• The Cerebras Wombat* is the latest flung poo in the AI monkey war.  (AnandTech)
  
  It has 400,000 cores implemented using 1.2 trillion transistors, 18GB of internal SRAM, and 9PB/second of on-chip bandwidth, packed into a compact 46,225 mm2, i.e. the size of a small pizza.
  
  And yes, it's a single chip.
  
  What does all that hardware do?  8-bit multiplications.  Lots of them.
  
  And it's programmable in Python.
  
  It's not that TSMC module with the HBM2 though.
  
  * They call it the WSE but that's a terrible name so I gave it a better one.
  
  
• On the other end of the scale, UPMEM is adding an 8-core processor to each 4Gbit DRAM chip.  (AnandTech)
  
  So an 8GB module has 128 cores and a fully-populated 256GB server would have 4096 cores.  The cores are implemented directly on the DRAM die.  No-one does this because DRAM production is very different to CPU production, and the resulting CPU cores can only run at 500MHz.  But with 4096 of them, does that really matter?
  
  Well, yes.  But for certain tasks - they cite genomics - it can be 20 to 40 times faster than conventional servers.
  
  Definitely not that module with the HBM2.
  
  
• IBM announced the Power 9 AIO which is an update to the existing Power 9 architecture with a 25GHz memory bus.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  This kind of thing has been tried for years and has never taken off, because although it offers more memory bandwidth per socket it has never provided more memory bandwidth per dollar.  Rather the reverse.
  
  And dollars can buy you more sockets.
  
  Still not that module TSMC was showing off.
  
  
• Gizmodo's new owners are clueless.  (TechDirt)
  
  Well, sure.  They bought Gizmodo.
  
  Lots of great one-liners in the article, such as

  The company still employs some great investigative reporters

  We're still talking about Gizmodo?  Just checking.
  
  
• The Ruby rest-client package got compromised.  (GitHub)
  
  Time for capability-based programming languages.
  
  
• Why ElementaryOS left Medium and returned to 1993.
  
  
• Julia 1.2 is out.
  
  Julia is a clean and elegant language for scientific computing.  Fortran done properly.  It has one major problem (for certain users) in that it uses an optimising JIT compiler rather than static compilation.  That allows the language to provide generic functions without eldritch horrors like C++ templates, but means it's a pain to generate distributable binaries.  Not impossible, but a pain.
  
  
• Gmail went down.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  I noticed this one because it was during the day Australia time and we use Gmail for work.  And then it stopped working.  Fortunately not for very long.
  
  
• A bug in iOS 12.4 means you can jailbreak your iPhone.  (ZDNet)
  
  But given the nature of the bug, so can a malicious app.
  
  But apps can only be downloaded from the App Store, and we all trust the App Store, right?
  
  
• Twitter is banning state-run media organisations from buying advertising on the platform after being criticised for showing Chinese anti-democracy propaganda.  (The Next Web)
  
  ABC, BBC, CBC hardest hit.  Oh, and SBS.  Yeah, we have two of them.
  
  I give Twitter 48 hours before they completely fuck up this basically sensible decision.
  
  
• Bill Nye the Chromebook guy vs. Best Buy.  (ZDNet)
  
  Key takeaway:

  "So who buys that $999 Pixelbook?" I wondered.

  "No one," he said.

  
  

Video of the Day

Posted by: Rick C at Wednesday, August 21 2019 01:27 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Rick C at Wednesday, August 21 2019 01:30 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Rick C at Wednesday, August 21 2019 01:53 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, August 21 2019 09:53 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Rick C at Wednesday, August 21 2019 12:56 PM (Iwkd4)

6 Those two factors are a problem for Chromebooks, yeah. 

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, August 21 2019 01:16 PM (PiXy!)

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• Minecraft, one of whose chief selling points is that it runs pretty much anywhere, is getting a major graphics upgrade.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Which will only work if you are on Windows 10 and have an Nvidia RTX graphics card.
  
