Top Story

• Visa and Mastercard have cancelled Russia's credit cards. (CNBC)
  
  All of them.
  
  On the one hand, yes, Russia is run by a nuclear-armed despotic thug.
  
  On the other hand, this is a totally reasonable move that won't hit innocent bystanders or have massive long-term blowback.
  
  On the third hand, this is a way to crush nuclear-armed states without kicking off World War III.
  
  On the fourth hand, we know - we know - that now that this has been weaponised, it will not stop here. We know because we've been here before.
  
  And on the fifth hand, none of this happened when Trump was president.

Questions and Answers

• Not phrased as a question, but deserving of an explanation.
  
  From Fisht:

  There is nothing worse than the Gluten people. The anti Gluten Cult signaled the end of America. No basis in fact and no ability to stop talking about it. JP did a great episode on this millennial virtue scam.

  It's absolutely true that 95% of the people eating gluten-free, and all of the most vocal ones, are doing it as a fashion accessory.
  
  But that leaves the other 5% who will spend two days trapped in the bathroom if they accidentally nibble on the wrong brand of breadstick.
  
  I'd much rather not have to limit myself to eating out maybe once a year. I'd love not to have to view the words Ingredients: Wheat flour the same way I would Front towards enemy. I don't particularly enjoy paying twice as much for food and having one tenth the range to choose from.
  
  But I don't have a lot of say in the matter.
  
  
  
• From Mel Pinto:

  If we use gab in our URL when commenting, the comment will not go thru and you get:
  Your website (gab.com) has been banned. If you feel this is in error, please contact the blog owner by email, or tech support at help@mu.nu

  Not intentional. It's probably tripped the automated spam filter. I'll remove it, but I might need to explicitly whitelist it.
  
  
  
• From 40 Miles North:

  Pixy, I asked a couple days ag if you thought graphics card prices would drop. In the last two days, the price on the XFX Speedster Radeon RX 6600 XT dropped 20%! I hope to buy one shortly. It should be a decent jump from my XFX Radeon RX 460. Let me know if you think I should wait.

  If the price is right, buy it. It's a decent card and as you say, much much faster than the RX 460.
  
  Chip supply remains uncertain so I wouldn't hold off on something you need.
  
  
  
• From Mrs Whatsit:

  I am running video processing (enhancing) software on two PCs. Same version of the software. PC's identical except one is Win 10 and the other Win 11.
  
  Processing the exact same video file, the Win 11 machine is significantly slower (by several hours).
  
  Is it possible to take a PC that came with Win 11 preloaded and roll back to Win 10?

  You can't roll back, but you should be able to download Windows 10 from Microsoft and install it on your Windows 11 system. (How-To Geek)
  
  Windows 11 uses the same activation keys as Windows 10 so any system authorised to run 11 is able to run 10. Some systems running 10 aren't officially supported on 11, but you won't have that problem.
  
  
  
• From Caiwyn:

  Pixy, can you explain how you got into VTubers and what the appeal is? I watched the KFP video you posted a couple of weeks ago, and I found it very amusing, but I felt like I was missing some context. Do you have a place to start for someone interested in going down that rabbit hole? Is there any kind of connection to the politics that drives this site, or is it completely disconnected?

  Oy, there's a question.
  
  To tackle the last part first, vtubers originated in Japan and are still heavily influenced by Japan. The two largest agencies - Hololive and Nijisanji - are Japanese, as are many of the smaller ones like Prism and Phase Connect and VOMS. Japanese culture leans conservative, mostly, and vtubers are for the most part the polar opposite of the screaming campus garbage babies that infest so much of online media.
  
  Pipkin Pippa - Phase Connect's resident Bugs Bunny character, because apparently every agency needs a resident Bugs Bunny character - has a standing invitation to go on Nick Rekieta's livestream and no-one thinks this is odd. Precisely zero pushback.
  
  As to where you should start.... Um. In mid-2020 when I got into it, that was easy. There was Haachama and Coco with Hololive Japan, Pikamee with VOMS, and the three girls from the newly launched Hololive Indonesia, though I didn't know at the time that they all spoke fluent English.
  
  And that was about it. Almost everything else was in Japanese.
  
