• Acer's Nitro 5 is an all-AMD gaming laptop - if you select the all-AMD build anyway.  (AnandTech)
  
  Ryzen 5 2500U with 8GB RAM (user-upgradable to 32GB), RX 560X with 4GB RAM, 256GB SATA SSD and 1TB HDD, and the least colour-accurate 1080p IPS display the reviewer has ever seen.
  
  I hope you like green, because that's what you're going to get.
  
  Also effective against Daleks.
  
  
• That Ryzen handheld gaming widget seems to be progressing towards reality.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Starting at $699, a rather expensive reality; that's the same price as the Acer laptop above.
  
  
• Etsy took money out of an unspecified number of its sellers' accounts rather than paying it in.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  People are, shall I say, irked.
  
  
• Are Apple going to release a 16-inch MacBook Pro and a 31 (or 32) inch 6k monitor this year?  (9to5Mac)
  
  Maybe.  But this is Apple we're talking about.  Good old keep it the same but raise the prices Apple.
  
  Also, so far as I know, 6k LCD panels don't exist, though it's a common high-end video resolution.  Checking the TFT Central database at 31.5" (the most likely size) we find 1920x1080, 2560x1440, 3840x2160, 5120x2880, and 7680x4320.  That is, 1080p, 1440p, 4k, 5k, and 8k.  6k is absent.  In fact, no 6k panels are listed at any size.  Which doesn't mean that someone isn't busy cooking one up, but doesn't provide an support for the idea either.
  
  
• AMD quadrupled its server market share from Q4 2017 to Q4 2018.  (Serve the Home)
  
  However, their share had previously dwindled to less than 1%, so while a welcome recovery, it's a slow one.
  
  
• How to get banned for life from AirBnB.  (The Next Web)
  
  Actually, that's boring.  Forget that.
  
  How to get banned for 17 years from the Fairmont Empress hotel in Victoria, Canada.  (New York Times)
  
  Much better.  It involves a suitcase full of salami, several dozen seagulls, and a faulty hair dryer.  And a towel.

  "I had forgotten that sea gulls cannot fly when they are wrapped in a towel,” he admitted.

• Apple will be hosting a major event on March 25 where they are expected to announce major new streaming services that will all be shut down within three years.  (Tom's Guide)
  
  
• The Born Rule is a formula relating the probability of an experimental outcome to the wave function of a quantum system, first set down by Max Born in 1926.
  
  It works great.  But it's taken more than 90 years for mathematicians and physicists to figure out why it works.  (Quanta)
  
  The new work shows that if you assume that wave function's collapse - for some definition of collapse - on observation, the Born Rule follows from the postulates of Quantum Mechanics.  This doesn't tie you to or exclude any of the interpretations either, as some earlier attempts did.
  
  
• All hats are grey in the dark.  (ZDNet)
  
  If you're spreading worms, I don't think you count as a white hat anymore.

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, February 19 2019 12:57 AM (Q/JG2)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, February 19 2019 08:02 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, February 19 2019 08:16 AM (Q/JG2)

Posted by: cxt217 at Tuesday, February 19 2019 08:21 AM (LMsTt)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, February 19 2019 11:33 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: cxt217 at Tuesday, February 19 2019 03:25 PM (LMsTt)

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• Intel's 9th generation mobile CPUs have peeked out from under the covers.  (AnandTech)
  
  Looks like two four core models and four eight core models.  No six core; instead they have eight cores without hyperthreading, which is about the same performance as six cores with.
  
  
• Google is planning changes to the Chrome APIs used by ad blocking extensions that will break most of those extensions.
  
  Google claimed these changes were for performance reasons.
  
  Developers of tracker blocker Ghostery investigated Google's claims and found that they were a load of crap. (ZDNet)
  
  Google then "clarified" its plans.
  
  
• A Guide to Chaos Monkey: Making systems more reliable by fucking everything up.
  
  
• Cygwin 3.0 is out.
  
  This version no longer supports Windows XP.

• Little Witch Academia: Chamber of Time is 64% off at Humble Bundle this weekend.
  
  
  

Video of the Day

Posted by: J Greely at Sunday, February 17 2019 02:59 PM (tgyIO)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, February 17 2019 04:19 PM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, February 18 2019 03:20 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, February 18 2019 03:25 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: J Greely at Monday, February 18 2019 06:55 AM (tgyIO)

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, February 18 2019 09:02 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, February 18 2019 09:45 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: J Greely at Monday, February 18 2019 10:32 AM (tgyIO)

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, February 18 2019 02:54 PM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, February 18 2019 09:06 PM (PiXy!)

