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8-Channel Threadripper Rumor Back From the Dead
They will be supported by AMD's new WRX80 platform which is actively being worked on by several board partners right now. Main features include 8-channel DDR4-3200 support in UDIMM, RDIMM, LRDIMM flavors, 96-128 Gen4 PCIe lanes with 32 switchable lanes to SATA and some PRO features which will allow these chips to be the ultimate workstation solution in the market. In another tweet, Videocardz reported that AMD will be introducing its Ryzen Threadripper PRO lineup on the 14th of July which is next week [Tuesday].
I think 256 GiB RDIMMs (Samsung) are still the highest capacity out there, so it could support up to 4 TiB of memory.
That's also a greater amount of PCIe 4.0 lanes, TR 3990X only supports 64.
Desktop Renoir vs Ryzen 3000
The Ryzen 3000XT refresh CPUs are out:
New AMD Ryzen 3000XT Processors Available Today
Nothing interesting there as they offer bad price/performance compared to the CPUs they replace, low performance gains, and 3800XT and 3900XT also drop the stock coolers. And Zen 3 should be out within 3-4 months. If the non-X chips are forced out of stock and the prices drop, then it might be of some interest.
What could be more interesting is the top-end 8-core Renoir desktop APU:
Chiplet technology is good for scaling up core counts, but it's not as efficient as monolithic dies like Renoir. Importantly, the Infinity Fabric clock should be higher in Renoir. So it might perform better and use less power despite having 1/4 the L3 cache.
It could also mean that the 4700G will cost more than the 3800X (debuted at $400, now around $300-$320). But you don't have to buy a GPU.
In other news, Intel's Lakefield is widely being seen as a disappointment:
The Intel Lakefield Deep Dive: Everything To Know About the First x86 Hybrid CPU
It seems that the big and small cores won't run at the same time. The main improvements are in power consumption or idle power consumption, but performance will be lackluster, comparable to other low TDP dual-core or Atom quad-core chips. The devices that Lakefield will land in will also be absurdly overpriced (kind of like the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx it is competing against).
Intel will get another shot at a heterogeneous x86 architecture with Alder Lake next year.
Spinning Rust: RAID 10?
One of the very old hard disks (Western Digital Green, 2TB) that I recycled to put in my new PC is starting to fail. At the moment I have a manual backup strategy where I have a pair of disks partitioned identically, one as the "live" system and the other as the backup, and I rsync things across as and when needed.
I was looking at the price of SSDs and they're still way too high for what I need. I am not going back to 1TB of storage. I really need at least 3TB so I was looking at buying some more spinning rust.
I did a quick search for hard disk reliability by brand and found some tables which, at a glance, basically told be not very much apart from that there's one brand I don't trust and apparently I was right.
I was looking at Scan Computers and I was thinking of buying a pair of Western Digital Blue 4TB drives, but they're on pre-order. I noticed that there are Toshiba drives, which look like they should be a lot faster for about the same or less money (7200rpm vs 5400rpm, 128MB cache vs. 64MB cache).
For about the same money (a few £ more) as a pair of Western Digital 4TB 5400rpm drives, I could get four 2TB Toshiba 7200rpm drives with 64MB cache, or four 5400 WD Blue 2TB drives, and RAID them. I was thinking of RAID 10 (striped and mirrored).
In the past I have usually bought slower drives since I imagined they might last longer. Am I over-thinking this?
Update: I bought a pair of 4TB Toshiba X300 disks (non-SMR). They seem pretty quick so far. I put the very latest Slackware64-current (kernel 4.5.50) on and copied over all my data. The only thing to note is that the heads are quite noisy compared with the old 2TB Western Digital Greens.
Pro-Democracy Books Pulled in Hong Kong
Hong Kong security law: Pro-democracy books pulled from libraries
Books by pro-democracy figures have been removed from public libraries in Hong Kong in the wake of a controversial new security law.
[...] Since the security law came into effect on Tuesday, several leading pro-democracy activists have stepped down from their roles. One of them - one-time student leader and local legislator Nathan Law - has fled the territory.
