Thursday, December 23
Daily News Stuff 23 December 2021
Disclaimer: Chitter chitter weresquirrels of Jakarta.
Top Story
- Another day, another major outage at AWS US-East-1. (Bleeping Computer)
There was a power outage that took out AZ4 in the northern Virginia location. Services affected included (deep breath) Amazon itself, Hulu, Coinbase, Slack, Imgur, Asana (oops, we use that at work), Zendesk (double oops), and HubSpot (triple oops).
- What's next for the Microsoft Cloud? (ZDNet)
With all these AWS outages Microsoft is sitting pretty - what's that, Lassie? Another critical security vulnerability that went undetected for four years? (The Record)
I guess if no-one can reach your server it's perfectly secure.
Tech News
- Those dirtbags at Princeton have issued a formal apology and cancelled their "research" project. (Princeton)
The "privacy study" consisted of emailing thinly-veiled legal threats from fake addresses and watching how the victims responded.
That's it. That's the research.
- Quanta has a quick roundup of real research for the past year. (Quanta)
This one is just physics; I'll see if they have more posts covering other fields.
- The Steam winter sale is now on. (Steam)
The D&D game I mentioned yesterday - Solasta: Crown of the Magister - is half price. It seems consistently well-regarded, so I'll pick it up. Given how Wizards of the Coast (the publisher of D&D these days) is destroying itself, this might be the last good D&D game ever.
- The Crucial P5 Plus is kind of meh. (Serve the Home)
If your expectations are extremely high. It can hit 6.8GBps on reads, and worst case sustained writes average 500MBps.
The benchmark comparisons do show that the rather pricey Gigabyte Aorus 7000s may be worth the money if you need serious write performance.
- LLVM's HIPSPV Coming Together For AMD HIP To SPIR-V For OpenCL Execution (Phoronix)
Nope, no idea.
- Climate change is caused by lesbians. (Reddit)
Makes sense.
- AMD is expected to announce stuff at CES. (Tom's Hardware)
Ryzen 6000 laptop chips with updated graphics, a Zen 3 desktop refresh with up to 192MB of V-Cache, the new Zen 3 workstation chips, and Zen 4 due later in 2022.
- LG has unveiled a 16:18 monitor. (Tom's Hardware)
The DualUp is a 27" monitor with a resolution of 2560x2880 which is interesting, but what I really want is a large ultrawide screen with a resolution of 7680x2880 - essentially three of these in one monitor.
- Adata has shown off its first PCIe 5 M.2 SSDs. (Tom's Hardware)
Read speeds up to 14GBps and writes up to 12GBps, with capacities up to 8TB. Don't expect these to be cheap.
- Intel has come under fire in China for (checks notes) asking its suppliers not to use child slaves. (Bloomberg)
Fuck China.
- One of the cofounders of Twitch set up an NFT website and it promptly got hacked. (Kotaku)
In fairness, when compared to recent DeFi hacks this was so small in scope that it barely registers.
- Is Omicron over before it even began? (Washington Post)
Cases already seem to be ebbing in South Africa.
- Micron says that memory shipments are limited by non-memory components. (WCCFTech)
If you want to buy individual DDR5 chips, no problem. If you want to buy completed modules, though, there are none to be found because a 50 cent power management chips has a nine month lead time.
- The 27-inch iMac and/or iMac Pro may or may not be on its way with or without a mini-LED display. (WCCFTech)
Or not.
- Websockets are great. (Adama)
Right up until you try to make them work reliably. Which is not a problem with websockets, which work exactly as specified, but a problem with making anything work reliably in an unreliable world.
- Jug provides task-based parallel programming for Python. (GitHub)
I need to look at Python task queues.
- What problem blockchains actually solve. (Solution Space)
Blockchains do actually solve a problem, but they are mostly applied to problems they do not solve.
- The problem with big tech. (Paul le fou)
Okay, the guy got banned from Tinder for bullshit reasons - after paying for a platinum subscription. Not a huge deal.
But the general case is accurately identified: There's no punishment for false positives. Big tech never suffers for banning people who did nothing wrong. It's expected. And there's no recourse.
