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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.
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.
janrinok says I need to do my journal, as part of my therapy
Soylent News has a racism problem. The problem is not so much the racists, though we do seem to have plenty of those in the comments, and I offer all of them a virtual punch in the face. The real problem is the inability to discuss racism. For example, our most recent inability resulted in the mod-banning of the TMB, just because he is Native American. This is not right.
So in the interest of raising the level of discourse here on SoylentNews, I thought it might be a good idea to submit some recent studies and confessions on exactly this topic. But my efforts have been rebuffed, with great vehemence and vitrol. For example, one rejection reads:
We're sorry, your submission "My regrettable libertarian romance: I rebounded from my experimental phase, but many don't" was declined for the following reason:
My regrettable liberal romance: I rebounded from my experimental phase, but many don'tThe editors felt it inappropriate for them to correct the issue themselves.
Well, duh! the prior submission was all about the Dunning-Kruger Effect, so of course they felt it was inappropriate. And who the hell of the Eds thinks I am a liberal? Are we politically illiterate on SN? Θεέ μου.
The submission, in all its rejected glory, can be found here: My regrettable libertarian romance: I rebounded from my experimental phase
And the next rejection was even more, well, childish? What are the Eds afraid of? That they might be racists? (They are.) and not know it? (They don't.) But that is no reason to reject a submission from the Pew Research, pointing out that racists don't know they are racists, unless they know they are racists, and intentionally seeking to draw our attention away from it? No reason given for this rejection. Hmmm. Here it is:
The most racist people are also the least likely to recognize their own racism
And then, we have a follow up to our TMB disturbing study, what with the facts and all, that still offends the eds. Rejection notice:
We're sorry, your submission "Americans See Advantages and Challenges in Country’s Growing Racial and Ethnic Diversity" was declined for the following reason:
"whites are more likely than blacks to say diversity is very good for the country"
The reason is a quote from the Fine Article? I do not understand! Are the Eds saying that the submission does not make some point that they think I am making? Or is the fact that most "whites" are not racist means that the Eds of SoylentNews are not racist? Puzzling Evidence, per David Byrne and Talking Heads. Original (disappeared quickly, this is the point, these submissions did not languish in the queue for days, they were killed in a matter of hours: why? Truth hurts?):
Americans See Advantages and Challenges in Country’s Growing Racial and Ethnic Diversity . Of course, the entire point of the submission was to point out that racists are a minority, a white Republican minority, in America. We cannot be talking about that on SN, Richard Spencer and Milo would not be happy.
Finally, a submission pointing out that, well, read the title:
Nearly half of white Republicans say it bothers them to hear people speaking foreign languages
Some may be aware, if they peruse the queue, that I on occasion submit submissions from places other than America or its lapdog, Britain, in languages that Americans find opaque and disturbing. And of course, this is most prevalent among the least educated, and therefore Republican, Americans. Really, we should internationalize SoylentNews. We have Unicode, and we can't use it? Why? The only explanation is, yes: Racism. So before you say, "I am not in favor of Racism, but . . ." , allow me to say, "μπορεί τα γαϊδουράκια να βρουν το δρόμο τους στην πισίνα γονιδίων σας."
Even my submission where I purposely made no comments, no editorializing, no nothing, rejected! Must be racism!
********Update! Yet another rejection! This one is Is there life after the Alt-right Apparent answer, from the eds, is no. Nothing but death, destruction, darkness, nihilism, hatred, racism, misogyny, pro-business attitudes, and The Dark Side. Once you go alt-right, you'll never be able to be a normie again. Kinda the point, eh? But some of us reject the premise. Come back from the Dark Side, Soylent! It is not too late for you! We'll burn you in a Jedi funeral! Promise.
_______________
And this:https://soylentnews.org/submit.pl?op=viewsub&subid=33637
It was going to be an alt-right white wedding! (yeah, right!)
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.
Joe Biden Parody Website Outranks Campaign Site
The internet snafu suggests the Biden campaign is having early difficulty with its digital operation. That could pose trouble for the 76-year-old as he competes in a field that has already proven to be savvy with new tools for online outreach and fundraising.
The problem has also emerged despite the Biden campaign's prolific spending on Google.
An online tracker maintained by the progressive digital advertising firm ACRONYM shows the Biden campaign has spent more than $360,000 on Google platforms, racking up more spending on the site than all the other candidates in the crowded field except Sen. Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana.
The informative parody website doesn't come with an annoying popup like the official one does.
The parody website presents a number of Biden's past positions:
In 1996, Senator Joe Biden voted for the Defense of Marriage Act which defined marriage as between a man and a woman. This law also prevented states from recognizing same sex marriages.
Senator Joe Biden voted for the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 which initiated the “3 Strikes and You’re Out” policy which has resulted in many people spending life sentences in jail for minor crimes.
In 1982, Senator Joe Biden initially voted for a constitutional amendment which would have allowed states to overturn Roe v. Wade – the Supreme Court decision which legalized abortion.
In the 1970s Joe Biden stated that “I have become convinced that busing is a bankrupt concept.” He actively worked to oppose busing as a way to desegregate schools. Biden even wrote letters seeking the support of people who thought schools should be segregated by race.
Senator Joe Biden, who at the time was chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, voted for the resolution to authorize military involvement in Iraq. The Iraq war resulted in the death of 4,424 US military members and cost taxpayers $2.4 trillion.
Harsher mandatory minimum sentences for drug use, civil asset forfeiture without a conviction, and imposing death penalty for drug related murders – this is Joe Biden’s legacy. He voted for both the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 and its 1988 counterpart and claimed George H. Bush’s war on drugs was “not tough enough, bold enough, or imaginative enough.”
Daily Show segment from 2015 (5m5s)
Previously: Joe Biden's #MeToo Adventure Continues
