• The last Dresden Files book came out in 2014.  But now:
  
  
  
  Peace Talks in July.  Battle Ground in September.
  
  There was the first Cinder Spires book and a bunch of comics in between, but it's been a while otherwise.
  
  Here's a recent interview with Jim Butcher.
  
  
  
  Butcher explains in the interview that he spent three years trying to write this latest volume, and ended up with a 400,000 word first draft, before his editor suggested How about we make this two books?  Which made a light come on, but he had to do a lot of rewriting to make each novel a reasonably self-contained entry in the series.
  
  He noted in another interview that these two books only fill one slot in the series outline - 16 of 20 in the main sequence - so there will be one, possibly two extra volumes before the concluding trilogy.
  
  Also, the Dutch edition of Grave Peril is titled Doods Nood.  (Reddit)
  
  
  
• While we're on books, and fantasy books specifically, I've been rereading Mike McClung's Amra Thetys series.  I had bought but not read The Last God, a collection of side stories not involving Amra herself.  I finally read that and it was good enough to prompt a reread of the other five volumes.
  
  Probably not the best book in the series to read first though.
  
  The first book in the series, The Thief Who Pulled on Trouble's Braids, is either $0.99 or $0.61 on Amazon right now so you can't go far wrong. 
  
  
  

• Here come the Ryzen 4000 laptops, finally.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  This one is the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14, a 4800HS model with an RTX 2060, so they haven't tested integrated graphics just yet (they're working on additional benchmarks though) but on the CPU side of things it is unequivocally the fastest laptop in their roundup, even against the Dell XPS 15 with Intel's top of the line Core i9-9980HK.
  
  And it has an 11 hour battery life.  On a 3.5 pound gaming laptop.
  
  The model seen here has a 1080p display but there will also be a 2560x1440 version, which is effectively "retina" level at 14".
  
  
  
  In that review Leo mentions that a couple of years ago he reviewed an Asus GL702ZC - a 6.6 pound 17" laptop with a desktop Ryzen 1700 and Radeon RX 580 - the same configuration as my current desktops.
  
  The G14 is 30 to 50% faster, and half the size, and has vastly better battery life.
  
  It comes with a power brick, but will happily charge off USB C if you don't need it in its top turbo mode.
  
  Except for those missing keys the 2560x1440 model would make a great go anywhere / do anything laptop.
  
  
  
• Intel's Rocket Lake is coming unless it isn't.  (WCCFTech)
  
  This is Intel's 11th gen part with the new Xe graphics, and power ratings from 15W to 125W.
  
  
  
• The cloud is full, part two.  (ZDNet)
  
  Azure reports that demand in certain locations has jumped by 775%, and overall demand for certain telecommuting products has jumped over 200% worldwide.
  
  
  
• The Standard Model, like Ramans, does everything in threes.  (Quanta)
  
  We just don't know why.  People have been working on this for decades and we still don't know, but an interesting suggestion is that it's the the particles that seem unusual to us - not the electron but the corresponding tau particle - that are the ones that are actually fundamental.
  
  
  
• Yes, the Galaxy S20 has 100X zoom.  (Thurrott.com)
  
  No, it's not any good.  The 10X zoom looks great in the sample photos though.
  
  
  
• Is Uranus leaking gas?  (Digital Trends)
  
  Sorry, I had to.  You know I had to.
  
  
  
• Zoom has stopped sending all your data to Facebook.  (Vice)
  
  Says Zoom.  We'll see.
  
  
  
• I spend a lot of time calling out the US news media.  The Australian news media can be just as bad at times, but the difference is they don't operate in lockstep the same way, and on any story one of the mainstream outlets will actually report the facts in some recognisable form.
  
  Case in point:
  
  
  
  
  Directly calling out China for not just lying but for rewriting history and disappearing inconvenient whistleblowers - when the US media are busy repeating the lies.
  
  Stop the video when it gets to the interview clip though.  The interviewee is a moron.

Posted by: J Greely at Tuesday, March 31 2020 01:09 AM (ZlYZd)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, March 31 2020 01:13 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Tuesday, March 31 2020 06:10 AM (5iiQK)

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