• I've been trying to order an air fryer from Kmart recently - because they're dirt cheap and have free shipping - but they always seem to be out of stock of what I want.  I don't need a fancy model with three frying racks, and I don't want a tiny one that can just about handle a chicken nugget on a warm day.
  
  I ended up getting a mini convection oven from them instead, because it was even cheaper than an air fryer and a lot larger and more versatile.  Also dead easy to clean unless I cook something that splashes upwards into the fan, because it's almost all glass.
  
  Anyway, I was ordering the week's groceries and I checked to see if they had anything I could use to assist with my experiments on air frying in the mini oven - I had in mind a wire basket of some kind.  Though, I suppose I could just use a large sieve, which I already have.
  
  They didn't have wire baskets.  What they did have - both the supermarket chains I order from, in fact - is air fryers.
  
  So, one of those next week.
  
  
  
• I got Nuitka's onefile mode to work.  Well, sort of; it uses AppImage and I got AppImage to work.
  
  The problem was that it was missing an icon file, which it doesn't actually need for any reason whatsoever, and Nuitka was suppressing the error message from AppImage so you couldn't tell.
  
  Now instead it fails at runtime because jaraco.text can't find the Lorem ipsum file.  I have no use for jaraco.text or Lorem ipsum, but it breaks anyway.
  
  Also it takes 1.3 seconds to start up, because it actually unpacks into a temp directory and runs from there.  That's fine for a long-running web app like Mana (or Minx) but would suck for lightweight apps and tools like my little monitoring agent.
  
  On the other hand, the monitoring agent is under 200 lines of code, where Mana and Minx are 10k and 17k LOC respectively, so the agent and tools like that are much easier to simply move to Nim or Crystal - and in fact I have already done that.
  
  Overall this is a fiddly and imperfect way to bundle apps, but it does work, and once you figure out which modules are causing problems (Munch, Jaraco) you can write a build hook and that problem goes away.
  
  I could just rewrite 10k LOC in Nim or Crystal except that I'd also need to port several libraries for templates, text processing and the like that currently aren't available on those languages, so meh to that.
  
  Now I'm going to look at making Mana work with SQLite so it can be entirely self-contained for small instances.
  
  
  
• Speaking of which, there are an estimated one trillion SQLite databases in use worldwide.  (SQLite)
  
  That's rather a lot.
  
  
  
• Sapphire has announced a passively cooled Radeon RX 5700 XT.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  It's intended for servers and compute workstations rather than gaming, though it does have the regular set of one HDMI and three DisplayPort outputs.  Power consumption is 180W, where the 5700 XT is usually rated at 225W, so performance will likely suffer by a few percent.
  
  Pricing is, unfortunately, on a need-to-know basis, and you don't need to know.
  
  
  
• Gigabyte has announced the Aorus Gen4 7000 SSD range that effectively maxes out PCIe 4.0.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Reads at 7GBps, writes up to 6.85GBps, and endurance rated at 0.4 DWPD for 5 years.
  
  Pricing is, and I quote, premium.
  
  
  
• TSMC is ramping up its ramp up of new fabs.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  They're planning to spend up to $28 billion on new manufacturing facilities this year, up 60% from 2020.
  
  They'll also be entering risk production on 3nm this year - that is, the first potentially marketable chips on the new process, while they iron out the final bugs.  Full volume production for 3nm will begin in the second half of 2022.
  
  
  
• Intel and board partners are prepping a slew of Z590 motherboards to couple with Rocket Lake, whichever that is.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Oh, right, that's the one that reduces the core count from ten to eight.  Got it.
  
  
  
• Sigmal is expleriemcing tegnical differcultes.  (Signal)
  
  Signal's staff are shoving servers into racks as fast as they can, but barely keeping up with the waves of users fleeing WhatsApp.
  
  Also, Chrome's spellcheck is weird.
  
  
  
• Meanwhile WhatsApp has postponed stealing your data and mass-banning users who refuse to comply until May.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  "You will be eaten last", a company spokesman added.
  
  
  
• Google wants to make it very clear that they own your data.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  The Google Sync API was included in the Chromium codebase, allowing users of some third-party browsers to sign in to Google and retrieve their bookmarks, saved passwords, and other information.
  
  Google will put a stop to that, you mark my words.
  
  
  
• BugTraq is dead.  (ZDNet)
  
  It survived 27 years, which is three eternities in internet time, before being killed by a chain of corporate acquisitions by increasingly hostile companies.
  
  
  
• Google gave Minds a 24-hour warning to prevent free speech or removed from the Play Store.  (Russia Today)
  
  I have to go to fucking Russia Today to find this story.
  
  Minds have removed search, discovery, and comments from their app on both the  Apple and Google app store.  The full, unrestricted Android app can be downloaded from their own website.
  
  If you use an iPhone, well, that's your problem.
  
  
  
• Parler CEO John Matze has had to go into hiding along with his family.  (Russia Today again)
  
  Matze says he has been flooded with death threats, which seems more than plausible given the level of insanity today.  (Ultra Violet: Hide in your bunker until further notice.)
  
  Parler is suing Amazon for a whole bunch of stuff, from simple breach of contract to multiple violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act.  Amazon did all those things, but the question is whether Parler can get the courts to pay attention.
  
  
  
  Interestingly here, Amazon is trying to argue that CDA Section 230 protects them - Amazon - from breach of contract suits, which means they know they fucked up.  Their contract with Parler required 30 days' notice of material breaches warranting termination, and Amazon barely gave 30 hours.
  
  
  
• Just got a notification of a new Coco livestream that ended seven hours ago.  Good work, everyone.

Not At All Tech News

Cooking With Sous Vide and Also Supercritical Carbon Dioxide Video of the Day

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Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, January 17 2021 10:29 AM (PiXy!)

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