• Google's new motto: "It's not evil if it turns a profit."  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  
• Never bet against Mario.  (WCCFTech)
  
  
• The problem with autoscaling: Everything scales automatically except your wallet.  (Hackernoon)
  
  
• GitLab is producing a data science tool to complement their core platform.  GitLab's core platform being, um, GitLab.
  
  The goal is to be for data scientists what GitLab is for developers.  Since my job spans these fields, and I like GitLab a lot, and the project is open source, I'm on board with this effort, except...  "Meltano"?  (GitLab)
  
  
• That Lenovo ThinkPad E485 that was available at a really good price and then went up $300 without notice is now available again for A$999 only now with 16GB of  RAM instead of 8GB.  Also, Ryzen 2700U models are available for an extra $100.  If you're interested in a general-purpose notebook and don't need a 4K screen or dedicated GPU, this looks like a very nice all-rounder for a great price.  Some of the time.

• Kairosoft's Thrift Store Story is out in English.  This is approximately their 347th mobile game.  Most of them are good.  (Not you, Fish Pond Park.)
  
  So is Wild Park Manager. When did that happen? Hmm. April. Didn't notice. And yet, it's already installed on my tablet. How did that happen?
  
  If you're new to Kairosoft and want to give them a try, I suggest Game Dev Story or Beastie Bay, which is free.  Dungeon Village, Mega Mall Story, and Grand Prix Story are also great fun. 
  
  
• Apple has many dollars.  Not a lot of unit growth though - just 1% year on year - so expect them to keep increasing prices, and me to keep not buying them.  (AnandTech)
  
  
• Apple stops supporting industry standards, industry stops supporting Apple.  (PC Perspective)
  
  Apple's decision to deprecate OpenGL and OpenCL was and remains shortsighted.
  
  
• AMD's new Threadripper 2990WX Ultimate Warrior Phoenix Deathclaw Niobium Ludicrous Edition Pro can hit 4GHz on all 32 cores, air cooled.  Maybe.  (WCCFTech)
  
  
• The bullshit web is where every page contains 5KB of text and 50MB of crap you not only don't want, but would pay to avoid.  (PixelEnvy via Hacker News)
  
  
• A game of snake.  Encoded on a bootable CD image.  Packed into a single tweet.
  
  
• Kid kills quantum.  An 18-year-old university student has come up with what looks like a classical algorithm for recommendation systems that works as well as the recently discovered quantum version, but doesn't require a time rotor to run.
  
  
• EPYC servers really want four memory channels populated to work well.  This is good news, because they have eight memory channels.  So with the coming doubling of core counts expected next year, we should see a doubling of performance on many tasks, and not find servers constrained by memory bandwidth.
  
  Also, 32GB modules are cheaper than 2 x 16GB modules, and leave more room for upgrading later.
  
  Same goes on a smaller scale for Ryzen CPUs - but not the APUs, which are already bandwidth constrained.  (ServeTheHome)
  
  So, does this mean I'd be okay buying one memory kit and upgrading both my machines to a lopsided 24GB while I wait for DRAM prices to finally come down?  Maybe it does.
  
  
• Tom's Hardware lists the best productivity (i.e. non-gaming) CPU in each of five categories, from ultra-budget to high-end professional.  All AMD.
  
  This may change when Intel's 8-core chips are released (end of the year?) but even then will likely change back in AMD's favour in the first half of 2019.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  
• Lightning and financial systems don't mix.  Or rather, when they do mix, you're unlikely to enjoy the results.  When preparing DR strategies, make sure to include angry thunder gods in your calculations.

Posted by: Mauser at Thursday, August 02 2018 10:42 AM (Ix1l6)

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