TweakHound

Computer stuff...

Eric (a.k.a. TweakHound)

Friday Random Stuff…

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Google Chrome 64
“The stable channel has been updated to 64.0.3282.140 for Windows, Mac and Linux…This update includes 1 security fix”
Download

Leaping To Failure
openSUSE Leap 15 Beta has been released. “Leap 15 is expected to use the 4.12 series kernel.”
4.12??? WTH? 4.14 LTS was released in NOVEMBER. Reckon I will be skipping another release.

Off Topic

Nice Commercial But Your Beer Sucks
“Budweiser has fared even worse. Sales of the brand, which have declined each year since 1988, were down 6.8 percent in 2017…In the most recent four-week period, Bud Light volume was down 6.8 percent, according to Nielsen data through Jan. 13. (Coors Light volume was down 3 percent and Miller Lite volume was down 0.6 percent during the same period.)”
Folks with taste buds are finding the answer in craft beer. Dilly Dilly indeed.

related:
The #1 Beer Destination In The World
1. Richmond, Virginia
“From one craft brewery to 22 in less than 10 years, RVA is officially on the map
Beer has blossomed in Richmond, and it’s time we all take notice. As the recently revamped Richmond Beer Trail will tell you, this Southern city is now rich with breweries.”

WooHoo!
Men are more attractive when desired by other women, study finds
“A trait which is often seen in female birds and fish, the idea behind mate copying or The Wedding Ring Effect, is that by already being in a relationship or desired by other women, a man has already proven that they have some desirable characteristics.”
woohoosmiley
We kinda already knew that didn’t we bros?! Anywho, might wanna share this article with your gal.

I’m So Proud Of You
Facebook lost daily users for the first time ever in the U.S. and Canada
“Facebook’s daily active user base in the U.S. and Canada fell for the first time ever in the fourth quarter, dropping to 184 million from 185 million in the previous quarter.“

Random Monday Stuff…

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Software Updates
7-Zip 18.0.1
Nvidia GeForce Drivers 390.77 WHQL

Firefox 58.0.1
Firefox 32-bit
Firefox 64-bit
All downloads
Release Notes (not up yet)

Not Intel-ligent
“In initial disclosures about critical security flaws discovered in its processors, Intel Corp. notified a small group of customers, including Chinese technology companies, but left out the U.S. government, according to people familiar with the matter and some of the companies involved.”
My first thought was the word “treasonous”. Yeah I know, but that is what came to mind. Probably doesn’t rise to that but it sure is stupid. Amazing that a company full of some of the brightest among us has failed so miserably recently.

About That Windows Unpatch Patch
Over the weekend several sites have reported that “Microsoft issues emergency Windows update” that unpatched the Spectre patch.
AFAIK they haven’t put anything on Window Update and there is no “out-of-band update”, at least not on any of my 7 running PCs. Frankly I think they all got the news from AskWoody who is the only site I’ve seen get it right:
“The patch is only available from the Update Catalog, and it’s the same patch for all versions of Windows.”
and
“It’s highly likely that when Intel gives the all-clear for Spectre variant 2, it’ll be part of yet another patch.”
and most importantly
“Moral of the story: Wait.”

Pai In Your Face
How does this embarrassment still have a job?

Big Brother
iVerge – Exclusive: ICE is about to start tracking license plates across the US
They are tracking everyone plates not just illegals. I don’t have much to complain about as I have an E-ZPass but that is an opt-in thing.

Ars Pro
Ars Technica is turning to a premium subscription model. I’ve only tried one and that was over at Paul Thurrott’s site. I let that expire as I didn’t feel the value was worth the cost. Is this where the web is headed?

Logic
Non sequitur. Some folks really need to understand this before they make comments.
 
RIP Mort Walker

Good Movie, Bad Movie, Bad Experience

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Please Stand By
“Dakota Fanning stars as a woman who escapes a group home hoping to get her Star Trek script produced in Hollywood. On the way she must conquer a new world full of challenges.”
This is in theaters but is also on Comcast PPV which is how I watched it. I thoroughly enjoyed this movie.

Hostiles
Way too long and too boring. I’m not sure what the message was except, “all men suck, especially white men”.
It was well acted.

