• TSMC  to customers: Get with the program and move to 28nm already.  (AnandTech)
  
  Compared to the new hotness (see below) 28nm is old school and almost old hat, but it works, and it works the same as older processes.  It's the last robust process with planar transistors rather than FinFETs, so designs are relatively easy to move.
  
  There is also a 20nm planar node, but it sucks.  AMD never used it, for example, despite being stuck on 28nm for years.
  
  
  
• Samsung meanwhile has started production at 3nm.  (ZDNet)
  
  The main advantage of Samsung's 3nm and their new GAAFET transistors is that they cut power consumption by nearly half.  They also reportedly offer up to 20% better performance but the way that number is measured makes its utility dubious.  You need the chart plotting frequencies against power consumption and the details of the sample circuit being evaluated.

• The Raspberry Pi Pico W is the Raspberry Pi Pico with added W.  (RaspberryPi)
  
  The W stands for 802.11n - WiFi.
  
  The article also notes that the Pi Pico chip is made on TSMC's 40nm process, so: Get with the program.
  
  
  
• Retail prices for Threadripper Pro 5000 have been announced and ouch.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  The 24 core Threadripper 3960X cost $1399.  The 24 core Threadripper Pro 5965X costs $2399 - and will be about 20% faster than the 7950X when that chip arrives in September.
  
  AMD is the only game in town for workstation chips, really, and they're setting prices to match.

Posted by: StargazerA5 at Thursday, June 30 2022 09:06 PM (F3K2c)

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, July 02 2022 12:12 AM (/tDCi)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Saturday, July 02 2022 12:34 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, July 02 2022 09:56 AM (/tDCi)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

• Ugly monkey JPEG company Yuga Labs has sued "conceptual artist" Ryder Ripps for - and I quote - false designation of origin, false advertising, cybersquatting, trademark infringement, unfair competition, unjust enrichment, conversion, and tortious interference for copying its ugly monkey JPEGs.  (The Verge)
  
  Ripps responded:

  Ripps (who has also sold original NFTs) described his work as a twist on appropriation art, exploring "the power of NFTs to change meaning, establish provenance, and evade censorship.” He’s run similar projects before, including selling a slightly modified version of a CryptoPunk designed to poke fun at the series. "The lawsuit grossly mischaracterizes the RR/BAYC project,” he said in a statement on Twitter, asserting that buyers were explicitly informed they weren’t buying an official Bored Ape.

  This is a clear admission of copyright infringement and Yuga Labs would win this one in a walk except that, um, nowhere in that list of offences to they mention copyright infringement.
  
  But calling it RR/BAYC is likely enough the land him in hot water.  If I called my company IBM (NA) with the fine print saying *not actually I doubt the judge would be too impressed either.

• Cephalopod molluscs have civil rights in Britain, but not AI.  (BBC News)
  
  But what about digital bivalves?  Won't somebody think of the electronic oysters?
  
  
  
• Raccoon Stealer is here to steal your raccoons.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  And passwords.  Mostly passwords, to be honest.
  
  
  
• Apple claims that it blocks or limits third-party software to protect you, the customer.  Are they telling the truth?  No.  Of course not.  How long have you been reading these posts?
  
  
  
  
  Apple blocks or limits third party software because (chorus) fuck you, that's why (/chorus).
  
  
  
  
  
  
• It's always worse than you think.  (Imperfectionist)
  
  Right up until you're dead, at which point expectations and reality precisely coincide.
  
  
  

Lego World War I Video of the Day

Posted by: dljessup at Thursday, June 30 2022 07:12 AM (We9L4)

Posted by: furball321 at Thursday, June 30 2022 08:29 AM (n+R81)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, June 30 2022 09:59 AM (PiXy!)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

• Server fell over at 5AM.  (Not the Ace server, the one that runs my own blog and many others.)
  
  I didn't have an audible alarm because I currently only have the travel laptop with me, and I didn't notice right away because I got to bed at 4:30 and had a meeting at 8:30.
  
  I have a new server, I just haven't had time to complete the migration.  Soon...
  
  
  
• Rufus is a tool for generating install images that just happens to let you bypass Windows 11's requirements for a Microsoft online login.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Windows 11 Home - like 10 Home - has always required an online login; the recent change is that Windows 11 Pro now does as well.
  
  Funny thing is, I've activated Windows 10 Home on many systems and Windows 11 Home one one, and I've never used an online account to do so.  Just kill the network interface during initial setup and the online login widget dies too.
  
  
  

Tech News

• The MSI Pro B660M-P is a 12th gen Intel motherboard for $90.  (AnandTech)
  
  I wouldn't recommend that one unless you're on a really tight budget though.  For another $20 this Gigabyte motherboard adds a second M.2 slot, a second HDMI port, and 2.5Gb Ethernet.
  
  This would pair well with lower-end 12th Gen CPUs like the i3-12100 and i5-12400 to deliver great performance at a reasonable price - and the lower-end chips also have much lower power consumption than their more expensive cousins.
  
  
  
• Meanwhile Intel has published benchmarks of its new Arc A380 graphics card.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Normally I'd advise people to be skeptical of manufacturer benchmarks, but in this case they lose all but one comparison and come dead last in most, so it probably is fairly accurate.
  
