• Verizon sucks.  And now they own Yahoo.  (Techdirt)
  
  It's so bad that Amazon changed the details it includes in receipts so that Verizon can't steal the data.
  
  
• TechCrunch argues for private censorship in order to avoid government censorship - which won't happen because First Amendment so the entire argument is garbage.
  
  Not just private censorship, but coordinated private censorship across social networks.
  
  
• IS YOUR LINUX BOX MAKING TOO MUCH NOISE TOO BIG?
  
  VoCore can fix that.
  
  
• NBN is planning to expand the FttC rollout using larger DPUs to connect MDUs, an increasingly common factor in suburban Sydney.  (ZDNet)
  
  Do I have NBN?  I do not.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Monday, September 03 2018 08:57 PM (Es+wK)

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, September 04 2018 06:16 AM (ITnFO)

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, September 04 2018 06:19 AM (ITnFO)

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Posted by: Rick C at Monday, September 03 2018 11:48 AM (ITnFO)

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• You can't partition a MySQL table with a full-text index, which is one of the top use cases for partitioning a MySQL table.  Poo.
  
  
• What's in a Lake, Atomic Edition: Gigabyte's Brix line now features some Gemini Lake (yes, another one) Atom models.  Most notably the GB-BLCE-4105 with a Celeron J4105 and the GB-BLPD-5005 with a Pentium Silver J5005.
  
  These chips are vastly improved over older Atoms, with up to three times the single-threaded and multi-threaded performance of chips currently found in budget laptops.
  
  
  
  In fact, the J4105 and J5005 deliver almost exactly the performance of the classic Core 2 Quad Q6600 at 1/10th the power.
  
  
  
  In theory, they only support up to 8GB of RAM, but there's theory and there's screenshots of the Windows 10 system summary with 16GB of DDR4 2400 RAM.
  
  This is good, because if I upgrade the SSDs and RAM in Tohru and Rally I need to pop out the existing SSDs and RAM, and these Brixen provide a dirt cheap option to put those into a working system for offloading some Linux VMs or whatevers.  They only support PCIe x2 for the SSD, so the transfer rate would be limited to 2GB per second, but I think I can probably live with that.
  
  Intel offers an even cheaper model using the Celeron J4005 which is dual core rather than quad core.  That's not fatal given the low price, but it lacks the M.2 slot the Brixen have, which rules it out for me.
  
  
• Huawei's Kirin 980 brings the Arm A76 core (at 1.92 or 2.6GHz) and Mali G76 GPU together on TSMC's 7nm process.  (AnandTech)
  
  This should be an impressive chip; my daily tablet is a Huawei Mediapad M3, which has the Kirin 950, a quad-core A72 at 2.3GHz.  It's pretty quick; the only thing I really miss on that tablet is LTE.
  
  Huawei say the new chip should be 30-40% faster than the Snapdragon 845, which is in turn 30-40% faster than the Kirin 950.
  
  The cluster of four A76 cores is split into two pairs, one at max speed, the other at medium speed, to give better control over battery life.  This is a new feature from Arm.  I'm not sure if the cores are synthesized differently or if the difference is purely in the voltage levels.
  
  Another interesting thing is how fast this happened.  Arm announced the A76 core in May.  The Mate 20 will launch with the Kirin 980 in October.
  
  
• Fuck the Windows 10 Photos app.
  
  
  
  
• The Asus Zenbook Pro UX480 is a 14" laptop with a Whiskey Lake U CPU and that nice touchscreen touchpad, let down by a flawed keyboard layout and a meh 1080p display.  (AnandTech)
  
  
• MSI's new P65 Creator is supposedly a laptop for content creators, but has a 144Hz 1080p display where a 60Hz 4K display would be vastly preferable.  (Via PCPer)
  
  Otherwise it's very good, with a sane keyboard layout, a quad-core Intel CPU, a choice of GTX 1050Ti, 1060, or 1070 graphics, and up to 32GB RAM, a single Thunderbolt port, and three full-speed USB 3.1 ports, wrapped up in a nicely understated design while keeping the weight under 2kg.  With a 4K wide-gamut display it would make a great creative laptop with real gaming abilities at need.  Get on that, MSI.
  