  This comes after a previously planned graphics update was abandoned due to a lack of cross-platform support.
  
  
• Epic offered a new developer a place in their store...  But only if they went exclusive and cancelled existing plans with Steam and GOG.
  
  Epic did not get what they wanted.  (WCCFTech)
  
  
• An Australian federal court has ruled that police cannot force you to unlock your phone, even with a warrant.  (The Guardian)
  
  Given that we have nothing resembling the US Bill of Rights except regarding freedom of religion, this is encouraging.  It wouldn't withstand a change in the legislation though.
  
  
• Twitter and Facebook are running Chinese propaganda but it's okay because they're getting paid for it.  (The Next Web)
  
  
• JSON is merely somewhat annoying.  YAML is actively dangerous.
  
  The YAML spec is longer than the XML spec.  But hey, it's still probably simpler than SGML.  Just not as well defined, or portable, or robust, or secure, or...
  
  Use JSON for data exchange, TOML for config files.  Neither is as flexible as as YAML, because too much flexibility leaves you with spaghetti.
  
  
• Moore's Law isn't dead says Intel TSMC.
  
  The Hot Chips conference is on this week, so I'm hoping to find out exactly what that monster chip pictured on that page is.  Two 600mm2 processors and eight stacks of HBM2?
  
  
• Company selling overpriced non-alcoholic beverages says no-one wants cheap non-alcoholic beverages. (BBC)

  We exist to solve this dilemma. What do you drink when you're not drinking?

  Uh, Claytons.  Was that a trick question?

Posted by: Jay at Tuesday, August 20 2019 12:37 AM (mrlXS)

Posted by: cxt217 at Wednesday, August 21 2019 08:43 AM (LMsTt)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, August 21 2019 09:55 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Rick C at Wednesday, August 21 2019 12:53 PM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Rick C at Wednesday, August 21 2019 12:54 PM (Iwkd4)

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• The mainstream media have still not learned the lessons of Gamergate.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  What lessons are those, Tech Crunch?  That you should try to tell the truth on occasion, even if just for the novelty value of it you worthless hacks?
  
  
• Nvidia thinks buying a non-raytracing GPU is crazy.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Doubly crazy now that there are two games that support it.
  
  
• California, the hub of the internet, is up to its eyebrows in human shit.  (WSJ)
  
  And we're told that sympathetic magic is superstitious nonsense.
  
  
• Intel and the art of painting a target on yourself.  (Serve the Home)
  
  The 28 core workstation-oriented W-3275 costs more than a 64-core Epyc.  They're begging for Threadripper 3000 to come along and put them out of their misery.

• The Thief Who Pulled on Trouble's Braids
• The Thief Who Spat in Luck's Good Eye
• The Thief Who Knocked on Sorrow's Gate

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, August 19 2019 09:56 AM (GYEIO)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, August 19 2019 01:45 PM (PiXy!)

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• DRAM prices are down, flash prices steady.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Good news for everyone except DRAM and flash manufacturers.  As long as prices don't fall far and fast enough to harm those manufacturers and cause factory closures, as happened back in 2013.  Memory prices are only now approaching the lows set back then.
  
  
• Google plans to deprecate FTP support in Chrome.  (PixelsTech)
  
  They're planning to remove FTP support because it's insecure.
  
  It's insecure because they don't support FTPS.
  
  They don't support FTPS because fuck you that's why.
  
  
• If it's hot enough to boil water, it's too hot.
  
  
  
  
• Why is the result of ('b'+'a'+ + 'a'+'a').toLowerCase() 'banana'?  (StackOverflow)
  
  See Google's response to FTPS.
  
  (The toLowerCase() call hides the clue that would let most programmers spot the cause, apart from the obvious problem that it's fucking JavaScript and could do anything at any moment.)
  
  
• Ew.  Ugh.  Seriously, Mozilla?  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Coupled with a remote access vulnerability that could have been seriously nasty.
  
