• The USB Promoter Group announced the announcement of the release of the USB4 spec.  (AnandTech)
  
  The spec itself is expected to be announced by the middle of the year.  It's "based on" Thunderbolt 3, but the announcement of what that means hasn't been announced yet.  Expensive cables is a good bet, though.
  
  With this, USB 3.2 Gen 1 will be renamed USB4 Gen 1, USB 3.2 Gen 2 will become USB4 Gen 2, and USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 will become USB4 Gen 2x2.  The new speed will be named USB4 Gen 4x4.
  
  Or maybe not.  Who knows?  These guys have all the branding sense of Supermicro.
  
  
• The University of California told Elsevier to take a hike.  (TechDirt)
  
  Elsevier is the Engulf and Devour of the academic publishing world, so this is significant.
  
  
• SPOILER is yet another speculative execution flaw in Intel CPUs.  (The Register)
  
  Though it's not clear how significant it is.  Reportedly it doesn't affect Arm or AMD CPUs.
  
  

Elsewhere

Picture of the Day

Posted by: Rick C at Wednesday, March 06 2019 01:40 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Rick C at Wednesday, March 06 2019 02:30 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, March 06 2019 08:53 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Wednesday, March 06 2019 11:34 AM (xOgT9)

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• Linux 5.0 is out!  (Phoronix)
  
  The bug that led to a week's delay turned out not the be a significant problem, but the extra week allowed things to settle down a bit so all is well.
  
  
• Did a Singapore retailer just leak all the Ryzen 3000 configurations and pricing?  (Reddit)
  
  Probably not.  Looks like they copied and pasted the previous unconfirmed leaks right into their price list.
  
  
• XKCDify your Matplotlib charts.
  
  This is actually kind of cool.  You can see how it makes information more accessible by being less perfect.
  
  
• An 8-port 10GbE router/switch for $270?  (Serve the Home)
  
  Well, maybe.  It's MicroTik, which has a less than stellar security record.  And it's underpowered for L3 / routing functions.  But switching works fine, and it's passively cooled.  (And it's A$350 locally, which is pretty good.)
  
  But it's SFP+ rather than 10Gbase-T.  They don't seem to have any 10Gbase-T models at all.
  
  
• In a timely reminder that everyone's a goddamn idiot, it looks like Chinese surveillance teams left their collected data in a publicly-exposed MongoDB database with no password.  (Bleeping Computer)

  "There is no security. It looks like they have NO CLUE what they are doing,” the researcher told us.

• The QuadrigaCX mystery deepens.  (NewsBTC)
  
  The CEO of Quadriga died in a hospital in India last December.  (There were suggestions he faked his own death, but there seems to be a death certificate and a body, which would be tricky to arrange.)
  
  Most of the funds held on behalf of clients were stored offline on cold wallets, which is standard practice - if it's not plugged in, you can't hack it.  But only the CEO had the necessary password, so C$190 million disappeared overnight, leaving staff scrambling to recover access.
  
  Only...  No deposits were made to the known cold wallets since April of last year.  All the information is public, but no-one has been able to trace through the maze just yet.
  
  
• A roundup of Ryzen V1000 and Epyc 3000 boards.  (Serve the Home)
  
  Ryzen V1000 is an embedded version of the Ryzen 2000-series APUs - up to 4 cores and Vega 11.  Epyc 3000 is something that so far doesn't exist on the desktop, a one or two die CPU package, with between 4 and 16 cores.
  
  There are ITX and STX and all sorts of other formats to choose from.
  
  
• This waifu does not exist.  (thiswaifudoesnotexist.net)
  
  This waifu does not exist.
  
  
  
  This waifu does not exist?
  

• Lenovo's Tab V7 is a reasonably-priced 7" phoneblet.  (Android Central)
  
  6.95" 2160x1080 screen, Snapdragon 450 (eight core A53, 1.8GHz), 3/32GB or 4/64GB, USB-C, headphone jack, LTE, and just one camera each on the front and back.  5180mAh battery, total weight 195g.
  
  €249 for the base model, price not yet given for the 4/64GB model.
  
  It's not anything special design-wise, but with the lack of compelling small tablets lately it might be worth taking a look.  I'd prefer 1920x1200 (as on the 2013 Nexus 7, which I still have and still works), but a wider screen makes it hard to thumb-type.
  
  
• The semiconductor industry will need new resist chemistries if it is to reach the 1nm process node.  (EETimes)
  
  Well, that's a bit of a down - wait, 1nm?
  
  "But", you say, "1nm is only five silicon atoms wide.  How can they do that?"
  
