Friday, December 17
Daily News Stuff 17 December 2021
Onwards To The Eighties Edition
Onwards To The Eighties Edition
Top Story
- So I technically survived the last working day of the year and I'm technically on leave for three weeks. In reality I'll be logging in on Monday to do a few things - but I won't be answering phone calls or attending meetings. Those alone make it a holiday.
- Lumi arrived, or possibly Pomu. Anyway, the second of my Dell Inspiron 16 Plus laptops. I might get a third one of these - I'm using them as compact, portable servers with a built-in UPS, which is why I need more than one of them.
The specific model I've been buying isn't 40% off right now so any potential purchases will wait until that sale comes around again.
- Ethereum costs $250 per second and is 5000 times slower than a Raspberry Pi costing $45. (Usenix)
It has a data transfer rate about as fast as a 19.2k modem and storage costs that would turn a 1960 IBM account manager green with envy.
And it doesn't even work consistently.
Tech News
- Merry Christmas! You've been hacked! Here's a bill for $45,000! (Tom's Hardware)
Just what I wanted! How did you guess?
- I'm not sure who the imagined market is for a $2600 audiophile network switch. (Tom's Hardware)
Audiophiles want tube amplifiers and laser turntable pickups. They don't stream from Spotify.
- A reader also forwarded this audiophile SSD. (AudiophileStyle)
This one does have one valid function: 100% of the TLC flash is locked in pseudo-SLC mode, making for more consistent write speeds. Though any SSD these days is a thousand times faster than is needed for audio recording and playback, even if you're using 192kHz and 32 bits.
- Next-level Zenloss:A new strain of ransomware specifically targets Minecraft servers. (Bleeping Computer)
Ha. My Minecraft server runs in a container and the host takes a snapshot every twenty minutes.
And keeps it.
Forever.
Thousands of the damn things.
I really should clean that up.
(I think zenloss is a Hololive term, and mostly relates to Minecraft, which is rather nasty about deleting all your items if you die and don't make it back to your place of death in five minutes.)
- Log4j attackers otherwise are switching to mining Monero. (Bleeping Computer)
That's the same thing that happened in that $45,000 AWS account breach above - the hackers used the account to mine Monero, earning themselves $800 at a cost of $45,000. So yes, it's 50 times less painful to just have your wallet stolen.
- Fossil fuels kill a million people a year. (Ars Technica)
Sort of. Shorten lifespans to that effect, anyway.
Mostly coal.
Mostly China.
If you've seen a major Chinese city on a bad air day this is entirely believable.
- So burn wood instead. (New Yorker)
It's technically renewable so the EU will shower you with subsidies even though it makes no fucking sense.
If the system is stupid you might as well take advantage of it.
- At EA it can take a day to change a three lines of code. (Neowin)
Or rather - the article is kind of dumb - it takes five minutes to make the change and the rest of the day to test the effects throughout the game.
- Crypto investors were cheated out of $8 billion in 2021. (The Register)
Still less than civil asset forfeiture.
- Is China going backwards to Mao or sideways to Pol Pot? (The Register)
The Chinese government has issued a new list of things you're not allowed to say in video streams, including:
1. Suggesting socialism is anything but perfect.
2. Suggesting Marxism is anything but perfect.
3. Suggesting the CCP is anything but perfect.
4. Suggesting that maybe things are going in the wrong direction.
5. Suggesting that the CCP has at any time in history been anything but perfect.
6. Suggesting that shoving people into an unmarked van at 3AM never to be seen again might not be the most perfectly ethical way to behave.
7. Making jokes about the CCP.
8. Pointing out that Taiwan is a country that exists.
9. Mentioning the independence movements in Hong Kong, Tibet, Xinjiang, or basically anywhere else on the planet the CCP considers their property.
10. Reporting on any foreign news that reports on any of that or mentions Taiwan as a country that exists.
11. History.
12. Making jokes about China.
13. Making jokes about the Chinese flag.
14. Making jokes about the Chinese national anthem.
15. Factual reporting about what Chinese leaders actually said.
16. Cosplaying as any Chinese leader.
17. Wearing funny hats.
18. Pointing out that that Mao guy kinda sucked.
...
100. Anything else the CCP doesn't like.
Yes, the list has exactly 100 rules, and yes, that's the last one.
