Tech News

• HPE is buying Cray for $1.3 billion.  (AnandTech)
  
  Seems like a good purchase.  HP Enterprise previously bought SGI in 2016, and Cray just won a $500 million dollar contract partnering with AMD to build a 1.5 exaflop supercomputer for the Department of Energy.
  
  What are such supercomputers used for?  Well, for example, in the Fukushima nuclear incident someone had the idea of pouring sand over the troubled reactor.  The DoE ran a simulation overnight and came back and said: Do NOT pour sand on the troubled reactor.  That would be bad.
  
  
• Samsung is sampling 32Gb DDR4 chips.  (AnandTech)
  
  Already?  That was quick.  They only just got 16Gb chips shipping in any volume.
  
  Turns out the answer is no.  These are 16Gb chips, they're just two 16Gb chips.
  
  Exactly how they present logically and electrically, and whether they would allow you to put 4x64GB UDIMMs on a typical current generation CPU is not clear.
  
  
• Good work guys.  Now even Canada doesn't like you.  (TechDirt)
  
  In the United States the social networks are protected by the First Amendment and Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.  The rest of the world is pretty much a free-fire zone for speech rights.  None of the major players seems to have worked out what this means.
  
  
• Black is a Python code formatter from the Python team.
  
  Being from the Python team, it doesn't work on any version of Python older than 3.6, and enshrines some formatting decisions that no-one really likes.
  
  I'll stick with Ctrl-Alt-L while I migrate to Crystal, thanks.
  
  
• Salvatore Sanfilippo, the creator of Redis, writes about maintaining an open source project.
  
  Disclaimer: Redis doesn't suck.
  
  
• Your internet data is rotten.  (The Conversation)
  
  Oh, rotting?  Well, that too I guess.
  
  
• More like Hack Overflow, amirite?  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Sigh.  At least they didn't incessantly demand personal data the way Quora did.
  
  
• We've found enough exoplanets now to start teasing out new theories on planetary formation from the statistical data.  (Quanta)
  
  In this case, rocky planets 1.5 to 2 times the diameter of Earth are unexpectedly rare, possibly because once a planet reaches a certain size early in its formation, its growth tends to accelerate outside that range.
  
  
• How did we end up in a timeline where Donald Trump is the last defender of free speech on Planet Earth?  (One Angry Gamer)
  
  
• AnimeNYC says no fictional WWI Nazis thanks.  (One Angry Gamer)
  
  That's the second thing to show up on Twitter in the past 24 hours that has made me want to watch Tanya the Evil.
  
  
• China bans the word "kill" from video games.  (One Angry Gamer)

  Fong brings word from the mainland that in addition to having to avoid games that disrupt China’s "socialist values”, they also have to avoid dismemberment, overt sexual content, bones, guts, human corpses, skeletons, and now blood of any kind.

  This is not about ethics or morality or social order; it's a demarcation dispute.

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, May 18 2019 05:38 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, May 18 2019 05:40 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: cxt217 at Saturday, May 18 2019 11:39 AM (LMsTt)

Posted by: Phil Fraering at Tuesday, May 21 2019 02:23 AM (Clxcy)

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• Only Google can stop forest fires.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Add another one to the Killed by Google list.  Dual booting Windows 10 on Chromebooks is dead even before it shipped.
  
  
• A 12 core Ryzen CPU benchmark leaked out.  (WCCFTech)
  
  It's an engineering sample with a top speed of 3.7GHz (the same as my Ryzen 1700) but even so outperforms 99.3% of systems on the UserBenchmark site.
  
  
• Wait, Dropbox has an API?
  
  Now you tell me.
  
  
• Google Pay's privacy settings are private.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Makes sense, I guess.
  
  
• A vague handwavey plan to save the web that won't work.  (ZDNet)
  
  
• Don't Believe the FUD: Ethereum Can Scale.  (Coindesk)
  
  Yeah, right.
  
  Ethereum is currently in the third day of its latest meltdown.  I have accumulated $100 just in transaction fees for transfers that have gotten stuck and aren't even showing as processing.
  
  Now, unlike with a bank, you get refunded the fees when those transactions eventually fail.  But right now the entire Ethereum network is basically unusable for anything more complicated than making payments - unless you are willing to pay transaction fees that are more than the value of the transaction itself.
  
  
• If you want to make payments, you can do it far more quickly and cheaply on Stellar, unless the entire core cluster of nodes has fallen over simultaneously and the network can't figure out a quorum to continue processing.
  
  Which happened today.
  
  One of the projects at my day job is a dual blockchain app running on Ethereum and Stellar.  So yes, today was a lot of fun.

