• Nvidia has launched the GTX 1660 Ti much to no-one's surprise.  (AnandTech)
  
  It's about 25% faster on compute than the GTX 1060, with 50% more memory bandwidth (replacing GDDR5 with faster GDDR6).  This makes it a solid upgrade over the 1060 and an easy winner over AMD's similarly-priced RX 590.  In some titles it even beats the GTX 1070, which was a very solid mid-range card.
  
  It lacks the ray-tracing and AI features of the recent RTX launches, but for most games that makes no difference.  If you want a reasonably-priced card for 1080p or 1440p gaming, this looks like the one to get.  For 4k it's underpowered and short on memory.
  
  AMD will likely drop pricing on the RX 580 and 590 soon to keep them relevant.  The other card they have up their sleeve is the Vega 56, which is comfortably faster than the GTX 1660, but is likely too expensive to manufacture to allow substantial price cuts.
  
  
• HP seems to have spilled the beans on Intel's Cascade Lake server chips.  (Serve the Home)
  
  They look just like the current Wombat Lake [insert correct name here] range, so this is the most boring leak ever.
  
  
• V is a new language that blah blah blah why can't curly bracket languages just die already.
  
  It compiles 1.5 million lines of code per second per thread (on what CPU?) and, um, there's nothing on their GitHub yet.
  
  
• Redis Labs changed its "open source" license again.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  The existing license wasn't open source, but apparently wasn't not open source enough, so they changed it.  Again.
  
  It's important to keep in mind that Redis Labs doesn't produce Redis, though they help fund its development, and Redis is still truly open source under the three-clause BSD license.  The Redis Labs license only applies to Lua modules like their search engine and Bloom filter, which are, well, meh.
  
  
• Redis itself is proceeding unchanged, with no major changes planned except for access control, which will be welcome.
  
  

• Pinterest has started censoring wrongthink.
  
  The Guardian, of course, applauds.
  
  Now in this case they are censoring anti-vaccine bullshit, but that's not really any better.  Take a stand for the truth, don't give the conspiracy theorists even more to chew on.
  
  
• Chase Bank is reportedly booting comic book creators.  (One Angry Gamer)
  
  If they have the wrong politics, of course.
  
  There may be more to it, but if there is, Chase refuses to say what.

• Intel's spin-transferable torque magnetoresistive random access memory (BOB) is ready for mass production.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  This is a non-volatile memory technology with similar performance and rewrite endurance to regular DRAM, but able to retain data for weeks without power.  Device capacities so far have been fairly sad, though, in the low megabits.
  
  
• Hayabusa-2 just touched down on Ryugu, the asteroid it reached in June last year.  (BBC)
  
  This is the one that previously launched two little hopper robots to explore the asteroid.
  
  
• Israel's first Moon mission is on its way after a successful SpaceX launch.  (Mashable)
  
  The 600kg automated probe was built entirely with private funds, and will reach the Moon in April.  That's a fairly leisurely pace, but requires a lot less fuel.
  
  The rocket also launched an Indonesian communications satellite and a satellite-tracking satellite built by the USAF.
  
  This is the third launch of this particular booster, and it is due to fly again in April.
  
  
• More details on Arm's N1 and E1 cores.  (Serve the Home)
  
  While Arm is planning for partner devices with up to 128 cores, the current developer board has a rather underwhelming total of two.

• Companies have pulled YouTube advertising and YouTube itself has disabled comments on tens of millions of videos  (Tech Crunch) over a story that may be mostly bullshit.  (YouTube)
  
  The fuss is over comments on videos now.  Next year it will be likes of comments on videos.  After that, who knows?
  
  Key point: YouTube will now pull advertising from your videos (and wreck your income if that's what you do for a living) if they don't like a comment.

IZMV of the Day

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Saturday, February 23 2019 06:18 AM (LZ7Bg)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Saturday, February 23 2019 11:56 AM (PiXy!)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

• The men who sold the Moon.  (IEEE Spectrum)
  
  
• Samsung announced their new small tablet.  (AnandTech)
  
  Snapdragon 855 CPU, 7.3" 2048x1536 AMOLED display, plus a 4.6" 1680x720 rear display, also AMOLED.  12GB RAM, 512GB UFS 3.0 flash storage, three front cameras (selfie, video, and "live focus"), three rear cameras (video, wide angle, telephoto), USB-C, headphone jack, and the other usual bits.
  
  $2000.
  
