• You remember how recently I had to block 175 servers that were crawling mee.nu and killing our performance?
  
  This is why.  (ScrapingBee)
  
  The article explains how to scrape websites and avoid automated blocking and filtering, and recommends using precisely the VPN service that I had to manually block in our firewall, one toxic IP address at a time.
  
  It got posted to r/programming.  People were not impressed.  (Reddit)
  
  
• AMD's Renoir APUs may still be Vega but will be Zen 2 with up to eight cores unless they're not.  (WCCFTech)
  
  It's a benchmark leak and not just a rumour so it looks like eight core mainstream laptops are a go for 2020.
  
  The article also suggests an increase from 11 CUs to 13 CUs on the graphics side.  The graphics benchmark results support that, with close to 20% better performance.
  
  
• ASRock has added support for registered DIMMs to their X299 motherboards unless they haven't.  (WCCFTech)
  
  I didn't know you could do that with a BIOS update.  You still won't get ECC support as I understand it, because Intel's HEDT processors have that permanently disabled.
  
  
• Multipass puts a Linux cloud on your Windows or Mac desktop.  (Multipass.run)
  
  On Windows Home it uses Virtualbox; on Windows Pro it can use the built-in virtualisation.  I think that means you can run Multipass and WSL on the same system, something that is impossible with Virtualbox and WSL.  (At least, if you want Virtualbox to run 64-bit containers.)
  
  It looks like it's essentially LXD wrapped up into a neat little bundle.  I like LXD containers quite a lot and use them for all my development work - I can start up a new Linux instance in a couple of seconds, and then throw it away when I'm done testing.
  
  LXD networking, on the other hand, can die in a fire.  OpenVZ got that right a decade ago.
  
  
• You can't use geometric fields with TokuDB, another limitation.  That one is slightly annoying - not for my current application, but for something else I had planned.
  
  
• France has fined Google $166M for its confusing ad rules that were implemented to placate countries like France.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  It's one of those cases where you wonder if there is a way for them both to lose.
  
  
• Hit indy game Stardew Valley is coming to a new platform: Your car.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Well, if you drive a Tesla, you can now engage autopilot and spend your commute time harvesting pumpkins and whatnot.*
  
  
• Ghostery Midnight is an ad blocker for desktop apps that decide that they need to also jump on the annoying ad bandwagon looking at you Microsoft.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Sounds great.

  After a seven-day trial, Midnight will cost $14 per month.

  They're doomed.
  
  
• The HP Elite Dragonfly is...  Wait.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Why would you put 32GB of Optane storage in a system with a 512GB NVMe SSD?  What the hell are you doing, HP?
  
  
• A comparison of AMD and Intel's current top-of-the-line HEDT CPUs.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  This is not pretty for Intel.  Of course Threadripper with 24 or 32 cores is going to dominate the 18 core 10980XE in productivity, but it even wins many of the gaming benchmarks.
  
  This review highlights again that where the 2990WX was an interesting niche CPU for certain high-end tasks, the 3960X and 3970X are brilliant all-rounders.

Video of the Day

Bonus Video of the Day

Music Video of the Day