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Watch them wrassle a pair of siamese elephants

Still too close to call...

QOTD:

...Gabbard won by not being there. The dog and pony show conducted by corporate news has adult political aspirants panting like sixth graders for teachers attention. Demeaning to all involved.

Extremely so... Looked like they were begging permission to go to the bathroom.

This has to be part of the Trump campaign. He has them doing a Keystone Cops routine, shooting at each other. What a scene!

Big 501(c) scam, all of this

What's TLC is SLC Again: MEMXPRO Introduces PC32 Full-Drive Pseudo-SLC SSDs

Pseudo-SLC caches for TLC-based SSDs are almost as old as TLC NAND itself, serving as a simple and practical solution to TLC's lower sustained throughput. But like all caches, pseudo-SLC caches have a finite size; and once you run over it, you're back to directly hitting the TLC. So what is a user or system builder to do if they need a drive with SLC-like performance all the time? For a while, the answer to that has been MLC drives, but with MLC slowly but surely on its way out as well, other solutions are needed. And to that end, MEMXPRO is introducing a series of new drives that go the opposite direction, embracing pseudo-SLC mode to its very core by making the entire drive pseudo-SLC.

Based on 64-layer 3D TLC memory, MEMXPRO's PC32 drives use drive-wide pseudo-SLC mode to give the drives MLC-like performance and reliability. This setup is overkill for most applications, but for use cases that require SSDs with long lifespans, and high [durability] – MEMXPRO's specialty – the PC32 fills an important niche.

The MEMXPRO PC32 drives in are based on the Silicon Motion SM2262EN controller as well as Micron’s B17A 64-layer 3D TLC NAND memory, which is rated for 10,000 P/E cycles. By putting the drives in pseudo-SLC mode, the manufacturer is able to increase their durability to 40,000 P/E cycles, albeit at the cost of capacity. Since TLC NAND that offers 3-bits of storage per cell is otherwise reduced to 1-bit per cell, the drives are available in capacities from just 80 GB to 320 GB. As for throughput, with the high-end controller used for the drive, MEMXPRO has rated the drives' sustained sequential read and write performance 3,250 and 2,980 MB/s respectively, which is in line with other modern SSDs featuring a PCIe 3.0 x4 interface.

If you can figure out what kind of die size this uses (e.g. 512 Gb), you could forecast how much capacity pseudo-SLC drives of given dimensions can store in the future. NAND will eventually reach at least 256 layers, and that can be multiplied with string stacking and other techniques.

Bloomberg School of Public Health: No Evidence ‘Assault Weapon’ Bans Reduce Mass Shootings

A new study from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health has found that there is no evidence that “assault weapon bans” have any impact on “the incidence of fatal mass shootings.”

Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, named after notorious anti-Second Amendment activist billionaire Michael Bloomberg, released the results of its study last week.

The study “did not find an independent association between assault weapon bans and the incidence of fatal mass shootings after controlling for the effects of bans on large-capacity magazines.”

The study, which analyzed fatal mass shootings in 45 states between 1984 and 2017, did find that “firearm purchaser licensing laws that require an in-person application or fingerprinting are associated with an estimated 56 percent fewer fatal mass shootings in states that have them.”

Bloomberg, who is running for president as a Democrat, has a history of trying to destroy Second Amendment rights. His anti-gun organization, Everytown for Gun Safety, has a history of using misleading or outright false statistics manufactured by gun control groups that he has financially backs to assist in his efforts.

The most recent example happened during the Super Bowl when Bloomberg aired a one-minute commercial that was full of false information.

The emotional ad claimed in writing: “2,900 CHILDREN DIE FROM GUN VIOLENCE EVERY YEAR.”

The claim from Bloomberg was categorically false at the cited number included adults and counted suicides as examples of gun violence.

