They are my oldest and deadliest enemy. You cannot trust them.
If Hitler invaded Hell, I would give a favourable reference to the Devil.

Friday, July 21

Geek

Daily News Stuff 21 July 2023

Stupid Cupids Edition

Top Story


Tech News

  • Alleged pricing for AMD's Radeon 7700 and 7800 has leaked.  (Tom's Hardware)

    The rumour puts the 7700 at $450 and the 7800 at $550, which is probably true because both prices are $50 too high.

    At $400 the 7700 would compete directly against Nvidia's 8GB RTX 4060 Ti and crush it, and at $500 the 7800 would face up against the 16GB 4060 Ti model and make mincemeat out of it.

    It was AMD's fight to lose and they did.


  • Solidigm has announced 60TB QLC SSDs for the datacenter.  (AnandTech)

    Prices are not mentioned in the article, but one of the comments has the details: You can expect this to be around $4000.  Which is a lot of money, but only 20% more per TB than the list price of the 4TB Team MP34.

    If you need over a petabyte of fast storage in a 2U server, it's now easy.


  • At the other end of the scale you can get a 2TB WD SN850X at Best Buy for $99.  (Tom's Hardware)

    It's a good drive and that's a great price.  If you need 2TB of storage, no reason to wait.  Prices will probably continue to trend downwards, but when it's already under $100 there's only so much further it can go.


  • Apple is threatening to remove online services from the UK if planned surveillance legislation passes.  (BBC News)

    This isn't even a "maybe they both can lose" situation.  Apple is right; the legislation is awful.

    It would make it legal for British police and intelligence agencies to do everything their US equivalents currently do illegally.



Disclaimer: Please do not press this button again.

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Thursday, July 20

Geek

Daily News Stuff 20 July 2023

Shut Her Down She's Sucking Mud Edition

Top Story

  • OpenAI has not made GPT-4 dumber, says OpenAI.  (Tom's Hardware)

    However, GPT-4's ability to figure out whether the number 17077 is prime (it is) has fallen from 97.6% in March to 2.4% in June.

    This highlights a couple of problems with the whole notion of GPT-4 and other Large Language Models:

    1. They literally know nothing.  It's all word games.  If you understand what a prime number is it might take you a few minutes to run through the possible factors on a calculator and get the right answer, or even better program a computer to do it for you.  GPT-4 is incapable of doing that.

    2. They literally learn nothing.  If someone keeps asking you if 17077 is prime (it is) you might want to remember the answer, maybe even write it down.  GPT-4 is incapable of doing that as well.

Tech News



Disclaimer: There is no cloud, there is only other people's porn collections.

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Wednesday, July 19

Geek

Daily News Stuff 19 July 2023

That Time I Was Reincarnated As A Lime Edition

Top Story

  • Framework's new 16" laptop - dubbed reasonably enough the Framework Laptop 16 - is now available for pre-order.  (The Verge)

    If you want one you'll be waiting a while because the first five production batches sold out in the first day.

    It comes with a Ryzen 7840HS or 7940HS CPU, up to 64GB of DDR5 RAM (and probably 96GB, but that depends on BIOS support), up to 6TB of SSD (10TB if you install your own), and optional Radeon 7700S graphics with 8GB of VRAM.

    The screen is a solid all-rounder: 2560x1600, 165Hz, 100% DCI-P3 colour, and 500 nits brightness.  The CPU isn't high-end - it has eight cores while AMD now offers 16 core laptop chips - but should be plenty for most users.

    And the optional dedicated GPU is truly optional: It works without it, you can add it later if you want, you can remove it, and you can upgrade it later on.  There's a plan for a storage module with two more M.2 slots to go in that expansion bay if you don't need the advanced graphics.

    It also has six little I/O modules, supporting a choice of USB-C, USB-A, DisplayPort, HDMI, microSD, 2.5Gb Ethernet, storage modules up to 1TB, and/or a headphone jack.  Only three of the module bays support external video, so you can't put anything anywhere, but it is very flexible.

