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That's Ryzen AF: Some Old AMD Chips Might Be Getting a 12nm Makeover

AMD's first-gen Ryzen processors are selling at all-time low pricing, but it turns out that some of these chips are filtering out into the hands of enthusiasts with an unexpected surprise: The 12nm process, which is more efficient and faster than the original manufacturing process used with AMD's freshman Ryzen chips.

The original Ryzen 5 1600 landed with six cores and twelve threads powered by the 14nm GlobalFoundries process, but a new "AF" version has appeared at retailers for a mere $85 and apparently comes with the 12nm Zen+ architecture.

[...] The newer AF models also come with the Wraith Stealth cooler, which is a lesser cooler compared to the Wraith Spire that came with the original 1600 models.

Performance may or may not be slightly better.

AMD Ryzen 4000 ‘Renoir’ 8 Core, Ryzen 7 4700U APU Leaks Out – 7nm Zen 2 Cores With Up To 4.2 GHz at 15W

8 cores at a 15 Watt TDP sounds great (I have a Llano system with 4 cores at 35 Watts), although we'll have to see if hyperthreading is dropped or if that was just related to how it was tested.

I don't think using Vega graphics instead of Navi is a deal killer. But if there is no AV1 decode on the media engine, I don't want to get it. Also, I want to start seeing some AMD APUs with HBM or stacked DRAM on the chip, which could come with Zen 3 or Zen 4, if not later. AFAIK, Intel isn't planning to stop including eDRAM on certain models, and the next-gen consoles will probably have the CPU, GPU, and RAM packed in close.

Update: AMD’s 4th Gen Ryzen 9 4900H & Ryzen 7 4800H APUs With Up To 8 Core / 16 Threads Coming in Early 2020 – Ryzen 7 4800HS APU Spotted & Listed in ASUS Gaming Notebooks

Here are some proper APUs. Except I'm not sure I care about a 45 Watt TDP chip in that form factor anymore. Even if I take the hit down to 15 Watts, it would perform better than any laptop I've used.

The important thing is that this could help AMD claw back some market share in the segment and get some design wins.

AMD’s Radeon RX 5500 XT Graphics Cards Bottlenecked by PCIe Bandwidth?

If Radeon RX 5500 XT launch reviews were crippled by using PCIe 3.0 instead of 4.0, WTF is AMD's marketing department doing?

There is an expectation that APUs will completely take over 1080p gaming in the near future, and the already tiny die size of the RX 5500 XT is notable. Shrink to "7nm+" or "5nm" and that level of performance will require an even smaller die size.

A Republican state lawmaker in Washington is accused of participating "in an act of domestic terrorism against the United States," according to a new report released Thursday by the Washington State House Republicans on their website.

According to the report, state Rep. Matt Shea is the subject of an investigation that was commissioned by the Washington State House Representatives to find out whether he "engaged in, planned, or promoted political violence." Rampart Group LLC investigators say the investigation was sparked by "public allegations made against [Shea] in news media and online reporting," the report said.
The report said, "[i]nvestigators have obtained evidence that Representative Shea, as a leader of the Patriot Movement, planned, engaged in, and promoted a total of three armed conflicts of political violence against the United States Government in three states outside the State of Washington over a three-year period to include 2014, 2015 and 2016."

Investigation finds Washington state representative took part in 'domestic terrorism'

Instead of desperately trying to deflect from Trump's high crimes and misdemeanors, why don't you ask me all those incredibly pressing Epstein questions right here?

文言 wenyan-lang by Ling Dong uses classical Chinese as a syntax. It is Turing complete.

Breaking news:
https://twitter.com/golan/status/1206959246988005379

Source code:
https://github.com/LingDong-/wenyan-lang

Web page:
http://wenyan-lang.lingdong.works/

Yes, crazy. Trump has screwed the pooch, with his "letter" to the +House of Representatives. Wholey fricking crapola! Dude just confessed! So, now, the United States of Americans shall spend the next couple of weeks explaining to the Trumpsters what crime is, and how it is violating laws, and what Laws are, and why we should obey them. All very troublesome, and much more difficult than just shooting them in the head. Which they deserve. Repungables, bouncing of the bedrock of good farming folks an their indigenious same-sex practices! If only Runaway1992 had come out earlier, we could accept him as a trans-ammo-sexual. He could go, . . .. or he could go . . . . I have no idea where we are now in Conservative gender/caliber identity. But 5.56 mm, means you have a tiny dick, and you are trying to make up for it with velocity, or fragmentation, which is really, seriously, a dick move.

