft of foreign software, so that's okay.

• Some of you expressed interest in the cover home of The Concise Dictionary of Regrettable Architecture (4th ed, Stodder & Houghton, 3716pp) as mentioned in yesterday's Pixy Goes House Hunting item.
  
  Well, here's one of the bathrooms:
  
  
  
  After looking at several late 19th to early 20th century homes that have been lovingly restored (and one that is a complete dump but is heritage listed and so frozen in time as a complete dump) this place comes across like a big bowl of curried corn flakes.
  
  Every single pixel asks the question why?  
  
  And that's the bathroom they they selected to show off the property.  If this was a modest three-bedroom place passed down in the family for 65 years and now on the market for the first time, sure.  Buy it, replace the kitchen, bathroom, and carpet, strip off the wallpaper and paint everything left white, and you'd have yourself a little gem.
  
  For this one, the owner would have to be someone prepared to drop an additional half a mil to gut it and rebuild from the inside out.
  
  In other words, not me.

Posted by: ahd at Saturday, April 02 2022 09:56 PM (6vszb)

Posted by: normal at Saturday, April 02 2022 10:12 PM (obo9H)

Posted by: normal at Saturday, April 02 2022 10:14 PM (obo9H)

Posted by: Rick C at Sunday, April 03 2022 12:39 AM (Z0GF0)

Posted by: J Greely at Sunday, April 03 2022 07:54 AM (ZlYZd)

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• I have my agent checking the contract on my first alternate now.  Assuming there's no major issues and no-one has already grabbed it (and there's no indication of that so far), I'm prepared to go over asking price if needed, because this one has the right combination of being ready to move right in and have the potential for improvement - because you could park a freight train in the garage.
  
  Speaking of which, the craziest damn house popped up in my tracker just now.  Seven bedrooms, three bathrooms, four living rooms, two kitchens, two laundries, nine car spaces, five minute easy walk through the park to the shops, and in my price range.
  
  Except (a) it's for auction at at the end of the month so who knows what the final price will be, and (b) it was built in 1957 and could grace the cover of a James Lileks book with the word "regrettable" in the title.
  
  
  
• CNN+, the new pre-failed streaming service from the former news network, is planning to sell NFTs of its first half hour of content.  (Ace of Spades)
  
  If this doesn't kill NFTs I think they might be immortal.
  
  What are NFTs, you ask?
  
  Well, think of a baseball card.  It doesn't have any special intrinsic value - it's just a piece of cardboard.  It doesn't give you any influence over the player, of course, or let you attend a game.  It's just a piece of cardboard.
  
  Now, imagine a digital baseball card - it's just a file on a computer somewhere.
  
  An NFT is like a digital version of a photocopy of a 3x5" index card that lists the address of the locker at the bus station containing the baseball card, so that if you remember the locker combination you can take it out and, um, put it into another locker, with the added bonus that eight billion people with hacksaws and power drills have easy 24x7 access to the bus station, and even so, there are people willing to spend six figures on these damn things.
  
  I can only sleep at night by telling myself that it's probably mostly money laundering and what these people really do for a living is something relatively wholesome like smuggling heroin or land mines or endangered monkeys or maybe all three each nested inside the other like so many addictive explosive hyperactive Russian dolls.
  
  Because, yes, my job is mostly NFTs these days.
  
  Which is why I can afford a seven bedroom house - albeit in a country town; this thing would be eight figures easy if it was in an upmarket suburb in Sydney - but I'd almost sooner live in a cardboard van by a cardboard river.
  
  
  

Tech News

• Quis scamodiet ipsos custodes?  (Lupinia)
  
  In which a scam prevention expert gets scammed - partly because she expects customer service from her bank to be incompetent, and it takes a while for the scammer to raise sufficient red flags.
  
  She is an expert and she manages to keep the scammer on the line while she calls the real customer service line of her bank so that they can watch in as the scammer tries to steal her money, but it's a valid if rare example of how you can be too cynical for your own good.
  
  
  
• Not with NFTs though.
  
  
  
• In case you've missed this one it's fortunate that it's harder to block Chesapeake Bay than the Suez Canal.  (gCaptain)
  
  Same shipping line, different ship.
  
  
  
• Ubuntu 22.04 is in beta.  (Phoronix)
  
  I'm looking forward to this; 20.04 had a surprisingly smooth launch; I think I first deployed it at the beginning of May that year and have had very little trouble with it.  (That's on servers.  I run lots of servers on Ubuntu, but I've had less experience with it on the desktop.)
  
  
  
• Google is bringing a new advertising API to Chrome.  (Ars Technica)
  
  If you don't like it, you can simply opt out.
  
  Of Chrome.
  
  Because you sure can't turn the new Topics API off.
  
  
  
• Samsung will sell parts and tools needed to repair the Galaxy S20 and S21 and Tab S7+.  (Fast Company)
  
  And provide detailed repair guides in partnership with iFixit.
  
  But Pixy, you say, aren't those all prior year models?
  
  Why yes.  Yes they are.
  
  
  
• Russia's Great Firewall isn't working and could be headed for collapse.  (Torrent Freak)
  
  Oh no.
  
  Anyway...
  
  
  
• The Hubble Space Telescope has spotted Earendel.  (CNN)
  
  I wondered where he'd gotten to.
  
  The star (because that's what Hubble spots, after all) is 28 billion light years away, which means since the Universe is only 14 billion years old that light effectively travelled at twice the speed of light in order to reach us.
  
  Because space is not only really big, but very weird.
  
  
  
  

Posted by: Horn wearing Anon at Friday, April 01 2022 07:53 PM (9GEPh)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Friday, April 01 2022 10:25 PM (r9O5h)

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