You know when grown-ups tell you everything's going to be fine, and you think they're probably lying to make you feel better?
Yes.
Everything's going to be fine.
Yes.
Everything's going to be fine.
Sunday, September 04
Daily News Stuff 4 September 2022
External September Edition
That's smaller than the diameter of an atom, but as the presenter notes a couple of times, these numbers are marketing, not measuring any physical reality.
External September Edition
Top Story
- Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince, Wednesday:
Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince today:Some argue that we should terminate these services to content we find reprehensible so that others can launch attacks to knock it offline. That is the equivalent argument in the physical world that the fire department shouldn't respond to fires in the homes of people who do not possess sufficient moral character. Both in the physical world and online, that is a dangerous precedent, and one that is over the long term most likely to disproportionately harm vulnerable and marginalized communities.
Today, more than 20 percent of the web uses Cloudflare's security services. When considering our policies we need to be mindful of the impact we have and precedent we set for the Internet as a whole. Terminating security services for content that our team personally feels is disgusting and immoral would be the popular choice. But, in the long term, such choices make it more difficult to protect content that supports oppressed and marginalized voices against attacks.
Yeah, forget all that.
Tech News
- Shot:
- Chaser:
- Amazon has lost a bid to prevent workers unionising at one of its NYC warehouses. (UPI)
Good.
Amazon provides a useful service - multiple useful services, though streaming anime sure isn't one of them - but by all reports treats its workers abominably. And is woke as hell so long as it doesn't lose them money.
- Speaking of Amazon losing money there are zero reviews on Amazon for their billion-dollar hate letter to Tolkien. (IndieWire)
IndieWire is also woke as hell, of course, and thinks silencing viewers is a great idea.
Tech Video of the Day
This gets pretty technical, but it covers the semiconductor industry's plans out to 2036 - when they expect to be at something called the 2A node - 0.2 nanometres.
That's smaller than the diameter of an atom, but as the presenter notes a couple of times, these numbers are marketing, not measuring any physical reality.
Disclaimer: There's a bear in there. And a chair as well. There are people with games. Nope, the bear's eaten them.
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Saturday, September 03
Daily News Stuff 3 September 2022
Recive Complain Edition
Recive Complain Edition
Top Story
- Twitter had a new plan to fight "extremism" - then Elon Musk arrived. (The Verge)
If you're guessing that "extremism" means normal people opposing fascist lunatics and the "new plan" was more annoying popups and account bans, then you're absolutely correct.
The first cool part is that Elon's bid to buy Twitter caused so much chaos internally that the plan was still-born, with management decisions delayed and many of the key censors fleeing the company for even shittier fields.
The second cool part is that an upset would-be censor who tweeted their wish that current CEO Parag Agrawal and former CEO Jack Dorsey "all fall down a very long flight of stairs" was reported for threatening a co-worker and fired.
Tech News
- I've ordered a Lenovo Tab M10 FHD Gen 3 as an update to my Lenovo Tab M10 FHD Gen 2. It's about the same size and weight, and has only a minor screen upgrade, but it ships with Android 12 rather than Android 9 and has two A75 cores which blow the A53 cores on the older model out of the water.
Also it was on sale and my old tablet is in a box somewhere and I can't find it.
- The commenters over at Ars Technica are too deranged for me to deal with today.
- USB 4 version 2 also does 120Gbps - in one direction. (Angstronomics)
And 40Gbps back. This is very handy if you want to dock your laptop with an 8K 120Hz screen with integrated I/O and networking. Not that there are a lot of such monitors available - precisely zero as at the time of writing - but since USB 4 version 2 isn't out yet either that's not a huge problem.
The article also notes that although USB 4 is very new, Thunderbolt 3 (which USB 4 is based on) delivered 40Gbps speeds all the way back in 2015, so this speed increase has been a while coming.
- Sony's Xperia 5 IV is basically a smaller version of their Xperia 1 IV. (Liliputing)
While a 6.1" screen isn't small, the device is basically all screen, making it similar in size to 5.5" phones from three or four years ago.
It also comes with a 1/8" headphone jack and a microSD slot, two endangered species in the phone space.
Not cheap though at just under $1000.
Disclaimer: We recive complain. If not be resolved after 24H your services will be closed.
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06:06 PM
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Well, That Just Fills Me With Confidence
We recive complain. If not be resolved after 24H your services will be closedAs if I needed another reason to get off this server.
Looks like the hosting has quietly changed hands again. Yes, there are some crappy sites here on mee.nu - offering free blog hosting will do that - and I need to root them out. I'll likely need to disable signups for a while.
Everything is backed up because I don't trust them at all not to simply switch off the servers. This server co-operated by crashing during the backup.
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Friday, September 02
Daily News Stuff 2 September 2022
Tree Farmer In The Sky Edition
Tree Farmer In The Sky Edition
Top Story
- Tree planting schemes are just creating tree cemeteries. (Vice)
Planting trees in a desert is hard. Planting trees in England is hard to screw up, and yet that's what they're doing.
But by the time the trees have all died, the people planting them have been paid and moved on to the next scheme.
