• The Case of the Counterfeit Unicorn.  (Lowering the Bar)

  The world is facing a real emergency.  Plaintiff is not.  The motion to reconsider the scheduling order is denied.
  
  

• The Case of Google v. Oracle.  (Inside)
  
  The nineteenth iteration of the Oracle / Google debacle has also been postponed due to the catastrophic global plague pandemic situation.
  
  
  
• When you've lost Tech Crunch, you've lost, well, Tech Crunch.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Apple has refilmed Spielberg's Amazing Stories series.  I don't recall the original making much of a splash, and this version sounds like it's achieve laminar flow.  Which is not a good thing.
  
  
  
• Julia 1.4 is out.
  
  Julia is a language for scientific computing, what Fortran would be if it weren't Fortran and was Julia instead.
  
  The big question is does it finally support static compilation and the answer is sort of maybe but I'm using Crystal for that now.
  
  
  
• TSMC has released full details of its 5nm process.  (WikiChip)
  
  Compared to the original 7nm node (there are now updated 7nm nodes) it delivers up to 87% higher transistor density and 15% better performance at the same power consumption or 30% lower power consumption at the same performance.  
  
  It also requires fewer processing steps than 7nm thanks to the use of EUV.  Combined with its higher density that should make it very cost-effective as volume ramps up.  Smaller die sizes mean a lot more good chips per waver.
  
  
  
• Microsoft and Google have put new browser versions on hold temporarily while sysadmins get VPNs deployed for a billion new telecommuters.  (ZDNet)
  
  Bugfixes will continue as normal.
  
  
  
• Microsoft's Surface Go 2 could use Intel's Amber Lake CPU.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Is that good?  Bad?  Apparently it's bad.  Does anyone keep track of the million lakes anymore?
  
  At least as silly as the part numbers have become you can get some idea of a chip's capabilities.  We're talking an m3-8100Y.  The Y means super-ultra-low-power - generally 6W, the m3 means it sucks, and the 8100 means that it's the bottom end of all the 8th generation parts when 10th generation is already out.
  
  That said, we are talking about an 8" tablet, and the CPU is 37% faster than the Pentium 4415Y used in the current Surface Go.
  
  
  

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, March 23 2020 03:41 AM (Iwkd4)

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