Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Wednesday, June 02 2021 12:12 PM (5iiQK)

Posted by: normal at Wednesday, June 02 2021 11:18 PM (LADmw)

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• AMD had their Computex keynote, and announced a few things, some expected, and one not.
  
  
  
• Ryzen 5000 desktop APUs will be coming to the retail market August 5th.  (AnandTech)
  
  The 5700G is an 8 core / 16 thread part with a 65W TDP and will cost $359.  The existing 8 core CPU, the 5800X, costs $449, so that's not a bad price.
  
  It does run 100MHz slower, and it has half the L3 cache and only PCIe 3.0.  On the other hand, it uses less power than the 105W 5800X and has built-in graphics.
  
  
  
• The Radeon 6000M family is also here.  (AnandTech)
  
  The 6800M is basically a reduced power 6700XT.  The 6700M is a cut down and reduced power 6700XT - 10GB of RAM instead of 12GB, and about 90% of the performance.  And the 6600M looks like the leaked specs for the upcoming Radeon 6600.
  
  It looks like the 6800M isn't quite as fast as the mobile RTX 3080, but it's not too far behind.
  
  
  
• And finally, AMD CEO Lisa Su put to rest rumours that they were working on 3D chip stacking technology by announcing that 3D chip stacking technology would be going into production this year.  (AnandTech)
  
  Su showed off a version of the Ryzen 5000 with 192MB of L3 cache.  The existing high-end parts have 64MB across two CPU chiplets, and the new version stacks another 64MB cache chiplet on top of each of those.
  
  They reported performance gains of up to 25%.  Admittedly that's in one specific game, Monster Hunter World, but 25% is huge and MonHun is huge.
  
  It also helps with a limitation of newer process nodes.  TSMC's 5nm node is about 35% smaller than 7nm, but only for logic circuits.  For memory it's basically the same size as 7nm.  With die stacking AMD could produce just the CPU chiplets on 5nm and the cache dies on the older and cheaper 7nm process.
  
  
  

• AMD also unveiled their FidelityFX AI upscaling solution.  (AnandTech)
  
  This competes directly with Nvidia's DLSS, except that it's open source and also works on Nvidia hardware.  This is exactly what AMD did with Freesync - now an industry standard - to Nvidia's proprietary  and expensive G-sync.
  
  
  
• Nvidia's 3080 Ti is a 3090 with half the RAM.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Well, it also has 256 shaders missing, but that's about 2% of the total.  That's so they can salvage dies with one or two defects.
  
  It will cost $1199 - in theory.  The regular 3080 costs $699 - in theory.  So you're paying 70% more for a 15% performance boost.  In theory.  I have no idea what the real prices will be.
  
  There's also a 3070 Ti which looks to be 7% faster than the 3070.
  
  
  
• Porn film distributor The Score Group file a DMCA takedown request demanding Google remove links to Wikipedia's own Wikipedia page.  (TorrentFreak)
  
  Google said no.
  
  
  
• Microsoft has released WinGet, a package manager like RedHat's Yum or Debian's Apt.  (Thurrott.com)
  
  It's available right now on GitHub.
  
  
  

Not Technically Tech News

Posted by: normal at Tuesday, June 01 2021 11:21 PM (LADmw)

Posted by: Rick C at Wednesday, June 02 2021 12:19 AM (eqaFC)

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Wednesday, June 02 2021 01:23 AM (LZ7Bg)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Wednesday, June 02 2021 02:33 AM (6y7dz)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, June 02 2021 05:21 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: J Greely at Wednesday, June 02 2021 07:03 AM (ZlYZd)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, June 02 2021 07:20 AM (PiXy!)

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• Blockchain mining has made it impossible to buy video cards for video, so what if they instead used hard drives?
  
  Yep, storage market is fucked.  (New Scientist)
  
  Drives haven't disappeared, but bargains on large hard drives that were commonplace six months ago are gone, and supply is patchy generally.
  