  
• Asus shrank their ZenBook 13 in the wash.  (The Verge)
  
  Follow the link, scroll down a little, and you'll see the 2018 model next to the 2017 model.  The two laptops have the same screen size but look completely different.
  
  
• I mentioned before that a flaw in Apple's event scripting allowed misbehaving applications to automatically click on security notifications to give themselves permission to trash your Mac.
  
  In the latest beta of MacOS Apple have fixed this by replicating the single most despised feature of Windows Vista.  (Six Colors)
  
  This completely breaks application scripting.  Completely breaks it.  (Shirt Pocket Watch)
  
  Good work, world's first trillion dollar company.
  
  
• Google's new Advanced Protection Program uses hardware keys made in China by a company linked to the Chinese military.  (ZDNet)
  
  Yubico - which makes its keys in the US and Sweden - is available as a backup solution, but the required primary key is a dubious Chinese item that you have to buy from Amazon - Google don't even supply it.
  
  The keys may be secure, for all I know, but this project is garbage implemented by idiots.  Google aren't even trying to appear secure here.

Video of the Day

• Lenovo's Yoga Book C930 is a 1.7 pound mini-notebook with a low-power (Y-series) Core i3 or i5 CPU, 4GB RAM (hopefully there will be options for more), a 2560x1600 screen, and 1920x1080 keyboard.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  No, that's not a typo.  The keyboard is a 1080p e-ink panel with haptic feedback.
  
  Which means...  If you don't like the keyboard layout, you can change it.
  
  I need to buy twelve of these.
  
  
• Lenovo's ThinkPad X1 Extreme is the consumer version of their ThinkPad P1 ultralight workstation.  Same specs, essentially - 6 core CPU, up to 64GB RAM, dual M.2 SSDs, 4K screen, GTX 1050Ti - just with the regular versions rather than the Xeon / Quadro editions.  (AnandTech)
  
  US$2991.55 with a 6 core i7-8850, 32GB RAM, a 4K display, 1TB NVMe drive, and a 4GB GTX 1050Ti.  That's not cheap, but that's a lot of power in a compact and portable device.
  
  
• Netgear's Nighthawk XR700 router delivers 802.11ad - and 10G ethernet via an SFP+ port.  (AnandTech)
  
  Seriously, Netgear?  SFP+ rather than 10GBase-T?  On a router aimed at gamers?
  
  
• The next version of Firefox will block tracking cookies by default.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  That will piss Facebook and Google off enormously.  Good.
  
  
• San Francisco apparently has a problem with birdlime.  (Axios)
  
  
• Australia's new national health IT system is a fuckup of unimaginable but entirely predictable proportions.  It would be illegal in most countries.  (ZDNet)
  
  
• I still don't have NBN.  They're too busy screwing things up and wasting money to actually connect anyone.  (ZDNet)

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, September 01 2018 01:37 AM (ITnFO)

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• Acer has announced the new Swift 5, a perfectly ordinary-looking 15" notebook.  Quad core Intel 8th generation CPU, up to 16GB RAM and 1TB SSD, 1080p display, and my preferred keyboard layout, with PgUp/PgDn/Home/End at the right.  (AnandTech)
  
  But it weighs 990 grams - just over two pounds.  That's less than half the weight of my 15" Dell laptop.
  
  
• Acer's 13" Swift 3 weighs 1.3kg.  (AnandTech)
  
  Huh?
  
  
• If you need something with a bit more vroom to it, Acer's new Aspire 7 models offer Kaby Lake G, the Intel/AMD hybrid chip with Vega graphics.  (NotebookCheck)
  
  
• Yes, Acer did just have a big product launch, why do you ask?
  
  
• Samsung released their new NVMe Thunderbolt-only external SSD, the X5.  (AnandTech)
  
  It is remarkably ugly and overheats after a couple of minutes of sustained use, reducing performance by 95%, at which point you might as well be running a regular disk drive on a USB 2.0 port.
  
