• AMD has announced the Ryzen 3000 mobile family.  (AnandTech)
  
  Points of interest:
  
  
• These are the 12nm second-generation parts, not the exciting 7nm third-generation parts we're all waiting for.  (There were no Ryzen 1000 mobile parts.)
  
  
• But AMD announced this as just an oh-by-the-way, not even counting it as worth mentioning in their big keynote address on Wednesday.
  
  
• There are now both U-series 15W parts and H-series 35W parts.  The specs are basically the same; the H series just has much more thermal headroom and actually achieves the peak clocks rather than throttling.
  
  
• Two new 6W parts.... Oh, they're Excavator, not Zen.  Never mind.
  
  
• Nvidia announced the RTX 2060, launching on January 15 for $349.  (AnandTech)
  
  It delivers GTX 1070 performance for GTX 1070 prices.  It has more memory bandwidth but less memory.  It's decidedly unexciting given that it competes on a level footing on price and performance with a 2016 card, but Nvidia are clearly thinking "What are you going to do, buy AMD?  Wait, come back!"
  
  
• Nvidia also announced RTX Mobile providing lower-power versions of the 2060, 2070, and 2080.  (PC Perspective)
  
  First products expected by the end of this month.
  
  
• Speaking of Nvidia, they just adopted Freesync.  (AnandTech)
  
  Cheap wins every time.  One of the reasons behind this is that game consoles and televisions have adopted Freesync.  There's no market for the added cost of G-Sync in the living room, but Freesync has basically no unit cost, just a design cost, so why not?  If Nvidia want to sell into that market, Freesync is the only option.
  
  Intel have also announced their upcoming GPUs will support Freesync.
  
  
• HP's Spectre x360 15 has an AMOLED display.  (AnandTech)
  
  100% DCI-P3 colour space and 100,000:1 contrast, but what about the panel life?
  
  Like all the Spectre range, it's quite pretty in an angular way.  I prefer the ash grey and copper accents of 2017 over the newer midnight blue and gold, but it's still a work of art.
  
  
  
  
• HP's Omen 15 has a 240Hz display and GTX 1070 graphics and looks like a...  (AnandTech)
  
  Okay, it's not awful.  But for comparison:
  
  
  
  
• Acer's 2019 Swift 7 is 92% screen and weighs under 2 pounds.  (AnandTech)
  
  
  
  But only 1080p, Y-series CPU, and no home/end keys.  And expensive at $1699.  But it's fanless, and there are limits to what you can do if you want that and don't want an extra pound of heatsink.
  
  
• Acer also announced some rather larger laptops with Nvidia GPUs and 15" or 17" screens.  (AnandTech)
  
  These start at a hefty 4.6 pounds and $1799, but at least the 17" model has an interesting flippy hinge thing.
  
  
  
  
• Seagate announced new BarraCude and FireCuda SSDs.  (AnandTech)
  
  They're almost the same, with the BarraCuda coming in 256MB and 512MB and the FireCuda at 1TB and 2TB.  The larger models have better performance and endurance, but even the smallest model can deliver 3.4GB/s, effectively maxing out a PCIe 3.0 x4 link.
  
  The IronWolf range meanwhile are SATA drives for NAS use.  (AnandTech)
  
  Since two SATA SSDs can already fill a 10GbE connection, there's no real need for NVMe in the NAS market.
  
  
• Asus' ZenBook S13 has bezels so small that it has a notch.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Fortunately in the name of sanity it's not really a notch, but a notch-shaped extension that goes the other way, a little lip to the top bezel.
  
  Full U-series CPU on this one, 13.9" screen so it's really a 14" model, claimed 97% screen-to-body ratio, up to 16GB RAM and 1TB SSD.
  
  No dedicated home/end though, not even dedicated pgup/pgdn from what I can see.
  
  
• Alienware announced their "thin" and "light" m17 which DON'T SHAPE THE SCREEN LIKE THAT IT LOOKS LIKE IT ESCAPED FROM 1976 AND NOT IN A GOOD WAY.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  
• Asus launched their Mothership a sort of 17" 10 pounds Surface Pro for gaming.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Well, they didn't launch it - it will be out later in Q1 - but I had to say that.
  
  Other Linus got his hands on a pre-release model.
  
  
  
  
• Razer's Blade 15 is getting RTZ graphics - your choice of 2060, 2070, or 2080.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  I thought the Blade 15 was ligher than that - the article lists it at 4.7 pounds.
  
  
• Samsung showed off a 219" LED TV and also a smaller 75" model.  (WCCFTech)
  
  These are "microLED" panels using more conventional inorganic components (WCCFTech) and according to Samsung are much less prone to burn-in than OLED / AMOLED displays.
  
  The price, however, is in "if you have to ask" territory.
  
  
• Huawei announced their most powerful Arm CPU yet, the Kunpeng 920.  (ZDNet)
  
  Kirin was a good name.  It's in the Monster Manual.  Kunpeng is less good.
  
  Anyway, it's a 64 core server CPU running at 2.6GHz, with 8 channel memory and dual 100GbE ports.  Huawei has also announced servers based on the new chips, which no-one outside China will touch with a barge pole.
  
  
• Apple Death Watch: Don't worry Apple, we haven't forgotten you!
  
  The Phone That's Failing Apple: iPhone XR  (Wall Street Journal)
  
  It's the best selling of the new models.  It's just not best-selling enough.
  
  
• Apple Death Watch: You need to go on a diet.  (ZDNet)
  
  A good argument that Apple needs a new low-end device rather than simply continuing to sell outdated models at reduced prices.
  
  
• Original Linus has announced Linux 5.0.  (Phoronix)
  
  Basically Original Linus sometimes just wakes up and says "we're going to change the major version number".  This was called 4.21 up until Saturday.  Which doesn't mean that there isn't a ton of new stuff, just that there's always a ton of new stuff.
  
  
• Samsung is now iTunes and AirPlay compatible for people stuck with orphaned Apple devices now that that company is doomed.  (Six Colors)
  
  Doomed, I say.
  
  
• Speaking of doomed, Apple are describing noticeably crooked devices costing  thousands of dollars as having "subtle deviations in flatness".  (ZDNet)
  
  Like Florida.
  
  
• Finland says Microsoft should pay the costs for fucking up people's computers with forced upgrades.  (ZDNet)
  
  I had to re-install Skype this morning after updating to 1809.  That's $3.70 you owe me for my time, Microsoft!

• A former Grindr user is suing the platform over what seems to be a straightforward case of criminal harassment by another Grindr user, not really involving the company at all.  (NBC)
  
  The case has already been thrown out once, but the claimant is appealing that decision.
  
  
• A photographer licensed a photo to a stock photo company and was shocked to find out that someone used it.  (TechDirt)

  Walmart is selling my picture without my permission throughout all New Brunswick...

  (Actually, they're not.)

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, January 08 2019 02:29 AM (Q/JG2)

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, January 08 2019 02:31 AM (Q/JG2)

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, January 08 2019 02:49 AM (Q/JG2)

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, January 08 2019 02:51 AM (Q/JG2)

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, January 08 2019 03:02 AM (Q/JG2)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, January 08 2019 09:14 AM (PiXy!)

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