Reason Magazine reported:

According to to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, FactCheck.org notes, the average number of firearm-related deaths involving Americans 17 or younger from 2013 through 2017 (the period used by Everytown for Gun Safety) was about 1,500, roughly half the number cited by Bloomberg. Furthermore, nearly two-fifths of those deaths were suicides, meaning the number of minors killed each year by “gun violence,” as that term is usually understood, is about 73 percent smaller than the figure cited in Bloomberg’s ad.

The Daily Wire highlighted Bloomberg’s views on guns in an extensive profile piece on him last September:

Bloomberg’s anti-gun advocacy is perhaps the single most defining issue of his recent private citizen activism — and perhaps the single most defining issue of his 2020 presidential bid. He is very closely affiliated with and has helped fund Everytown for Gun Safety and Moms Demand Action, which are both groups deeply hostile to Second Amendment rights. He also co-founded Mayors Against Illegal Guns while he was mayor of New York City. Bloomberg supports “universal” background checks, which often serve as a rhetorical euphemism for the government serving as an intermediary in all private firearms transfers. Bloomberg believes that every gun owner should need a permit before making a gun purchase. He supports a ban on the undefinable sub-class of firearms referred to as so-called “assault weapons” — a line of thought that, if taken to its logical conclusion, could lead to the banning of all semi-automatic firearms in America.

In addition to promulgating false information about guns, Bloomberg has also repeatedly displayed ignorance on the issue, both on how guns operate and on what gun laws exist.

Bloomberg told Rolling Stone in 2014 that he did not know whether a minor was allowed to own a rifle, and later claimed that anyone who owns a gun is “pretty stupid.”

In a 2012 interview with ABC News, Bloomberg demonstrated that he does not know basics when it comes to guns, including what the difference between a semi-automatic and fully-automatic firearm is.

Democrat presidential candidate billionaire Michael Bloomberg, who spends tens of millions of dollars pushing for extreme gun control laws, demonstrates that he knows literally nothing about firearms.pic.twitter.com/SCjpNdQm6h

— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra)

https://www.dailywire.com/news/bloomberg-school-of-public-health-no-evidence-assault-weapon-bans-reduce-mass-shootings

Bloomberg looks kinda like O'Connell. He works it like a republican, all the attacks are just water off a duck's back. Not a care in the world. No doubt he was amused by all the squawking. When there is only one, he will move in for the kill.

I wonder what a Bloomberg/Gabbard ticket would do.

Sheriff: Prison Reform Advocate Planted Guns for Jail Break
Tennessee authorities say a longtime prison reform advocate was preparing to stage a jail break when he hid loaded guns and ammunition in a new jail that was under construction.
By Associated Press, Wire Service Content Feb. 19, 2020, at 4:43 p.m.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A longtime prison reform advocate was preparing to stage a jail break when he hid loaded guns and ammunition in a new jail that was under construction, Tennessee authorities said Wednesday.

Alex Friedmann, a former prisoner turned crusader against private prisons and a longtime editor at Prison Legal News, was charged last month with attempted burglary. He was accused of gaining access to the new jail by dressing as a construction worker and stealing keys.

As the investigation continued, “it was discovered that Mr. Friedmann, over many months, had developed and implemented an extremely deliberate and, in my opinion, evil plan,” Nashville Sheriff Daron Hall said during a Wednesday news conference announcing Friedmann’s re-arrest on upgraded charges.

Friedmann is now charged with vandalism of $250,000 or more, with his bond set at $2.5 million.

Friedmann's attorney, Ben Raybin, issued a statement late Wednesday.

“I am currently unable to comment on any of the factual allegations,” Raybin said. “Mr. Friedmann is presumed innocent and will respond through the appropriate legal processes.”

Hall said he believes Friedmann was designing a massive jail break that would endanger “every inmate, every visitor and our entire community.”

“Virtually everything I’m telling you is on video” Hall said, noting that investigators have poured through hundreds of hours of video to identify the areas of the building that were compromised.

Hall currently serves as president of the National Sheriff’s Association and said no one there has ever seen anything like this before.

“It will forever change how correctional facilities are built,” he said.

