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Taiwan's Legislature Approves Same-Sex Marriage Law
Trump's Tariffs are the Largest Tax Increase in Decades
A CNBC analysis of data from the Treasury Department ranks the combined $72 billion in revenue from all the president’s tariffs as one of the biggest tax increases since 1993. In fact, the tariff revenue ranks as the largest increase as a percent of GDP since 1993 when compared with the first year of all the revenue measures enacted since then, according to the data.
Trump’s tariffs are equivalent to one of the largest tax increases in decades
And about that massive welfare program he's setting up for farmer bailouts? $62 MILLION went to Brazilian criminals:
Remember when tax hikes, welfare, bailouts and criminals were bad?
Samsung Samples 32 Gb DRAM Chips
Samsung Samples 32 Gb DDR4 Memory Chips
JEDEC’s DDR4 specification only describes 4 Gb, 8Gb, and 16 Gb memory devices. As a result, DRAM makers have to use advanced packaging techniques to build chips for high-capacity memory modules for servers or workstations. DDPs are not something particularly new, but 32 Gb DDR4-2666 DDPs are unique to Samsung.
[...] Samsung does not disclose pricing of its 32 Gb DDR4-2666 DDPs, but it is obvious that they will be sold at a premium given the fact that they are only available from Samsung and they are harder to build than SDPs.
The expensive way to double capacity.
By comparison: Samsung Shows Off 256 GB Server Memory Modules Using 16 Gb Chips
Makeup YouTuber #Cancelled
The canceling of James Charles: Beauty YouTuber loses 3 million subscribers in a weekend
One video led to YouTube’s biggest makeup vlogger losing millions of subscribers
That's apparently the largest/fastest loss of subscribers in YouTube history.
Funny memes aside, if you look into the circumstances more closely, James Charles got called out for promoting a company's gummy vitamin formulated for sleep (melatonin and other junk) instead of his friend Tati Westbrook's vitamin product. But Tati Westbrook doesn't sell any sleep vitamin products (they are intended for hair/nails and skin). So the whole feud is built on a misunderstanding or deliberate misrepresentation. As for catfishing/trying to turn guys gay, Tati Westbrook kept those allegations under wraps and only decided to bring them up after complaining about a stupid product promotion (or more accurately, her own stupid product not being promoted by her "friend").
That isn't to say that James Charles isn't necessarily a scumbag and scam artist selling overpriced junk and $500 fan meetup tickets. But the recent cancelling of YouTuber "ProJared" (NSFW) is much more clear cut.
The Media’s Sudden Disinterest in the Denver STEM School
When the shooting at the Highlands Ranch, CO, Stem school happened, the world reacted in shock and horror that yet another student used a firearm to hurt or kill other students in a place that is supposed to be one of the safest places for your child to be.
News agencies across the country immediately took action, and activist groups began planning events to promote gun control. One such event occurred at the very location the shooting occurred. Students were duped into attending, believing it was a vigil of some kind, but walked away when they found out that the atrocity they endured was being politicized.
Frustrated, crying and angry, #STEMschool shooting victims hold an impromptu vigil in the rain Wednesday after leaving a gun-control vigil they felt inappropriately politicized their trauma. (They asked that I not photograph their faces close up, and I respected their wishes.) pic.twitter.com/cksRXGtYQA
— Trevor Hughes (@TrevorHughes) May 9, 2019
Facebook posts from concerned people dotted the social media site and Twitter was ablaze with anti-gun rhetoric once again.
And then it all suddenly went silent.
Now, the media seems far less interested in the shooting. An odd turnaround for the media who take every opportunity to hammer home the idea that guns are the problem in this nation, not something else. Why? It’s because the identity of the shooters was released, and it doesn’t fall in line with any of the approved columns for a media-based attack.
They found that one of the shooters is gay and another is transgendered and biologically female, as NBC reported in the update about her. Even NBC buried these facts in their own report about it, choosing instead to call the gay shooter a “bully” instead of highlighting their identities and backgrounds first:
The suspected shooter, Devon Erickson, “would whisper, like get really close and kinda put his arm around you, and whisper in your ear, ‘don’t come to school tomorrow,'” said Kevin Cole, a former student of STEM School Highlands Ranch, during an interview on “Today.”
Erickson, 18, and a juvenile, who police identify as a girl but who prefers male pronouns, are accused of entering the K-12 school with handguns Tuesday. NBC News is not identifying the juvenile suspect.
One of the shooters also expressed his hatred for Christians according to Heavy, which is also unfitting for reports as Christians are always the bad guys in the story.