Donald is impeached. Even if the Senate Replicans acquit, he has been impeached. Bad Precedent, Loser President, White people suck at being president, and he is going down. So sade. Marquis de Sade! Into young girls, and Slovenians! Oh, oh my God! ]

Real God, not the American fuckfaced Evangelical ignoramous Fundmentalist alleged Christians who say, "Cyrus"! Do you have any idea who Cyrus was, and why the Greeks had to become all gay and shit to fight his grandson, Xerxes? I guess not, history is not a strong point amoungst Americans, nor is Geography, or Math, or Biology (Vaxxers), or Astrophysics (Flat-headed Earthers, and Trumpers). So here I just want to say, crazy people, you need help. Sam Colt made crazy people equal, but not in the way you think. Once you realize how deeply you have been spoofed, hoodwinked, and bamboozled, and other words with two "oo"s in them, you will realize, go Dem, or go "boom".

I am violating my own journal periodocity rule! Oh, Well, Happy Impeachment Eve! Especially to all not USAians. And khallow. Poor khallow.

Pope lifts 'pontifical secret' rule in sex abuse cases

The Pope has declared that the rule of "pontifical secrecy" no longer applies to the sexual abuse of minors, in a bid to improve transparency in such cases.

The Church previously shrouded sexual abuse cases in secrecy, in what it said was an effort to protect the privacy of victims and reputations of the accused.

But new papal documents on Tuesday lifted restrictions on those who report abuse or say they have been victims.

Church leaders called for the rule's abolition at a February Vatican summit.

They said the lifting of the rule in such cases would improve transparency and the ability of the police and other civil legal authorities to request information from the Church.

Information in abuse cases should still be treated with "security, integrity and confidentiality", the Pope said in his announcement. He instructed Vatican officials to comply with civil laws and assist civil judicial authorities in investigating such cases.

The Pope also changed the Vatican's definition of child pornography, increasing the age of the subject from 14 or under to 18 or under.

Of course, my favorite example is from the movie "Willow", where the shaman releases a bird, and says "Follow the bird!" and everyone says, "But it is going back to the village!", whereupon the sage say, "Ignore the bird, follow the river."

Good advice for all, but here I repeat a submission that is still languishing in the queue, only not yet rejected because no editor has actually looked at it, I can only surmise. But it is timely, and needs to get out to all Soylentils post haste. To be clear, I did not say "eat paste", stop that, Runaway1946!! OK, Original submission follows:

Usually, I am not one to believe in "signs". Often they can be used to rally troops before battle, or other such psychological effects. But then just today, this:
Bald Eagle entangled by Octopus, and it struck me, this is a sign.

As with all signs, it needs interpretation.

But the eagle started it.

A bald eagle, probably looking for food, got tangled with a Pacific Octopus in waters off Quatsino, Canada, according to staff from a fishing company that helped rescue the animals and captured video of the incident.

"Our staff at our Mahatta West farm in Quatsino rescued an eagle that had bitten off more than it could chew when it tried to catch an octopus," read a post on Mowi Canada West's Facebook page.

Now, we have precedent, in this report: Trump gets attacked by bald eagle.

So, a large Orange octopus tries to kill an American Bald Eagle, the national bird of the United States? Obviously the Cephalopod is Trump. Think about it, the word means Head-Foot. The Eagle is, then, what it is the symbol of, America. And the Canadians (irony, eh?) are the House beginning impeachment, freeing America from tentacles of the Trump administration. I predict, Trump will lose. It's in the signs!!

Of course, from the article:

The Mowi staff "are used to seeing the wonders of nature around them on a regular basis, but they knew that this was a once in a lifetime experience," the Facebook post said.

The staff retrieved the octopus and the eagle with a pole and separated them.

According to Mowi, the octopus then swam away, unharmed, and the eagle "recovered on a branch for around 10 minutes before it flew away.

Trump may survive to descend into the murky darkness from which he sprang. Signs are always hard to read. But this one is unusual.

