Tech News

• If you need more than 256GB of RAM for your desktop, as many of us do, there are affordable Epyc workstation motherboards that support up to 2TB.  (AnandTech)
  
  This one is PCIe 3.0 only, but on the other hand that's seven slots configured as x8/x16/x8/x16/x16/x8/x16 so bandwidth is not in short supply.  Also twin 10G Ethernet plus another port for remote management, and 16 SATA ports.
  
  
  
• Speaking of big computers Folding@Home has hit 1.5 exaflops.  (AnandTech)
  
  Which is a lot.
  
  
  
• The source code to AMD's Navi designs has allegedly been stolen.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Not the drivers, but the designs for the chips themselves.
  
  The only possible market for the stolen data is China, and at this point they'd get sanctioned into dust if they tried anything.
  
  
  
• Implementing function overloading in Python.
  
  It doesn't look all that bad, but you really only want to do this in statically-typed languages, which Python is not.
  
  
  
• The cloud is full.  (The Register)
  
  Oops.
  
  
  
• Linux is dropping support for 100BaseVG networking.  (Phoronix)
  
  That's not a variant of 100G Ethernet.  That's a variant of 100M Ethernet that failed about 25 years ago.

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, March 27 2020 12:39 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, March 27 2020 12:54 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, March 27 2020 12:29 PM (PiXy!)

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• Yes, the mayor of Houston is a Democrat.  (TechDirt)
  
  
  
  
  And so is the police chief:
  
  
  
  
  Who apparently has never heard of Brandenburg v. Ohio:
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Microsoft and Nvidia say their supply chains are coming back to life.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  A two-month bubble in the pipeline will likely mean shortages and higher prices for the rest of the year, though.
  
  
  
• If you're using Adobe Creative Cloud, update it now.  (ZDNet)
  
  There's no known exploit for a new remote file-deletion bug, but it pays to get yourself patched against unknown exploits as well. 
  
  I just checked mine and it had already updated itself, which is good to see.
  
  
  
• Also, time to patch your HPE SSDs.  (ZDNet)
  
  At the stroke of midnight - well, to be specific, 4 years, 206 days, and 16 hours after they are first turned on - certain models with certain firmware revisions will turn into pumpkins.  Which could easily take out your entire RAID array all at once.
  
  

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, March 26 2020 01:22 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: cxt217 at Thursday, March 26 2020 02:05 AM (LMsTt)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, March 26 2020 08:42 AM (PiXy!)

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• Yes, chloroquine phosphate is available from pet stores for treating fish parasites.  That doesn't mean you should eat spoonfuls of it.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• I'm getting a 24 core Threadripper server to play with - I mean, to offload key background processing from expensive cloud services - at my day job.  Intel also has workstation CPUs.  (Serve the Home)
  
  An 18 core Xeon W-2295 costs about the same as a 24 core Threadripper and gets stomped on every benchmark except possibly one that uses AVX-512.  It does have an advantage in memory support - the Xeon can use registered modules, so it can go up to 1TB of RAM vs. 256GB on Threadripper.
  
  That is a shortcoming for AMD because high-end workstations these days tend to start at 256GB.
  
  
  
• Twitter is removing tweets that misinform people about Wuhan Bat Soup Death Plague or at least that's what they say they're doing.  (ZDNet)
  
  What they are actually doing - as I learned personally - is shadowbanning people for jokes, or honest and accurate comments.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• It is literally impossible for speech recognition software to identify the colour of your skin.  (New York Times)
  
  
  
  
  
• Relative is, well, relative.  (The Guardian)
  
  This 555 million-year-old fossil is one of the earliest ever found with bilateral symmetry, so it might conceivably be a direct ancestor.

Video of the Day

Posted by: Jay at Wednesday, March 25 2020 05:15 AM (vuQH5)

Posted by: Rick C at Wednesday, March 25 2020 05:52 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, March 25 2020 07:59 AM (PiXy!)

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• Depending on the global market for essential goods and services is a bad idea.  (The Guardian)
  
  The EU was a bad idea; national self-sufficiency is key.
  
