Dogfood Warning

• Nobody saw that coming.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Okay, everybody saw that coming.
  
  
  
• If you thought the 1.8GHz base clock on the Ryzen 4800U was bad, take a look at what Intel has in store. (AnandTech)
  
  The Core i7-1065G7 - which is a four core 15W part - has a base clock of just 1.3GHz.
  
  Only the 2.3GHz base clock of the 28W i7-1068G7 actually beats the 4800U, which has twice as many cores at half the TDP.
  
  
  
• Windows 7 support ends in three days.  Upgrade now.  Or replace it with Linux Mint.  (ZDNet)
  
  I have a little Lenovo laptop with a 32GB eMMC disk drive.  (The hardware is quite nice and it was very cheap.) 
  
  It has a 128GB SD card which is plenty of storage for files, but Windows can't work out how to use that for its updates, so I have to reset it to factory default to get back enough space to actually update to new Windows 10 releases.
  
  Linux Mint it is then.
  
  
  
• A decade of iPads: "Movie Kindle" to paperweight.  (9to5Mac)
  
  I haven't used mine in three years.
  
  
  
• Lenovo's IdeaPad Duet Chromebook is a...  Oh, it's in the name.  (AnandTech)
  
  For $280 you get a quad Cortex A73, 4GB RAM, 128GB flash, a 1920x1200 10" screen, and a bundled detachable keyboard.
  
  If it runs Android and Linux cleanly it might be a nice little device.

Music Video of the Day

Posted by: Rick C at Sunday, January 12 2020 03:24 PM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, January 12 2020 03:52 PM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, January 13 2020 03:18 AM (Iwkd4)

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• If you need more faster storage, Asus has a quad PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 NVMe SSD adaptor.  (AnandTech)
  
  It only works in AMD systems, but that's not a problem, because it only works in AMD systems.
  
  
  
• If you updated Firefox to 72.0 to get that notification popup blocking, well, update it to 72.0.1.  (PC Perspective)
  
  There was a security flaw, though it's not clear if this is a new bug or an existing one that wasn't fixed in 72.0.
  
  
  
• Party like it's 1975 with your very own Apple I.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  No soldering required - the kit includes all the parts, breadboards to assemble it, and jumper wires, some pre-assembled into a handy system bus.  It will ship later this year for $119.
  
  
  
• The "non-commercial" term in Creative Commons licenses means no direct commercial use, not no commercial involvement of any kind ever.  (TechDirt)
  
  Someone released teaching materials under BY-NC-SA 4.0 - that is, attribution required, no commercial use, and if you update the materials for your own use you have to share your updates too.
  
  They then sued copy shops that were used to copy the materials.
  
  The 9th Circuit told them to take a hike.
  
  
  
• Scalene, Scalene, Scalene, Scaleeeene...  (GitHub)
  
  Is a Python performance profiler.
  
  
  
• Linus: Don't use ZFS.  (Real World Tech)
  
  Everyone: (Uses ZFS.)
  
  
  
• Potato.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Google has removed over 1700 malware-infested apps from the Play Store.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Uh-oh.
  
  Since 2017.
  
  Never mind.
  
  
  
• Cuttlefish get all the fun.  (Popular Science)
  
  Researchers have demonstrated that cuttlefish have 3D vision by fitting them with little cuttlefish 3D glasses and showing them cuttlefish movies.
  
  Click the link.  Really.
  
  
  
• Amazon labelled Honey - a coupon-clipping browser extension now owned by PayPal - a security risk.  (Wired)
  
  Bets on how long before they are proven correct?
  
  
  
• Moderating content for Facebook is only slightly better than clawing out cobalt with your fingernails in an illegal mine in the Central African Republic.  (Vice)
  
  Are there illegal cobalt mines in the Central African Republic?  Is the Central African Republic still a country?*  Anyway, Facebook bad.
  
  
  
• Air filters make students smarter.  (Vox)
  
  Or - something no-one seems to have considered - this is yet another example of the Hawthorne effect, a finding dating back to the earliest scientific productivity studies, that studying people makes them more productive.
  
  At the Hawthorne Works in Cicero, Illinois, they tested to see if better lighting improved productivity.  It did.
  
  They then tested with worse lighting to see if that reduced productivity.  Instead, it improved productivity.
  
  They then set the lighting back to where it had been originally.  That also improved productivity.
  
  It turned out that having someone show an interest in your work and try to improve your working environment in itself makes you more productive.
  
  (I couldn't remember the name of the Hawthorne Effect, but it turns out five minutes of frantic Googling is an adequate substitute for genuine erudition.)
  
