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This is about a 12nm "Zen+" chip coming out this year, not "Zen 2".

AMD Ryzen 5 2600 Pinnacle Ridge Processor Single And Multi-Core Benchmarks Leak

The Ryzen 5 2600 is a 6-core/12-thread processor with a 3.4GHz base clock and 3.8GHz boost clock. It also has 3MB of L2 cache, 16MB of L3 cache, and a 65W TDP.

In Geekbench, the chip scored 4,269 in the single-thread testing and 20,102 in multi-threaded testing. Compared to the Ryzen 5 1600, which is a 6-core/12-thread processor clodcked at 3.2GHz to 3.6GHz with the same cache arrangement and TDP, the Ryzen 5 2600 is anywhere from 7-15 percent faster in single-threaded performance, and 22-31 percent faster in multi-threaded performance. The ranges in percentages take into account different scores in Geekbench's database.

Even if going by the low end numbers a 7 percent jump in single-threaded performance and 22 percent gain in multi-threaded work chores is a nice upgrade. Part of the difference is obviously attributable to faster clockspeeds, but performance optimizations underneath the hood also play a role. The gap could be even wider when Pinnacle Ridge ships too, as AMD and its partners will have had more time to polish up drivers.

AMD Ryzen 5 2600 spotted in Geekbench database

Previously:

AMD Expected to Release Ryzen CPUs on a 12nm Process in Q1 2018
AMD at CES 2018

As Peter Thiel ditches Silicon Valley for LA, locals tout 'conservative renaissance'

If the billionaire tech investor and noted libertarian Peter Thiel really does leave Silicon Valley for Los Angeles to escape what he views as an increasing intolerance for conservatives, the city’s growing community of conservatives will be there to welcome him.

Among LA’s right-leaning residents are the Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro, the political commentator Dave Rubin and the blogger Bill Whittle. There’s also the former members of the defunct Friends of Abe, a secretive group of Hollywood conservatives that fractured in 2016 over the candidacy of Donald Trump.

“Silicon Valley has long despised the American right and it’s beginning to flex its muscles against us,” said Michael Knowles, an LA-based podcaster for The Daily Wire, referring to a lawsuit filed by conservative media site PragerU against YouTube for allegedly “censoring” conservative videos.

“It’s a sign of the time that Peter Thiel is heading down here because there’s been a conservative renaissance in Los Angeles,” Knowles said.

PragerU’s chief marketing officer, Craig Strazzeri, added: “It’s both astounding and sad – but unfortunately not surprising – that there are parts of this country where you are socially and professionally shunned if you support the duly elected president of our country. That might be changing in Los Angeles.”

Previously: Peter Thiel Migrating From Silicon Valley to Los Angeles

The playboy who got away with $242m – using ‘black magic’

Air Dabia

You Up? College in the Age of Tinder

Frankly, dating apps can also just make things incredibly awkward. My freshman year I swiped through hundreds of people. At one of the last tailgates of the year, a random man walked by me and yelled: “Hey! We matched on Tinder! You are Tinder girl!”

I was mortified. Suddenly everyone around me knew that I was on Tinder. And I had swiped through so many people, I had no idea who this guy was. He was just another nameless “match” that I would never get to know. Because, needless to say, I walked away and never spoke to that guy again.

[...] The same Snap asking to “hang out” sent at 2 p.m. can have a completely different meaning when sent at 2 a.m.

[...] You don’t want to be mid-makeout while the jewel-encrusted crab from “Moana” is singing about how shiny he is.

Meet the Writer the New York Times Hired and Fired In Just Six Hours

After a Twitter Storm, The Times and a New Hire Part Ways

I’m a 29-Year-Old Pregnant Virgin

"This is me giving a middle finger to the people who told me I couldn’t do it because I’m not married yet."

Russians are mocking their space program after the SpaceX launch

Some dove head-first into Russia's rising inequality and the excessive wealth among the country's billionaire elite. One user noted the millions of dollars and years of effort Musk has plowed into pioneering space technology, and lamented the comparison with the kinds of things Russia’s notorious 96 billionaires tend to spend their own money on.

His example: Roman Abramovich, the Russian oil-and-metals magnate who spent some $233 million buying the U.K. soccer team Chelsea.

Abramovich, who’s worth $11 billion according to Forbes magazine, also splashed out some $400 million for the world's second-largest yacht in 2010, which he named Eclipse, ironically enough.

Others used the SpaceX craze to poke fun at Moscow’s standard tit-for-tat diplomatic approach to disputes with Washington, with one user photoshopping a mobile missile launcher flying through the cosmos as Russia’s “symmetrical response.”

How Elon Musk Beat Russia's Space Program

The Soviet Union tried something similar in the 1960s and early 1970s. Sergei Korolev, the rocket designer who launched the first satellite and the first man into space, began the development of what came to be known as the N-1, a 30-engine superheavy rocket capable of taking a 75-ton space station to orbit and perhaps to the Moon, Mars and Venus. Finished after Korolev’s death in 1966, the N-1 was test-launched four times. Each of the launches failed, largely because of the difficulty of running so many engines at the same time.

