• Intel's 2020 and 2021 client CPU roadmap seems to have leaked.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  This includes Comet Lake (the rumoured up to 10 core desktop CPU), Rocket Lake (a mainstream CPU with integrated graphics), Tiger Lake (a low powered 4 core part built on 10 nm), Amber Lake (an ultra low power part for tablets), and Comet Lake and Rocket Lake Xeons.
  
  Rocket Lake is supposedly due in Q1 2021 and will include PCIe 4.0, something that AMD will be providing this year, and will be supporting on existing motherboards.
  
  If this roadmap is real and AMD does launch a 16 core mainstream CPU this year, it will be three years before Intel has a counter to it.
  
  
• Mercedes has filed for declaratory relief against lawsuits by graffitists whose "work" is visible in car ads.  (TechDirt)
  
  Read Permanence by Karl Schroeder to see where we end up if this isn't slapped down.
  
  
• The director of the US Patent Office is either an idiot or a troll of the first order.  (TechDirt)
  
  
• Microsoft's Azure revenue grew by 73% in the past quarter.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Azure revenues are close to $40 billion a year now.  No, I don't know why either.
  
  
• This web page is a useless pile of crap.  (Internet Health Report)
  
  Someone needs to poke Web Pages That Suck.  Their country needs them.
  
  
• Facebook expects to be fined up to $5 billion by the FTC.  (The New York Times)
  
  Well, it's a start.
  
  
• SushiChain is a blockchain implemented in Crystal.
  
  It looks interesting and may have some smart features but the documentation is...  Well, mostly, it isn't.
  
  
  

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, April 26 2019 12:38 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, April 26 2019 01:21 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Friday, April 26 2019 02:58 AM (LZ7Bg)

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Friday, April 26 2019 03:02 AM (LZ7Bg)

Posted by: StargazerA5 at Friday, April 26 2019 04:52 AM (jl9eJ)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, April 26 2019 10:09 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, April 26 2019 10:12 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Mauser at Friday, April 26 2019 12:17 PM (Ix1l6)

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• Oppo's Reno 10x Zoom has a popup selfie camera.  (AnandTech)
  
  This one pivots rather than sliding, which might be a more robust design in the long term.  6.6" 2340x1080 OLED display, 48MP main camera, 12MP telephoto camera, 8MP wide angle camera, and 16MP front camera.  Snapdragon 855 with 8GB/256GB and a 4065 mAh battery.
  
  
• Meizu's 16s is basically the same thing with no moving parts.  (AnandTech)
  
  Its front camera has a diameter of 2.5mm so while this model has a bezel it is very small.  The headphone jack is also very small, being entirely absent.
  
  
• Nvidia launched their GTX 1650 which is simultaneously slower and more expensive than AMD's Radeon 570.  (AnandTech)
  
  It does use less power, though, so if you're stuck with an older OEM system and have to rely on slot power, it's probably the best you're going to find.
  
  Most interesting part of this launch is that Nvidia didn't allow reviewers to test the card before, providing neither sample cards nor the drivers required to run this model.
  
  Despite that, the verdict has been delivered already and it's a resounding meh.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  The card they tested didn't even have the decency to run on slot power, its only real advantage.  So make sure you check carefully if you need that specific functionality.
  
  
• Fractal Design produces clean, understated computer cases.  This is not one.  (PC Perspective)
  
  Well, compared to some of the monstrosities out there I guess it still is, but ech.
  
  
• Sandisk may not have 1TB cards out yet but Lexar does.  (SSD Review)
  
  Well, review samples anyway.  No listing on Amazon yet, but their 512GB model is a promisingly affordable $82.
  
  
• DO NOT WRITE YOUR OWN CRYPTOGRAPHIC PROTOCOLS.  (TechDirt)
  
  Is your name Bruce Schneier?  I think not.
  
  [I'm planning on ignoring my own advice tomorrow.  Watch this space.]
  
  
• Intel announced 34 new CPUs.  (AnandTech)
  
  These are all just marketing variants of the Coffee Lake Refresh die, which is the same as Coffee Lake, which is the the same as Kaby Lake, which is the same as Skylake, which is almost identical to Haswell.  More cores at the high end but those parts had already been released, so this announcement is a big dish of nothing.
  
  
• Washington Post music critic hates podcasts.  (Washington Post)
  
  "Just anyone can blather on endlessly these days," he added.  "What is the world coming to?"
  
  
• QEMU 4.0.0 is out.
  
  If you need to run S390 software with hot plug support, or Arm with more than 256GB of virtual RAM, or RISC-V with USB, this is what you've been waiting for.
  