  Update: Or the entire notion of the Hawthorne Effect could be experimenter bias.  (Scientific American)

Tech Video of the Day

Picture of the Day

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, January 11 2020 03:40 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, January 11 2020 03:52 AM (Iwkd4)

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• Samsung showed off their 4th generation external SSD - the T7 - now with a fingerprint sensor.  (AnandTech)
  
  That's a very useful feature for mobile storage.  There's also a slightly cheaper model without the sensor.
  
  
  
• Viewsonic has a 55" 4K OLED monitor too.  (AnandTech)
  
  No price, of course.
  
  
  
• The HP Envy 32 looks like a pretty damn nice all-in-one system.  (AnandTech)
  
  32" 4K HDR 600 DCI-P3 display, up to a Core i7 9700S (the 65W version) and RTX 2080, up to 32GB RAM and 1TB of SSD, and an integrated Bang and Olufsen sound bar.  Exact selection of ports not listed but includes Thunderbolt 3.
  
  I would prefer a Ryzen 3900, which is also a 65W part, but AMD systems with Thunderbolt are pretty rare.
  
  
  
• Asus' Dual RTX 2070 Mini is something of a disappointment.  (PC Perspective)
  
  The only thing dual about it are the fans.  It doesn't even have dual DisplayPort ports.  Though there might be a reason for that.
  
  
  
• Intel announced their NUC 9 Pro and NUC 9 Extreme, which are...  ITX systems.  (ZDNet)
  
  Or rather, ITX-sized but not actually ITX systems to guarantee vendor lock-in.  They're a lot bigger than existing NUCs, but are still about as small as any ITX case you can find and can fit a 500W power supply and an 8" video card.
  
  They also have built-in Thunderbolt support, which I suspect is where the other video outputs of the Asus Dual RTX 2070 Mini went, since it was shown off specifically with a NUC 9.
  
  The 9 Pro supports Xeon E CPUs, up to 64GB of ECC RAM, two M.2 slots, the aforementioned dual Thunderbolt 3 ports, four USB 3.1 ports, one HDMI 2.0, WiFi 6, and dual Ethernet ports - but gigabit only, which is disappointing.
  
  Of slightly more interest is that these have a passive PCIe backplane: The entire guts of the system are packed into a dual-width 8" PCIe card, the same size as the 2070 Mini.  So you could yank out the entire working part of your computer and....  Yeah, not sure what you're supposed to do with it after that.
  
  If you could use the second slot for a second Compute Unit that would be interesting.  You can't.
  
  
  
• Did AMD just confirm Big Navi is coming?  Yes.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  
  
• Phison showed off an 8TB M.2 NVMe SSD.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  It's a QLC device to pack that much storage into such a small space, but still delivers 3.5GB per second reads and 3.0GB per second writes.  This is a reference design, since Phison make the controllers and don't sell SSDs themselves, so no pricing or availability dates.
  
  
  
• Twitter is testing a new mode that prevents anyone replying to your tweets.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  This has been hailed as a breakthrough by the usual idiots.  Tech Crunch are at least smart enough to ask What if Trump uses this? but not smart enough to realise the answer is So what if Trump uses this?
  
  Despite Twitter's best efforts, you can still quote-tweet someone who's blocked you.  Just takes an extra 30 seconds.
  
  
  
• Seagate showed off its HAMR and dual-actuator disk drives.  (AnandTech)
  
  I didn't see the point of the return of dual actuators in an age of RAID and cheap SSDs, but this tidbit enlightened me: These drives have a peak transfer rate of 480MB per second.  That's basically the same as a SATA SSD and is easily a new record for spinning rust.
  
  As usual, no pricing or availability dates.
  
  
  
• AnandTech apparently has a scoop on the upcoming Threadripper TRX80 systems but it hasn't been posted yet.  It was mentioned earlier today on YouTube but without any details.
  
  
  
• A Circuit judge has ordered Google to hand over a year's worth of Jussie Smollett's data to investigators, including emails.  (Chicago Tribune)
  
  The ramifications of this are huge, and I expect TechDirt will set themselves on fire pretty shortly.  Not without reason.
  
  
  
• You can no longer write an indie web browser.
  
  At least, not a competitive one, not since W3C approved DRM as part of the web standards.  I posted about this previously but this new article includes more up-to-date details.
  
  
  
• ACSOTGSFM.  (Serve the Home)
  
  (Another cheap SFP-only 10Gb switch from Microtik.)
  
  
  
• Thunderbolt 4 is one louder.  (CNet)
  
  Seriously, that seems to be about the size of it.
  
  
  
• You glow in the dark.  Yes, you.  (PLOS)
  
  Just...  Not very much.
  
  
  
• YouTube's vaunted algorithm has reportedly flagged Happy Tree Friends as suitable for children.
  
  Good.  Let the little bastards learn that they can't trust anyone.  We'll get an entire generation of libertarians.
  