- Germany is taking 4GW of nuclear capacity offline because fuck you, that's why. (BNN Bloomberg)
The plants aren't at the end of their life. They're not excess capacity. Energy futures are already spiking to record highs.
The lost capacity is going to be covered by coal plants when renewable power runs low, so this is a clear net negative for the environment, and they know it.
- Intel has mediocre video cards on the way. (WCCFTech)
The ARC A350 and A380 are expected to slot in below the low end from AMD and Nvidia. But if you just want a card for a multi-monitor solution and not for gaming, they'll likely do just fine, and they'll run even in systems with tiny PSUs and no PCIe power leads available.
Expected in Q1.
April
- On April 1, the ASRock Z590 Taichi had a thing that spins, TSMC was investing $100 billion in fab expansion and R&D, the EmDrive still didn't work, and taking the world's fastest server out for a drive.
Plus Hololive EN got new costumes.
- On April 2, my main dekstop PC started crashing if I played two YouTube videos at once, Intel's i5-11400 was in stock and not terrible, AMD increased production of Ryzen CPUs and it was eventually enough, and isEven as a service (iEAAS).
- On April 3, we updated our video drivers and our mouse stopped working - the solution is to disable HDCP, I enjoyed my first weekend off in a couple of months and went fishing - in Minecraft, Hynix invested $106 billion in new fabs and R&D, Rocket Lake Xeons were on the way, and Rust leaked your username.
- On April 4, the best CPU was the one you could find on store shelves, the best GPU likewise, GitHub was being used to mine crypto, personal details of half a billion Facebook users were floating around the internet, and power went out at our dataenter, I had to switch over to the backup server and hide some old content but it should all be fixed in a day or two.
- On April 5, LG stopped making phones, disabling PSF cost 1% in performance, and the server was still down but should be back in a day or two.
- On April 6, Oracle lost its long running copyright suit against Google, Edge grew three sizes that day, the Erdős-Faber-Lovász conjecture was settled, the new Razer Book 13 lacked the Four Essential Keys, Azure went down dure to a DNS problem, fuck Coloroado, it was a bubble - and still is, speaking of which $2 trillion in cryptocurrency, Yahoo Answers shut down, the anwer was not to hire communists in the first place, everything was in short supply, and the server was still down but should be back in a day or two.
- On April 7, fire, flood, and explosions, Ice Lake Xeons scaled up to 40 cores - when AMD already offered 64, 7% of Americans were smart enough to stay off the internet, Autralia was considering its own Section 230, the RIAA was run by idiots, sometimes a silly idea that works is still a silly idea, and the server was still down but should be back in a day or two.
- On April 8, EEVBlog returned from its little fire/flood/explosion hiatus, Amazon's SC1 storage was $15 per TB per month, Alienware announced its first AMD laptop since 2007, GnuCOBOL, Twitch Bans Everyone, Facebook didn't give a shit, and the server was still down but should be back in a day or two.
- On April 9, Asus announced Ryzen 5000 NUCs which all used Ryzen 4000 CPUs, Intel's DG2 was rumoured to compete with the RTX 3070, 600,000 stolen credit cards were stolen when a hacking site got hacked, LinkedIn joined the 500 million user leak club, and the server was still down but should be back in a day or two.
- On April 10, we submitted a price list to the EU Parliament, Linux was coming to Arm-based Macs - and still is and forever will be, the Ryzen 5900 non-X leaked, dogs is dogs and cats is dogs and squirrels in cages is parrots, an app for installing apps installed malware, and the server was still down but should be back in a day or two.
- On April 11, China slapped Alibaba with a $2.7 billion antitrust file and CEO Jack Ma was literally unavailable to comment, everyone got integrated graphics, web sites didn't need to be accessible to people who didn't have internet access, why HJKL, genocide schmenocide, and the server was still down but should be back in a day or two.
- On April 12, AMD CPUs were in stock and being snapped up by
turkeyspeafowl, the 5700G was real, Duck blocked FloC, Apple found a useful feature and fixed it, the legacy media lost its shit, inside Intel's fat NUC, potato chips, Coca Cola, ketchup, Fruche, and quail eggs, and the server was still down but should be back in a day or two.