  
• JavaScript is space cancer.  (Reddit)
  
  Best comment: I look forward to awe-inspiring images of the [object Object] supercluster.
  
  
• Gigabyte has a new 2U 256 core server.  (Serve the Home)
  
  Well, 4 node cluster, anyway.  Time to plug in some 100Gbit cards and fire up OpenMP.
  
  
• Nintendo's Switch has now outsold the N64.  (One Angry Gamer)
  
  In one third the time, too.
  
  
• Memory prices are finally coming back down.  (Tech Report)
  
  Not to historic lows yet, but much cheaper than what we've been faced with the last couple of years.
  
  AMD was also selling the 16 core Threadripper 2950X at about 20% off but that one's already gone.

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, April 25 2019 05:37 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, April 25 2019 08:13 PM (PiXy!)

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• Modern C++ considered harmful.
  
  Specifically, it is no better for memory safety than C, and arguably worse because it is more complicated and has more scope for subtle bugs.
  
  Use Rust if you need to be close to the metal, Go if you like C syntax but don't need to be that close to the metal, or Crystal if you rightly loathe C syntax.
  
  
• AI models considered harmful.
  
  At least, if you don't pay attention to them, they will keep doing their own thing while conditions around them change until the answers they produce are no longer even remotely correct.
  
  
• Online feuds considered harmful.  (The Verge)
  
  It's not the people who actually run the DDOS servers who go to jail, it's whoever the FBI can actually track down.
  
  
• Heavy metals considered harmful.  (CBC)
  
  Unless - ahem - bark bark I'm a shark.
  
  
• Language wars considered harmful.  (Hacker News)
  
  But fun.  And not all that harmful, really.
  
  
• Notifications considered harmful.
  
  Anyone with a busy social media account (on any platform) has turned off notifications.  I don't and I have anyway.
  
  
• Facial recognition considered harmful.  (Engadget)
  
  Your facial recognition system is 99.98% accurate.  Congratulations!  You just matched it to a fake ID and arrested the wrong person.
  
  
• The EU considered harmful.  (ZDNet)
  
  Alles klar, Herr Kommissar?
  
  
• Zombie deer considered harmful.  (The Compost)
  
  "Zombie Deer Virus" is actually another prion disease.  Like we need more of those.
  
  Infected deer meat can be made safe by reducing it to ash.  Seriously, no amount of cooking will stop a prion disease; you have to actually destroy the protein molecules.
  
  
• Google considered harmful.  (Arxiv.org PDF)
  
  We can't stop here, this is MS Fnd in a Lbry country.
  
  
• Free speech considered harmful.
  
  Wait, what?  Oh, the New York Times.  Never mind.
  
  
• Lenovo ThinkPad P72 considered harmful - to your credit card.
  
  A powerful mobile workstation, yes.   Affordable, not so much.
  
  
• Scientific Linux considered, uh, deceased.  (Phoronix)
  
  It still works but there won't be a Scientific Linux 8.  It's all CentOS from here on out.
  
  
• Windows 10 April update considered harmful.
  
  If you're an antivirus vendor.  They've been scrambling to fix things after Microsoft broke most third-party anti-virus software with a new patch.
  
  
• SanDisk pricing considered - rats, I missed the sale.  (Amazon, via Tech Report)
  
  It was $25 for a 200GB card, apparently.  Now it's all the way back up to $31.  And $64 for 400GB.  Or A$100.02 including GST, which is not bad.
  
  No sign of the new 1TB cards so far.
  
  
• Huawei considered harmful.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Paywalls also considered harmful, but eh.  Google and Facebook have stolen all the ad money and you have to make a living somehow.
  

• I tried Chunibyo when it first aired and bounced off after a single episode.  Giving it another try now, and yes, it's a lot better than my first impression led me to think.
  
  I've been watching a lot more anime lately because I've been working with Ethereum, and it's horrible beyond all imagining and I need something to reset my brain afterwards.  Even Golden Time, which frankly was kind of bad.

Picture of the Day

The Night Shift  Art by Atey Majeed Ghailan

Posted by: Rick C at Wednesday, April 24 2019 01:20 PM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, April 24 2019 02:25 PM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Rick C at Wednesday, April 24 2019 02:44 PM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Friday, April 26 2019 02:53 AM (LZ7Bg)

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Friday, April 26 2019 02:53 AM (LZ7Bg)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, April 26 2019 04:11 PM (PiXy!)

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• Elixir, Phoenix, Absinthe, GraphQL, Apollo, and (blearrgh) React.
  
  That was almost a good combination.  It's still a good article if your job involves building APIs.
  