“You know what I hate? All these Christians who hate gays, yet in the bible, it says in Deuteronomy 17:12-13, if someone doesn’t do what their priest tells them to do, they are supposed to die. It has plenty of crazy stuff like that, but all they get out of it is ‘ewwwwww gays,’” wrote Erickson in a Facebook post.
There was even anti-Christian messaging spraypainted on the shooter’s car before the attack, and the words “F*** SOCIETY.”
Car towed from #stemshooting suspect's home apparently has "F*** SOCIETY" spray painted on the side. Also "666" and a what looks like a pentagram sprayed on the hood. pic.twitter.com/e6QX3lq4v3
— John Fenton (@higuysimjohn) May 8, 2019
Worst of all, the shooter appeared to be a Democrat who posted memes and messages from the hard-left Facebook group “Occupy Democrats.”
None of this falls in line with what the shooter is supposed to be according to what the media likes to tell us. For mainstream press, the shooter is supposed to be white, male, straight, extremely right-leaning, and bonus points if he’s supposedly Christian. However, both of these shooters fall into their most protected groups.
Judging by how the media coverage and subsequent fallout from school shootings have gone in the past, the media seems absolutely silent in comparison now, but it’s easy to see why. All of its usual strawmen have been stripped away and its left with nothing but the cold reality that there was something mentally wrong with the two shooters.
All the shooters throughout history, when put together, are a diverse lot. They range from white to Middle-Eastern, to black. They’re left, right, white-supremacists and anti-Christian, gay and straight, women and men. While some killers tend to share more similarities with other killers, the point is clear: It’s not just what your background is.
There was clearly something wrong in the heads of the people who engage in these murders. However, the media doesn’t seem to be interested in investigating the demonstrable fact. They’ve now, for the most part, walked away from the Denver Stem school story. The students don’t seem to be as into making a political spectacle as some of the Parkland students were, and the shooters don’t fit the narrative.
The media loves bloodshed, but not bloodshed it can’t use. It doesn’t care about how safe you are, and I’d venture to say that it waits with bated breath for the next opportunity. I wish I was being hyperbolic, but the media has clearly demonstrated that I’m not.
AMD Milan Rumor: ~80 Cores, Combined With GPUs + HBM
Milan - The Next Frontier? (22m28s)
Notes from SemiAccurate's CC with Susquehanna this morning
Various sources said things like "Milan will have 80 cores" or "Milan will have 15 chiplets".
The speculation, based on sources and other reasoning, is that the the 8-core chiplet will continue to be used going forward. They have great yields compared to bigger monolithic chips and AMD can simply make them smaller in size rather than boost core count of each to 10-12 cores. Zen 2 Epyc uses eight 8-core chiplets for up to 64 total cores, and a future version could use ten chiplets to get to 80 cores.
AMD and Cray will make a 1.5 exaflops supercomputer.
In fact while AMD has kept the details on the technology light, it sounds like this version of [Infinity Fabric] will be the most advanced version yet. AMD is specifically noting that it’s an “incredibly” coherent fabric, calling it the first fully optimized CPU + GPU design for supercomputing. AMD’s GPUs and CPUs will be arranged in a 4-to-1 ratio, with 4 GPUs for each EPYC CPU. It’s worth noting that AMD’s slide shows a mesh with every GPU connected to the CPU and two other GPUs, but I’m not reading too much into this quite yet, as AMD hasn’t disclosed any other details on the IF setup.
Design and Analysis of an APU for Exascale Computing
AMD may try to do something like create a server/HPC APU that consists of ten 8-core CPU chiplets, four GPU chiplets(?), and the I/O chiplet, with DRAM/HBM stacked on top of the I/O die which emits less heat.
If the GPU thing is a red herring but Milan does have 14 CPU chiplets + 1 I/O chiplet, that's a whopping 112 cores. Even if clock speeds regressed a bit, it could offer more multithreaded performance per dollar than predecessors.
Obvious Sockpuppets
They're not all that bright, either; the classic tell is consecutive or near-consecutive UIDs, as is the case with John Miller (UID 6613) and "real" Donald Trump (UID 6614). Less well-known, but all the more obvious, are NPC-$BIGNUM (UUID 7144) and NPC-$BIGNUM+1 (UID 7147).
I don't think these are the same person--that is, I don't think rDT/John Miller and the two NPCs are all the same person--but it's fairly obvious each of them has the corresponding pair of socks. And rDT/JM also apparently are "highly correlated with a bunch" of ACs, most of which have been judiciously Spam modded out of existence from the sound of it.