  I got myself a new 6TB drive (Toshiba Gold) last month to replace a failing unit in my NAS, because I knew this was coming.  That drive is still available - but I'd now have to order it in from Amazon UK, because there's zero stock in Australia, even at double the price I paid.
  
  The people behind Chia say that this will be a good thing in the long run as drive makers ramp up production, to which I counter, fuck you you fucking fucks.
  
  
  

• Apparently it's Computex or something, and Intel has announced a refresh of their Tiger Lake laptop parts.  (AnandTech)
  
  You can tell how far they've come by the fact that these are 15W parts but they quote performance numbers for them running at 28W and they actually use up to 50W: Not very.
  
  
  
• The next version of Windows 10 is on its way, and will bring sweeping UI changes that will probably suck.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Or you could not do that, Microsoft.  Just a thought.
  
  
  
• Despite booking $11 billion in orders, Aerion could not raise funds to complete its supersonic business jet.  (Flying)
  
  They will now return to making expensive chairs.
  
  
  
• Apple's next-gen M1X Mac mini will return the features removed from the M1 Mac mini.  (9to5Mac)
  
  Not upgradeable RAM, though.  Not upgradeable anything, in fact.

Posted by: normal at Monday, May 31 2021 11:54 PM (obo9H)

Posted by: normal at Monday, May 31 2021 11:54 PM (obo9H)

Posted by: normal at Tuesday, June 01 2021 12:05 AM (obo9H)

Posted by: David Eastman at Tuesday, June 01 2021 05:07 AM (t/97R)

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Posted by: cxt217 at Monday, May 31 2021 11:51 AM (4i7w0)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, May 31 2021 01:17 PM (PiXy!)

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• Intel has quietly slipped Tiger Lake B into the sales channel - so quietly that I missed the importance of this yesterday.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Existing 11th generation Intel desktop CPUs are made on their old 14nm process; until now only laptop chips were produced at 10nm.  Tiger Lake B represents Intel's first 10nm desktop parts.
  
  We'll have to wait for reviews to see exactly how this turns out, but the new 11900KB uses 65W at base load, compared to 125W for the 14nm 11900K.  It also looks like they've increased the cache from 16MB to 24MB.
  
  On the other hand, base clocks for the 11900B are a little slower than before.
  
  The 11500B on the third hand looks like it could be a gem: The power remains the same at 65W, but base clocks are up from 2.7GHz to 3.3GHz, and maximum boost clock from 4.6GHz to 5.3GHz.
  
  
  
• Intel also has graphics cards on the way.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  This is great given the ongoing shortage and sky-high prices from both Nivida and AMD.  The cards are expected to have up to 512 Xe execution units, which gives us a good idea how fast they will be, because Tiger Lake laptop chips have up to 96 Xe units.  The dedicated cards will likely run at a faster clock.
  
  On the downside, we won't see these until next year, so in the meantime it's either wait or pay the scalper.
  
  
  

• Zen 3 Threadrippers could arrive in August.  (WCCFTech)
  
  That's ten months after the launch of Zen 3 for the consumer desktop, though it's only recently that the high-end Zen 3 parts (12 and 16 cores) became readily available.
  
  
  
• Microsoft Edge 91 is here and it's, um, basically crap.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  It pushes a bunch of unwanted features and an even bigger bunch of bugs. 
  
  Avoid.  Oh, wait, you can't.  It updates itself auotomatically.
  
  
  
• Iran has banned Bitcoin mining due to ongoing blackouts.  (NBC)
  
  This is not entirely because the country is run by genocidal kleptocrats; they've also been subject to a prolonged drought that has reduced hydroelectric output. 
  
  The government blamed the blackouts on a natural gas shortage, which is rather like Australia blaming problems on a mouse shortage.  (CNN)
  
  
  

Bonus Not Actually Junk Video of the Day

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, May 31 2021 05:06 AM (eqaFC)

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, May 31 2021 05:36 AM (eqaFC)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Monday, May 31 2021 10:39 AM (6y7dz)

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, May 31 2021 03:48 PM (eqaFC)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Monday, May 31 2021 10:41 PM (6y7dz)

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• When our main datacenter burned down, fell over, and sank into the swamp - which is several weeks ago now - I had to bring up other sites on the mee.nu server and I made some hacks to limit performance-crunching features.
  