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• Newegg has those $1800 motherboards for that $3000 Xeon processor if you want one.  (AnandTech)
  
  Well, they actually don't; it's just a per-order.  But they would if they did.
  
  
• Sasmsung has announced the Galaxy Tab S5e.  (AnandTech)
  
  10.5" 2560x1600 AMOLED display - no 8" model unfortunately - avaialble with 4GB/64GB or 6GB/128GB.  400 grams, starting at $400.
  
  
• Everyone already made the chicken jokes.  (AnandTech)
  
  Intel appears to be preparing a Core i9-9900KFC.  This might be a model without graphics (there are other F parts) but with an L4 cache (there are other C parts).  But all the other parts with an L4 cache had Iris Plus or Iris Pro graphics, so this would be a first.
  
  
• Western Digital has uploaded their new SweRV to GitHub.  (AnandTech)
  
  Unlike most GitHub projects, this is a CPU.  A RISC-V implementation to be precise.  Apache licensed.
  
  
• The ASUS TUF RTX 2060 is a tubby little cubby all stuffed with fluff.  (PC Perspective)
  
  I mean, look at it.
  
  
• Windows 10 now runs on the Rasbperry Pi.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Well, it can walk on the Raspberry Pi.  Crawl.
  
  Windows 10 really needs 4GB of RAM to behave itself, and the top of the line Pi 3 B+ has 1GB.  So the experience is less than stellar.
  
  
• USB-C is a mess.  (WCCFTech)
  
  
• Samsung is planning on stealing Huawei's networking equipment market out from under them.  (Reuters)
  
  Good luck to them, I say.
  
  
• If it weren't for RAM there would be 70% fewer Windows patches.  (PC Gamer)
  
  If it weren't for RAM, there would be 100% fewer Windows patches.  But silly headlines aside, it's interesting how common memory-safety bugs still are.
  
  
• If your wallet is too heavy for you to lift without assistance, Amazon can help you out with some 48 core bare metal server instances.  (Serve the Home)
  
  
• Google is fixing incognito to be incognitoer.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  I ran into this recently - some sites are using tricks to detect that you are in incognito mode.  Google is preparing to wage war on them.
  
  
• Some really dumb articles were circulating this week about how scientists working at OpenAI had created a monstrous fake news generator (PC Magazine) that was too dangerous to ever unleash on the world.  (Vox)
  
  It was fake news.  (ZDNet)
  
  The articles generated are obvious nonsense - check out the weather report in the second article.  That's probably why the Vox writers are so worried.  If they can't get the bots to unionise, they're out of a job.
  
  
  

• Tired of Europe stealing all the credit for idiotic IP laws, Japan is proposing to make all copyright infringement a criminal offense.  (TechDirt)
  
  If every artist who drew Bowsette was sent to jail, they'd need to wall off the whole of Hokkaido.  (Pixiv)

• Nvidia's Q4 revenues are down 24% since last year, with gaming revenues particularly being down 45%.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Nvidia blamed this on "people not buying our stuff".
  
  
• Sony says it is open to cross-platform online gaming.  (TechDirt)
  
  Sony says it has always been open to cross-platform online gaming.
  
  There are exactly two cross-platform online games available on the PS4.
  
  Sony says this is the fault of lazy developers.
  
  Developers are unimpressed.
  
  
• Apple is out to save journalism.  (Recode)
  
  Whether they are saving journalism from itself, or from themselves, is unclear.  Anyway, they're taking 50% of subscription fees - compared to 30% on iTunes or the App Store - but generously allow individual outlets to keep their ad revenue for now.
  
  
• Apple is having a bad year because it is run by idiots.  (ZDNet)
  
  This makes it an excellent fit as a journalism platform, to be honest.
  
  
• Amazon cancelled its NYC plans because NYC is run by idiots and Amazon is not.  (ZDNet)
  
  Not entirely.  Not even mostly.
  
  
• Deliveroo reroutes from Ruby to Rust.
  
  Or rather from Ruby to Ruby plus Rust.  The combination is five times faster than Ruby alone.
  
  Of course, if they'd simply gone with Python...

• South Korea has set up its own Little Firewall.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  They are blocking websites using SNI and forcing search engines to filter results.  Not nasty dark web stuff like drug sales, but ordinary adult content.
  
  
• IBM has a cloud platform.  (The Next Platform)
  
  Who knew?
  
  
• Singtel lost 40 million mobile customers.  (ZDNet)
  
  Have they looked down the back of the sofa?  I found $2.40 last time I pulled the cushions out.
  
  
• Hardkernel's Odroid N2 is a wee bit more powerful than the Raspberry Pi.
  