  Avoid.
  
  PCPer's review is more positive and they also tested this $24 NVMe to USB 3.1 adaptor which does surprisingly well.  Of course, it's just an adaptor, and you have to add an M.2 NVMe drive before it does anything at all.
  
  Looks like there are a few of these available now.  The magic word is JMS583, which is the USB 3.1 to NVMe interface chip they all use.
  
  
• TPG and Vodafone are merging in Australia as the consolidation of the hundreds of tiny phone companies and ISPs created by deregulation continues.  (ZDNet)
  
  My NBN connection is now two months late.  And that's after waiting 9 years to get a connection date at all.  No-one in the US is allowed to complain about their ISP unless their dog got run over by a Comcast truck.
  
  
• Lenovo's ThinkStation P520 gets reviewed.  (ServeTheHome)
  
  Industrial design peaked with the SGI O2.  Which I have one of.  In my closet.  It runs at 150MHz.
  
  
• Acer (them again) showed off their Predator X, a dual Xeon workstation that, fully configured, runs into the mid five figures, in a case that looks like it cost fifty bucks on eBay.  AnandTech says, and I quote, "Please No".
  
  
• Looking for a convertible Windows laptop tablet thingy?  Living in Australia?  You can pick up an HP Spectre x2 for $1275 after the secret promo code (which is in bright red banner at the top of the page).  That's with a Core i7 with Iris Plus graphics (with 64MB of eDRAM), 16GB RAM, 512GB NVMe SSD, and a 3000x2000 display.  Dual USB-C connectors (left and right) with charging and DisplayPort support, micro SD and a headphone jack.
  
  It's last year's i7 - 7th generation - and ultra-low-power, so dual rather than quad core.
  
  Only other real strike if it doesn't have my preferred key layout, but it's hard to fit that in a 12" laptop.  Also, it's a few ounces heavier than my old 13" LG UltraPC, but it has four times the memory, four times the storage, a much improved display...  And you can yank off the keyboard and use it as a tablet.  I mean, you can use what's left as a tablet, the keyboard just kind of sits there.
  
  Pen is extra in this package, I think.  $90 option.  But the equivalent Surface Pro model sells from $3299 - without pen or keyboard, and with a slightly lower-resolution screen.
  
  I just went and checked the price again, because the last time I saw pricing like this I had wandered onto Lenovo's US store by mistake.  Nope, it's real.  I think I'm going to have to get one...
  
  
  

• Twitter is recommending people to UNfollow.  That will end well.  (Axios)
  
  
• Two thirds of conservatives polled are aware of the fact that social networks are censoring them.  (Axios)

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, August 30 2018 12:42 PM (ITnFO)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, August 30 2018 01:20 PM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, August 30 2018 01:21 PM (PiXy!)

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• What's in a lake?  Intel launches Whiskey Lake and Amber Lake CPUs.  (AnandTech)
  
  These are ultra-low-power (U series) and hyper-low-power (Y series) chips for thin and light and overpriced notebooks, and join Cannon Lake, Coffee Lake, Ice Lake, Kaby Lake, and Skylake in the increasingly crowded Lakes District.
  
  
• Intel's product naming is getting confusing, says Tom's Hardware.
  
  Getting confusing?
  
  
• Speaking of Intel, they are releasing their own Linux distribution - aimed at autonomous vehicles, so with lots of extra verification.  It's based on the existing Clear Linux distro.  (Phoronix)
  
  
• Oppo's new Find X phone has beautiful hardware, terrible software.  (Android Central)
  
  Just ship stock Android, you idiots.
  
  The phone has a 93.8% screen ratio - that is, almost the entire face of the phone is display - and it achieves this with a little motorised pop-up widget holding the sensor array.  The rear camera is available all the time, but for selfies it needs to slide the camera out from behind the screen.  It's a complicated arrangement, but better than a notch.
  
