Daily Tech News 18 October 2022

• A fire at a major datacenter in Korea wreaked havoc on the country's online infrastructure on Saturday. (Korea Times)
  
  The fire at the fifteen acre datacenter just south of Seoul caught burned for eight hours before being fully extinguished, which is a long time for this sort of thing. The fire at OVH in Strasbourg didn't last much longer than that, and the building burned to the ground.
  
  The disastrous effects were felt throughout the community:

  "I needed to receive a photo from my business partner through KakaoTalk. But I had to go through an inconvenient process to get the photo through email because of the KakaoTalk disruption," said a KakaoTalk user, asking for anonymity. "I should've used Telegram."

  Well, okay, that's a minor thing, but:

  "I send some money to my parents every month automatically through Kakao Pay, but I can't verify it," said a user of the platform.

  Well, I can see how that would be temporarily vexing. One more try?

  "After dinner last night, I tapped on the Kakao T app to call a cab, but it didn't work," said another user. "So I took the subway home."

  It's almost as if these platforms aren't really that critical and people can cope fine without them.
  
  
  
• Apparently I ordered the new hifi system that was delivered by Amazon tomorrow, yesterday, twice. Except that I only paid for one and they only delivered one.
  
  I think there's a time rift somewhere between Sydney and New House City.

• Stability AI, the company behind the Stable Diffusion algorithm for generating AI art, has raised $100 million in funding. (Tech Crunch)
  
  At a valuation of $1 billion, which used to be a lot of money, but given that I ordered $100 worth of groceries on the weekend and it came in two bags, isn't anymore. (Though the paper towels and soda were out of stock, otherwise it would have been three bags.)
  
  
  
• Want an 8k resin-based 3D printer? The Phrozen Sonic Mighty 8k is one. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Seems to produce good results as you'd hope with a 28 micron resolution, but resin printers are kind of fussy. I'll likely get one once I've got some furniture in the place, but not a fancy model like this to start with.
  
  
  
• Intel's 13th gen CPUs and AMD's Ryzen 7000 range are power hungry beasts - unless you tell them not to be. (WCCFTech)
  
  The 13900K restricted to 80W is as fast as a 12900K running unlimited, and the 7950X running in 65W Eco mode is faster than a 5950X running at full throttle.
  
  Again, this looks good for next-generation laptops.
  
  
  
• Shame then that I'm having trouble with my laptop right now. The best replacement is HP's Pavilion Plus 14, but I missed the sale last month.
  
  The sale is back on... But there are only two models available in Australia (no build-to-order buffet for us) and only the most expensive one is in stock.
  
  
  
• In a sign that supply chain shortages are finally easing lead times for chip delivery shrank in September from an average of 27 weeks, to just 26 weeks and 3 days. (Bloomberg)
  
  That's much better.
  
  
  
• Last week, the Bitcoin blockchain did absolutely nothing for 85 minutes. (CoinDesk)
  
  It is set to average one block every ten minutes, which is pretty terrible given that right now I am cursing the slowness of another blockchain that process a block every three seconds. Given the distribution, hour-long processing delays can be expected roughly once a month. Slightly more often if someone sets the datacenter on fire.
  

posted by Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM

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