  The answer is surprisingly simple, and uses a technique known to the semiconductor industry since the beginning.  It's a lie.  Nothing about the 1nm node is actually 1nm.  But since nothing about the current 7nm process is actually 7nm, this doesn't matter as much as you might expect.
  
  
• Update your ColdFusion deployments now!  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  People still use ColdFusion?  Well, Supermicro does.  I was pasting in the links yesterday and I was all "Dot c-f-m?  Seriously?"
  
  
• Japan's SDF tells SJWs to get bent, says Strike Witches is awesome.  (One Angry Gamer)
  
  "Also, they are wearing pants."
  
  
• Space X launches a dragon into orbit.  (Ars Technica)
  
  Nothing about launching dragons into space could possibly turn out badly.
  
  
• Facebook is finally shutting down its Onavo bullshit spyware free VPN.  (TechDirt)
  
  This comes after Apple yanked a similar Facebook bullshit spyware free VPN from the App Store and revoked Facebook's enterprise certificate.

• Lenovo's Yoga C930 has a quad-core CPU, up to 16GB of RAM and 2TB of SSD, Thunderbolt, a pen, Dolby Atmos sound - and a terrible, terrible display.  (AnandTech)
  
  Remember that Acer laptop where greens were really green and whites were green and blues were also green?  Same deal here.  Might even be the same panel.
  
  AnandTech tested the 1080p model; there's also a 4K option which would necessarily be using a different panel and might be better.
  
  Also, it doesn't have dedicated PgUp/PgDn/Home/End keys despite being a 14" laptop, so no-one should buy it anyway.
  
  
• Chuwi's Aerobook is a 13.3" 1080p laptop that does have dedicated PgUp/PgDn/Home/End keys.  (AnandTech)
  
  8GB RAM and 128GB SSD, which isn't much, but the storage is user-upgradable and the price is expected to be $499.  Only real problem then is the CPU - a sluggish ultra low power Core M.
  
  Chuwi also announced the Ubook, an 11.6" model with a pen and detachable keyboard, expected to cost from $469 for the base model to $699 with 1TB of SSD.
  
  
• Supermicro's A2SDi-8C+-HLN4F is more than just a forgotten Hugo Gernsback novel.  (Serve the Home)
  
  It's a mini-ITX board with an 8 core Atom (the good Atom, so it's merely kind of slow rather than abominable), four DIMM slots supporting up to 256GB ECC RAM, 12 SATA ports, 4 GbE ports plus an extra for the BMC, one M.2 slot (PCIe 3.0 x 2) and one PCIe slot (x4).
  
  
  
  And it uses just 33W at full load.
  
  If you need faster networking, the A2SDi-H-TF has dual 10GbE ports rather than the quad 1GbE.  And if you need a bit more CPU oomph, the A2SDi-H-TP4F has a 16 core Atom CPU, dual 10GBaseT, and dual 10Gb SPF+ ports.
  
  
  
• Astrophysicists finesse the FRB.  (Quanta)
  
  
• Is a 32" 4K display with 95% DCI-P3 gamut a good deal at $349?  (Tech Report)
  
  Maybe.  Some reviews on Amazon say that the contrast ratio is, well, crap.  Others seem to be happy with it though.
  
  

• Never one to under-react to a fake crisis, YouTube is reportedly disabling comments on all videos featuring young children.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  
• The EU just fell foul of its own planned fake news regulations.  (TechDirt)
  
  In a fit of irony that only people with at least two functioning brain cells could have predicted.

• Xiaomi is teaming up with Light - makers of that weird 16-camera camera - to make multiple multiple camera phones.  (AnandTech)
  
  Where "multiple" can mean as many as 18.
  
  
  
  
• Lenovo has a 595 gram 14" portable monitor.  (AnandTech)
  
  Only 1080p though, so meh.
  
  
• The FTC fined dietary supplement company Cure Encapsulations $12.8 million for posting fake reviews on Amazon.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Pretty Cure Review Stars was not the most popular season of the franchise.
  
  
• Hyperloop says it can get people from Sydney to Canberra in 22 minutes.  (ZDNet)
  
  Which is great because it means you can be back in Sydney in 44 minutes.

• Oppo also showed off a foldable phoneblet - just a prototype in this case.  (Ars Technica)
  
  It looks a lot like the Huawei Mate X, with a wraparound screen on the outside and a hand grip thingy.
  
  
• Samsung's Exynos 9820 vs Qualcomm's Snapdragon 855.  (Ars Technica)
  
  The Galaxy S10 range uses Samsung's own CPU in many parts of the world.  How does it compare?  It's...  Okay.
  
