SoylentNews

When I was asked to make this address I wondered what I had to say to you boys who are graduating. And I think I have one thing to say. If you wish to be useful, never take a course that will silence you. Refuse to learn anything that implies collusion, whether it be a clerkship or a curacy, a legal fee or a post in a university. Retain the power of speech no matter what other power you may lose. If you can take this course, and in so far as you take it, you will bless this country. In so far as you depart from this course, you become dampers, mutes, and hooded executioners.

As a practical matter, a mere failure to speak out upon occassions where no statement is asked or expect from you, and when the utterance of an uncalled for suspicion is odious, will often hold you to a concurrence in palpable iniquity. Try to raise a voice that will be heard from here to Albany and watch what comes forward to shut off the sound. It is not a German sergeant, nor a Russian officer of the precinct. It is a note from a friend of your father's, offering you a place at his office. This is your warning from the secret police. Why, if you any of young gentleman have a mind to make himself heard a mile off, you must make a bonfire of your reputations, and a close enemy of most men who would wish you well.

I have seen ten years of young men who rush out into the world with their messages, and when they find how deaf the world is, they think they must save their strength and wait. They believe that after a while they will be able to get up on some little eminence from which they can make themselves heard. "In a few years," reasons one of them, "I shall have gained a standing, and then I shall use my powers for good." Next year comes and with it a strange discovery. The man has lost his horizon of thought, his ambition has evaporated; he has nothing to say. I give you this one rule of conduct. Do what you will, but speak out always. Be shunned, be hated, be ridiculed, be scared, be in doubt, but don't be gagged. The time of trial is always. Now is the appointed time.

John J. Chapman
Commencement Address to the Graduating Class of Hobart College, 1900

I hear what many of you posted regarding my reputation. But I made the decision to burn my reputation in the Spring of 1997, in response to the Heaven's Gate UFO Cult Mass Suicide. I've been publishing openly about my mental illness ever since then, in hopes of pointing out to others that reality is not as concrete as it may seem.

If my present consultancy doesn't work out, maybe I'll start a donut shop. No one would care that I'm a wingnut provided the donuts tasted good.

I have lots of other ideas.

I'm not saying you're wrong, rather, that to wreck my reputation was my conscious, carefully-considered choice.

Just before I posted my first web page about my illness, I carried a hardcopy around with me, to ask friends, family and my mental health professionals whether I should really publish it. All but one encouraged me to do so. That one who said I should not, had been stigmatized due to her own disability. I chose to publish in part to erase the stigma against people like her.

Put articles here, edit, publish stories later. Comment if you like something.

Hate

Is CES getting too big for its own good?

Lenovo

Lenovo Refreshes ThinkPad Lineup at CES
Lenovo Launches The Modular ThinkPad X1 Tablet at CES
Lenovo Launches ThinkVision Displays With USB-C Docking At CES
Lenovo Launches ThinkPad X1 Yoga At CES With OLED Display
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/lenovo-thinkpad-13-windows10-chromebook,30879.html
http://www.anandtech.com/show/9889/lenovo-refreshes-thinkpad-lineup-at-ces
http://www.anandtech.com/show/9887/lenovo-launches-thinkpad-x1-yoga-at-ces-with-oled-display
Lenovo Announces The Vibe S1 Lite
Lenovo Debuts New ThinkVision Displays At CES 2016
These Are Lenovo's idea And Yoga Products For CES
Lenovo Shows Off (Razer) Gaming Systems And Peripherals at CES

Acer

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/acer-ultra-thin-curved-monitors,30873.html#xtor=RSS-181
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/acer-h7-monitors-usb-type-c,30866.html#xtor=RSS-181
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/acer-ces-notebooks-chrome-tablet,30874.html#xtor=RSS-181
Acer Aspire Unveils Switch 12 S 2-in-1 Notebook

NVIDIA

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/nvidia-vr-ready-qualification-program,30880.html
NVIDIA Announces DRIVE PX 2 - Pascal Power For Self-Driving Cars
NVIDIA Discloses Next-Generation Tegra SoC; Parker Inbound?
Nvidia Shield TV Update 3.0 Offers Marshmallow, Additional Storage Options And Customizations

