Daily Tech News 30 December 2021

• I found out how to do shared directories properly under LXD. I had an older and rather complicated guide that sent me fleeing in the opposite direction, but when I was looking for it again yesterday I discovered a newer and much simpler guide using the latest version of LXD and tried it out and, uh, it worked.
  
  Had to go back and enable a particular kernel module, but other than that it was very simple to set up and worked perfectly.
  
  
  
• If the cap's reversed, your board is cursed. (WCCFTech)
  
  The Asus ROG Maximus Z690 Hero has one tiny flaw: It catches fire.

  The issue potentially affects units manufactured in 2021 with the part number 90MB18E0-MVAAY0 and serial number starting with MA, MB, or MC.

  Some units - not all, but it's not clear what percentage, since it's a brand new product and "units manufactured in 2021" doesn't cut it down much - have a critical capacitor placed backwards, shunting unwanted current into the power circuitry so that sooner or later the whole board fails, if you're lucky, or explodes, if you're not.
  
  The article shows how to spot this - it's a component near the memory slots that's rotated 180 degrees. If the stripe is on the right (with the I/O ports on the left), you're fine. If the stripe is on the left, your board will die; it's just a question of how soon and how violently.
  
  All affected boards will be replaced, though if you have a family member with a surface-mount soldering station it's a pretty easy thing to fix.
  
  
  

• Nvidia is spending $6.9 billion in prepayments for capacity on TSMC's 5nm production line and Samsung's whichever. (WCCFTech)
  
  Nvidia's current generation of cards are pretty good and are built on Samsung's 8nm process, which is behind current 7nm processes let alone the new 5nm. 2022 should be a good year for video cards - if you can find one.
  
  
  
• Linux patches from Intel allow for updating your BIOS without rebooting. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  It's called PFRUT.
  
  
  
• Via has shut down its Centaur Technology site after selling its CPU development team to Intel. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  It's totally not slavery though.
  
  
  
• Meanwhile Intel has sold its SSD business to Korean electronics group Hynix. (Serve the Home)
  
  Intel hasn't been making any good consumer SSDs for some time. Expensive enterprise stuff at one end and cheap QLC devices at the other.
  
  
  
• Sweden's Northvolt just produced Europe's first lithium-ion battery. (Teslarati)
  
  Yay, I guess.
  
  
  
• Here's what to expect from Apple in 2022... (9to5Mac)
  
  
  
• ... Stay in your pod and eat your bugs. (9to5Mac)
  
  "Quit whining and do as you're told", said Apple.

• On November 1, it turned out - unexpectedly - that forcing users to link their desktop logins to a cloud account was a bad idea for a company with a history of catastrophically bad cloud security, everything was going to get worse, the Google Pixel 6 Pro was a thing that existed, and we weren't sure what the heck was going on with neutrinos.
  
  
  
• On November 2, the Surface Pro 8 was not terrible, notched quanta could pack 500TB of data onto a tiny glass disk that you would immediately drop and shatter into dust, Nvidia rumours were playing on loop, complexity was killing software developers but we had a cure, and MacOS updates were bricking Macs again.
  
  
  
• On November 3, when everything is monetised, only Monet will have... wait, Zillow used AI to make a mint on the real estate market - for other people, Facebook was "shutting down" its face recognition project and "deleting" all the data, 30,000 GitLab servers needed updating, and Google's new phone CPU was great at things you don't do on a phone.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• On November 4, Gen X was going to be stuck maintaining code forever, Australia prepared two lunar rovers for launch, Stardock prepared Start11 for launch, AMD prepared Zen 4, Zen 4c, and Zen 5 for launch, and McDonalds announced a zero-calorie gluten-free vegan McRib. No, I don't know why either.
  
  
  
• On November 5, Alder Lake arrived and promptly melted the polar ice caps, though the cheapest part - the 12600K - wasn't bad, the Asus ROG Maximums Z690 Hero was an Alder Lake motherboard [DON'T BUY THAT ONE IT CATCHES FIRE -- Future Pixy], engineers moved on from PCIe 5 to PCIe 6, people were the problem, and another choice quote from Apple:

  Our mission is to provide people with the choice of what we view as the best.

  
  
  
  
  
• On November 6, the Eternal October went on hiatus for a couple of days, the Intel's new 12900K Blast Furnace Edition was sold out everywhere, unless you got a prebuilt system like the Falcon Northwest Talon or the Alienware Aurora R13 which were HOLY CRAP THAT'S EXPENSIVE, Intel bought Centaur Technology from VIA - or something, it wasn't entirely clear, 86 motherboards on the wall, using the Pi Pico as a VGA adaptor for a Z80, the snipping tool in Windows 11 broke because of an expired certificate somewhere, nobody trusted Google, never update anything, how to dump Chrome, you couldn't replace the screen on an iPhone 13 and never would because of critical security thingies, MacOS was a wretched hive of scum and villainy according to Apple, and Shmedish shmomestic shmerrorists.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• On November 7, complexity was still killing software developers and so were terrible websites full of garbage articles, programming was definitely not hard though, there was already no DDR5 RAM anywhere, Amazon planned to extend its satellite fleet to a total of 7774 from the current, uh, zero, someone with a drone tried to blow up a power substation, Intel's desktop integrated graphics were kind of meh, DON'T USED MANAGED DATABASES, the chip industry was spending a combined $2 billion per week to expand production, and Microsoft published a free report that basically said "Buy a new computer already damn you".
  
