• Was testing deployment options for the new system today.  DigitalOcean running out of a RAM disk was about the same speed as Vultr running from SSD.
  
  Although....  That test is very write-heavy, and unless I start getting a million posts a day right away I'll be far more concerned with reads.  Vultr is still ahead there but not by so much that DO isn't an option.
  
  The advantage of going with DigitalOcean is that (a) they pool bandwidth, so if the database server comes with 4TB (which it would) that gets added to the pool to be used by the web servers, and (b) they have block and object storage in every location.
  
  Advantage of Vultr is that it's faster and it's easy to do a custom install running ZFS.  With DO I can easily add block storage and configure that with ZFS, but that is even slower than the standard storage.
  
  Third option is RamNode, who I haven't used before, but who have been around a while and are well-regarded.  They don't have object or block storage, but they do have fast NVMe servers like Vultr, and cheap disk-based storage servers with tons of available bandwidth.  (As low as $1 per TB transferred.)
  
  All three are viable so I'll just pick one and go with it.
  
  
• AMD's Lisa Su may be presenting Zen 3 at CES.  (WCCFTech)
  
  And/or the Ryzen 4000 APUs, which may or may not deliver 8 cores to mainstream laptops.
  
  Or possibly something else.
  
  
  
  
  
• Speaking of which, AMD is set to become TSMC's largest 7nm customer.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Only partly because Apple will be moving to 5nm later this year, and AMD isn't planning on that until 2021.
  
  
• Isaac Asimov's century.  (The Humanist)
  
  Today is the 100th anniversary of Isaac Asimov's birth, more or less (there aren't exact records).  TechCrunch reminded me of the fact, so thanks for that, but their article will just make you irritated so I won't link it here.
  
  Science Magazine also has a respectful article.
  
  
• Literature, films, and music created in 1924 have now entered the public domain.  (Hyperallergic)
  
  In the US; in many other countries they have been in the public domain for years.
  
  
• Your programming language is bad and you should feel bad.
  
  Mind you, this list would reject Python specifically, and pretty much everything other than Lisp for other reasons.
  
  
• Apple is suing a security company under the DMCA for creating an iOS security tool.  (iFixit)
  
  This is section 1201 of the DMCA, the anti-circumvention section, a.k.a the bad part.  Corellium - the company in question - allows you to create virtual iPhones in your browser to test security issues.  Apple is not happy about that and wants them dead.
  
  
• SAFe is an unholy incarnation of darkness.  (Medium has not yet blocked me this month)
  
  SAFe is Agile for Enterprise.  Agile is a lightweight team-driven software development methodology for smaller projects, so it is exactly what you don't want at enterprise scale.  Scroll down to the diagram in the linked article where they explain it all.
  
  
• A look at the Threadripper 3960X.  (Serve the Home)
  
  AMD's smaller Thirdripper is still impressive.  Intel's fastest workstation processor - costing twice as much - can beat it on, oh, on Passmark, and a couple of others, but in almost every case Intel's best is coming in third, and sometimes fourth.  And that's even before AMD releases their high-end parts.
  
  
• Python 2.7 has reached EOL.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  There is one final update due in April, and then that is it.
  
  Unless you are using PyPy, which is both written in and compatible with Python 2.  Since dropping support for Python 2 would require rewriting the entire thing, they are planning to support it indefinitely.
  
  Still, libraries will slowly drop support for Python 2.  Web3, the Ethereum library, doesn't work with Python 2 at all.
  
  RedHat will also continue supporting Python 2.7 through to at least 2024.
  
  
• MacOS 8 and the Y2.02K problem.  (Six Colors)
  
  In 1997?  Seriously, Apple, in 1997 you did this?
  
  Like every other MacOS problem there is a third-party utility to fix it.
  
  
• The LG G8X ThinQ Dual Screen solves the folding screen problem by...  Not folding the screen.  (ZDNet)
  
  It has two screens (both 6.4" 2340x1080 OLED displays) and a hinge in between.
  
  
• One quarter of all the pigs in the world died in 2019 of swine fever.  (New York Times)
  
  Which sounds shocking - and I suppose it is - but pigs raised for market (which is almost all of them) do not live very long lives in the first place.
  
  
• In an apparent attempt to make cancer great again, the FDA has banned the production and sale of many flavoured vape products.  (Engadget)
  
  Sigh.
  
  
• A federal judge has blocked...  Wait, what's this?  A federal judge has blocked California's terrible "gig economy" law.  (CBS News)
  
  Apparently only as it applies to truck drivers though.  How it will play out for other groups if they succeed in their lawsuit will be interesting to watch.
  
  I am not against laws protecting workers from being taken advantage of by unscrupulous companies.  I am just against this law, because it is dumb.
  
  
• LG will be launching eight new 8K TVs at CES next week.  (9to5Mac)
  
  The models range from 65" to 85".  Prices are not mentioned and are likely still stratospheric, but prices for 4K came down pretty quickly once the second-tier players got onto the market, and it's likely to be the same only more so with 8K.
  