  I haven't had time to undo those hacks yet because we also had servers at that datacenter for my day job and the following weeks were somewhat....  Fraught.
  
  Anyway, I'll be working to undo those de-featurings this weekend.
  
  
  
• It's time to firewall your firewalls to defend your defenses from attacking attackers.
  
  Just before a report was released about Chinese hackers compromising Pulse Secure VPN appliances, the hacks were quietly removed.  (The Record)
  
  FireEye, the company monitoring this, has revised its report from "a group likely connected with Chinese espionage did this" to "China did this".
  
  
  
• The Russia-based hackers who compromised the SolarWinds management software are targeting the governments of 24 countries.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Again, this is not a rogue criminal organisation operating in Russia.  This is the Russian government.
  
  
  
• If you have SonicWall security appliances, patch that shit now.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  It never ends.
  
  If you don't want to sleep for a week, go over to Bleeping Computer and start scrolling.

• Back in the Paleolithic Era I had a YouTube channel.  It will come as a surprise to many of you that it was a curated collection of anime openings and endings.  No full episodes, no full songs, just the opening and ending credits.
  
  Then the first version of ContentID got switched on, and I got three strikes instantly because the music in some of those clips matched their database, and it was gone forever.*
  
  That was more than a decade ago, but proving that a trillion dollars in market cap doesn't mean you have the faintest clue about anything Twitch is replicating YouTube's fuckup in every last detail.  (The Verge)
  
  Nice Twitch channel you have here.  Shame if anything were to happen to it.  Like, for example, Twitch happened.
  
  * I still have all the video files and if you search very carefully you might still find them, but the YouTube channel got yeeted to Yeetsville.
  
  
  
• USB power delivery is getting amped up to 240W.  (AnandTech)
  
  Well, that's technically the exact opposite of what's happening.  Standard USB-C cables can deliver up to 60W - 20V and 3A.  Specifically rated cables can deliver 100W - 20V and 5A.  The new standard keeps the same current rating but increases the voltage to 48V.
  
  That's only for 5A rated cables and you'll need a new cable anyway, with capacitors rated at 60V+ for safety.
  
  This can replace power bricks for even most high-end laptops - and smaller all-in-one desktops as well - with a single standard port.  The power bricks won't necessarily be smaller, but the same power brick will work for any device unless the manufacturers explicitly cripple them so that is almost certainly what will happen.
  
  The new standard also supports stepping the voltage up in 100mV increments, so you can expect chargers that support all of that to cost a bit more than the typical cheap phone charger from Kmart.
  
  
  
• I came looking for weed, and found Ethereum.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  British police took a break from confiscating butter knives to check out a suspected pot farm using an illegal electricity tap.  They confirmed the location using an infrared-sensing drone, which is a common way to spot these sites because their grow lamps put out a lot of heat.
  
  But so do 100 specialised mining rigs stuffed full of Nvidia graphics cards, which is what was actually found.
  
  
  
• Sabrent's 2TB Plotripper Pro has a 54PBW rating.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  To unpack that a little, this is a 2TB NVMe SSD, one of those little M.2 drives that plugs into a slot on newer motherboards.  It can write a total of 54PB - 54,000TB - over its lifespan.
  
  Assuming a 5 year warranty, that's 30TB per day - 15 times the drive's capacity, which is termed as 15 DWPD (drive writes per day).
  
  That is the highest rating I have ever seen on a general-purpose SSD.  Expensive enterprise drives go as high as 10 DWPD.
  
  This is - of course - for crypto mining with Chia.
  
  
  
• Nvidia's RTX 3080 Ti is a 3090 with half the RAM.  (WCCFTech)
  
  People complained when the 3090 was launched because the MSRP of $1500 was considered excessive.  Compared to what it costs to get one of those cards now, that seems laughably low.
  
  
  
• Twitter has confirmed their paid plan, Twitter Blue.
  
