• 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?

That cheap source of H750s I found is no longer quite so cheap; in fact, no longer cheap at all, having increased overnight from $6.04 to $13.23.  Yech.  On the other hand it looks like DigiKey went in the opposite direction and is now under $10.

Still, if I need to use two of them due to the pin limitations, it might not hurt to look at other parts.  As long as it has at least 1MB RAM and an LCD controller that can display 960x540 - and supports ARMv7 - any experiments I run with the dev kit I have will port straight over.

The RZ/A1L starts at A$22.45 which is still more than two of the H750s, but has the advantage that it's only one chip to worry about, and has 3MB of RAM compared 1MB on the H750.  Also it has two larger siblings if I should need more memory, pins, or graphics performance.

It suffers from some of the same pin assignment craziness, so if you want to use the LCD controller you can only have a 16-bit external memory bus, but having 176 pins instead of 100 is about 76% less constrained.

Disclaimer: The drink you drink when you're not drinking a...  Wait.

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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