  Yes, The Guardian.
  
  
  
• Intel's upcoming Lakefield processors could be competitive with the Snapdragon 835.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Which is three years old now, so good job Intel.
  
  
  
• Car companies are leaping into the brave new ventilator world.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Ventilators are essential for pneumonia patients but are much simpler than other modern medical devices so this is actually feasible.
  
  The other point of interest is the contrast between the tweets from a Republican president:
  
  
  
  
  And a Democratic governor:
  
  
  
  
  I'd take the political stuff to Twitter but I've been ghostbanned.  Which is like being shadowbanned only they kill you.
  
  
  
• Why is the EAX register called that?
  
  Well, the E stands for "extended" and the X stands for "extended" and everything is shut down and it's a really slow news day.
  
  
  
• On the other hand I got groceries delivered today - everything except the carrot cake, which was out of stock, and the paper towels, which I forgot to order.
  
  And I was able to place an order for next week.  Since Coles stopped doing home deliveries Woolworths has been booked solid, but they seem to be bringing that under control.
  
  
  
• Ordered that Threadripper server at my day job.  Not one but two 8TB enterprise PCIe SSDs.
  
  
  
• Amazon Prime deliveries can now take as long as a month.  (Vox)
  
  Welcome to Australia.
  
  
  
• Amazon Prime Video on the other hand is now streaming the latest cinema releases same day.  (CNet)
  
  Because the cinemas aren't.
  
  
  
• Some French dude named Jean-Louis Gassée speculates on where Apple is headed with MacOS and iOS.  (Monday Note)
  
  What would he know?
  
  
  

Posted by: Jay at Monday, March 23 2020 10:26 PM (vuQH5)

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, March 24 2020 01:20 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, March 24 2020 01:25 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, March 24 2020 01:34 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, March 24 2020 10:56 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, March 24 2020 02:28 PM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Wonderduck at Tuesday, March 24 2020 02:54 PM (cTMj+)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, March 24 2020 03:00 PM (PiXy!)

Posted by: J Greely at Tuesday, March 24 2020 04:37 PM (ZlYZd)

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, March 24 2020 11:47 PM (Iwkd4)

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• The Case of the Counterfeit Unicorn.  (Lowering the Bar)

  The world is facing a real emergency.  Plaintiff is not.  The motion to reconsider the scheduling order is denied.
  
  

• The Case of Google v. Oracle.  (Inside)
  
  The nineteenth iteration of the Oracle / Google debacle has also been postponed due to the catastrophic global plague pandemic situation.
  
  
  
• When you've lost Tech Crunch, you've lost, well, Tech Crunch.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Apple has refilmed Spielberg's Amazing Stories series.  I don't recall the original making much of a splash, and this version sounds like it's achieve laminar flow.  Which is not a good thing.
  
  
  
• Julia 1.4 is out.
  
  Julia is a language for scientific computing, what Fortran would be if it weren't Fortran and was Julia instead.
  
  The big question is does it finally support static compilation and the answer is sort of maybe but I'm using Crystal for that now.
  
  
  
• TSMC has released full details of its 5nm process.  (WikiChip)
  
  Compared to the original 7nm node (there are now updated 7nm nodes) it delivers up to 87% higher transistor density and 15% better performance at the same power consumption or 30% lower power consumption at the same performance.  
  
  It also requires fewer processing steps than 7nm thanks to the use of EUV.  Combined with its higher density that should make it very cost-effective as volume ramps up.  Smaller die sizes mean a lot more good chips per waver.
  
  
  
• Microsoft and Google have put new browser versions on hold temporarily while sysadmins get VPNs deployed for a billion new telecommuters.  (ZDNet)
  
  Bugfixes will continue as normal.
  
  
  
• Microsoft's Surface Go 2 could use Intel's Amber Lake CPU.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Is that good?  Bad?  Apparently it's bad.  Does anyone keep track of the million lakes anymore?
  
