Saturday, January 04

Geek

Daily News Stuff 4 January 2020

Everything Is On Fire Edition

Tech News

  • 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:

    http://ai.mee.nu/images/ExtraCrunch.PNG?size=640x&q=95

    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.

    http://ai.mee.nu/images/Kiwinap-s.jpg

    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.

Other News

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


Video of the Day

A reminder of how tiny the UK is. Matt and Geoff visit every Platform 0 in the country - from Cardiff to London to Edinburgh - in about 18 hours. On the other hand I don't know of any Platforms 0 in Australia at all.




Picture of the Day

http://ai.mee.nu/images/Isol_LanternRoad.jpg?size=720x&q=95

Lantern Road by Shouichi



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Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:04 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 1911 words, total size 16 kb.

1 TechCrunch: "Add to that Microsoft’s move to the Chromium engine, which is finally giving Microsoft a seat at the browser table again, plus the success of upstarts like Brave and Vivaldi, and you’ve got the right mix of competitive pressure and customer interest for innovation to come back into what was a stagnant field only a few years ago."
Ah--a bunch of new skins on the same engine means more competition!
Also privacy.  (That's where the free preview cuts off.)

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

2 "the screen is only 1080p"
Meanwhile Dell brought back a 16:10 ratio on the new XPS 13!

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

3 The XPS 13 is pretty sweet.

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

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Apple pies are delicious. But never mind apple pies. What colour is a green orange?




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