Friday Feedback

My Luck be with you

In an amazingly lucky series of events, having nothing to do with skill or will power, Kash Patel is reporting that the FBI has captured 3 of the FBI’s top ten since January 20th.

There is no way that this had anything to do with policy changes, it must have been luck that allowed the FBI to accomplish this.

Chinese Made, Doesn’t Matter If It Isn’t Crap

I’ve talked about my fight with hardware. Currently, I have the pieces of a NAS enclosure on the healing bench, ready for the motherboard to be returned to Amazon.

Why? Because it is the wrong motherboard!

As I’ve said, the standard for Mini-ITX boards is 17cmx17cm. There are many motherboards that are advertised a Mini-ITX which are 17×19. Not a big deal, unless it means that it doesn’t fit in the case.

After I figured this out last time, I made sure I ordered a motherboard that was 17×17, 4 SATA ports, PCIex16. That’s not what arrived today, after waiting for a week+.

What arrived today was another 17×19 board. It is also short by one SATA port. I’m unclear as to what motherboard it is, but it is going back.

Amazon will give me a refund, but I’m back to waiting for a motherboard, again. I’ll get there.

Microarchitecture

The first computer I worked on was an 8080. This was an 8bit CPU. The second was the 6502, another 8bit CPU.

Over time, the CPUs became more powerful. The computer I type this on is more powerful than the Cray X/MP I babysat. It has more memory, more cores, more threads. It has more network capacity. It is also a 64bit machine.

The problem that I’ve run into is that an X86-64 architecture CPU doesn’t fully describe what the CPU is capable of.

When I moved from the i386 to the X86-64, it was simple. Unfortunately, Intel and AMD have been adding instructions to their CPUs that extend them past the base X86-64 definition.

To work around this, operating systems and libraries have become more complex as they attempt to determine what features are available and how best to use them.

Coding for the base X86-64 works on all machines, but it is handicapping the newer CPUs.

Thus, several groups came together and created a new standard called Microarchitecture. In this system, the CPU is at the X86-64 X86-64-v1, …-v2, …-V3, or …-V4 level.

RedHat stopped support of X86-64-v1 several years ago. They are dropping support for X86-64-v2 with REL 10.

I’m replacing machines that don’t meet the minimums, and having to try three different motherboards is upsetting me.

SCOTUS Watch

Snope and Ocean State Tactical are back for conference today. The earliest we hear the Court’s decision on Writ of Certiorari will be Monday.

I do not expect to hear anything except, maybe, that they are re distributed for the conference on the 28th

If they are heard on the 28th, they will be heard in the same conference as Antonyuk. This could lead to all three cases being heard at the same time.

This would mean that the Supreme Court would be addressing magazine bans, semi-auto bans, and sensitive places bans in the same opinion.

Given how the Second Circuit snubbed their noses at the Supreme Court, it would not surprise me if the Court took it up again.

To refresh your memory, this case has been to the Supreme Court three times. Once, cert was denied. Once cert was granted, the Second Circuit court’s opinion was vacated, and the case was remanded to the Second Circuit to do it right, in light of Rahimi.

This Week’s Question

What is your current opinion of AG Pam Bondi? How is it different from when she was nominated for AG?