Daily Tech News 27 March 2022

• Microsoft has been accused of handing out bribes in Africa and the Middle East in order to secure new business deals. (The Register)
  
  Compared to the totalitarian insanity we generally get from Big Tech, this sort of traditional petty corruption feels almost comforting. It's like you come home from a day fighting off laser-equipped robot dogs and your own dog just wants to bite you.

• From Chi-Town Jerry:

  I want to upgrade my PC -
  Currently:
  AMD Ryzen 3 2200G with Radeon Vega Graphics 3.50 GHz
  8 GB RAM
  
  Not enough to run MS Flight Simulator which my kids bought me..
  Will a new MoBo with an AMD Ryzen 5 5600G (w/onboard graphics) be enough to run that and Windows 11?
  
  The price of graphics cards is insane here!

  Here's a CPU benchmark comparison between those two chips.
  
  The 5600G is miles faster on that front.
  
  On the graphics side that site doesn't have the 2200G listed, but the older chip has 8 graphic cores at 1.1GHz, and the newer one has 7 cores at 1.9GHz. So about 50% faster.
  
  However, the recommended minimum graphics card for the game is the RX 570, which is about three times faster again. So that hardware will certainly run better, but I don't know if it will be better enough to make the game enjoyable.
  
  
  
• From Caiwyn:

  I am still skeptical of crypto simply by default, but what exactly are the downsides other than current volatility?

  For the most part, crypto really does run as a combination MLM / Ponzi / pump-and-dump scam. The thing is, under all the bullshit it is actually useful. The other thing is, there's so much bullshit that the utility is being destroyed.
  
  I work in the crypto space - over the last few years it's gone from being 10% of my job to 90%.
  
  I hate it.
  
  As the technical lead at our small company I'd be a natural to send to a conference for a talk or panel discussion, but the CEO knows I'd stand up, look out at the expectant audience, and say LEARN TO CODE.
  
  
  
• From OSUsux:

  Hey, Pixy. After a recent harddrive crash I'm looking for a home RAID solution mostly for storing photos, media, etc. I'm tech adjacent, but I haven't ever done anything with RAID. So I'm looking for something that is easy to setup AND rebuild when an HDD goes bad.
  
  I probably don't need a ton of space - I have less than 1 TB of stuff now, would probably want at least 2, maybe 4 TB of space for room to grow. I would anticipate this being a long term (10+ years) storage solution. Also trying not to break the bank on this.
  
  Any suggestions?

  A low-end Synology box with two drive bays like the DS-220j would probably work fine, or one of Western Digital's dual-bay devices that come pre-populated with disks. Those come pre-configured with RAID-1 (mirroring) so you just need to plug it in and hook up your computer - and swap the failed drive if and when it starts blinking red. With those capacities you probably don't need anything bigger, just something that will save your bacon automatically when a drive fails.
  
  Just don't connect it to the internet.
  
  
  
• From J. Random Dude:

  NASs. I've thought about getting a QNAP or something similar but with their software updates occasionally being corrupted by virii, am I better off just rolling my own, ie adding more drives and such to the Windows box I'll be using to run Blue Iris surveillance camera software?

  QNAP is probably fine as long as you don't connect it directly to the internet. Same with the recent problems that have hit Asus, Western Digital, and Synology devices - though QNAP has had the worst run this past year.
  
  For a single application though you're probably fine just adding drives directly to your PC. Certainly cheaper that way.
  
  
  
• From Thing From Snowy Mountain: Dandolo Did Nothing Wrong:

  Late Question For Pixy: If I want to share some videos what's a good alternative to youtube?

  Rumble, probably. Seems to be getting more traction than the other startups right now.
  
  
  
• From Rodent:

  Pixy any comments on protecting corporate systems? Seeing a lot of cyber attacks and ransomware on municipal systems, food manufacturers, and others. Latest was H.P. Hood dairy based in Boston. Meat plants and cream cheese makers come to mind for past events. Apologies if you're posted on that previously and I missed it.

