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Daily Tech News 1 August 2021

Top Story

• So I went out to the shops last night here in occupied Sydney and... Yeah, nothing. Number of soldiers sighted: Nil. Number of police sighted: Nil. Number of bored security guards: One. Mask compliance: 50%.
  
  Which doesn't mean that I'll ever vote for these fascists again, just means they're lazy fascists.
  
  Yeah, I'm gonna need you to arrest yourself tomorrow. So if you could arrange that for, mmm, 9AM, that'd be great.
  
  
  
• The SolarWinds hackers - which is to say, the Russian government - also hacked at least 27 US Attorneys' offices. (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Which is just more evidence that it was always a state actor and not a criminal gang. And that it was Russia and not China in this case, because China simply buys the people it needs.
  
  More details at AP:

  The department said 80% of Microsoft email accounts used by employees in the four U.S. attorney offices in New York were breached. All told, the Justice Department said 27 U.S. Attorney offices had at least one employee's email account compromised during the hacking campaign.

  
  
• The Darkside hacking group - the one behind the Colonial Pipeline attack - has rebranded itself BlackMatter. (Bleeping Computer)
  
  They're easily identified because they use home-brewed encryption.
  
  And, again, it's Russian government.
  
  
  
• Meanwhile Chinese hackers - by which of course we mean the Chinese government - are hacking insecure home routers to build a mesh network from which to attack everything else. (The Record)
  
  Do us all a favour. Skip the small stuff and just breach Amazon's mesh network so they'll be forced to shut it down.

Tech News

• Physicists have built the first time crystal, a device that oscillates perpetually without consuming energy. (Quanta)
  
  It's only a handful of atoms, it has to be kept at cryogenic temperatures inside a diamond inside a quantum computer, it doesn't do anything useful, and if you look at it too hard it breaks - literally - but it's still better than Wish.Com.
  
  
  
• Chromebook sales grew 75% in Q2. (Thurrott.com)
  
  I understand the appeal, but you're handing complete control of your data to crazy people.
  
  
  
• Virtual contact is worse than no contact for people over sixty in locked down cities. (The Guardian)
  
  I'm in the latter but not the former category, but I can confirm my life would be vastly improved if Skype stopped ringing at two in the morning.
  
  
  
• The GAO has told Jeff Bezos to fuck off. (CNBC)
  
  He sued over the award of a lunar lander contract to SpaceX, and the ruling affirms that everything about the contract followed regulations. Also that SpaceX actually gets shit done.
  
  
  
• GitHub now provides free legal assistance to projects hit by DMCA takedown notices. (VentureBeat)
  
  That... Sounds good. Waiting for it to go horribly wrong somehow.
  
  
  
• The Asus ProArt Studiopro Pro 16 Pro leaked on Amazon China. (WCCFTech)
  
  Wait, Amazon China?
  
  Anyway, it has a top-of-the-line Ryzen 5900HX (actually I think there's a 5950HX that is the tiniest smidgen faster), Nvidia RTX 3070 graphics, a 16" 3840x2400 OLED display, 32GB of RAM, 2TB of SSD, and probably the Four Essential Keys. The current 15" and 17" models have them.
  
  Around $3000, so not cheap, but there's literally nothing wrong with it.
  
  
  
• Samsung will be producing 24Gb DDR5 chips. (WCCFTech)
  
  One thing I noted immediately in the DDR5 spec was support for 24Gb memory sizes. Generally only powers of 2 are supported, and current chips are all either 8Gb or 16Gb.
  
  Problem is memory technology hasn't been shrinking as fast as processors, and 32Gb chips aren't quite economical yet. So the committee planned ahead and fitted in a half-node increase.
  
  So in a year or so you'll start seeing 12GB, 24GB, and 48GB modules. The spec allows for modules up to 128GB - and up to 512GB total on a typical DDR5-enabled desktop CPU - but those sizes will take a lot longer to arrive.
  
  
  
• Exactly 20 years later, Intel's Itanium is dead. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  This was Intel's attempt to lock up the server market, by designing a brand new 64-bit architecture and not licensing it to anyone.
  
  It ran headlong into the torpedo of AMD's own 64-bit chips, which were faster, much, much cheaper, and could run all existing software. Intel had to license AMD's architecture but had long-term contracts and were stuck supporting Itanium as well.
  
  
  

Hololive Teaser Trailer of the Day #1



Hololive English please-don't-call-it-Generation-2 inbound. Probably within a week; they don't let much time pass between these teases and the launch.

The voice is IRyS, the HoloEN "vsinger" - that is, a vtuber who focuses on music - who debuted three weeks ago and already has over half a million subscribers.

As to what the hell the video is talking about... Nobody knows. I think they put Haachama in charge of marketing.

Best comment:

The Ascendant │ Ame's apostle【2nd of the Twelve】 7 hours ago
So... it's official guys, the earth is a cube.

Hololive Teaser Trailer of the Day #2



This looks to be a horror game of some kind*, voiced by the Hololive talents. Hololive - well, Cover Corp, which manages Hololive and Holostars and INNK Music - has a money printer going brrr right now, and it looks like they're trying do diversify before the money printer burns out.

Which I don't think is likely any time soon; they are very good at finding talent, and pretty good at nurturing it.

* I mean, the horror part might seem clear enough, but those scenes wouldn't be out of place in half the dating sims sold in Japan.



Disclaimer: I'll get you, my pretty, and the horse you rode in on.