- On April 13, AMD announced the 5800 and 5900 non-X, a different server exploded this time, Amazon release OpenSearch, verbing weirded HTTP, hackers held Dutch cheese to ransom, the Unit Conjecture was false, Intel looked at its record profits and demanded a government bailout, and the server was still down but should be back in a day or two.
- On April 14, the HoloEN Minecraft server expired, scammers used fake product recalls to get their hands on graphics cards, Apple ruined everything, Apple and also Google ruined everything, the Dell Inpiron 14 7000 looked nice and I just managed to get one before they stopped making it, millions of IoPoC devices were insecure - gain, and the server was still down but should be back in a day or two.
- On April 15, Journalists for Cenorship was at it again, a motherboard only a mother could love, Washington State passed a pro-municipal broadband law, I installed Cinescore - and it worked, bath pizza, and the server was still down but should be back in a day or two.
- On April 16, there was a power outage at TSMC's FAB14A, there was a power outage during a storm in Ogden, Utah, Nvidia called RTX 3000 its best product launch ever and you couldn't get one anywhere, don't use Chrome, Twitter worked to reduce bias in its algorithms but not - critical point - in its employees, testing the Raisin 5900X, and the server was still down but should be back in a day or two.
- On April 17, everybidy blocked Google's FloC, an encrypted penguin was still a penguin, Python mostly worked, a passively cooled i9-10900, knots in the family tree, Dell spun VMWare back out, the Asus ZenBook Duo 14 lacked the Four Essential Keys but for good reason, Elon Musk channeled his inner D. D. Harriman, and the server was still down but should be back in a day or two.
- On April 18, the trouble with LXD, Beethoven's hamster, and the server was still down but wait - the server was back!
- Still on April 18 but with a working server, always use --instance-only, or --optimized-storage, that works too, thanks for the bonus, I quit, Twitter went down and nothing of value was lost, Intel's midrange 11th gen desktop parts were not terrible, one card only, Intagram for kids was a bad idea, and Facebook allowed governments to lie, something that had never happened before in all human history.
- On April 19, AMD's Epyc Milan was the world's fastest CPU, Van Gogh didn't exist, an Nginx cheat sheet, no-one was driving the car, and even a dead squirrel could get hit on the head by an acorn.
- On April 20, we got a new new server, what good was AI anyway, barking dogs, screaming babies, and IoT, and multiplying a SPOF by four just creates four SPOFs.
- On April 21, nothing was on fire right at that moment, an 850,000 core CPU, Alder Lake-S Xeon W-1400, Mongita was SQLite for MongoDB, the M1 iMac arrived, Discord turned down $12 billion, and the Geico gecko sprung a leak.
- On April 22, teenagers having knife fights was perfectly normal, the Linux Foundation banned the University of Minnesota, the Zenbook 13 had the Four Essential Keys, a 6k Docker container, we ran Linux GUI apps on Windows, the Russians showed that they could be just as stupid as anyone else, and Intel defeated a zombie patent troll.
- On April 23, we cursed Cogent backhaul links, I got a day off - well, a night off anyway, the best tablets of 2021 were not particularly good, the Post Office was spying on everyone, the EFF sued Proctorio - no, not the game, IBM corrected a mistake, phishing emails looking to steal Twitter account details turned out to be genuine emails sent by Twitter because Twitter was run by idiots, the iMac was overpriced, and honey entered the modern era.
- On April 24, I ate lunch, you couldn't buy a Land Rover, dozens of fraud convictions were overturned in Britain when it was proven that the Post Office couldn't count, unplug your QNAP NAS right now and leave it like that, and we encountered cascading containment failure.
- On April 25, SSDNodes launched in Sydney and I have two servers there that I basically haven't used because this entire year was chaos but at least they're cheap, this is how you get a regulatory crackdown, don't click on this link, the University of Minnesota apologised for getting caught, and Sabrina the Teenage Embezzler.
- On April 26, the naming of names was a nomenclature matter, Apple said that no reasonable person would assume they owned the things they bought, hackers stole Apple's schematics and for some strange reason no-one cared, Twitter was blocking tweets crital of the government, we lost a little on every sale but made it up on volume, we reminded ourselves to look into Envoy, and the Linux Foundation told the University of Minnesota to take a long walk off a short pier.