  
• Google wants to reduce the maximum lifespan for SSL certificates to one year.  (ZDNet)
  
  Because, basically, fuck you that's why.
  
  Certificate revocation is a major problem that has no good solution, so Google's plan is to make all certificates revoke themselves every year anyway.
  
  
• Notepad is moving to the Microsoft Store.  (Thurrott,com)
  
  Because...  That allows Microsoft to separate minor application updates out from Windows updates, which actually makes a lot of sense.
  
  
• Imgur got banned from running Google AdSense because .  (One Angry Gamer)
  
  

Posted by: Rick C at Sunday, August 18 2019 06:55 AM (GYEIO)

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• A reminder that Nintendo are also awful and incompetent. (TechDirt)
  
  They just choose different things to be awful and incompetent about.
  
  
• YouTube meanwhile did something right and shut down manual copyright claims that were widely being used to steal revenue. (Tech Crunch)
  
  The scheme was this:
  
  
• Popular channel adds new video.
  
• Scan it for anything resembling any music you might have the license for.
• Whack it with a copyright claim and steal the revenue.
• Copyright claim gets overturned after a few days or a week.
• You still have the revenue you stole.
• Rinse and repeat.

YouTube was deeply shocked that people abused this system that was basically designed to be abused.


• Amazon isn't just for fake 1TB SD cards anymore.  (Serve the Home)
  
  
• Honestly, the main thing that derailed 5G wireless was 5G wireless.  (ZDNet)

• Humble Bundle has Acid Pro 8.0 (music editing) and Sound Forge Pro 12 (audio editing) for $25.
  
  As usual these are last year's versions (though Acid Pro 9.0 only came out in May) but they are the full professional releases for about 5% of the full professional price.
  
  
• Huaweis behaving badly.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Telecommunications company controlled by a totalitarian fascist state meets African kleptocracy.  What could possibly go wrong?
  
  
• WeWork IPO shows it's the most magical unicorn.  (Bloomberg)
  
  WeWork is losing billions and plans to go public soon.  (WCCFTech)
  
  How bad do you have to be at your job for WCCFTech to be so obviously better?
  
  
• A cure has been found for a deadly, multi-drug-resistant strain of tuberculosis.  (New York Times)
  
  And it's relatively cheap and safe.
  
  TB doesn't get the attention of Ebola but this strain killed 75% of its victims before they could even get a diagnosis.
  
  
• Anime4K is a new anime upscaling algorithm.  (GitHub)
  
  It looks to my eye to be slightly better than Waifu2x while being dramatically faster.
  
  
• A dump of internal Google docs revealed a list of blocked news sites.  (One Angry Gamer)
  
  Including some site called "oneangrygamer.net".
  
  
• Oh, and 40 pages of YouTube search terms where the algorithm was carefully tweaked to keep you safe from harmful facts.  (One Angry Gamer)
  
  
• Just get a mid-range Android phone.  (ZDNet)
  
  Or a low-end one from a reputable brand.  Apple and the Android high end have been captured entirely by fashion trends at this point.
  
  
• Star Wars Barbie actually looks pretty cool  (Amazon)
  
  At $100 I'd hope so.
  
  There's also a Darth Vader Barbie who looks like a 90s New York advertising exec, and...  An R2-D2 Barbie. 
  
  Okay.  You do you, Mattel.  You've sold literally a billion of these things so I won't presume to tell you your business
  
  

Posted by: J Greely at Friday, August 16 2019 01:26 AM (ZlYZd)

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, August 16 2019 05:25 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, August 16 2019 11:19 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: benzeen at Friday, August 16 2019 03:32 PM (5uTz6)

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• Google is run by idiots.  (Wired)
  
  And staffed by lunatics.
  
  The Wired article repeatedly tries to suggest that some of the problems faced by Google over the past four years stem from outside causes, but the content makes it clear that it is all of their own doing.  One name in particular appears twenty-five times and in any competently run company would appear once followed by a note that that individual's contract was terminated for cause.
  