Comparisons:

Homer, Iliad Bk. 12:

For a bird had come upon them, as they were eager to cross over, an eagle of lofty flight, skirting the host on the left, and in its talons it bore a blood-red, monstrous snake, still alive as if struggling, nor was it yet forgetful of combat, it writhed backward, and smote him that held it on the breast beside the neck, [205] till the eagle, stung with pain, cast it from him to the ground, and let it fall in the midst of the throng, and himself with a loud cry sped away down the blasts of the wind. And the Trojans shuddered when they saw the writhing snake lying in the midst of them, a portent of Zeus that beareth the aegis. [210]

And, of course, Mexico:

The myth-story tells that the Mexica tribe, originally from Aztlan (mythic place, and why people incorrectly named them “Aztecs”) were looking for the promissed land. The supreme god of the Mexica tribe was Huitzilopochtli, and told them to travel south and establish a big city.

In order to know when they reached the promissed land their god Huitzilopochtli would signal them by placing an eagle devouring a snake on top of a prickly pear.

For sooth, he will be besmirched, anon.

Wednesday was my first appointment with my new ophthalmologist, who is also my eye surgeon.

So today I finally get a response to my complaint, 5 months past the 45-day deadline.

The doctor admitted to misgendering me in front of his student, and has apologized to the student. He also wants an opportunity to apologize to me, and is willing to see me again as a patient if I'm okay with it.

I am now stuck with a quandry. He's been my specialist since 2011, and I like him. The question now is can I trust him?

I don't know. One the one hand, what he did was the equivalent of repeatedly using the N word to refer to a black person. On the other hand, an official investigation and apologies to both the student and I has to count for something.

I'm going to sleep in it. I'll discuss it with my social worker in the new year, as well as any new options from the changed retinal diagnosis.

I was thinking, and now that the retinas aren't so inflamed, it just might be possible to do cataract surgery with just a normal risk of retinal tears caused by the vitreous humour moving forward and sucking at it.

Still means I'm also looking at two vitrectomies to repair the existing holes in each eye, but that's an improvement.

Something to think about over the holidays.

Defeated GOP governor pardoned violent criminals in a spree lawyers are calling an ‘atrocity of justice’

Matt Bevin is no longer the governor of Kentucky, but his decisions continued to send shock waves through the state’s legal system this week after he issued pardons for hundreds of people, some of whom committed violent offenses.

Bevin issued 428 pardons since his defeat to Democrat Andy Beshear in a close election in November, the Louisville Courier Journal reported. His list includes a man convicted of reckless homicide, a convicted child rapist, a man who murdered his parents at age 16 and a woman who threw her newborn in the trash after giving birth in a flea market outhouse.

He also pardoned Dayton Jones, who was convicted in the sexual assault of a 15-year-old boy at a party, Kentucky New Era reported.

It is not unusual for governors to issue pardons as they leave office, but Bevin’s actions boggled some of the state’s attorneys, who questioned his judgment.

[...] Steele said he was particularly disturbed by the pardon of Patrick Brian Baker, whose brother hosted a fundraiser for Bevin and donated to him over the years, the Courier Journal reported.

[...] Not all of Bevin’s pardons stirred controversy. He spared death row inmate Gregory Wilson by commuting his sentence to life with the possibility of parole after 30 years, the Courier Journal reported. Wilson’s 1988 murder trial had been plagued by legal and ethical issues.

Bevin also pardoned Louisville community activist Christopher IIX, who was convicted of possession of a controlled substance in 1990 and theft by failure to make disposition in 1997, according to local reports. In the pardon, Bevin said the activist “has turned his life around after a rocky start many years ago and has paid his debt to society.”

On His Way Out, Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin Pardons Murderers, Rapists, Hundreds More

Matt Bevin defends his controversial pardons in twenty-tweet-long Twitter thread

So, American Congress having hearings. Seems some folks are not all that happy about it. But today I heard a Doug Collins referring to something, not sure what it was, but I could have swore I heard him say that someone was "besmirking the dead". Does anyone have any idea what this is?

No doubt, it has something to do with "getting to the oranges of the Russia investigation", as the target of the investigations, Suspect #1 put it. Something about a Squid going pro? Go for it, Squidward! He'll make a fine Republican Congress critter, in spite of being an invertebrate.

Move to strike the last word. Ball in your court, Soylentils.

Oh, and Louie Gohmert hates education.