  
  
  
  For $2.99 per month you get absolutely nothing.
  
  There is one feature Twitter could offer that would be worth paying for - it rhymes with edit button - but they absolutely refuse because they know that their users are batshit insane and it would be an unimaginable clusterfuck.
  
  
  
• What's new in Swift 5.5?  (Hacking with Swift)
  
  Swift is Apple's programming language to replace Objective C, which absolutely nobody liked.  There was a lot of buzz around it early on as a new systems programming language with a clean and thoughtful design, but then people tried using it and the buzz died.
  
  There are third-party compilers and you can write apps in Swift and run them anywhere including Android, but nobody wants to.
  
  
  
• If you have a last-generation iPad Pro with 6GB of RAM, a single app can use at most 4.5GB of that, leaving 25% of the RAM for the operating system and other apps.
  
  If you have a new 16GB iPad Pro your apps can now get 5GB of RAM - a whole extra 512MB.  (MacRumors)
  
  iPads are a good device for artists, with their high resolution screens and stylus support.  Why plug an expensive drawing tablet into an expensive PC when you can just get an iPad?
  
  Well, this is why.  Because Apple hates you.
  
  

Karen Girls Music Video of the Day

Posted by: Avatar_exADV at Sunday, May 30 2021 01:38 AM (v29Tn)

Posted by: Rick C at Sunday, May 30 2021 03:42 AM (eqaFC)

Posted by: normal at Sunday, May 30 2021 07:44 AM (obo9H)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, May 30 2021 04:03 PM (PiXy!)

Posted by: normal at Sunday, May 30 2021 11:18 PM (obo9H)

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• Intel's next-generation Alder Lake is expected to arrive this year - and probably with a whimper.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Intel have been talking up its single-core performance, but they need to, because it looks like the low power laptop parts - 15W - will have two cores.  Well two large cores - the type of core you normally find on laptops - and also eight small cores, like a smart phone.
  
  AMD can provide eight large cores at a 15W TDP.
  
  So Intel not only needs to deliver a really fast large core, because they'll only have two of them, and a really fast small core, because they'll only have two large cores, they need to deliver the really fast large cores and the really fast small cores working together seamlessly at a low power consumption and that just plain ain't on the cards..
  
  It looks like it could be even more power-hungry than Tiger Lake...  It is Tiger Lake, right?  When that is exactly the issue these small cores are supposed to address.
  
  I do expect it to deliver on single-threaded workloads.  And it will be arriving well before AMD's Zen 4, so it should have time to establish itself before it gets demolished in turn by the competition.  Competition of this sort is a fine thing.
  
  
  
• Actually the thing that had me earlier muttering under my breath oh, great - I save my expletives for the written word, mere shrieks of anguish being too ephemeral to be a worthy medium - turned out to be pretty reasonable.
  
  At my day job we're currently suffering from success.  It's better than the alternative, but it's going to be hectic for the rest of the year.  October in particular is going to be 31 days of crazy.  The length and frequency of these posts might get a little glitchy around then.
  
  
  

• Marvell has announced the first PCIe 5.0 SSD controllers.  (AnandTech)
  
  Intel's Alder Lake is expected to provide PCIe 5.0 - I don't remember if that has been officially announced as yet, or merely leaked - as is AMD's Zen 4 next year.  But this controller is aimed at servers, not at desktops, let alone laptops.  Power consumption for the controller chip alone is 9W, where an 8-core AMD APU - CPU and graphics combined - uses 15W.
  
  PCIe 4.0 is already pretty power hungry; PCIe 5.0 isn't going to improve that.  But it is fast; this controller will deliver up to 14GB per second.
  
  
  
• Speaking of Zen 4, here's Zen 5.  (WCCFTech)
  
  I'm not sure this even deserves being called a leak; it consists of a name - Granite Ridge - and a diagram so pixelated it could appear on a true crime show without any additional editing.
  
  
  
• How to get all your work done on an iPad.  (ZDNet)
  
  Step 1: Have very, very low expectations.
  
  He lists email, a calendar, a password manager, and a text editor.  He could get by with a Tandy Model 100.
  