So...what's the point? At the very least, this is using the SN posting system in bad faith. The NPC twins appear to be trying to play a satirical good cop/bad cop game (and failing rather badly...), rDT and JM are poor satire (though they've been improving a bit lately) and who knows WTF the AC socks are really on about. This is needlessly deceptive, if you ask me: if your opinions cannot stand up to the test of collision with reality on a one to one basis with other accounts, extra sockpuppet accounts are not going to change that.
The NPC twins in particular are very obviously here for the sole purpose of stirring shit and causing chaos. Admins: what, if anything, is going to be done about this? You're showing yourselves to be rather weak-willed and careless in the face of sinister forces....
South Korea's 'Webtoons' Put Japan's Print Manga on Notice
South Korea's booming 'webtoons' put Japan's print manga on notice
Should Japanese manga publishers, who have for years invested first and foremost in developing print content, jump on the webtoon bandwagon to strengthen their outreach to a foreign, tech-savvy audience?
Opinions among industry insiders and experts are mixed, but at least for Hideki Egami, a former editor at leading publisher Shogakukan, the answer is a definitive yes.
“Sales for comic magazines in Japan have long been trending downward — we don’t know how much further the domestic market for print manga will shrink,” Egami said.
“Japanese publishers are now at a stage where they can’t overlook the need for going digital and overseas. … Webtoons, I think, are the most reasonable way forward.”
Vertically optimized
Unlike Japanese manga, which in most cases are first marketed for a print audience and only subsequently promoted online via apps, webtoons cater to digital device users from the get-go: Their format has already been optimized for personal computers or smartphones.
Webtoons typically scroll vertically and are in full color, as opposed to traditional manga, which are often black and white and read horizontally. Once they spread on popular manga apps in Japan, the digital South Korean comics immediately attracted a youth following here.
Iran to resume its nuclear program
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani announced Wednesday that his country was taking steps to halt its compliance with elements of a landmark nuclear accord, in a move that appeared certain to aggravate tensions with the United States.
In a televised speech, Rouhani said that Iran would hold on to stockpiles of excess uranium and heavy water used in its nuclear reactors. He set a 60-day deadline for new terms to the nuclear accord, after which Tehran would resume higher uranium enrichment.
In November, the United States reimposed sanctions that have strangled Iran’s oil and banking sectors as well as its foreign trade. The sanctions came after the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw from the pact that Iran negotiated with world powers in 2015 and that curbed its nuclear program in exchange for widespread sanctions relief.
Iran had been complying fully with the terms of the deal even after the Trump administration unilaterally withdrew last year, according to the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Iran announces it will stop complying with parts of landmark nuclear deal
Great job Trump!
AMD Threadripper 3 Could be Delayed, Navi Looks Bad (Rum0rz)
Third-Gen Ryzen Threadripper Zen 2 CPUs Mysteriously Vanish From AMD's 2019 Roadmap + Tom's
Delaying Threadripper 3 might make a lot of sense. If Ryzen 3 doubles the max core count to 16, and Epyc 2 doubles it to 64, Threadripper 2 will continue to have up to 32 cores. It is unknown what core count Threadripper 3 will have. They could use 4-8 chiplets to provide 32-64 cores. Most high-end users probably don't need it right now, Threadripper 2 is still a better value than Intel, and AMD could just cut Threadripper 2 prices to get rid of the inventory.
What is known is that Navi will still be based on AMD's Graphics Core Next (GCN) design which is showing its age. It effectively has a 4,096 stream processor limit.
PS5 will include a Navi GPU, and the GPU or SoC will apparently include hardware acceleration for ray tracing. It's not known if desktop Navi GPUs will have this capability.
From the article:
Navi is meant to be the last GCN based GPU design by AMD and as such, should be the most optimized version of the architecture we have seen to date with multiple improvements being delivered. However, the report says that early Navi samples are not even able to match Vega 20 clock speeds and the Navi GPUs which can meet the frequency targets are reportedly facing major thermal and power consumption issues. We heard similar rumors for the Vega 10 and Vega 20 parts before they launched and those rumors turned out to be very close to the real image when the cards finally landed into consumer’s hands.
It may be possible that AMD is trying to uplift the performance by increasing frequency while sacrificing thermals and power efficiency. That is pretty much what Radeon VII was but it’s still much early to say if that’s the truth as the cards won’t be available until next year.
Worst case scenario: Navi is lackluster due to being GCN-based and power consumption issues, and its first non-GCN successor ends up lackluster due to a lack of optimizations.
A leaked/alleged lineup is given in the article showing Radeon VII or better performance starting at $430, and RTX 2070 performance at $330. If that holds true, Navi could be a price/performance win over Nvidia, just not as good as it could have been.
