Daily Tech News 27 May 2021

• So, after that extremely unplanned upgrade last night - which took forever even on an 8-core system with NVMe storage - my mouse had three broken legs. Basically it would get stuck about once a second, unfreeze, and immediately stick again.
  
  But I know this one. This has happened before. And I blogged about it so that if it ever happened again, I'd know exactly where to look for the solution.
  
  ...
  
  Oh, right. The solution to sudden mouse freezes after a Windows upgrade is to disable HDCP on your second monitor.
  
  Really.
  
  
  
• Get your SSDs now before the price goes up. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Yep, you guessed it. Blockchain ruins everything.
  
  
  

• Speaking of SSDs, the WD Black SN750 SE is one. (AnandTech)
  
  Don't buy it. Probably. I got myself two WD Black SN750 drives in the Cyber Monday sales, but those are actually very different drives. The older model is a conventional high-end PCIe 3.0 drive; the newer one is a low-end PCIe 4.0 drive - it has no DRAM cache. And since its listed specs are only at PCIe 3.0 levels I don't really see the point.
  
  It will probably do just fine for the average desktop - more than fine - but wouldn't be my first choice. Or even my tenth.
  
  
  
• Nvidia may be launching the RTX 3070 Ti and 3080 Ti on Monday. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Get those second mortgages ready!
  
  It was easier when you simply couldn't get them at all.
  
  
  
• AMD is now the 11th largest semiconductor company in the world. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  After increasing sales by 93% year-on-year.
  
  Texas Instruments is number 9, with 27% annual growth, which is pretty good for a company founded in 1930.
  
  
  
• AMD's Strix Point APU could feature both Zen 5 and Zen 4 cores, RDNA 3 graphics, and a large L4 cache, all on TSMC's 3nm process. (WCCFTech)
  
  Or, on the other hand, not. But an L4 cache for AMD's APUs will come sooner rather than later. Intel's already done it, after all.
  
  
  
• Freenode is imploding, and it's spectacular. (FossPost)
  
  This is the 25-year-old IRC network that got taken over by corporate interests under questionable circumstances. Those corporate interests, it turns out, are completely fucking retarded.
  
  I've said that socialism is the belief that the goose will continue to lay eggs after it's been served up as Christmas dinner, but that way of thinking is also common among a certain class of entrepeneur.
  
  
  
• Oracle is giving away free shit. (Serve the Home)
  
  In this case, a 4 core Arm virtual server with 24GB of RAM.
  
  I don't know what the catches are. They're there, I just don't know what they are yet.
  
  
  
• Amazon is buying MGM for $8 billion. (Thurrott.com)
  
  Which will give them ownership of Stargate and a bunch of other stuff.
  
  I'd mock this deal on general principle but the only Amazon show I've actually watched was Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman's Good Omens and they didn't fuck it up. I fully expected them to fuck it up and they did not.
  
  
  
• If everyone is working from home the answer to maintaining corporate control is to make them live at work. (SF Chronicle)
  
  Google's new motto: If you're gonna be evil, don't take any half measures.
  
  Code eighteen hours and what do you get?
  A mocha soy latte and five grand in debt.
  
  
  
• Russia is a safe haven for hackers, say key cybersecurity and counterintelligence officials and also everyone else with two functioning brain cells. (CNBC)
  
  In my opinion, Darkside was operating with - at a minimum - the tacit approval of Russian authorities, if not under their direct control.
  
  
  
• Long working hours kill people. (The Seattle and/or New York Times)
  
  As Buffy said, hey I've died twice.
  
  

posted by Pixy Misa at 05:17 AM

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