MediaTek

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/mediatek-soc-wearables-smarthome-bluray,30833.html

Samsung

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/samsung-portable-ssd-t3,30875.html
Samsung Adds Lightweight Models To ATIV Book 9 Notebook Series
Samsung Unveils The Galaxy TabPro S
Samsung Announces New Gear S2 Models And iOS Support
Samsung Announces The Ultra-Light Notebook 9 Series Laptops At CES 2016

ASUS

ASUS Announces February Launch For The ZenFone Zoom

Huawei

Huawei's Mate 8 6-inch Phablet Coming To North America, We Go Hands On
The Huawei Mate 8 Review
Huawei Announces The MediaPad M2 10
Huawei Launches Huawei Watch Elegant and Huawei Watch Jewel
Hands On With the Huawei Honor 5X

PCs, Laptops, Tablets

MAINGEAR Rolls-Out 34” All-in-One PC with 18-Core Xeon, GeForce GTX Titan X
Endless On A Mission To Bring Information Age To All With $79 PC
Gigabyte Updates Aorus X5 Gaming Notebook With Skylake And Fusion Keyboard
Origin PC Goes Custom With Chronos SFF Case, Omni AIO Gaming PC
Toshiba’s DynaPad Tablet to Hit Stores in Late January
ASRock To Deliver Mini-PC Using Intel's New STX Form Factor
Razer Launches The Razer Blade Stealth Ultrabook And Razer Core At CES 2016
Samsung Announces Budget 'Chromebook 3' For Early 2016
Android-Based Remix OS 2.0 Coming As Free Download For PC And Mac
Intel’s Skull Canyon Mystery PC Confirmed And Detailed
First Benchmarks On Intel's New Atom-Based Compute Stick
Intel Brings Skylake To Its NUC PCs
AMD Reveals Single Socket For Zen CPU, APU
AMD Announces A10-7890K APU and Upgrades Desktop Platforms
Intel Expands Compute Stick Family with Cherry Trail and Core M Models
Compulab Rolls-Out Passively-Cooled Airtop Systems
CES 2016: MSI’s 27-inch 4K Gaming AIO with Full Sized Discrete GPU, the 27XT 6QE
CES 2016: 34-inch 3440x1440 AIO Hands-On at GIGABYTE
Home>desktops
CES 2016: MSI’s Vortex Gaming PC on Display and It Looks Almost Like a Mac Pro
CES 2016: MSI Gaming Notebooks and Mobile Workstations
ECS Goes Skylake with LIVA One

Smartphones

Gold Nexus 6P Comes To The US
Intel’s Smartphone: RealSense/Project Tango Dev Kit Shipping Q1
Lenovo, Intel Have Duelling Project Tango Smartphones
Intel and Google Equip Smartphones with 3D Cameras and Computer Vision
Acer Liquid Jade Primo Dock, Quick Look
Marshall's 'London' Smartphone Is Built For Music Creators
Macate 'Cyberphones' Promise Unspoofable Face Recognition, Other Security Measures

Wearables

CES 2016: Fitbit Blaze smartwatch sends shares into dive
Honor Launches The Honor Band Z1
Zeiss Smart Optics: Discreet Smart Glasses

Graphics

Imagination Announces PowerVR Series7XT Plus Family - Rogue Gets Improved Compute
Imagination Demos Realtime Ray Tracing
Asus Debuts Graphics Dock That Uses PCIe Over USB-C

Storage

Seagate used shingled magnetic recording in a 2.5" portable drive for the first time in order to fit 2 terabytes within a 9.6 mm thick enclosure.