The Movie Theater
I’ve gone off on the movie going experience before. We walk up. +100 people in line. The kiosk/auto ticket line is shorter but only one of the two computers are operational. 20 minute wait. Get inside, a 10 minute wait for the ticket taker. Someone cuts and the teenage ticket taker lets this happen. Since I am almost next I speak up on behalf of the multitude,”Why would you let him through, he obviously cut the line.” Before he can answer an off-duty but uniformed Barney Fife sticks his nose in, “There are 2 lines” he says. “No there is not”, I answer. “Yeah”, says the woman in front of me to the cop. He backs off and I let it go. Now the concession line. They have one of those winding rope patterns set up for it. It looks to be at least a 20 minute wait. No popcorn for me.
There are 7 movies previews. There are commercials for the Coke and popcorn that apparently they think I paid to watch. There reminders to STFU. There are reminders to silence your phones that several people obviously ignore. Ditto for texting.
And they wonder why people don’t go to movies.

Thursday Random Stuff…

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Chrome 64
53 security fixes including Meltdown and Spectre protection.
HDR suppport.
Mute annoying sites. You can do this by right-clicking on a tab.
Download

Polaris
Windows Central says “Polaris” is a Win10 version “for traditional PC form factors”.
I want my PC to act like a PC. Not a phone. Not a tablet. But when it comes to Microsoft getting things right, I’ll believe it when I see it.

Coincidence
“Intel quietly warned computer manufacturers at the end of November that its chips were insecure due to design flaws, according to an internal Chipzilla document…The date of the disclosure to OEMs is likely to raise eyebrows as it happened on the same day Intel chief exec Brian Krzanich sold shares in his company worth $25m before tax.”
They always get away with it.

Inside The Fight For The Soul Of Kaspersky Lab
Semi-long article and worth the read.
“Kaspersky Lab is under fire in the US over concerns that it could provide its clients’ private — and at times secret — information to the Russian government. A new investigation by Russian news site Meduza, published here exclusively in English, goes inside the battle for control of the company — a battle sources say was won by the side allied with Russian security services.”

Wednesday Random Stuff…

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BIOS Hell
BIOS updates are being recalled and replaced. Woody Leonhard has the scoop on several vendors.
My new rig had a second BIOS update 2 days ago. Previous BIOS version was F5i. It has disappeared and been replaced by F5m. Yesterday I reran PCMark10 on that rig. Performance drooped again. On PCMark10 I now have a performance loss of 6.4% overall, with a high of 9.9% in Essentials. Post updated here: Meltdown & Spectre Updates Benchmarked

Software Updates
EMDB 3.10
Mp3tag 2.86

2 News SSDs

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Intel and Samsung released new SSDs and Anandtech benchmarked them.
Intel 760p NVMe M.2:
“Compared to other NVMe SSDs, the 760p is clearly not a high-end drive…but Samsung’s recent NVMe SSDs are often far faster than the 760p…The Samsung 960 EVO is currently a bit more expensive than the 760p but largely justifies that price.”
Samsung 860 Pro SATA:
“Ultimately the Samsung 860 PRO is a commendable technical achievement; Samsung has pushed the SATA III interface to its limit by having it serve such a powerful SSD, and it’s entirely possible we won’t see a better desktop SATA SSD ever made. But as SSDs get faster and faster and the SATA interface does not, I would argue that the 860 PRO isn’t a very good product”

Privacy Policy

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Intel Pulls Meltdown & Spectre Patches

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Intel:
“We recommend that OEMs, cloud service providers, system manufacturers, software vendors and end users stop deployment of current versions, as they may introduce higher than expected reboots and other unpredictable system behavior.”
Ahhhhahahahahaha!

Oh, and Linus Torvalds went off on Intel:
“It’s not that it’s a nasty hack. It’s much worse than that…so the IBRS garbage implies that Intel is _not_ planning on doing the
right thing for the indirect branch speculation…So somebody isn’t telling the truth here. Somebody is pushing complete
garbage for unclear reasons…As it is, the patches are COMPLETE AND UTTER GARBAGE…They do literally insane things. They do things that do not make sense. That makes all your arguments questionable and suspicious.”

And remember, good ol’ TweakHound told you not to update in the first place.