  Oh, and it folds up.
  
  And unlike the iPad, it's supposed to.
  
  
• Samsung also announced the Galaxy S10, S10+, S10 5G, and S10e.  (AnandTech)
  
  They're phones.  Similar internals and camera arrangements to the Fold tablet, with the top models adding a fourth rear camera for 3D.   Headphone jack is present on all models, and all except the S10e have a new under-screen fingerprint sensor.
  
  Prices start at $750 for the 6GB/128GB S10e, heading up to $1600 for the 12GB/1TB S10+.  Prices for the S10 5G not announced just yet.
  
  
• Arm announced their new N1 server and E1 embedded CPU ranges based on derivatives of the A76 mobile core and A65 automotive core respectively.  (AnandTech)
  
  The N1 core measures 1.2 to 1.4mm² on a 7nm process, and uses 1W at 2.6GHz.
  
  Unlike the mobile parts, which group CPU cores into clusters of two or four, these designs use a mesh arrangement like Intel's server parts.  Arm has prepared a reference design with 128 N1 cores, but it can also be implemented using chiplets with smaller core counts.
  
  The E1 is a lower-performance part, but is less than 0.5mm² and uses less than 200mW at 2.5GHz.  It uses a similar mesh arrangement to the N1, with a 16 core reference design expected to use less than 15W (including I/O, memory, and network controllers).
  
  
• Oh, that microphone.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Don't worry about it.
  
  
• BenQ has a new professional 4K display.  (AnandTech)
  
  32", HDR10, 95% DCI-P3, DisplayPort, Thunderbolt, HDMI, usual stuff.  And it also has a built-in KVM switch that apparently can also control a second monitor.
  
  I have two Dell all-in-ones with 4K screens.  Each has HDMI out and HDMI in, so I have them cross-linked so each can be the second monitor of the other.  But to do that switch I have to press four buttons - monitor 1, monitor 2, keyboard, mouse - and wait for them to all sort themselves out.  Not very fluid.
  
  
• An uncountably infinite number of Möbius strips cannot be packed into an infinite 3D volume.  (Quanta)
  
  Well, that explains why I can't get my suitcase closed.

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, February 21 2019 03:13 PM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, February 21 2019 03:15 PM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, February 21 2019 09:54 PM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Kayle at Friday, February 22 2019 01:32 AM (magRz)

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, February 22 2019 02:40 AM (Q/JG2)

Posted by: J Greely at Friday, February 22 2019 03:42 AM (tgyIO)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

• That chemical contamination incident at TSMC could result in as much as $550 million in lost revenue.  (AnandTech)
  
  If you thought you were having a bad day...
  
  
• Intel launches new, higher-clocked Pentiums to take on the latest Athlon processors from AMD.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Wait.  My calendar must need rebooting or something.
  
  
• Grand Canyon Park Museum offered visitors a taste of radiation.  (NPR)
  
  Uranium ore is pretty safe unless you eat it.  Mostly alpha radiation.  So don't eat it.

  A previous version of this story didn't explain that the proximity to uranium ore described was unlikely to cause health problems, and it referred to uranium instead of uranium ore.

  Uranium metal is a different matter, but don't eat that either.
  
  
• Autocomplete using Markov chains.
  
  Hah.  I could add that to the new version of Minx.  Have it write blog posts for you.
  
  
• A look at AMD's EPYC 3201.  (Serve the Home)
  
  This is an 8 core embedded server CPU; the EPYC 3000 series goes from 4 cores and 4 threads to 16 cores and 32 threads.  I haven't seen AMD's plans for this range for 2019, but a "low end" embedded server CPU with 32 cores and 64 threads would be something.
  
  
• Apple may be supporting iPad apps on the Mac in a couple of years unless they don't.  (Thurrott.com)
  
  
• How to optimise your piglet.  (Badoo.com)

  "No matter how hard you try, you can’t make a racehorse out of a pig. You can, however, make a faster pig.”
   — A comment in the Emacs sourcecode.

  
  
  

• "Bots" and "astroturfers" took to the streets to protest the EU's garbage-tastic copyright legislation.  (TechDirt)

Posted by: Jay at Thursday, February 21 2019 04:25 AM (PMgKz)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, February 21 2019 11:55 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Saturday, February 23 2019 06:23 AM (LZ7Bg)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

• Take the last nope train to fuckthisshitville.
  