Intel 3D XPoint, Pictured: Microsoft Joins The Party
LaCie Unveils USB-C Porsche and Chrome Drives
Seagate Updates DAS Portfolio at CES 2016
SanDisk Announces X400 Client SSD for OEMs
Patriot Memory Enters PCIe Storage Market with Hellfire SSDs
Zotac Prepares Premium NVMe SSD Based On Phison's E7
Silicon Motion Has The First Multi Vendor 3D Flash Controller
Need A 512 GB USB Stick Or USB Type-C SSD Enclosure? Patriot Has You Covered
OCZ Preps Second-Gen TLC, First NVMe SSDs For 2016
Patriot Shows Hellfire And Viper SSDs At CES
QNAP at CES: A M.2 SSD NAS, Dual-Xeon ZFS NAS and More
The QNAP TBS-453A Changes The NAS Game
Kingston Readies Several New Products For 2016
Mark Your Calendar: Phison E7 Set For March Release
SanDisk Updates DAS Lineup at CES
Plextor M8Pe With Marvell Eldora Coming Soon
Mushkin Goes For The SSD Trifecta At CES
G-Technology Demonstrates G-SPEED Shuttle XL Thunderbolt 2 DAS at CES

Displays

CES 2016: Hand-on with LG's roll-up flexible screen
Samsung Introduces Curved 27-inch CF591 FreeSync-Over-HDMI Monitor
Dell Introduces World's First InfinityEdge Monitors And 30-inch OLED Monitor
Dell's Wireless Monitors Change The Way You Work
Dell Demonstrates 30-inch 4K OLED Display
Hisense at CES: Affordable and Feature-Packed 4K TVs for HTPCs
Viewsonic Debuts Eight New Monitors At CES

Virtual Reality

Oculus Rift Now Available For Pre-Order For $599, Will Ship In April
The Vive Pre, HTC’s New VR Developer Kit: First Look
HTC Unveils the Vive Pre Dev Kit
Virtuix' Potential Mini-IPO Lets General Public Invest In VR Tech
Tom's Hardware Tries The Virtuix Omni VR Treadmill
Alienware And Dell Announce Oculus Ready PC Bundles For $1,600
Oculus: The Best Way To Keep A Secret Is To Not Know Answer
Exclusive: Fove's VR HMD At CES 2016, First Look
Virtuix Proved That The Omni Vr Treadmill Is the Real Deal
QiVARI Eye Tracking Tech Taking On Tobii, Fove In AR/VR HMDs
3DRudder VR Foot Controller Steering Towards March Launch
Interview: Valve's Chet Faliszek On The HTC Vive Pre
Crytek Announces 'VR First' Academic Program

Cameras

HumanEyes' Consumer-Grade 'Vuze' 360-Degree VR Camera Package, Under $1,000
Razer Launches The Stargazer Webcam With Intel RealSense3D At CES 2016
Kodak Launches 360-Degree 4K Action Cam And Accessories

Networking and Routers

Promise Unveils Apollo Personal Cloud Product
Amped Wireless' Athena Series Gets A New Router And Range Extender
Linksys Teases New MU-MIMO Products At CES 2016
Netgear Announces Cable Modem Router To Lower Your Monthly ISP Rental Costs
Wi-Fi HaLow: Long-Range, Low-Power Wi-Fi for Internet-of-Things Devices
Four New Linksys Cable Modems Revealed During CES
Netgear's MU-MIMO EX7300 And EX6400 Range Extenders Are Available Now
TP-Link Unifies Smart Home Functionality With The SR20 Smart Home Router
Securifi's Almond 3, An All-Encompassing Smart Home Solution
Netgear Releases Nighthawk X4 Successor: The R7800 Nighthawk X4S
D-Link Offers Adaptive Roaming With New Unified Network Kit
Synology Demonstrates RT1900ac 802.11ac Router at CES
Linksys Expands Max-Stream Networking Lineup at CES
Netgear Updates Networking Lineup at CES
TRENDnet Announces AC2600 Router and AC1900 USB 3.0 WLAN Adapter at CES
Amped Wireless Launches APOLLO IP Cameras and Updates Networking Lineup at CES
D-Link Demonstrates Innovative Networking Solutions at CES
Securifi Updates Smart Home Hub Lineup with New Almond 3 Wireless Router