  

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, January 10 2020 04:24 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, January 10 2020 11:59 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, January 10 2020 12:20 PM (Iwkd4)

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• Samsung announced the 980 Pro, their first PCIe 4 SSD.  (AnandTech)
  
  Only delivers 6.5GB per second reads and 5GB per second writes, so doesn't deliver the full potential of PCIe 4 just yet.  Maybe they'll get that just in time for PCIe 5.
  
  
  
• Thunderbolt 4 is on its way.  (AnandTech)
  
  Still no actual details, but it appears that this iteration has the same bandwidth as Thunderbolt 3, but supports USB up to at least 3.2 2x2.  Whether it is the same thing as USB 4 or a different, semi-compatible standard remains to be seen.  And Intel isn't saying.
  
  
  
• Are you in the market for a 38" 2300R curved IPS 175Hz G-Sync UWQHD+ monitor?  Because if so you're in luck.  (AnandTech)
  
  Out in April from Acer for just $2400.
  
  
  
• Micron is sampling DDR5 server DIMMs to, um, server companies I guess.  (AnandTech)
  
  They promise not just faster speeds but more efficient use of available bandwidth by subdividing the channels so the CPU can perform more, smaller, memory operations.  Don't expect to see it in the market this year though.
  
  
  
• InWin's Diey signature-edition case is an RGB-lit robotic pinecone.  (PC Perspective)
  
  This does not seem entirely practical, though maybe that's just me.
  
  
  
• Adata showed off a prototype consumer SSD that does 1 million IOPS and 7GB per second on reads.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Expected to ship mid-year.
  
  
  
• Hackers upset with Facebook for warning the hackees they have been hacked.  (TechDirt)
  
  In this case, the leet haxors are EU police using Israeli spyware.
  
  
  
• Everything Google has announced at CES.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  If you are thinking "But Pixy, Google hasn't announced anything at CES" then you'd be right.  
  
  Except for one thing - the nameless Google Assistant is getting a "forget I said that" feature.  That is genuinely useful.
  
  
  
• How to exit vim.  (GitHub)
  
  Print this out, fold it, wear it as a hat.
  
  
  
• This entire story is vapid garbage.  (Above Avalon)
  
  Found in the links from this tweet about another story that was also vapid garbage.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Cancer death rates are down - with the biggest annual drop on record.  (Washington Post)
  
  The US federal government is already working to reverse this.
  
  
  
• Measles death rates are up.  (BBC)
  
  Sigh.
  
  
  
• IBM has stopped work on server-side Swift.  (Programmer.info)
  
  IBM has been the major backer of Swift web framework Kitura.
  
  I tried out Swift for web services a couple of years ago, and a little testing showed that it was clearly not ready for production back then and also was no faster than Python when using PyPy.  And its JSON handling was a train wreck.
  
  
  
• Sonos is suing Google, alleging that something something something.  (Six Colors)
  
  
  
• Firefox 72 is out and stomps on notification request popups.  (ZDNet)
  
  As a user, thank you Firefox team!
  
  As a web developer, uh-oh.
  
  Chrome plans to do the same starting next month.
  
  
  
• More cases of the Y2.02K bug are surfacing.  (ZDNet)
  
  "There's no way the program will still be running in 20 years" is the new "Hold my beer and watch this."

Spaghetti Space Western Trailer of the Day

Picture of the Day

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, January 09 2020 01:58 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, January 09 2020 02:02 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, January 09 2020 02:24 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, January 09 2020 02:26 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, January 09 2020 02:43 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, January 09 2020 03:38 AM (Iwkd4)

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• AMD announced the Radeon 5600XT.  (AnandTech)
  
  It is, as expected, a Radeon 5700 with slightly lower clocks and a 192-bit memory bus.  Board TDP is 150W, compared to 180W for the 5700.
  
  With 6GB of RAM it costs $279 compared to $349 for the 8GB Radeon 5700.  Available January 21.
  
  
  They also announced the Radeon 5600M which is the exact same hardware configuration down-clocked to bring it into a laptop power range (which they don't precisely specify).
  
  
  
• AMD also announced the 64 core Threadripper 3990X, priced at $3990.  (AnandTech)
  
  I mean they couldn't not, could they?
  
  Base clock is 2.9GHz, compared to 3.7GHz on the 32-core 3970X.  So if you only manage base clocks it's 56% faster, but if you manage to hit boost clock on all cores (which you're not likely to do without water cooling) it's up to 91% faster.
  
  It's also faster than two $10,000 Intel Xeon Platinum 8280 chips.  Available February 7.
  
