• The site is glitchy today. Not this particular blog, for some reason. Working on it.
  
  Update: Whacked it extra hard, errors stopped. Let's see if that sticks. Couldn't find an underlying cause.
  
  
  
• I hate Ethereum.
  
  It's cryptographic Stockholm Syndrome: You're so happy when something finally works that you forget that it shouldn't be that fucking hard.
  
  
  
• I have located the perfect server for our operations.  Threadripper 3960X, 128GB RAM, 8TB PCIe x8 SSD - 1 million IOPS - and a 16TB disk drive for backups.
  
  The same day, the Aussie dollar cratered and now I don't know if I can afford it.  But it's not a one-off deal so maybe I can do something.
  
  (And when I say "perfect" I mean "woohoo total overkill baby".)
  
  
  
• Sony have announced the specs of the PlayStation 5. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  It's around 90% of the Xbox Xeriex X:
  
  
• Same 8 core Ryzen 2 but at 3.5GHz rather than 3.8GHz.
• 36 RDNA 2 CUs vs. 52, but at about a 25% higher clock speed, so it gets 10.3 TFLOPs vs. 12 TFLOPs.
• Much faster SSD - Sony say 5.5GB per second vs. 2.4GB per second on the Xbox.
• Same 16GB of DDR6, but without the odd bandwidth split Microsoft have created.
• 825GB SSD compared to 1TB, but it can be upgraded with select third-party PCIe 4.0 SSDs. Sony will publish an official compatibility list.


Basically close enough that the titles will matter more than the hardware.



• Facebook is blocking New York Times stories on the Wuhan Bat Soup Death Plague. (TechDirt)
  
  Popcorn time.
  
  
  
• Speaking of Corona-chan, she may have met her match: A combination of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin cleared the virus from 100% of patients in the space of a week. (Google Drive) (PDF)
  
  96% of the control group still had the virus active in their systems at the end of the trial.
  
  It's a small study and brand new, so take it with a grain of salt, but it's not the only report of promising results with hydroxychloroquine and similar anti-malarials.
  
  
  
• iPad support for mice and trackpads reportedly doesn't suck. (Six Colors)
  
  Which is interesting because mouse support on MacOS is a disaster area.
  
  
  
• Nikola Tesla, call your office. Lab. Whatever. (Ars Technica)
  
  The Waveshare e-ink display is controlled by NFC from your smartphone.
  
  It is also powered by NFC from your smartphone.
  
  Downside: It takes five seconds to comply. Refresh. It takes five seconds to refresh.
  

Posted by: Jay at Friday, March 20 2020 05:16 AM (vuQH5)

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