A cricket bat!
Twelve years, and four psychiatrists!
Four?
I kept biting them!
Why?
They said you weren't real.

Thursday, June 30

Geek

Daily News Stuff 30 June 2022

All Sales Final Edition

Top Story

  • TSMC  to customers: Get with the program and move to 28nm already.  (AnandTech)

    Compared to the new hotness (see below) 28nm is old school and almost old hat, but it works, and it works the same as older processes.  It's the last robust process with planar transistors rather than FinFETs, so designs are relatively easy to move.

    There is also a 20nm planar node, but it sucks.  AMD never used it, for example, despite being stuck on 28nm for years.


  • Samsung meanwhile has started production at 3nm.  (ZDNet)

    The main advantage of Samsung's 3nm and their new GAAFET transistors is that they cut power consumption by nearly half.  They also reportedly offer up to 20% better performance but the way that number is measured makes its utility dubious.  You need the chart plotting frequencies against power consumption and the details of the sample circuit being evaluated.

Tech News


Disclaimer: Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a match, strike me a light, I'm in a plight.  Matchmaker, matchmaker, lend me your fire, my need for a smoke is dire.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:02 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 290 words, total size 3 kb.

Wednesday, June 29

Geek

Daily News Stuff 29 June 2022

EOFYE Edition

Top Story


Tech News

Lego World War I Video of the Day



They've done Star Wars, Indiana Jones, DC, Marvel, and Harry Potter, so I guess this was next.

Except this is stop motion with real Lego, not computer animation.



Disclaimer: Q = 2b ^ ~2b.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:56 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 348 words, total size 4 kb.

Tuesday, June 28

Geek

Daily News Stuff 28 June 2022

Oops It Deaded Again

Top Story

  • Server fell over at 5AM.  (Not the Ace server, the one that runs my own blog and many others.)

    I didn't have an audible alarm because I currently only have the travel laptop with me, and I didn't notice right away because I got to bed at 4:30 and had a meeting at 8:30.

    I have a new server, I just haven't had time to complete the migration.  Soon...


  • Rufus is a tool for generating install images that just happens to let you bypass Windows 11's requirements for a Microsoft online login.  (Tom's Hardware)

    Windows 11 Home - like 10 Home - has always required an online login; the recent change is that Windows 11 Pro now does as well.

    Funny thing is, I've activated Windows 10 Home on many systems and Windows 11 Home one one, and I've never used an online account to do so.  Just kill the network interface during initial setup and the online login widget dies too.


Tech News


Disclaimer: Could not read file A:\disclaimer.txt.  (A)bort, (R)etry, (I)gnore?


Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:05 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 441 words, total size 4 kb.

Geek

Ugh

  • Be me.
  • Fly back to Sydney from the nice New House.
  • Work until 3 AM.
  • See AmeTori off-collab and decide to stay up for another half hour to see that live.
  • Finally get to sleep at 4:30 AM.
  • Server crashes at 5 AM.
  • Meeting at 8:30 AM discussing critical issues that need to be resolved.
  • Don't see the notification for nearly 8 hours.
This server is flaky and has been for some time.  I have two three alternate servers I could move to, but the migration is fiddly and I've had negative amounts of free time these last six months.

But apologies, once I'm permanently settled in New House City things will improve.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:00 PM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 114 words, total size 1 kb.

Monday, June 27

Geek

Daily Tech News 27 June 2022

Pixy Doesn't Die At The End

Top Story

  • Bad thing about working for a small company: Sometimes someone needs to work through the night - repeatedly - and that someone is you.

    Good thing about working for a small company: This does not pass unnoticed.

    To put it another way: When the new CPUs and graphics cards come out later this year, I'm all set to buy a new high-end gaming system.  On which I shall play Minecraft.

    There's still a crisis I need to deal with tonight - a database playing up in weird ways - but it's the only crisis I have to deal with tonight.

    (Also, I'm not the only one who has had to jump in and do weird things at awful hours recently; we've had a lot going on.  It's a good team.)


Tech News


Disclaimer: And I need to save that money for my Minecraft rig.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:31 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 328 words, total size 3 kb.

