• Running Android without Google.  (Tom's Guide)
  
  Okay, so the hardware in the two tests reported here is sold by google - the Pixel 4a and Pixel 5 - but the software is two versions of Android - /e/OS and GrapheneOS - stripped of all the Google-specific software and tracking.
  
  You can still install the Play Store and install all your usual apps, and they will (mostly) work the same as before.  The one thing highlighted here is that you will lose Google's custom camera app - and this results in a marked drop in photo quality because the software is doing most of the magic there.
  
  But if you want out of the Google trap without losing compatibility entirely, either of these might be a viable option.

• What's coming up in AMD motherboards.  (PC Magazine)
  
  AMD launches Ryzen 7000 and the matching Socket AM5 motherboards on September 15, and the motherboard makers have gone beyond leaks to official previews of the hardware.
  
  The new boards will bring a few new features: PCIe 5 for double the I/O bandwidth, DDR5 for about 60% more memory bandwidth, and USB 4 for double the bandwidth there if and when 40Gbps USB devices show up.
  
  10Gb Ethernet also seems to be more common than on the last generation, which is welcome given the paucity of PCIe slots these days.
  
  
  
• AMD is also releasing a new range of video cards this year.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  These will offer a lot more compute power than the current generation - two to three times at the high end, but it remains to be seen what that translates to in terms of graphics performance and power consumption.  I suspect you'll get something like a 50% improvement at the same MSRP and TDP, with the high-end cards being way out there on both numbers.
  
  
  
• Does the Dog Die is a cute idea driven into the ground and then nuked from orbit.  (Does the Dog Die)
  
  There's a Twitter account CanYouPetTheDog which simply documents what video gams let you pet a dog.  That's fun.
  
  Does the Dog Die tries to catalog every potential trigger for the most hyper-neurotic people in existence.  That's not fun at all.

Posted by: normal at Monday, August 15 2022 08:12 AM (obo9H)

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