CAN I BE OF ASSISTANCE?

Monday, August 22

Geek

Daily News Stuff 22 August 2022

The Moral Of The Story Edition

Top Story


Tech News

  • Cory Doctorow has Kickstarted a new audiobook.  (Kickstarter)

    Doctorow won't put out a book with DRM, and Audible won't publish an audiobook without DRM.  This book, then - Chokepoint Capitalism - is about the ways Big Tech - Amazon (which owns Audible), Google, Facebook, Apple, and others - have conspired to take all the value from every transaction and leave the actual content creators with crumbs.

    It's so far raised nearly eight times its (admittedly modest) initial goal.

    Fair warning: Doctorow is a leftist, but an old-school one who can write coherently even when his premises are wrong.


  • A whole bunch of stuff on Ryzen 7000.  (Tom's Hardware)

    With the launch a week away the leaks are probably pretty accurate at this point.


  • The first major update for the hit fan-made game Holocure - a Hololive-oriented spin on Vampire Survivors - is out September 9.



    It will add Hololive Japan Gen 0 and Gamers to the current roster of characters (just Hololive English).

    Hololive has a very open approach to fan-made products using their IP, with some great results.


Disclaimer: It's not like I have 140,000 coins ready and waiting for the new release or anything.

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Geek

Daily News Stuff 21 August 2022

Whatever Whatever Edition

Top Story

  • Google search is quietly damaging democracy.  (Wired)

    The argument here is that Google moving from providing unbiased, unfiltered search results to attempting to provide you with what they believe is the right answer has a deleterious effect on individual ability in fact-finding and decision making in the modern world and thus in evaluating political news and making voting choices.

    Well, so far so good.  Needs to be examined but not implausible.

    Where the whole thing comes off the rails, ploughs through a nursing home, crashes into a school, bursts into flames, and finally explodes is that this is the thesis of the author's book The Propagandists' Playbook: How Conservative Elites Manipulate Search and Threaten Democracy.  (Amazon)

    Yes, you read that right: She claims that conservatives are twisting Google's search results with the aim of "humanizing the people whose worldviews and media practices conservatism embodies" - using trickery learned in Bible studies class.

    This is "Jews control the weather on Mars" levels of insanity.


Tech News

  • The Merge: Ethereum is finally going to Eth2, dropping proof-of-work for proof-of-stake.  (Ethereum)

    What does this mean?
    Misconception: "The Merge will reduce gas fees."

    False. The Merge is a change of consensus mechanism, not an expansion of network capacity, and will not result in lower gas fees.
    Oh, but it will be faster without the proof-of-work requirement, right?
    Misconception: "Transactions will be noticeably faster after The Merge."

    False. Though some slight changes exist, transaction speed will mostly remain the same on layer 1.
    It does mean that no-one will be using graphics cards to mine ETH anymore, because you won't be able to mine ETH anymore.  

    And it will mean that the electricity used by the Ethereum blockchain will be reduced by around 99.9%.

    This is expected to happen sometime.  I think it's about two years behind schedule at this point, but it's understandable that they'd rather it be hopelessly late than lose billions of dollars of other people's money.  That's a sentiment that more blockchain developers should adopt.


  • Intel's graphics cards may suck, but they can run Crysis.  (Tom's Hardware)

    Crysis was a serious test of hardware performance when it came out, but that was in 2007.  These days it will run on a potato.

    Similarly, a modern low-end card like the RX 6600 can comfortably beat the performance of the GTX 1080 - and that's from just six years ago, not fifteen.




  • Hoes Mad in Your Area: Artists react to the use of AI art to illustrate an article that would not have otherwise been illustrated.  (The Atlantic)

    This article is half groveling apology, have pathetic attempt at navel gazing, as you would expect from Fascist Quarterly when they inadvertently offend their core readership of complete lunatics.


Whatever Music Video of the Day



Disclaimer: We ain't role models, not now, not ever.

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Sunday, August 21

Geek

Daily News Stuff 20 August 2022

99.44% Done With This Shit Edition

Top Story

  • I am now a full-time resident of New House City.  Thanks to my brother for his help with the infinite number of "last few items" that needed to be moved.

    Schedules should slowly return to normal as I begin fixing the many things that have been broken for months while I ran around like a crack-addled squirrel with its tail on fire.


  • Samsung is building a $15 billion chip R&D facility.  (AnandTech)

    That's in addition to the $200 billion they're spending on new and expanded factories.  I think they might be serious about this stuff.


Tech News

  • The entire history of human ingenuity was leading to this point:



    The computer inside that Lego brick is an Arm Cortex M0 with 16k of flash and 4k of RAM.  That's a low-end microcontroller but plenty to liven up your next Lego spaceship build.

    More here.  (The Verge)


  • Lego?



    I assumed at first that this was a 3D render but it's real.


  • And speaking of low-end microcontrollers the Pi Pico isn't the only Pi Pico in the sea.  (Tom's Hardware)

    Raspberry Pi sells the chip they developed - called the RP2040 - directly to other manufacturers who are now selling a variety of compatible boards.


  • Alleged specs of Intel's 13th generation Raptor Lake lineup.  (Tom's Hardware)

    At the high end this is stuff we pretty much knew already, but further down the list the i5-13500 and 13600 both include 8 E-cores - where their 12th gen counterparts had none.  That will make those mid-range chips about 60% faster on multi-threaded tasks.


