Friday, January 03
Daily News Stuff 3 January 2020
We've Got To Go Back Edition
We've Got To Go Back Edition
Tech News
- Was testing deployment options for the new system today. DigitalOcean running out of a RAM disk was about the same speed as Vultr running from SSD.
Although.... That test is very write-heavy, and unless I start getting a million posts a day right away I'll be far more concerned with reads. Vultr is still ahead there but not by so much that DO isn't an option.
The advantage of going with DigitalOcean is that (a) they pool bandwidth, so if the database server comes with 4TB (which it would) that gets added to the pool to be used by the web servers, and (b) they have block and object storage in every location.
Advantage of Vultr is that it's faster and it's easy to do a custom install running ZFS. With DO I can easily add block storage and configure that with ZFS, but that is even slower than the standard storage.
Third option is RamNode, who I haven't used before, but who have been around a while and are well-regarded. They don't have object or block storage, but they do have fast NVMe servers like Vultr, and cheap disk-based storage servers with tons of available bandwidth. (As low as $1 per TB transferred.)
All three are viable so I'll just pick one and go with it.
- AMD's Lisa Su may be presenting Zen 3 at CES. (WCCFTech)
And/or the Ryzen 4000 APUs, which may or may not deliver 8 cores to mainstream laptops.
Or possibly something else.
- Speaking of which, AMD is set to become TSMC's largest 7nm customer. (Tom's Hardware)
Only partly because Apple will be moving to 5nm later this year, and AMD isn't planning on that until 2021.
- Isaac Asimov's century. (The Humanist)
Today is the 100th anniversary of Isaac Asimov's birth, more or less (there aren't exact records). TechCrunch reminded me of the fact, so thanks for that, but their article will just make you irritated so I won't link it here.
Science Magazine also has a respectful article.
- Literature, films, and music created in 1924 have now entered the public domain. (Hyperallergic)
In the US; in many other countries they have been in the public domain for years.
- Your programming language is bad and you should feel bad.
Mind you, this list would reject Python specifically, and pretty much everything other than Lisp for other reasons.
- Apple is suing a security company under the DMCA for creating an iOS security tool. (iFixit)
This is section 1201 of the DMCA, the anti-circumvention section, a.k.a the bad part. Corellium - the company in question - allows you to create virtual iPhones in your browser to test security issues. Apple is not happy about that and wants them dead.
- SAFe is an unholy incarnation of darkness. (Medium has not yet blocked me this month)
SAFe is Agile for Enterprise. Agile is a lightweight team-driven software development methodology for smaller projects, so it is exactly what you don't want at enterprise scale. Scroll down to the diagram in the linked article where they explain it all.
- A look at the Threadripper 3960X. (Serve the Home)
AMD's smaller Thirdripper is still impressive. Intel's fastest workstation processor - costing twice as much - can beat it on, oh, on Passmark, and a couple of others, but in almost every case Intel's best is coming in third, and sometimes fourth. And that's even before AMD releases their high-end parts.
- Python 2.7 has reached EOL. (Bleeping Computer)
There is one final update due in April, and then that is it.
Unless you are using PyPy, which is both written in and compatible with Python 2. Since dropping support for Python 2 would require rewriting the entire thing, they are planning to support it indefinitely.
Still, libraries will slowly drop support for Python 2. Web3, the Ethereum library, doesn't work with Python 2 at all.
RedHat will also continue supporting Python 2.7 through to at least 2024.
- MacOS 8 and the Y2.02K problem. (Six Colors)
In 1997? Seriously, Apple, in 1997 you did this?
Like every other MacOS problem there is a third-party utility to fix it.
- The LG G8X ThinQ Dual Screen solves the folding screen problem by... Not folding the screen. (ZDNet)
It has two screens (both 6.4" 2340x1080 OLED displays) and a hinge in between.
- One quarter of all the pigs in the world died in 2019 of swine fever. (New York Times)
Which sounds shocking - and I suppose it is - but pigs raised for market (which is almost all of them) do not live very long lives in the first place.
- In an apparent attempt to make cancer great again, the FDA has banned the production and sale of many flavoured vape products. (Engadget)
Sigh.
- A federal judge has blocked... Wait, what's this? A federal judge has blocked California's terrible "gig economy" law. (CBS News)
Apparently only as it applies to truck drivers though. How it will play out for other groups if they succeed in their lawsuit will be interesting to watch.
I am not against laws protecting workers from being taken advantage of by unscrupulous companies. I am just against this law, because it is dumb.
- LG will be launching eight new 8K TVs at CES next week. (9to5Mac)
The models range from 65" to 85". Prices are not mentioned and are likely still stratospheric, but prices for 4K came down pretty quickly once the second-tier players got onto the market, and it's likely to be the same only more so with 8K.
Other News
Music Video of the Day
The newly announced official song of the United States Space Force.
Disclaimer: Space Oddity was considered but you can't march to it.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
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"Apparently only as it applies to truck drivers though."
Truck drivers already have Federal laws, and the California one apparently violated those. This is a time when Federal interstate commerce supremacy actually was used for good!
I'm glad the truckers got out of this (even though it's only a temporary injunction for now, but that was granted because they were deemed likely to win at trial) but by carving them out of AB 5, that may make it harder to get rid of it.
Still, it's really hard not to feel schadenfreude about, for example, all the Vox writers who got let go, after Vox crowed about the law a few months back.
Truck drivers already have Federal laws, and the California one apparently violated those. This is a time when Federal interstate commerce supremacy actually was used for good!
I'm glad the truckers got out of this (even though it's only a temporary injunction for now, but that was granted because they were deemed likely to win at trial) but by carving them out of AB 5, that may make it harder to get rid of it.
Still, it's really hard not to feel schadenfreude about, for example, all the Vox writers who got let go, after Vox crowed about the law a few months back.
Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, January 04 2020 12:45 AM (Iwkd4)
Posted by: Wonderduck at Saturday, January 04 2020 11:53 AM (cTMj+)
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