  
• USB 3.2 should show up this year.  (Ars Technica)
  
  To make things simpler, 5Gbps USB 3.0 and USB 3.1 Gen 1 will be renamed USB 3.2 Gen 1, 10Gbps USB 3.1 Gen 2 will be renamed USB 3.2 Gen 2, and the new 20Gbps standard will be named USB 3.2 Gen 2x2.
  
  Guys?  USB 5, USB 10, USB 20.
  
  You're welcome.
  
  
• Supermicro motherboards can host persistent rats in their BMC.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  This is one of the reasons everyone doubted that Bloomberg story - if you want to hack servers, it's much simpler to do it in software.
  
  At the moment the cure is to simply update the BMC firmware before deploying or re-deploying a server.
  
  
• Zero Server.

  It allows you to build your application without worrying about package management or routing. Write your code in a mix of Node.js, React, HTML, MDX, and static files and put them all in a folder.

  Take off and nuke the entire site from orbit.
  
  Twice.
  
  
• Amazon Personalize is a new AWS API that provides the same recommendation engine used by the Amazon online store.
  
  Lol.
  
  Lol.
  
  Lol.
  
  Lol.
  
  The marketing team at my day job asked me to whip up a quick recommendation system.  I gave them a search engine instead, since I wasn't in the market for busywork for a dozen generations of grad students.
  
  
• ASRock Rack's X470D4U is a Ryzen (AM4) server motherboard.
  
  Yes.  Finally.
  
  MicroATX form factor, which is fine.  Supports either up to 64GB of RAM, or 64GB RAM modules.  Since it uses unbuffered memory and 64GB unbuffered modules don't exist yet, it's not entirely clear which.
  
  
  
  6 8 SATA ports, 2 NVMe slots (x4 and x2), 2 + 1 GbE ports (the extra for the BMC module), 2 USB 3.1 ports, and VGA.  Three PCI slots, the first slot with bifurcation support for a riser card.
  
  A couple of extra SATA ports would have been nice, but still a pretty nice board.  With the upcoming Ryzen 3000 chips this year it will allow a new wave of cheap and very fast servers with ECC memory, and blow Intel out of the water.
  
  Update: It does have a couple of extra SATA ports.  The spec sheet is a bit confusing.  6 ports off the chipset and two extra ports off an Asmedia controller.  On the board picture (now included) it's much clearer.
  
  
• And then everyone got the clap.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Thunderclap attacks devices with Thunderbolt ports because Thunderbolt directly exposes the internal PCIe bus.  IOMMU is supposed to prevent this, but only MacOS universally supports it and even there it has flaws.
  
  
• SK Hynix detailed its upcoming 16Gb DDR5-6400 memory chips.  (AnandTech)
  
  Okay, so...  Unless JEDEC have changed things, 6400MT/s is the top speed specified for DDR5, and manufacturers are planning to launch at that speed.  I think something needs to give, guys.

• China is exporting censorship.  (TechDirt)
  
  It's cheap, if not quick, to get books printed in China.  Now they're fucking over their printing industry by censoring every page, even for books printed in foreign languages and destined for foreign countries.
  
  
• British regulators call for more regulations.  (TechDirt)
  
  In this case, they want to regulate social media to prohibit fake news.
  
  Not, you will note, the actual purveyors of fake news, i.e. politicians.
  
  
• Cloudflare is running a canary farm.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Quis canariat ipsos canares?

Posted by: Anonymous Coward at Wednesday, February 27 2019 11:27 PM (LADmw)

Posted by: Jay at Thursday, February 28 2019 01:32 AM (mrlXS)

Posted by: J Greely at Thursday, February 28 2019 02:13 AM (tgyIO)

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, February 28 2019 06:54 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, February 28 2019 07:02 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, February 28 2019 08:53 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, February 28 2019 09:16 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, February 28 2019 09:43 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: J Greely at Thursday, February 28 2019 02:06 PM (tgyIO)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, February 28 2019 06:32 PM (PiXy!)

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• Micron's 960GB BX500 SSD is just $119 at Newegg.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  The link in the article says $199, but I checked and $119 is correct.
  
  This is a low-end drive, but it's 3D TLC flash, not cheaper QLC, and should work just fine in most applications.
  
  You can also get a 512GB Intel 760p - a pretty good M.2 NVMe drive - for
  $103.
  
  
• Extinct Formosan clouded leopard spotted in Taiwan.  (Taiwan News)
  
  Spotted all over, in fact.
  