  At least as silly as the part numbers have become you can get some idea of a chip's capabilities.  We're talking an m3-8100Y.  The Y means super-ultra-low-power - generally 6W, the m3 means it sucks, and the 8100 means that it's the bottom end of all the 8th generation parts when 10th generation is already out.
  
  That said, we are talking about an 8" tablet, and the CPU is 37% faster than the Pentium 4415Y used in the current Surface Go.
  
  
  

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, March 23 2020 03:41 AM (Iwkd4)

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• Twitter suspended Cory Doctorow for being Cory Doctorow.  (TechDirt)
  
  Good call for once, Twitter.
  
  
  
• Google has cancelled their I/O conference which hasn't been interesting since 2013.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  I thought it had already been cancelled.
  
  
  
• Free plague candy!  (WCCFTech)
  
  I mean games, yes totally games and not candy that will give you the plague.
  
  GOG has 27 free games.  Okay, they're either old titles or minor titles, but they're free.
  
  Steam has...  Oh.  Steam has demos.  Fuck Steam.
  
  
  
• Build a complete 8-bit computer with just five chips.  (IEEE Spectrum)
  
  An Atmel ATmega1284, a USB interface, and four 7400-family ICs.  (Yes, I know.)
  
  The 1284 has 128KB of flash and 16KB RAM, which is enough for a basic 8-bit computer - and it is actually an 8-bit CPU.  It runs at 20MHz with single-cycle execution, though, so it blows any actual 8-bit computer of the era out of the water.  Well, with this design 75% of the CPU time is spent generating the video output, and it runs at 14MHz, but even so.
  
  It runs Forth, which unless the implementation is absolutely terrible will run rings around interpreted Basic.
  
  
  
• The problem with Active Records. (Cal Paterson)
  
  And also with REST.
  
  When I was a little boy programmer my day job was spent working with what is now called the "Active Record pattern" except that this was a long time ago and it actually worked properly.
  
  
  
• We're getting one of those shiny Threadripper servers at my day job.  That will at least give me the chance to try it out and see what it can do before I plunk my own money down.  PassMark says it's three times as fast as our biggest current server on multi-threaded tasks, and about 60% faster single-threaded than our fasted server for that.  
  
  If it works out well we plan to add a bunch more and move stuff out of our expensive cloud servers.
  
  

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Sunday, March 22 2020 04:20 AM (5iiQK)

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Sunday, March 22 2020 04:29 AM (5iiQK)

Posted by: J Greely at Sunday, March 22 2020 07:02 AM (ZlYZd)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, March 22 2020 03:42 PM (PiXy!)

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• That's not the real design of the PlayStation 5, is it?  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  It looks like an automated mini Frisbee launcher to entertain small dogs while you're at work.
  
  
  
• The most mysterious song on the internet.  (Rolling Stone)
  
  There's a complete recording available, but in 35 years of searching no-one has been able to identify it.
  
  
  
  
  
• Geekbench scores cannot be compared across platforms.  (Six Colors)
  
  No, an iPad Pro is not five times faster than a Macbook Air.
  
  
  
• This way to the egress.  (The Register)
  
  AWS egress costs are absurd.  If you're mostly using data outside the cloud of origin, store it on Backblaze, which is much, much cheaper.
  
  
  
• This might be the least worst thing Twitter has done for years.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  
  
  
  And now they'll have to ban....  Oh.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Affinity are offering 90-day free trials and 50% discounts on all their software.  (Affinity)
  
  There's never been a better time to ditch Adobe.

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, March 21 2020 01:20 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Saturday, March 21 2020 10:14 AM (PiXy!)

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• The site is glitchy today. Not this particular blog, for some reason. Working on it.
  
  Update: Whacked it extra hard, errors stopped. Let's see if that sticks. Couldn't find an underlying cause.
  
  
  
• I hate Ethereum.
  
  It's cryptographic Stockholm Syndrome: You're so happy when something finally works that you forget that it shouldn't be that fucking hard.
  
  
  
• I have located the perfect server for our operations.  Threadripper 3960X, 128GB RAM, 8TB PCIe x8 SSD - 1 million IOPS - and a 16TB disk drive for backups.
  
