Daily Tech News 10 June 2021

• Bitcoin vs. the volcano. (ZDNet)
  
  El Salvador has not only made Bitcoin legal tender, but announced plans to power Bitcoin mining with volcanoes. Well, geothermal power. Which is something they actually have, unlike money.
  
  One of the effects of this is that there's no capital gains tax on Bitcoin in El Salvador. The other effects - well, too early to tell.
  
  I'm pretty negative on blockchains generally, but I'm not a huge fan of the traditional financial system either.
  
  
  
• Meanwhile, JBS reportedly paid hackers $11 million in Bitcoin to get their cows back. (Blockchain News)
  
  That's how it works, right? I think that's how it works.
  
  
  

• Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3070 Ti is here. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Reviewers are unimpressed. It splits the nominal price difference between the regular 3070 and the 3080, but is barely faster than the 3070. If you can get it for recommended retail price it's great value in today's market, but that's rather unlikely.
  
  
  
• Video card of the day is the GeForce GT 730 from 2014. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Things are so bad that they've pulled them back off the dusty shelves of Warehouse 13 and are shipping them out to retailers.
  
  They're not great. They're not good, even. But they work.
  
  
  
• Things are much better if you were holding out for a new CPU. All models of the Ryzen 5000 range are in stock at most retailers and selling at or below recommended retail prices. In Australia the 12 core 5900X is selling for what the 8 core 5800X cost just a month ago.
  
  AMD's Radeon 6700X graphics cards are also readily available. Expensive, yes, but available.
  
  
  
• Western Digital and Seagate are ramping up production of hard drives - specifically in response to Chia. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  They're not expanding production facilities as yet but will be adding shifts to run existing factories at full capacity. They're fully aware that the Chia bubble could burst at any moment and flood the market with second-hand disk drives.
  
  
  
• Raptor Lake - Intel's next next generation of desktop CPUs - could have up to 24 cores. (WCCFTech)
  
  Of course, that's 8 good cores and 16 crappy ones, because Intel is absolutely determined to hand the high-end desktop market to AMD on a platter.
  
  
  
• Patch your Chrome stuff. (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Google has fixed an actively exploited bug, so if you're still on 91.0.4472.77 you should update to 91.0.4472.101 right away.
  
  
  
• Asked how many customers had had video data from their Ring video doorbells handed over to police without a warrant or even notification, the company, now owned by Amazon, said. (Tech Crunch)
  
  That's an unedited quote, by the way.
  
  The Electronic Frontier Foundation was more forthcoming:

  Ring is ostensibly a security camera company that makes devices you can put on your own homes, but it is increasingly also a tool of the state to conduct criminal investigations and surveillance.

  They also catch fire.
  
  
  
• Everything new is old again: The Vivaldi browser now has built-in email, calendar, and RSS feed support. (The Verge)
  
  What about news, though? No love for NNTP?
  
  
  

posted by Pixy Misa at 04:30 AM

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