• Employees at Apple's flagship New York store are working towards unionisation.  (9to5Mac)
  
  That's not the good part.  The good part is the comments.  Pro-union liberals and anti-Apple conservatives fighting pro-Apple liberals and anti-union conservatives.
  
  I need popcorn.
  
  
  

Tech News

• Dell has implemented proprietary DDR5 memory modules in its new Precision laptop range.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  The single "CAMM" module supports up to 128GB of RAM - which would otherwise require four 32GB SODIMMs.  Four memory slots are rare but not unknown in workstation-class laptops.
  
  It's still a little better than soldered RAM, just not much.
  
  
  
• Samsung's main semiconductor division is, reportedly, a mess.  (SemiAnalysis)
  
  The problem is corporate culture delaying necessary changes to fundamental processes - not unlike what was happening with Intel for nearly a decade.
  
  A lot of the article is speculative, but there are definitely delays and yield issues at Samsung's fabs, not to mention a distinct lack of progress at developing their own mobile processors.
  
  
  
• Speaking of Intel its new 56 core Sapphire Rapids server chips hit 3.3GHz at just 420W.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  If you're thinking that's rather a lot, that's because it is.
  
  This should be a pretty fast chip and provide much-needed competition to AMD's 64 core Epyc range, except that AMD is expected to ship 96 core Epyc CPUs this year and 128 core models early next year.
  
  
  
• I for one embrace our new robot chef overlords.  (ZDNet)
  
  Where's the obligatory dig at the Chick-fil-A owners' religion - oh, there it is.  Still:

  it's renowned for good food, staff who say "my pleasure" -- and sound like they mean it -- and traffic jams at its drive-thrus.

  Which is more than most journalists are prepared to concede.