  
  
• AI's core competence seems to be screwing things up faster and on a larger scale than mere humans can hope for.  (Vox)
  
  And we are very, very good at screwing up.  The problem is we need to eat and sleep and stuff like that, so I'm told, so we take regular forced breaks from screwing up.
  
  AI can screw things up 24x7.

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, May 29 2021 12:12 AM (eqaFC)

Posted by: normal at Saturday, May 29 2021 01:10 AM (LADmw)

Posted by: J Greely at Saturday, May 29 2021 06:05 AM (ZlYZd)

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Sunday, May 30 2021 07:58 AM (LZ7Bg)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, May 30 2021 04:34 PM (PiXy!)

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• So, after that extremely unplanned upgrade last night - which took forever even on an 8-core system with NVMe storage - my mouse had three broken legs.  Basically it would get stuck about once a second, unfreeze, and immediately stick again.
  
  But I know this one.  This has happened before.  And I blogged about it so that if it ever happened again, I'd know exactly where to look for the solution.
  
  ...
  
  Oh, right.  The solution to sudden mouse freezes after a Windows upgrade is to disable HDCP on your second monitor.
  
  Really.
  
  
  
• Get your SSDs now before the price goes up.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Yep, you guessed it.  Blockchain ruins everything.
  
  
  

Tech News

• Speaking of SSDs, the WD Black SN750 SE is one.  (AnandTech)
  
  Don't buy it.  Probably.  I got myself two WD Black SN750 drives in the Cyber Monday sales, but those are actually very different drives.  The older model is a conventional high-end PCIe 3.0 drive; the newer one is a low-end PCIe 4.0 drive - it has no DRAM cache.  And since its listed specs are only at PCIe 3.0 levels I don't really see the point.
  
  It will probably do just fine for the average desktop - more than fine - but wouldn't be my first choice.  Or even my tenth.
  
  
  
• Nvidia may be launching the RTX 3070 Ti and 3080 Ti on Monday.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Get those second mortgages ready!
  
  It was easier when you simply couldn't get them at all.
  
  
  
• AMD is now the 11th largest semiconductor company in the world.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  After increasing sales by 93% year-on-year.  
  
  Texas Instruments is number 9, with 27% annual growth, which is pretty good for a company founded in 1930.
  
  
  
• AMD's Strix Point APU could feature both Zen 5 and Zen 4 cores, RDNA 3 graphics, and a large L4 cache, all on TSMC's 3nm process.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Or, on the other hand, not.  But an L4 cache for AMD's APUs will come sooner rather than later.  Intel's already done it, after all.
  
  
  
• Freenode is imploding, and it's spectacular.  (FossPost)
  
  This is the 25-year-old IRC network that got taken over by corporate interests under questionable circumstances.  Those corporate interests, it turns out, are completely fucking retarded.
  
  I've said that socialism is the belief that the goose will continue to lay eggs after it's been served up as Christmas dinner, but that way of thinking is also common among a certain class of entrepeneur.
  
  
  
• Oracle is giving away free shit.  (Serve the Home)
  
  In this case, a 4 core Arm virtual server with 24GB of RAM.
  
  I don't know what the catches are.  They're there, I just don't know what they are yet.
  
  
  
• Amazon is buying MGM for $8 billion.  (Thurrott.com)
  
  Which will give them ownership of Stargate and a bunch of other stuff.
  
  I'd mock this deal on general principle but the only Amazon show I've actually watched was Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman's Good Omens and they didn't fuck it up.  I fully expected them to fuck it up and they did not.
  
  
  
• If everyone is working from home the answer to maintaining corporate control is to make them live at work.  (SF Chronicle)
  
  Google's new motto: If you're gonna be evil, don't take any half measures.
  
  Code eighteen hours and what do you get?
  A mocha soy latte and five grand in debt.
  
  
  
• Russia is a safe haven for hackers, say key cybersecurity and counterintelligence officials and also everyone else with two functioning brain cells.  (CNBC)
  
  In my opinion, Darkside was operating with - at a minimum - the tacit approval of Russian authorities, if not under their direct control.
  