Tech News
- You had one job: USB 4 Version 2.0 will hit 80Gbps. (Tom's Hardware)
It still uses the same USB-C connector but will require an active cable (read: expensive) to hit that top speed. Otherwise it will fall back to the current 40Gbps.
But why not just call it USB 5? Do they have some sort of PTSD related to version numbering?
- Flash memory prices are expected to drop sharply by the end of the year. (Tom's Hardware)
Predictions are for a drop of up to 35% in the current quarter and an additional 20% in Q4. Which is a lot. Component shortages have kept prices up the last couple of years but that is coming to an end for computers, though it still applies to industrial electronics.
- Micron is investing $15 billion in a new factory near Boise, Idaho. (Tom's Hardware)
Interesting that the article gives the expense rather than the price, since this factory will be subsidised by both the state and federal governments.
- The Framework laptop is now open for pre-order in Australia. (Frame.work)
Including the new 12th generation model.
It's not particularly cheap and it lacks the Four Essential Keys, but on the other hand it's not glued together - all repairs can be done with the single (included) screwdriver - and that counts for a lot.
Actually, since I have spare DDR4 SODIMMs and SSDs - and nothing in this laptop is soldered in place - I could just get the entry level model and upgrade it, which would cut the price nearly in half.
Disclaimer: Well, not nothing. The chips in the things you can replace are soldered to the things, but everything you can replace you can replace.
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Thursday, September 01
Daily News Stuff 1 September 2022
Land Of The Eternal Early Spring Edition
Land Of The Eternal Early Spring Edition
Top Story
- As we head into spring the weather here in New House City is trending towards what would be a chilly midwinter week in Sydney. But since it never gets particularly cold in Sydney, and this house is built for cold weather, it's actually quite pleasant.
My daily heating bill is coming down too; yesterday it was about half what it was during the coldest days of July. Which is good because while Australia hasn't had Europe levels of energy crisis - we export LNG rather than import it - it sure hasn't gotten any cheaper.
And the garden is starting to bloom. At some point I'll have to find out what these plants are.
- The CEO of Turkish crypto exchange Thodex, who looted his customers of $2 billion in crypto assets and fled to Albania, has been caught and extradited and now faces 40,000 years in prison. (Tom's Hardware)
Pour encourager les autres.
Tech News
- Arm is suing Qualcomm and its newly acquired subsidiary Nuvia because although Qualcomm has an Arm architecture license and Nuvia has an Arm architecture license, Qualcomm is not permitted to use Arm architecture developed by Nuvia. (Tom's Hardware)
This seems shortsighted by Arm, because it eradicates the whole chip design startup model - build a better CPU and get acquired by one of the big players.
- The Asus Zenbook 17 Fold is a 17" laptop that folds to become a 12.5" laptop. (Tom's Hardware)
This is one of those things that might be great someday when the technology crosses over a some threshold but right now is an expensive gimmick.
- The first leaked independent benchmark of the Ryzen 7950X looks promising. (Tom's Hardware)
Integer performance is 23% faster single-threaded and 45% faster multi-threaded; floating point is 22% and 38% respectively.
Cryptography is 70% faster single-threaded, which is a huge boost likely attributable to support for AVX-512 - new instructions that can process 512 bits of data per cycle instead of the usual 256.
A couple of interesting things about AVX-512: First, AMD supports the instruction set but didn't bother to increase the hardware to 512 bits - which makes the chip larger, more power hungry, and more expensive. Instead they use the existing 256 bit floating point unit twice. The new instructions are still better suited to certain tasks so even with this cheap and cheerful approach they get between 30% and 150% better performance.
Second, AVX-512 is an Intel instruction set, but no Intel consumer CPUs support it. It's in Alder Lake chips, making those chips larger, more power hungry, and more expensive... But they've deliberately disabled it.
- Speaking of AMD it looks like the full lineup of Zen 4 server CPUs has leaked. (WCCFTech)
Up to 128 cores, 1152MB of L3 cache, 4GHz clock speeds, and 400W TDP, though not all at once.
The lineup is divided into single and dual socket Genoa chips with up to 96 cores and optional 3D cache, and dual socket Bergamo chips with 112 or 128 cores at lower clock speeds.
Genoa is built on 5nm; Bergamo will come along a bit later on TSMC's 4nm process.
Disclaimer: I have a dog with seven paws,
With bloodshot eyes
And savage jaws.
His teeth are long and pointed
And his legs are double jointed,
And he scratches hamsters' eyes out with his claws.
He has other nasty habits
Like chewing bunny rabbits,
And he often eats a pussycat for tea,
If you say it isn't true
I'll set my dog on you,
And he'll bite your ruddy leg off
Just you see!
With bloodshot eyes
And savage jaws.
His teeth are long and pointed
And his legs are double jointed,
And he scratches hamsters' eyes out with his claws.
He has other nasty habits
Like chewing bunny rabbits,
And he often eats a pussycat for tea,
If you say it isn't true
I'll set my dog on you,
And he'll bite your ruddy leg off
Just you see!
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