  Now, there's 11 members of Hololive English and 6 in Hololive Indonesia, both with more on the way, 11 members in Prism Project who all speak fluent English, 14 (last I counted) 20 in Nijisanji's English-speaking branch, plus Phase Connect, Tsunderia, Cyberlive, MyHoloTV, VOMS, major indies like Kson, mid-rank indies like Shizukou, Vyolfers, and Reiny, and small indies like Nymroot and Mooyü.
  
  So... Kind of depends what you like.
  
  Someone fighting the meme wars on the side of righteousness and/or chaos? Pipkin Pippa of Phase Connect.
  
  The nicest person you could possibly imagine but with a weakness for terrible, terrible puns? Ninomae Ina'nis (Ina) of Hololive or Pina Pengin of Prism Project.
  
  Salty gamer girl with a heart of gold? Amelia Watson and Gawr Gura of Hololive.
  
  
  
  Manic chaos fairy? Pomu Rainpuff of Nijisanji.
  
  Dark Overlord of All and honorary Aussie? Haachama of Hololive Japan.
  
  As Australian as Vegemite on toast? Luto and Sara of Prism Project, and Baelz and Sana of Hololive.
  
  Classic RPGs and weird dating sims? Mooyü.
  
  Be prepared to be totally lost as far as the "lore" goes. It doesn't matter what "bottom left" means, or why Pekora's name comes up alongside the Geneva Community Guidelines, why all the penpals want to jump in the bioreactor, or who Pomura and Ayunda are, and you'll pick up Japanese terms like yabe and ponkotsu quickly enough from context. There will be plenty of context.
  
  And be prepared to drop in and out of streams. Hololive alone puts out a hundred hours of content a day, though only a quarter of that is in English.
  
  
  
• From DaveX64:

  Do you have a favorite Keyboard - Video - Mouse (KVM) solution when you need to control more than one computer from the same place or do you favor more of a Remote Desktop type solution?
  I would like to control a Windows and a Linux box from the same dual monitors, keyboard and mouse without a lot of hassle. They're desktop computers in tower cases, not laptops.

  I haven't used one for a while, but the one I did have was an Aten unit that supported dual PCs with dual monitors, and it worked pretty well. They still make those.
  
  
  
• From Catherine:

  Pixy, I'm no longer up on tech or computers. But my kid in college is looking into buying a laptop for school. She will study at least some computer programming as a math major and computers minor, and I would not be surprised if she ends up with two degrees. She could spend what I consider to be a mint on a laptop ($3k would not break her financially). What is in stock and capable if computer science is her plan? We have ordered Dells in the past and they've held up well. I'm so sick of buying from woke companies, but it doesn't seem like there is hope not to pay foreigners or woke idiots. We try to buy American, but we're also realistic . . . and we are in the Midwest US but would order too. Feel free just to drop a link and not spend much time. I'm sure you get this often.

  I have a Dell Inspiron 16 Plus and I quite like it. Fast, mostly quiet, great screen, half the price of an equivalent MacBook. It's not a gaming system but more than capable for stuff like Minecraft. Plus you can pop it open with a screwdriver and upgrade the memory and storage yourself - it's not soldered in place on that model, and Dell provides a detailed service manual.
  
  
  
• From Dudeman:

  My kid is looking for a laptop when he begins college next year. He wants a Framework laptop. Is this a good option? What is a better option?

  If you want something you can do basic upgrades and repairs on yourself, there is no better option than the Framework right now. A single screwdriver (provided) is all you need and everything is labeled and replaceable. The four I/O ports are swappable to whatever you need - USB-A, USB-C, HDMI, DisplayPort, and little storage modules up to 1TB. And it runs well under Linux.
  
  It will soon be slightly out of date - it's 11th generation and 12th generation laptops are starting to appear - but if you're not buying for a while there might be a newer model out by then.
  
  
  
• From RayG:

  Pixy, I get the "secure" lock icon when I enter https://ace.mu.nu on my desktop Chrome. I don't get it on my iPad no matter what I do. Also, on my desktop, when I follow the link for Comments at the end of the "above the fold" part of your post on the main page, I do not get the lock icon. I can enter "https://" in front of the URL myself and get it.
  
  Why is the site not always secure by default? Why can't I get the lock icon on my iPad?

