Wednesday, January 07
Daily News Stuff 7 January 2026
Kyboard Dition
Kyboard Dition
Top Story
- AMD's VP of its client division has hinted that AM4 might see a return. (Tom's Hardware)
Socket AM4 runs on DDR4 memory, where AM5 is DDR5 only. And DDR4 memory hasn't increased in price as much as DDR5, but more importantly, people already have it.
Several AM4 chips are still in production, but some of AMD's most popular CPUs like the 5700X3D and 5800X3D were cancelled because the competed too well with newer models, while others like the 5600X3D and 5700G were never widely available in retail channels.
Don't expect anything actually new, but a return of the 5800X3D would be welcome.
- AMD also hinted at open-sourcing FSR4 upscaling. (Tom's Hardware)
They accidentally made the code public for a short ehile, which quickly led to experimental backports that supported RDNA3 and even RDNA2 graphics cards.
Tech News
- How about an overpriced keyboard for that new computer you can't build? The Asus ROG Falchion Ace 75 is a 75% mechanical keyboard for $219. (Tom's Hardware)
It's... Okay, I guess. It has the Four Essential Keys but that's no great achievement in a desktop keyboard. It has a "programmable touchbar" but that just means you can change what it does; you can't change the display.
- Corsair's Galleon 100 SD has a 1280x720 display. (Notebook Check)
Strange thing: It's another keyboard.
It's ten-keyless, which is to say, it has no numeric keypad.
But in its place it as twelve fully programmable keys - with LCD keycaps, the aforementioned 1280x720 display (I'm not sure it's really 1280x720 because the article also says it's a 5" screen and it's definitely not that big) and two small rotary dials. A mini Stream Deck built right into your keyboard.
At $350 it is very not cheap though. You can get 16GB of RAM for that. Or a Corsair TKL keyboard like the K70 and a Stream Deck.
- AMD has announced its P100 series of embedded Ryzen chips. (Serve the Home)
These are identical to existing Zen 5 desktop and laptop chips - including embedded version of the Strix Halo AI processer - but the family includes models rated for industrial and automotive conditions (-40C to 105C) and for operating 24/7 for ten years.
- WiFi 8 is at CES. (The Verge) (archive site)
It's no faster than WiFi 7 but is instead designed to be more reliable and use less power.
- Powerbanks got bedazzled. (The Verge) (archive site)
A righteous rant from The Verge about useless features ruining the functionality of what should be simple, inexpensive devices.
Musical Interlude
Disclaimer: I was a couple of months ago old when I learned this was a Robert Palmer song.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
05:51 PM
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Post contains 449 words, total size 5 kb.
1
A sensible Verge article? Maybe Trump sent commandos to retrieve the CEO.
At any rate, one tangential thing: I got a new Anker charger (not a battery bank) for Christmas with 4 ports, two of which can each do 140w, and more importantly, any two USB-C ports can do a total of 140w, which also allows for 65+45 or 65+65. I couldn't find one before this for under about $150, but this one was briefly on sale for $60. At any rate, it's got a small display on it, which I rolled my eyes at, until I realized that the default was to display the total output, and a touch-sensitive button would cycle through a couple of options including showing real-time power draw on all four ports, which is cool.
At any rate, one tangential thing: I got a new Anker charger (not a battery bank) for Christmas with 4 ports, two of which can each do 140w, and more importantly, any two USB-C ports can do a total of 140w, which also allows for 65+45 or 65+65. I couldn't find one before this for under about $150, but this one was briefly on sale for $60. At any rate, it's got a small display on it, which I rolled my eyes at, until I realized that the default was to display the total output, and a touch-sensitive button would cycle through a couple of options including showing real-time power draw on all four ports, which is cool.
Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, January 08 2026 02:59 AM (Mj2Hk)
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A bit off topic... or maybe not...
Inspired by your "I'll buy a pre-built mini PC because the price of the memory seems to be from a couple of months ago" posts inspired me to go look, and I found a PC with a reasonable spec for a price that didn't make me faint. Talking to the manager of the place, he said that the PCs were priced when they were built, so the cost of the memory, GPU, etc was 3 or 4 months back. (The house brand for a national electronics chain is what I ended up with)
And it almost didn't matter because they were sold out of memory and mostly sold out of GPUs before New Years.
Inspired by your "I'll buy a pre-built mini PC because the price of the memory seems to be from a couple of months ago" posts inspired me to go look, and I found a PC with a reasonable spec for a price that didn't make me faint. Talking to the manager of the place, he said that the PCs were priced when they were built, so the cost of the memory, GPU, etc was 3 or 4 months back. (The house brand for a national electronics chain is what I ended up with)
And it almost didn't matter because they were sold out of memory and mostly sold out of GPUs before New Years.
Posted by: Zendo Deb at Thursday, January 08 2026 04:43 AM (8VyNJ)
3
Yep. The mini-PCs I bought were initially barely more expensive than the RAM they contained, and then actually cheaper than the RAM. They've since gone up in price... To still be cheaper than the RAM.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, January 08 2026 09:02 AM (PiXy!)