  When I write tweets like this, some read it as "Gary hates JS". I like React and prefer it to all alternatives including HTML. I like and use TypeScript. Etc. That doesn't require me to think that "hello world" having 1,568 dependencies containing 1,119,218 LOC is a good idea.

  — Gary Bernhardt (@garybernhardt) February 18, 2019

• Apple's 2018 Macs have a - Apple's 2018 Macs have a - Apple's 2018 Macs have a serious audio glitch. (CDM)
  
  
• Deep learning may need a new programming language. (VentureBeat)
  
  It's called Prolog.
  
  
• MIT's Vault is a cryptocurrency that doesn't require you to download the whole goddamn blockchain to participate.
  
  This is a problem with Bitcoin and Ethereum that - long term - will entirely block their growth. Unless they fork their blockchains to newer technology, which is possible but laden with drama.

Picture of the Day

Posted by: J Greely at Wednesday, February 20 2019 01:33 AM (tgyIO)

Posted by: Rick C at Wednesday, February 20 2019 02:02 AM (Q/JG2)

Posted by: Rick C at Wednesday, February 20 2019 02:42 AM (Q/JG2)

Posted by: Kayle at Wednesday, February 20 2019 03:21 AM (magRz)

Posted by: Rick C at Wednesday, February 20 2019 11:05 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, February 20 2019 01:33 PM (PiXy!)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

• Acer's Nitro 5 is an all-AMD gaming laptop - if you select the all-AMD build anyway.  (AnandTech)
  
  Ryzen 5 2500U with 8GB RAM (user-upgradable to 32GB), RX 560X with 4GB RAM, 256GB SATA SSD and 1TB HDD, and the least colour-accurate 1080p IPS display the reviewer has ever seen.
  
  I hope you like green, because that's what you're going to get.
  
  Also effective against Daleks.
  
  
• That Ryzen handheld gaming widget seems to be progressing towards reality.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Starting at $699, a rather expensive reality; that's the same price as the Acer laptop above.
  
  
• Etsy took money out of an unspecified number of its sellers' accounts rather than paying it in.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  People are, shall I say, irked.
  
  
• Are Apple going to release a 16-inch MacBook Pro and a 31 (or 32) inch 6k monitor this year?  (9to5Mac)
  
  Maybe.  But this is Apple we're talking about.  Good old keep it the same but raise the prices Apple.
  
  Also, so far as I know, 6k LCD panels don't exist, though it's a common high-end video resolution.  Checking the TFT Central database at 31.5" (the most likely size) we find 1920x1080, 2560x1440, 3840x2160, 5120x2880, and 7680x4320.  That is, 1080p, 1440p, 4k, 5k, and 8k.  6k is absent.  In fact, no 6k panels are listed at any size.  Which doesn't mean that someone isn't busy cooking one up, but doesn't provide an support for the idea either.
  
  
• AMD quadrupled its server market share from Q4 2017 to Q4 2018.  (Serve the Home)
  
  However, their share had previously dwindled to less than 1%, so while a welcome recovery, it's a slow one.
  
  
• How to get banned for life from AirBnB.  (The Next Web)
  
  Actually, that's boring.  Forget that.
  
  How to get banned for 17 years from the Fairmont Empress hotel in Victoria, Canada.  (New York Times)
  
  Much better.  It involves a suitcase full of salami, several dozen seagulls, and a faulty hair dryer.  And a towel.

  "I had forgotten that sea gulls cannot fly when they are wrapped in a towel,” he admitted.

• Apple will be hosting a major event on March 25 where they are expected to announce major new streaming services that will all be shut down within three years.  (Tom's Guide)
  
  
• The Born Rule is a formula relating the probability of an experimental outcome to the wave function of a quantum system, first set down by Max Born in 1926.
  
  It works great.  But it's taken more than 90 years for mathematicians and physicists to figure out why it works.  (Quanta)
  
  The new work shows that if you assume that wave function's collapse - for some definition of collapse - on observation, the Born Rule follows from the postulates of Quantum Mechanics.  This doesn't tie you to or exclude any of the interpretations either, as some earlier attempts did.
  
  
• All hats are grey in the dark.  (ZDNet)
  
  If you're spreading worms, I don't think you count as a white hat anymore.

