Daily Tech News 1 November 2023

• Seems to be a loose connection inside my laptop. That's why the problem is intermittent.
  
  It can probably be fixed, I think I'll just turn it into a Linux server and stick it on a shelf, and take the other laptop (better screen and CPU but 16GB of soldered RAM) and use that as my Windows system.
  
  
  
• The Day of the 4TB SSDs: Call of Duty Modern Warfare III requires 213GB of disk space. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  I have - I think I still have it - a Sun Ultra 5 workstation with two 14GB disk drives.
  
  That used to be a lot. Today that much storage would cost about a dollar.
  
  
  

• An AI-powered smoothie shop opened in San Francisco in September. Why is it closed already. (The Guardian)
  
  Well, one, San Francisco, and two, as even the Guardian noticed, their customers seem to be AI-powered as well.
  
  
  
• If Black 2.0 and Black 3.0 just weren't Black enough for you, Black 4.0 is now available. (Culture Hustle)
  
  These are real things.
  
  Vantablack was invented in 2014 as a new pigment that absorbs approximately 99.965% of visible light (and ultraviolet and infrared as well). It's very striking, because light basically just disappears. It's not like the usual glossy or even matte black surface, it looks like someone cut a hole in the Universe.
  
  And then the inventors sold the exclusive rights to use it in artworks to Anish Kapoor.
  
  So another company came along and created even blacker blacks - 2.0, 3.0, and now 4.0 - which are available for sale to everybody in the world - except Anish Kapoor.
  
  
  
• Elon Musk's plans to make X the "everything app". (The Verge)
  
  It's an interesting read and provides some justification for the exorbitant price he paid for Twitter, though it's not clear how much of this he had in mind at the time and how much is post-facto rationalisation.
  
  Some of the things mentioned, like end-to-end encryption, are great ideas that need to be more widely adopted (and will piss off the UK government no end).
  
  Other things, like using Twitter to make payments, I'm a lot less keen on.
  
  I do not want an "everything" app. I want a bunch of entirely independent, competing apps that each do one thing well, and that I can replace easily if they stop doing that thing well.
  
  
  
• WeWork looks set to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. (Tech Crunch)
  
  I keep forgetting that WeWork isn't already bankrupt. It's share price is down approximately 99.965% from its peak five years ago, with the company's valuation falling from $47 billion to $121 million.
  
  A lot of that was bad timing, launching a huge office management company just before the Wuhan Bat Flu Death Plague locked everyone in their homes for three years, though a lot of it was that the company was run by idiots.
  
  I'm sure somebody will miss them.
  
  
  
• Sam Bankman-Fraud didn't ask where the $8 billion went. (The Verge)
  
  Maybe it's just me, but that would seem to be an important question, somewhere between "where are my pants" and "why has my heart stopped beating".

posted by Pixy Misa at 04:53 AM

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