Cooling, Cases, PSUs, Motherboards, Accessories

Cooler Master Debuts MasterWatt 1200W, 1500W PSUs
Cooler Master Unveils MasterAir Maker 8, MasterCase Maker 5
RGB Lighting Comes To Logitech’s G502 Proteus Spectrum
CES 2016: be quiet! Doubles Revenue in 2015
Deepcool Integrates Liquid Cooling Into Genome ATX Case
be quiet! Pure Power 9 Series Unveiled
Rosewill Showcases PSUs, Cases And More At CES 2016
Seasonic Reveals Its First Titanium PSU: The Prime
DeepCool's Liquid Cooled PSU
AMD Reveals Wraith: Next-Generation Cooler for Microprocessors
EVGA Introduces Upgradable All-In-One Liquid Cooling System
Thermaltake Pacific R360 D5 Water Cooling Kit Makes A Splash At CES
SilverStone PSUs, Cases And Other Accessories At CES 2016
In Win Outs H-Frame Case And Limited Edition 1065 W PSU
Thermaltake’s Core W100 And WP100 Are Cases With Plenty Of Spaces
Thermaltake Makes A 'Green' 1250-Watt RGB LED PSU
CES 2016: Deepcool’s Gamer Storm brand Exhibits Water Cooling for a Power Supply
The Problem With Overclocking On Non-Z170 Chipsets
CES 2016: GIGABYTE’s Double Length Gaming BRIX
MSI's Four New Motherboards Includes Gold PCB Model
Super Micro Unveils Z170, H170 Boards With OC Features At CES
The Rosewill Quark Series Power Supply Review (750W, 850W, 1000W, 1200W)
CES 2016: The Race to Skylake Xeon Motherboards at GIGABYTE
CES 2016: Deepcool’s Genome is a Water Cooling Equipped Case with a Helix Reservoir
All Of Asus' New Motherboards At CES
CES 2016: MSI’s Golden Idea for Motherboards
CES 2016: Cooler Master’s MasterWatt Connected Digital PSU Almost Ready
Patriot’s Three Prototype Gaming Mice At CES

Cars

CES 2016: Faraday Future shows off its concept car
Qualcomm, Nvidia are driving us nuts – with silicon-brains-for-cars
Automakers Mark Moves Into Tech With Expanded Presence At CES
NVIDIA Pascal GPUs Coming to Automotive ‘Supercomputer’

Drones and Robots

At CES, New Robots Deliver More Coos Than Utility
Drone able to transport humans shown at Consumer Electronics Show by Chinese drone company

Misc.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/ces-enthusiast-news-here,30869.html#xtor=RSS-181
CES 2016: A look at the first tech announced in Vegas
NZXT Launches Overhauled CAM 3.0 PC Monitoring Tool
CES 2016 Day Zero Wrap-Up (Video)
Ambarella CES 2016 Tour
Revisiting Keyssa: Commercial Availability, Products in Q1 2016
Tom's Hardware CES 2016 Day One Video Wrap-up
Tom's Hardware CES 2016 Final Video Roundup
Tom's Hardware's CES 2016 Top Picks
Peek Into The Future: C.E.S. 2016 Wrap-Up
CES 2016: ASUS Product Tour
CES 2016: Dell Booth Tour
CES 2016: Lenovo Booth Tour
Conexant Announces New Audio Processing Solutions At CES
Report by Robert Scoble from CES
ASUS Booth Tour at CES 2016: 10G Switches, External GPU Dock, USB-C Monitor and more
An Unexpected CES Trend: Modularity

Write:

Automotive + NVIDIA Pascal
LG rollable display
3D Xpoint
Seagate stuff
http://www.anandtech.com/show/9940/intel-and-google-equip-smartphones-with-3d-cameras-and-computer-vision

Some express dismay that I'm living in a tent under a highway overpass. Actually I feel like I've got it pretty good.

I have my music, see.

When I left Caltech in January 1985 I was determined to work as a street artist on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley. I'm not real sure what happened - my memories of the time are confused - but I wound up at UC Santa Cruz where I ultimately completed my physics degree.

I've been working as a coder since 1987. Since 2004 I've thought I should be a musician. Not just as a hobby but as a way of life.

