Daily Tech News 25 November 2021

• Slashdot linked to an Axios (spit) story bewailing the failure of the US Senate to approve the nomination of a communist to head up the country's banking regulations. Not ever mentioning that she's a communist.
  
  A certain someone pointed out that she's a communist.
  
  And got voted up +5 Insightful.
  
  
  
• Speaking of communists, China has suspended Tencent from updating existing apps or launching new ones. (South China Morning Post)
  
  Tencent is a holding company for a huge range of investments in both Chinese and foreign businesses - like Engulf and Devour, their motto is Our fingers are in everything. They run WeChat, which has 1.2 billion users, and own 20% of Universal Music, and a huge list of other stuff.
  
  They were one of the most valuable corporations in Asia at the start of the year, close to the trillion dollar mark, before Chairman Xi knifed the economy in the front.
  
  And now they are not permitted to fix bugs in their apps. I'm sure this will work out just fine for everyone.
  
  
  
• Speaking of communists and tech companies getting banned, miracle of miracles the Department of Commerce has actually been doing its job. (The Register)
  
  Another 27 companies from China and Pakistan have been banned from doing business with the US - including one that has the exclusive distribution rights for HP servers in China.

• A roundup of DDR4 Z690 motherboards for Intel's new Alder Lake chips. (AnandTech)
  
  Since DDR5 modules are as rare as hen's teeth in a bioreactor.
  
  
  
• Is it time for water-cooled RAM now that DDR5 is here? (Tom's Hardware)
  
  No.
  
  
  
• Is my cat Turing complete? (Belay the C++)
  
  The answer is yes, but just because you can perform computations with a cat doesn't mean you should.
  
  
  
• Is it possible to smear paint on the wall without creating valid Perl?
  
  Yes. (PDF)
  
  Although 93% of tested paint splatters, when passed through OCR software, did in fact produce valid Perl code - including the signature splatters from Nintendo's Splatoon - that still left 7% that did not.
  
  
  
• Online shoppers risk losing over $53 million to holiday scams, says the FBI. (Bleeping Computer)
  
  But I don't have $53 million....
  
  
  
• Europe must ban crypto mining, says Sweden. (EuroNews)
  
  Big talk from a country whose newest prime minister didn't last a full day before resigning.
  
  
  
• The other CoCo colours. (Vintage is the New Old)
  
  The Tandy / Radio Shack Color Computer 2 was my first computer back in '84. It had, in theory, nine colours available. But if you were willing to write directly to the video controller registers there were half a dozen more that you could find.
  
  Things have changed a bit since then.

posted by Pixy Misa at 03:41 AM

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