  
  
• On November 8, the supply chain crisis went from worse to worser, Intel caught up with AMD as long as you had a private nuclear reactor, we formed a POSSE, Arm Macs leaked memory like a big leaky thing with a leak in it, no, stop, go back, IoT done right, Microsoft threatened to add AI to Office, how was Henry Kissinger still alive anyway, and the jokes wrote themselves.
  
  

  Hey, Ross. Congratulations on your new TV. You wouldn't be able to disable the ads we're afraid. ^HA

  — Samsung UK (@SamsungUK) October 27, 2021

  
  

  Hey, Ross. Congratulations on your new TV. You wouldn't be able to disable the ads we're afraid. ^HA

  — Samsung UK (@SamsungUK) October 27, 2021

  
  
  
  
• On November 9, the leaks were coming from inside the leaky thing, AMD confirmed both Zen 4 and Zen 4c and a 96TFLOP double precision accelerator card, Robinhood leaked to the poor, Visual Studio 2022 was here, the NBN started testing FttN upgrades after thirteen bleedin' years, and DRM considered shitty.
  
  Plus we started to party like it was 1979.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• On November 10, Microsoft's Surface Laptop SE was compact, lightweight, repairable, cheap, and kind of crap, Rolls-Royce was building nuclear reactors and so was France, OWC offered a $13k 64TB SSD, those critical security thingies on the iPhone 13 suddenly vanished, how to save millions on your storage needs - spoiler: start by spending tens of millions and cut it by ten percent, don't use Docker, don't use Exchange Server, don't use SolarWinds, and Apple said to its users if you don't want to live in a pod and eat bugs why don't you just go buy an Android device.
  
  
  
• On November 11, hiding malware in plain site with Unicode, testing that rather nice Framework laptop under Linux, three out of four adults correctly diagnosed Facebook, YouTube removed the dislike counter after their own counter triggered an overflow error on a 64 bit int, and Google lost its appeal against a $2.7 billion EU antitrust ruling.
  
  
  
• On November 12, the US government banned Huawei and ZTC from receiving FTC licenses, so it sounds like cheque bounced, Patreon was building its own video platform and, well, good luck with that, Microsoft was playing notice me senpai with the DOJ's antitrust division, cut your losses and just buy a Switch, we accidentally subscribed to Adobe again, yet another Python JIT compiler, and Ars Technica had always been at war with Ars Technica.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• On November 13, Australia was number one, 50 more Z690 motherboards you shouldn't buy, leaked benchmarks of Intel's upcoming 12700H laptop chips seemed rather bakwards, no earth, no sea, no sky, only Kryo, nobody didn't like squirrelwaffles, and managers weren't worried about keeping tech workers happy NO SHIT SHERLOCK.
  
  
  
• Still on November 13, the FBI was sending out phishing email to tech workers, and Sana and her sisters.
  
  
  
• On November 14, I took my new pressure washer out of the box to clean the back deck and discovered that my garden hose had died of COVID, Intel senior management was, against all the odds, dumber than Joe Biden, their engineers could still produce decent chips though, the top twelve tech turkeys of 2021, and the real reason everyone wants to shove ads into everything - spoiler: it's exactly what you think it is.
  
  
  
• On November 15, we laid out the plans for Starlab (my new home office), IBM announced a quantum computer with 127 qubits, Yabai was a thing that did stuff, asynchronous Rust kinda sucked, used tractors were the new RTX 3090, and testing out a server with ten tractors on board.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• On November 16, Russia blew up one of its own satellites, New York City passed regulations controlling the use of AI in hiring decision and actually somehow got it right, Windows 10 was slightly faster than Windows 11, or to put it another way, Windows 11 was only slightly slower than Windows 10, hackers were taking over Alibaba servers to min crypto because if you're going to commit one crime why stop there, surface freight was so screwed up that air freight was becoming competitive, and the 4004 turned 50.
  
  
  
• On November 17, we paid cash for you to delete your NPM module, or other people's for that matter, Brave browser now bundled a crypto wallet because money, Kioxia announced new M.2 2230 SSDs, Windows 10 21H2 was here, the final six-monthly update before Windows settled down to a relatively sane yearly schedule, and Australia's Blueprint for Critical Technologies was dumb.
  