  
  
• AMD also announced the Ryzen 7 4800U, an 8-core 15W mobile part.  (AnandTech)
  
  Compared to the existing Ryzen 3700U, it has twice the cores, twice the cache, a slower base clock - down from 2.3GHz to 1.8GHz, which is the penalty you pay for to get an 8 core high-end system-on-a-chip that only uses 15W - a slightly higher boost clock, 20% fewer GPU shaders, and a 25% higher GPU clock.
  
  It also supports LPDDR4x memory, which will fix the major limitation of the existing APUs - they didn't have enough memory bandwidth for the GPU to run at full performance, and up to 64GB total RAM whether regular DDR4 or LPDDR4x.
  
  There are four smaller and slower parts down to the 4 core Ryzen 3 4300U, plus a couple of Athlon-branded dual-core parts.
  
  They also also announced the Ryzen 7 4800H, which is the exact same chip as the 4800U but with the traning wheels off.  It has a 45W TDP and can compete on an even footing with the fastest desktop processors from 2018.  There's also a 35W version specifically created for Asus.
  
  Available in laptops sometime this quarter.
  
  
  
• Intel's 10nm+ Tiger Lake will offer double the graphics performance of Ice Lake.  (PC Perspective)
  
  It will ship this year, probably.
  
  It also reportedly includes support for Thunderbolt 4, which I cannot find any detail about anywhere.  That may be a typo for USB 4, a.k.a USB 40, which has been announced but is basically an open-license version of Thunderbolt 3 and not substantially a new standard.
  
  
  
• Lenovo announced the Thinkpad X1 Fold, which is exactly what you think it is.  (PC Perspective)
  
  A 13.3" OLED display that folds in the middle, although exactly why it does this is not clear since it comes with an optional wireless keyboard.
  
  Available around the middle of the year.
  
  
  
• Ryzen 4000 laptops announced include:  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  
• MSI's Bravo 15 a 15" budget gaming system.
• Asus' Zephyrus G14 and G15 thin-and-light-ish models that pair a35W 4800HS with an RTX 2060 and - on the 14" model - a 2560x1440 screen and an anime display.  (The lid has 1200 embedded mini-LEDs to annoy your coworkers.)
• Acer's Swift 3 with a 14" 1080p display and up to 16GB of LPDDR4x starting at $599.
• Dell's G5 Gaming with a 4000H-series chip, and a matching 5600M GPU.
  
  
  
• Dell showed off a prototype Ryzen-based Nintendo Switch sort of thing.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  The 8" display section - like the Switch, the controllers detatch from the sides - might make a nice tablet except for the awful trapezoidal design.
  
  
  
• Chinese skiers training in Norway ahead of the 2022 Winter Olympics which will be held in China requested a Norwegian library remove Chinese books about China because if they - the skiers - were caught with them they - the skiers - might be shipped of to a labour camp.  By China.  (TechDirt)
  
  The library said no.
  
  There's a lot there to unpack but almost all of it is stupid so I'm not going to.
  
  
  
• GitHub, Mozilla, and Cloudflare asked India to please clarify its insane intermediary liability rules.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  This is the law where India demands hostages from web sites that want to be accessible in India.
  
  
  
• Half the websites using WebAssembly are malicious.  (ZDNet)
  
  Since it doesn't have much practical application right now that's not really that much of a surprise.
  
  
  
• Twitter bots and trolls are spreading, uh, actual recognised news stories.  (ZDNet)
  
  The story in question is the theory that more fires than usual this season are being deliberately lit, which the article blithely labels a conspiracy theory and the police are...  Well.
  
  
  
  
  There is a conspiracy theory that the arson investigation is a conspiracy to counter conspiracy theories that the Australian government is conspiring to deny global warming for reasons.  Probably aliens.
  
  
  
• Microsoft showed off the Xbox Xeriex X CPU.  (Thurott.com)
  
  Rather literally.  As in "here is a photo of the chip".
  
  But it does answer the question of whether this would be a chiplet-based or monolithic part.  Monoliths all the way for 2020.  (The new Ryzen APUs are also monolithic.)
  
  
  
• The US Federal Deposit Library Program website was hacked by pro-Iranian script-kiddies.  (Ars Technica)
  
  Ghost of Lee Harvey Oswald hardest hit.
  
  The site runs a version of Joomla from 2012.  The only reason it isn't hacked every five minutes is that no-one has heard of it.
  
  
  
• iOS now tells you who is tracking your movements.  (Wall Street Journal)
  
  Developers who want to track your movements without you knowing hardest hit.
  
  
  
• The Samsung Galaxy Chromebook has a 4K 13.3" AMOLED touchscreen and costs $999.  (The Verge)
  
  At that price it comes with 8GB of RAM and a 128GB of SSD, which is actually enough to run ChromeOS reasonably well.  It has a microSD slot for more storage and two USB-C ports, a fingerprint scanner, and a stylus that hides away inside the body of the laptop.
  