  My comments in this area are mostly along the lines of STOP THAT YOU IDIOTS! WERE YOU RAISED IN A BARN?
  
  Which while well-deserved are not really actionable advice.
  
  
  
• From m0lr4k:

  I am tired of hardware devices that dictate when their usefulness ends for me. I have had a co-branded Google / Asus router for a number of years. Well now Google has said it won't work past the end of the year, because Google.
  
  Any recommendations for a home router for a medium-sized home, preferably one that allows FOSS firmware to be flashed on it? I've looked at a few (and even the option of using a Raspberry Pi Compute Module as a router), but I don't see a clear leader like the old Linksys 54g (or whatever model) was 15 years ago. Extra options like support for mesh networks and home automation would be cool, but I'm now in the camp of rolling it myself if I add much to those sorts of things.

  I'm not sure what exact model to recommend, but what you are looking for is OpenWRT. They maintain a huge list of supported devices and matching software versions. Might be worth checking your current hardware if you haven't already.
  
  
  
• From AshevilleRobert:

  Question. Is it possible to build a PC with none of the major components coming from china (Processor, memory, motherboard, case, power supply and video card)? I understand that discrete components will be, just wanting to avoid the finished items being so.

  Maybe. The chips for CPUs are made in the US and Taiwan, GPUs in Taiwan and South Korea. RAM chips and flash have major factories in the US and South Korea. The leading motherboard and graphics card manufacturers are based in Taiwan - but they all operate some of their production in mainland China so it would be tricky proposition to make sure nothing comes from there.
  
  
  
• From Squints:

  I'd love some elaboration on this from last week:
  
  >>enter ! and one or more letters at the end of your search query and it will use a different search index - and there are thousands supported
  
  Not for all thousands, of course, but a couple of examples. Thanks muchly.

  This one is in relation to DuckDuckGo search.
  
  The simplest one is that by adding !g to the end of your search, you get results from Google. Similarly, !a searches Amazon and !w searches Wikipedia. !/. searches Slashdot - and so does !./ in case you fumble it. There are currently 13,565 of these "bangs" available.
  
  
  
• From Braenyard:

  Question - I need a portable HD that is independent of the internet. I bought a Seagate 1T and the first thing it wanted to do was connect, in fact, I could go no further unless I connected. The opposite of what I want.
  
  I have a WD Word Book 3T and would like a portable to use all the time and back it up to the WD Word Book. Reviews don't cover my connectivity concern.
  Any recommendation, please?

  Format that sucker. Show it who's boss. While a new external hard drive might want you to connect to the internet, once you format it it will become raw storage and won't demand anything.

• PCIe 5 SSDs will require active cooling. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  As in, a fan, right on your disk drive.
  
  Although the actual quote is slightly different:

  But for sure, the SSDs are going to be hotter, in the same way that CPU and GPU got hotter in the 1990s. As we move to Gen5 and Gen6, we may need to consider active cooling.

  (My italics.)
  
  Still, there's a reason I went for PCIe 3 SSDs for my laptop upgrades. (Also price.)
  
  
  
• Baldur's Gate 3 Will Be the Benchmark Incarnation of D&D 5th Edition in a Game, Says Larian
  
  This is going to suck, isn't it?
  
  (Checks Steam Early Access.)
  
  44,000 scores averaging Very Positive, despite being a full-price title in Early Access for three years.
  
  Maybe... Not?
  
  
  
• Ubuntu Finally Switches to Rolling Releases. (Slashdot)
  
  Oh no-
  
  
  
• Ubuntu becomes a rolling release with Rolling Rhino. (Neowin)
  
  Wait, R? The upcoming release is Jammy Jellyfish. We won't loop back around to R until 2026.
  
  
  
• Rolling Rhino Remix is an un-official Ubuntu flavour. (GitHub)
  
  So... Nothing.

posted by Pixy Misa at 05:08 AM

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