Daily Tech News 16 July 2021

• It's not censorship if it's a private company, say the communists, who have all somehow simultaneously seized upon a new talking point.
  
  

  The Biden administration is telling Facebook which posts it regards as "problematic" so that Facebook can remove them.
  
  This is the union of corporate and state power -- one of the classic hallmarks of fascism -- that the people who spent 5 years babbling about fascism support. https://t.co/U2Ee3DgXJe

  — Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) July 15, 2021

  
  

  There is no circumstance -- none -- in which it's acceptable for the White House or any other agency of the government to be providing lists to Facebook of "problematic" content it wants removed, yet's that exactly what Psaki says they're doing:https://t.co/NTbP8fhBbi

  — Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) July 15, 2021

  
  
  Yes, it's Gleen Grennwald, and I haven't forgotten his history. But I have to give him credit for announcing that the emperor's pants are on fire when the emperor's pants are, in fact, on fire.
  
  At this point every country in the world should either be banning American Big Tech, shaking them down for cash, or both. Australia has so far gone for the shakedown route. I'd prefer an outright ban, but at least it's something.
  
  
  

• Intel is in talks to buy Global Foundries for $30 billion. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Global Foundries was formerly AMD's in-house chip manufacturing division, spun off as a separate company in the dark days when AMD was bleeding cash and uncertain to survive at all. They don't have a leading-edge process node - 12nm, not 7 or 5 - but they do have production capacity and there's a shortage at pretty much every process node right now.
  
  
  
• Ukraine shut down an illegal footballer mining operation. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Eyebrows were raised at the announcement that the authorities there had closed down a crypto mining facility and seized - among other items - 3800 PlayStation 4 consoles.
  
  Turns out that alongside Ethereum they were farming rare unlockable characters in FIFA 21.
  
  
  
• Samsung's Exynos 2200 will have 6 RDNA2 cores. (WCCFTech)
  
  This apparently beats even Apple's A14, which is not a slow chip.
  
  AMD's own upcoming - I think it's called Raphael - next-gen laptop chip will have 12 RDNA2 cores. The Xbox Series X has 52, but runs slightly hotter than a mobile phone.
  
  
  
• Microsoft has shared guidance on its Windows Print Spooler vulnerability. (Bleeping Computer)
  
  No, not that one. Another one.
  
  They just patched a major remote vulnerability. This new one is a local privilege escalation vulnerability.
  
  
  
• A new mathematical proof indiciates that it may be possible to know how many numbers there are. (Quanta)
  
  Cantor's diagonalisation argument is a simple proof that not all infinities are the same size, but doesn't in itself establish what size of infinity the set of real numbers is, just that it's bigger than the - also infinite - set of integers.
  
  Cantor hypothesized that the infinity of real numbers was the immediate next larger infinity than that of integers, but couldn't prove it. The new result indicates that either Cantor was correct, or that it is the next larger infinity after that - where other hypotheses in the intervening century proposed much, much larger infinities.
  
  
  
• The US CPSC has filed a complaint against Amazon for selling dangerous crap. (Ars Technica)
  
  Go after them for the fake microSD cards too, guys.
  
  
  
• The US State Department is offering a $10 million report for information on state-sponsored hackers. (The Record)
  
  Russia. China. Iran. North Korea.
  
  Wait, the article actually lists those countries, in that order. Huh. Someone isn't asleep, it seems.
  
  
  
• If you have a Chevy Bolt, park it outside, next to your Ring doorbell. (CBS News)
  
  So they can keep each other company when they catch fire.
  
  
  
• The Steam Deck is a pretty nice PC for $399. (Hot Hardware)
  
  Quad core Zen 2 CPU with RDNA2 graphics - which means that this really is a custom chip, because currently those are only made for Microsoft and Sony - 16GB of RAM and up to 512GB of NVMe SSD.
  
  And a 7" 1280x800 display, which kind of sucks. It really needs to be 1920x1200 if you want to do anything with it other than playing games.

posted by Pixy Misa at 05:18 AM

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