  
• Micron says me too.  (Globe Newswire)
  
  The object in question being another 1TB microSD card.  Available Q2, no pricing yet.
  
  
• Need 512GB of RAM on a mini-ITX motherboard?  Supermicro has you covered.  (Serve the Home)
  
  8 core Epyc 3251, four DIMM slots (two channels on the 3251 though), four SATA ports, four 1GbE ports (plus another one for the BMC), two USB 3.0 ports, VGA out, one M.2 slot, and a x16 PCIe slot.  66W system power at full load, which isn't bad at all.

• You fell victim to one of the classic blunders. The most famous is "Never get involved in a land war in Asia," but only slightly less well known is this: "Never run a social media company in Europe."  (IPKat via TechDirt)
  
  
• Rotten Tomatoes has wiped out their pre-release "want to see" ratings across the entire site after Captain Marvel got splortched with a rating of 27%.  (One Angry Gamer)

Instructional Poster of the Day

Posted by: Jay at Wednesday, February 27 2019 02:20 AM (mrlXS)

Posted by: Rick C at Wednesday, February 27 2019 02:43 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Rick C at Wednesday, February 27 2019 02:46 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, February 27 2019 09:23 AM (PiXy!)

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• Huawei's Mate X also folds - the other way.  (AnandTech)
  
  It has a Kirin 980 CPU, a 2480x2200 8" screen, 8GB RAM, 512GB flash, a proprietary "fuckYouCard" slot, and costs €2299.
  
  More pictures.  (Huawei)
  
  
• TCL also showed off a folding OLED display.  (AnandTech)
  
  Just the display, not a complete device.
  
  
• LG's G8 and V50 are fairly normal phones.  (AnandTech)
  
  Snapdragon 855, 6GB RAM, 128GB flash, three rear cameras (main, tele, wide), USB-C and headphone jack.  3120x1440 display, 6.1" on the G8 and 6.4" on the V50.
  
  
• Nokia's 9 is also a thing that exists.  (Ars Technica)
  
  Or will be soon.  Snapdragon 845 - last year's model - 6GB RAM, 128GB flash, a 6" 1440p-ish screen (I couldn't find exact numbers), and five 12MP cameras.
  
  
• Is matter conscious?  (Nautilus)
  
  No.  The question is stupid and the people asking the question are stupid.  If you read that article, you will also become stupid.  Don't read it.
  
  The comments are also stupid.
  
  
• Linus stuck Linux back in the oven for another week.  (Phoronix)
  
  This is the big five-o.
  
  
• SanDisk has announced 512GB and 1TB microSD cards.  (BusinessWire)
  
  $200 for 512GB and $450 for the 1TB SanDisk Extreme.  It looks like they're also planning faster Extreme Plus and Extreme Pro models, which will get expensive.
  
  The downside is I can no longer tell people that any 1TB microSD card they see is a fake and they shouldn't waste their money.
  
  The upside is I can add 1TB of extra storage to my laptop.

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, February 26 2019 02:14 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, February 26 2019 10:08 PM (PiXy!)

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• Need a nominally portable battery pack that can charge your iPhone 47 times?  ChargeTech has you covered.  (AnandTech)
  
  It weighs 5.4kg (12lbs) and has a 462 Wh battery.  It could also charge a 2018 MacBook Air 9 times with a little left over.
  
  
• TSMC will begin mass production of 7nm+ in March.  (PC Perspective)
  
  This partly applies EUV to existing 7nm manufacturing.  It's not a huge advance, but it does provide somewhat higher transistor densities and some reductions in power consumption (on the order of 10%).
  
  This will be followed quickly by their 5nm process, which uses EUV throughout, and provides substantial improvements in transistor density - a 5nm chip could be close to half the size of the equivalent 7nm chip.
  
  
• DNS is doomed.  (ZDNet)
  
  Well, doomed-ish.  ICANN is urging everyone to move to DNSSEC.
  
  Problem: No-one uses DNSSEC.  At my day job we own two TLDs, and deal directly with various registries and registrars, and the uptake so far is minimal.
  
  
• Premiere Pro had a TINY AUDIO GLITCH.  (ZDNet)
  
  Fixed now, but that might not be entirely satisfactory if your sound equipment or hearing are already permanently damaged.
  

• Is Patreon angling to be acquired by Facebook?  (Tech Crunch)
  
  That would make sense of their recent abject fuckery.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Monday, February 25 2019 04:57 PM (LZ7Bg)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, February 25 2019 08:09 PM (PiXy!)

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