  
• Vocus have plugged in a 40Tb patch cord between Perth and Singapore.  If you've ever tried to use a Singapore-based server from Australia, you'd know that despite the relative proximity it's really no better than going all the way across the Pacific to California.  This might improve things.

• Have you been posting your tweets to your Facebook timeline?  Well, don't look now, but they might be gone.  Not just the feature, but all the prior tweets on the Facebook side, and all the comments on them as well.  (Techcrunch)
  
  Facebook first broke the feature with an API change, then somehow screwed up extra hard and lost all the history too.

Picture of the Day

Posted by: Rick C at Wednesday, August 29 2018 12:35 PM (ITnFO)

Posted by: Wonderduck at Wednesday, August 29 2018 01:21 PM (+BFHX)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, August 29 2018 01:53 PM (PiXy!)

Posted by: cxt217 at Thursday, August 30 2018 06:05 AM (BcQU4)

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• Friday:

  AMD are getting 7nm parts from both TSMC and Global Foundries, which will give them a full year with a solid fabrication lead on Intel, as well as the advantages of the Zen design.

  Today: Global Foundries stops all 7nm development.  (AnandTech)
  
  AMD likely knew of GloFo's uncertainty well in advance, hence the hedging of their 7nm bets with TSMC.  This probably doesn't affect AMD much, except that lower-tier parts are likely to continue to be produced at 12nm for a while.  The second generation server chips and professional graphics chips were already planned to be fabbed at TSMC.
  
  It might mean a delay - or higher prices - for 12 and 16 core mainstream desktop parts, though, depending on the volume TSMC can produce and how quickly AMD makes inroads into Intel's server market share.  Four Zen dies sold as a 32 core server CPU make AMD a lot more money than if they are sold individually as four desktop CPUs.
  
  So we might just have to struggle onwards with a mere 8 cores until 2020.  Or in my case, two computers with 8 cores each, thanks to Dell's clearance sale on 2017 models.  And the price cut to $399 for the Threadripper 1920X means that those who really need 12 cores can get them.
  
  
• Freesync with an Nvidia graphics card?  Sure, if you have an AMD APU.  (PCPer)
  
  It does add some latency to the frames, but not so much as to make the idea worthless.
  
  
• In line with new emission laws from the EPA, Toyota just set $500 million on fire.  (TechCrunch)
  
  
• Qualcomm either is, or is not, shutting down its server division which doesn't make any servers.  (Fudzilla)
  
  Arm servers are not a thing.  Stop trying to make them a thing.
  
  
• VMware announces Arm support in ESXi (pronounced "esxi").  (ServeTheHome)
  
  Arm servers are the next big thing.
  
  
• Microsoft are pushing Intel CPU updates to AMD systems.  This seems to be harmless on AMD systems, since the patches are ignored, but some Intel users are reporting problems booting after the update.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  On the other hand, that's true after every Windows 10 update.  Guess what I was doing last night?  Well, yes, swearing a lot, but apart from that.
  
  
• I now have a script that syncs the entire mee.nu production environment to my dev environment every day.  Finally!  This is why I bought Rally Vincent, and she's doing a great job.  The trick to getting it working smoothly was rsync --inplace, which allows me to quickly update my database snapshots even though I STILL DON'T HAVE NBN.
  
  

Social Media News

• Facebook and Google want to draft new federal privacy regulations.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  HahahaNO.
  
  
• Mike Masnick reports that internet content moderation isn't politically biased, just hard to do well.  (Techdirt) 
  
  Mike is great.  He's also wrong.  (PJ Media)  
  
  
• Wouldn't it be great if the military had all the money they needed and BuzzFeed had to hold a bake sale?  (WSJ)

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, August 28 2018 11:52 AM (ITnFO)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, August 28 2018 01:01 PM (PiXy!)

Posted by: cxt217 at Tuesday, August 28 2018 01:19 PM (BcQU4)

Posted by: benzeen at Tuesday, August 28 2018 01:19 PM (bwzPa)

Posted by: benzeen at Tuesday, August 28 2018 01:22 PM (JpDcM)

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