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Tuesday, June 04
This Post Is Sponsored By Edition
Top Story
- In addition to the Zen 5 desktop lineup, AMD has announced its first Zen 5 laptop CPUs, codenamed Strix Point. (Tom's Hardware)
These are mainstream chips with integrated graphics.
Compared to the previous generation, the CPU cores increase from 8 to 12, and the graphics cores from 12 to 16.
Eight of the twelve CPU cores are the smaller, slower, Zen 5c, so the 12 core model is probably equivalent to a 10 core Zen 5 CPU - or as fast as a 12 core Zen 4.
The model I'm really waiting for is Strix Point Halo, with more than 16 CPU cores - we don't know exactly how many - and 40 graphics cores. That hasn't been announced yet.
- Asus has announced several laptops based on the new AMD chips. (Liliputing)
None of them have the Four Essential Keys.
No release dates yet but this particular model is listed for pre-order at Best Buy for $1399.
Tech News
- Intel also announced new laptop chips. (AnandTech)
Lunar Lake is due out by September, aimed at mainstream laptops. Intel says that the new Performance cores offer 16% better IPC than the previous generation - exactly the same increase as AMD claims for Zen 5.
Intel also claims that the Efficiency cores can provide 70% better single-threaded performance and 3x better multi-threaded performance than the previous E-cores in Meteor Lake.
If that's accurate, it's a huge improvement, taking the E-cores (which were adequate but not good) to a level where they are directly comparable to Zen 5c.
Lunar Lake will be followed up by Arrow Lake before the end of the year, by while Arrow Lake will have the new Performance cores, it might still have the older, slower Efficiency cores.
So go for Lunar Lake? Not so fast. Lunar Lake will only be available with memory soldered directly onto the CPU, a maximum of 32GB.
- New York plans to restrict the use of social media recommendation algorithms for teenage users. (CNBC)
I... Yeah. Okay. Good luck.
- If you have a third-party repair on your Google phone and send it in to Google for additional repairs... They will just keep it. (Android Authority)
Because fuck you, that's why.
- After raising $100 million in capital, "AI fintech" startup LoanSnap is being sued, fined by federal and state authorities, and evicted. (Tech Crunch)
Well, it's a start, but let me know when it escalates to prison time.
- Australia's "e-Safety Council" is now openly protecting pedophiles. (Twitter)
The tweet banned from view in Australia reports on an "LGBTQIA+ club" in a public school in Melbourne... For children aged 8 to 12.
The video and screenshots of the banned tweet have now been posted by an Australian senator, so the attempted silencing has had its usual effect.
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Monday, June 03
No Edition
Top Story
- The rumors were correct, and at Computex Taipei today AMD announced new CPUs due in stores next month. (AnandTech)
The Zen 3 based eight core 5800XT (a minor speed upgrade over the 5800X) and sixteen core 5900XT (a major upgrade over the twelve core 5900X) will refresh the AM4 platform.
- Oh, and Zen 5 will also be out next month. (AnandTech)
These will arrive in the form of the 9600X, 9700X, 9900X, and 9950X, with TDPs ranging from 65W for the first two, to 170W for the 9950X.
The 9600X and 9700X use 40W less than their Zen 4 predecessors, and the 9700X uses 50W less.
At the same time they're an average of 16% faster on real tests, and twice as fast in some specific cases.
- Server CPUs are coming soon as well, with up to 192 cores.
Tech News
- Snowflake is at the center of the world's largest data breach. (Double Pulsar)
Snowflake is saying that they weren't breached, it's just that multiple customers were breached, all at the same time, without them noticing or doing anything about it.
- How the new Microsoft Recall feature fundamentally undermines Windows security. (Double Pulsar)
Surely it's not that bad?
- Stealing everything you ever type or viewed on your Windows PC is now possible - with just two lines of code. (Double Pulsar)
It is that bad.
- The Asus ROG Ally X is what the Asus ROG Ally should have been. (The Verge)
It's not an upgrade in terms of screen or CPU, but it improves a whole host of small mechanical issues, increases RAM from 16GB to 24GB, doubles the storage, and doubles the battery life, while only adding two ounces to the weight.
- Quake in 13k of JavaScript. (Tom's Hardware)
Well, sure, why not?
- AI is a secret octopus playing connect the dots. (Tech Crunch)
Pretty much, yeah.
