• RAM prices may drop 25% next year. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Well, it's a start, but it would still leave prices at more than twice their low point five years ago.
  
  
• ARM unveiled their client CPU roadmap and intentions to challenge Intel. (AnandTech)
  
  Ooh! New architecture?
  
  No.
  
  Well, new cores then?
  
  No.
  
  So... Marketing?
  
  Marketing.
  
  
• MSI's PS42 laptop is a 14" model with 1080p screen (adequate), quad core CPU (good), optional discrete GPU (great - oh, it's a crappy MX150, never mind) and A SENSIBLE KEYBOARD LAYOUT. (AnandTech)
  
  Wait, why is the trackpad all the way over there? And... Is that the webcam? DAMMIT MSI!
  
  
• New Jersey's court IT is run by idiots. Claiming changes done in order to comply with NIST recommendations, they have done exactly what NIST recommends against - maximum (not minimum!) password lengths, mandatory expiry, and security questions. (TechDirt)
  
  
• FASTER is a fast open source key-value store (the core of a database) from Microsoft. How fast? Up to 160 million operations per second fast.
  
  Ooh! It supports some sort of binary tree for sorting?
  
  No, only hashes. (PDF)
  
  Well fuck.
  
  (You can build any data structure on top of a binary tree. You can only build unordered structures on top of a hash, which is far more constraining.)
  
  
• 24 cores and I can't type an email.
  
  A day in the life of a Chrome developer at Google gives you great insight into why everything sucks so much on modern computers.
  
  
• The Protectli FW4A is a four-port firewall appliance for small(ish) offices. Install your own OS - there are various BSD and Linux distributions designed for exactly this. All the network controllers are Intel, so it should be compatible with anything and everything. (ServeTheHome)
  
  The thing I noted is that it has a VGA port. That's pretty much essential because the alternative is rigging a serial connection somehow. But I don't have anything on my desk that takes VGA in - I'd have to dig an old monitor out of the spare room.
  
  Its big brother (sister?) the FW6A has six ports (fairly obvious) and includes HDMI. It's not much more expensive - $419 vs $349 including memory and storage, and includes a lot more USB ports - and you don't need to dumpster dive for a monitor to set it up. Go for that one. Or just air gap your coworkers, that's pretty good too.
  
  
• Princess Evolution RaaS is not a poorly translated FM Towns game from 1993. Well, it might be that too, who knows. But the gameplay in the 2018 version sucks. (Bleeping Computer)
  
  
• AMD is now shipping their 35W low-power desktop APUs, the 2200GE and 2400GE. These have the same specs as the 2200G and 2400G except for clock speed. Capped at 35W instead of 65W they will throttle under load much sooner. (FanlessTech)
  
  AMD is also believed to be planning a 45W high-power laptop chip to complement their existing 25W laptop parts. And when I say "believed to be planning" I mean "everything except the price and ship date has been leaked".
  
  
  

Social Media News

• The US government saw what our elected idiots in Australia are doing and decided they wanted some of that too. (Reuters, via Axios)
  
  They want to make a hole-without-a-hole in the encryption of Facebook Messenger, which would of course destroy the security of the app, affecting about three hundred trillion users.
  
  It's Reuters, so they blame this on President Trump for saying mean things about MS-13, a criminal gang that practices ritual torture and mutilation of murder victims.
  
  
• When "don't be evil" hits the bottom line: Google are reportedly lying to their own staff over the planned censored search engine for the booming dystopian surveillance state sector. (The Intercept)
  
  The Intercept says "misled", but it doesn't look like it was a mistake. And while The Intercept occasionally fluffs a story pretty badly (or simply burns its sources), this one has been widely reported.
  
  
• So, this has been going on:
  

  I'm gonna build my own credit card company after Mastercard revokes my account.

  — Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) August 16, 2018

  Ace has the details, and explains why the social media mafia might be setting fire to their own legal feet under the DMCA.
  
  
• Oh, and this:
  

  Yesterday the SJWs ran an interesting experiment. They pointed to a specific GoFundMe page using us as "the bad people" for not hiring based on ideology and demanding people not buy Star Control. Pre-orders of Star Control jumped far more than the gofundme did.

  — Brad Wardell (@draginol) August 17, 2018

  The delightful own goal by crazed injustice warriors aside, NEW STAR CONTROL GAME. Unfortunately due to legal wrangling Star Control 1 & 2 are not available for sale at present, though I managed to grab them before they disappeared. But there is a pretty much legal, approved, and complete open-source port of Star Control 2 so not all is lost.  It's available for Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and Amiga. (No, really.)
  
  
• Please hold off destroying Twitter and Facebook for a few more weeks, I'm working as fast as I can.
  
  
• This will not stand.
  

  An account that tweets pictures of ducks
  
  You show 'em, @Jackpic.twitter.com/e1tv6OhDF1

  — Old Holborn✘ (@Holbornlolz) August 18, 2018

Posted by: Kayle at Saturday, August 18 2018 03:13 PM (JIRac)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Saturday, August 18 2018 03:15 PM (PiXy!)

Posted by: cxt217 at Sunday, August 19 2018 03:32 AM (BcQU4)

Posted by: cxt217 at Sunday, August 19 2018 03:34 AM (BcQU4)

Posted by: Rick C at Sunday, August 19 2018 08:55 AM (ITnFO)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, August 19 2018 10:55 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Rick C at Sunday, August 19 2018 11:07 AM (ITnFO)

Posted by: benzeen at Sunday, August 19 2018 03:00 PM (JpDcM)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, August 19 2018 03:38 PM (PiXy!)

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