SoylentNews

A police force.
In unmarked vehicles.
Unmarked uniforms.
That arrests, beats, and detains random people off the street.
(in a campaign of government sponsored terror!)
With no records of these arrests and beatings.
The victims simply "released" with no charges.
Like it never happened.

If this isn't a "Secret Police" force, I don't know what is.

It sounds like Trump is finally taking the US closer to the type of leadership he likes in Russia, China and North Korea.

But we still don't have military parades.

If Trump's government can ignore the 1st, 4th and 5th amendments, then can it also ignore the 2nd? Shouldn't those others be at least as important as the 2nd? After all, the 2nd is NOT going to stop the government from taking away your other rights.

I'm moving soon, to a much smaller place, and I can't take all my old machines with me. I suppose I could recycle them, but it seems like a damn shame, since most of them work just fine, they're just old.
Anyone want four Pentium 3 to Pentium 4 era desktops? The drives have been nuked, so they've got no OS, but they used to run Linux.

I figure if anyone out there can also appreciate older hardware, they'd probably be here.

Donald Trump now says it's Patriotic to wear a mask.

THIS is not leadership. This is not leadership and this is not leading. This is a little boy getting spanked and trying to make it look like it was his idea the whole time.
This man should not be leading any country. He's not a manager: he's a kidager (yes...i just stole from Spongebob).

https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/20/politics/donald-trump-mask-tweet/index.html

^<no-sarcasm>
1. Send rioters to turn peaceful protests into something not peaceful
2. Send in unidentified federal thugs to harass / arrest people, with no record of such interactions -- because the situation is out of control!
3. Profit!

Sounds like a 3rd world dictatorship in action. Or China.

Wasn't this country founded with people protesting grievances once those grievances grew intolerable?

Racism is more deeply entrenched in the USA than I would have believed. Maybe because I'm naive white privilege.
_{</no-sarcasm>}

One more unrelated thing: the best way to help unemployed people would be a payroll tax cut.

^{The Psi Corps is your friend. Trust the Corps.}

At Last, a 2.5Gbps Consumer Network Switch: QNAP Releases QSW-1105-5T 5-Port Switch

After entirely too long of a delay, the wait for faster consumer-grade network switches appears to be coming to an end. This week QNAP launched its QSW-1105-5T switch, one of the industry’s first unmanaged 2.5Gbps (2.5GBASE-T) switches. The 5-port switch supports 2.5GbE operation on all five of its RJ45 Ethernet ports, and along with being unmanaged it is also fanless, allowing the switch to work maintenance-free and installed virtually anywhere. The QSW-1105-5T is already on sale in Taiwan for roughly $100, meaning that we’re looking at a price-per-port of about $20.

[...] As the first of what will undoubtedly be many 2.5G switches over the coming months, the QSW-1105-5T also gives us our first real look at what we can expect from this generation of switches as far as footprints and power consumption goes. Since it’s not carved from a pro-grade switch, the 18 cm x 14.5 cm switch is significantly smaller than earlier NBASE-T switches. And with a maximum power consumption rating of 12 W, we’re looking at power consumption of just a bit over 2 Watts per port, which is also a significant improvement over admittedly far more powerful switches.

All of which sounds unremarkable, and indeed that’s exactly what makes the QSW-1105-5T so interesting. The biggest barrier to wide consumer adoption over the last few years has been the cost – both in regards to the core technology and added frills – so we’ve been waiting for quite a while to see NBASE-T technology transition from pro-grade switches to cheap, consumer-grade gear.

It is in your own best interest to wear a mask if going into the hardware store to buy something to kill aunts in your home.

Pinephone “Community Edition: PostmarketOS” Launched with 3GB RAM, 32GB Flash, USB-C Hub

After PinePhone “BraveHeart Edition” with any OS pre-installed introduced at the end of last year, Pine64 launched PinePhone “Community Edition: UBports” with Ubuntu Touch last April, and now the company is taking pre-orders for Pinephone “Community Edition: PostmarketOS with Convergence Package”.

Besides using a different operating system, the new PinePhone also got a hardware upgrade with 3GB RAM and 32GB flash instead of the 2GB/16GB configuration from earlier models. Due to the changes and the addition of a USB-C dock for convergence, the price has also gone up from $149.99 to $199.99 with shipping scheduled to start at the end of August. If you don’t need the extra memory, storage, and convergence package, you can still pre-order PinePhone with postmarketOS for $149.99.