Now SpaceX has pulled off a similar task, and even though it’s not clear yet who will contract for the Falcon Heavy’s services, SpaceX founder Elon Musk now has the most capable missile in the world: It can deliver up to 64 tons into orbit. Russia’s plans to build such a rocket, capable of flying to the Moon or to Mars, aren’t even complete yet, and certainly not fully funded, though Igor Komarov, head of Roskosmos, the Russian space agency, has promised a first launch in 2028. Even China is likely to have a superheavy launch vehicle before Russia. But it’s the success of upstart Musk that smarts. Roskosmos has the full power of the state behind it, after all. And yet here’s this boyish-looking showman launching his roadster into space, David Bowie blasting from the car’s speakers and “Don’t Panic” -- a quote from Douglas Adams’ “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” -- lit up on the central console.

GPUs make a lot heat. They also do sums very quickly. You can buy GPUS these days that do well over a trillion floating-point operations per second. Some crazy people like to donate the computing power of their GPUs to distributed science projects. Some like to mine crypto-currencies hopefully to make a profit.

Suppose you could make a very simple computer that basically consisted of a cheap CPU and a few GPUs capable of somewhere between 1 and 10 TFLOPS, and would output heat at a rate of about 1kW, you could use it as a fan heater. Such a device would cost between £0.12 and £0.15 per hour to run at current UK prices.

Could that computing power be worth that much money to someone? Could you heat your house for free?

[Final (I hope) Update 0715GMT, 12 February 2018]
I ended up implementing Ampache and it seems to work acceptably (more details here).

I still need to do some clean up, but this is looking good.

Oh, and fuck you, Tivo!
[End Update]

[Update 0528GMT, 11 February 2018]
Fuck you Tivo!
[End Update]

I've been using Tivo for more than a decade (I got the first one free with a new TV -- the first one is always free, isn't it?).

Of course, DVRs are really only useful if you view/hear your own media and copy media to and from the DVR.

For a number of years, I've been using pyTivo and kmttg to manage that process.

Several months ago, a Tivo software upgrade broke the music streaming functionality from pyTivo (although oddly, not the video). Some research found that the only Tivo supported streaming music app (and video, but I don't care about that) was Plex media server, coupled with the (really, really, really crappy) Tivo Plex client.

I implemented the Plex Media Server and found it to be slow and a resource hog (which I didn't really care about since it was on its own VM).

The big issue for me was that even though the Tivo was local to me and the Plex server was local to me, the Plex server would refuse to function unless I created an account on their site and allowed the Plex server to phone home.

It's bad enough that it's clunky and slow, but that I had to allow them to spy on my completely *local* music streaming? Not happening. As such, I shut down the Plex server for good. Good riddance to bad garbage.

So, for the last few months, I've been trying to find a mechanism which will allow me to stream music through my Tivo -- with privacy -- like pyTivo used to allow me to do.

I've come up with nothing. Tools like Emby, Streambaby, GMediaServer, Galleon and others aren't supported (Tivo killed support for HME and doesn't support DLNA) any more.

Eventually, I'd like to move off of Tivo and go with something that's FOSS, but I'm not ready to plunk down the cash (a PC with multiple tuners and enough CPU, memory and disk to support my needs will be pricier than is practicable right now) at the moment.

So here's a hail Mary to any Soylentils who may have had the same issue and solved it.

I'm not averse to bringing in some inexpensive hardware (with HDMI or composite connectors) to stream audio to my receiver, bypassing the Tivo altogether. But I'd much prefer a software solution.

Any ideas or suggestions?

The Memo: Knives come out for Kelly

Kelly’s most vehement critics even suggest the episode could herald his demise within the administration.

“We’ll see this as an inflection point when he is fired,” said one source within President Trump’s orbit. The source, who requested anonymity to speak candidly, blasted Kelly as “tone deaf and politically inept.”

A second source close to the Republican Party complained, regarding Kelly, that “everybody knows he limits access and information flow to POTUS on a daily basis; this could be the beginning of the end of that — and maybe Kelly as chief.”

Trump's self-imposed shackles are coming undone!

Banned From Election, Putin Foe Navalny Pursues Politics By Other Means

He said he doesn't have any doubts that the Russian government interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election because similar methods have been deployed against members of the Russian opposition: hacked emails, the publication of false personal information and attacks on social media accounts by armies of bots.

"Putin is conducting a creeping expansion into the Internet — extremely effectively and cheaply," Navalny said. "Of course he had fun hacking those servers and meddling, but it didn't have any significant effect on the elections."

Amid all the hostility between the U.S. and Russia, Navalny said the affinity between Putin and President Trump is inexplicable, especially considering that the Kremlin has based even its domestic policy on anti-Americanism. "This makes no sense, and there is no rational explanation for it. But maybe one day there will be a new Watergate and we'll learn a lot about these amazing ties," he said.

Beyond the personal relationship of presidents, Navalny said that the strategic interests of Washington and Moscow are largely aligned, and that instead of squabbling the countries should be pursuing nuclear non-proliferation and fighting terrorists together. A key move to bettering relations would be for Russia to stop its involvement in the war in eastern Ukraine, he said.

"We're a Western country," Navalny said. "Russia — based on its size, population, nuclear weapons and intellectual potential — should strive to be a leading European country."

Russia should aim to join the European Union and work on participating in a joint security system with NATO members like the U.S., Britain and France, he said.

Navalny's only job is to keep doing what he is doing now without getting assassinated, and eventually mount a real attempt at winning the Presidency after Putin retires from politics.