• Nvidia's RTX 2080 and RTX 2080 Ti are out.  (AnandTech)
  
  Well, not out in the sense that you can buy them, but out in the sense that you can't buy them, because (a) there aren't any and (b) the cheapest cards cost around A$1400.
  
  [Correction: Looks like some RTX 2080 cards are in stock, though the RTX 2080 Ti is not.]
  
  The 2080 performs about the same as the existing 1080 Ti but has less memory (8GB vs 11GB), and the 1080 Ti can be found for A$1000.  The 2080 Ti is the fastest gaming card around, but will likely cost around A$2000.
  
  The interesting part is the extra functionality added with the Turing family of chips: Dedicated ray tracing cores for more realistic light and shadows, and dedicated AI cores for more realistic...  AI.  In a year or two this will become significant, as libraries and games adopt the new features.  Right now, though, it's not, and even hardware ray tracing can't deliver playable 4K frame rates.
  
  Still if you're a game developer, this card is a no-brainer.  If you have a seven-figure trust fund, or you have a popular YouTube channel streaming or reviewing games, sure.   Otherwise you might as well stick with what you have until Nvidia and AMD bring their 7nm cards out next year, which will be both faster and cheaper.
  
  Gamers Nexus has more details than you could possibly want for each card.
  
  
  
  
  
• AMD's Fireflight APU powers the less snappily-named Subor Z+.  (AnandTech)
  
  This, as mentioned previously, is only the fourth Zen family chip (despite a range of dozens of shipping processors).  It has four Zen cores and 24 Vega graphics cores, making it similar to Intel's Kaby Lake G parts.  In this case, it's one piece of silicon to Intel's three.
  
  AnandTech have got hold of one and are working on a complete review.  They just couldn't resist leaking a few snapshots.
  
  
• Newegg had a credit card breach.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  This is why I refuse to store credit card details.  If Stripe or PayPal get hacked, everyone in the world will be screaming, but it won't be my job to clean it up.
  
  

• The New Yorker decries the awfulness of social media in a piece filled with logical fallacies and outright lies.
  
  Irony dies in darkness, it appears.
  
  
• Axios runs a piece attacking Republicans attacking Democrats attacking - wait, lost track there - Democrats who want to add $4 trillion in unfunded expense to the US federal budget.
  
  
• Wait, was that the article I meant to report?  Probably not.
  
  Axios also runs a piece on Evernote and the folly of forever apps.
  
  Don't trust any online app to be around forever.
  
  Don't trust any offline app to be around forever.
  
  Except Emacs.  That thing will survive the heat death of the cosmos.  [Ctrl-Alt-Meta-Shift-Ꙫ: Reboot universe.]
  
  
• This Reddit thread on the lawsuit against Silicon Valley companies colluding to drive down wages features one commenter describing them as "the richest companies in history" and receiving an off-the-cuff lecture on the history of the East India Company.

Posted by: J Greely at Friday, September 21 2018 02:05 AM (tgyIO)

Posted by: cxt217 at Friday, September 21 2018 08:02 AM (EGo5e)

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