  
  
• Long working hours kill people.  (The Seattle and/or New York Times)
  
  As Buffy said, hey I've died twice.
  
  

Show Tune Anime Music Video of the Day

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, May 27 2021 11:38 PM (eqaFC)

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, May 27 2021 11:41 PM (eqaFC)

Posted by: normal at Friday, May 28 2021 01:09 AM (LADmw)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, May 28 2021 01:10 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, May 28 2021 02:58 AM (eqaFC)

Posted by: normal at Friday, May 28 2021 10:08 AM (obo9H)

Posted by: cxt217 at Friday, May 28 2021 02:45 PM (4i7w0)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, May 28 2021 03:19 PM (PiXy!)

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• Dear Microsoft,
  
  It's not fucking up to you how many fucking times I pause your fucking updates.  Unlike you retards, I have a fucking job to do, so kindly take your updates, cover them in glitter glue, and shove them so far up your ass that you see stars when you close your eyes.
  
  Love,
  
  Pixy
  
  Update: WINDOWS YOU FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT DIE IN ALL THE FIRES.
  
  
  
• Arm has announced three new Arm cores.  (AnandTech)
  
  Which is kind of a logical thing for Arm to announce, and a logical thing to be announced by Arm.
  
  Anyway, specifically we have the X2, following the high-performance X1, the A710, following the formerly high-performance A78, and the A510, following the power-efficient A55.
  
  All three support the new Armv9 instruction set, and the X2 and A510 are 64-bit only designs.  As a developer I'm generally against ripping out backwards-compatibility like that, but on the other hand the x86 architecture has maintained binary compatibility since 1978 and as a result is now insane.
  
  Anyway, the X2 is 16% faster than the X1, assuming the same manufacturing process and power consumption.  The A710 - no longer being the top performing core - delivers the same performance as the A78 but uses 30% less power.  And the A510 is 25% slower than the A73, which was Arm's high-end core in 2017 - and what powers my "new" phone.
  
  Not an astounding upgrade but still pretty solid.

Tech News

• A million PCs are being sold per day, with an expected growth of 18% for 2021.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  The article says that this is happening "despite" the component shortages, but that's backwards.  This is a major factor causing the component shortages.  PC sales have been trending slowly downwards for years and certainly no-one was stockpiling parts in the event of a surge.
  
  
  
• It may look like a Flavoradio from 1980 but it is actually an FPGA developer kit for vision-centric AI projects.  (Serve the Home)
  
  At $199 it's a little more expensive than an AM radio too, but that's a pretty good price for this kind of developer board.
  
  
  
• Chrome 91 includes a gravity sensor API.  (Phoronix)
  
  That will come in handy the next time I forget to pay the gravity bill.
  
  
  
• Mathematicians have figured out how to figure out the square root of one.  (Quanta)
  
  For rather complicated definitions of "square root" and "one".  Specifically it solves Hilbert's 12th problem from 1900 for what are known as totally real fields.
  
  Not in the way Hilbert envisioned, since mathematics has advanced somewhat in 121 years, but solved nonetheless.
  
  
  
• Russia has fined Google 6 million rubles - approximately twelve cents - for failing to remove what it calls "illegal content".  (Engadget)
  
  What Russia means here is content inconvenient to their narrative, the kind of stuff Big Tech kills with an axe if it inconveniences their own narrative.
  
  
  
• Amazon's ad revenue is now twice that of Snap, Twitter, Roku, and Pinterest combined, or approximately twelve cents.  (CNBC)
  
  I don't think any of those companies are exactly raking it in right now.
  
  
  
• I mentioned that Phison has a dumb name but makes good SSD controllers, but a 15 microsecond access time?  Really?  (Hot Hardware)
  
  That seems awfully fast but the chart data is at least consistent.
  
  And speaking of dumb names, one of their competitors is called InnoGrit.  I guess eventually all the cool names are taken.
  
  
  
• I hadn't heard Subaru - the dancing duck girl from yesterday - sing before.  Her voice drops by about an octave.  Rather striking.

