Tech News

• AMD's 4th gen Epyc Genoa will have stuff unless it doesn't. (WCCFTech)
  
  Specifically, up to 96 Zen 4 cores, 12-channel DDR5, 128 lanes of PCIe 5.0, and a 6096-pin socket.  In a two-socket system 48 PCIe lanes of each CPU will be used as interconnect, making 160 lanes available for I/O.
  
  Supposedly with a 320W TDP configurable up to 400W.  Current Threadrippers peak at 280W, and most Epycs are lower; 400W is rather a lot.
  
  But a 96-core 4th gen will easily match two 64-core 2nd gen Epycs.  It will also have twice the I/O bandwidth and more than twice the memory bandwidth.
  
  I had seen speculation of 96 cores and wondered how they'd fit the 12 chiplets required - even with 5nm it would be a tight fit.  The answer is, make the socket bigger.
  
  It's also rumoured to support AVX-512 which is currently the only server benchmark Intel can still win.
  
  It won't appear until the first half of next year, though.
  
  
  
• Wonder if they'll support three channel DDR5 on socket AM5.  The desktop I/O die is currently one quarter of the Epyc I/O die, so if they keep that ratio, it would mean three memory channels.
  
  Doubt it - though it would make for amazing APUs
  
  
  
• WASM everywhere everywhere. (GitHub)
  
  It's a Web Assembly interpreter compiled using that run-anywhere C library.
  
  Card
  
  
  
• Don't plug your new Arm-based Macbook into that USB-C dock.  (ZDNet)
  
  Because it might die.
  
  Two points worth noting.  First, Apple blames the dock.  Second, they've released a software patch for it.
  
  
  
• The invoice for the viewscreen was in your spam folder.  (ZDNet)
  
  Alexa supports over 90,000 Skills.  What do they all do?  Amazon doesn't know, or much care.
  
  
  
• Microsoft has a patch for that horrible NTFS bug, where you can scramble your filesystem by opening a file with a particular name.  (Hot Hardware)
  
  You can't have it.
  
  The patch, that is, not the bug.  The bug you can have.
  
  To be fair, this is because they are allowing beta testers to beta test.  Pushing a buggy filesystem patch out to a billion users would not end well.
  
  
  
  

Posted by: PatBuckman at Tuesday, March 02 2021 02:51 AM (6y7dz)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Tuesday, March 02 2021 03:06 AM (6y7dz)

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• You can mine Ethereum on Apple's M1 Arm chip.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Despite Apple's vaunted efficiency and TSMC's 5nm process, it is half as efficient as a previous-generation Nvidia card fabricated on 12nm.  And for throughput, it delivers between 3 and 4% of a 3060 Ti.
  
  
  
• I recently mentioned Redbean, the tiny run-anywhere web server.  Take the binary, add your content directly to the file (since the binary is also a valid Zip archive), and run it directly on Windows, Mac, Linux, or Free/Open BSD - or boot directly into it from BIOS.
  
  And now Lua.
  
  
  Redbean+Lua+SQLite would make a <1MB application server that could be distributed as a single binary for every major platform.
  
  
  
• Lastpass doesn't want you to use Lastpass.  (PC Perspective)
  
  Why exactly does a password manager need seven third-party tracking cookies?
  
  
  
• In defense of dumb TVs.  (Framework)
  
  Kogan - Australia's own little Amazon Marketplace - still has a couple of store brand 4K dumb TVs.  And they're stupidly cheap.  I might pick up the 50" model before they disappear entirely, otherwise it's....
  
  Well, Philips does sell a 55" 4K monitor.  95% DCI-P3 gamut, DisplayHDR 1000, DisplayPort input, and a built-in 40W soundbar.  But it is a fair bit more expensive.  Also a reasonably-priced 43" monitor, though without DCI-P3 or HDR.
  
  
  
• After killing CentOS, Red Hat now offers free RHEL subscriptions for open source nonprofits.  (ZDNet)
  
  Of course, before they killed CentOS they already did that.  It was called CentOS.  And you didn't have to beg for it.
  
  
  
• Planned to clean my fridge, so I typed fridge cleaner into the search box when ordering my groceries.  Soapy water and paper towels would do the job, but I wanted to see what came up.
  
  What came up was a specifically food-safe disinfectant.  Kills the usual 99.9% of germs, but no harsh chemicals, it promised.  Took a look at the ingredients - water, ethyl alcohol, and vanillin.  Oh.  It's basically vanilla vodka at one tenth the price.
  
  I'm not sure exactly what proof it is; it doesn't say on the label.  After taking a whiff, I did what any enterprising scientist would do and sprayed a small puddle on the granite countertop and dropped in a lit match.  The puddle didn't catch fire, but the match burned with a blue flame for the next thirty seconds before finally going out.
  
  It also works really well at cleaning glass, and smells great.
  
  Update: They publish a safety sheet for it.  It's 25% alcohol by volume - 50 proof - and they list the flash point as 36°C.  Which doesn't mean that it catches fire at 36°C, it just means that it can catch fire at 36°C if you apply a match to it.  As does, for example, paper.
  
  
  
• Speaking of Hololive and YouTube's algorithmic idiocy, apparently best doggo got demonetised for a while and had Wuhan Bat Soup Death Plague warnings attached to her videos.

• Want to block tracking images in Apple Mail? Just block all images, says Apple.  (Daring Fireball)
  
  Because fuck you, they added.
  
  
  

Posted by: J Greely at Monday, March 01 2021 01:02 AM (ZlYZd)

Posted by: normal at Monday, March 01 2021 01:36 AM (obo9H)

Posted by: normal at Monday, March 01 2021 01:38 AM (obo9H)

Posted by: J Greely at Monday, March 01 2021 05:28 PM (ZlYZd)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, March 01 2021 09:25 PM (PiXy!)

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