You know when grown-ups tell you everything's going to be fine, and you think they're probably lying to make you feel better?
Yes.
Everything's going to be fine.

Friday, July 22

Geek

Daily News Stuff 22 July 2021

Pack Up Your Troubles Edition

Top Story

  • Yes, Virginia, the FBI is reading Twitter.  (The Verge)

    Anything that allows them to bring high-profile cases without leaving the sofa, up to and including making them up, not that they need to in this case.
    So what have we learned here, friends? First of all, don’t do illegal things. Second, don’t do them on a public blockchain where anyone can look. Third, Coinbase definitely reads crypto Twitter. Fourth, so do the feds. Fifth, when one of your employees is indicted for wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud, the most important time to note that tokens aren’t securities is right after the indictment is unsealed.


  • SEC lists nine crypto tokens as securities following Coinbase insider trading charges.  (The Block)

    Oh.

Tech News

Disclaimer: Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, continues to not exist.

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Thursday, July 21

Geek

Daily News Stuff 21 July 2022

Petrambic Iameter Edition

Top Story

  • My poem is done.  I abandoned the sonnet and went for five stanzas in the common meter - 8-6-8-6 with an abab rhyme scheme.

    That solved the problem of finding another rhyme for "baby", but means it can be sung to the tune of the Pokemon theme - which is hilariously (in)appropriate.


  • Neopets' database has been hacked and their user and password information is out there.  (Bleeping Computer)

    Worth noting that their password field appears to be VARCHAR(20) - which means if it's stored as a hexadecimal hash, it's just 80 bits, which means that every single password has likely been cracked already.

Tech News

Cat, I'm A Kitty Cat Video of the Day


Inya really got into the spirit of this one.


Disclaimer: Twenty minutes queueing for the queue, then forty minutes in the queue, then 90 seconds to actually go through security.  The line snaked around until it pretty much filled the terminal.

I don't know what the holdup was, since they've actually streamlined things.  Bag in one bin, contents of pockets in the other, don't need to remove your jacket or belt anymore, much less your shoes.  Still far easier in the other direction though.

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Wednesday, July 20

Geek

Daily News Stuff 20 July 2022

Bat Soup Edition

Top Story

  • Everything continues to go perfectly as planned with no delays or interruptions.


  • An Italian court has ordered Cloudflare to block three BitTorrent sites from its DNS service.  (TorrentFreak)

    This is an important case, because:

    1. The sites are not hosted in Italy.
    2. Cloudflare is not an Italian company.
    3. Cloudflare does not host these sites.
    4. Cloudflare does not provide DNS services for these sites.

    Cloudflare runs an open DNS service that allows anyone to look up the IP address for any website anyway.  The Italian courts have basically said you cannot provide public access to public information.

    Cloudflare has filed an appeal.

    You can easily run your own DNS server, but these recent services - 1.1.1.1, 8.8.8.8, and 9.9.9.9 - are fast, convenient, and reliable, so it's far less common to do so.  Might be time to start again.


Tech News

  • Western Digital's 22TB drives are available at retail now.  (AnandTech)

    In any colour as long is it's gold, or red, or purple.

    Buy the gold.  Unless low power consumption is critical, the gold enterprise model is better than the red NAS model in every way, for the same price.

    In fact, if that error rate is correct for the red model, it's trash and should be avoided entirely.


  • Need a big chunky all-AMD gaming laptop with a 4k 120Hz display and at least moderately useful battery life?  The Alienware m17 R5 might be it.  (Tom's Hardware)

    It has AMD's latest Ryzen 9 6900HX CPU - not a big advance over the 5900HX except on integrated graphics, which may or may not matter in a gaming laptop - and Radeon RX6850M XT graphics with 12GB of VRAM - basically a desktop 6700 XT.

    While no gaming laptop is going to last long on battery while playing games, it did last six hours for a combination of web browsing, video playback, and OpenGL.  The old R4 model managed two.

    That's likely because it can switch to the integrated graphics when you're not playing games, probably cutting the power consumption by, well, two thirds.


  • For any (computer-related) X, build your own X.  (GitHub)

    And yes, the list includes a guide to building your own X.