  CPU is a 10th-gen Core i5, and more expensive options will include up to 16GB of RAM and 1TB storage.
  
  I'm not a huge proponent of ChromeOS outside of schools, but its support for Android apps and, recently, for full access to Linux are making it increasingly viable.  And $999 is not excessive for a laptop with such a high-end display.
  
  
  
• Someone needs to burn the FTC to the ground.  (Ars Technica)
  
  A brouhaha involving YouTube and YouTube isn't the villain?  Well, not the primary villain.  At fault is the FTC insisting that YouTube creators are liable for events over which they have no control whatsoever.
  
  
  
• A 32" 4K Acer miniLED monitor for, um,  $3599.  (Tech Report)
  
  It's a weird grab-bag of features, sporting G-Sync, 144Hz refresh, DisplayHDR 1400 certification, and 89.5% of Rec. 2020.  It seems to target movie editors who play competitive e-sports.  And who make a whole lot of money at one or the other.
  
  The rest of us can make do with that $300 LG model.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Is it still $300?  Yes.  Yes it is.
  
  
  
• While MangaDex is officially back on line and all the files have been transferred, the site is not yet entirely back to normal.  I quote:

  Things are being fucky at the moment because of... various issues

  I know how that is.
  

• Well, that didn't happen.
  
  
  
  
  Update: Oh, they deleted it.  (PJMedia)
  
  Fortunately.  Because it would have been rather inconvenient if every city in Australia had burned to the ground.
  
  An Australian ABC producer responded:
  
  

Tech Video of the Day

Picture of the Day

Pixy is Watching

Posted by: Mauser at Wednesday, January 08 2020 02:52 PM (Ix1l6)

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• 'Twas the night before CESmas and all through the house,
  Not a story was stirring, not even a new Logitech gaming mouse.
  
  
• Intel's 45W 10th gen mobile CPUs will be out soon.  (AnandTech)
  
  Just in time for Intel's 14nm++ parts to get stomped by AMD's 7nm ones.
  
  
• Lisa Su's keynote address is in about 10 hours, which means that unusually - very unusually - it is at an entirely convenient time for me to watch it live.  When I've done that in the past it's been at 3AM or worse.
  
  
• Seagate is launching the FireCuda Gaming, a portable USB 20 SSD.  (AnandTech)
  
  USB 20 is pretty thin on the ground, but it is of course backward - and forward - compatible.
  
  
• Asus has a 360Hz monitor because numbers.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  
• Keep Labs, which makes and sells digital weed humidors, won an innovation award from CES and then was banned from saying what its product actually does.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  This is an annual event at CES now.
  
  
• Acer announced a 55" 4K 120Hz DCI-P3 HDR OLED monitor unless it didn't.  (WCCFTech)
  
  It will cost $2999 when it arrives in six to eight months.
  
  
• Beware of brown M&Ms.
  
  In this case the brown M&M is a completely redundant dependency with an AGPL license, which means that using the parent, nominally BSD-licensed, library infects your entire project.
  
  There is no reason to license a library under AGPL.  That's not what it's for.
  
  
• I have no eyes but I must see.  (Cell)
  
  
• Your blog post is bad and you should feel bad.  (Real World Tech)
  
  Original Linus pointing out that no, Linux doesn't have a problem with its locking mechanism, you have a problem with your benchmark code.
  

• So that happened.
  
  

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, January 07 2020 02:49 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, January 07 2020 03:11 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, January 07 2020 03:22 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, January 07 2020 04:40 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: J Greely at Wednesday, January 08 2020 06:59 AM (ZlYZd)

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• Intel has PCIe 4.0 Optane SSDs.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  But no PCIe 4.0 processors or motherboards, so they'll only work with AMD hardware.
  
  Well, you can get adaptor cards that convert a PCIe 3.0 x16 slot to a PCIe 4.0 x8 slot, but those are for hardware developers and definitely not for production.
  
  
• And then they immediately fucked it up: After simplifying WiFi naming with numbers 1 through 6 to identify speeds, the Wi-Fi Alliance has introduced WiFi 6E.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  This is WiFi 6, but with support for the 6GHz spectrum.  Since that isn't approved yet you can't actually use it anywhere, but that's not a problem right now because it also doesn't exist.
  
  
• mount -t thewholedamninternet /mnt/everything  (GitHub)
  
  
• Ethical but stupid.  (Perens.com)
  
  Bruce Perens - who wrote the definition for "open source" - on well-meaning but unenforceable and ultimately harmful "ethical" licenses.
  