  The silver lining is that many of the worst of the lunatics resigned in protest over their idiotic tantrums being given due consideration i.e. ignored.  But the CEO of YouTube is one of the chief offenders, and she's still firmly in place and destroying shareholder value at a truly impressive rate.
  
  
• A 3000-series Threadripper might have leaked out via Geekbench.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  It's a 32-core CPU with a base clock of 3.6GHz and 128MB of L3 cache, and there's only one company in the world producing chips like that.  The multi-core score is 15% faster than a 2990WX which is exactly where you'd expect it to be.
  
  
• TechDirt is talking nonsense today.
  
  
• Twitter says fuck you and your fucking edit button you fucking fucks.  (Paraphrased.)  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Meanwhile, Twitter announced a new feature that would sing users' timelines to them in three, four, or five-part harmony.
  
  
• Why Medium sucks for programming articles.  (Medium)
  
  
• Netflix is fucked.  (The Hollywood Reporter)
  
  That's what "inflection point" means, right?
  
  
• Ethereum lagged in dapp users in Q2 but its price doubled.  (The Next Web)

  Despite price increase, it wasn't all plain sailing for Ethereum in Q2.

  No, you idiots, the problems were caused by the price increase.  If the price of Ethereum doubles, the cost of running a distributed app on the Ethereum blockchain also doubles.  How the hell is anyone supposed to absorb that?
  
  
• Inside the world of "terrible" 3 cent microcontrollers.
  
  Which are actually pretty good.

Retrocomputing Journal

• Hynix announced 3.6 GHz HBM2 memory bringing bandwidth for high-end graphics cards close to 2TB per second.  (AnandTech)
  
  It's still a bit too expensive for mid-range cards.  AMD's Vega cards used it and had trouble competing on price as a result.
  
  
• There's a rumour that Intel won't not ship PCIe 4.0 after all and will instead not skip straight to PCIe 5.0.  (PC Perspective)
  
  The idea that Intel would skip an entire PCIe generation was always silly.  PCIe 4.0 doubles your available bandwidth at a stroke, and is supported by devices such as SSDs and video cards right now.  PCIe 5.0 is more complicated, more expensive, uses significantly more power, and not currently available anywhere.
  
  Intel might not qualify servers on PCIe 4.0 if they are aggressively pursuing 5.0 there, because their whole server platform is two years behind schedule anywhere.  But on the desktop?  They will absolutely go to 4.0.
  
  
• Britain is, for some unfathomable reason (actually, it's completely fathomable, it's because they're idiots) working on implementing a godawful EU content-filtering directive just minutes before the country is due to leave the EU forever.  (TechDirt)
  
  TechDirt posted complete nonsense elsewhere to balance out this article.
  
  
• An Indian bullshit sorry online counselling company filed criminal charges against a journalist who contacted them about security holes in their software.  (TechDirt)
  
  As you would.
  
  
• WordPress bought Tumblr in a deal that values Tumblr's porn stash at over $1.097 billion.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  
• Ebola is now much more effectively treatable.  (Wired)
  
  Wired says curable, but while the new treatment doubles survival rates, mortaility rates remain terrifying at 49%.
  
  
• Seven plus or minus two.
  
  That's the number of discrete identifiers humans can hold in short term memory.  Long term memory is far, far larger than that - take for example the number of distinct words used in this post so far that you had no trouble at all absorbing.
  
  But if a person is faced with an explanation of something with more than five unfamiliar terms, there's a good chance it will simply make no sense to them.  They're not stupid, or no more stupid than anyone else.  Rather, it's a bad explanation if your target audience is homo sapiens.
  
