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Daily Tech News 24 July 2021

Top Stories

• Deploying a new blockchain - I hate those things - for an urgent project. Everything goes swimmingly in test. It's complicated, but doesn't require an entire new programming language the way Ethereum does.
  
  Switch over to production. Discover production network is significantly slower than test and the timeout is hard-coded in the API library, so every transaction fails.
  
  Hack a sensible timeout into the library.
  
  Now only 25% of transactions fail. We issue them and they disappear without trace.
  
  Contact the blockchain developers directly.
  
  "Yeah, 25% sounds about right."
  
  Never mind the commies, we need to throw the blockchain people into a volcano.
  
  
  
• Get an urgent ticket from hosting provider at 4AM. I missed the previous ticket because it arrived two days ago - also at 4AM - when I got to sleep at 3AM, and by the time I woke up I had fifty other emails to go through.
  
  Report that a domain is hosting malware. Ask for details.
  
  Get back a link with - literally - 77 virus checkers reporting it clean and one reporting a problem. No information at all as to what the problem is, or why one positive outweighs 77 negatives.
  
  
  
• If Amazon's game New World killed your EVGA RTX 3090, it will be replaced under warranty immediately and without question. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Problems with the game have now been reported on multiple cards from both Nvidia and AMD, though, so it might be safest just to play Minecraft until this all blows over.
  
  

  I've now had the following GPU owners express they have had shut downs and failures with New World...
  RX590
  6800
  6800XT
  6900XT
  3080Ti
  3090
  So once again, the issue definitely is with SOMETHING in the way the game New World is rendering. This ISNT a 3090'exclusive issue! PERIOD!!

  — JayzTwoCents (@JayzTwoCents) July 22, 2021

Tech News

• A 14 core Alder Lake (Intel's upcoming 12th gen chip) mobile CPU is slower than a current 8 core AMD 5800H. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  On the other hand a 16 core desktop Alder Lake is reportedly faster than a 16 core Ryzen 5950X. (Tech Radar)
  
  Something is sus here.
  
  
  
• Crappy GPUs assemble! (Tom's Hardware)
  
  When good cards are overpriced or unavailable, which is the least crappy of the crappy alternatives? Intel's DG1 is likely a non-starter anyway since it's an OEM cart that won't run on most motherboards. It can outperform Nvidia's bottom-of-the-barrel GTX 1030 on some games, though. It's not complete garbage.
  
  
  
• The Radeon 6600 XT ain't gonna be cheap. (WCCFTech)
  
  Expected retail pricing is close to recommended pricing for the much faster 6800 XT - which has 72 cores vs 32 on this new card. You can't get for the 6800 XT for anything like recommended price, so this just reminds us how screwed up the market still is.
  
  
  
• The Framework laptop is now shipping. (Frame.Work)
  
  This is the one with four tiny swappable I/O modules. If you want a laptop with four HDMI ports, you can get it. The modules start at $9 for USB so it's cheap to get extras if you want to swap it around.
  
  It doesn't currently come with the Four Essential Keys, but the keyboard is designed to be replaceable, so that could change.
  
  
  
• If you're a law-abiding citizen in a country where the government is not law abiding and also hates your guts you have nothing to worry about. (Apple Inside)
  
  Fuck you, asshole.
  
  
  
• Eric Schmidt - Google's former token adult - says the US shouldn't break up the fascist Big Tech companies because that would weaken the US against fascist China.* (Financial Times)
  
  He doesn't seem to have considered to option of not being fascist.
  
  * You can see on a chart the exact year when China switched from communism to fascism. The famines stopped but the oppression kept right on going.
  
  
  
• 2% of Twitter users are deluded enough to think it's worth using two-factor authentication to protect their nonsense. (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Actually, if you use Twitter for OAuth to sign into other sites, it definitely is worth enabling 2FA. But given that Twitter bans users without review or recourse you might want to rethink that.
  
  
  
• Journalists for Censorship strike again. This fucker got suspended from Facebook for what looked to the low-IQ crowd like a death threat as opposed to a quote from a terrible movie. (ZDNet)
  
  Rather than learning the lesson that censorship is bad, he wants everyone he disagrees with censored. Just not him. Because he's the good guy here.
  
  
  
• The Jehovah's Witness's attempt to sue a stop-motion Lego animation YouTube channel out of existence has gotten stuck. (TorrentFreak)
  
  They don't know who runs the channel and the court is uninclined to assist them. Google has - quite correctly refused to hand over the user's personal information without a court order.

Very Random Videos

O Fuck Canada Video of the Day



Thousands of indigenous children died - of tuberculosis and other diseases of the day - in government-run boarding schools starting in the 1880s. It got so bad that many of the deaths simply went unrecorded. This has been known for decades and a seven-year inquest published a detailed report on it all back in 2015.

So why is it suddenly an headline issue now? Because politics ruins everything.


Axolotls Cause Sleep Disorders Video of the Day

Hololive JP went axolotl crazy with the new Minecraft release. There's a very rare blue axolotl in the game that has a 1 in 1200 chance of appearing when you breed two axolotls. To breed two axolotls you need live tropical fish, which aren't easy to find either.

Kanata (Coco's friend and real-life roommate) bred over 3000 axolotls before finally achieving blue heaven. She spent so much time live-streaming all this that she developed sleep apnea.

Here's Officer Oozoru investigating the conditions on Kanata's unlicensed axolotl ranch.




Usada Pekora Sings the Opening Theme of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics Video the Day



I'm not even kidding. It's called Roto's Theme.

TOKYO 2020 OLYMPICS PLAYLIST
- Dragon Quest “Overture: Roto’s Theme”
- Final Fantasy “Victory Fanfare”
- Tales of series “Sorey’s Theme - The Shepherd”
- Monster Hunter “Proof of a Hero”
- Kingdom Hearts “Olympus Coliseum”
- Chrono Trigger, “Frog’s Theme”https://t.co/kjjr0Ghka6

— Nikkei Asia (@NikkeiAsia) July 23, 2021

That FrameWork Laptop Might Actually Not Suck Video of the Day



Schematics or Die.

I don't know the people behind this laptop, but Louis Rossman has been calling out electronics manufactures for years over the irreparable crap they spew out, and he's cautiously optimistic.


That Ryzen Alienware R10? Yeah, Nah Video of the Day



People have complained - a lot - about the fan noise on these Alienware systems. Now you get to see why. If for whatever reason you get one of these, pay extra for water cooling. The air-cooled model tested here instantly failed thermal testing.


You Know What Also Fails Thermal Testing Video of the Day



In this case, an RTX 3090 that melts the temperature probe.



Disclaimer: In Soviet Russia, temperature probe melts you.