    The keyboard is also modular.  The default keyboard lacks the Four Essential Keys, but you can add a numeric keypad or a 24 key macropad.  Or you can get both and swap between them on a whim.  The keyboard modules are programmable and each has an embedded RP2040 - the chip in the Raspberry Pi Pico.

    And everything is designed to be user-replaceable eith just a screwdriver and some patience.

    It's not cheap, but neither is the MacBook Pro, its polar opposite in terms of serviceability.

Tech News



Disclaimer: If life gives you lemons, don't walk into oncoming traffic.

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Tuesday, July 18

Geek

Daily News Stuff 18 July 2023

Can't Get There From Here Edition

Top Story

  • You can't run MongoDB 5.0 or later on Linux under VirtualBox on Windows 11.

    Which doesn't affect most people at all, but one of the reasons I wanted a laptop with 64GB of RAM and 4TB of SSD was so I could have a complete test environment with two virtual servers in a cluster running all my code, and we use MongoDB a lot at my day job.

    The reason it doesn't work is that Windows 11 is already virtualised - a lot of the new security features depend on virtualisation, and so does WSL2 if you use that.  So when you run VirtualBox you are running a virtual environment inside a virtual environment.

    Which with earlier versions of VirtualBox simply didn't work.  Now it works, unless you want to run specific programs - like MongoDB - that use the AVX instruction set.

    Why the AVX instruction set is disabled in this case I have no idea.  The VirtualBox window has a little turtle icon to indicate it's running under Microsoft's Hyper-V paravirtualisation system and thus suffering from institutionally-enforced mental retardation, but the only fix is to disable WSL2 and all the new security features.

    Or upgrade to Windows 11 Pro.  Or backgrade to Windows 10.

    Or Linux.

    Laptop hasn't crashed today so yesterday's incident may have been due to my messing around trying to get VirtualBox working.


  • Samsung's new 27" 5k monitor is here.  (Tom's Hardware)

    It costs $1600 where Dell's 32" 6k monitor costs $2400, so while yes, it is cheaper, if you're in the market for a high-end professional monitor I'm not sure that you're going to quibble about the extra $800 for a larger, higher-resolution screen.

    Also the Samsung has built-in smart TV features, which many people would pay to avoid.

Tech News

  • Is the Radeon 7800 a 16GB Radeon 7700?  (Tom's Hardware)

    Maybe.  If so it would be no faster than the previous generation 6800, but would leave plenty of room for a faster 7800 XT model.

    And if the price is right - no more than $500 - it could kick Nvidia where it hurts.  Well, actually, it won't hurt at all because Nvidia is swimming in an AI startup money pool at the moment, but it would at least make a good graphics card for normal users.

    Nvidia's RTX 3060 Ti caught a lot of flack for having just 8GB of RAM on a 128 bit bus.  The 7700 will have 12GB of RAM on a 192 bit bus, and the 7800 will have 16GB of RAM on a 256 bit bus.  So unless AMD screw up the pricing - which they probably will - they should have a much more attractive offering in the $400-$500 range.


  • JumpCloud, an IT firm serving 200,000 orgs, says it was hacked by nation-state
    "Extremely targeted" attack involved a data injection into JumpCloud's commands framework.  (Ars Technica)

    This is legally-mandated security breach disclosure speak for "some idiot clicked on a link in an email".



Disclaimer: Rule One of the Internet: Never click on anything.

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Monday, July 17

Geek

Daily News Stuff 17 July 2023

Kerpow Splat Edition


Top Story

  • New laptop crashed twice today.  Don't know why; I ran the built-in tests and they all came back good.

    I loaded two terabytes of stuff onto it over the weekend without a hiccup, and the core temperature seems to be hovering around 54C, which isn't much at all.  Only thing I can think of is I was using my Linux VM more, but I don't see why that would make a difference.

    I did uninstall McAfee, but that shouldn't make anything worse.


  • SpaceX has now launched 1612 satellites using just two rockets.  (WCCFTech)

    Those are the kinds of numbers you need to achieve if you're serious about taking over the global space launch market, and they is.

