Daily Tech News 28 August 2022

Top Story

• Following the shocking* revelation* that the FBI strong-armed social networks including Twitter and Facebook into hiding damaging new information* about the corruption of former vice-president and now president Joe Biden, the FBI has explained that it engages in similar constitutional violations to protect its own illicit pursuit of power all the time so what are you complaining about?
  
  

  FBI says it "routinely notifies" social media companies of potential threats following Zuckerberg-Rogan podcast https://t.co/6RlmH9FA9x pic.twitter.com/rUnHgDmxVX

  — The Hill (@thehill) August 27, 2022

  
  
  Just a few minor points:
  
  
• They warn social media companies - but not the public.
• They keep this secret.
• When they say "potential threats" they mean stories they want suppressed.
• These stories are viewed as threats because they are true.
  
  

Tech News

• Walmart has joined Amazon in offering blatantly obvious scams on its online store with a disclaimer that they haven't bothered to check anything about what they sell so tough shit if you get ripped off you idiot. (Ars Technica)
  
  In this case a 30TB SSD for $39. You typically get 1GB and some clever software that makes it look like it works right until you write 1.01GB.
  
  Oh, and while they don't warn you that everything in the product description is a lie, they do warn that it could give you cancer. If, I assume, you smoke it.
  
  
  
• The Asus ProArt B660 Creator D4 is a perfectly adequate Intel motherboard. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Should work fine for current 12th generation and upcoming 13th generation CPUs. The ProArt range is normally marked by the inclusion of Thunderbolt ports - relatively rare on desktop motherboards - but this doesn't have those.
  
  It is more reasonably priced than the higher-end ProArt models though, and there's nothing specifically wrong with it. And it has DisplayPort output over USB-C if you need that.
  
  
  
• More price cuts are coming for video cards next month. (WCCFTech)
  
  The best deal I've seen so far was A$999 for an RX 6900XT, but that's disappeared. So if you don't want to wait for the new cards to arrive - they'll be announced soon, but availability is another question - and see the card you want at a price you're happy with, it might be a good idea to go for it.
  
  
  
• Nvidia's Orin CPU is a new high-end embedded Arm processor. (Serve the Home)
  
  It has lots of interesting stuff on board: 12 A78 cores (the high-end Arm core in your phone if it's more than one but less than two years old), 5 TFLOPs worth of Ampere graphics cores (that can be split into two logical GPUs for server workloads), video encode and decode at up to 8k60 resolution, up to four 10Gb Ethernet ports, and four pairs of A52 cores running in lockstep for safety-critical tasks.
  
  Plus it has interconnect links so you can run up to four chips as a single system.
  
  There are a lot of uses for such a chip, including robotics and smart vehicles. I'd like to see it in a home storage / media server, since the current models are either woefully underpowered or use expensive and power-hungry Intel CPUs. Orin starts at 10W.
  
  
  
• Neither party got all it wants but the judge in the Twitter / Musk trial has ordered Twitter to hand over the data it's been hiding on the real bot numbers. (CBS)
  
  Remember that Twitter is suing Musk to force him to go ahead with the takeover, when just weeks ago they were vocally insisting that the bid severely undervalued the company. One way or another, the Twitter we have all come to know and loathe isn't long for this world, and the directors and shareholders know it.

• I'm watching The Saga of Tanya the Evil, an anime series set in an alternate Earth where WWI doesn't kick off until 1923. It's not entirely historically accurate - there's a plane in an episode set in 1926 that looks very much like the Me 323, which first flew in 1942 - but this version of Germany is larger and more powerful than in our timeline, so I'll grant them a little leeway there.
  
  The show isn't flawless, but it does offer an unsparing look at the realities of war - and in the movie that follows season one, the realities of communism. We see, without commentary, a Federation (Russian) officer executing soldiers who have failed to defend their base against an overwhelming Imperial (German) assault.
  
  Not for the squeamish; if you don't want to see what would realistically happen in trench warfare to anyone dumb enough to stick their head up for a better look, best avoid. And the story seems to be going somewhere but hasn't got there yet; a second season is in production but not yet scheduled to air, so if you don't like to be left hanging, also best avoid.
  
  But I've always thought that if the European powderkeg hadn't been set off at Sarajevo things would have been much worse when it did inevitably explode five or ten years later, and this series examines that and comes to much the same conclusion.
  
  It's also worth noting that the series isn't titled The Saga of Tanya the Quite Nice Really Once You Get to Know Her.