• The US government is attempting to fund its infrastructure bill with crypto regulations.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Now, I'm not entirely against crypto regulations - some days I'd be delighted to see the entire industry suffer a sudden spontaneous existence failure - but just one part of the infrastructure bill will run to $1 trillion and the regulations are expected to generate $28 billion over ten years.
  
  They did the math.  And ignored the answer.
  
  
  
• In related news a study - apparently of, by, and for idiots - says more people would use crypto if they understood it.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  I understand crypto.  This claim seems...  Inaccurate.
  
  
  
• I was logged into the server right as it crashed tonight.  Load average 60 and climbing.  I've blocked some IPs - well, about a quarter of a million IPs - and I'll see if constraining the CPU on this container makes things more stable.
  
  Update: Oops.  That's not the CPU limit.  That setting breaks things.  Anyway, the application and database containers are now each limited to 3 virtual cores, out of 8 (quad core + hyperthreading).  Not sure if that will be enough, but right now it's perfectly fine.
  
  
  

Tech News

• Apple has new video cards - for use only in the Mac Pro - but faster than any individual card you can get anywhere else.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  The Radeon PRO W6800X Duo is a 400W card with two Radeon 6800 chips connected over AMD's Infinity Fabric, and 64GB of GDDR6 RAM.
  
  Perfect for playing Minecraft.  At 16K resolution on a video wall.
  
  
  
• Apple also has a new keyboard, and this one only works on M1 Arm-based Macs.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Yes, a keyboard that doesn't even work on other Mac models.
  
  
  
• Build your own CDN in 5 hours.  (Fly.io)
  
  Give or take five weeks, really.  Not a bad article overall:

  We have choices.  We could use Varnish (scripting! edge side includes! PHK blog posts!).  We could use Apache Traffic Server (being the only new team this year to use ATS!). Or we could use NGINX (we're already running it!).  The only certainty is that you'll come to hate whichever one you pick.  Try them all and pick the one you hate the least.

  It do be like that.
  
  
  
• I used to link to stories from Tech Crunch.  I stopped because of shit like this.
  
  
  
  
  Oh no, free speech!  Whatever shall we do?
  
  
  
• Note to self: Do not use DRAMless SSDs for Linux servers.  (Phoronix)
  
  I was actually planning to do just that - I'm building out a new development lab, and I'm going to deploy a small stack of Intel NUCs for cluster testing.  Plan was to use some existing WD Black SSDs and add WD Blues when those ran out.
  
  The WD Blue looks great on Windows-oriented benchmarks, but it's DRAMless.  The Samsung 980 is similar, and on the benchmarks on that page it's as much as eight times slower than the WD Black.  It's definitely not eight times cheaper.
  
  
  
• I'm getting a Dell.  I mentioned to my boss that I was going to be setting up a new home lab - the Linux cluster of NUCs and so on - and he said the company would pay for some of it.  I want to be free to do whatever the hell I want with the desktop stuff, so I suggested a laptop.
  
  Dell Inspiron 14 7000.  Core i7-1165G7, 2560x1600 screen, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD, 2GB Nvidia MX350 which isn't fast by any means but is there, 1.25kg.  Two of the Four Essential Keys at least; the others double up with F11 and F12 which I can live with.   
  
  HP have the perfect laptop with a 4K OLED display and the FEK in their proper place, but it costs a lot more than the Dell.  More than two Dells.
  
  My old Dell laptop still works - I'm typing on it right now - but it's developed some weirdness.  Sometimes the trackpad will click but not track, and sometimes it won't do anything at all.  And the battery stopped working entirely for a couple of months - and you can no longer get replacements.
  
  The new one is 80% faster single-threaded, 300% faster multi-threaded, and 40% lighter.  And presumably doesn't die the instant you unplug the charger.  Oh, and the screen on the new one covers 100% of sRGB.  Not sure what the gamut of this one is, but it's fairly muted.  Incredibly sharp - I chose it for the 4K screen - but the colours don't pop.
  
  
  
• Microsoft ran out of servers.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  They offered a free trial of Windows 365 - basically a Windows desktop running in the cloud.  Uptake was great.  Supply not so great.
  
  
  
• Microsoft accidentally leaked the latest redesign of MS Paint.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  It actually looks less crappy.
  
  
  
• Supply chain attacks are getting worse and you are not ready for them.  (ZDNet)
  
  The problem with the world today is that there are not enough grumpy old bastards saying You're not putting that shit on my servers.  Back when I was a very young Pixy they were already a dying breed, and we need to find a new supply somehow.
  
  
  
• AMD's 5600G and 5700G APUs have finally launched as retail parts.  (Hot Hardware)
  
  Can you get them anywhere?
  
  No.
  
  That might change, though.  All of AMD's other CPUs are now in stock and selling at MSRP.
  
  
  
• If you've manage to nurse your 2011-era unpatched Android device all this time, congratulations and farewell.  (Ars Technica)
  
  You'll lose access to Google services by the end of September.
  
  Later but still very old Android devices will continue to work because sometime around Android 4 they added a modular update architecture, but the very early versions can't be fixed any more.
  
  
  
• South Korea is looking to blow a hole in Apple and Google's walled payment gardens.  (Mac Rumors)
  
  Proposed legislation would force their respective app stores to accept and allow third-party payment processors.
  
  
  

Posted by: normal at Thursday, August 05 2021 12:14 AM (LADmw)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, August 05 2021 09:27 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Jay at Thursday, August 05 2021 11:55 PM (0jVI9)

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