Tech News

  • Over 50% of young Danes gave streamed or downloaded content illegally.  (Torrentfreak)

    The other 50% have learned how to lie.


  • The GPT Win 4 (2023) has a 6" 1080p screen, a Ryzen 7840U CPU, and up to 64GB of RAM and 4TB of SSD.  (Liliputing)

    Why can't we get regular laptops like this?  The only thing it doesn't have is a dedicated GPU, which is understandable in a 6" device but they also have a dock with a Radeon 7600M GPU if you need that.


  • Christopher Nolan wants Oppenheimer to be a cautionary tale for Silicon Valley.  (The Verge)

    Don't nuke Hiroshima, check.

    I'll also note that President Truman thought that Oppenheimer was a jackass.


  • Has the VIC-II chip in your faithful Commodore 64 finally fried itself after forty years?  Help may be at hand.  (GitHub)

    The new version drops straight into the socket previously occupied by your expired chip, but has one or two new tricks, like an 80 column mode, increasing the colours available from 16 to 262,144, supporting VGA, DVI, and HDMI output, an extra 64k of dedicated video RAM, doubling the vertical resolution for modern monitors that can't cope with ancient low-resolution signals, and a blitter.

    This is good to see because you can still buy 6502 CPUs.  There's a company called Rochester Electronics that has stockpiled fifteen billion old chips because there's always someone, somewhere, who needs fifty original model Z80A processors to replace failed signal controllers in a subway, because running a new controller through modern safety qualifications would cost millions of dollars and take at least a decade.

    But custom chips like the VIC-II were never available for Rochester to stockpile, and before long there won't be any working chips left to replace the failed ones.


Disclaimer: AITA for nuking Hiroshima and then whining about it to my boss?

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Sunday, July 16

Geek

Daily News Stuff 16 July 2023

Anyone's Race To Lose Edition

Top Story

Tech News


Disclaimer: Oh I could make you into stew
Or maybe put a curse on you
An executioner's work is never done
Or I could just chop off your head
And still rest easy in my bed
Except then your ghost would haunt my dreams, so
I can't decide...

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Saturday, July 15

Geek

Daily News Stuff 15 July 2023

One Louder Edition

Top Story

  • So as I mentioned yesterday my laptop charger decided to emulate Chernobyl at 5PM on a Friday.

    And the reason for that was that something shorted out.  Not the charger itself - it wouldn't be that, because I have many chargers.  Not the cable - I have at least a dozen USB-C cables.  It was the single solitary USB-C port on my laptop.

    Fortunately I also have many laptops, and I already set up the latest one for my recent trip because it looked like my regular one was on the way out.


  • Apropos of nothing, Windows 11 is dogshit.  It works, it's just endlessly annoying.  

    Microsoft, I don't want any of that.  All the changes are bad.  All of them.


  • The unions of Hollywood are trying to save it from itself, the way Tamerlane saved Isfahan.  (The Verge)

    Here's the problem: The actors are siding with the writers against the studios, when the writers have collaborated with the studios for years to burn the city to the ground.

    You're your own worst enemy, Fran Drescher, just like Microsoft.


Tech News

  • I mentioned that I have a 4TB Team MP34 in the new laptop, and it's one of the cheapest drives around in that size, with no apparent flaws at least on paper.  It's only PCIe 3, but most of the time that makes no difference.  But until now I hadn't put it under any real stress.

    Today I set up a Linux virtual machine (Ubuntu 22.04 desktop) and pre-allocated a 100GB volume for it.  Ran at a steady 1.6GB per second throughout.  I'm not sure whether the drive or the CPU was the bottleneck, but that's nothing to complain about as a real-world result.

    As for the laptop itself, an HP Pavilion 14 (not the Plus model, the cheap one): It's pretty good.  The Ryzen 5625U is not the latest chip, and not even the fastest in the range from two years ago, but it works fine.  The keyboard feels good, and while I need to get used to the layout, it's exactly the layout I was looking for, so if I don't like it that's on me.

