Is this how time normally passes? Really slowly, in the right order?

Monday, March 18

Geek

Daily News Stuff 18 March 2024

Return Of The Bing Edition

Top Story

Tech News

  • I missed this one when it came out because it originally shipped with only 16GB of RAM: The Asus Zenbook OLED 15 2023 model.  (TechRadar)

    It has a 15.6" 2880x1620 120Hz OLED display with 100% DCI-P3 colour.  That's very similar to the display I'm using right now and it's very, very good.

    CPU is a previous-generation Ryzen 7735U - eight Zen 3 CPU cores and 12 RDNA2 graphics cores, so not quite the latest but very capable.  One USB 4 port, one USB 3 C port, one USB 3 A port, HDMI, and a headphone jack.  Not a huge wealth of ports but adequate.

    It has a numeric keypad but it's a compact three column layout so you can just leave NumLock off and use it as a cursor pad and the Four Essential Keys.  And reprogram the extra keys to your whim with PowerToys.

    And it's readily available with 32GB of RAM.


  • How the House quietly revived the TikTok ban before most of us noticed.  (The Verge)

    If "us" means tech journalists, you guys wouldn't notice a tapdancing elephant in the bathroom if it was inconvenient to the narrative.


  • You can download GPT-2 and run it in Excel.  (Spreadsheets Are All You Need)

    Seriously.

    It's the "small" version of GPT-2, which has 124 million parameters, so it's small enough that Excel doesn't explode.  (Unless you're running on a Mac in which case you might want a blast shield.)  But being able to poke at it as a spreadsheet can help demonstrate how it works.

    Modern small LLMs are typically 7 billion parameters, so Excel need not apply.


Disclaimer: Could try loading into PowerPoint though...

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Sunday, March 17

Geek

Daily News Stuff 17 March 2024

A Proxy By Any Other Name Edition

Top Story


Tech News

  • The Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Fold 16 2024 is actually good.  (The Verge)

    I don't know what the specs are because the review focuses almost entirely on the screen, but then the device is almost entirely screen, so that kind of makes sense.

    Folded up with the keyboard in place the screen is about 12" diagonally.  Unfolded it's a 16" 2560x2024 display, and great for artists since it's pen-enabled.

    Problem, as usual, is that it costs around $3000.


  • The LinkedIn app is adding games, because...  It just is.  (Tech Crunch)

    Okay, I guess.


  • If you were watching the VMWare mess and feeling glad your company chose Citrix well there's bad news on the way for you as well.  (The Register)

    Now that the competition has destroyed itself, Citrix is doubling its pricing.


  • Get noted, commies.  (Newsweek)

    China posted to Twitter arguing against the proposed forced divestiture of TikTok.

    They got hit with a community note pointing out that TikTok is banned in China.

    And despite claims that TikTok is not controlled by the Chinese government as a spying operation, that same government says it would rather shut the whole thing down than permit it to be sold.


  • NASA's old supercomputers are causing mission delays.  (Tom's Hardware)

    What missions?


  • Twelve years later, the game Star Citizen is approaching 1.0.  (WCCFTech)

    The game was formerly infamous for raising half a billion dollars while still in beta, but it took about a decade to do that and Palworld just did the same thing in under two months.

    So...  New normal, I guess?


  • How many ways are there for 225 Minecraft mods to be mutually incompatible?

    Latest one I've tripped over is that adding compatibility between Aquamirae and Expanded Combat causes the game to crash.  I've got Forge and Fabric working together with no problems (I wanted Incendium and Nullscape together with BetterNether and BetterEnd), but when I add that tiny straw to all the other mods, it kills the game instantly.

  • A lot.  The answer is, a lot.


  • I'm building a modpack that's intended to look vanilla when you start out, but have a ton of content open up as you explore.

    Apart from drastically changed Nether and End dimensions, it adds the Aether, the Everbright and Everdawn, Twilight Forest, Midnight, and Undergarden dimensions, and several more that I'm still testing.  Plus lots of mobs, building materials, crafting options, and transport.

    It doesn't have Create because (a) that changes the goals of the game and (b) when I add that in with all the other mods my 16GB laptop thrashes endlessly.  To be fair with all the software I have installed 8GB is gone by the time Windows has booted.

    I'll be playing on a 64GB system but I want it to work with 16GB.

Disclaimer: New normal, same as the old normal...  But with an extra half a billion dollars.

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Saturday, March 16

Geek

Daily News Stuff 16 March 2024

Bean There Edition

Top Story


Tech News

  • Sony's PS5 Pro could be out in time for it to be not available for Christmas.  (The Verge)

    And also to have no games to play.

    It's not a huge upgrade - around 50% faster graphics, same CPU - but that should help with any games that are just not quite smooth enough.

    Not that there are any games.


  • Walmart is now selling the M1 MacBook Air for $699.  (Liliputing)

    Which would be a great price except that's the 8GB model and, of course, you can't upgrade it.


  • Someone out there is worth $70 billion, and nobody knows who it is  except that it's not Craig Wright.  (WCCFTech)

    Bitcoin was invented by the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto.  Australian "computer scientist" Craig Write claimed to be the person behind the pseudonym, but just had his claims thrown out in court as being laughably without merit.

    Whoever it is owns over a million Bitcoin, worth around $70,000 each.


