Friday, May 08
Daily News Stuff 8 May 2020
Reopening Edition
This is a very satisfying video. Louis repairs a MacBook that has had a capacitor literally explode, damaging the motherboard and causing a short circuit. Because of the way MacBooks are made, this meant that it was impossible to recover the data from it.
Was. Past tense.
Reopening Edition
Tech News
- Went to the shops this evening. More people around, and they're looking more relaxed. Toilet paper aisle was fully stocked, albeit with just three selections.
Got some more gluten-free lamingtons. Baked beans in ham sauce were out of stock though.
Apple stores are open again. (9to5Mac)
A sign of spring?
Interesting that there are only 22 Apple Stores in Australia and one of them is within walking distance of my house.
- Apple, Sonos, and Spotify have gotten into a fight over who offers the worst support to their developers. (Fortune)
Popcorn time.
- Amazon is evil. (The Guardian)
I mean, it's The Guardian, so take it with a pinch of salt, but Amazon appears to have put it in writing, which is never a good idea.
- USB 4 could make DisplayPort obsolete with its new alt mode which is, um, DisplayPort. (Tech Report)
So DisplayPort is obsolete, to be replaced by DisplayPort.
- Thanks to AMD, $120 is the new $350. (AnandTech)
All the tech reviewers are gushing over the $120 Ryzen 3300X and to a lesser degree also the Ryzen 3100.
They're both 4 core / 8 thread Zen 2 parts with 16MB of L3 cache. The 3300X is clocked a little higher, but the real distinction is that the 3100 has two active CCXs with two cores each, where the 3300X has one CCX with four cores.
On some tasks this makes the 3300X 26% faster than the 3100, much more than can be explained by the clock speed difference. Having all the cores together in one CCS significantly reduces cache latency.
And the reason that matters is that Zen 3 will increase the CCX to 8 cores, so mainstream 6 and 8 core desktops could see a similar performance jump.
- You'll need a new motherboard though unless you won't. (WCCFTech)
Not because older chipsets won't be compatible with the new CPUs, but because older motherboards don't have enough room in their ROMs for the necessary BIOS updates.
X570 and B550 will officially support Zen 3, and there will be 600-series chipsets. Anything older and you're probably on your own.
- The original cookie specification was GDRP compliant. (Baekdal)
Third-party cookies were simply forbidden. That.... Changed.
Video of the Day
This is a very satisfying video. Louis repairs a MacBook that has had a capacitor literally explode, damaging the motherboard and causing a short circuit. Because of the way MacBooks are made, this meant that it was impossible to recover the data from it.
Was. Past tense.
Disclaimer: Changed quite a lot.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
11:38 PM
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Post contains 431 words, total size 4 kb.
1
USB over DP: I wouldn't mind seeing the DisplayPort connector go away and be replaced with USB C.
Maybe the USB-IF should've thought more about the issue of what features cables support. Maybe "power-only", "regular USB data only", and "everything" categories would be enough, and then simple icons on the packaging? Sure, some people would get the wrong cables from time to time, but that probably happens now. (Heck, it definitely does: I got a new 144Hz monitor this winter, and got an HDMI cable for it, only to find out that the HDMI port only supports 120Hz and not 144Hz, so I had to buy a DP cable to get the full speed (and also, as it turns out, to be able to share two monitors between two computers with only a 2x1 KVM (solution: computer A uses DP to the second monitor, computer B uses HDMI, I put a computer to sleep before switching to the other one, and set the second monitor to auto-switch to the active port instead of being always on HDMI. (I could, of course, buy another KVM, this time a 2x2, but they're more expensive.)
Maybe the USB-IF should've thought more about the issue of what features cables support. Maybe "power-only", "regular USB data only", and "everything" categories would be enough, and then simple icons on the packaging? Sure, some people would get the wrong cables from time to time, but that probably happens now. (Heck, it definitely does: I got a new 144Hz monitor this winter, and got an HDMI cable for it, only to find out that the HDMI port only supports 120Hz and not 144Hz, so I had to buy a DP cable to get the full speed (and also, as it turns out, to be able to share two monitors between two computers with only a 2x1 KVM (solution: computer A uses DP to the second monitor, computer B uses HDMI, I put a computer to sleep before switching to the other one, and set the second monitor to auto-switch to the active port instead of being always on HDMI. (I could, of course, buy another KVM, this time a 2x2, but they're more expensive.)
Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, May 09 2020 02:41 AM (Iwkd4)
2
"If advertisement cookies are undermined, journalism could ultimately be
pushed behind paywalls, making it only available to those who can
afford it."
In other words, "if you won't let us track you around the web, you can't view the site."
I wonder if there's a browser extension that could reject ad cookies--or better yet, mess with them. "oh, lotsofads.com set a 24-character cookie? Here, have 24 'a's in a row, instead."
In other words, "if you won't let us track you around the web, you can't view the site."
I wonder if there's a browser extension that could reject ad cookies--or better yet, mess with them. "oh, lotsofads.com set a 24-character cookie? Here, have 24 'a's in a row, instead."
Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, May 09 2020 03:22 AM (Iwkd4)
3
Also, he goes off the rails shortly afterwards. " General Motors and Toyota chose to side with Trump, so that they don't have to reduce emissions"
Uh, no, that's not what's happening. Trump's proposal was to reduce the standard manufacturers will have to meet in a few years from 55 to (iirc) 45mpg fleet averages. It's just like those dishonest people who call a reduction in the rate of increase in the budget a "cut".
Of course this guy doesn't have comments.
Uh, no, that's not what's happening. Trump's proposal was to reduce the standard manufacturers will have to meet in a few years from 55 to (iirc) 45mpg fleet averages. It's just like those dishonest people who call a reduction in the rate of increase in the budget a "cut".
Of course this guy doesn't have comments.
Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, May 09 2020 03:23 AM (Iwkd4)
4
Every time I start idly considering switching to a Mac, something like this comes out.
Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, May 09 2020 03:28 AM (Iwkd4)
5
I have a Mac. It's fast and reliable and the screen is beautiful and I would not buy another.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Saturday, May 09 2020 09:13 AM (PiXy!)
6
WSL2 may be the thing that finally breaks my Mac dependency, especially given how much of my old software is permanently orphaned by Catalina. And you can twiddle a few bits to make VMware Workstation run Mac images, to preserve legacy stuff. I'd just need to finally learn the quirks of the Windows Japanese IME (which hopefully works seamlessly in WSL2 terminals), and find a decent font manager.
-j
-j
Posted by: J Greely at Saturday, May 09 2020 09:56 AM (ZlYZd)
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