  • A roundup of upcoming AMD motherboards.  (WCCFTech)

    10Gb Ethernet is still thin on the ground, but every board listed here has at least 2.5Gb.


Disclaimer: I think I left my vacuum cleaner in the living room.  Oh, and my toaster in the bathtub.

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Friday, August 19

Geek

Daily News Stuff 19 August 2022

Everything Is Going Swimmingly Edition

Top Story

  • Almost.


  • Ow.


  • Samsung will be launching 32Gb DDR5 memory in early 2023, with modules to follow in late 2023.  (Tom's Hardware)

    Not sure exactly why there's such a lead time between the chips and the modules, but it's pretty consistent with past launches.

    This will mean 64GB DIMMs for desktops and laptops, so desktops (and servers based on desktop systems) will be able to go up to 256GB of RAM and laptops that use modules rather than soldered-in RAM will go to 128GB.

    That assumes that the memory controllers in existing CPUs properly support the new capacity.  They should - the DDR5 spec list chip sizes up to 64Gb - but it's a bit hard to test until the chips are actually out.

Tech News



Disclaimer: You bastards!

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Thursday, August 18

Geek

Daily News Stuff 18 August 2022

What The What Edition

Top Story

Tech News

I Think People Figured It Out Video of the Day


In which a certain former vtuber slowly goes insane and also gets 8000 simultaneous viewers.


Disclaimer: I love pink cat.

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Wednesday, August 17

Geek

Daily News Stuff 17 August 2022

Announcement Announcement Edition 

Top Story

  • AMD has announced a launch event for Ryzen 7000 on August 29.  (Tom's Hardware)

    With hardware presumably shipping a few weeks later during September.

    I'll keep an eye on the event and post the details here, but I think everything about Ryzen 7000 has already either been officially announced or leaked.

Tech News



Unrelated Music Video of the Day




Disclaimer: On second thought, let's not go there.  It is a silly place.

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Tuesday, August 16

Geek

Daily News Stuff 16 August 2022

Uh Edition

Top Story

  • Android 13 is here, bringing with it uh.  (Thurrott.com)

    Apparently you can stream certain things from a thing to another thing, and it has spatial audio support for headphones - it makes the sound feel like you're walking around in a room.

    Okay.

    I think the last Android release which was really a must-have was version 6 with adoptable storage.  Of course, most of the major manufacturers - particularly Samsung and Sony - immediately broke adoptable storage and leave it broken to this day, and Google's own hardware can't support adoptable storage because it has no storage to adopt.

Tech News



Disclaimer: A communist clock is still right once a day.

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Monday, August 15

Geek

Daily News Stuff 15 August 2022

Worst Of Both Worlds Edition

Top Story


Tech News


Disclaimer: Tenchi, El Hazard, Ranma, Urusei Yatsura, the original Oh My Goddess AMV, and at least one Sailor Moon cel with the background painting.

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Geek

Things Found

Something I've been looking for all throughout the move - a folder of original anime cels - finally showed up while I was cleaning out the garage at the old place.  Slightly the worse for wear, but only slightly.  

And given what happened to the sofa, that's a relief.

And I ordered this:


The case is a Hyte Y60, which Gamers Nexus reviewed and thought was actually good:


Though not without its quirks.  You would not want to try building a server in this case.

It originally wasn't available in Australia, but PC Casegear - who I've used for years - has picked it up for pre-order.

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Sunday, August 14

Geek

Daily News Stuff 14 August 2022

No News Is No News Edition

Top Story

  • Running Android without Google.  (Tom's Guide)

    Okay, so the hardware in the two tests reported here is sold by google - the Pixel 4a and Pixel 5 - but the software is two versions of Android - /e/OS and GrapheneOS - stripped of all the Google-specific software and tracking.

    You can still install the Play Store and install all your usual apps, and they will (mostly) work the same as before.  The one thing highlighted here is that you will lose Google's custom camera app - and this results in a marked drop in photo quality because the software is doing most of the magic there.

    But if you want out of the Google trap without losing compatibility entirely, either of these might be a viable option.

Tech News

  • What's coming up in AMD motherboards.  (PC Magazine)

    AMD launches Ryzen 7000 and the matching Socket AM5 motherboards on September 15, and the motherboard makers have gone beyond leaks to official previews of the hardware.

    The new boards will bring a few new features: PCIe 5 for double the I/O bandwidth, DDR5 for about 60% more memory bandwidth, and USB 4 for double the bandwidth there if and when 40Gbps USB devices show up.

    10Gb Ethernet also seems to be more common than on the last generation, which is welcome given the paucity of PCIe slots these days.


  • AMD is also releasing a new range of video cards this year.  (Tom's Hardware)

    These will offer a lot more compute power than the current generation - two to three times at the high end, but it remains to be seen what that translates to in terms of graphics performance and power consumption.  I suspect you'll get something like a 50% improvement at the same MSRP and TDP, with the high-end cards being way out there on both numbers.


  • Does the Dog Die is a cute idea driven into the ground and then nuked from orbit.  (Does the Dog Die)

    There's a Twitter account CanYouPetTheDog which simply documents what video gams let you pet a dog.  That's fun.

    Does the Dog Die tries to catalog every potential trigger for the most hyper-neurotic people in existence.  That's not fun at all.

Disclaimer: You can pet the dog in Holocure.  You'll probably get killed by the swarms of enemies if you try, but you can do it.

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