  
• Speaking of Bruce Perens, he just resigned from the OSI over something called the Cryptographic Autonomy License which is exactly one of these well-meaning cancers.  (The Register)
  
  Here's the full text of the proposed CAL.  (GitHub)
  
  Here, for comparison, is the MIT license.  (Opensoruce.org)
  
  Yeah, we are going down the wrong path here.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• The unexpected creation and timely demise of promiscuous cookies.  (TroyHunt.com)
  
  This is (part of) why sites force you to enter your old password in order to change your password, even when you're already logged in.
  
  
• The 45th Wing of the US Space Force will conduct its first launch of 2020 on Monday.  (Space News)
  
  I love the way military numbering works.  The Space Force has a 460th Wing, but has only five wings in total.
  
  
• MangaDex is back.  (MangaDex.cc)
  
  So, it seems that the reason this all happened without much planning or advance warning is that (a) someone uploaded a licensed chapter of Boruto and (b) instead of issuing a DMCA takedown the English-language publisher issued a subpoena.  (TorrentFreak)
  
  MangaDex's hosting company - which apparently also handled their domain registration and donation processing - scuttled the ship, but at least allowed them access to migrate the data to an undisclosed location.
  
  Some interesting stats on this page.
  
  Their total storage requirements are 9TB, which I have to spare, but they push 1 to 2 PB per month, which I definitely don't.  You can get a storage server with 16TB RAID-10 for $99 per month, but the 10Gb unmetered connection you'd need - at a minimum - would cost another $999.  (Also there's no way a single disk-based server could handle the IOPS.)
  

• Feel-bad story of the day: 98 people have been arrested in Queensland alone in recent weeks for deliberately starting fires.  (Brisbane Times)
  
  This ranges from arson down to disobeying total fire bans, but it appears that these numbers are up significantly from normal.
  
  
  

• Did not get a lot done today, because, well, this:
  
  
  
  It was just 26C on Sydney Harbour but 44C where I live and a record-breaking 49C in the western suburbs - Penrith in Sydney's west was the hottest place on Earth today.
  
  Also had a migraine, which might not be unrelated.  Or maybe that came from eating too much ice cream.
  
  Oh, and the main connection between the NSW and Victoria electrical grids was shut down today due to the ongoing bushfires.  Unlike South Australia (which is run by lunatics) both state grids are capable of operating independently and there haven't been any outages as far as I know.
  
  It's expected to be about twenty degrees cooler here tomorrow, so I have that to look forward to.
  
  
• I did sign up for a RamNode account to give that a try.  It's very cost-effective for smaller apps - a $5 SSD node and a $5 HDD node can take you a long way.
  
  It does start to get more expensive (and less flexible) if you need more than 200GB of SSD on a single server.  They do offer sizes up to 800GB though, but there they have less of a price advantage.
  
  
• Browsers are interesting again.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Well, shit.  The last thing we need is for browsers to be interesting.  They should be invisible.
  
  Let's see what the article has to say:
  
  
  
  Ah, it says "fuck off".
  
  
• Samsung has announced...  Announced the announcement of the Galaxy S10 Lite and Note 10 Lite.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Going to be a lot of that this weekend.  Actual announcements will all be at CES next week.
  
  
• An interview with Ramune Nagisetty on the future of Foveros.  (AnandTech)
  
  Foveros is Intel's die-stacking packaging technology, the successor to EMIB.  Unless you're interested in die-packing stackaging technology the best part of the interview is probably the name of Intel's Director of Process and Product Integration, which I already mentioned.
  
  
• Samsung announced the first test chip built on 3nm GAAFET technology.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Compared to 5nm - which isn't even out yet - this is 35$ smaller, 30% faster, and uses 50% less power.
  
  You might be wondering how companies can keep producing smaller and smaller chips without running into runaway quantum effects.  Well, the answer is that the numbers are a lie and have been for years; nothing about a 3nm chip is actually 3nm.
  
  But - and this is what matters - 3nm is smaller and faster than 5nm.
  
  Because semiconductor manufacturers have been lying about real process sizes for so long we actually have another decade before we hit fundamental limits.  At which point the marketing numbers will be smaller than the diameter of an atom.
  
  
• A 32" 4K LG VA monitor for $300.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  95% DCI-P3 - which is amazing for the price - FreeSync, and two HDMI and one DisplayPort ports.
  
  
  
  Kiwi by Simz
  
  
• Sci-Hub may have been naughty.  (TechDirt)
  
  They are under investigation by the DOJ for LINKS TO RUSSIA! but the worst thing they seem to have been credibly accused of is using underhanded methods to gain access to some science archives.
  
  That is in itself a criminal offense, though, so if true there could be jail time.
  
  
• A look at Lenovo's T490s.  (PC Perspective)
  
  It's small, light, reasonably fast, has a battery life up to 20 hours, has dedicated PgUp/PgDn/Home/End keys, and option built-in 4G.
  