  

Other News

Picture of the Day

Mountain Shrine by Cpieng

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, January 04 2020 12:45 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Wonderduck at Saturday, January 04 2020 11:53 AM (cTMj+)

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• Intel's upcoming Core i9-10900K is reportedly up to 30% faster than the 9900K on multi-threaded tasks.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Unfortunately for Intel, the Ryzen 3900X is already 50% faster than the 9900K on those tasks.  (CPUBenchmark.net)  
  
  
• It's either that or elemental fluorine: How to tarnish platinum: Sell it as a Xeon 9200.  (AnandTech)
  
  Ouch.
  
  
• Running Python in the Linux kernel.  (Medium)
  
  Or not.  I'll go with not.
  
  
• The Chrome extension Shitcoin Wallet much to everyone's surprise steals your Ethereum coins.  (ZDNet)
  
  I mean, they all but called it "Ethereum Coin Stealer".
  
  
• India is heading back to the Moon.  (Reuters)
  
  Their previous lunar orbiter worked smoothly, but their Moon rover suffered a hard landing, as in, it was completely obliterated.
  
  
• Well don't do that then.
  
  
  
  
  
• One of Samsung's memory chip factories suffered a 60-second power outage.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  It will take up to three days to get the plant back on line and all the chips on the production line might need to be scrapped.  I'm not sure if the queue is as long for DRAM, but 3d flash has a lot of processing steps so they might lose weeks of production.
  
  
• Is the light over my desk blinking on and off or am I having a seizure?
  
  (Looks directly at LED downlight.)
  
  Fuck, now I'm blind.  That thing is far too bright.  Oh, and three of the LEDs were indeed flickering on and off.
  
  
• Apple has renewed its licensing agreement with GPU design company Imagination.  (AnandTech)
  
  Apple's custom Arm chips used Imagination graphics for years, before announcing they were going to use their own designs and cancelling their deal with Imagination, which almost killed that company.
  
  
• Oh no.
  
  
  
  

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, January 02 2020 11:58 PM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, January 03 2020 12:20 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Saturday, January 04 2020 12:25 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, January 04 2020 12:35 AM (Iwkd4)

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• Keep your computer cool this summer (well, it's summer here!) by dunking the whole thing in a tank of coolant that costs $18 a litre.  (AnandTech)
  
  The kit costs $2450.  That does not include the computer.  The computer is extra.
  
  
• This is not technical itself, but a social psychology study of clustering effects in social networks is certainly of interest, and the clusterfuck that the researchers managed to generate doubly so.
  
  
  
  
  The summary notes that moderate conservative voices on Twitter - the Center Right - are overwhelmed by the Extreme Right.  (Medium)
  
  What it does not note is what the definition of the Extreme Right is that is used by this study.  And that is because there is no definition used by the study.
  
  What they did was label certain Twitter accounts as Extreme Right, and then those accounts that follow them get tagged as Extreme Right as well.
  
  And the first example - there are only two - the first example of an Extreme Right account they give is The Heritage Foundation which is middle-of-the-road classical liberalism.
  
  Part one and part two are available for download as PDFs.  Part two consists entirely of interviews with journalists, if you needed a clearer idea of where this was going.
  
  The only bright spot in this farrago of academic malfeasance is page 22 of part one which notes that everybody hates the New York Times.
  
  
• Speaking of Medium, it takes five clicks and a page reload to reply to a comment - starting from the individual post page.  This is the competition?
  
  
• The Big 5 tech companies are worth $5 trillion.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  If you're playing Fantasy Stockmarket, short Google.  The company is rotten to the core.
  
  
• The old internet died and we did nothing.  (BuzzFeed)
  
  Don't know about you, BuzzFeed, but my posts from 2003 are still intact.
  
  And - hah, just thought of something.  I have a backup of every tweet I posted before Twitter nuked my account.  I'm about to launch my own social network....
  
  
• Samsung TVs may upload screenshots for automatic content recognition.  (Hacker News)
  
  I'll likely get a 4K TV this year.  I have 4K monitors - plural - because I use them all day for work, but my TV is still 720p.
  
  It will be a cheap, no-name device as devoid of intelligence as I can find.  If it can't even automatically switch to the active input, I'm okay with that.

• An interesting who-knew-what-when piece on the FISA abuse scandal.  (The Epoch Times)
  
  Is the Epoch Times trustworthy?  I don't know.  They were implicated in a fake news ring on Facebook recently.  (The Verge)  But they were implicated by Facebook and I don't trust Facebook either.
  
  But this article links to the PDF of the related court order - on the .gov site, not their own copy - and provides page references for the claims it makes.  That is refreshing.

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, January 02 2020 04:13 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, January 02 2020 04:17 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, January 02 2020 05:01 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, January 02 2020 11:09 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, January 02 2020 01:11 PM (Iwkd4)

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