Category Archives: News

Article note: I mean, I'm not sad see to see those clusters of assholes get discouraged, and at least they applied it in a nominally cross-spectrum way. But still, all communities are defined by an in-group/out-group antagonism, so now we enter the era of infinite, slippery arguments about what counts as "hate speech" and what counts as "community norms." Ed: Oh fuck, I read the rules, it's a little dumber than I expected. "Marginalized or vulnerable groups include, but are not limited to, groups based on their actual and perceived race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, immigration status, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, pregnancy, or disability. These include victims of a major violent event and their families. ... While the rule on hate protects such groups, it does not protect all groups or all forms of identity. For example, the rule does not protect groups of people who are in the majority or who promote such attacks of hate." Read that rule carefully and note that it would, for example, not apply against minority apartheid activists. "Punching Up" has always been and continues to be a synonym for "Hurting the right people" for a different audience.

Article note: The activist left's (which has, essentially, devolved into a continuous replay of the "Judean peoples front vs. People's Front Of Judea" Monty Python sketch while the actually-in-power capital class rides off with complete victory) tendency to respond to having to no real power by increasingly exercising petty power for media purges (more mud-mask == blackface purges in the feed today, lol), nomenclature battles, and personal harassment, is undermining their ability to ever attain any real power with their bullshit. I don't much care either way about this and the dozen other recent "Master/Slave can only be understood the light of U.S. History" linguistic manipulation stories, but I'd like to live in a country with a functioning healthcare system and infrastructure, and that will require some consolidated power on the left. Social movements live and die on their ability to demonstrate power and restraint, and this shit is demonstrating the lack of both, at a time when all you need to do to be the responsible adult is not be an _obvious_ petty jackass.

Article note: Fuckin' cool. I love "Just because" hacks on retro hardware, I love watching owner-hostile security schemes fall, here we are in the intersection.

Nearly 20 years after its initial release, a hacker has found a way to run homebrew software on an unmodified PlayStation 2 using nothing but a carefully burned DVD-ROM.

Previous efforts to hack the PS2 relied on internal modifications, external hardware (like pre-hacked memory cards and hard drives), or errors found only on very specific models of the system. The newly discovered FreeDVDBoot differs from this previous work by exploiting an error in the console's DVD video player to create a fully software-based method for running arbitrary code on the system.

Security researcher CTurt laid out the FreeDVDBoot discovery and method in detail in a blog post this weekend. By decrypting and analyzing the code used for the PS2's DVD player, CTurt found a function that expects a 16-bit string from a properly formatted DVD but will actually easily accept over 1.5 megabytes from a malicious source.

Article note: Good! Once again, Roberts demonstrates he actually believes in the functioning of the legal system, and everyone to the right of him demonstrates they are craven ideologues.

“Apps are the ad blocking workaround the industry found after browsers started marking it harder.” https://t.co/FRYcgL9GkX

Article note: A longer, more professional version of my "Fuck those guys" earlier about the NYT fucking things up for Slate Star Codex.

Article note: Neat, it panned out. The ascendancy of ARM is really weird, they went from being a flailing niche PC business clinging to life by licensing out one of the uglier RISC-ish designs from the 80s to being in everything from $1 micros, through fondleslabs, workstations, servers, and the largest operating supercomputer. Japan's heavily planned supercomputing program has been working out for them for like 40 years now; based on what I saw at SC Fujitsu's A64FX parts are the first actually-impressive high-end ARM parts (not a surprise, they've been building vector engines forever and appear to have mostly designed the SVE extensions based on that), and the Tofu interconnect is a truly impressive piece of tech. Plus the synchronization with the Apple ARM announcement really makes a spectacle of it.

Article note: That is a bummer, Slate Star Codex is usually a really interesting read and there are several old posts I regularly link. That the old media vs. new media "We're going to doxx you because journalism" shit is still going should be embarrassing for the dinosaurs by this point.

Article note: The annual rumor came true this time, Apple is going for a third (m68k -> PPC -> x86 -> ARM, though only two with the warmed-over NextStep platform) architecture change. If anyone knows how to do it, it should be them.

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  ARM Macs get a whole Apple SoC, with lots of components. [credit: Apple ]

After 15 years, Apple will again transition the Mac to a new architecture. The company announced at its developer conference today that it will introduce Macs featuring Apple-designed, ARM-based processors similar to those already used in the iPhone and iPad.

Tim Cook pegged this switch as one of the four biggest transitions the Mac has ever had. Alongside the move to PowerPC, the move to Intel, and the transition to Mac OS X, ARM will be one of the biggest Mac changes ever. Apple is promising "a whole new level of performance" with a "Family of Mac SoCs.

Longtime Apple users have been through all this before, with the transition from PowerPC to Intel and now for Intel x86 to ARM. All the big platform transition hits are coming back. The transition to ARM from x86 means that some Mac apps will be native and some won't. For apps that support both x86 and ARM, Apple is introducing the "Universal 2" binary that will package both codebases together. For apps that haven't made the transition to ARM yet, the Rosetta emulator is back as "Rosetta 2" and will now let x86 apps run on your ARM Mac, albeit with reduced performance.

Article note: This feels like a Windows 8 moment, that is a very "mobile inspired" whitespace-heavy, touch friendly, context sensitive shell presenting itself as a desktop OS.

Enlarge (credit: Apple)

It's WWDC, and today Apple is announcing the next big version of macOS "Big Sur," which, after 15 versions of "OS 10.x," is actually version 11! Big Sur, like the previous versions, is named after a region in California.

Apple says Big Sur comes with an "entirely new interface" with "refinements in buttons and controls" and a new unified icon yet. Finder and most other apps feature a more transparent, top-to-bottom sidebar with an all-white (or all-dark) main section to the right. Toolbars have been redesigned, with the big gray window topper of previous versions getting the boot.

Control Center has arrived on the Mac, too. Clicking on the toolbar by the time will bring it up, just like the notification panel. Inside, you'll find sliders for the volume and display brightness, along with other power controls and media playback. You can drag controls into the status bar for quick access. Widgets have been reworked with a gallery display view, and you can easily drag them into the side widget bar.