• Qualcomm has announced the Snapdragon 780G, a new high-midrange mobile chip.  (AnandTech)
  
  This brings the A78 core and 5nm technology to the midrange phones.
  
  
  
• Razer is preparing new laptops with Ryzen 5000 APUs and RTX 3000 graphics.  (WCCFTech)
  
  The real Ryzen 5000 APUs - the Zen 3 models, not the rebadged Zen 2 models.
  
  If these have the Four Essential Keys they might be worth the price, since Razer laptops are otherwise quite good.  But I rather doubt that will happen.
  
  
  
• Is the ship still stuck?  (IsTheShipStillStuck.com)
  
  Yes.
  
  Costing about $10 billion a day in delayed trade.  Ships are beginning to reroute the long way 'round.
  
  
  
• All the uwus.  (GitHub)
  
  A multi-threaded vectorised uwuifier that can uwuify two gigabytes of text per second.
  
  There's even an app for Windows that lives in your systray.
  
  
  
• A $69 million 404 error waiting to happen.  (The Verge)
  
  NFTs are suddenly hot and don't actually store any of the content they represent on the blockchain.  Some use IPFS, but people are pointing out that some of the IPFS files are already missing.
  
  There are technical solutions to this, but you can't do it on Ethereum at present because it's a couple of orders of magnitude too slow and five orders of magnitude too expensive.
  
  
  
• The HP Spectre X360 13 2021 doesn't suck.  (Hot Hardware)
  
  It's Intel rather than AMD, but the 11th gen Intel laptop parts are pretty good (unlike the desktop version).  It does have the Four Essential Keys.  It also has one of those weird Intel H10 drives with 32GB of Optane and 512GB of flash storage, which might partly make up for being limited to 16GB of RAM.
  
  
  
• Speaking of essential keys, the current model XPS 13 has them.  Not in my favoured arrangement at the side, but they are there and dedicated keys.
  
  The XPS 15 and 17, having a lot more room for an optimal keyboard arrangement....  Don't.
  
  

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, March 27 2021 01:59 AM (eqaFC)

Posted by: cxt217 at Saturday, March 27 2021 08:40 AM (4i7w0)

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• My request to replace the splat 24 core Threadripper with a new dual Epyc 7702 was approved immediately, since I have better things to do than fuss with broken servers.
  
  It's slower single-threaded (by about 25%) but faster multi-threaded (by about 150%), and has twice the RAM and SSD.  Should be nice.
  
  Except for the whole single point of failure thing, it could probably run all our applications by itself.
  
  Tech support swapped the drives for the broken server into a brand new system - and it's still broken.  It's giving me memory errors - except when I run a memory test.  Ain't nobody got time for that.
  
  
  
• Samsung is sampling 512GB DDR5 modules for next-gen servers.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  These are still using 16Gbit dies - nobody has anything denser yet.  The DDR5 spec allows for dies to be stacked up to eight high, twice as much as DDR4, hence the higher capacity.
  
  DDR5 also allows for 24Gbit dies, which are more feasible than jumping straight to 32Gbit.  With AMD's next gen Epyc rumoured to have 12 channel memory, we could see weird memory sizes with two factors of three - 9216GB for one socket and one DIMM per channel.
  
  
  
• Genshin Impact has raked in a billion dollars.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Meanwhile I'm sort of generally aware that it's a thing that exists.  There's a character called Paimon, yes?
  
  
  
• Apple may be violating European privacy laws even while boasting of protecting users' privacy.  (Politico)
  
  Or not.  The laws are European, so they mean whatever it is convenient for them to mean, just like Apple's privacy policy.
  
  
  
• Researchers are injecting tiny robots into mouse brains.  (Science Robotics)
  
  Are you pondering what I'm pondering?

Steve, Stop, They're Already Dead Videos of the Day

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, March 26 2021 01:08 AM (eqaFC)

Posted by: normal at Friday, March 26 2021 04:01 AM (LADmw)

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, March 27 2021 01:46 AM (eqaFC)

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, March 27 2021 01:50 AM (eqaFC)

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• Sorry folks, canal's closed.  Camel out front should've told ya.  (ABC)
  
  The Suez is going to need one hell of a laxative.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Intel is back, says Intel.  (AnandTech)
  
  We shall see.
  