  
• Windows is falling apart, you should buy Chromebooks instead says completely trustworthy and unbiased company behind Chrome.  (ZDNet)
  
  
• EV certificates are dead following a crippling shortage of green pixels.  (ZDNet)

Posted by: Jay at Wednesday, August 14 2019 01:27 AM (mrlXS)

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• The mClassic "plug and play graphics processor" is an is an HDMI-to-HDMI adaptor that probably includes an upscaler / colour-correction chip.  (Tom's Hardware / Indiegogo)
  
  Which your TV already has.  If you have an older console with HDMI feeding into an older monitor with 2560x1440 native resolution and a linear upscaler, this might be what you need to improve the picture quality.  Otherwise it's likely useless.
  
  
• Intel's Phantom Canyon NUC will have 10nm CPUs when it arrives in 2021 unless it doesn't.  (WCCFTech)
  
  
• Multi-threading is still hopelessly broken: A Python retrospective.  (ZDNet)
  
  
• Lenovo's new 1U Epyc server offers room for 16 hot swap 2.5" U.2 SSDs.  (Serve the Home)
  
  10 at the front, 2 at the rear, and four...  At the sides?  Or something.  So hot swap once you've dismantled the rack.
  
  Also worth noting that Lenovo are concentrating on single-socket models, not the usual dual-socket.  Exactly how much of the market needs more than 64 cores remains to be seen; I expect a lot of dual-socket servers are sold with two 12-core Xeon Silver CPUs (or their earlier counterparts) and could easily be replaced by even a low-end Epyc now.
  
  
• Samsung just announced a 108-megapixel camera module for smartphones.  (Thurrott.com)
  
  It's a lot bigger than most current camera.  It would have to be, because current camera pixel sizes are close to the wavelength of visible light.  Make them much smaller and they won't actually work.
  
  
• Custom Radeon 5700 cards are arriving.  Do they solve the issues with the reference design?  Are they worth the extra $10?
  
  
  
  Yeah, pretty much.  It's not a lot faster, but it is quieter and cooler and doesn't really cost any more.

Posted by: Mauser at Tuesday, August 13 2019 12:34 PM (Ix1l6)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, August 13 2019 02:00 PM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Mauser at Wednesday, August 14 2019 12:51 PM (Ix1l6)

Posted by: J Greely at Thursday, August 15 2019 10:38 AM (LGSd2)

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• Cisco to Cisco customers: You don't own nothin'.  (iFixit)
  
  Cisco software licenses are now bound to the original purchaser, not to the hardware.  And devices will phone home to check that their current owner has the appropriate license.
  
  This takes second-hand Cisco gear from being a highly-desirable commodity for people building home networks to basically rack-mount rust.
  
  
• One Law for Big and Small Alike, which prohibits you from saying naughty words if you have fewer than a million followers.  (Ars Technica)
  
  YouTube moderators, who couldn't tell which side of their bread was buttered with a gas chromatograph and an easy-print copy of the Chemical Rubber Company's Buttered Bread Handbook, were shocked and appalled that a hugely popular channel wasn't immediately and permanently banned for tasering a dead rat.
  
  Also, it appears that tasering a dead rat is against YouTube's community guidelines, so there goes my new channel before it even got started.
  
  
• Apple is now the fourth largest smartphone maker by volume.  (Yahoo News)
  
  Samsung, Huawei, Oppo, then Apple.
  
  Profits are a different story; while Apple has been weakening on that front as well they are still the industry profit leader by a significant margin.
  
  
• P++ is a strongly-typed offshoot of PHP for people who can't grasp the concept of DON'T USE PHP YOU IDIOTS.  (PHP.net)
  
  
• SQLite can be used as an attack vector  (squints) if you have permission to overwrite another app's database files.  (ZDNet)
  
  So if you already have the key, you can open the door.  It's a sneaky vector to make a security hole persistent, but not a security hole in itself.

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, August 12 2019 03:22 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Wonderduck at Monday, August 12 2019 02:44 PM (ssz1E)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, August 12 2019 11:48 PM (PiXy!)

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