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Sunday, June 02
Disempenguinated Edition
Top Story
- The first launch of the Boeing Starliner has been scrubbed - again - this time due to a computer problem. (CBS)
The launch is controlled by three independent computers that for safety reasons have to agree at all times. Four minutes before launch one appears to have gotten into an argument with the other two and decided it wasn't going to talk to them until they apologised.
Engineers on site seem to be resigned. "I'm married with four kids", said one. "This might take a while."
Tech News
- TSMC is preparing both 12nm and 5nm versions of its controller chips for HBM4 modules. (AnandTech)
Smaller than a postage stamp, HBM4 will store up to 64GB and have transfer rate of 2TB per second, which is a lot.
- The implosion of an EV startup. (Tech Crunch)
"Elon Musk is an idiot. If he can do it, I can do it."
(Fails miserably.)
Rinse and repeat.
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Saturday, June 01
I think the Minecraft modpack is done. There's nothing I know of to add, and nothing that is causing problems.
It will be uploaded to Curseforge soon, and I'll upload the file here as well - the modpack definition file is only about 600K.
The goal of this is a "vanilla plus plus" feel; that everything in the modpack is something Mojang might add if Microsoft weren't terrified of upsetting the players. So there are no crazy magic mods, and no dramatic changes to the look and feel. It doesn't add to or change any of the status bars, and you start the game empty handed looking for a tree to punch just as always.
Some highlights:
Building and Crafting
- Create, along with a number of add-ons
- Chipped, which alone adds about seven thousand new decorative blocks - and seven new workstations for creating and modifying them
- Chisels and Bits, which lets you use a chisel to carve Minecraft blocks into any shape you fancy
- Domum Ornamentum, which lets you take two Minecraft blocks (including blocks from other mods) and a pattern, and create a new block combining them
Dimensions
- The Aether (with add-ons)
- The Bumblezone
- The Everbright
- The Everdawn
- The Feywild
- The Twilight Forest
- The Undergarden
Creatures
- Bugs Aplenty
- Cane's Wonderful Spiders
- Creeper Overhaul
- Critters and Companions
- Enderman Overhaul
- Exotic Birds
- Grimoire of Gaia, which includes a number of hostile mobs so they are set to only start showing up after 28 days in game
- More Mob Variants, which includes all the new wolf types coming in 1.21
- Nether Depths
- Nether Overhaul
- Productive Bees
- Unusual Fish
- What the Gecko
Others
- Villages and villagers have received a major upgrade combining about thirty different mods and resource packs - though they're still kind of dumb because the AI upgrade I tried made the game crash
- Food and drink are completely overhauled, with Aquaculture, Croptopia, Farmer's Delight giving a huge range of crops and cooking options, and the Let's Do series bringing wine, beer, spirits, tea and coffee, and candlelit dinners
- New measures to protect and enhance your pets - plus a lot of new pets to find
- Easier travel with Small Ships, Immersive Aircraft, and from Tameable Beasts several new steeds to ride - some of which can fly
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Xboxnt Edition
Top Story
- Xbox is was down. (Reddit)
Pixy, your Xbox and Xbox 360 are sitting in a box in the garage, and your Xbox Series X is sitting in its original box in the closet because you still haven't opened it. What do you care?
I can't log in to Minecraft.
I have Minecraft installed. I have my own server. I can't play it because a service I don't use and don't care about is down.You may not be able to sign-in to your Xbox profile, may be disconnected while signed in, or have other related problems. Features that require sign-in like most games, apps and social activity won't be available.
This apparently includes offline single-player games that you have already installed on your console. And Minecraft.
- Live Nation has confirmed earlier reports of a data breach. (Tech Crunch)
The company itself wasn't hacked, but:A spokesperson for Ticketmaster, who would not provide their name but responded from the company’s media email address, told TechCrunch that its stolen database was hosted on Snowflake, a Boston-based cloud storage and analytics company.
I hate cloud storage.Snowflake said in a post on Friday that it had informed a "limited number of customers who we believe may have been impacted" by attacks "targeting some of our customers' accounts." Snowflake did not describe the nature of the attacks, or if data had been stolen from customer accounts.
The problem there is that when Snowflake says "a limited number of customers", they mean "a handful of the largest corporations in America", not "a small number of individual people".
And just one of Snowflakes customers had half a billion customers of its own.
As always with security, it's only as strong as the Post-it note on the intern's desk at your cloud storage provider.
Tech News
- The same group offering Live Nation's data for sale also claims to have hacked Santander, a Spanish bank with thirty million customers. (BBC)
Given the confirmation from Live Nation this one is likely also true.