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Agree with Rick C: that Verge article was entirely sensible. The only disagreement I have with it is that an integrated flashlight feature costs practically nothing to add (LEDs are cheap) and costs no power when it's not running (not even a trickle charge, not if they're implemented it sensibly), so why not? After all, although the article is quite right to point out that "the phone you're charging also has a flashlight," there are times when you might find it handy to have a flashlight that isn't your phone, and since the charger is a big honkin' battery, why not add a few LEDs since it adds minimal cost? Most chargers don't need an integrated flashlight, yes, but the specific model that Mr. Ricker was complaining about is billed as being for outdoor use (and comes with a carrying handle), and that's one situation where a flashlight that is not your phone (and can stand upright and provide light without being carried) is actually useful.
But that's my only disagreement with the article. The other things he's complaining about -- large displays, WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity, and so on -- are indeed power-sapping misfeatures. Only the integrated flashlight makes any sense, and that's only because LEDs are extremely cheap and cost NO power at all when turned off.
But that's my only disagreement with the article. The other things he's complaining about -- large displays, WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity, and so on -- are indeed power-sapping misfeatures. Only the integrated flashlight makes any sense, and that's only because LEDs are extremely cheap and cost NO power at all when turned off.
Posted by: Robin Munn at Thursday, January 08 2026 12:40 PM (nBo/7)
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Small LCDs don't necessarily use a lot of power, but it's still a silly thing to do.
Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, January 08 2026 12:42 PM (1zWbY)
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Note to Pixy: your Python commenting code can't handle Unicode characters: they're going through an 'ascii' codec at some point. I originally wrote my comment with em-dash characters rather than double hyphens (--), but I got the following Python traceback:
Traceback (most recent call last): File "/opt/pypy2/site-packages/cherrypy/_cprequest.py", line 630, in respond self._do_respond(path_info) File "/opt/pypy2/site-packages/cherrypy/_cprequest.py", line 689, in _do_respond response.body = self.handler() File "/opt/pypy2/site-packages/cherrypy/lib/encoding.py", line 221, in __call__ self.body = self.oldhandler(*args, **kwargs) File "/opt/pypy2/site-packages/cherrypy/_cpdispatch.py", line 54, in __call__ return self.callable(*self.args, **self.kwargs) File "Test.py", line 212, in default return go(cherrypy) File "Test.py", line 133, in go return Page.go(cp) File "/home/minx/test/Page.py", line 453, in go Form.go(page) File "/home/minx/test/Form.py", line 3162, in go handler(page) File "/home/minx/test/Form.py", line 648, in form_comment print('Akismet check %s in %0.3fs on %s %s %s "%s"' % ('error' if aki_err else 'accept' if aki_ok else 'reject', time.time()-taki, tags.get('form.name',''), tags.get('form.web',''), tags.get('form.mail',''), text)) UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode character u'\u2014' in position 1171: ordinal not in range(12
Thankfully hitting the Back button in Firefox restored the contents of my comment box, so I could replace the em-dashes with double-hyphens and I didn't lose what I had typed. But I thought you'd like to know that there's a Unicode-handling bug in the comments code here.
Traceback (most recent call last): File "/opt/pypy2/site-packages/cherrypy/_cprequest.py", line 630, in respond self._do_respond(path_info) File "/opt/pypy2/site-packages/cherrypy/_cprequest.py", line 689, in _do_respond response.body = self.handler() File "/opt/pypy2/site-packages/cherrypy/lib/encoding.py", line 221, in __call__ self.body = self.oldhandler(*args, **kwargs) File "/opt/pypy2/site-packages/cherrypy/_cpdispatch.py", line 54, in __call__ return self.callable(*self.args, **self.kwargs) File "Test.py", line 212, in default return go(cherrypy) File "Test.py", line 133, in go return Page.go(cp) File "/home/minx/test/Page.py", line 453, in go Form.go(page) File "/home/minx/test/Form.py", line 3162, in go handler(page) File "/home/minx/test/Form.py", line 648, in form_comment print('Akismet check %s in %0.3fs on %s %s %s "%s"' % ('error' if aki_err else 'accept' if aki_ok else 'reject', time.time()-taki, tags.get('form.name',''), tags.get('form.web',''), tags.get('form.mail',''), text)) UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode character u'\u2014' in position 1171: ordinal not in range(12
Thankfully hitting the Back button in Firefox restored the contents of my comment box, so I could replace the em-dashes with double-hyphens and I didn't lose what I had typed. But I thought you'd like to know that there's a Unicode-handling bug in the comments code here.
Posted by: Robin Munn at Thursday, January 08 2026 12:43 PM (nBo/7)
7
Oy. That was properly formatted, with <pre> tags and everything, and then the code stripped out the <pre> tags and turned the traceback into a mess. Plus, the number 127 in parentheses got mangled. I didn't even know that the number 7 followed by a closing paren was an old-style emoticon.
Oh well, at least the Python traceback is readable.
Oh well, at least the Python traceback is readable.
Posted by: Robin Munn at Thursday, January 08 2026 12:47 PM (nBo/7)
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P.S. Pixy, if you want the properly-formatted Python traceback, shoot me an email (at the email address I commented with) within the next day or two and I'll send it to you by email. You probably don't need it so I won't keep it around forever, but I've pasted it into a scratch buffer in VS Code in case you want it for some reason.
Posted by: Robin Munn at Thursday, January 08 2026 12:53 PM (nBo/7)
9
Thanks, yeah, I know where to look for that bug.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, January 08 2026 05:17 PM (PiXy!)
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