  The same day, the Aussie dollar cratered and now I don't know if I can afford it.  But it's not a one-off deal so maybe I can do something.
  
  (And when I say "perfect" I mean "woohoo total overkill baby".)
  
  
  
• Sony have announced the specs of the PlayStation 5. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  It's around 90% of the Xbox Xeriex X:
  
  
• Same 8 core Ryzen 2 but at 3.5GHz rather than 3.8GHz.
• 36 RDNA 2 CUs vs. 52, but at about a 25% higher clock speed, so it gets 10.3 TFLOPs vs. 12 TFLOPs.
• Much faster SSD - Sony say 5.5GB per second vs. 2.4GB per second on the Xbox.
• Same 16GB of DDR6, but without the odd bandwidth split Microsoft have created.
• 825GB SSD compared to 1TB, but it can be upgraded with select third-party PCIe 4.0 SSDs. Sony will publish an official compatibility list.


Basically close enough that the titles will matter more than the hardware.



• Facebook is blocking New York Times stories on the Wuhan Bat Soup Death Plague. (TechDirt)
  
  Popcorn time.
  
  
  
• Speaking of Corona-chan, she may have met her match: A combination of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin cleared the virus from 100% of patients in the space of a week. (Google Drive) (PDF)
  
  96% of the control group still had the virus active in their systems at the end of the trial.
  
  It's a small study and brand new, so take it with a grain of salt, but it's not the only report of promising results with hydroxychloroquine and similar anti-malarials.
  
  
  
• iPad support for mice and trackpads reportedly doesn't suck. (Six Colors)
  
  Which is interesting because mouse support on MacOS is a disaster area.
  
  
  
• Nikola Tesla, call your office. Lab. Whatever. (Ars Technica)
  
  The Waveshare e-ink display is controlled by NFC from your smartphone.
  
  It is also powered by NFC from your smartphone.
  
  Downside: It takes five seconds to comply. Refresh. It takes five seconds to refresh.
  

Posted by: Jay at Friday, March 20 2020 05:16 AM (vuQH5)

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Tech News

• Samsung has entered production of uEFS 3.1 modules, which are the same as eUFS 3.0 only .1 better.  (AnandTech)
  
  Huge improvement on sequential write performance, from 410MB/s to 1200MB/s.  How much phones really need that I don't know, but in some situations, like saving raw photo data, that would be a big help.
  
  
  
• The 70s are back, and this time they're fractal.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Fractal Design, to be specific.

  The blue and rose-gold options both also come with the dark tempered glass pane, but if you want a more natural look, there is also a grey option with a walnut top insert and a white silver choice with a white oak top.

  Only walnut and white oak?  What about beech and cherry?
  
  
  
• American journalists encounter actual totalitarianism.  (TechDirt)
  
  And they don't like it much.
  
  
  
• An Italian hospital ran out of valves for much-needed ventilators, so they 3d-printed them for $1 each.  (TechDirt)
  
  The manufacturer (a) wanted $10,000 each, (b) couldn't supply them, (c) refused to provide the 3d model so that they could be manufactured locally, and (d) threatened to sue.  In all, not a good PR move during a global pandemic.
  
  
  
• Sony is having their PS5 launch event right now.  It's soporific, but amusingly they've composited a shadow audience into the video, MST3K-style.
  
  
  
• Apple's brand new iPad Pro hsa a trackpad.  (Apple)
  
  And a really ugly camera module.
  
  Okay, the trackpad is in the optional keyboard, making it a potential laptop alternative if it didn't suck at being a laptop.
  
  Also, LiDAR for collision detection.
  
  
  
• Apple also updated the MacBook Air and Mac mini.  (Six Colors)
  
  The Air gets the new, slightly less sucky keyboard from the MacBook Pro.  The mini gets more storage.
  
  
  
• Why all([]) returns True in Python.
  
  Mathematically Python is doing the right thing here, no question; the article instead discusses why mathematics is the way it is.