And deeply unwise. If you mess with banks, you get heavy law enforcement on your tail.
- Putting the Minisforum V3 Tablet to the test. (Hot Hardware)
In short: It works well and is significantly better value than Microsoft's Surface, but the build quality is not quite the same.
- The biggest findings in the Google Search leak. (The Verge)
To nobody's great surprise, Google lied.
- Microsoft's new Windows Recall AI spyware has been hacked to run on unsupported hardware. (The Verge)
Why?! Why would you do this? Couldn't you turn your efforts to something less harmful, like the global distribution of aerosolised plutonium hydroxide?
- Journalists are "deeply troubled" by OpenAI's deals with Vox, The Atlantic. (Ars Technica)
At long last, all the oxygen thieves are getting replaced by a Perl script.
- Minecraft mod Grimoire of Gaia turns out to have a built-in option to only spawn creatures after a given number of in-game days have passed. That's great, because the creatures in the mod have a nasty habit of showing up and immediately killing new players.
I was about to test that when Xbox went down.
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Friday, May 31
Leave It In The Ground Edition
Top Story
- Fracking wastewater from Pennsylvania alone could provide 40% of domestic lithium requirements for the US. (Ars Technica)
The Marcellus Shale formation in Pennsylvania contains enough natural gas to meet all domestic requirements for 18 years all by itself, and is also rich in lithium. So rich that the wastewater from fracking efforts is just loaded with the stuff.
The Ars commentariat is outraged at the thought that extracting critical energy resources could provide other critical resources for free. There's not enough lithium in the world for that lot.
Tech News
- The Framework 13 laptop has a new higher-resolution screen option. Oh, and a new Intel CPU. (Ars Technica)
The CPU is the Intel Meteor Lake series, the 1th generation since Intel renumbered everything. It's... Okay. It uses less power and has improved graphics compared to 12th, 13th, and 14th generation Intel chips.
The screen is a 120Hz 2880x1920 model with rounded corners. The corners are because it's not a custom panel made for Framework, but a 13" 3:2 ratio model that just happened to be available and fit almost perfectly.
Still no Four Essential Keys.
- Twitch has terminated all members of its Safety Advisory Council. (CNBC)
Awesome.
- Spotify will be providing full refunds to all purchasers of its soon to be defunct Car Thing. (Engadget)
Good.
- A group of filmmakers is still trying to force Reddit to cough up the IP addresses of people discussing Bittorrent. District Court Judge James Donato just upheld all previous decisions telling them to take a long walk off a sinking pier. (TorrentFreak)
Good.
- Google claims that it never said putting glue on pizzas and eating rocks was a good idea, and also that customers are satisfied with their new glue-and-rock pizzas so shut up about it already. (The Verge)
User feedback shows that with AI Overviews, people have higher satisfaction with their search results, and they’re asking longer, more complex questions that they know Google can now help with. They use AI Overviews as a jumping off point to visit web content, and we see that the clicks to webpages are higher quality - people are more likely to stay on that page, because we’ve done a better job of finding the right info and helpful webpages for them.
Also that it's your fault:One area we identified was our ability to interpret nonsensical queries and satirical content. Let’s take a look at an example: "How many rocks should I eat?" Prior to these screenshots going viral, practically no one asked Google that question.
You're a bunch of troublemakers, you people, using a search engine for search like that.
- I found out why all the "RPG" dance clips on YouTube are only 24 seconds long.
That's the only good part of the song.
Anime Music Video of the Day
Anime is the recently aired Apothecary Diaries, which is truly excellent and recommended to everyone except children. It's not an adult anime, but it is a grown up anime.
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Thursday, May 30
In Alaska In February With The Windows Open Edition
Top Story
- Google has confirmed that leaked technical details of its search engine are genuine. (The Verge)
Experts believe this is likely to make Google Search worse, though they were unable to explain how this is possible.
Tech News
- Arm has announced its latest mobile CPU cores. (AnandTech)
Of note, the X925 is claimed to be 36% faster than Arm's fastest cores from last year, when built on the latest 3nm process (where last year's cores would have been 5nm).
That's a pretty decent gain, but my phone is five generations behind in CPU cores and works just fine.
- Leaked tests of the upcoming Ryzen 9000 show it faster than a 13900K but slower than a 14900K on single-threaded tests - 18.5% faster than Ryzen 7000. (Tom's Hardware)
While Intel holds the absolute speed record (for now), it did that by pushing 400W of power into eight fast cores. The new Ryzen cores may be very slightly slower, but a Ryzen CPU with sixteen fast cores uses half the power of an Intel CPU with just eight.