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, February 19 2019 12:57 AM (Q/JG2)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, February 19 2019 08:02 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, February 19 2019 08:16 AM (Q/JG2)

Posted by: cxt217 at Tuesday, February 19 2019 08:21 AM (LMsTt)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, February 19 2019 11:33 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: cxt217 at Tuesday, February 19 2019 03:25 PM (LMsTt)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

• Intel's 9th generation mobile CPUs have peeked out from under the covers.  (AnandTech)
  
  Looks like two four core models and four eight core models.  No six core; instead they have eight cores without hyperthreading, which is about the same performance as six cores with.
  
  
• Google is planning changes to the Chrome APIs used by ad blocking extensions that will break most of those extensions.
  
  Google claimed these changes were for performance reasons.
  
  Developers of tracker blocker Ghostery investigated Google's claims and found that they were a load of crap. (ZDNet)
  
  Google then "clarified" its plans.
  
  
• A Guide to Chaos Monkey: Making systems more reliable by fucking everything up.
  
  
• Cygwin 3.0 is out.
  
  This version no longer supports Windows XP.

• Little Witch Academia: Chamber of Time is 64% off at Humble Bundle this weekend.
  
  
  

Video of the Day

Posted by: J Greely at Sunday, February 17 2019 02:59 PM (tgyIO)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, February 17 2019 04:19 PM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, February 18 2019 03:20 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, February 18 2019 03:25 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: J Greely at Monday, February 18 2019 06:55 AM (tgyIO)

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, February 18 2019 09:02 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, February 18 2019 09:45 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: J Greely at Monday, February 18 2019 10:32 AM (tgyIO)

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, February 18 2019 02:54 PM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, February 18 2019 09:06 PM (PiXy!)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

• Newegg has those $1800 motherboards for that $3000 Xeon processor if you want one.  (AnandTech)
  
  Well, they actually don't; it's just a per-order.  But they would if they did.
  
  
• Sasmsung has announced the Galaxy Tab S5e.  (AnandTech)
  
  10.5" 2560x1600 AMOLED display - no 8" model unfortunately - avaialble with 4GB/64GB or 6GB/128GB.  400 grams, starting at $400.
  
  
• Everyone already made the chicken jokes.  (AnandTech)
  
  Intel appears to be preparing a Core i9-9900KFC.  This might be a model without graphics (there are other F parts) but with an L4 cache (there are other C parts).  But all the other parts with an L4 cache had Iris Plus or Iris Pro graphics, so this would be a first.
  
  
• Western Digital has uploaded their new SweRV to GitHub.  (AnandTech)
  
  Unlike most GitHub projects, this is a CPU.  A RISC-V implementation to be precise.  Apache licensed.
  
  
• The ASUS TUF RTX 2060 is a tubby little cubby all stuffed with fluff.  (PC Perspective)
  
  I mean, look at it.
  
  
• Windows 10 now runs on the Rasbperry Pi.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Well, it can walk on the Raspberry Pi.  Crawl.
  
  Windows 10 really needs 4GB of RAM to behave itself, and the top of the line Pi 3 B+ has 1GB.  So the experience is less than stellar.
  
  
• USB-C is a mess.  (WCCFTech)
  
  
• Samsung is planning on stealing Huawei's networking equipment market out from under them.  (Reuters)
  
  Good luck to them, I say.
  
  
• If it weren't for RAM there would be 70% fewer Windows patches.  (PC Gamer)
  
  If it weren't for RAM, there would be 100% fewer Windows patches.  But silly headlines aside, it's interesting how common memory-safety bugs still are.
  
  
• If your wallet is too heavy for you to lift without assistance, Amazon can help you out with some 48 core bare metal server instances.  (Serve the Home)
  
  
• Google is fixing incognito to be incognitoer.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  I ran into this recently - some sites are using tricks to detect that you are in incognito mode.  Google is preparing to wage war on them.
  
  
• Some really dumb articles were circulating this week about how scientists working at OpenAI had created a monstrous fake news generator (PC Magazine) that was too dangerous to ever unleash on the world.  (Vox)
  
  It was fake news.  (ZDNet)
  
  The articles generated are obvious nonsense - check out the weather report in the second article.  That's probably why the Vox writers are so worried.  If they can't get the bots to unionise, they're out of a job.
  
  
  

• Tired of Europe stealing all the credit for idiotic IP laws, Japan is proposing to make all copyright infringement a criminal offense.  (TechDirt)
  
  If every artist who drew Bowsette was sent to jail, they'd need to wall off the whole of Hokkaido.  (Pixiv)

• Nvidia's Q4 revenues are down 24% since last year, with gaming revenues particularly being down 45%.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Nvidia blamed this on "people not buying our stuff".
  