I was really beating myself up for not singing on the street as often as I could have. But I've been a busker for just three months. Actually I'm making good progress.

Today is below freezing, it's too cold to sing. Not that I'm unwilling to brave the chill but that the cold air in my throat diminishes the capacity of my voice.

By the time Spring comes I will have more songs to sing, and will sing better. I'll earn plenty of tips then.

I'm good at coding, but coding does not make me happy.

Music makes me happy.

Meet sexcurity theater:

Belgium police investigate Brussels lockdown orgy claims

Police chiefs in Belgium have reportedly launched an internal investigation into claims soldiers and police officers held an orgy while colleagues hunted for terror suspects. Two policewomen and eight soldiers are said to have engaged in a sex party at a police station in the Brussels neighbourhood of Ganshoren.

The city was in lockdown over fears of a Paris-style attack at the time. Soldiers slept at the police station for two weeks during the operation.

"When they left, they organised a small party to thank the police in the area," police spokesman, Johan Berckmans, told Belgian newspaper La Derniere Heure (in French). "We have launched an investigation to find out what exactly happened."

Speaking to De Standaard (in Dutch), the spokesman said 15 to 20 soldiers had been sleeping at the Ganshoren police station during two weeks in November so they did not have to travel so far at the end of their shift.

I've been experiencing depression, not a "Goodbye Cruel World" sort, more like feeling no ambition at all. I haven't been singing on the street as much as I could. There's a problem with being totally self-employed: if I don't show up to work I have no one to scold me.

I know very well that this is not like my normal self so I asked my psychiatrist for imipramine. It has worked well in the past. He prescribed 50 mg at bedtime for my first week, then 50 mg in the morning and at bedtime after that.

Tonight I will complete my first week of it. It's not having any effect yet.

If I sleep too much it makes me depressed if I'm depressed I sleep too much. Clearly I should sleep less but I just don't feel like getting out of bed.

"Get more exercise," commanded my psychiatrist back in the day.

"I don't feel like it."

"Do it anyway."

I had in mind to study up on kernel programming but instead it's all I can do to reload Facebook.

I'm getting more food stamps on the third. I'll buy some ice cream. Ice cream fixes everything.

Learning from the past: What yesterday's media can tell us about the times

If you want to get a real feel for what was happening during a certain period in history, how people really felt about the issues of the day, take a look at the media coverage.

For example, a recent study of how historically black newspapers covered the landmark 1967 Supreme Court case that legalized interracial marriage, Loving v. Virginia, found their coverage not that much different from their mainstream counterparts.

The team of researchers, including a journalism professor from Michigan State University, was surprised by the findings, as they hypothesized that black newspapers would be more sympathetic to the racially mixed couple who challenged the Virginia law.

Historically, said MSU’s Geri Alumit Zeldes, the African-American press is an advocate for civil rights.

“Just knowing how the ethnic press operates, we thought they were going to be very one-sided in favor of the Lovings,” she said. “But they followed the same pattern as the mainstream media such as the New York Times and others.”

Zeldes said one of the lessons learned from this, something that hasn’t changed since the first newspaper was printed, is that news is a cultural mirror of what is going on in society at that point in time.

“If you take a look at the newspapers at the time they were published, they will give you hints as to what the times were like,” she said. “So if we look at the black press at that time period, you can get a sense of what the black community was thinking because those reporters were part of that community.”

Zeldes said that by reviewing the newspapers’ stances on the issue, it gives us a clue to the political and cultural mood of the time.

“It indicates,” she said, “that some segments of society in the late 1960s were ready to lessen social and cultural marriage restrictions, but that other groups in the United States were still undecided.”

News as a Cultural Mirror: Historically Black Newspapers Reflecting Public Views of Loving v. Virginia (1967) (DOI: 10.1111/josi.12144)

From Futurity.

At the time I wrote it I was very determined to go to music school to learn to compose symphonies. Some kuron advised me "So you want to compose, then compose". That is he felt I should not need a degree to write music.

This essay is very popular with composers, there have been three who offered to teach me but life was just a little too crazy to focus on it.