Party Like It's 1979 Video of the Day
That doesn't really sound like a 70s song, and that's because it ain't.
1962.
1962.
Disclaimer: And now the maple syrup is very sticky,
The stuff is on the pancakes now,
That ought to make them stick together.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
06:30 PM
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Posted by: normal at Friday, December 17 2021 10:46 PM (obo9H)
2
That NVMe drive is hilarious. External power, giant filtering caps, an external crystal, 333GB, and...a Realtek controller with a PCIe 3.0 x2 interface and 4 NAND channels. Well, I guess they needed to cut corners somewhere.
Also: "I only would have used a different power connector because it total height. It wouldn’t fit in my case, I only have have about 5mm or so."
Yeah, no kidding. A lot of motherboards have *no* clearance, like mine, which has heatsinks for both drives it supports. You literally couldn't even use this as your main drive, the one connected to the CPU, because that one you can't even remove the heatsink (there isn't one), because the drive sits upside down on a daughterboard, floating above the motherboard!
To be fair, you probably wouldn't *want* to use it as your primary drive, because of the size, interface, and you'd probably not want to share bandwidth with OS activity.
Also: "I only would have used a different power connector because it total height. It wouldn’t fit in my case, I only have have about 5mm or so."
Yeah, no kidding. A lot of motherboards have *no* clearance, like mine, which has heatsinks for both drives it supports. You literally couldn't even use this as your main drive, the one connected to the CPU, because that one you can't even remove the heatsink (there isn't one), because the drive sits upside down on a daughterboard, floating above the motherboard!
To be fair, you probably wouldn't *want* to use it as your primary drive, because of the size, interface, and you'd probably not want to share bandwidth with OS activity.
Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, December 18 2021 12:23 AM (Z0GF0)
3
"Minecraft, which is rather nasty about deleting all your items if you die and don't make it back to your place of death in five minutes"
There are mods that will eliminate that problem by dropping a grave container with all your stuff where you died.
There are mods that will eliminate that problem by dropping a grave container with all your stuff where you died.
Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, December 18 2021 12:25 AM (Z0GF0)
4
Audiophiles, way beyond the old Laser Pickup for vinyl. Now days they argue endlessly about which USB cable sounds better with the Kilobuck DAC.
Then there are the Power Cable threads, Ugh!.
Then there are the Power Cable threads, Ugh!.
Posted by: Mark Gosdin at Saturday, December 18 2021 12:30 AM (FKpVG)
5
Dear People,
I've been experimenting recently with turning a two channel MP3 into a time series, and downsampling the results. I think I can hear a difference between the 11k sampling frequency result and the 22k sampling frequency result.
I'm worried I'm turning into an audiophile. Help! Please.
I've been experimenting recently with turning a two channel MP3 into a time series, and downsampling the results. I think I can hear a difference between the 11k sampling frequency result and the 22k sampling frequency result.
I'm worried I'm turning into an audiophile. Help! Please.
Posted by: PatBuckman at Saturday, December 18 2021 02:19 AM (r9O5h)
6
Pat,
have you discovered any desire to buy vastly-overpriced cables or other equipment? If not, you're probably safe, but better to destroy anything in the vicinity with a speaker to avoid contamination.
have you discovered any desire to buy vastly-overpriced cables or other equipment? If not, you're probably safe, but better to destroy anything in the vicinity with a speaker to avoid contamination.
Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, December 18 2021 03:31 AM (Z0GF0)
7
If you are grinding off bits of sound, it seems like you've used an audio file on your audio file.
Posted by: benzeen at Saturday, December 18 2021 04:31 AM (/p5qM)
8
Well, the type of electronics I'm really interested in, the analog signal quality often really does matter, and equipment can get quite expensive. It is actually a little bit justified, because these systems are stupidly hard to make work at all, and the consumer digital electronics world does not supply components that are good for the high power applications. Hobbyist grade systems are basically for low power applications only.
Posted by: PatBuckman at Saturday, December 18 2021 04:43 AM (r9O5h)
9
Noticed something odd about the pagination thing on the bottom of my blog. It says Page 1 of 1 on the first page, and then Page 2 of 2 on the next, and so on.
Posted by: Mauser at Saturday, December 18 2021 04:30 PM (Ix1l6)
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