- Oh my God, you can't just say that: Construction of Intel's new 1nm fab in Germany has been delayed by "too much black soil". (Tom's Hardware)
That is, the site selected turns out to be first-rate farmland, and Germany has soil conservation laws that require all that soil to be... Something expensive and inconvenient. I don't know what exactly.
- Afnic has announced IBDNS, a DNS server that doesn't work. (Afnic)
Flaky DNS servers are a curse (there's a major Australian website that tries to force people onto its IPv6 address even if they're not connected to IPv6) so they've created one that is deliberately and controllably insane.
- Cheap at half the price: The Khadas Mind. (Serve the Home)
It's decent hardware, but you can get the same specs for half the price if you sacrifice 5% of the build quality.
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Wednesday, May 29
Database go boom at work.
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Tuesday, May 28
Sue All The Things Edition
Top Story
- Elon Musk's xAI has raised $6 billion in funding from people hoping to cash out before the bubble bursts. (Tech Crunch)
Okay. It's still garbage, but it's competition for the communists running OpenAI and Google.
Tech News
- Stop making brightly coloured toys, say anti-waste reasearchers. (The Guardian)
If everything is grey and nobody buys anything, we will all lead happier, more fulfilling lives.
Somehow.
- AMD's Zen 5 could be launching in August and on sale in October. (WCCFTech)
- Or they could be available in retail stores by July. (WCCFTech)
Those stories were posted twelve hours apart.
- Big Data is dead. (Mother Duck)
A decade ago, all the noise that now surrounds AI was about Big Data - querying petabytes of garbage to get bytes of gold.
Turns out there was no gold, and in most cases, not even any petabytes. The typical large company has 100GB of analytical data, with some going up to a terabyte or so, which will fit easily on a cheap consumer SSD that can deliver a million IOPS.
- Medical research into ultra-processed food has tripled since 2020. (Ars Technica)
Has it found anything?
Well, no.
- Specs have leaked for Motorola's next-gen G85 phone. (Notebook Check)
I have a Moto G54, one step down in the previous generation. Great phone. Does everything I need. Cost about $120.
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Monday, May 27
Nice Generators Don't Explode Edition
Top Story
- Widespread power failure at one of the two data centers where I have servers. In fact, it was so widespread that it took out servers I have with two different providers.
Yes, they have battery backup and generators.
No, those didn't work. At all.
But at least this time they didn't explode and set off the sprinkler system leaving the company with weeks of cleanup work.
- Families of the victims in the Uvalde shooting, and the remoras with legs they call lawyers, are suing Activision and Facebook. (Tech Crunch)
They blame Call of Duty for turning a psychopath into, well, a psychopath.
The Call of Duty series has sold around half a billion copies over the past twenty years. If it were the problem, we would know.
Tech News
- The Unreal Engine license requires programmers to use inclusive language in their code. (Bounding into Comics)
In particular, the license takes aim at using genders where none are specifically required by the context, and to avoid vernacular that might be unclear to those not familiar with English.
That's going to go down well with the speakers of gendered languages like French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish, whose languages Unreal owner Epic Games just collectively mega-aggressed.
- Is the RTX 4060 really better than the RTX 3060. Yes. (Tom's Hardware)
It's not worth upgrading, perhaps, but there are very few cases where the 3060 is objectively better.
- Windows 11 IoT Enterprise LTSC is coming - and it can run in 2GB of RAM. (Tom's Hardware)
That's because it strips out all the crap that nobody wants. It doesn't even have the TPM requirement that Microsoft declared an absolute minimum for Windows 11 compatibility.
Which is why you're not allowed to buy it.
- One in nine US children are being diagnosed as children. (NPR)
Dr. Max Wiznitzer, a professor of pediatric neurology at Case Western Reserve University, says he suspects some parents may be reluctant to put their kids on ADHD medication out of misguided concerns. "There's the myth that it's addictive, which it's not." He says studies have shown people treated with ADHD have no increased risk of drug abuse.
Really? Let's ask another expert.The hypotheses underlying the procedure might be called into question; the ... intervention might be considered very audacious; but such arguments occupy a secondary position because it can be affirmed now that [this is] not prejudicial to either physical or psychic life of the patient, and also that recovery or improvement may be obtained frequently in this way.
Oh, my mistake. The second quote was talking about lobotomies.
- ICQ is shutting down after 28 years. (The Verge)
I don't think I ever used it.
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