The ravens are looking a bit sluggish. Tell Malcolm they need new batteries.

Saturday, August 31

Geek

Daily News Stuff 30 August 2019

I Can't Believe My Isekai Has This Many Legs Edition

Tech News

  • Sharp is working to deliver 8K over 5G.  (AnandTech)

    This may seem something of a niche market right now, but when 8K displays come down in price the way 4K already has and become ubiquitous, and 5G does the same, which will take a little longer, these things will be deployed everywhere.

    And then they'll all get hacked but that's another news item.

  • Asus is preparing at least two motherboards for what PCPer has taken to calling Thirdripper.  (VideoCardz)

    AMD appears to be planning three chipsets for their new flagship desktop parts: The low-end TRX40, the high end WRX80, and the middle-end TRX80.

    Yes.

  • Someone is suing the people behind that baby shark song though not over crimes against humanity as you might expect, but copyright infringement.  (TechDirt)

    The interesting thing here is while the litigant points out that miscreant Korean company PinkFong did not write the song...  Neither did he.  

    The really interesting thing is that, in this hyperdocumented age, no-one seems to know who did write it.  It just kind of appeared.

  • NPM has banned ads.  (ZDNet)

    The only possible move other than to burn down the entire ecosystem, which was my preferred approach.

  • Canonical (the company behind Ubuntu) has released Dqlite, an open source distributed embedded database.

    At first I was Who the hell needs a distributed embedded database? and then I realised that the target market is me.

    Thanks Canonical, I'll take a look at this.

  • Compass needles are going to point north for the first time in 360 years but only for a few days in September and only if you are in Greenwich, England.  (The Guardian)

  • Google uncovered a long-term effort to target iPhone users via known security flaws.  (Six Colors)

    The bugs in question were patch months ago.  What Google found was a major ongoing effort to use the bugs to compromise the phones of selected victims - most likely by a state actor.


Video of the Day



Kumo desu ga, Nani ka? (So I'm a Spider, So What?) is a light novel and manga series about stop me if you've heard this before only this time she's a spider.  i've read the manga version up to the latest chapter, and although it's clearly similar to Re:Slime the character and the story are more deftly written and more engaging.  (I say character because, well, in the manga so far that's pretty much how it is.  I understand the light novel series jumps around a bit more.)

Aoi Yuki has been cast as the unnamed protagonist (sometimes referred to as Kumoko, which just means spider-girl).  She's the voice of Tanya the Evil, Tohru from A Channel, Kayo from Erased, Kino from the recent remake, and best girl Froppy.  I like what she does with the character even in this quick preview; she's more exasperated and less panicky than than I expected.

I hope they can clean up the CGI a bit by the time it lands, though Kumoko herself looks pretty good.


Disclaimer: That Time I Got Preincarnated As I Can't Believe My Little Isekai Has This Many Legs And Still Can't Communicate will probably air in 2020.

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Thursday, August 29

Geek

Daily News Stuff 29 August 2019

Metal As Anything Edition

Tech News

  • Threadripper 3 will not be ignored dammit.  (Tom's Hardware)

    This is the third benchmark leak of an engineering sample of a Ryzen 2 Threadripper.  Base clock of 3.6GHz up from 3.0GHz on the 2990WX, plus the 15% IPC uplift we've seen, plus more consistent memory latency with the new I/O die means this will be a high-end workhorse rather than a niche part.  And that Intel is gonna get stomped.

  • Comet Lake S is Intel's response to Ryzen 2.  (Tom's Hardware)

    Not much of a response, admittedly.  10 cores at 125W where Ryzen is already shipping 12 cores at 105W and will soon have 16 cores.  I don't know if AMD have been more specific than "September" but then Intel haven't been more specific than "next year".

  • The DOJ is considering blocking a cable from Los Angeles to Hong Kong for national security reasons because there totally aren't any other internet routes between America and China.  (Tom's Hardware)

    Possibly because Facebook and Google (who are funding the cable's construction) won't let them tap it.  Of course the Chinese government will be listening to everything on the other end.

  • Google just deleted an open source Android app and terminated the developer's account because
    After reviewing your appeal, we have confirmed our initial decision and will not be able to reinstate your developer account.
    they have apparently morphed into Twitter.

