• Western Digital has announced the WD Black SN750, their third-generation high-end consumer NVMe SSD. (AnandTech)
  
  Turns out it's their second-generation high-end consumer NVMe SSD.  Same controller, same flash memory, updated firmware.  Since the second generation was already very good (and a big upgrade over the first generation) this is not a bad thing.  It can already saturate PCIe 3.0, and PCIe 4.0 motherboards and SSD controllers aren't out yet, so there wasn't much more for them to do.
  
  
• Everything we know about Ryzen 3000 (Interesting Edition®) and the 500-series chipsets. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  
• AMD will support PCIe 4.0 on existing motherboards, but it's up to the manufacturers to qualify specific boards and update the BIOS to enable it.
  
  
• The 500 series chipset will likely be brand new and designed by AMD rather than ASMedia, based on the current EPYC server chipset.  (Gamers Nexus)
  
  It will support PCIe 4.0 as well, and have a higher power consumption as a result (15W vs. 8W).  It may not appear until a few months after the CPUs, which is why it's so important that existing motherboards get updated to support the new CPUs.
  
  
• The AM4 socket remains the same, so chips and motherboards are backwards and forwards compatible. (Assuming BIOS updates.)
  
  
• Meanwhile, AMD's next-gen Navi graphics, which were a no-show at CES, replaced at the last minute by Radeon VII due to delays, are now expected to appear at E3 in July.
  
  
• Chooseco is suing Netflix over Bandersnatch. (TechDirt)
  
  I just love that they're called Chooseco.  The lawsuit however seems to be pure garbage.
  
  
• MIDI 2.0 is coming!
  
  The original MIDI standard was laid out in 1983.  It's older at this point that most of its users.
  
  
• What happens when identical twins send their DNA samples to consumer DNA testing companies will surprise you unless you have been paying attention and realise that doing a full DNA sequence is still very expensive and these companies are to the Human Genome Project what a class of pre-schoolers enjoying a finger-painting session are to the Italian Quattrocento. (CBC)
  
  
• Google manipulates search results to suppress offensive content.  (One Angry Gamer)
  
  The main story is via Breitbart, which has become a swamp of nonsense since Andrew Breitbart's death, but other reports appear to back this up.  Knowing Google, the truth is probably  far worse than is currently being reported.
  
  
• In a happy surprise, Star Control: Origins is back on Steam  (One Angry Gamer)
  
  

• Nice one, Facebook. Way to go. (TechDirt)
  
  Refusing to refund charges run up by underage users is a surefire PR coup.
  
  
• There is joy in Mudville - the EU's godawful copyright legislation has unexpectedly struck out!
  

  BREAKING: Council has failed to find an agreement on its #copyright position today. This doesn’t mean that #Article11 and #Article13 are dead, but their adoption has just become a lot less likely. Let’s keep up the pressure now! https://t.co/DEYBhuRyGz#SaveYourInternet

  — Julia Reda (@Senficon) January 18, 2019

  Note that it's only mostly dead.  Mostly dead is still partly alive.
  
  
• The GDPR is still in full and hideous effect, though, with Amazon, Apple, and other companies facing potential fines totalling up to €18.8 billion.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  This week.  For complaints from one advocacy group.
  
  
• Mike Godwin (yes, that Mike Godwin) reports on the problem of epistemic closure.  (TechDirt)
  
  The book Network Propaganda demonstrated that the problem with epistemic closure in American news sources lies not with explicitly biased sources like blogs, but with the mainstream media.  But Mike apparently suffered an aneurysm mid-way through the article when he offered this hypothetical for the reader's consideration:

  Consider: if progressives had cocooned themselves in a media ecosystem that had cut itself from the facts—that valued tribal loyalty and shared identity over mere factual accuracy—conservatives and centrists would be justified in pointing out not merely that the left's media were unmoored but also that its insistence on doctrinal purity in the face of factual disproof was positively destructive.

  Mike, you idiot, that's precisely what has happened.
  
  67% of Democratic voters believe that the Russians changed the vote counts in the 2016 election.  (The Economist/YouGov poll, November 4-6, 2018)
  
  This is of course completely false, and everyone in the administration is on record as saying it is completely false, but it is the mainstream belief among Democrats.
  
  
• Oh, snap.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Sorry.  Had to.

Picture of the Day

Posted by: cxt217 at Sunday, January 20 2019 02:48 AM (LMsTt)

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