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, May 17 2019 12:43 AM (Iwkd4)

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• Intel announced a whole new lineup of CPU security flaws today. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  The flaws, nicknamed ZombieLoad, affect every hyper-threaded Intel CPU manufactured since 2008.
  
  The solution is to disable hyper-threading, which reduces performance on heavily threaded workloads by about 20% but is probably better than having all your data stolen.
  
  Mitigation patches are flying all over the place right now.
  
  
• The OnePlus 7 is neither bad nor horrifyingly expensive.  (AnandTech)
  
  It's drawing wide praise, in fact.  And it can be yours for "only" $670.  (My current phone cost $150 outright.)  That's the most expensive phone from OnePlus so far, but it's cheaper than an entry-level iPhone XR.
  
  It lacks wireless charging, which is annoying, and a headphone jack, which is double plus annoying.  Either of those is a deal breaker for me.
  
  
• Samsung announced its 3nm GAA MBCFET PDK 0.1 with 3GAE risk production in H2 2020 and 3GAP the following year.  (AnandTech)
  
  In human speak, 3nm chips will be here in just a couple of years.
  
  
• Infinite online storage for free!
  
  Until Google fixes it, so a couple of weeks tops.
  
  
• One strike and you're out as far as Facebook Live goes.  (ZDNet)

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, May 16 2019 12:37 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, May 16 2019 12:45 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: J Greely at Thursday, May 16 2019 06:08 AM (ZlYZd)

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, May 16 2019 06:31 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, May 16 2019 10:42 AM (PiXy!)

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Breaking News Bulletin

• Ethereum sucks.
  
  

• Looking for a desktop PC with a heatsink as big as its case? Lenovo has you covered with the ThinkCentre M930n Nano IoT.  (Notebook Check)
  
  As the "nano" part might suggest thought, the case isn't all that big.
  
  
• Lenovo also showed off a folding laptop though the screen on the prototype is only 13" unfolded, so I'm not sure how useful it is.  (PC Perspective)
  
  I mean, most laptops fold.  Just this one has a screen on both sides.  Both sides of the inside.  That is, it has a screen where the keyboard should be, and a screen where the screen should be, and it's the same screen.
  
  
• Ethereum is pretty terrible.  I mean, it's an amazing technological achievement, just so long as you're not trying to do anything with it.
  
  
• Slack aims to be the most important software company in the world which is kind of like a kiwi aiming for the Moon.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Great choice of targets but you ain't gonna hit it.
  
  
• Hacker Laws.
  
  
• Google has decided the headphone jack is a downmarket feature and will only provide it on mid-range phones.  (Android Authority)
  
  Google, as I may have mentioned previously, is run by idiots.
  
  
• A bug in WhatsApp let hackers install programs on your phone just by calling you.  (ZDNet)
  
  That takes some talent.  It's not like this is Sendmail in the early 2000s with the Exploit of the Week Club; Android is designed for security.  How WhatsApp screwed it up that badly is unclear.
  

Anime Opening of the Day

Posted by: Mauser at Wednesday, May 15 2019 12:11 PM (Ix1l6)

Posted by: Rick C at Wednesday, May 15 2019 01:13 PM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Mauser at Saturday, May 18 2019 11:45 AM (Ix1l6)

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• A leaked Biostar spec sheet confirms some earlier leaks of AMD's X570 chipset.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  PCIe 4.0 everywhere; the new board has three M.2 slots all with 4 lanes of PCIe 4.0, for a theoretical 8GB/s of bandwidth, bidirectional, each.  The two on the chipset are limited to a total of 8GB/s to the CPU though.
  
  
• Maybe we'd all be better off if the Bay Area  quietly sank into the Arctic Ocean.  (Salon)
  
  I understand the geographical obstacles to this plan, but I kind of like the Pacific Ocean and wouldn't want to do that to the poor thing.
  
  
• 40% of Australians had their private information leaked in a single incident earlier this year.  (ZDNet)
  
  Though apparently we are not allowed to know what company or organisation was involved.  That's private.

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, May 14 2019 01:22 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, May 14 2019 01:50 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, May 14 2019 03:41 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, May 14 2019 04:26 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, May 14 2019 06:39 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, May 14 2019 01:20 PM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Rick C at Wednesday, May 15 2019 08:36 AM (Iwkd4)

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Posted by: cxt217 at Monday, May 13 2019 04:13 AM (LMsTt)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, May 13 2019 11:37 AM (PiXy!)

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• Mark Zuckerberg says breaking up Facebook isn't going to help.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Perhaps not, but it would be hilarious.
  
  
• Dear Facebook, please stop helping.  (The Atlantic)
  
  Facebook's core principles of radical inconsistency and guerrilla censorship make it hard to track down violent extremists, in this case, Syrian war criminals.
  
