Dear Santa, thank you for the dolls and pencils and the fish. It's Easter now, so I hope I didn't wake you but... honest, it is an emergency. There's a crack in my wall. Aunt Sharon says it's just an ordinary crack, but I know its not cause at night there's voices so... please please can you send someone to fix it? Or a policeman, or...
Back in a moment.
Thank you Santa.

Wednesday, March 22

Geek

Daily News Stuff 22 March 2023

Redacted Edition

Top Story

Tech News


Disclaimer: Beware of falling eels.

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Tuesday, March 21

Geek

Daily News Stuff 21 March 2023

Pippa Does Zillow Edition

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Tech News



Disclaimer: And watch out for cat detector vans.

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Monday, March 20

Geek

Daily News Stuff 20 March 2023

Pest Toast Edition

Top Story

Tech News

  • There is no tech news today.  There just isn't.


Disclaimer: And when I say there is none, well I mean there is some.

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Sunday, March 19

Geek

Daily News Stuff 19 March 2023

Copywrong Edition

Top Story


Tech News

  • The 2023 Asus ROG Zephyrus Duo 16 also doesn't have the four essential keys.  (NotebookCheck)

    This is partly a downgrade from the 2022 model, as they've replace the 4k main screen with a 2560x1600 240Hz model, while keeping the second screen at 4k width.  To be fair, 2560x1600 is pretty good at 16", but it's actually lower resolution than the 14" model's 2880x1800.

    While it doesn't have the 4EK, what it does have is a 16 core Ryzen 7945HX, Nvidia RTX 4090 graphics (though the laptop version, which is equivalent to a desktop 4080), two DDR5 SODIMM slots for up to 64GB of RAM (and up to 96GB in the near future), two M.2 slots for up to 16TB of storage, two USB-C 3.2 ports (though not USB 4 / Thunderbolt), two USB-A ports, HDMI 2.1, 2.5Gbps wired Ethernet, a headphone jack, and a full-size SD card slot.

    Personally I'd rather have a lower-powered graphics solution - a 4060 would be fine - and a 4k 60Hz main screen, but since I'm not going to buy one that doesn't really matter.


  • Codon is a compiler that takes Python code and turns it into binaries that run as fast as C unless you use Unicode in which case it collapses into a screaming heap.  (Exaloop)

    I hate it when that happens.


  • AMD is testing its own big/little CPU design.  (Tom's Hardware)

    As seen in mobile chips - which now often have three levels of CPU core - and on Intel's 12th and 13th generation, these designs have a small number of full-sized cores - high performance, high power - and a larger number of slower but more efficient cores.  In Intel's case, the E cores are half the speed of the P cores but a quarter the size.

    AMD seems to be taking a more moderate approach, because the low-power cores are still based on Zen 4.  These are aimed at smaller devices - ultralight laptops, for example, and portable gaming consoles like the Steam Deck (which uses an earlier custom AMD chip).


Disclaimer: It's all bees, all the time, here at World Of Bees.

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Saturday, March 18

Geek

Daily News Stuff 18 March 2023

Noot Noot Edition

Top Story

  • Silicon Valley Bank went broke, but not because it was woke.  (The Verge)

    Actually, from the sounds of what the article says supposedly in SVB's defense, it's because it was woke, the clients were woke, the investors were woke, and the state and federal governments were woke.

    Poor fuckers never stood a chance.

    The article does have a good point in that ESG isn't as harmful as it might be, because it's all a scam anyway.  Nobody actually puts serious money into woke causes, they just say the words to keep the money coming in, and then skim their take off the top with the iron-clad defense that they wore the juice.


  • Oh, yeah, about that: Even after being bailed out, SVB is out of money and has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.  (Tech Crunch)

    Everything is going swimmingly.  Wearing concrete boots.


Tech News

  • Midjourney v5 is here and it's actually a big improvement.  (Ars Technica)

    It still has heavy censorship on prompts - worse than ChatGPT - but it can now draw hands with four fingers and a thumb, and not folded backwards, eighteen inches long, or attached directly to the elbow, at least some of the time.

    When I tried it last year it was still at v2, so the improvement has been rapid.  But the censorship has only gotten worse, and it's not just porn that it refuses to create, but anything containing any of a very long list of words.  Which they don't tell you.


  • Qualcomm's Snapdragon 7+ Gen 2 has a Cortex X2.  (AnandTech)

    So this midrange chip is in line with high-end chips from a year ago.  Which isn't bad.


  • AMD's 7040HS laptops are delayed until next month.  (AnandTech)

    I'm hoping to find one with the 14" OLED panel that's becoming increasingly common, 32GB of RAM, and the Four Essential Keys.  There is nothing like that at the moment - you can get the 14" OLED and 32GB, or 14" OLED and 4EK, or a 16" laptop with 32GB and the 4EK, but not the combination I want.


  • Intel could be shipping 2nm desktop CPUs in the first half of 2024.  (Tom's Hardware)

    Or not.  The original plan was 4nm chips in H2 this year and 2nm in H2 next year, but signs are there won't be any new Intel desktop CPUs this year.