- On April 27, Basecamp went woke, started going broke, and unlike most companies put two and two together, it was not a defective Xbox CPU, TSMC was preparing to release 4nm and 3nm chips, the MacOS malware filters had a hole in them big enough to drive the Ever Given through sideways.
- On April 28, Arm announced the upcoming V1 and N2 server cores, AMD also announced a record quarter, never run Google ads, Microsoft also blocked FloC, Mangadex was still offline, streaming web browsers to your web browser, and MacOS went one step sideways and two steps down.
- On April 29, Chia voided your warranty, AI dungeon leaked your creepy fetishes you weirdo, and Experian leaked absolutely everything about absolutely everyone.
- On April 30, Chia ate an exabyte, dammit Walter, another reason not to buy an Arm based Mac, Vivaldi blocked those damn cookie popups, and always trust a squirrel with fireworks.
Party Like It's 1979 Video of the Day
Disclaimer: Chitter chitter weresquirrels of Jakarta.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
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1
In fairness, America is wrong to be pushing 'no child labor, ever'. America's public school system seems like it might have objectively worse outcomes than child labor.
As for nuclear power, yeah, pushing solar/wind, which is right now inherently mixed fossil fuel, and pushing against nuclear, is a clear act of evil by American and German regimes. "Oh no, terrorists might get access to fissile material" is obvious bullshit the way both regimes have screwed over counter proliferation efforts against Iran.
As for nuclear power, yeah, pushing solar/wind, which is right now inherently mixed fossil fuel, and pushing against nuclear, is a clear act of evil by American and German regimes. "Oh no, terrorists might get access to fissile material" is obvious bullshit the way both regimes have screwed over counter proliferation efforts against Iran.
Posted by: PatBuckman at Friday, December 24 2021 01:00 AM (r9O5h)
2
I agree on the child labour issue, but it's more about embarrassing Pooh Bear and his regime.
Posted by: normal at Friday, December 24 2021 06:28 AM (obo9H)
3
Child /slavery/ is not a good deed, that I will concede.
The rampant fecklessness of industry sourcing stuff in China from slave labor was wrong.
And we should not have made our employment law so unduly burdensome that expanding into totalitarian slave labor markets seemed like a reasonable idea. If we had anything going for us, it was that free labor is smarter and more productive. It very much looks like our self proclaimed rulers were trying to destroy us from very early on.
Xi's preferred pronoun in English is Pooh. Calling him anything else is deadnaming, and makes trannies kill themselves*. Xi leads a profoundly incompetent, evil and destructive regime. If he were the best option for the Han, the Han might as well exterminate themselves, and save pain**.
*I'm joking here, and do not wish to encourage anyone to kill themself. Please don't, where there is life, there is hope.
**Yeah, the Han have better options. I don't truck with killing oneself to 'save pain'. If anyone is considering this, I think it very likely that the state of mind will prove temporary if you wait, and there are a bunch of evil jerks who lie to people who are in serious pain and other difficulties.
The rampant fecklessness of industry sourcing stuff in China from slave labor was wrong.
And we should not have made our employment law so unduly burdensome that expanding into totalitarian slave labor markets seemed like a reasonable idea. If we had anything going for us, it was that free labor is smarter and more productive. It very much looks like our self proclaimed rulers were trying to destroy us from very early on.
Xi's preferred pronoun in English is Pooh. Calling him anything else is deadnaming, and makes trannies kill themselves*. Xi leads a profoundly incompetent, evil and destructive regime. If he were the best option for the Han, the Han might as well exterminate themselves, and save pain**.
*I'm joking here, and do not wish to encourage anyone to kill themself. Please don't, where there is life, there is hope.
**Yeah, the Han have better options. I don't truck with killing oneself to 'save pain'. If anyone is considering this, I think it very likely that the state of mind will prove temporary if you wait, and there are a bunch of evil jerks who lie to people who are in serious pain and other difficulties.
Posted by: PatBuckman at Friday, December 24 2021 08:52 AM (r9O5h)
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