  It has A73 cores instead of A53 cores.  The A5x series is low power; the A7x series is high performance.  Not that the A53 is terrible, but the A73 is more than twice as fast.
  
  Which means it uses more power, of course, so it won't fit everywhere you might want to put a Pi, and it's more expensive as well.  But choice is good.
  
  Boards will ship in April, $63 with 2GB RAM, $79 with 4GB.
  
  There was to be an Odroid N1 last year, but it was cancelled because the memory chips became unavailable without warning.
  
  
• DigitalOcean introduces managed databases, starting with PostgreSQL.
  
  Because...  Just because.
  
  Pricing starts at $15 for a database node with 1 CPU and 1GB of RAM, which is three times the cost of a regular VPS of that size.
  
  PostreSQL is better than MySQL in every way except for actually using it.
  
  Full-text indexing in MySQL: Put a full-text index on the desired fields.
  
  Full-text indexing in PostgreSQL: Take your text fields, and create a new field that is a doubly-inverted flip list of the communitised k-terms.  Then simply apply a Queequeg-Moravec hash-trie index to the denormalised wave function of the tetragrammaton.  The search operator is &*==!=? and the match terms take the form of a sonnet.  In Flemish.  You may experience database outages if your Flemish is not period-accurate to the late 16th century.

• The British Thoughtcrime Brigade is at it again, wanting to make clicking on a link deemed "terrorist" in nature a crime.  (ZDNet)
  
  Until proven innocent.
  
  
• The EU's own plague zombies are back in the form of the nightmarishly awful EU Copyright Directive.  (TechDirt)
  
  It's even worse than it was before.
  
  Under the revised Article 13, sites that allow user-posted content (which is basically every site) must license everything.  What do they mean, everything?
  
  EVERYTHING.
  
  Before users post it.  
  
  Under Article 11, citing news items will require a license.  No exceptions.
  
  Julia Reda is still fighting this crapfest.
  
  
• The Verge filed baseless takedown notifications against YouTubers analysing their terrible PC build video.  (One Angry Gamer)
  
  The Verge is owned by Vox.
  
  Vox is a dumpster fire.

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, February 15 2019 01:28 AM (Q/JG2)

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, February 15 2019 01:34 AM (Q/JG2)

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, February 15 2019 01:43 AM (Q/JG2)

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, February 15 2019 01:46 AM (Q/JG2)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, February 15 2019 01:49 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, February 15 2019 03:48 AM (Q/JG2)

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, February 15 2019 03:49 AM (Q/JG2)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, February 15 2019 03:59 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, February 15 2019 06:21 AM (Q/JG2)

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, February 15 2019 06:24 AM (Q/JG2)

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• An underground cable fire at the local electricity substation serving 26,000 homes and business can really put a crimp in your productivity.
  
  
• Google and IBM are still trying to get their respective cloud offerings out of the dreaded "other" pie slice.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  IBM, call me.  Been using your services (or those of companies you have since acquired) since 2006.  I also use Amazon, Google, and DigitalOcean.  I can tell you exactly what to do.
  
  
• Xiaomi scooters can be remotely hijacked.  (ZDNet)
  
  Take this scooter to the corner store!
  
  
• Don't leave dirty socks lying around.  (ZDNet)
  
  Oh joy, another stupid goddamn Linux daemon and another stupid goddamn privilege escalation vulnerability.

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, February 14 2019 01:10 AM (Q/JG2)

Posted by: J Greely at Thursday, February 14 2019 01:48 AM (tgyIO)

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, February 14 2019 03:17 AM (Q/JG2)

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• Google will start censoring its search results in Russia too.  (TechDirt)
  
  Oh good.
  
  
• Google Docs gets an API.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Wait, it didn't already have one?
  
  
• Amazon bought Eero.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  This is part of Amazon's push into home automation.  Eero makes some good products, but it's a tiny company with some big competitors, and the two product lineups have more synergy than conflict, so the deal makes sense.
  
  Some customers are taking this less than entirely calmly.  (Also Tech Crunch)
  
  
• AMD's Radeon VII had no UEFI support for several hours.  (Tech Powerup)
  
  The internet outrage machine was just getting into gear when a new BIOS was released that fixed the problem.  You could actually hear the air leaking out.
  
  
• PyPy 7.0.0 is out.  (PyPy Tech)
  
  This includes production-ready support for Python 2.7 and 3.5, and alpha support for Python 3.6.  3.5 is just fine for most things.
  
  
• Calmira adds the Start Menu to Windows 3.1.  (Toasty Tech)
  
  Which puts it ahead of Windows 8.