  • Analog Devices and MIT have teamed up to build a real live working microprocessor out of carbon nanotubes.  (Ars Technica)

    It's a RISC-V core (open source and very popular) with around 14,000 transistors.

    It runs at a clock speed of...  Oh.  It runs at a clock speed of 10kHz.

    This one might need some more work, guys.

  • Microsoft has approved exFAT support in Linux and it's coming whether you like it or not.  (Phoronix)
    I know the code is horrible, but I will gladly take horrible code into staging. If it bothers you, just please ignore it. That's what staging is there for smile
    Let he who has not pushed horrible code into staging cast the first revert.

  • Gravitational wave observatories have discovered a black hole that shouldn't exist.  (Quanta)

    It's in the gap between regular supernova remnants and supermassive black holes where black holes should be exceptionally rare - far too rare for our gravity wave telescopes to have found one yet.  Depending on their mass, dying stars form white dwarfs, neutron stars, or black holes.  But extremely large stars - above 65 solar masses - don't leave anything behind at all: The supernova obliterates the star entirely.

    This black hole looks to be around 100 solar masses, and it shouldn't be there.

  • PATCH YOUR CISCO ROUTERS NOW.  (ZDNet)

    10/10 would not buy again.

  • Google may be moving Pixel production from communist China to...  Vietnam?  (ZDNet)

    I guess that's an improvement.  Maybe?

  • The Xioami Redmi Note 8 Pro has five cameras including a 64 megapixel main sensor.  (The Next Web)

    Chinese pricing tops out at $252 with 8GB RAM and 128GB flash.  Expect it to cost a little more than that if it comes to Western shores, even grey market.

    CPU is a 2.05GHz dual-core A76 plus six A55 cores, which is the latest technology if not the highest clock speed, and should do pretty well.  Screen is 2340x1080, and it has a 4500mAh battery.

    And yes, it has a headphone jack.  (GSMArena)  And a microSD slot.

  • High-end TVs from several manufacturers' 2020 lineups are expected to ship with an experimental leave the video the fuck alone mode.  (Ars Technica)

    In this mode, the advanced adaptive artificial intelligence in your TV set will be whacked across the nose with a newspaper (included) and told to leave the video the fuck alone.


Video of the Day

How to cook the perfect steak - in 1.3 seconds.



Honestly, this guy doesn't make that much more noise than my current neighbours, and he probably doesn't do it at 4AM.


Disclaimer: Ethereum, Ethereum, wherefore fucking art thou, Ethereum?

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Geek

Daily News Stuff August 28 2019

Let Dozing Bulls Lie Edition

Tech News

  • If you have an FX-series Bulldozer AMD will pay you up to $35.  (Tom's Hardware)

    This is in settlement of a suit regarding the description of these chips as "eight core" which they sort of were and sort of weren't.  The total amount of the settlement is $12.1 million which isn't going to bankrupt AMD or make anyone else rich.

  • Backpage was actively working with law enforcement to shut down sex trafficking when legislators and law enforcement went after them for promoting sex trafficking.  (TechDirt)

    Remember kids: Private business might be slimy, but prosecutors are slimy and have qualified immunity.

  • Duolingo will now teach you Latin, perfect your your trip to the 2nd century.  (Tech Crunch)

  • Google Hire?  More like Google Fire.  (ZDNet)

    Another service getting shut down with no replacement.

    Google, you're bad at this.  Let small companies build these things, then buy them, then slowly squeeze the life out of them, like Computer Associates in the old days.

  • Bedbugs need not apply.  (Esquire)

    A tale of freedom of speech that - for a change - ends happily for everyone except the bedbug.

  • My brother was in Indonesia recently and mentioned something about this: Jakarta is sinking and Indonesia is going to build a new capital. (Ars Technica)

    Nothing to do with global warming; the earth under the city is compacting for a host of reasons and the city is sinking by as much as 16 centimetres per year - and it's accelerating.


Disclaimer: Not drowning, waving.

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Tuesday, August 27

Geek

Daily News Stuff 27 August 2019

Right Light Rise Edition

Tech News


Video of the Day





Disclaimer: Raise right, lower left, and both up, clap your hands.  You are not wrong!

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Geek

Daily News Stuff 26 August 2019

Lazy Sunday Afternoon Edition

Tech News


Disclaimer: Komi still can't communicate.  I'm now up to chapter 150 with just 64 more to go.  Fortunately this is the anti-Berserk and the author is cranking out a new chapter a week.