• I Have So Many Questions About Music

In other news, with the money my Aunt gave me for Christmas, I purchased a hardbound drawing book, two technical pencils, a technical pen, an eraser and a pencil case. I'm quite good at drawing when I'm in practice, but it has been a long time so I have some work to do.

3D XPoint: Not The Point

A fun article about Intel/Micron's 3D XPoint that I was too lazy to submit.

Computing capabilities aside, the $34 billion 2020 estimate from Intel for 3XP DIMMs partially reveals the Earth-shaking nature of this technology. What most people aren't yet realizing is that 3XP is "fast enough" to replace standalone DRAM in the vast majority of use cases. Research from 2011 outlines a hybrid PCM/eDRAM chip that increases performance and dramatically reduces power versus traditional homogeneous DRAM. This was done using assumptions from the old filamentary PCM technology: nano-PCM will improve the numbers even more dramatically.

From the patent applications, we know that the announced 128Gbit 3XP part is heavily sandbagged (i.e. - they don't want it to appear too disruptive). With the expected four planes (instead of two) and four bits per cell, that works out to exactly one terabit. This blows 3D NAND out of the water. This is the part that they were really going to announce - after the ECD bankruptcy had reached closure last summer.

But my article came along in the form of a giant monkey wrench, the ECD bankruptcy closing was further delayed and the Ovonyx CEO was deposed. Microsoft scrambled to put together a stop-gap Windows phone after it became apparent that they weren't going to be able to ship their PCM/3XP phone in the near future (this phone wasn't cancelled - just delayed until PCM is fully-secured).

Where the Sidewalk Ends

There's no incremental technology planned to succeed DDR4 DRAM. The industry is going to fragment at this next step (Micron's HMC, Samsung's WIO and AMD/nVidia/Hynix HBM). This transition is going to produce few winners and many losers. Who's going to win? The US Government has already weighed in on the matter (where "HMC" is Micron's "Hybrid Memory Cube")

Today I found a reasonably quiet place to make a very lo-fi recording of America the Beautiful with the built-in mic of my Acer Aspire E 15, with Audacity. I saved it as an Ogg. I don't know what quality number it is but really that doesn't matter.

Soylent Singing

It's easy to tell that my mic does not have flat frequency response, as certain notes resonate with the Acer's plastic case.

I'll make some far, far better recordings when I can rustle up the cash for a real mic. You can get good-quality mics with built-in USB for about $200, or I could get a better mic with an XLR connector then use a USB audio interface. Sadly my Acer has no way to attach firewire.

I once owned a Zoom H4 handheld audio recorder. It advertises itself as four-track however it is really two tracks, it just has the ability to record a second time, laying down the second pair of tracks along with the first pair. There is a somewhat improved model available now but I don't recall the price.

More important than finding a better mic is finding a quiet place to record.

I'm expecting to cash out a $7000 401k soon. I'd forgotten all about it until I was reminded of it by the Social Security Administration. I'm going to buy a van to live in, when I do I expect it would work to go way out in the woods to do the recordings.

I'm afraid I've been slacking at the guitar, however I've been picking up the piano again as there is an upright that I can play at a day center for the mentally ill in vancouver. All the shops are closing early tonight, so I'm expecting to spend some time on my guitar before I turn in.

For Christmas day, the Potluck in the Park people are holding a dinner from noon to 3:00 at the Portland Art Museum. I expect I'll go to that.

http://www.vice.com/read/a-brief-history-of-bizarre-christmas-crimes

Journalists are getting beheaded in Syria, it's near-impossible to get an abortion in Texas, and almost half the world lives on less than $2 a day. Even so, a bunch of assholes dress up like Santa every year, run drunkenly through the streets, and dry-hump each other through sweaty, plush suits. The only good that can come from such a grotesque public display of whimsy is a good old-fashioned bank robbery. Last year, some fucking genius dressed up like Santa during SantaCon, the seasonal Santa-themed pub crawl for people with strong opinions about football and other useless bullshit, and robbed a bank in San Francisco.

The cops never found him.