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The First Quadruple Asteroid: Astronomers Spot a Space Rock With 3 Moons

Astronomers had already spotted two other rocks orbiting the asteroid known as 130 Elektra, and think more quadruple systems are out there.

First observation of a quadruple asteroid

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Deep-sea Arctic sponges feed on fossilized organisms to survive

The sponges, some over 300 years old, eat the remains of critters from at least 2,000 years ago

These sponges survive the deep sea by feeding on remains of long-dead animals

Giant sponge grounds of Central Arctic seamounts are associated with extinct seep life

Intel's 35W 'Alder Lake' T-Series CPUs Sneak into Retail

Intel is now shipping its latest low-power Core i7-12700T and Core i9-12900T processors with a 35W TDP in Europe and Japan, meaning we'll see them on Western shores soon. Aimed at small form-factor and fanless PCs, Intel's hybrid Alder Lake-S CPUs look particularly good for these market segments with their energy-efficient cores. They also appear to have quite reasonable pricing, too.

For AC who was asking about the 35W chips. But they can still go up to 106W lol.

Radxa Preps a Compact Six-Core Answer to the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W: The Radxa Zero 2

Radxa Zero 2

I was going to wait until a CNX Software story popped up about this, but I guess they are waiting on more information.

Take the form factor of the Raspberry Pi Zero, and stuff in a 6-core that is faster than the Raspberry Pi 4 Model B:

Radxa Zero 2 is a low profile single board computer with a small form factor. Powered by Amlogic A311D SoC, it can run Android and selected Linux distributions.

Radxa Zero 2 features a hexa-core 64-bit ARM processor, 4GB 32bit LPDDR4 memory, HDMI output up to 4K60p, onboard Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity, USB 3.0, and 40-pin GPIO header. Additionally, the power port can also be used as a USB 2.0 OTG port to connect more peripheral.

GPU performance should be way up, going from Mali-G31 MP2 to Mali-G52 MP4. It also gains a 5 trillion operations per second (TOPS) NPU.

Both the S905Y2 and the A311D are Amlogic SoCs on a "12nm" process node, but you would wonder about heat issues from running 4x Cortex-A73 and 2x Cortex-A53.

I think the ROCK5 Model B with the RK3588 is more interesting than this constrained device which seems like a knee-jerk reaction to the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W, but it's still funny to see what can be done at this small size.

Obligatory I can't buy this, it doesn't exist.

See also:

Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W vs Radxa Zero – Features and benchmarks comparison

A bunch of gameplay tests and other videos about the Radxa Zero

https://soylentnews.org/~takyon/journal/7718

Solving VR’s ‘infinite walking’ problem with moon boots

Ever wonder how it’s possible to create a convincing VR scenario that lets you, say, trek through the Sahara Desert without the painful, immersion-breaking experience of colliding with a wall in your apartment? Ekto VR believes it has the answer: Slip on a pair of the company’s simulator boots over your regular shoes, don a VR headset, and you’re able to experience walking through virtual environments that are far, far larger than the physical space you’re contained within.

Ekto VR’s boots work by using an array of motorized wheels on their underside, which spin counter to the speed that the user is walking in. In order to avoid motion sickness, the boots allow the wearer to initially take several steps forward. This is done to provide the necessary vestibular inner-ear cues to tell their bodies that they are accelerating forward. However, after a few steps, the boots automatically glide the wearer back to the center of the room so that they appear to be walking on the spot, as if on a treadmill. Meanwhile, the user believes they are continuing to make forward progress — and, based on the VR scene they’re experiencing, they are.

But can I double jump?

I was going to make a submission about this earlier, but the add-on has already been wiped off of Mozilla and GitHub, seemingly "voluntarily" by its creator. So there may be more to the story.