Prison Legal News is a project of the nonprofit Human Rights Defense Center. Friedmann resigned as editor after his earlier arrest in January, executive director Paul Wright said in a telephone interview.

[ED: What this AP story doesn’t mention is that this celebrated “prison reform advocate” had spent ten years in a Tennessee prison for attempted murder, armed robbery, and attempted aggravated robbery.]

https://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2020-02-19/sheriff-prison-reform-advocate-planted-guns-for-jail-break

Don't you just love those liberal activists? Is it necessary to state the obvious? Non-violent, non-dangerous offenders locked up for weeks or months for being bad don't even WANT weapons. It would only be dangerous, violent offenders who are looking for weapons.

And, I almost missed the romanticized side of things. Attempted murder, armed robbery, and attempted aggravated robbery - much the same thing that Patty Hearst was involved in. Awwww, to bad he's not an heir to some rich old bastard, huh?

Now he says he won't release his medical records.

We have released quite as much documentation as any other candidate has... I think we have released a detailed medical report and I'm comfortable on what we have done...

Typical arrogant politician. What an ass... That's a great way to shed support and drop out "gracefully" before any possible dirt comes out. Maybe now the debate will get interesting if anybody has the guts to hammer on him for this.

Whatever, if he were to get the nomination, Bloomberg will run as an "independent" [he is more anti-Sanders than anti-Trump] with full DNC support and throw it to Trump. With only decades old leftovers on the ticket, it looks more and more like that's the game

SpaceX nailed the launch but missed a landing on Monday [Updated]

SpaceX launches fifth batch of Starlink satellites, misses booster landing

Despite the reduced workload, Falcon 9’s reusable first-stage booster missed the droneship “Of Course I Still Love You,” splashing down nearby in the Atlantic Ocean.

On the live stream, it looked like a "space snake" came off of the booster. Critical component?

If the booster is too salty or smashed to be refurbished, that is an expensive batch of Starlink sats.

2 more launches to go until the lower bound for launching a service. 8 more for "moderate coverage".

I saw this blog post on the Kodi news ticker on LibreELEC:

In Defence of Our Good Name

Kodi is undoubtedly synonymous with streaming 🏴‍☠️piracy🏴‍☠️, although it is useful software even when "clean" and you can do a decent amount with the official add-ons repo (YouTube, Pluto.TV, internet radio, etc.).

Are they going through the obligatory motions to distance themselves from 🏴‍☠️yarrrrr🏴‍☠️ or are they legitimately pissed off? It's probably a bit of both.

Exclusive: Intel Xe HP 4-Tile 500W GPU EU Count Leaked, No It’s Not 512

This is a follow-up to an earlier story I linked.

• Intel Xe HP (Gen 12.5) 1-Tile GPU: 512 EUs [Est: 4096 Cores, 12.2 TFLOPs assuming 1.5GHz, 150W]
• Intel Xe HP (Gen 12.5) 2-Tile GPU: 1024 EUs [Est: 8192 Cores, 20.48 TFLOPs assuming 1.25 GHz, 300W]
• Intel Xe HP (Gen 12.5) 4-Tile GPU: 2048 EUs [Est: 16,384 Cores, 36 TFLOPs assuming 1.1 GHz, 400W/500W]

That's 81.3, 68.3, and 72-90 GFLOPS/Watt, if accurate.

Compare to about 44.2 GFLOPS/W for Radeon RX 5700, 53.8 for RTX 2080 Ti, or 116.3 for Tesla T4. I'm just getting those numbers by dividing the FP32 GFLOPS by TDP, so YMMV.

400-500 Watts sounds extreme but it might not be as hard to cool as you think since the die area of a 4-tile multi-chip module (basically chiplets) would be huge. An advantage of the MCM approach is better yields. It would be difficult to create a 1,600 mm² monolithic GPU, while putting four 400 mm² tiles together is easier.

If this is a success, Intel will probably shoot for a design with 8 tiles eventually (2024?).