Disclaimer: What else rhymes with baby?  Trying to work it into a sonnet and the CDCDCD rhyme scheme at the end is killing me.

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Tuesday, July 19

Geek

Daily News Stuff 19 July 2022

Eightless End Edition

Top Story

Tech News

Disclaimer: No we didn't!  Yes you did!  You invaded Poland Ukraine.

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Monday, July 18

Geek

Daily News Stuff 18 July 2022

Bring Forth Your Wretched Hives Edition

Top Story

  • Google is a wretched hive of scum and villainy.  (EFF)

    Google's Manifest V3 will - the company lies - protect the privacy of browser users.  It does this by breaking plugins that protect the privacy of browser users.

    Google is not a tech company, but an ad company.  The tech these days is a coincidence, and increasingly a hindrance, to the ad business.

Tech News


Disclaimer: Are you excited?  I'm excited.  Whee.

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Sunday, July 17

Geek

Daily News Stuff 17 July 2022

Yes We Have No Anything Edition

Top Story

  • We're sorry that your delivery hasn't been delivered.  Please click on this link to find out when your delivery is expected to be delivered.

    <click>

    Your delivery will be delivered in two hours ago.


  • Intel is preparing to launch its new range of dedicated graphics cards - competing with Nvidia and AMD - to great fanfare.

    Well, some fanfare.

    A little fanfare.  (The Verge)

    Intel's high-end A750 card will compete against Nvidia's definitely not high-end RTX 3060, at least on some games.  Five games, to be precise.  Intel isn't talking about other games.  You've got five games, what do you want?

    Had this launched a year ago, even with the performance caveats, Intel would have sold as many as they could make.  But it's launching into a market where cards are sitting on shelves waiting to be bought at or a little below MSRP, so it's probably doomed.

    Intel also pulled its rather nice NUC laptop range that came with Nvidia 3060 and 3070 graphics options and replaced it with models with its own graphics chips, meaning they won't be selling any laptops either.

Tech News

Disclaimer: While true: Don't.

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Saturday, July 16

Geek

Daily News Stuff 16 July 2022

Wolves Solving Trolley Problems Edition

Tech News



Disclaimer: And what about second breakfast?

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Geek

Poop

First this server, then me having to fill in as sysadmin at my day job to fix the servers there.

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Friday, July 15

Geek

Daily News Stuff 15 July 2022

Modified Limited Hangout Edition

Top Story

Tech News



Disclaimer: The above content, as well as the below content and content to either side and in arbitrary other directions in unspecified dimensions is opinion, and does not represent or imply a factual report of events in this or any other universe, past, present, future, or in orthogonal multiple timestreams, and anyone claiming otherwise is lying, deranged, or Bob from the NSA.  Hi Bob.  Poker night Wednesday as usual?

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Thursday, July 14

Geek

Daily News Stuff 14 July 2022

Wherefore Art They Now Edition

Top Story

  • Delutaya, Kson, Namie.

    If you're deep enough into the rabbit hole to know one of those names, the others might be worth checking out.


  • Google is slowing down hiring for the rest of the year.  (WSJ)

    That doesn't sound particularly significant, but the company hires about 10,000 people per quarter.

    CEO Sundar Pichai declined to comment in depth, saying only that the company had "filled its quota of useless commie boat anchors" and was looking for people who would actually do something in return for their salaries.


Tech News

  • 94% of companies have faced an online attack in the past year.  (CSO Online)

    The other 6% also faced an online attack and were too busy to answer a freaking poll right now because their website was down.


  • The Chinese Wikipedia section on Russia was a work of elaborate fiction.  (Vice)

    Apparently one woman wrote or edited 300 separate articles, inventing politics, history, and references from whole cloth.  All the articles linked together and confirmed each other's details, making the fable tricky to spot unless you looked, well, anywhere other than Wikipedia.

    Some of the articles were even translated and added to other editions of Wikipedia, because nobody ever bothers to check if something that sounds good is actually true.


How It Started Music Video of the Day


How It's Going Music Video of the Day




Disclaimer: Never underestimate the power of weaponised autism.

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