• HP has some teeny weeny workstations with the new Xeon E CPUs.  At 8 inches square they're a lot bigger than recent mini-PCs (the one mentioned yesterday is 5 inches square) but support workstation CPUs and graphics and ECC RAM.  (AnandTech)
  
  
• Ubuntu 18.04 is still a pain in the bum.  If you use Percona packages or the official MongoDB release, things will break.
  
  
• Minecraft now supports Windows.  Not in way you might think.  Video

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Posted by: J Greely at Monday, July 23 2018 01:48 AM (tgyIO)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, July 23 2018 11:23 AM (PiXy!)

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• Dell doesn't skimp on SSDs.  Rally turns out to have a very nice Toshiba XG5 which is not far short of the gold standard of the Samsung 970.  Only problem is it's kind of small for my needs at 256GB.
  
  If Dell refreshes their AMD Inspiron 27 lineup, there's a few things I'd like them to do:
  
  
• Use the new LCD panel (as found in Rally Vincent), which is brighter and has a better colour gamut.  The old panel was good but a bit muted.  (I can't get any more detailed information from the control panel.)
  
  
• Enable full USB 3.1 gen 2 (10Gbit).  Five USB 3.0 ports is nice, but it's a bit disappointing that they are "only" 5.0Gbit.
  
  Or Thunderbolt or USB 3.2, if either is practical.  But at least full speed USB 3.1.
  
  
• Have some build-to-order options, or at least a higher-end model.  8 cores and an 8GB RX 580 is great, but 16GB of RAM, 256GB of SSD, and 1TB disk are all on the small side.  And with only two RAM slots, one M.2 slot, and one drive bay, upgrading means removing the old one.
  
  
• Even better, make room for more internal options.  Four RAM slots would be a huge win, as would a second M.2 slot, even if it's slower bcause you ran out of PCIe lanes.  Consider ditching or shrinking the subwoofer and using the reclaimed space for a second 2.5" drive bay. It's not a very good subwoofer anyway.
  
  
• Move the webcam up top like you've done with the Intel models.
  
  
• While you're at it, 10Gbit ethernet would be great, since it's not something that can be readily upgraded.  (Or can it?  I need to check the service manual.  One reason I got these things is that almost everything is replaceable.)
  
  
• It's all about the octo-onions or something  (via Hacker News)
  
  (Beyond real numbers and complex numbers, there are two more types of number - quaternions and octonions.  Quaternions are the core of computer graphics;  your graphics card is a huge array of quaternion calculators.  And that's it - there are no other generall useful types of number.  While our games are built of quaternions, it seems reality might be constructed of octonions.)
  
  
• Reddit have redisigned their site to increase density.  It's kind of bad.  Density is not a design goal.
  
  
• Apparently HP bought SGI at some point and I missed it.  Should have happened sooner while there was more left of SGI to buy.  Anyway, they have a new supercomputer if you are in the market for brains in a box.  (ServeTheHome)
  
  
• Ceci n'est pas une iPhone.  (Motherboard, via Six Colors)
  
  
• Is data pollution the new air pollution?  Connected cars may generate 1.5 million petabytes of data per year by 2020.  Which isn't far away at all.  F1 cars currently genreate 36TB of data over the course of a single race.  Self-driving cars can generate 1TB per hour.  (SemiEngineering, Barrons)
  
  
• Chuwi has a nice looking toaster that doubles as a Windows PC.  Video (via Fanless Tech)
  
  There's something very similar available from Australian retailer of cheap Chinese-manufactured goodies for A$219 (4GB/32GB).  That includes sales tax, and works out to US$160, which is a lot better than the Chuwi version at $240.  I'm tempted to buy one, throw in a spare 2.5" drive, and leave it to run Linux stuff for me, like tracking the Ethereum and Stellar ledgers.
  
  Update: Looks like the Kogan device is a rebadged ACEPC AK1.  Getting Linux working is possible but fiddly.  I've had that Grub problem on older servers as well, but Ubuntu 18.04 seems to fix it.

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Posted by: Wonderduck at Sunday, July 29 2018 09:55 AM (0VFKi)

Posted by: Rick C at Sunday, July 29 2018 11:32 AM (ITnFO)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, July 29 2018 02:36 PM (PiXy!)

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• Huawei moves to the Cortex A73 for its mid-range Kirin 710 SoC.  The A73 is close to twice as fast as the ubiquitous A53, so this is good news for cheaper phones and tablets.  (Fudzilla)
  
  
• Google Cloud fell down.  More specifically, their load balancers fell down.  One of the key apps at my day job - with a ton of active users - is on Google Cloud and didn't so much as hiccup, because we just use DNS for load balancing and none of this fancy stuff. 
  
  Of course, the people using Google's load balancers are precisely the people most concerned about keeping their sites up and running.  (via Hacker News)
  
  
• Western Digital is shipping ship shipping ships shipping shipping ships...  Sorry.  Is shipping 1.33 terabit QLC flash chips.  Most SSDs are MLC (2 bits per cell) or TLC (3 bits per cell), with an SLC (one bit per cell) cache for performance.  QLC is 4 bits for cell - hence the odd capacity; they've taken an existing 1Tb TLC design and updated it with a QLC controller.
  