  
  
• They will at least be offering x86 core designs for third-parties to embed in their own chips.  (AnandTech)
  
  Which cores was not mentioned.
  
  
  
• Two 32 core Ice Lake Xeons are 4% faster than a single 64 core Epyc.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Epyc Rome, here, not Milan, though Milan averages only 17% faster due to thermal constraints.
  
  Speaking of Epyc Rome, we might be getting a 128 core Epyc server at my day job to replace the 24 core Threadripper that just died.  It's more expensive, but not as much as you might expect, and it comes with twice the RAM and SSD.
  
  
  
• Google has removed ClearURL from the Chome extension store for garbage reasons.  (Hacker News)
  
  On the other hand, someone in the comments notes that ClearURL allows remote code execution via its blacklist, which is a really bad idea.  There's only one source for the blacklist, but that server has a big target painted on its back.
  
  
  
• Reddit has set itself on fire.
  
  
  
  
  
• The Nazis - sorry, I mean "free software advocates" - have come for RMS and the FSF.  (Ars Technica)
  
  Not worth reading, really; it's Ars Technica at its most Ars.  I told them off in the comments and then left.
  
  But it's a useful reminder that the New Left despises the Old Left.
  
  
  
• Was the Wuhan Bat Soup Death Plague human-engineered?  Has Cream of Bat Soup been unfairly maligned all these years?  (MIT Technology Review)
  
  Maybe.  The virus has odd features for both an engineered and a natural pathogen.
  
  
  
  

Mom, I Need A 3090 So I Can Play Minecraft Video of the Day

Is It Wrong to Pick Up Girls in a Minecraft Dungeon Video of the Day

Posted by: cxt217 at Thursday, March 25 2021 03:04 AM (4i7w0)

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, March 25 2021 03:35 AM (eqaFC)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Thursday, March 25 2021 03:39 AM (6y7dz)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Thursday, March 25 2021 03:42 AM (6y7dz)

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, March 25 2021 06:42 AM (eqaFC)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, March 25 2021 09:16 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, March 25 2021 01:42 PM (eqaFC)

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Tech News

• One of our Threadripper servers stopped working this morning.  Got it rebooted, started up all the VMs, and it died again.  Tried starting up just the critical VMs, everything looked good...  Then it died again.
  
  Rebooted again with all the VMs shutdown, and it died just sitting at the command line, so I'm thinking probably not a software problem.  They're running diagnostics now.
  
  
  
• Also set myself up with a Minecraft server, then discovered that Minecraft gives me a headache.  Or maybe I started with a headache because I was dealing with a sick server half the day, because I don't recall that happening last time.
  
  Setting up a Minecraft server is very straightforward; the only difficulty I had was that it's behind three firewalls so I had to poke two holes and make a tunnel in between.
  
  
  
• Crystal has gone 1.0.  (Crystal-Lang)
  
  This release doesn't include major changes or full Windows support - it wasn't intended do.  Rather, it says that the language is now ready for production, and that there won't be any breaking changes before 2.0.
  
  A lot of projects need to learn that lesson.  Elasticsearch, looking at you.
  
  
  
• MangaDex is offline for code updates after a possible database breach.
  
  
  An attacker did access an admin account, and to a previous version of their codebase.  They haven't confirmed a database breach but are taking measures based on that assumption.
  
  The site will likely remain offline for the next two weeks while they do a thorough review.
  
  
  
• HP's Envy x360 15 2021 edition has it almost all.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Four essential keys, check.
  Ryzen 5700U, check.
  Optional 4K OLED display, check.
  1TB NVMe SSD, check.
  
  Wait.... 5700U.  That's Zen 2 - a rebadged 4800U.  You bastards!
  
  Also, it maxes out at 16GB of RAM, which is not bad, but not enough for serious work these days.
  
  
  
• My PC: I can't work anymore.  I don't have a C drive.
  Me: You just booted from your C drive.
  PC: No C drive.
  Me: Let's open Explorer.
  PC: Don't have one of those.
  Me: Open WSL.
  PC: Sure.
  Me: df
  PC: C:\ D:\ F:\ G:\ H:\
  Me: What's that?
  PC: What's what?
  Me: That's a C drive.
  PC: I don't have a C drive.
  Me: ...
  Me: <unplugs missing external drive that should be mapped to E:>
  PC: <spontaneously opens 17 explorer windows for C:>
  PC: <also somehow has lost my VPN settings>
  
  

• Comparing all the CPUs.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Interesting to note that a 32-core Threadripper 3970X delivers an average of 75% of the multi-threaded performance of the 64-core 3990X.  Even 280W isn't enough to run 64 cores at full speed.
  