Browser Extension Adds Sci-Hub Download Links to Publishers’ Websites

As scientists and academics of all kinds turn to Sci-Hub to freely access scientific papers, a new browser tool aims to make access even more straightforward. Currently available from the Mozilla addon store but also compatible with Chrome, 'Sci-Hub Injector' embeds Sci-Hub download links into popular publishers' websites.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29954046

Mozilla and GitHub:

Sci Hub Injector

SciHub Injector is currently offline.

I will keep the paragraph below.

Important legal notice

I don't recommend doing things that go against whatever laws that apply where you are. I condemn illegal activities. This is the user's reponsibility. SciHub is not affiliated in any way with this project.

Replicating this yourself should be relatively easy. Grabbing the DOI should be trivial, and then maybe you want to find the best places to slap a Sci-Hub button on each major publisher's website. Insert a link or button anywhere a valid DOI is found as a fallback. Inline SVG could be used to replicate the raven logo.

We Finally Have Our First GeForce GT 1010 GPU Benchmark

NVIDIA’s GeForce GT 1010 Is So Slow That Even Intel’s Iris Xe Integrated GPUs Can Outperform It

This would be weaker than the Vega 6 graphics in the Ryzen 3 5300G (the OEM-only Cezanne quad-core desktop APU).

Turn An Android Phone Into A Desktop PC! Motorola’s New Desktop Mode! Moto Edge X30 (10m28s video)

The Motorola Moto G100 shows why we might no longer need a PC soon (May 2021)

https://nexdock.com/compatible-smartphones/

Samsung, Motorola, Huawei, and Xiaomi all have their own desktop modes.

I prefer direct URLs which can be loaded by an <audio> element. In some cases you have to inspect a web page to find a URL, but they may be dynamic and stop working after some time. Others will work indefinitely.

Two places to look: the Icecast directory and Radio Garden.

I'm also looking for the minimum amount of JavaScript necessary to extract the currently playing song/show without knowing about the type of stream loaded. I might end up using this:

https://www.npmjs.com/package/icecast-metadata-js
https://eshaz.github.io/icecast-metadata-js/

Check the 90.9 Jazzy rádió - Jazzy Cool example, and it clearly captures the song title metadata.

AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 5000 to launch on March 8, 2022

So apparently no cheaper quad-channel Zen 3 Threadripper, there may or may not be versions with 3D V-Cache later, and then you can expect to see 96-core Zen 4 Threadripper in 2023.

Edit: AMD confirms Threadripper PRO 5000WX series through SATA-IO filing

Edit 2: AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 5000 specifications have been leaked

There are 64, 32, 24, 16, and 12-core options.

The king SoC of ARM single board computers approaches.

Rockchip RK3588 datasheet available, SBCs coming soon

We had most Rockchip RK3588 specifications so far for the long-awaited Cortex-A76/Cortex-A55 processor, but at today’s Rockchip Developer Conference 2021, more information surfaces with impressive CPU and GPU benchmarks, and the Rockchip RK3588 datasheet has just dropped from the sky directly into my laptop, as such document usually does. At least two single board computers are expected to soon follow from Radxa and Pine64.

[...] I’m quite surprised they could use a Mali-G610 “sub-premium premium” GPU as it was announced together with Cortex-A510, Cortex-A710, Cortex-X2 Armv9 cores, but it also works in SoCs with older Armv8 cores so that’s good, and that’s why GPU performance is truly a big step, up to over 10 times faster, compared to Rockchip RK3399.

Rock5 Model B layout

Pine64 December update: a year in review

Lastly, Rockchip will finally be introducing the RK3588 on December 16th (which means I can’t write about it on the day the update goes live – sorry), which will most certainly be of interest to us. What I will say is that it will bring entry-level desktop-class Arm CPU performance and plenty of IO options; keep a lookout for press coverage of Rockchip’s event.

While the prospect of a high-end computational device is certainly exciting, it also isn’t at the top of our to-do list.

It's sad that this thing can be delayed by a couple of years and still look good in comparison to everything else on the market.

The only competitor (limiting "competition" to ARM SBCs) might be the Amlogic S908X, which has also been scarce.