• 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:
  
  

I got a little confused watching this, before I remembered there's a third season I've never seen.

Give the overproduced video a minute for the song to kick in.  Once it does you'll forgive the wait.  

Benny Goodman.  Also, while I'm not objecting, Saint Motel do love their motifs.

Tech Video of the Day

Tech Jesus gets his hands on some of those Ryzen 4000 laptops including a look at that anime display (that's really what they call it) from Asus.

Picture of the Day

Little Mouse by ROTUS

Pixy is Watching

Wait, no, not that Yuno.  This Yuno:



This is apparently the inspiration for Steins;Gate because it went back in time and came out in 1998.  

I was wondering why there were so many attractive women in the opening credits without any clear function in the plot (though a couple of them have been explained as of episode six).  Turns out it's for exactly the reason you would expect.


Disclaimer: Yes, an area of forest larger than Belgium has been lost to the Australian fires.  That's because Belgium is fucking minuscule.

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

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