Wednesday, November 24

Geek

Daily News Stuff 24 November 2021

Barrel Of Chaos Monkeys Edition

Top Story

  • Bad news: DDR5 availability is a bad joke at this point.  (Tom's Hardware)

    Good news: It doesn't make any difference to typical workloads anyway, and where it does you'd be better off with a Threadripper or Threadripper Pro.  For games, DDR4 averages about 2% faster than DDR5 because of the high latency of early DDR5 modules.

    I checked two Australian online stores plus Amazon and Newegg, and none of them have any DDR5 RAM.  On eBay scalpers are charging between $25 and $80 per GB.  Decent DDR4-3600 modules from Corsair, Geil, G.Skill, and Team are readily available at less than $4 per GB.


Tech News

  • No P-cores for you! (WCCFTech)

    If the listing here is correct, Intel is planning to flood the zone with low-power E (for efficiency) cores, while P (for power) core counts will remain static at 8.  The new 12900K has 8 P and 8 E, while next year's 13900K is expected to have 8 P and 16 E, and the future 15900K 8P and 32 E.

    That's...  Kind of mixed.  The advantage is that Intel's E-cores are half the speed of the P-cores (actually a bit more) while using one quarter the power and die area, so on multi-threaded test you are potentially better off with this flood the zone approach.

    The downside is that you have huge disparities in individual thread performance depending on which core a task lands on.  Bad enough on the desktop; chaos on a server.

    On the third side, while AMD offers a 16 core desktop CPU right now - since last year, though early on supply was pretty tight - it is clearly thermally constrained and would run faster given a higher power budget.


  • GoDaddy leaked user profiles for 1.2 million WordPress sites.  (The Daily Swig)

    Sounds like rather a mess.  Usernames and passwords were exposed - plaintext passwords in some cases because they're stored in config files for the app, along with private keys for SSL certificates.


  • You can't trust App Store review scores.  (The Verge)

    I mean, yes, we all knew that, but this is an interesting case.  




    Yep.  All the positive reviews are reviews of the podcasts, not of Apple's podcast app, which people still hate.


  • Samsung is building a new $17 billion chip factory in Taylor, Texas, just outside Austin.  (Yahoo)

    Not clear if this is for leading-edge production or for bulk production of older chips for embedded and automotive tasks - both are in short supply right now - but the price tag suggests it will be pretty up-to-date.


  • India is planning to propose banning all private cryptocurrencies.  (Bloomberg)

    Yeah, well, that's just, like, your opinion, man.


  • The US is playing me too.  (Bloomberg)

    The Federal Reserve, FDIC, and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency which I hadn't even heard of until Uncle Joe decided to nominate an unreconstructed Stalinist to the post, are working on regulations to roll out next year.

    On the plus side that might destroy the entire industry.


  • How retarded are the retards at Axios?  All the retarded.  (Axios)

    They do eventually concede that there might be concerns with China's new privacy law, which places no restrictions whatsoever on the government while hampering private business.


  • Russia meanwhile is demanding hostages from all foreign tech companies if they want to continue operations in the country.  (9to5Mac)

    That's a hell no from me.


  • Apart from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the new Macbook?  (Hot Hardware)

    PC reviewer reviews the MacBook Pro, is not impressed with that stupid notch.


Party Like It's 1979 Video of the Day



Could have sworn this song was from the 80s, but no.  This video yes, but not the song.


Party Like It's 1939, 1959 and/or 1989 Video of the Day




Disclaimer: Put regular in the time scoop instead of super and that's what you're going to get.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:09 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 655 words, total size 6 kb.

1 WTFTech's been flogging that chart since at least July, based on following a few links back.  I didn't see anything in the text to support it, although I only followed 4 or 5 links.  I strongly suspect they pulled that out of wherever they normally get their more wild rumors.

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, November 25 2021 12:45 AM (Z0GF0)

2 If an app vendor tried interrupting whatever I was doing to ask me to rate it, it would either be ignored or get a 1-star rating.  But I'll admit I'm cranky (normally, I just click the "leave a rating" button to go to the Android store and then back out of it, so the app will stop nagging me.

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, November 25 2021 12:47 AM (Z0GF0)

3 Russia story:  no problem.  Open one office in Moscow.  Hire 3 locals, give 'em makework jobs.

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, November 25 2021 12:57 AM (Z0GF0)

4 As for the notch, well, all the whiny people who insisted on thin bezels *and* a webcam brought this on themselves.  From the story a couple weeks ago, it at least sounds like the notch is mostly well-implemented.

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, November 25 2021 01:08 AM (Z0GF0)

5 They have been updating that chart, though, and I think it's entirely plausible that we'll see 16 E-cores on 13th gen.  If you look at the die photos, the E-cores are small.  It's an easy benchmark win for Intel.

We shall see.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, November 25 2021 02:30 AM (PiXy!)

6 "People want a built-in webcam."

I'd happily pay a premium to not have a built-in webcam or microphone.

Posted by: normal at Thursday, November 25 2021 03:41 AM (LADmw)

7 My Dell laptop has a little physical camera shutter.  Just slide that into place and done.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, November 25 2021 07:56 AM (PiXy!)

8 Yes, but if it's not there at all, you don't need the shutter.  It's also not being somehow powered up all the time, adding to your battery drain.  And USB webcams are cheap, can be replaced easily (when you might want something higher resolution, f'rinstance), and can be unplugged when not needed.  I mean, I really see no upside at all to a built-in, shitty camera that's always powered up.  Also, make sure that shutter blocks IR.

Posted by: normal at Thursday, November 25 2021 12:16 PM (obo9H)

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




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