  It's not bandwidth limited either, as the same is true of the 8-channel Threadripper Pro 3995WX.
  
  There are some Intel results in there too.
  
  
  
• The Radeon 6700 (non-XT) will have 6GB of RAM ans cost under $400 unless it doesn't.  (WCCFTech)
  
  You will not be able to get one.
  
  
  
• If you are running MySQL on a systemd server, it will completely ignore your settings in /etc/security/limits.conf and randomly run out of filehandles.  This will look like random network errors until you manage to trigger it running the command-line interface on the database server.
  
  Fuck systemd.
  
  
  
• The absolute worst case scenario happened.  (r/sysadmin)
  
  Both primary and recovery sites burned to the ground?  Ransomware attack and the backups are unreadable?  Multi-disk failure in a critical RAID array and the tape library jammed?
  
  No.  DNS is down.
  
  That...  Does not seem like the absolute worst case, but perhaps that's just me.
  
  
  
• How exactly to you manage to screw up a simple file management interface so that it...
  
  
  I know, the answer is JavaScript.
  
  
  
• So I went out to have a look and it was millions of spiders.  (The Guardian)
  
  Yes, it's Australia.  Of course it's Australia.  Not to worry, this is miles from where I live.
  
  
  
• The Biden Administration, having roughly the intelligence of a Minecraft squid, has announced it will be deploying cyber attacks against Russia.  (MSN / The Telegraph)
  
  I have no words.
  
  
  

Posted by: normal at Monday, March 22 2021 11:30 PM (LADmw)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Tuesday, March 23 2021 03:27 AM (6y7dz)

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• Get your Pi Pico on the internet.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Since there's not really an operating system to hack, this is probably relatively safe.
  
  
  
• Asus is launching an Intel Xe DG1 graphics card.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Like Intel's previous announcement, this only works with certain CPUs and chipsets; in fact, the Asus version only works with Asus motherboards using those CPUs and chipsets.
  
  This is not likely to present a problem, because there's no reason you'd want to buy one.
  
  
  
• Intel's Alder Like brings DDR5, PCIe 5.0, and up to 2x better multi-threaded performance unless it doesn't.  (WCCFTech)
  
  The last should raise an eyebrow, but typical of Intel they don't specify 2x better in what, or compared to what.  They are fond of comparing performance with their own three year old chips that customers are likely to upgrading from.  Which in this case would mean....  Six cores.  Alder Lake has sixteen cores, though half of those are Atom.
  
  
  
• TP-Link has two new 10Gb switches which aren't too expensive but also don't seem to be available anywhere yet.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  The 5 port version is passively cooled and runs around $275, and the 8 port model is fan-cooled and costs around $450.
  
  
  
• Nvidia's unhackable mining throttling thing is well and truly hacked.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  You need an 8x PCIe slot and a $6 dummy HDMI plug.
  
  
  
• Flatpak considered harmful.  (Flatkill)
  
  I don't use Flatpak but I am forced to use Snap which is quite bad enough, with its insane practice of creating a new and visible filesystem for every single installed package.
  
  
  
• Western Digital's SN850 is fast.  (AnandTech)
  
  Up to twice as fast as the SN750 I got recently.  Also twice as expensive.
  
  
  
• The Surface Duo can now double as a 3DS.  (Thurrott.com)
  
  Without the 3D, but easier to expense.
  
  
  
• Mini-Zork II has been released for the Commodore 64.  (Vintage is the New Old)
  
  Mini-Zork was released back in the day, a cut-down version of Zork that fit in 64k of RAM and could be distributed on tape, though I shudder to think of the loading time.
  
  Mini-Zork II was largely complete but abandoned and eventually buried, but the source code has been rediscovered and it's now available for download if you somehow have a C64 connected to the internet.

Not Exactly Tech News

• Kiara didn't have an outro animation.  She described what she had in mind, and a fan immediately made it for her.  It meets her specifications perfectly.
  
