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Daily Tech News 4 June 2021

Top Story

• The Supreme Court has reined in the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. (Ars Technica)
  
  The government has been using it to slap additional charges on any crime where computers were involved, and the decision says that if it's going to be used that broadly, it would make felons of the entire country.
  
  Interesting split to the decision: Thomas, Alito, and Roberts were in the dissent, against the Trump appointees and the liberals.
  
  In this particular case a cop was caught taking bribes and charged with accessing a computer system pursuant to said bribes. (ZDNet)
  
  The problem is, he was authorised to access that system, and he wasn't charged with the obvious crime of the bribe itself. So now the charges have been thrown out.
  
  
  
• Something I didn't think of with regards to AMD's recent announcement of die stacking to increase cache sizes. This technique requires a custom CPU chip as well as custom memory chip to stack on top. Only AMD didn't announce a custom CPU chip, just an update to Ryzen 5000 with triple the cache.
  
  Which means...
  

  It looks like it was built in all along

  — 𝐷𝑟. 𝐼𝑎𝑛 𝐶𝑢𝑡𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑠 (@IanCutress) June 2, 2021

Anime of the day is Alice to Zoroku from 2017, the story of... It's hard to explain. It's really hard to explain. It's the story of an odd young girl named Alice and a grumpy old bugger named Zoroku who runs a flower shop.

Possibly the manga series has more time and focus, but the anime isn't quite sure of what it wants to be or who its audience is, and tries to be all things to all people, and yet somehow actually mostly brings it off. In this case it helps that it's only 12 episodes; that would have become impossible in a longer run.

I described it at the time as a cross between Hellsing, Usagi Drop, The Tomorrow People, and a post-graduate lecture on particle physics, and I stand by that.



Tech News

• How to buy an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti. (WCCFTech)
  
  1. Check the online stores.
  2. They don't have any.
  3. Go to a brick-and-mortar store.
  4. They don't have any either.
  5. Go home.
  6. Order pizza.
  
  
  
• Not always Russia: Chinese hackers hacked the network of New York's MTA in April. (Bleeping Computer)
  
  The point of entry? A Pulse Secure VPN appliance.
  
  Firewall your firewalls and VPN your VPNs. It's the new double-bagging.
  
  
  
• The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Fold is the world's first folding notebook except for every other notebook computer ever except that Tandy 1000 and other relics of the 80s from before they invented hinges. (Thurrott.com)
  
  It works well but it's horribly expensive - price for a basic model is around $2500 - so it's not clear quite what the point is. You have to start somewhere, and with another five years of iteration this could be a gem. Or on the other hand, not.
  
  
  
• Amazon to its drivers: Go play in traffic. (Motherboard)
  
  Sure, you'll likely get killed, but it will shave another thirty-seven seconds off your route.
  
  
  
• Copyright holders are suing Cloudflare for failing to shut down infringing sites. (TorrentFreak)
  
  Cloudflare doesn't host the sites; they provide secondary network services - content delivery and DDOS protection. And they forward DMCA notices as required by law.
  
  But the individual sites are many and mostly broke, while Cloudflare is a big fat bag of money.
  
  They're not the worst of Big Tech but I have no particular love for them either.

Counting Stars Anime Music Video of the Day



I haven't posted much Miyazaki material lately, because it goes without saying that you should watch Miyazaki films, but I have a particular fondness for Ponyo. Some critics see this as a lesser film; I think they need their heads read. I'd place it right up there with Kiki and Totoro.


When You're Tired of New York, You're Tired of Overpriced Garbage Video of the Day



Louis Rossman is scouting Florida as a new home and business location. If you watched any of his New York real estate or COVID videos, you know why. This has been building up for some time.

I don't know how he votes, but he loathes Cuomo and De Blasio, so that's a start.


Just One Specific Manga May or May Not Have Outsold the Entire American Comic Industry Video of the Day



I haven't read or watched any of Demon Slayer - no, wait, that's not true; I watched a bit of the first episode and it rather touched a nerve by portraying violence against children and I noped out.
Anyway, it may not, technically, all by itself, have outsold all American comics combined last year.

Still, the top twenty comics by sales volume in America are all Japanese. Get woke, wake up in debtors' prison.



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