Friday, February 03

Geek

Daily News Stuff 3 February 2023

Not With A Pop But With A Ppppppttt Edition

Top Story

  • First time as tragedy, second time as farce, third time as an episode of Seinfeld: There's a Chinese spy balloon drifting over Montana.  (ABC News - no, the other one)

    The Pentagon is tracking it but not taking any action due to the risks involved.

    Of a balloon.

    Over Montana.

Tech News

  • AMD's 128 core Bergamo CPUs have been confirmed for launch in the first half of this year.  (WCCFTech)

    That's one of three expected server CPU launches from AMD this year: Bergamo with 128 cores,  Genoa-X with 96 cores but over 1GB of cache, and Siena, a smaller, cheaper version of Epyc that will nonetheless still offer more cores than not only Intel's latest Sapphire Rapids chips but also Intel's next-generation Emerald Rapids.


  • Twitter is cancelling free access to its API and replacing it with a "basic paid tier".  (The Verge)

    Details are somewhere between sketchy and non-existent at the moment except for the date - February 9th.

    I suspect the focus here is not so much on revenue as on bots.  Twitter is just awash in bots, and has been for years.

    I'm not saying the stupid posts you see coming from Twitter are all fake though.  Sorry if I got your hopes up.  No, people really are that stupid and the world will end in flames pretty soon.


Disclaimer: If we're lucky.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:42 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 242 words, total size 2 kb.

1 I've only seen the first episode. but this is quite cute:
https://deadlyanimes.com/episode/watch-the-great-jahy-will-not-be-defeated-uncensored-season-1-episode-1-english-subbed-dubbed-online/

Posted by: Tim Turner at Friday, February 03 2023 06:58 PM (VZYxJ)

2 Twitter API could be explained another way.

Twitter fired a bunch of people.

Twitter is finding that the code base is a wee bit of a mess. 

The former employees who were agents of state threat actors, or of ideologically terrorist organizations could well be using the API as an attack surface to cause problem.

Limiting API access could be a way to proceed on getting the runaway technical debt under control.

Posted by: PatBuckman at Saturday, February 04 2023 12:19 AM (r9O5h)

3 The tin-foil-hat part of me is wondering if the Chinese balloon might not be too high for the currently-depleted US air defense units to engage.

Posted by: Siergen at Saturday, February 04 2023 02:51 AM (bUd4W)

4 I haven't seen what altitude the balloon is at, it's almost certainly too high for a fighter to go up and shoot it down with guns. I have no idea whether air to air or ground to air missiles would track on a simple balloon or not. I'd hate to spend millions to replace a ground to air missile to shoot down a weather balloon though..

Posted by: David Eastman at Saturday, February 04 2023 04:06 AM (sYlgI)

5 Gentlemen, we cannot let those suspicious-looking foreigners gain a balloon gap over the United States!

Posted by: normal at Saturday, February 04 2023 09:41 AM (obo9H)

6 lasers

balloon envelope is almost certainly fragile if you hit it at the correct frequency

/Might/ be too high to be dispersing a bioweapon. 

If you caused a slow enough leak, you might be able to recover the sensor package intact, not that we would necessarily learn much from the sensor package. 

Posted by: PatBuckman at Saturday, February 04 2023 10:37 AM (r9O5h)

7 They are spying on our dental floss tycoons!
https://youtu.be/DmcYTShN4Fk

Posted by: Kristophr at Saturday, February 04 2023 11:29 AM (DuN/J)

8 The risk - Biden and buddies may lose some payola?

Posted by: Frank at Saturday, February 04 2023 06:36 PM (rglbH)

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Apple pies are delicious. But never mind apple pies. What colour is a green orange?




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