Posted by: normal at Wednesday, May 26 2021 07:40 PM (obo9H)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, May 26 2021 07:53 PM (PiXy!)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Thursday, May 27 2021 12:34 AM (6y7dz)

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, May 27 2021 03:13 AM (eqaFC)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Thursday, May 27 2021 03:30 AM (6y7dz)

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, May 27 2021 04:27 AM (eqaFC)

7 Bought a used PC a while back.  Original owner must have been a business - there were no standard games on it, and it was locked down good and tight. I keep getting pop-ups saying I should unlock it so MS can bollix things up whenever they feel like it, but I've preferred to do my updates myself on my time line, thank you very much

Posted by: Frank at Thursday, May 27 2021 05:21 AM (rglbH)

Posted by: cxt217 at Thursday, May 27 2021 08:44 AM (4i7w0)

Posted by: normal at Thursday, May 27 2021 10:49 AM (obo9H)

Posted by: normal at Thursday, May 27 2021 11:07 AM (obo9H)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, May 27 2021 03:33 PM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, May 27 2021 11:31 PM (eqaFC)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, May 28 2021 01:08 AM (PiXy!)

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• I think I've fixed the main page template over at Ace's site. The template code somehow got mangled and was including multiple copies of posts into that page, though the individual pages worked fine.
  
  I still get a warning from Safari about the page, but it certainly loads faster. I think Safari is just not a very good browser in general.
  
  
  
• On the plus side, if you're on MacOS, Mozilla just fixed a 21 year old problem in Firefox. (Bugzilla)
  

  Blake Ross
  Comment 5 • 21 years ago
  
  How easy/hard would this be?

  Well, I think that question got answered.

• AMD's Ryzen 5600H laptop part beats Intel's 11400H. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  By a tiny margin on single-threaded tasks, but a solid 28% on multi-threaded.
  
  The 5600H uses the latest Zen 3 cores, which is great but also really fucking annoying because the 5600U... No, wait, the 5600U is also Zen 3? So the 5700U and 5500U are Zen 2. I don't know, whatever. Chips is chips.
  
  These - the 5600H and 11400H - are 6-core parts for mid-range laptops, most likely to be found paired with something like an RTX 3060.
  
  

• No, I didn't get enough sleep last night, how did you guess?
  
  
  
• AMD's RDNA 3 and Nvidia's Lovelace family - both due next year - are expected to be more than twice as fast as the current cards that you can't get. (WCCFTech)
  
  Actually, I just checked, and my usual supplier has not only the 6700XT and 6900XT in stock, but also a small number of RTX 3060, 3070, and 3080 cards. The prices for the Nvidia cards are astronomical (and the AMD cards stratospheric), but they have them.
  
  
  
• Qualcomm has announced a developer kit for Windows on Arm. (Thurrott.com)
  
  Three years after they launched Windows on Arm, which raises the question of how the fuck they expected anything to be developed for it.
  
  It will be powered by Snapdragon 7c compute platform, which is, well... You know that cheap phone I bought recently, which had a three-year-old SOC that didn't use the latest Arm core even when it was new? The Snapdragon 7c is slower than that.
  
  
  
• Apple is looking to remove the ability to boot from an external drive. (Apple Insider)
  
  Apple seems intent on crippling third-party tools that can back up your boot volume, while their own backup utility often fails for no reason.
  
  Also, if the internal drive on your new Arm-based Mac - which is soldered in place and encrypted by a chip that is also soldered in place - if that drive dies, you can't boot, even if you have a bootable backup. You're simply fucked.
  
  
  
• China is cracking down on crypto mining. (South China Morning Post)
  
  Okay. Sure. You do that. Have fun.
  
  
  

Just Two Ducks Dancing Video of the Day

Posted by: J Greely at Tuesday, May 25 2021 11:59 PM (ZlYZd)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Wednesday, May 26 2021 12:38 AM (6y7dz)

Posted by: ReallyBored at Wednesday, May 26 2021 02:16 AM (cp/J1)

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