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Daily Tech News 15 August 2021

Top Story

• I was wondering if I really need 64GB of RAM and 4TB of SSD for my new desktop replacement notebook. So I ran some tests on an older notebook with 16GB.
  
  Now I'm wondering if 64GB will be enough. Probably.
  
  Also the Dell model I want went on sale Friday and is already out of stock, and now probably won't ship until mid-September. Great.
  
  
  
• On the upside it looks like I've figured out how to safely migrate mee.nu - at a binary level - from the old 32-bit CentOS VM to shiny new 64-bit Ubuntu 20.04. Full migration will come later when we're on stable (and much faster) hardware.
  
  We used to use OpenVZ but it's basically dead now, so I can't just copy the container across this time. But with some compatibility libraries I can migrate the exact Python setup intact. The databases were moved to MySQL 5.7 last year, so that part is reasonably current.
  
  
  
• Apple will keep clarifying this CSAM mess until morale improves. (Gizmodo)
  
  That's not my headline. That's the literal headline on the article. Apple screwed this one up good.
  
  
  

Tech News

• If you were hoping the Radeon 6600 XT would reduce pressure on the video card market we've got bad news. (VideoCardz)
  
  Although the 6600 XT is not particularly fast at mining Ethereum, it's very power-efficient - it mines about 30% more coins per watt than any other current card.
  
  On the other hand, if the miners buy all of those, they might leave some of the other cards which are better for gaming but worse for mining.
  
  
  
• 1Password is abandoning its native Mac app for a clumsy cross-platform Electron replacement. (Six Colors)
  
  The article blames the developer for deciding that the Mac wasn't an important enough platform to maintain a custom app. But really, didn't Apple already decide that for us? If they won't support their platform, why should we?
  
  
  
• The Perl development community is disintegrating over code of conduct issues. (Ars Technica)
  
  Codes of conduct are a cancer on open source development, a takeover by people who contribute nothing, and - you committed what into the source code? Jesus Tapdancing Christ, dude, take some time off. Like forever maybe.
  
  
  

Anime Trailer of the Day



Well, sort of anime. It was two weeks ago that they dropped the first teaser, and this confirms exactly what we all thought - Hololive EN Gen 2 with a full five members is coming very soon - likely just before the Gen 1 anniversary. It's also likely to be the only full generation debut this year, though I'd be happy to be wrong.

This is a much slower pace than last year, when they debuted Hololive ID Gen 1, CN Gen 2, JP Gen 5, EN Gen 1, and ID Gen 2. (And the last couple of members of JP Gen 4 were early January.)

But with the launch of EN Gen 1 the company went from I think this might be working, keep putting more talents out there to holy crap, it's working, whatever you do, don't screw this up. Out of dozens of members only three now have fewer than half a million subscribers. The one that left a few weeks ago to pursue an indie career already has 800,000 subscribers of her own.


Let's Check In On Haachama Video of the Day



Haachama is the youngest member of Hololive and simultaneously one of the oldest, having joined in 2018 when she was still in high school. About six months ago she discovered the classic Bruegel painting of the Tower of Babel - or one of them, since there are two - and decided she was going to build it in Minecraft.

And did.

You can't grasp the full scale of it from this clip, since she's flying around inside it and has the render distance turned up. With the Minecraft default settings you can't see one wall from the other.



She completed her last year of high school here in Australia. Trapped by the Bat Flu travel restrictions and with only a potato computer and two tin cans and a length of string for internet access, she had to get creative with her content. And she certainly did that.

Oh, and that food? She was looking after herself much of the time, so the weird stuff she created for her channel is what she ate. Thankfully she was able to zip back home to Japan late last year when both countries were out of lockdown at the same time.


Disclaimer: I have a cunning plan...