  
  
• Build your own Ryzen-based small business server.  (Serve the Home)
  
  Not that I'm planning to do this.  (Scribbles notes furiously.)
  
  
  
• The Stasi have come after the company running Truth Social.  (The Independent)
  
  Because of course they have.
  
  
  
• Crypto exchange FTX is intalks to acquire Robinhood.  (Yahoo Finance)
  
  Congratulations on your future expansion into the only industry shadier than your own.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  
  
• Popular pew-pew game Valorant is going to start recording voice chat.  (PC Gamer)In a brief statement, Riot Games said that "the telescreen was behind the painting".
  
  
  
• SSD read speeds on the brand new M2 Macbook's base model are half those of the M1.  (Mac Rumors)
  
  Apple made the SSD in the new 256GB model smaller and cheaper and more efficient and also a whole lot slower.

Posted by: normal at Wednesday, June 29 2022 08:55 AM (obo9H)

Posted by: cxt217 at Wednesday, June 29 2022 12:05 PM (MuaLM)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, June 29 2022 04:33 PM (PiXy!)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

• Bad thing about working for a small company: Sometimes someone needs to work through the night - repeatedly - and that someone is you.
  
  Good thing about working for a small company: This does not pass unnoticed.
  
  To put it another way: When the new CPUs and graphics cards come out later this year, I'm all set to buy a new high-end gaming system.  On which I shall play Minecraft.
  
  There's still a crisis I need to deal with tonight - a database playing up in weird ways - but it's the only crisis I have to deal with tonight.
  
  (Also, I'm not the only one who has had to jump in and do weird things at awful hours recently; we've had a lot going on.  It's a good team.)
  
  
  

Tech News

• You could maybe try not breaking the law.  (The Register)
  
  Just a thought.
  
  
  
• DevOps is a failure.  (Lee Briggs)
  
  DevOps is just the old school ops with...  No, not with anything.  Just old school ops.
  
  
  
• Google programmers, or, how one idiot hired more idiots.  (PVS Studio)
  
  I was dealing with these guys before there was Google.  We called them idiots then too.
  
  
  
• Code bloat has become astronomical.  (Positech)
  
  The article notes a file upload program that is 230MB of code and can't actually upload files.
  
  The first comment points out than an empty Unity game project weighs in at 16,000 files totaling 1GB.
  
  
  
• I wonder if QNAP switches are plagued with security issues like their storage solutions.  Probably not; I doubt they'd run unpatched PHP on their network switches.
  
  I hope they wouldn't, anyway.
  
  This looks like a good solution for my computer room.  (Amazon)
  
  Might need something bigger later, but right now if you want more than four 10GbE ports - and aren't using SFP+ - that gets expensive.

Posted by: normal at Monday, June 27 2022 05:52 PM (obo9H)

Posted by: J Greely at Monday, June 27 2022 10:56 PM (oJgNG)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, June 28 2022 02:39 AM (PiXy!)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

• Say, whatever happened to that fancy Asus "Space Edition" laptop?  Did it ever make it to market?
  
  Yep.  (Amazon)
  
  On the one hand, kind of expensive.
  
  On the other hand, with an i9-12900H it's nearly three times as fast as the laptop I'm using right now.
  
  On the third hand, Amazon's spec sheets are maintained by idiots.  This one states the laptop weighs 9.9lbs.
  
  
  

Tech News

• If leaked specs of next-generation video cards are correct, your next PC might need a 1000W power supply so here's one from Gigabyte.  (AnandTech)
  
  Temperatures have been below freezing here in New House City the last four nights so this currently doesn't seem like such an extravagance.  Play Minecraft on an i9-13900K / RTX 4080 system and keep the house warm at the same time.
  
  
  
• Italy has banned Google Analytics, declaring it illegal under the GDPR.  (Simple Analytics)
  
  This is terrible.  I'm out of popcorn.
  
  
  
• Shocking everyone, a report finds that Robinhood lied throughout the Gamestop debacle last year.  (Yahoo Finance)
  
  And in fact was only kept alive by an unexplained liquidity waiver.
  
  
  
• The SEC has proposed new regulations to deal with "meme stock" situations like this.  (Yahoo Finance)
  
  As described, they do not look terrible.  Let's wait for the other shoes to drop though.
  
  
  
• Is this ridiculous overpriced digital water bottle with its accompanying iPhone app worth it?  No.  (9to5Mac)
  
  The promised "deep dive" is garbage and doesn't evaluate much of anything, but such is the tame Apple press.

Posted by: normal at Monday, June 27 2022 03:19 AM (obo9H)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

Posted by: Rick C at Sunday, June 26 2022 01:00 AM (BMUHC)

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Sunday, June 26 2022 04:35 AM (LZ7Bg)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, June 26 2022 07:58 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Rick C at Sunday, June 26 2022 11:11 AM (BMUHC)

Posted by: normal at Monday, June 27 2022 03:14 AM (obo9H)

Posted by: cxt217 at Monday, June 27 2022 09:39 AM (MuaLM)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

• So, went to the Ikea site today to price some bookshelves.
  