  On the other hand, the screen is only 1080p, and it is not exactly cheap.
  
  I took a look on Lenovo's website and you can't get the reviewed configuration in Australia.  Not that I was interested, just curious.  Here you can have 16GB of RAM or the 4G modem, not both, because the RAM is soldered in.
  
  
• Samsung's Galaxy S20 and Galaxy Fold 2 will launch in February unless they don't.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Samsung has a big event scheduled for February 11.
  
  
• SSD prices could rise sharply this year unless they don't.  (WCCFTech)
  
  I'm hoping don't.
  
  
• Oracle copied Amazon's API.  (Ars Technica)
  
  Time for some goose grease, as the kids say.
  
  
• Lenovo's ThinkCentre M90n is a compact NUC-style device that you should absolutely avoid.  (Serve the Home)
  
  Because the RAM is soldered in.
  
  
• AMD's upcoming Renoir offers insanely faster complex splatting than Intel's Gen12 UHD.
  
  
  
  
  
• The Linux Kernel Code of Conduct Committee has started providing regular reports.  (Phoronix)
  
  The witch-burnings will begin soon enough.
  
  
• Has Google forgotten its original motto?  (ZDNet)
  
  Does the Pope shit in the woods?
  
  
• Google has disabled Google Assistant and Google Home access for all Xiaomi devices.  (Engadget)
  
  This follows some weird shit of people seeing still images from other people's security cameras.
  
  This seems to have been a caching bug on Xiaomi's side that triggered if you had a bad network connection.  You have to be very, very careful about caching private data like this - the rule of thumb is, don't.
  
  
• If you run Battlefield V on Linux you will get banned for cheating.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  So don't do that.
  
  
• Parking meters in NYC went on strike due to a Y2.02K bug.  (Gothamist)
  
  They're running MacOS 8?
  
  
• Add another one to the Google Deadpool: Google News is shutting down.  (CNet)
  
  This was formerly Google Play Magazines, then Google Play Newsstand.  Now it's Google Ex-Parrot.
  
  At the current rate by July 2021 Google will have killed more products than it has created.

• American journalism digs clear to other side of planet, keeps digging.
  
  

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(From here.)

Posted by: Rick C at Sunday, January 05 2020 06:49 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Rick C at Sunday, January 05 2020 06:54 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, January 05 2020 10:36 AM (PiXy!)

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• Was testing deployment options for the new system today.  DigitalOcean running out of a RAM disk was about the same speed as Vultr running from SSD.
  
  Although....  That test is very write-heavy, and unless I start getting a million posts a day right away I'll be far more concerned with reads.  Vultr is still ahead there but not by so much that DO isn't an option.
  
  The advantage of going with DigitalOcean is that (a) they pool bandwidth, so if the database server comes with 4TB (which it would) that gets added to the pool to be used by the web servers, and (b) they have block and object storage in every location.
  
  Advantage of Vultr is that it's faster and it's easy to do a custom install running ZFS.  With DO I can easily add block storage and configure that with ZFS, but that is even slower than the standard storage.
  
  Third option is RamNode, who I haven't used before, but who have been around a while and are well-regarded.  They don't have object or block storage, but they do have fast NVMe servers like Vultr, and cheap disk-based storage servers with tons of available bandwidth.  (As low as $1 per TB transferred.)
  
  All three are viable so I'll just pick one and go with it.
  
  
• AMD's Lisa Su may be presenting Zen 3 at CES.  (WCCFTech)
  
  And/or the Ryzen 4000 APUs, which may or may not deliver 8 cores to mainstream laptops.
  
  Or possibly something else.
  
  
  
  
  
• Speaking of which, AMD is set to become TSMC's largest 7nm customer.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Only partly because Apple will be moving to 5nm later this year, and AMD isn't planning on that until 2021.
  
  
• Isaac Asimov's century.  (The Humanist)
  
  Today is the 100th anniversary of Isaac Asimov's birth, more or less (there aren't exact records).  TechCrunch reminded me of the fact, so thanks for that, but their article will just make you irritated so I won't link it here.
  
  Science Magazine also has a respectful article.
  
  
• Literature, films, and music created in 1924 have now entered the public domain.  (Hyperallergic)
  
  In the US; in many other countries they have been in the public domain for years.
  
  
• Your programming language is bad and you should feel bad.
  
  Mind you, this list would reject Python specifically, and pretty much everything other than Lisp for other reasons.
  
  
• Apple is suing a security company under the DMCA for creating an iOS security tool.  (iFixit)
  
  This is section 1201 of the DMCA, the anti-circumvention section, a.k.a the bad part.  Corellium - the company in question - allows you to create virtual iPhones in your browser to test security issues.  Apple is not happy about that and wants them dead.
  