  
• Never trust experts.  (The Atlantic)
  
  The article brings up Paul Ehrlich in the first paragraph, so you know the author is out for blood.  An interesting tidbit: Over the timeframe where Ehrlich predicted that famines would explode to kill hundreds of millions, deaths by famine declined by 95%.
  
  
• GitHub has a new tool to automatically build Ruby, Java, .NET, and (ugh) NPM packages from your source code.  (ZDNet)
  
  This is handy.  Crystal (yeah, that again) makes this very easy, particularly if your code is on GitHub.  Having so much stuff centralised on one platform owned by Microsoft does make me a little queasy, but better there than Google.  Not something I thought I'd be saying ten years ago.  Or probably even five.

• SSD prices are expected to fall below 10¢ per GB which is a safe bet because they already have.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  
• 28 cores and six-channel RAM on Mini-ITX.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Haha, I said, no, the CPU supports six-channel RAM but the motherboard does...  Does?  
  
  There's two models.  Both have four SO-DIMM slots on top in the usual place.  One version has two M.2 slots on the underside; the other has two SO-DIMM slots in the same place.
  
  So yes, they got it right.
  
  
• How did John Brunner get the future world of Stand on Zanzibar "spookily accurate"?  (BBC)
  
  The secret is that unlike the BBC, he could do arithmetic.
  
  
• How does an ancient quad-core 2600K compare to a modern eight core 9700K?  (AnandTech)
  
  If you're gaming at 720p, the latest CPUs are twice as fast.  If you're gaming at 1440p or higher, the differences are miniscule.
  
  If you're doing something other than gaming, though, it's night and day.  If your workload is multi-threaded, the new CPUs can be more than three times as fast.
  
  
• Windows 10 is active on 825 million devices.  (Thurrott.com)
  
  Only eight of those are me, I think.  Including virtual machines.
  
  
• It is impossible to improve upon this headline:
  
  Rolled Out! Devs Kick Artist Off Project for Misgendering a Non-Binary Rat.  (One Angry Gamer)
  
  
• In their efforts to prevent social network interference with political campaigns, YouTube has demonetised EU Parliament candidate Carl Benjamin's entire account.  (One Angry Gamer)
  
  That's Sargon of Akkad.
  
  
  
  
  
• A sufficiently determined programmer can write C in any language.
  
      require "lib_c"
    require "c/stdio"

    LibC.printf pointerof("HELLO!\n".@c)
  
  That's Crystal.  It doesn't normally look like that, but if you really want to...

Posted by: Rick C at Sunday, May 12 2019 05:42 AM (Iwkd4)

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• Someone is upset that Facebook is co-operating with the US government to remove the accounts of terrorist organisations.  (TechDirt)
  
  
• Apparently setting your money on fire is the hot new trend.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Uber, which has never made a dime and is never likely to, is valued at $82.4 billion.
  
  
• Marzipan will let iOS apps run on Macs.  (IconFactory)
  
  Problem: iOS apps will suck on Macs.
  
  Solution: Rewrite the iOS apps to work on Macs.
  
  
• I'm not even going to read that story, it's too depressing.
  
  
• Google just added a new tag to replace <iframe> because who needs standards?  (ZDNet)
  
  
• Those small fast mammals are no threat to us said the dinosaur.  (Tom's Guide via Six Colors)
  
  
• Mozilla is hoping to find a way to renew certificates before they expire.  (ZDNet)
  
  
• Let me know when you reach 10240x2880.  (TechSpot)
  
  Might also need Thunderbolt 4 to connect the thing, so get on that too.
  
  
• Intel's 2TB 660p is now available for $185.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Not in Australia it's not, though the price is coming down here as well.  I don't know why, but Samsung SSD pricing in Australia is better than in the US, while Intel pricing is worse.  In this case, the 2TB 660p costs 20% more than a 1TB 970 Evo Plus in Australia, but is 20% cheaper in the US.
  
  Full review of the 1TB model here if you're tempted.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  If I can find it here at US pricing (which would be roughly A$290 including GST) I'll likely buy one.  Yes, it's QLC, but it has a 24GB fixed pseudo-SLC cache, plus up to 250GB of dynamic pseudo-SLC cache (judging by benchmarks).  So you have to stress it quite a bit before you're hitting the QLC directly.
  
  I can get the 1TB model for A$175, which isn't too bad, but the 2TB model runs about three times that.
  
  
• Ars Technica loved Detective Pikachu.
  
  Is that a good sign or a bad sign?

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, May 10 2019 11:01 PM (Iwkd4)

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