  
• Amazon is exiting China.  (pandaily)
  
  If they could exit Australia too, that would be great.  Things worked better when they weren't here.
  
  
• O(n2) in CreateProcess.
  
  O(n2) has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
  
  This is from the same guy who wrote the seminal classic 24-core CPU and I can't type an email.
  
  
• China bans games involving poker, blood, and "imperial schemes" which is to say, politics.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Who do they think they are, Sony?

Golden Time is a 2013/2014 series that I completely missed when it came out, and just watched over the Easter long weekend (at least, it is here in Australia).  It's based on a new series of light novels by the author of Toradora, and received a first-rate anime adaptation by J.C. Staff.

The production values are top notch, the characters are engaging, the writing is often laugh-out-loud funny, and the plot is a train wreck.  And not one of those interesting train wrecks where the explosions and screaming go on far longer than you would think possible, but one of those boring ones where it simply falls off a bridge into a river and everyone dies.

Our protagonist Banri is a first-year student at a Tokyo law school, a refreshing change from the innumerable high-school romantic comedies.  On his first day (he's running late, of course) he meets and makes friends with fellow freshman Mitsuo who is promptly assaulted by his psycho ex-girlfriend Kouko (voiced by Yui Horie).

Things happen, Banri and Kouko and a group of fellow freshmen are kidnapped by Scientologists, Banri makes up a story about amnesia to fool them into letting the others go...  And then it turns out that he didn't make it up.  Cue the sound of air being let out of the show's tires.

Where it really goes off the rails though is a few episodes later when we see Banri's lost memories being represented by a ghost Banri.  I thought that was a fine metaphor - losing your memory is as close as you can get to dying without actually stinking up the place.

The problem is, it's not a metaphor.  It's an amnesia Force Ghost.  Who places a curse Banri for not making the decisions ghost Banri wants him to make, and nearly gets the entire group killed...  Only in the end they walk away with literally a scratch and it makes no difference to anything.

I didn't realise going in that it was written by the author of Toradora.  If I'd known that I would have had higher expectations and been even more disappointed than I was.

The occasional scene like this kept me watching:



Or this:

But there aren't enough moments like that for me to suggest that others do the same.

Taiga from Toradora is iconic.  Kōko meanwhile is treated as a secondary character throughout (even though the show is marketed as if everything revolved around her).  She could have been iconic.

But no matter how hard J.C. Staff and Yui Horie worked, she had that whole trainwreck thing to contend with.

Two blunt head traumas out of four.  Not recommended.

Golden Time Edition

• One fix for Netflix's "there's nothing to watch" problem.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Cancel your subscription.  If you haven't yet watched Little Witch Academia, watch that, then cancel.
  
  
• Should that be a microservice?
  
  A surprisingly level-headed examination of a simple problem.  If the question involves Node.js, definitely make it a microservice, so that it can microaccidentally be microdestroyed in a microfire later on.
  
  
• Pichi is an application router controlled by a REST API.
  
  If you've dealt with other application routers, which tend to be either "zero config" impenetrable nonsense or "sea of static config files" impenetrable nonsense, this is a godsend.
  
  
• Gab has removed the offensive word filter from Dissenter.  (One Angry Gamer)
  
  Its only purpose was to keep the plugin from being banned from Chrome and Firefox, and they banned it anyway, so [really rude words in Swahili] the lot of them.

I Do Not Like It, Sam I Am Edition

• Should ad-supported networks be regulated differently from other platforms?  (TechDirt)
  
  That seems at least a reasonable idea to pursue.
  
  
• Working as a librarian gave me PTSD.  (LA Times)
  
  What?
  
  In Washington DC.
  
  Oh.
  
  
• RedHat has taken over management of OpenJDK 8 and 11 from Oracle much to everyone's relief.  (TheServerSide)
  
  RedHat did this previously for OpenJDK 6 and 7 when Oracle forgot those existed.
  
  
• Google and Amazon have buried the hatchet, and not in each other.  (The Verge)
  
  YouTube is coming back to Amazon's Fire devices, and Prime Video is returning to Chromecast.
  
  
• Is it possible to escape the Apple ecosystem?  (ZDNet)
  
  Wait, Apple has an ecosystem?
  
  
• Build your own blockchain in Crystal.
  
  The code and explanation are both clear, and it covers the principles of blockchains and what mining is all about.  It doesn't cover the networking side of things so it's not a distributed blockchain.
  
  
• But increasingly, neither is Ethereum.  (Coindesk)
  
  Running a full Ethereum node is a pain because the blockchain has grown huge as Ethereum has gained popularity.  (And the transaction rate of Ethereum, compared to real-world systems, is still indistinguishable from zero.)
  