Posted by: J Greely at Wednesday, February 13 2019 01:13 AM (tgyIO)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, February 13 2019 09:57 AM (PiXy!)

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• Huh is a universal word.  (Ideophone.org)
  
  We present today's news in this spirit.
  
  
• The role of channel cobblers in the server market.  (Serve the Home)
  
  
• Windows 95 has been ported to JavaScript.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  
• The harmonic convergence of HPC and AI.  (The Next Platform)
  
  
• Artificial intelligence finds ancient ghosts.  (Quanta)
  
  
• Samsung will sell three out of a total of five 8K televisions this year.  (ZDNet)
  
  
• SJWs outraged over gashapon squidwashing incident.  (One Angry Gamer)
  
  
• Always mount a scratch monkey.  (Wired)
  
  
• Micron is not going to release OLC flash.  (WCCFTech)
  
  
• QuadrigaCX left their wallet on the bus.  Or did they?  (CoinDesk)
  
  
• Using AI to fix China's healthcare problems starting with STOP EATING TIGER DICKS YOU BARBARIANS.  (Tech Crunch)

• Knife Children by Lois McMaster Bujold is a new novella set a few years after the events of the Sharing Knife series.

  From the Author
  
  Just as a point of information, "Knife Children" is not a children's story, despite the confusion the title has apparently caused Amazon's classification.
  
  bests, Lois.

• Shadow Captain by Alastair Reynolds is a welcome sequel to Revenger.
  
  
• Humble Spawn Bundle contains Spawn.
  
  
• Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid is getting a second season.  This was leaked yesterday ahead of the official announcement but then hurriedly pulled down, so I marked it as a rumour.  Now confirmed.
  
  
• Tomorrow sees the Japanese release of Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid volume 8, Kanna's Daily Life volume 6, and Elma's Office Lady Diary volume 2.  I didn't know of all the spinoffs.  It's gone franchise.

Picture of the Day

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, February 12 2019 03:45 AM (Q/JG2)

Posted by: StargazerA5 at Tuesday, February 12 2019 05:39 AM (bz2EX)

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, February 12 2019 06:33 AM (Q/JG2)

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• QtNotepad is a 50KB notepad app written using the Qt toolkit.
  
  I've tinkered with Qt a little, but didn't realise you could get a standalone GUI app that small.
  
  Source code is a 3KB zip file.
  
  
• ELVM is a trans-compiler that takes C code and turns it into...  Other things.
  
  Here's an example.
  
  You're welcome.
  
  
• A closer look at the Xeon W-3175X Bandito vs. the Threadripper 2990WX Instigator.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Conclusion?  It's basically a tie.  The Intel chip is faster on tasks other than rendering, but that's one of the most common uses for this class of CPU.  And the Xeon is 60% more expensive, and requires a motherboard that is 200% more expensive than the AMD equivalent.

• If Facebook is outlawed only outlaws will have Facebook.  (Wired)
  
  This is an analysis of the German antitrust ruling against Facebook's advertising model.  Facebook is toast in Germany if they don't win on appeal, and that seems unlikely.

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, February 11 2019 08:00 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: StargazerA5 at Tuesday, February 12 2019 05:37 AM (bz2EX)

Posted by: StargazerA5 at Tuesday, February 12 2019 05:38 AM (bz2EX)

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• Google is an open-source ClusterFuzz.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Wait.  That might not be entirely correct.
  
  Fuzzing is a testing technique that automatically generates random inputs for your program - or carefully designed evil inputs, or some combination.  There are lots of tools for this already, but another one is welcome.
  
  
• Pikazon, I ChooseCo you!  (TechDirt)
  
  
• Abandoning Google Analytics for Fathom.
  
  Hmm.  What is Fathom written in?  Go?  Fine.
  
  Go, I've often said, is hipster COBOL.  But COBOL ran banks and insurance companies for decades.  A new COBOL is not inherently a bad thing.  I think people should have gone with Ada instead - it's a much better designed language than Go.  Or even Apple's Swift.  But Go is fine.
  
  (Fathom GitHub)
  
  

• Spotify will squish you if you use an ad blocker.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  I'm okay with that.  Spotify has a direct external cost for every song you listen to.  If they don't recoup that somehow
  
  
• California's disingenuous Attorney General is at odds with their incompetent legislature over the meaning of the state's new public records law.  (TechDirt)
  
  Given what we've seen with with Bill of Rights over the year, you would think that legislators would adhere to what I call the This means you, shithead rule.  That is, if anything in a bill could possibly be subject to weaselry, you add very specific text to the effect that This means you, shithead.
  
  
• Under the guise of preventing human trafficking, Hawaii wants to force ISPs to filter porn.  (TechDirt)