• All the D&D 5th Edition stuff you could ever want.  (The Trove)
  
  Also, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 3.5th, 4th, and in a folder labeled "BECMI", the Basic / Expert / Companion / Master / Immortals boxed sets, which were an interesting alternate take on D&D.  And the original edition plus expansions in a folder under within the 1st Edition.
  
  Meanwhile, thanks to a bunch of Humble Bundles, I have a pretty complete collection of entirely legitimate Pathfinder PDFs.
  
  
  
• Speaking of Humble Bundle they have a really nice Cities Skylines bundle going right now.
  
  For $18 you get the base game and the Concerts, Snowfall, Natural Disasters, Mass Transit, Green Cities, Industries, and Campus expansions, plus four content packs.  That only leaves Parklife and the recent Sunset Harbor expansions, and a few radio stations.
  
  
  
• Liva has a new Socket AM4 mini PC.  (PC Perspective)
  
  It takes any 35W AM4 APU, and supports two SODIMMs for up to 32GB (and probably 64GB),  an M.2 NVMe slot, and a 2.5" drive.
  
  I/O consists of six USB 3.0 ports, gigabit Ethernet, HDMI, VGA, two DisplayPort ports, a good old DB9 serial port, a USB 3.1 type C port, headphone and microphone jacks, and WiFi 5 a.k.a. 802.11ac.
  
  The only problem is that the review unit didn't entirely work - it crashed while they were running benchmarks.
  
  Which I must admit is a rather substantial problem.
  
  It's rather larger than a NUC - about 8" x 7" - but needs to be to fit all those ports and a socketed CPU.
  
  
  
• Perhaps the MSI Modern 14 would be a better choice.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  It has a Ryzen 4000 APU - a choice of a 4500U in the $649 model, or a 4700U in the $749 model, two SODIMM slots, an M.2 slot supporting both PCIe 3.0 and SATA drives, two USB 2.0 ports, one USB 3 Type-C port, an audio combo jack, and a microSD card slot.
  
  The screen is a 14" 1080p IPS model, which is adequate, and the battery is a 52 Wh unit delivering up to 10 hours of operation.
  
  And it has dedicated PgUp/PgDn/Home/End keys and weighs just 1.3kg.
  
  I'd like perhaps a higher-resolution display, but the light weight and socketed memory and storage make it an attractive buy.  The eight core 4700U model should keep up with application demands for a good long while given that you can throw as much as 64GB of RAM into it.
  
  
  
• In other news, Elon Musk and NASA collaborated to launch an apatosaurus into orbit.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  That capsule looks rather roomy.  By comparison.
  
  
  
• Beekeeper Studio is either a studio for keeping bees or a SQL editor and database management tool.  (GitHub)
  
  One of those.
  
  Probably.
  
  
  
• Intel's Xeon Gold 6250 is a high clock speed 8 core server part that costs $3400.  (Serve the Home)
  
  Which by strange coincidence is just $50 less than the current price for the 64 core Threadripper 3990X meaning you'd have to be completely crazy to buy the Xeon.  (WCCFTech)
  
  
  
• Oh.  Looks like one of our Threadripper servers rebooted itself.  And my restart script wasn't quite production-ready.
  
  
  
• That was a nuisance.  The MongoDB startup script was timing out before the journal recovery could complete, so it would start up, then shut down again, over and over.
  
  
  
• In corporate America, website port-scan you.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  There's actually a good reason for this: A number of malicious programs keep known ports open on your computer.  Your browser can connect to a local port and check if it's open, so if you're doing online banking your bank can check your computer for certain types of malware on the spot.
  
  On the other hand, they can also do bad stuff.  As I've mentioned before, you need to password-protect even local web servers.
  
  
  
• Google has postponed the launch of Android 11 due to (spins wheel) an international Vegemite shortage.  (Thurrott.com)
  
  
  
• An eighth Amazon worker has died of Wuhan Bat Soup Death Plague.  (Slashdot)
  
  Which puts Amazon at about 1/30th of the national average.
  
  
  
• A repeal of CDA Section 230 might be bad news for social networks.  (WBUR)
  
  Okay, so yes, that's true.  And given that I am attempting, fitfully, to launch my own social network, I am personally in the crosshairs.
  
  On the one hand, CDA 230 is why all the social networks that have survived are based either in the US, or in China where the CCP wants people to speak freely and openly of their political views so that they can be shoved into a van and carted off for reprogramming.
  
  On the other hand, Twitter.

Posted by: normal at Monday, June 01 2020 12:48 AM (obo9H)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, June 01 2020 01:24 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, June 01 2020 05:50 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: cxt217 at Tuesday, June 02 2020 10:23 AM (4i7w0)

Posted by: iemilyarden at Thursday, June 17 2021 02:34 AM (a36NK)

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Posted by: Tina Singh at Wednesday, February 23 2022 04:51 PM (k5suN)

Posted by: Tina Singh at Wednesday, February 23 2022 04:51 PM (k5suN)

Posted by: Tina Singh at Wednesday, February 23 2022 04:52 PM (k5suN)

Posted by: Tina Singh at Wednesday, February 23 2022 04:52 PM (k5suN)

Posted by: Tina Singh at Wednesday, February 23 2022 04:52 PM (k5suN)

Posted by: Tina Singh at Wednesday, February 23 2022 04:53 PM (k5suN)

Posted by: Tina Singh at Wednesday, February 23 2022 04:53 PM (k5suN)

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