    The screen is mostly fine.  It's only 1080p, a noticeable downgrade from the 2560x1600 panel on my Dell Inspiron 14 Plus - a model they no longer make.  The Pavilion 14 Plus model comes with a 2880x1800 OLED panel which looks amazing, but is limited to 16GB of RAM which is not so amazing.  But while the resolution isn't off the charts, it's still sharp and clear and the colours are vibrant.

    Only notable annoyance with the hardware is that it only charges from the right - it has a USB-C port and a barrel jack, but they're both on that side.  No SD card slot either, but I hardly use that these days.

    A few minor tweaks would turn this from a pretty good laptop to near-perfect, but nobody cares to do that.


  • Media execs haven't learned a thing from recent AI tests.  (The Verge)

    Yes they have.  They've learned that they need to spend a couple more months tweaking the prompts before they fire the whole lot of you worthless bastards.


  • Google Docs now has a built-in AI feature.  It's garbage.  (Tom's Hardware)

    Barely more reliable than a tech journalist.


  • AVX-512 works fine on AMD laptop chips.  (Tom's Hardware)

    Slightly amusing because Intel invented AVX-512 and then had to disable it on all its consumer chips because it made the existing power consumption problems even worse.

    AMD implemented AVX-512 so that it performs two 256-bit operations on subsequent clock cycles, and while that is obviously slower, it also uses much less power so the CPU can run at higher clock speeds.  So it's slower than a full 512-bit implementation, but much better than half the speed - and it's competing with Intel chips that now don't have AVX-512 at all.


  • Could an industrial civilisation have predated humans on Earth?  (Nautilus)

    No.


  • Reddit just deleted all chat messages more than six months old.  (Mashable)

    "That was in a changelog a year ago," says Reddit.

    No it fucking wasn't.

    The changelog says that chat messages posted after 1 January 2023 will be migrated to new infrastructure as of 30 June.  It doesn't say a word about deleting everything older than that.


  • Don't use Avast or AVG.  (Safety Detectives)

    The company is run by amoral scumbags.

    They have stopped beating their wives - in fact there is a special section at the top of this article that proudly announces the cessation of connubial corporal correction - but, well, frog, scorpion.


  • AI junk is starting to pollute the internet.  (Wall Street Journal)

    Starting to?


  • Lenovo is launching a new model of its Legion Y700 Android tablet next week.  (Notebook Check)

    This shares the high refresh rate 2560x1600 8.8" IPS display with the previous model, while upgrading the CPU to a Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 (with a Cortex X2 core, so this is very fast for a small tablet) and up to 16GB of RAM.

    I would buy this like a shot except for the tiny fact that Lenovo doesn't sell it outside of China.  You can buy it from third parties, unlocked, switched to English, and with the Google Play store installed, but that inherently means that some random person has updated the firmware.

Accidental Purchases Redux

Big party from Hololive's CouncilRyS - that is, the four members of EN Gen 2 after Sana's departure (they're all good but Sana was my favourite) plus "Vsinger" IRyS who debuted alone a month earlier.

And what the party was about was the release of new merch - a set of plushies - designed by Sana and including a Sana figure even though she left the company nearly a year ago.

Sometimes things getting stuck in Production Hell is a blessing, because now it's possible to get this stuff shipped to Australia, when it wasn't during the Wuhan Bat Flu Death Plague.



Disclaimer: Old Mother Hubbard
Sat in a cupboard
Eating her dinner alone.
Three bears came along
To sing her a song
And now they're buried in the back yard with the rest of those furry recreants.

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Friday, July 14

Geek

Daily News Stuff 14 July 2023

Of Course There's An App Edition

Top Story


Tech News



Disclaimer: Short one today because my laptop charger just melted.  Rather literally.

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Thursday, July 13

Geek

Daily News Stuff 13 July 2023

Off By Zero Edition

Top Story



Tech News



Disclaimer: Do not send to know what happened to the front end of the mouse.

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Wednesday, July 12

Geek

Daily News Stuff 12 July 2023

Pup And Cattybee Edition

Top Story


Tech News

Disclaimer: Moof or moof not, there is no van.

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