  
• SAFe is an unholy incarnation of darkness.  (Medium has not yet blocked me this month)
  
  SAFe is Agile for Enterprise.  Agile is a lightweight team-driven software development methodology for smaller projects, so it is exactly what you don't want at enterprise scale.  Scroll down to the diagram in the linked article where they explain it all.
  
  
• A look at the Threadripper 3960X.  (Serve the Home)
  
  AMD's smaller Thirdripper is still impressive.  Intel's fastest workstation processor - costing twice as much - can beat it on, oh, on Passmark, and a couple of others, but in almost every case Intel's best is coming in third, and sometimes fourth.  And that's even before AMD releases their high-end parts.
  
  
• Python 2.7 has reached EOL.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  There is one final update due in April, and then that is it.
  
  Unless you are using PyPy, which is both written in and compatible with Python 2.  Since dropping support for Python 2 would require rewriting the entire thing, they are planning to support it indefinitely.
  
  Still, libraries will slowly drop support for Python 2.  Web3, the Ethereum library, doesn't work with Python 2 at all.
  
  RedHat will also continue supporting Python 2.7 through to at least 2024.
  
  
• MacOS 8 and the Y2.02K problem.  (Six Colors)
  
  In 1997?  Seriously, Apple, in 1997 you did this?
  
  Like every other MacOS problem there is a third-party utility to fix it.
  
  
• The LG G8X ThinQ Dual Screen solves the folding screen problem by...  Not folding the screen.  (ZDNet)
  
  It has two screens (both 6.4" 2340x1080 OLED displays) and a hinge in between.
  
  
• One quarter of all the pigs in the world died in 2019 of swine fever.  (New York Times)
  
  Which sounds shocking - and I suppose it is - but pigs raised for market (which is almost all of them) do not live very long lives in the first place.
  
  
• In an apparent attempt to make cancer great again, the FDA has banned the production and sale of many flavoured vape products.  (Engadget)
  
  Sigh.
  
  
• A federal judge has blocked...  Wait, what's this?  A federal judge has blocked California's terrible "gig economy" law.  (CBS News)
  
  Apparently only as it applies to truck drivers though.  How it will play out for other groups if they succeed in their lawsuit will be interesting to watch.
  
  I am not against laws protecting workers from being taken advantage of by unscrupulous companies.  I am just against this law, because it is dumb.
  
  
• LG will be launching eight new 8K TVs at CES next week.  (9to5Mac)
  
  The models range from 65" to 85".  Prices are not mentioned and are likely still stratospheric, but prices for 4K came down pretty quickly once the second-tier players got onto the market, and it's likely to be the same only more so with 8K.
  
  

Other News

Picture of the Day

Mountain Shrine by Cpieng

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, January 04 2020 12:45 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Wonderduck at Saturday, January 04 2020 11:53 AM (cTMj+)

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• Intel's upcoming Core i9-10900K is reportedly up to 30% faster than the 9900K on multi-threaded tasks.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Unfortunately for Intel, the Ryzen 3900X is already 50% faster than the 9900K on those tasks.  (CPUBenchmark.net)  
  
  
• It's either that or elemental fluorine: How to tarnish platinum: Sell it as a Xeon 9200.  (AnandTech)
  
  Ouch.
  
  
• Running Python in the Linux kernel.  (Medium)
  
  Or not.  I'll go with not.
  
  
• The Chrome extension Shitcoin Wallet much to everyone's surprise steals your Ethereum coins.  (ZDNet)
  
  I mean, they all but called it "Ethereum Coin Stealer".
  
  
• India is heading back to the Moon.  (Reuters)
  
  Their previous lunar orbiter worked smoothly, but their Moon rover suffered a hard landing, as in, it was completely obliterated.
  
  
• Well don't do that then.
  
  
  
  
  
• One of Samsung's memory chip factories suffered a 60-second power outage.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  It will take up to three days to get the plant back on line and all the chips on the production line might need to be scrapped.  I'm not sure if the queue is as long for DRAM, but 3d flash has a lot of processing steps so they might lose weeks of production.
  
  
• Is the light over my desk blinking on and off or am I having a seizure?
  
  (Looks directly at LED downlight.)
  
  Fuck, now I'm blind.  That thing is far too bright.  Oh, and three of the LEDs were indeed flickering on and off.
  
  
• Apple has renewed its licensing agreement with GPU design company Imagination.  (AnandTech)
  
  Apple's custom Arm chips used Imagination graphics for years, before announcing they were going to use their own designs and cancelling their deal with Imagination, which almost killed that company.
  
  
• Oh no.
  
  
  
  

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, January 02 2020 11:58 PM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, January 03 2020 12:20 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Saturday, January 04 2020 12:25 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, January 04 2020 12:35 AM (Iwkd4)

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