  I can certainly force it the HTTPS by default. I'm not sure why there's an issue on your iPad, but I can try Safari on my iMac and see if it does the same thing.
  
  
  
• Also from RayG:

  Another question: when I use the "Continue reading" link instead of the "Comments" link on the main page, I get a page with a link that says "Access Comments" but it goes to e.g. http://minx.cc/?post=398108 when never opens, browser says "minx.cc took too long to respond." Is this a bug or what?

  Yeah, we need to update the templates and rebuild all the pages to get rid of that link.
  
  
  
• From Daniel Ream:

  My existing cobbled-together whitebox RAIDZ server needs updating. I've got 4x3TB drives plus a 500GB HDD for the OS. i7-875K CPU, 8GB RAM. It's moderately loud and produces a fair amount of heat. it just holds media and some personal files, no need for much performance.
  I'd like something cooler and quieter in some kind of non-rackmount form factor; haven't decided yet whether I'm going to add more drives to the pool or just buy a set of newer, bigger drives but I'd like both options, which means more than 4 3.5" HDD bays. Any recommendations for CPU/mobo/case?

  Even the new Core i3-12100 ($124) should do fine for that; modern CPUs are amazingly fast. Motherboard I'm not sure of, best to browse around for something reasonably priced with lots of SATA ports.
  
  As for the case, there is something that came out just recently: The AeroCool Cipher. It's a fairly standard ATX tower case, matte black with a mesh front and zero RGB nonsense, but it has room for 15 drives - 11 3.5" and 4 2.5".
  
  Supposed to be $75 plus tax but I couldn't find it on Amazon or Newegg to confirm.
  
  
  
• And from rd:

  MS Edge says AOSHQ is unsecure. No httpS, just http.
  
  Is there a missing certificate? How do I fix this?

  Click here. The server is not forcing HTTPS on new connections, so if your browser has remembered the old HTTP URL it will keep defaulting to that.
  
  All browsers now try HTTPS first, so this doesn't happen for new users.
  
  
  

Tech News

• The Asus Flow Z13 gaming tablet is heavy, ugly, expensive, and... Slow? (Tom's Hardware)
  
  It has the latest Core i9-12900H CPU, on-board RYX 3050 Ti graphics, and an optional 16GB RTX 3080 dock, so how can it be slow?
  
  Well, the 3050 Ti is noticeably slower than the 3060 (which is what I have, so I'm glad I paid the extra for that), and the 3080 is external running over Thunderbolt, so despite being a high-end card is slowed down by only having 4 lanes of PCIe.
  
  I guess if you want a gaming tablet the answer is, don't want a gaming tablet.
  
  
  
• A year late and a dollar short, Threadripper Pro 5000 is close to launch. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  But with up to 64 cores at 4.5GHz there is still no competition.
  
  
  
• Everything you need to know about Intel's 13th generation Raptor Lake CPUs. (WCCFTech)
  
  Wait, didn't 12 generation just come out? Isn't 12th generation mobile still just coming out?
  
  Yes, and yes.
  
  
  
• My oven is full of eels.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• The same hackers who hit Nvidia recently appear to have done the same to Samsung. (Bleeping Computer)
  
  The leaked data includes source code for the firmware of a lot of Samsung devices, which is not entirely a bad thing.
  
  
  
• The same hacking group is using certificates stolen from Nvidia to sign malware as trusted driver updates. (Bleeping Computer)
  
  This is entirely a bad thing.
  
  
  
• At least they're not solar freaking roadways. (Fast Company)
  
  Covering canals in California with pergolas of solar panels is not entirely a stupid idea. The land is not otherwise in use, there are access roads, and the shade will save enough water from reduced evaporation to irrigate an extra 50,000 acres.
  
  Which is not a lot but I wouldn't want to mow it.
  
  
  

Party Like It's 1980-ish Video of the Day

Posted by: J Greely at Sunday, March 06 2022 09:45 PM (ZlYZd)

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Monday, March 07 2022 07:11 AM (5iiQK)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, March 07 2022 09:24 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: normal at Monday, March 07 2022 09:47 AM (obo9H)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Monday, March 07 2022 03:08 PM (r9O5h)

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Monday, March 07 2022 09:55 PM (5iiQK)

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