  
  
• On November 18, AMD and Qualcomm were looking to use Samsung's 3nm process, Asus beat their Vivobook Pro 16X with the ugly stick, blink if you're under duress, die by the online cancellation, Reservoir NFTs, and Minecraft 1.18 got a date.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• On November 19, I broke things, the NFT Bay provided 20TB of NFT data, developers rejected new technology because it mostly sucked, SpaceX was planning an orbital flight of their Starship, Twitter deamped, and 25 people were poisoned by bullshit "alkalized water".
  
  
  
• On November 20, Amazon were amoral scum, we were very briefly grey-pilled, DDR6 and GDDR7 but no DDR5, China was lying about its supercomputers, open the car door please Hal, a cheap but also terrible Arm-based PC, the FDA wanted 55 years to deliver public records on Bat Flu vaccines to the public, DO NOT TRUST SMS-BASED 2FA, and the CEO of Citadel outbid a bunch of cryptoweenies for an actual copy of the actual Constitution.
  
  
  
• On November 21, the NFT Bay actually provided 10GB of NFT data and 19.9TB of zeroes, SquirrelWaffle did not in fact drop QakBot, the Wuhan Bat Flu Lab was not 100 yards from the Wuhan Bat Soup Market - a different disease lab was 100 yards from the Wuhan Bat Soup Market, and Lenovo's ThinkPad X1 Extreme was Extreme-ly overpriced.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• On November 22, leftist lunatics came together to mourn the passing of a child rapist, Intel was spending over $200 billion on fab expansion, the UK recognised octopi as sentient, paving the way for the same recognition to one day apply to journalists and politicians, that's not a tasselled wobbegong, how to download Windows 10, and Zebras were black with white stripes.
  
  
  
• On November 23, to shuck or not to shuck, Windows on Arm sucked, the best Windows laptops of 2021 sucked, and South Australia achieved energy sufficiency for five minutes.
  
  
  
• On November 24, there was still no DDR5, eight cores is enough for anyone, GoDaddy leaked details of 1.2 million WordPress sites including plaintext database passwords, the review score of Apple's Podcasts app was a lie, Samsung announced a new $17 billion factory in Texas, India proposed banning cryptocurrencies entirely which seemed like a grand idea to me, Russia demanded hostages, and that STUPID DISPLAY NOTCH.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• On November 25, communists gonna communist, China suspended Tencent from updating any of its apps, the Department of Commerce actually did its job, your cat was Turing-complete, 7% of paint splatters were not valid Perl programs, and Sweden told the rest of Europe to ban crypto mining and then resigned.
  
  
  
• On November 26, Ninja Science Team HoloX, the Kremlin started naming who exactly needed to hand over hostages, high-speed low-latency DDR5 RAM really didn't make a difference, PHP 8.1 was here for some reason, Australia needed a bigger volcano - or really any at all, and Walmart announced the children's toy of the year.

  "It's about taking five grams of cocaine and being alone... It's a very depressing song," Tanner said.

  
  
  
  
• On November 27, correlates of quantum coddling, the Seaberry mini-ITX board sold out in five minutes, there were absolutely no miles-long lines of trucks waiting to enter the Port of Oakland, AWS reduced its bandwidth pricing by a factor of (5ei/sqrt(jk)-16m**-4y)%, a brand new image format played QOI, the Biden Administration banned travel from Eswatini, Microsoft fucked everything up, they said we were mad to build a museum on a swamp, it was time to bring back TurboPascal, MongoDB 5.1 entered a quantum superposition of uselessness, MariaDB 10.7 entered RC status, and FastAPI looked like it might not suck.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• On November 28, the entire moderation team for Rust resigned, another tech news site filled with crap, DDR5 still was neither available nor worth the expense which was a pretty good tradeoff, pop psychology killed the villain, GitHub went down, we were all doomed, smoking a turkey with Prometheus who was probably a pretty cool dude and seriously never try to outdrink him because he grows a new liver every night, Bokeh looked like it didn't suck, and police in Sydney linked arms with anti-lockdown protestors instead of, as was the case recently in Melbourne, kerb-stomping and pepper-spraying them.
  
  
  
• On November 29, Australia's federal government went to war with the social networks and we wondered how they could both lose, the Bus Factor for PHP was reduced from 2 to 1, a big step in the right direction, mining in 22 seconds, YouTube went to war with Ninja Science Team HoloX, and Brixels.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• And on November 30, Twitter would not become an ocean of suck because it was already an entire galaxy of sewage, a compact 700W passively-cooled power supply, no 4K dumb televisions, yes 4K large-format monitors, a survey of 7000 companies found that only 3% were dumb enough to trust all their data with a single cloud provider, a proposed change to Ethereum gas calculations wouldn't help anyone, and three ex-Googlers sued the company for being evil.
  
  
  

posted by Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM

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