Daily Tech News 18 August 2023

• Fools and money: Purchasers of ugly monkey jpegs - which is to say, distributed database entries which are unique identifiers of digital images of ugly monkeys stored on someone's server somewhere - are suing auction house Sotheby's and ugly monkey jpeg purveyor Yuga Labs alleging that they, which is to say the buyers of said ugly monkey jpegs, are too stupid to be allowed out of the house without a leash. (Ars Technica)
  
  And while this is undoubtedly true, it might be hard to establish as a point of law that this idiocy is the fault of Sotheby's or of Yuga Labs.

  Sotheby's sold a lot of 101 Bored Ape NFTs for $24.4 million at its "Ape In!" auction in September 2021, well above the pre-auction estimates of $12 million to $18 million. That's an average price of over $241,000, but Bored Ape NFTs now sell for a floor price of about $50,000 worth of ether cryptocrurrency, according to CoinGecko data accessed today.

  Or rather, don't sell at that price.
  
  At least you can eat tulip bulbs.
  
  
  

• Is the PCIe 5 Seagate Firecude 540 worth buying? (Serve the Home)
  
  No. But it's less not worth buying than ugly monkey jpegs - about a thousand times cheaper, for a start, and you actually own it.
  
  
  
• Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella says AI is a tidal wave as big as the internet. (Bloomberg)
  
  A tidal wave? As in, it brings nothing good, you can see it coming a mile off, and you'd best seek high ground right away?
  
  Seems apt.
  
  
  
• The iKoolCore R1 Pro is a four port 2.5Gb Ethernet router that measures 3x3x2 inches and includes a quad core Pentium N6005 CPU, 16GB of RAM, and up to 1TB of SSD. (Liliputing)
  
  It also has HDMI, USB-C (and a second USB-C for power input), two USB-A ports, and a microSD slot.
  
  This is all identical to the iKoolCore R1 non-Pro edition released a few months ago except that this model has upgraded cooling and doesn't crash all the time.
  
  Which is a plus.
  
  
  
• The Verge continues to descend into Musk-induced insanity. (The Verge)
  
  Today's report is titled "Elon Musk is killing 'Environmental Twitter'" but instead makes the case that environmental activists are mindless zealots who will brook no opposition, or indeed anything but the most slavish support.
  
  Which is true.
  
  
  

posted by Pixy Misa at 04:10 AM

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