  Last chance to buy.
  
  What?  You've sold like a hundred million of the damn things.  You can't possibly be so stupid as to stop making them.

  It is estimated that every five seconds, one BILLY bookcase is sold somewhere in the world. Pretty impressive considering we launched BILLY in 1979. It’s the booklovers choice that never goes out of style.

  Well, not anymore.  (Fast Company)
  
  For decades, Billy bookcases have come in two versions: The cheap white ones coated with foil paper, and the more expensive wood veneer ones.
  
  There will no longer be a wood veneer option.  At all.  In fact, they're already gone, so if you were planning on putting anything other than the cheap white version in your brand new house, tough shit.
  
  With my revised plan to put shelves in the hallways, I was planning on using the cheap white version anyway.  Guess I'll do something else in the rooms where I want to match furniture and not just have it be inoffensive.
  
  
  
• At least there are donuts on the way.
  
  
  

Tech News

• Speaking of which, the best small Android tablet has gone the way of wood veneer as well.  I mean, there was only one adequate small Android tablet as it was - the Lenovo Tab M8 FHD - and that's gone.  As far as I can tell everything left on the market has the same screen resolution as the original Nexus 7 from 2012.  The crappy one, not the 2013 model that was actually pretty good.
  
  Lenovo's new Legion Y700 would be perfect - 2560x1600 8.8" screen and Arm A77 cores that blow the old A53 cores in the Tab M8 out of the water.  Except that it's kind of expensive - and only available in China.
  
  
  
• Everyone else just leaks stuff online: A Japanese city council worker has lost a USB drive containing personal details of every resident of Amagasaki - about half a million people.  (The Guardian)
  
  In his defense, he was very drunk.
  
  
  
• AMD's Zen 4 has a somewhat disappointing IPC uplift over Zen 3 - only 8-10%.  Overall performance will improve by more than that because clock speeds will be significantly higher and multi-threading is improved on the high-end models.
  
  Intel meanwhile is promising up to double-digit performance improvements.  (WCCFTech)
  
  In theory that means anything up to 99%, but I think they mean anything up to 10%.
  
  They are also packing in an extra eight Efficiency cores though, which should improve the multi-threaded performance by up to 30% on top of those single-threaded gains.

Posted by: J Greely at Saturday, June 25 2022 07:39 PM (oJgNG)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Saturday, June 25 2022 11:36 PM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Rick C at Sunday, June 26 2022 01:06 AM (BMUHC)

Posted by: J Greely at Sunday, June 26 2022 04:32 AM (oJgNG)

Posted by: David Eastman at Sunday, June 26 2022 07:59 AM (D6Mju)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, June 26 2022 06:37 PM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Mauser at Monday, June 27 2022 10:08 AM (BzEjn)

Posted by: Mauser at Monday, June 27 2022 10:10 AM (BzEjn)

Posted by: normal at Monday, June 27 2022 09:22 PM (obo9H)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

• Well, maybe a little dead.
  
  
  
• Resolved a weird and long-standing performance issue with the system at work by turning off threads in the application server and using a full process for every worker.  Magic.
  
  
  
• The designated office area at New House can fit 12.2m of desk in an L shape - almost exactly 40 feet. 
  
  Do I need 40 feet of desk space? 
  No. 
  Am I gonna?
  Darn tootin'.
  
  
  
• Similarly, there's quite a wide U-shaped hallway that wraps around a core area (kitchen / bathroom) and leads to all the other rooms.  I can fit 16 bookcases along the blank sections of wall without putting anything in an actual room.
  
  
  
• In which bad things happen to bad people.  (Pluralistic)
  
  Ah, the schadenfreude is overpowering.
  
  
  

Posted by: J Greely at Friday, June 24 2022 11:23 PM (oJgNG)

Posted by: David Eastman at Saturday, June 25 2022 02:08 AM (D6Mju)

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, June 25 2022 07:32 AM (BMUHC)

Posted by: normal at Saturday, June 25 2022 08:54 AM (obo9H)

Posted by: Peter the Not-so-Great at Saturday, June 25 2022 09:09 AM (yCp8E)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

• Quick one today because usual reasons.
  
  
  
• The PNY XLR8 CS3140 is yet another boring SSD.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Ho hum.  7.5GBps, 4TB capacity, 3PB write endurance.
  
  We live in an age of miracles and no-one is happy.
  
  
  
• QNAP again.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Seriously, they'd be safer if they simply caught fire.
  
  
  
• Motherboards for Intel's 13th generation CPUs will support DDR4 RAM.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Availability of DDR5 has improved but it's still a lot more expensive than DDR4, so this is something to consider if you're on a budget.
  
  
  
• Samsung has a new 200MP camera censor, 20% smaller than the previous model.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Which isn't really an advantage in camera sensors - you want the biggest sensor you can fit.

Posted by: Frank at Thursday, June 23 2022 09:18 PM (rglbH)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, June 24 2022 01:04 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: normal at Friday, June 24 2022 10:10 AM (obo9H)

Hide Comments | Add Comment