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Monday, August 26

Geek

Daily News Stuff 25 August 2019

Communication Disorder Edition

Tech News

  • Capturing composite video with a radio receiver.

    SDR is software-defined radio - using programmable digital logic in place of the traditional analog circuits.  VHF is just another frequency, and video is just another radio signal.  With a high enough sample rate, all things are digital.

  • The Font in Yellow.  (Gizmodo)

    The story of a typeface so terrible and beautiful that some idiot tried to drown it in the Thames.

  • Thread support has landed in Crystal.  (GitHub)

    Up to now, Crystal has supported concurrency by full operating system processes, each with their own memory space, and fibers, which are co-operative and share a single execution thread.  With full thread support you can distribute fibers across threads so that spawning lightweight workers is still incredibly fast but can also take advantage of multiple CPU cores.

    Downside is that you require locks for some simple datastructures that were safe to share with fibers alone.

    This was one of the two milestones they needed to pass before declaring a 1.0 release; the other being robust Windows support.  It runs fine on WSL right now... Unless you're using memory-mapped files, in which case it freaks out and dies.  But that's not Crystal's fault and is supposed to be fixed in WSL 2.0.

  • DigitalOcean offers managed database instances for PostgreSQL, MySQL, and Redis.  (DigitalOcean)

    I understand the first two.  Setting up a SQL database cluster is fiddly at best.  But Redis?  Not only is it dead simple, but it has completely different hardware requirements to MySQL or PostgreSQL, and yet DO's configurations are identical.

    Managed PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, Elasticsearch, or RabbitMQ clusters, sure, go ahead.  But spend half an hour and learn to run Redis yourself.


Disclaimer: Komi Can't Communicate.

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Saturday, August 24

Geek

Daily News Stuff 24 August 2019

Just When You Thought It Was Safe To Go Back To The Command Line Edition

Tech News



Disclaimer: Go for the tankies, Boo!  Go for the tankies!  Raaargh!

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Friday, August 23

Geek

Daily News Stuff 23 August 2019

Big Hot Chips Edition

Tech News



Disclaimer: Nobody asked you, Patrice!

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Geek

Daily News Stuff 22 August 2019

Plugged Nickel Edition

Tech News



Disclaimer: Plugged with what, though?

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Wednesday, August 21

Geek

Daily News Stuff 21 August 2019

The Secret Of NNP Editon

Tech News

  • Ugh.  Migraine.

  • Intel just announced 6 core low-power laptop CPUs.  (AnandTech)

    With a base clock of just 1.1GHz and a boost clock of 4.7GHz, how these new 15W U-series chips perform depends far more on real-world power and thermal characteristics than paper specs.

    They also have new 4-core ultra-low-power 7W Y-series parts, with a similarly huge gap between base and boost clocks.

    Devices are expected to arrive in October, which somehow isn't far away.  When did that happen?

  • Intel also has a new AI chip that is not the size of a small pizza.  (Tom's Hardware)

    In fact the whole board fits into an M.2 slot.

    The chip, called Spring Hill, has two Ice Lake cores and twelve ICE cores (Inference Compute Engine) because that's not fucking confusing at all.

  • Intel also also has a much bigger AI chip that definitely does not fit on an M.2 card.  (Tom's Hardware)

    It doesn't seem to be the same architecture, except for the basic point that both contain a ton of low-precision multiply units.

  • Speaking of that's not how it works, Mike, there is no First Amendment right to a White House Press Pass.  (TechDirt)

  • That 400,000 core pizza-sized AI chip I mentioned yesterday uses less than 40 milliwatts of power per core.  (Tech Crunch)

    But when you multiply that by 400,000 it comes out to 15 kilowatts.  Which is more than a pizza oven.

    Also, since this would be a low voltage part, they must be feeding it with kiloamps of current.  So this is one chip that isn't going to make a quick transition to consumer products.

  • Bitbucket kills Mercurial support.  (Bitbucket)  [Link fixed]

    Bitbucket kills Mercurial support
    Bitbucket kills Mercurial support
    GitHub came and and broke our heart
    We can't undo let's rm *


  • IBM open-sources the Power architecture.  (The Next Platform)

    Twenty years too late, IBM.


Disclaimer: Ugh.

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