  
• Sony says it is open to cross-platform online gaming.  (TechDirt)
  
  Sony says it has always been open to cross-platform online gaming.
  
  There are exactly two cross-platform online games available on the PS4.
  
  Sony says this is the fault of lazy developers.
  
  Developers are unimpressed.
  
  
• Apple is out to save journalism.  (Recode)
  
  Whether they are saving journalism from itself, or from themselves, is unclear.  Anyway, they're taking 50% of subscription fees - compared to 30% on iTunes or the App Store - but generously allow individual outlets to keep their ad revenue for now.
  
  
• Apple is having a bad year because it is run by idiots.  (ZDNet)
  
  This makes it an excellent fit as a journalism platform, to be honest.
  
  
• Amazon cancelled its NYC plans because NYC is run by idiots and Amazon is not.  (ZDNet)
  
  Not entirely.  Not even mostly.
  
  
• Deliveroo reroutes from Ruby to Rust.
  
  Or rather from Ruby to Ruby plus Rust.  The combination is five times faster than Ruby alone.
  
  Of course, if they'd simply gone with Python...

• South Korea has set up its own Little Firewall.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  They are blocking websites using SNI and forcing search engines to filter results.  Not nasty dark web stuff like drug sales, but ordinary adult content.
  
  
• IBM has a cloud platform.  (The Next Platform)
  
  Who knew?
  
  
• Singtel lost 40 million mobile customers.  (ZDNet)
  
  Have they looked down the back of the sofa?  I found $2.40 last time I pulled the cushions out.
  
  
• Hardkernel's Odroid N2 is a wee bit more powerful than the Raspberry Pi.
  
  It has A73 cores instead of A53 cores.  The A5x series is low power; the A7x series is high performance.  Not that the A53 is terrible, but the A73 is more than twice as fast.
  
  Which means it uses more power, of course, so it won't fit everywhere you might want to put a Pi, and it's more expensive as well.  But choice is good.
  
  Boards will ship in April, $63 with 2GB RAM, $79 with 4GB.
  
  There was to be an Odroid N1 last year, but it was cancelled because the memory chips became unavailable without warning.
  
  
• DigitalOcean introduces managed databases, starting with PostgreSQL.
  
  Because...  Just because.
  
  Pricing starts at $15 for a database node with 1 CPU and 1GB of RAM, which is three times the cost of a regular VPS of that size.
  
  PostreSQL is better than MySQL in every way except for actually using it.
  
  Full-text indexing in MySQL: Put a full-text index on the desired fields.
  
  Full-text indexing in PostgreSQL: Take your text fields, and create a new field that is a doubly-inverted flip list of the communitised k-terms.  Then simply apply a Queequeg-Moravec hash-trie index to the denormalised wave function of the tetragrammaton.  The search operator is &*==!=? and the match terms take the form of a sonnet.  In Flemish.  You may experience database outages if your Flemish is not period-accurate to the late 16th century.

• The British Thoughtcrime Brigade is at it again, wanting to make clicking on a link deemed "terrorist" in nature a crime.  (ZDNet)
  
  Until proven innocent.
  
  
• The EU's own plague zombies are back in the form of the nightmarishly awful EU Copyright Directive.  (TechDirt)
  
  It's even worse than it was before.
  
  Under the revised Article 13, sites that allow user-posted content (which is basically every site) must license everything.  What do they mean, everything?
  
  EVERYTHING.
  
  Before users post it.  
  
  Under Article 11, citing news items will require a license.  No exceptions.
  
  Julia Reda is still fighting this crapfest.
  
  
• The Verge filed baseless takedown notifications against YouTubers analysing their terrible PC build video.  (One Angry Gamer)
  
  The Verge is owned by Vox.
  
  Vox is a dumpster fire.

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, February 15 2019 01:28 AM (Q/JG2)

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, February 15 2019 01:34 AM (Q/JG2)

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, February 15 2019 01:43 AM (Q/JG2)

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, February 15 2019 01:46 AM (Q/JG2)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, February 15 2019 01:49 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, February 15 2019 03:48 AM (Q/JG2)

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, February 15 2019 03:49 AM (Q/JG2)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, February 15 2019 03:59 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, February 15 2019 06:21 AM (Q/JG2)

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, February 15 2019 06:24 AM (Q/JG2)

Hide Comments | Add Comment