  • Intel's Emerald Rapids server chips are coming to replace the disappointing Sapphire Rapids.  (WCCFTech)

    Two Sapphire Rapids chips are usually slower than a single AMD Epyc CPU, cost more, and use more power.  With Emerald Rapids, it's likely that two Intel chips will be slightly faster than one AMD chip - while costing more and using more power - except that AMD is increasing core counts from 96 to 128 this year.



Disclaimer: Do not taunt electric penguin.

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Friday, March 17

Geek

Daily News Stuff 17 March 2023

Moving Finger Edition

Top Story

  • A new treatment for prostate cancer kills the tumour with a nanoknife.  (Telegraph)

    Which is basically a tiny electrified scalpel, which can kill the cancerous cells while leaving the healthy tissue intact.  It's minimally invasive, can be done on an outpatient basis, and early cases indicate it has significantly few side-effects and less chance of infection than even over minimally invasive methods.


  • The 2023 version of the Asus Zenbook Pro 14 Duo OLED is here.  (Asus)

    This one has a 14.5" 2880x1800 120Hz OLED touchscreen (with 100% of DCI-P3 colour space), a 12.7" 2880x864 IPS display with stylus support, and in the model sold here in Australia, a 14 core Intel 13900H, 32GB of RAM, Nvidia RTX 4050 graphics with 6GB of VRAM, a 1TB SSD, two Thunderbolt 4 ports, one regular USB port, HDMI 2.1, a headphone jack, and a microSD slot.  Plus a barrel jack for a power supply so you don't need to tie up a Thunderbolt port for charging.

    It doesn't have the Four Essential Keys, but that's not a design mistake: There's no room.  What it does have is an app that lets you put custom controls on the second screen that can do whatever you want, so you can make your own Four Essential Keys.

    The RTX 4050 looks to be somewhere between the performance of the laptop and desktop versions of the 3060, so it's pretty decent for basic gaming.  There's also a version of the laptop with an RTX 4060 but it doesn't seem that model has made it to these shores.

    It's not cheap, and it's a bit heavy for a 14" laptop at 1.75kg (3.85lb) but it's a very capable little machine.


  • The Xerox Alto is 50 years old this month.  (The Register)

    This is the system that showed off the very first graphical user interface - and had the very first mouse.

    This isn't the one that inspired Steve Jobs to create the Macintosh - that was the later Xerox Star - but its direct ancestor.


Disclaimer: Or descendent if the idiots in the first article are right.

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Thursday, March 16

Geek

Daily News Stuff 16 March 2023

Something Something Edition


Top Story

  • Banks are still fucked.  (The Verge)

    1. Pin interest rates at record lows to boost the economy through wasteful spending.
    2. Crash the economy anyway by locking everyone into their homes.
    3. Boost the economy by printing trillions of dollars and flinging it to the four winds.
    4. Hike interest rates to combat the inevitable inflation that you predicted was impossible.*
    5. Bail out the banks that fail due to having all their money stuck in long-term low-yield bonds.
    6. You are here.
    7. Either cut interest rates to save the banks and send inflation soaring, or hike interest rates to fight inflation and set off a new round of bank failures.

    * This works by taking money from the middle class, who would otherwise be tempted to spend it, and basically just keeping it.  It doesn't work very well.


Tech News

  • Rembrandt and Phoenix could be coming to AM5.  (Tom's Hardware)

    AM5 is AMD's current desktop platform, and Rembrandt and Phoenix are last year's and this year's laptop chips respectively.

    This would be a great move: These chips are low power and have better integrated graphics than anything else available, enough to run older games at 60 fps without needing a graphics card.  Ideal for a small multi-purpose NAS, for example.


  • CISA says there's a critical security flaw in Cold Fusion.  (Bleeping Computer)

    Cold Fusion still exists?


  • Dell's latest Inspiron 14 costs $500 and probably isn't something anyone should buy.  (Liliputing)

    It runs an Arm 8cx Gen 2 CPU - which is the exact same chip as the 8cx Gen 1, and that sucked.  (The 8cx Gen 3 is actually good.)

    It comes with 8GB of RAM - not enough for anything but light use - and 256GB of SSD, which isn't completely hopeless but certainly is not a lot.

    It also lacks the Four Essential Keys, but nobody is going to be editing large codebases on this thing so those aren't as essential as they might be.

    I'm still looking for a laptop that isn't crippled by bad design choices.  As far as I can tell, there aren't any.


Disclaimer: It's turtles all the way up.

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Wednesday, March 15

Geek

Daily News Stuff 15 March 2023

Digital Intern't Edition

Top Story

Tech News



Disclaimer: It's termites all the way down.

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Tuesday, March 14

Geek

Daily News Stuff 14 March 2023

Oh No Edition

Top Story


Tech News



Disclaimer: A printed copy, at that.

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Post contains 370 words, total size 4 kb.

Monday, March 13

Geek

Daily News Stuff 13 March 2023

Oops They Did It Again Edition

Top Story


Tech News

Disclaimer: Splut, it's what's for breakfast!

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