  Running a light Ethereum node is a pain because light nodes suck so no-one will peer with you.
  
  So everyone wants to outsource that problem.
  
  And everyone is outsourcing it to the same platform - Infura.
  
  And that means you could replace the entirety of Ethereum with a single MySQL instance and maybe a couple of replicas for safety, and deliver 100x the performance for 1/100th the cost.
  
  That's the curse of decentralisation.
  
  
• The curse of centralisation, on the other hand, can be shown in WordPress.com's censoring of Jerry Coyne's blog at the behest of Pakistan.
  
  Run WordPress yourself: Get hacked.  Even if the current release of WordPress is secure, no-one runs it without extensions, and the WordPress extension marketplace is a disaster area.
  
  Use hosted WordPress: Get hacked anyway, get charged $50 extra a month.
  
  Use WordPress.com: Get censored according to the standards of the most repressive regimes on Earth.
  
  

Posted by: cxt217 at Monday, April 22 2019 01:17 PM (LMsTt)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, April 23 2019 01:05 AM (PiXy!)

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• Austria wants to criminalise internet anonymity.  (Hacker News)
  
  Cut off their internet access until they learn how to play with the other children.
  
  
• Ruby 3 will have type annotations.
  
  Just like recent versions of Python.  Or you can just switch to Crystal and your code will run twenty times faster.
  
  
• Feature branches are cancer.  (Fire CI)
  
  What the article doesn't mention is that branches aren't the problem.  Features are the problem.
  
  
• And it burned down, fell over, and sank into the swamp.  (Scientific American)
  
  
• LinkedIn is not actually at fault in a leak of 60 million user records.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Since the only thing leaked was public data visible on the site, this is probably one of the less traumatic such incidents.

Click for a readable version.  Possibly the only NSFW urban transport map you'll see all day.

Posted by: Kristophr at Saturday, April 20 2019 09:00 AM (9759K)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Saturday, April 20 2019 01:09 PM (PiXy!)

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• Don't be fooled, the BOXX APEX W4X only supports a maximum of 28 cores.  (AnandTech)
  
  That's barely a U these days, never mind an X.
  
  
• Huawei's P-is-for-Puma P30 and P30 Pro take pretty pictures but are punishingly priced.  (AnandTech)
  
  
• If you peel the screen off your Samsung Galaxy Fold it may cease to function.  (PC Perspective)
  
  Do not peel the screen off your brand new $2000 device.  You idiots.  (Android Police)  
  
  (Samsung managed to restrain themselves from actually saying that to reviewers and just sent them out replacements, but you can see the words bubbling up out of the press release.)
  
  
• ASRock has a new don't-call-it-a-NUC based on the AMD R1000 (a low-power dual-core Ryzen APU).  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  All depends on the price.  The graphics on the R1000 are somewhat lacking - just 192 shaders vs 640 on the high-end mobile parts - but the CPU is a fair bit faster than even the recent Atom parts.  So if it's priced in that range it will be interesting at least.
  
  
• Facebook Facebooked 1.5 million Facebook users.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Oops.
  
  
• James Comey apologises for being himself.  (TechDirt)
  
  
• Google forgot the rules about forgetting.  (TechDirt)
  
  Proust in his first book, he wrote about...
  
  
• The EU predicatably just voted their new garbage internet legislation into law.  (TechDirt)
  
  Someone needs to put them into time-out until they learn to play with the other children.
  
  
• Ubuntu 19.04 is out.  (Phoronix)
  
  Ubuntu 18.04 is now a decent stable server platform, though that took about six months after it was released.  I might try out 19.04 for development.
  
  
• Pyodide is a Python environment for scientific computing that runs in your web browser because.

• Science fiction and fantasy grand master Gene Wolfe has passed away, aged 87.  (The Guardian)
  
  The Book of the New Sun is probably his most noted work, but his stories range from the relatively whimsical Free Live Free and There Are Doors to the deeply introspective Soldier in the Mist.  Almost all of them are worth reading.  (I didn't care for The Land Across, but that's a rare exception).

• I have watched and enjoyed several anime series recently: The first half of Re:Slime (it loses steam after that point), My Roommate is a Cat, Hinamatsuri, Bunny Girl Senpai, Endro!, Iroduku, and Sakura Quest, which is an example of how quality writing, direction, and art outweighs a flimsy premise.
  
  Sakurada Reset is an example of how the lack of quality writing, direction, and art can sink an interesting premise.  Also, I don't think they had a budget.  I mean, literally zero.  Shame.