  Upside is it's cheaper, downside is it's somewhat slower and has a shorter lifespan.  The long term plan is for QLC to largely replace spinning media. (Guru3d)
  
  
• Why won't the Parker Solar Probe melt?  It's landing at night, obviously.  (Phys.Org)

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Saturday, July 21 2018 03:46 AM (3bBAK)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Saturday, July 21 2018 03:16 PM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Cadrys at Friday, July 27 2018 01:41 PM (QFF/9)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, July 29 2018 06:44 PM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, July 29 2018 06:44 PM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, July 30 2018 10:52 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, July 30 2018 11:11 AM (PiXy!)

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• In contrast to yesterday's scathing - well, indifferent, anyway - review of the Intel Xeon Gold 5117, ServeTheHome calls the Dell EMC PowerEdge R7415 the best single socket server on the planet.
  
  It's an AMD server.  (ServeTheHome)
  
  I have a Dell discount coupon right now, but I don't think it would go very far on one of these.
  
  
• Europe fines Google Bs. 600 trillion for abuse of market dominance in giving away Android for free.
  
  This is not entirely unwarranted, but the key behaviour in question was discontinued in 2014, so this will change nothing.  (AnandTech, TechDirt)
  
  
• Intel are expected to deliver 8 core low-end server and workstation, and mainstream desktop CPUs soon.  (ServeTheHome)
  
  
• AMD are expected to deliver 16 core mainstream desktop CPUs not quite as soon.  (WCCFTech, so take that with a pound of salt.)

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• AnandTech reports on VirtualLink - a new standard connector for VR headsets combining DisplayPort 1.4, USB 3.1, and power delivery, so you aren't tethered to your desk by three separate cables.
  
  Hidden away in the article is this little tidbit: Version 1.3 of the USB-C standard allows you to take over the four USB 2.0 pins in alt-mode, and convert them to another bidirectional high-speed lane.  (Or two lanes for output only.)  Potentially, that means a 50% increase in throughput using existing cables - perhaps a 30Gbps USB 3.3 is in the cards, falling back to USB 3.2/3.1 as needed?  (AnandTech)
  
  
• Backblaze blogs about their eleven-nines file durability and why, after the first few nines, that doesn't mean anything.  (via Hacker News)
  
  
• Apple's new top of the line i9 MacBook Pro can't maintain the stated base speed of its CPU due to thermal throttling - to the point that it can be slower than the cheaper i7 model.   Video
  
  
• If the Windows 1803 update left you with a useless disk partition containing OEM files that you can't access anyway here's how to fix it without breaking your computer.

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Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, July 19 2018 03:43 AM (Q/JG2)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, July 19 2018 09:32 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, July 19 2018 11:02 AM (ITnFO)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, July 19 2018 11:46 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: J Greely at Thursday, July 19 2018 11:48 PM (tgyIO)

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• Samsung announces LPDDR5 for next-generation mobile devices, with transfer rates up to 6.4Gbps.  That's 50% faster than their already very fast LPDDR4X. (AnandTech)
  
  
• Amazon's day was sub-prime.  (TechCrunch)
  
  
• ServeTheHome reviews the Intel Xeon Gold 5117 and the title sums it all up, really:
  
  Intel Xeon Gold 5117 Benchmarks and Review Why Bother 
  
  Verdict: Get an AMD EPYC instead.  (ServeTheHome)
  
  

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• If you have two Dell Inspiron 7775s and cross link them via HDMI and configure one of them to use Radeon EyeFinity and then switch the other one to show internal video again, well, just don't do that.
  
  Normal Windows multi-display support seems to work just fine.  (Typing on Rally as a second screen for Tohru right now.)
  
  
• Nvidia's Jepson embedded AI board supports PCIe 4.0 - and also 56 Gbps serdes.
  
  PCIe 1.0 was 2.5 Gbps, 2.0 was 5 Gbps, 3.0 is 8 Gbps but uses more efficient encoding, so it's very close to double the speed of 2.0.  PCIe 4.0 is 16 Gbps, and 5.0 will be 32 Gbps.  A lot of attention recently has been on 56 and 112 Gbps signalling, so this is set to continue for a while yet.  (WCCFTech)
  
  
• Serverless is the big new buzzword for people who don't need to write real software.  Now you can serverless in QBasic.  (via Hacker News)
  
  
• How will AMD's upcoming 32-core Threadripper CPU perform?  Well, we can get a good idea by overclocking AMD's existing 32-core EPYC CPUs.  The Threadripper will be Zen+ rather than Zen, so it will benefit from a faster cache and 12nm fabrication, but the core design and interconnect is identical.  32 cores at 4GHz, albeit with an external chiller similar to Intel's Computex demo.  Threadripper 2 will run on air cooling...  With a heatsink the size of a shoebox.  (via Reddit)

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1 The comments, well, some of them, are worth reading for a change.
> Hold on AMD allows overclocking on SERVER CPUS???  No Pretty sure they won't be happy

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, July 17 2018 01:09 AM (Q/JG2)

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, July 17 2018 01:09 AM (Q/JG2)

Posted by: Kurt Duncan at Wednesday, July 18 2018 04:08 AM (mEm0n)

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Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Monday, July 16 2018 04:09 AM (3bBAK)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, July 16 2018 10:24 AM (PiXy!)

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