• Lenovo's thin-and-light X1 Yoga is an X1 Carbon with more yoga and less carbon.  (AnandTech)
  
  It's the same hardware as the X1 Carbon but in an aluminium frame rather than carbon fibre.  That makes it a little heavier but has the advantage of being made of aluminium.
  
  Not sure why that's an advantage, actually.
  
  
• The HyperX QuadCast microphone doubles as a hurricane lamp.  (PC Perspective)
  
  Well, maybe not technically.
  
  
• With AMD's announcement of PCIe 4.0 support on Ryzen 3000 (non-boring edition) I was wondering when we'd start to see PCIe 4.0 SSDs, since we're already hitting the limits of PCIe 3.0 x4.
  
  Phison are on it.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  They're one of the few (only?) remaining independent SSD controller designers, and their engineering sample currently delivers 4GBps and 900,000 IOPS.  That will improve with faster flash, something that wasn't needed previously because existing flash could fill the PCIe 3.0 interface anyway.
  
  Which is good news because 900,000 IOPS, pfft.  Those are rookie numbers.
  
  
• Unity (which I have heard of) just nuked Improbable (which has raised $600 million in funding but which I have never heard of) over license violations relating to game streaming.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Developers got angry with Unity, but it seems that Unity had previously informed Improbable that they were in violation of the standard license and needed to negotiate a tailored license for their use case....  Over a year ago.
  
  
• Amazon is now providing DocumentDB, a service compatible with the MongoDB 3.6 API.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Not the API to MongoDB 4.0, which has multi-document transactions but has a much more restrictive license.  Whether that's due to the license (does it apply to the API or just the software?) or due to Amazon's particular implementation I don't know.
  
  MongoDB and Amazon are currently engaged in hissing at each other like two cats stuck inside due to bad weather.
  
  
• SWAGGINZZZ won Nethack.
  
  I don't think I have ever won a recent version of Nethack, though I've won at Rogue, the original Hack, and Larn.  SWAGGINZZZ cheats just a tiny bit, however - it uses a cluster of AWS servers to reverse-engineer the seed of pseudo-random number generator based on the observable dungeon and then predict the rest of the dungeon.
  
  
• It would seem that US carriers are selling your location data to anyone with the cash.  (Motherboard)
  
  And it's not even very much cash.  Via four intermediaries, anyone with $12.95 and your cell phone number can track you down in real time.
  
  Guys, if you don't want to see your industry stomped by overbearing European-style privacy regulation, stop that nonsense right now.
  
  
• ZFS doesn't work on the Linux 5.0 kernel due to changes in floating point support. (Phoronix)
  
  The response so far appears to be DONTCARE/WONTFIX.  This does not fill me with joy.

• Some US government websites' SSL certificates have been splorked by the ongoing shutdown.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  LetsEncrypt, people.  It's free and can be fully automated.  I have 7000 domains under it at my day job.
  
  
• Where there's deep-sea mud, there's brass.  (Nature)
  
  Well, not literally.  Well, maybe literally, but certainly yttrium, europium, terbium and dysprosium.
  
  
• We don't understand how brains think, not at a deep level, so we're building thinking computers - neural networks - to offer a new tool to study that process.
  
  Now we don't understand how neural networks think, so we're building a new tool to study that process.  (Quanta)
  
  It's research grants all the way down.
  
  
• Need a cheap case and a low resolution touchscreen for your Raspberry Pi 2 or 3 project?  Some random company in China has you covered.  (Scargill's Tech Blog)
  
  
• The world's largest advertising agency will offer an ad blocking service starting in July.  (Thurrott.com)
  
  And when I say offer, I mean deliver by default to about two billion users.
  
  It's not as bad as it might be because it seems to be - for now - better described as an obnoxious popup blocker which will, for example, stomp on auto-play videos.
  
  
• Germany has outlawed Amazon Dash buttons.  (PC Magazine)
  
  Identifying the real threat.  Good work.
  
  If that link doesn't work, try this one.  They do one of those stupid forced geographic redirects for Australian victims.

• LinkedIn blocked a user's content from being visible in China.  (TechDirt)
  
  This isn't a huge story, except for the slightly surprising fact that LinkedIn is visible inside China at all.  The total number of content removal requests reported by LinkedIn, worldwide, is 15.
  
  
• Google says Section 230 for me, but not for thee.  (TechDirt)
  
  Google is involved in a slow motion slap fight with TechDirt over the latter's report on the difficulty of properly moderating user-generated content.  Google's actions just keep proving TechDirt correct, but the irony is lost on them.
  
  
• The EU's execrable Article 13 is on the fast track to disaster.  (Julia Reda)
  
  In short, it makes all online platforms liable for user-generated content.  Platforms don't have to filter content, says the legislation, but are required to filter content.
  
  Yes, that's really what it says.
  
  How much filtering you are required to do depends.  On...  Stuff.
  
  Oh, and you're not allowed to block content that doesn't infringe.  And you have to be able to detect parodies and other fair use.
  

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, January 12 2019 01:47 AM (Q/JG2)

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, January 12 2019 02:20 AM (Q/JG2)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Saturday, January 12 2019 02:38 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, January 12 2019 12:47 PM (Iwkd4)

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