Disclaimer: Timing is everything.

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Friday, March 15

Geek

Daily News Stuff 15 March 2024

Mission Failed Successfully Edition

Top Story

  • Intel's 6.2GHz 24 core i9 14900KS is here.  (AnandTech)

    Priced at $689, it's a theoretical 150W part with a 253W maximum short-term power consumption that uses 375W here in the real world.

    PassMark doesn't have any scores up yet but I doubt it's worth the cost and heat for most users.  A 14700 will give you 75% of the performance at less than half the power consumption.


Tech News



Disclaimer: There is no fork.

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Wednesday, March 13

Geek

Daily News Stuff 13 March 2024

Chapa Chapa Edition

Top Story


Tech News



Disclaimer: Chipi chipi chapa chapa dubi dubi daba daba mágico mi dubi dubi boom boom boom boom.

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Tuesday, March 12

Geek

Daily News Stuff 12 March 2024

Chipi Chipi Edition

Top Story

Tech News



Disclaimer: Place water into a Glowstone frame for a Hostile Paradise.

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Monday, March 11

Geek

Daily News Stuff 11 March 2024

Bestidge's Law Edition

Top Story

  • Is the Reddit IPO worth your money.  Fuck no.  (Forbes)

    The article takes Reddit's current trajectory and calculates a realistic value of about 3% of the IPO valuation.  Reddit would have to reach Facebook levels of users for the IPO to be worthwhile.


Tech News


Disclaimer: How do you keep a comment section in suspense?

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Sunday, March 10

Geek

Daily News Stuff 10 March 2024

Weaselly Distinguished Edition

Top Story



Tech News

  • Watching the anime 16bit Sensation which is set (mostly) in a tiny third-rate game development studio during the nineties.

    The details are pretty good - the computers are recognisable models that were available in Japan at the time, and among the many PC-9801s there's even a Sharp X68000.

    The programmer is working in real X86 assembler, and while the paint software the artists use is fictional its features are real enough.  A bit lacking, really; I'm pretty sure automated dithering was a common feature by then.

    The anime itself is kind of silly, but if you like retro computers, or retro computer games, or, um, retro stories, you might want to check it out.

Disclaimer: Weasels are weaselly distinguished, while stoats are stoatally different.

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Saturday, March 09

Geek

Daily News Stuff 9 March 2024

Stoatally Different Edition

Top Story

Tech News



Disclaimer: I'm just surprised that it didn't catch fire.

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Friday, March 08

Geek

Daily News Stuff 8 March 2024

Looming Anime Drought Edition

Top Story

  • The worst person in the world just made a good point: EU Bookburner General Thierry Breton has confirmed his agency is investigating Apple over its decision to cancel Epic Games' developer account.  (Tech Crunch)

    Apple did this specifically to prevent Epic Games opening its own app store as is permitted under the new EU regulations.

    Breton pointed out that the regulations that force Google and Apple to open up their platforms also forbid those companies from using pretexts to keep their platforms effectively closed.

    As we've seen, the EU isn't shy about fining American companies billions of dollars, because for them it's free money.

    And it's reached a point where I don't blame them.  Watching one group of communist bleed another group of communists dry is better entertainment than you can find almost anywhere.


Tech News

All Tech Companies Suck Rant of the Day



I just bought a Moto G54 because (a) Motorola phones run a pretty clean version of Android, (b) it has a headphone jack and a microSD slot, (c) it has pretty good specs, with 8GB of RAM, 128GB of storage, an FHD+ screen, dual A78 cores and six A55 cores, and a 50 megapixel main camera with image stabilisation, and (d) it was dirt cheap at under $130 including sales tax and delivery.

Turns out they make you jump through hoops and void your warranty if you want to unlock the bootloader and install a fully open source operating system but with all the other nonsense going on I'm finding it hard to get outraged.  Yeah, it's sucky behaviour, but what am I going to do, pay four times as much for a three year old iPhone that is locked down harder than Motorola could ever dream of?


But Not as Much as a Certain Vtuber Company Video of the Day



Nijisanji's standard contract has leaked - the English language version, since it's a Japanese company - and though it's quite long it all boils down to two simple points:

1. We own you.
2. We owe you nothing.

There's a clause in there that if you are deemed to have "betrayed" the company, they can not only fire you without further notice but claw back everything they have paid you for the past twelve months.

There's another clause that they can force their vtubers to make appearances and issue press releases - which I suspect is what they used on Elira in the infamous hostage video - and another where they can force you to relocate at your own expense.

Oh, and there's another clause that they can change the contract at any time and the next time you stream you are automatically considered to have accepted the new terms.  Of course, streaming is the only way you can make money, but see points 1 and 2 above.

People still sign up for this because big vtubers make good money - solid six figures after YouTube and the agency take their cuts - but that's limited to Hololive (which has forty talents with over a million subscribers each) and a handful of others.  Smaller corporations and independent channels have a tough a hard time of it.


Secret Lives of Vegetables Video of the Day

Two of those handful of others are Filian - who hosted the annual vtuber awards recently - and Dokibird, who broke out of Nijisanji and kicked off much of the recent drama, both very successful independent vtubers.

Here Dokibird explains to Filian explain what is really going on.




Disclaimer: Nijisanji is basically a cat in corporate form.

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