  
  
  

Score One for the Good Guys Video of the Day

• Police warn students to avoid science website.  (BBC)
  
  There are some things man is not meant to know.  And by things we mean science, and by man we mean you.

  "Students should be aware that accessing such websites is illegal, as it hosts stolen intellectual property," said Det Insp Kevin Ives.

  Lern science, go to jail.  Great message there, Kev.
  
  
  
• PCI Express 6.0 is ready to go.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  The spec isn't officially finalised yet, but there is a final draft, and now hardware designs are ready for implementation.
  
  
  
• AMD and Intel are updating interrupt handling for x86.  (ZDNet)
  
  And they have completely different proposals on how to do it.
  
  Linus Torvalds has words:

  Honestly, it doesn't look too bad.

  Oh.
  
  AMD is doing a minimal change that fixes the key bugs that plague operating system designers, while Intel is doing a complete rethink that will provide a better long-term solution.  And, in fact, the two solutions are compatible if the companies can agree to cross-licensing.
  
  This is why we can have nice things.
  
  
  
• Victoria University in Wellington deleted all the files on every PC on their network.  (Newshub)
  
  Someone had a bad day after that.  More than one someone, probably.
  
  
  
• Bullshit water turns out to be harmful as well as expensive and useless.  (Ars Technica)
  
  Five children have suffered liver failure after drinking alkaline water; fortunately all have recovered.
  
  The company marketing this crap has been sued.
  
  Good.

Posted by: cxt217 at Sunday, March 21 2021 03:37 AM (4i7w0)

Posted by: Rick C at Sunday, March 21 2021 04:07 AM (eqaFC)

Posted by: cxt217 at Sunday, March 21 2021 08:16 AM (4i7w0)

Posted by: Rick C at Sunday, March 21 2021 10:20 AM (eqaFC)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, March 21 2021 07:21 PM (PiXy!)

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• AMD will not be implementing driver or firmware changes to limit GPU mining.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Because they did it in hardware.
  
  Not specifically, but the RDNA 2 design with less memory bandwidth and a large cache (96MB or 128MB) is markedly slower for mining tasks than Nvidia cards in the same price bracket.
  
  Oh, and the 6700XT is almost out of stock already in Australia.
  
  
  
• AWS has added Lambda to S3.  (ZDNet_
  
  They call it Object Lambda, and you can wire it up so that when you read a fil via the standard S3 API, it actually runs through a linked function first and returns the output of that function.  Useful, for example, for transforming JSON data automatically without having to manager your own database and application server.
  
  
  
• 19 different antivirus companies class uTorrent as malware.  (TorrentFreak)
  
  Hmm.  I switched to Deluge quite some time ago, so I'm not sure what uTorrent may or may not have been up to. 
  
  
  
• The bans will continue until morale improves.  (TorrentFreak)
  
  Russia is still threatening to block Twitter.  Since obviously people will just use VPNs to access it, they are also threatening to block VPNs, and ultimately, all content from outside Russia, some of which content even now is not entirely without value.
  
  
  

Posted by: Jay at Saturday, March 20 2021 06:08 AM (0jVI9)

Posted by: normal at Saturday, March 20 2021 06:08 AM (obo9H)

Posted by: normal at Saturday, March 20 2021 06:11 AM (obo9H)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Saturday, March 20 2021 10:07 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Mauser at Saturday, March 20 2021 02:54 PM (Ix1l6)

Posted by: J Greely at Saturday, March 20 2021 03:55 PM (ZlYZd)

Posted by: cxt217 at Sunday, March 21 2021 03:31 AM (4i7w0)

Posted by: Mauser at Sunday, March 21 2021 05:52 AM (Ix1l6)

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• Radeon 6700 XT is here and how it does depends on which review you read.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Or perhaps more significantly, on which game you are interested in.  Performance ranges from slightly behind the 3060 Ti on certain titles to faster than the 3080 on others.
  
  I suspect this is because AMD reduced memory bandwidth and compensated with a very large (96MB) on-chip cache, and some games are happier about that than others.  Driver updates will likely improve things going forward, but for now it's worth checking for benchmarks for your favourite games, because that makes the difference between whether this is a good card for you, or a great one.
  
  Of course you have to be able to get it first.
  