Picture of the Day

• Intel will stop making 5G modem chips and may exit the modem business entirely.  (AnandTech)
  
  
• Apple and Qualcomm have reached an agreement in their patent disputes and Apple will be licensing Qualcomm's patents and buying Qualcomm modem chips going forward.  (AnandTech)
  
  Intel was Apple's alternate modem supplier, so Apple was potentially faced with not having working phones at all.
  
  
• Sony's next-gen PlayStation is basically an 8-core Ryzen PC with AMD graphics.  (AnandTech)
  
  I already have one of those.  Two.  And two more 8 core AMD systems, but those other two date back to 2011 and the core count is somewhat dubious.
  
  
• Samsung just announced their new 6nm process and by some strange coincidence so did TSMC.  (WikiChip)
  
  TSMC is holding an event next week where details of the new process will likely be released.  Samsung has provided details of 5nm, so it's safe to assume that 6nm will fall in between that and 7nm.
  
  
• SQLite 3.28.0 is out.
  
  SQLite is a tiny simple embedded SQL server that supports a minimal subset of wait, it can do what?
  
  
• Google is considering actually looking at apps before releasing them to the Play Store.  (ZDNet)
  
  
• The new version of the XBox One S without the Blu-Ray drive will only cost slightly more than the model with it.  (Thurrott.com)
  
  Oops.
  
  
• Reddit has categorised Sargon of Akkad as hazardous waste.  (One Angry Gamer)
  
  That's rich coming from Reddit.  Have you seen you default subs lately, guys?
  
  Oh, and if you're visiting One Angry Gamer, Sony and Steam are censoring everything.  Makes it hard to get angry about Epic Store exclusives when you're starting to wish Steam would just dry up and blow away.
  
  
• Someone hacked Windows 8 live tiles.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  The three people affected by this said, and I quote, "Shucks."

• Monkey Punch a.k.a Kazuhiko Katou, creator of Lupin III, has passed away, aged 81.  (Crunchyroll)
  
  
• I've been watching Sakura Quest.  By mistake, I thought it was a show about a young princess who leaves her kingdom and returns years later to become queen and work with her council of ministers (all young women) to restore prosperity and discover the truth behind the myth of the mysterious dragon girl.
  
  Which in fact it is.
  
  Anyway, initial thoughts:
  
  
• This is nice, but it's no Shirobako.
  
• It's taking an awful long time to find its pace.
  

Remember, Chihiro... Art by Anato Finnstark

Posted by: Mauser at Thursday, April 18 2019 11:27 AM (Ix1l6)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, April 18 2019 12:47 PM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, April 19 2019 04:00 AM (PiXy!)

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• Intel's "35W" 9th generation CPUs have leaked.  (AnandTech)
  
  I say "35W" advisedly, because they only promise to run at 35W at their base clock speeds, which for the high-end 6 and 8 core parts range from 1.8 to 2.3GHz.  If you actually get them into boost territory the power consumption will go straight off the chart.
  
  
• The EU Council has voted to approve the terrible horrible no good very bad EU Copyright Directive.  (TechDirt)
  
  No matter how bad a situation is, a well-meaning, focused, and properly funded government can find a way to make it worse.
  
  
• That done, the EU has moved on to its next terrible horrible no good very bad internet regulation.  (TechDirt)
  
  This time it's "terrorist" content, which as we noted previously, includes Project Gutenberg, the Grateful Dead, and C-SPAN.
  
  
• India has taken a breather from the Pewdiepie Wars to ban TikTok.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Oh for fuck's sake guys.
  
  
• Journalist Carole Cadwalladr is a hyperventialting lunatic.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Cool name tho'.
  
  
• Samsung is preparing for 5nm too.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Unless they aren't.
  
  
• Keybase...  Lets you post signed social messages to confirm that you control accounts on various platforms.  Kind of underwhelming.
  
  
• AMD's new Ryzen R1000 embedded APU family is really just a couple of low-end V1000 chips with a different name.  (Serve the Home)
  
  
• Oh good.  That's just what we needed.  Adblock filter list providers can compromise your browser.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  If you don't subscribe to any third-party filter lists, you're safe.  This appears affect Adblock Plus, AdBlock, and uBlocker.

Posted by: Rick C at Wednesday, April 17 2019 03:29 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Rick C at Wednesday, April 17 2019 03:31 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Kristophr at Wednesday, April 17 2019 08:54 AM (9759K)

Posted by: Mauser at Wednesday, April 17 2019 12:18 PM (Ix1l6)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, April 17 2019 10:18 PM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, April 18 2019 02:51 AM (Iwkd4)

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, April 18 2019 02:55 AM (Iwkd4)

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