Daily Tech News 28 April 2024

• There's never been a better time to get into Fallout 76. (Ars Technica)
  
  There's never been a worse time to get into Fallout 76 either. There's never been a time to get into Fallout 76.

  Fallout 76 is good now. Actually, it's always been good.

  Oh, really?

  Two weeks in, Fallout 76 is a lonely, glitchy, flawed mess. (Ars Technica)

  But baby that was years ago. I've left it all behind.

  Redownloaded it - like an idiot I got it at launch - to see if it had aged well.
  
  Went though character creation, all good, then my character couldn't move. At all.
  
  Looked it up online and the fix was - SIX YEARS after launch - to manually edit some config files.
  
  Nope.
  
  Uninstalled.
  
  Still trash.

  As strong as the rest of your reporting, huh Ars Technica?
  
  

• Speaking of which, if you're bored you can watch the Ars commentariat tie itself into knots explaining why Germany's move from clean, safe, reliable nuclear power to the dirtiest of dirty coal - they burn lignite - is good for the environment. (Ars Technica)
  
  Or not. Actually, I'd recommend not. Though some of the comments are good:

  Not sure what these numbers mean. According to Wikipedia consumed energy in Germany was 76 percent fossil in 2023 (including a lot of lignite which is amongst the dirtiest coals). Also to note, over the years Germany has imported more and more energy from France (biggest nuclear park) to compensate for the closure of their own nuclear plants so in a way they have just outsourced their nuclear. And last, electricity prices in Germany are amongst the most expensive in Europe. All this sounds a little less shiny than the article?

  They could try burning Ars readers but they're probably too wet.
  
  
  
• The Eurocom 780W AC Power Adapter review. (AnandTech)
  
  780W is unremarkable for a computer power supply these days, though this has some nice features like running on mains power anywhere from 90 to 264 volts, and being able to sustain a 25% overload - right on 1000W of power draw - almost indefinitely.
  
  That's 20 volts out at 50 amps.
  
  Because this is a laptop power supply.
  
  
  
• Proxmox 8.2 is out. (Serve the Home)
  
  Proxmox VE is a pretty neat server virtualisation and management system based on a customised Ubuntu kernel. I've been meaning to set it up at home for a long time, but it's been a while since I had a standalone server that wasn't in use.
  
  
  
• Speaking of which, I've spent the weekend engaging in necromancy.
  
  Apart from the new Asus laptop (the one that refused to talk to the nice 2TB Team MP44 I bought for it) and the three cheap Beelink mini-PCs I bought to build a Linux cluster, I also had four old laptops sitting around.
  
  So I got everything assembled in what is nominally the music room (and in fact does contain an Akai midi keyboard) and I'm working through a long list of hardware upgrades that I already have the parts for, and an even longer list of software upgrades.
  
  At the end of it I'll have eight - probably nine, actually - working computers instead of just the one.
  
  It's all fun and games as usual. I couldn't remember the password on one of the laptops, so I stuck in the Windows 10 install drive and told it to reinstall.
  
  The Windows installer reported that it couldn't find the SSD.
  
  Fortunately I had another identical laptop that I could log in to, so I created a recovery drive from that, and with that I could reinstall Windows.
  
  Those two will soon have 64GB of RAM and 4TB of SSD each. The laptops and their upgrades have been sitting around waiting for me to have time to attend to them since February.
  
  Of 2022.
  
  
  
• The walls of Apple's garden are tumbling down. (The Verge)
  
  You do know that you could just not buy iPhones, right?
  
  
  
• Speaking of which, I also set up my Moto G14 today.
  
  Great screen.
  
  Works well.
  
  1080x2400 screen, 50 megapixel camera, two A75 plus six A55 cores, which is fine for me, though I'd avoid anything that was A55 only, and a headphone jack and microSD slot, which many phones at ten times the price don't have.
  
  Dirt cheap - I paid about $110 on sale for the 4GB / 128GB model.
  
  This is to replace the Oppo phone I've been using as my on-call pager because that one died of battery bloat.
  
  I'd recommend it but it's not available in the US.
  
  Also it talks when you boot it up, which I could do without.
  
  
  
• Tech gadgets are adding AI whether you like it or not. (Ars Technica)
  
  Actually, the case cited doesn't even involve adding AI. It's a new Logitech mouse with a dedicated AI button... Which pops up a menu on Windows.
  
  That's it.

posted by Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM

| Access Comments