Got a PinePhone!
Adventures in PinePhone-land

Previously:

Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) Starts "14nm" FinFET Volume Production

Look out Nvidia and AMD… Chinese GPU maker has a GTX 1080-level card in development

The new story:

Asia based Zhaoxin has plans for a dedicated graphics card series

A 70 Watt GPU wouldn't be as interesting as the 200 Watt "1080-level" GPU w/HBM concept from Jingjia Micro, but it could be good enough for cheap office PCs. It's also just a start: note that Zhaoxin's CPUs are on "16nm" while the GPU is on "28nm".

For starters, I have never really cared a lot about cell phones. They aren't "real computers" in my opinion, and they will never replace my desktop.

But, for reasons I'm not going into here, I suddenly need more reliable service, here at the house. That is, I need the cell phone to work, but I can't be going out into the rain, trying to find that magic spot in the yard where I get a full bar, or maybe two bars for reception.

I have, in the past, used those little cards that go inside of the cell phone, promising to boost your reception. I've had mixed results with that, none of them exceptionally good. The best of them might boost your reception by a bar. When you have no service at all, that little card will usually give you crappy service.

Looking at somewhat more serious equipment, Wilson makes a nice looking cell phone antenna for trucks and cars, that apparently gives you a nice signal boost. It sells for about $80 to $100. Problem is, the phone must be left in the antenna cradle, which probably means using the speaker phone. That sucks - you can't carry the phone around, and speaker phone always sounds like crap.

Car or truck, about $200
https://www.wilsonsignalbooster.com/weboost-drive-sleek-cradle-signal-booster-470135.html

Home use, starting about $500 to $1000
https://www.wilsonsignalbooster.com/
https://www.wilsonsignalbooster.com/weboost-470144-home-multiroom-signal-booster.html
https://www.wilsonsignalbooster.com/wilson-pro-70-plus-for-voice-3g-4g-lte.html

More serious equipment? Starting prices seem to be about $500 for a repeater. Set up your antenna, preferably in an elevated position, and point it at a cell tower. Run the coax inside the house, where it plugs into a booster device, which has another antenna to transmit the signal inside the house. Like magic, you should get 3 to 5 bars, and be able to wander throughout your home while maintaining that good, solid signal.

But, I have almost zero idea who makes good equipment, as opposed to consumer grade feel-good trash.

What is the competition for Wilson / weBoost? Some of you Soylentils have a lot of knowledge and experience in electronics. Point me at some good quality, reputable suppliers, please!!

Or, is this the best, and/or the best price, I'm going to find?

I did run across one booster system, that has to be set to one carrier or another. That is, it will not boost all cell phone signals at the same time - you have to choose one. It supposedly has a much stronger signal than any of the others I've looked at.

https://www.waveform.com/products/cel-fi-go-x

Again, that's a $1000. This particular page suggests that I can't change it from one carrier to another, instead, they want me to specify which carrier I want to use.

This one is near $1000, boosts all carriers, and they claim to have performance comparable to the cel-fi-go-x
https://www.waveform.com/products/hi-boost-home-15k-lcd-f20g-5s-lcd

So, are there better options out there? Cheaper options that are as good or better?

One interesting thing about Soylent News is that there's a very clear, very tangible political division in comments for practically everything. You see everything from Nazi sympathizers to full-blown Communists, but the far ends of the spectrum generally talk much more often. I suppose that could describe wider America, too, but usually it's not so intermixed in real life. I suppose internet makes that easier.

Myself, I'm socially center-left, and far-left economically. I value freedom of speech as a near-absolute, but I think capitalism is about to burn itself out and take a lot of us with it. But whatever, my beliefs are not what this one is about.

I'm wondering, what do Soylentils *really* think of their political opposition?
What do far-right think of the far-left, etc?

Describe how you think they view the world, what you think motivates them, nothing's off the table.
Only rule is, be honest about how you actually perceive them.

I might weigh in at some point in the comments, but I can't promise that.

I wonder if this journal will get any attention, whether it will explode into a white-hot thermite flame war, or whether I'll just get two or three comments calling me a faggot.

I'm genuinely curious about this. Let's hear it.