Daily Tech News 7 November 2023

• WeWork has gone bankrupt. (Bloomberg) (archive site)
  
  This will save the labour of at least a dozen neurons that I had assigned to correcting all the other neurons that believed that WeWork went bankrupt a couple of years ago.
  
  The company has $15 billion in assets and $19 billion in debt, which is not fatal except that it is also unprofitable and sees no path to profitability without major changes.
  
  The company has filed for Chapter 11 proceedings in the US, which means it will attempt to reorganise to somehow become a functional company... Which it never has been.

• Nitrogen-9 is apparently a thing. (Physics Magazine)
  
  If 7 protons and only 2 neutrons sounds wildly unstable - atoms typically have as many or more neutrons as protons - then you are paying attention. It very quickly disintegrates into five independent protons and a helium atom.
  
  In fact, nobody has actually observed Nitrogen-9; what they detected was something that had just disintegrated into five protons and a helium atom. But if you find a flaming pile of junk with four wheels and four doors and a Ford logo, it's not too much of a stretch to guess that it used to be a car.
  
  
  
• Speaking of flaming piles of junk, Washington DC is handing out free Apple AirTags to help track down stolen cars. (PC Magazine)
  
  Which is the least stupid thing I've heard out of Washington in years.
  
  
  
• If you want a pretty decent Windows laptop, the HP Pavilion Plus 14 is available for $680 with a discount code via HP's store on eBay. (Liliputing)
  
  This is similar to the model I'm using right now. Mine has an Intel 12700H, 16GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD; the model on offer has a 13500H - newer, but fewer cores, 16GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD. Both have a 2880x1800 OLED display, which is really nice, two Thunderbolt ports, two USB-A ports, HDMI, a microSD slot, and a headphone jack. And the four essential keys.
  
  If it had upgradeable RAM, or even just a build-to-order option for 32GB, it would be pretty much perfect. But you'd need a professional desoldering station to even attempt such an upgrade.
  
  
  
• Bluesky Social has migrated to SQLite. (Hacker News)
  
  SQLite is the most popular database in the world - there are an estimated one trillion copies of it in use, because it is so often embedded inside applications. But it's an unusual choice for a social network.
  
  What Bluesky is doing is giving each user their own database - which means the company is running 1.8 million individual databases.
  
  Which is Dante's 11th circle of Hell. (The 10th is inhabited by postmodernists.)

posted by Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM

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