  
  
• HP spilled the beans on Intel's upcoming Ice Lake server parts.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  They will go up to 40 cores.  This makes perfect sense, because of the way cores are arranged in Intel's server parts.  They use an X x X+1 grid - 3x4, 4x5, 5x6 - with two of the grid locations reserved for I/O rather than cores.
  
  So 3x4 gives 10 cores, 4x5 gives 18 cores, and 5x6 gives 28 cores - the current top of the line.  Next stop is 6x9, which equals 42.
  
  
  
• AMD's upcoming Van Gogh APU has 256-bit DDR5 support unless it doesn't.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  The information comes from a Linux kernel boot log, which includes these details:

  [ 99.984978] [drm] Detected VRAM RAM=1024M, BAR=1024M
[ 99.984981] [drm] RAM width 256bits DDR5
[ 99.985223] [drm] amdgpu: 1024M of VRAM memory ready
[ 99.985233] [drm] amdgpu: 3072M of GTT memory ready.

  It's possible, the article notes, that this is just the Linux kernel misidentifying four channel DDR5 as 4x64 bits rather than 4x32 bits - DDR5 has 32-bit channels.
  
  But given that this is expected to be a Zen 2 + RDNA 2 part, it's also possible that AMD really is shipping a high-end IGPU with support for 256 bits of DDR5, because they already are.  That's exactly what's found in the current Xbox and Playstation lineups.
  
  Well, almost exactly; they use GDDR6 and the Xbox has a 320-bit bus, but they are both Zen 2 + RDNA 2 designs.  Simply remove the custom logic designed for either partner and ship a die built with only AMD's standard bits and you'll have the fastest PC APU ever made and it won't even be close.
  
  
  
• Is building SMB directly into the Linux kernel entirely a good idea?  (Phoronix)
  
  I seem to recall there having been problems with this before.
  
  
  
• YouTube does not, in fact, have your back.  (TorrentFreak)
  
  Though I can see that getting warned of garbage copyright strikes before a video goes live is better than having your entire channel deleted without warning afterwards.
  
  
  
• What the hell is that squiggle-looking thing?  (Shapecatcher)
  
  Shapecatcher is Shazam for Unicode.  Draw a squiggle and it will find the closest matches.  Currently it doesn't handle kanji, but does do a lot of the really weird and rare glyphs.
  
  Let's see...  Alchemical symbol for urine?  Well, sure, I guess.
  
  
  

Ender Genocide Video of the Day

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, March 19 2021 01:27 AM (eqaFC)

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, March 19 2021 01:37 AM (eqaFC)

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, March 19 2021 01:42 AM (eqaFC)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, March 19 2021 01:52 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, March 19 2021 01:57 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, March 19 2021 01:57 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, March 19 2021 06:41 AM (eqaFC)

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, March 19 2021 07:11 AM (eqaFC)

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• Programming on Ethereum is like trying to write COBOL on an IBM 701 with only two tape drives.
  
  Your maximum compiled code size is just 24k, and breaking your code into multiple contracts can actually increase the size rather than reducing it.  Procedures can have a total of 16 variables, including parameters and explicit and implicit variables.  Apart from the code size limit, there's also a gas limit on deploying contracts that can bite you even if you're technically under the code size limit.
  
  And every time you need to push an update to production - if you can even do that, because by default contracts cannot ever be changed - it costs you a thousand bucks.
  
  
  
• Asus has shown off a new Thunderbolt 4 expansion card that can drop right in to any motherboard with an open PCIe x4 slot.  (AnandTech)
  
  If the motherboard comes with a matching Thunderbolt header because fuck you that's why.
  
  
  
• Intel's 11th generation Rocket Lake parts are here, much to nobody's surprise.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  They note that the eight-core Rocket Lake die measures 276mm² (slightly smaller than the previous estimate) while the ten-core Comet Lake measured just 206mm².
  
  Yes, they do seem to be available, but so are the six and eight core Ryzens now.  The high-end Ryzens are still hard to find, but Intel has no competitor there.
  
  
  
• Let's gray out menu items just because.  (All This)
  
  Apple is also bad at user interface design.  Good at making things look pretty.  Bad at making them useful.
  
  
  

Zombie Electroswing Rap Opening Theme Video of the Day

Posted by: Phil Fraering at Thursday, March 18 2021 04:00 AM (Clxcy)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, March 18 2021 09:17 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Phil Fraering at Thursday, March 18 2021 01:44 PM (Clxcy)

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