Sunday, June 26

Geek

Daily News Stuff 26 June 2022

Where Are They Now Edition

Top Story

  • Say, whatever happened to that fancy Asus "Space Edition" laptop?  Did it ever make it to market?

    Yep.  (Amazon)

    On the one hand, kind of expensive.

    On the other hand, with an i9-12900H it's nearly three times as fast as the laptop I'm using right now.

    On the third hand, Amazon's spec sheets are maintained by idiots.  This one states the laptop weighs 9.9lbs.


Tech News



Disclaimer: Rodents of unusual size?  I don't believe they exist.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:36 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 269 words, total size 3 kb.

Geek

Note To Self

The perfect laptop doesn't exist.  The perfect laptop is kind of expensive.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:14 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 15 words, total size 1 kb.

Saturday, June 25

Geek

Daily News Stuff 25 June 2022

We Made It, They Fucked It Up Edition

Top Story

  • So, went to the Ikea site today to price some bookshelves.

    Last chance to buy.

    What?  You've sold like a hundred million of the damn things.  You can't possibly be so stupid as to stop making them.
    It is estimated that every five seconds, one BILLY bookcase is sold somewhere in the world. Pretty impressive considering we launched BILLY in 1979. It’s the booklovers choice that never goes out of style.
    Well, not anymore.  (Fast Company)

    For decades, Billy bookcases have come in two versions: The cheap white ones coated with foil paper, and the more expensive wood veneer ones.

    There will no longer be a wood veneer option.  At all.  In fact, they're already gone, so if you were planning on putting anything other than the cheap white version in your brand new house, tough shit.

    With my revised plan to put shelves in the hallways, I was planning on using the cheap white version anyway.  Guess I'll do something else in the rooms where I want to match furniture and not just have it be inoffensive.


  • At least there are donuts on the way.


Tech News

  • Speaking of which, the best small Android tablet has gone the way of wood veneer as well.  I mean, there was only one adequate small Android tablet as it was - the Lenovo Tab M8 FHD - and that's gone.  As far as I can tell everything left on the market has the same screen resolution as the original Nexus 7 from 2012.  The crappy one, not the 2013 model that was actually pretty good.

    Lenovo's new Legion Y700 would be perfect - 2560x1600 8.8" screen and Arm A77 cores that blow the old A53 cores in the Tab M8 out of the water.  Except that it's kind of expensive - and only available in China.


  • Everyone else just leaks stuff online: A Japanese city council worker has lost a USB drive containing personal details of every resident of Amagasaki - about half a million people.  (The Guardian)

    In his defense, he was very drunk.


  • AMD's Zen 4 has a somewhat disappointing IPC uplift over Zen 3 - only 8-10%.  Overall performance will improve by more than that because clock speeds will be significantly higher and multi-threading is improved on the high-end models.

    Intel meanwhile is promising up to double-digit performance improvements.  (WCCFTech)

    In theory that means anything up to 99%, but I think they mean anything up to 10%.

    They are also packing in an extra eight Efficiency cores though, which should improve the multi-threaded performance by up to 30% on top of those single-threaded gains.


Disclaimer: No veneer for you.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:17 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 454 words, total size 4 kb.

Friday, June 24

Geek

Daily News Stuff 24 June 2022

I Aten't Dead Edition

Tech News

  • Well, maybe a little dead.


  • Resolved a weird and long-standing performance issue with the system at work by turning off threads in the application server and using a full process for every worker.  Magic.


  • The designated office area at New House can fit 12.2m of desk in an L shape - almost exactly 40 feet. 

    Do I need 40 feet of desk space? 
    No. 
    Am I gonna?
    Darn tootin'.


  • Similarly, there's quite a wide U-shaped hallway that wraps around a core area (kitchen / bathroom) and leads to all the other rooms.  I can fit 16 bookcases along the blank sections of wall without putting anything in an actual room.


  • In which bad things happen to bad people.  (Pluralistic)

    Ah, the schadenfreude is overpowering.


Disclaimer: Please, sir, can I have some more?

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:30 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 144 words, total size 1 kb.

Thursday, June 23

Geek

Daily News Stuff 23 June 2022

Tech News


Disclaimer: That's what...  No.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:57 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 129 words, total size 2 kb.

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