At least nine books have become unavailable or marked as "under review", according to the South China Morning Post newspaper. They include books authored or co-authored by Joshua Wong, a prominent pro-democracy activist, and pro-democracy politician Tanya Chan.
Hong Kong: books by pro-democracy activists disappear from library shelves
I will add a list here if I find it. Authors censored include Joshua Wong, Tanya Chan, and Chin Wan.
Unfree Speech - Joshua Wong
http://libgen.li/search.php?req=Unfree+Speech%3A+The+Threat+to+Global+Democracy&open=0&res=25&view=simple&phrase=1&column=def
Socks
I know some are going to find this subject offensive and deeply distasteful.
Let's talk about socks. Garibaldi was unsuccessful at bringing up this delicate subject with Cmdr. Sinclair.
When I buy socks, I find a pair that I like. Then I buy the whole rack. It's nice to have, say, 15 or 20 pair of the exact same set of socks. I figured out this algorithm optimization 30+ years ago.
Think about this for a moment.
When putting away clothes from the dryer, one of the rituals everyone must endure is the sock sorting procedure.
Find a sock, iterate through the remaining socks to (hopefully) find a matching sock. Then repeat that procedure until all possible pairs are matched.
List<Pair<Sock>> matchedSocks = new List<>( 2_000_000_000 );
List<Sock> unmatchedSocks = new List<>( 2_000_000_000 );
Iterator<Sock> socksToMatch = socksFromDryer().iterator();
while( socksToMatch.hasNext() ) {
Sock sockToMatch = socksToMatch.next(); // select from pile
socksToMatch.remove( sockToMatch ); // remove from pile
Sock sockMate = socksFromDryer.find( sockToMatch ); // find a mate?
if( sockMate == null ) {
// unmatched -- drat!
unmatchedSocks.add( sockToMatch );
} else {
socksToMatch.remove( sockMate );
Pair<Sock> p = new Pair<>( sockToMatch, sockMate );
matchedSocks.add( p );
}
}
Funny how it seems that (almost) every time there is a sock missing that is unmatched. One might suppose that come the next wash day, it might turn up again. But nope. Never again! This is according to the scientific theory which explains how socks are sucked into the same universal black hole that accumulates missing pens, combs, and for some people -- cigarette lighters. Maybe even keys.
Advantages of many pair of the same socks.
1. You never end up in a twisty little maze of many socks, all different! When one sock disappears into the black hole of missing pens and combs, you simply now have an odd number. Next time, you're back to an even number. When one sock disappears, you barely notice it.
2. sock pairing on laundry day is much easier.
This creates a new problem which requires solution: only one style / color of socks in drawer!
As it turns out, there is a solution. Have several different pair, a small number, say no more than five, different socks. For each type, be sure you bought about 15 to 20 pair of the same.
This doesn't undly complicate the sock pairing ritual on laundry day. Yet it maintains the advantages of not having a large pile of all different single socks that would otherwise be good if they only had a matching sock.
(Updated above to fix angle braces.)
Replace every < with <
Replace every > with >
So that it appears correctly.
Ugoos X4 Cube Android 9.0 TV Box Plays 4Kp120 AV1 Videos
Ugoos X4 Cube Android 9.0 TV Box Plays 4Kp120 AV1 Videos
Since AV1 is still fairly new, most [VPUs don't] support the new video codec, and while we have seen several AV1 capable processors including Broadcom BCM7218x, Realtek RTD1311/RTD1319, and Amlogic S905X4. as well as at least one Android TV box for operators, I’m not aware of any consumer TV box capable of handling AV1 available right now.
But this should change very soon, as Amlogic S905X4 powered Ugoos X4 Cube Android 9.0 TV box should soon be launched with the ability to play 4Kp120 AV1 videos.
Ugoos X4 Cube specifications:
- SoC – Amlogic S905X4 quad-core Arm Cortex-A55 processor with Arm Mali-G31MP2 supporting OpenGL ES3.2, Vulkan 1.1 and OpenCL 2.0
- System Memory – 2GB RAM
- Storage – 16GB eMMC flash, MicroSD card slot
- Video Output – HDMI 2.1 up to 4K @ 60+Hz, AV output with composite video
- Audio – Analog stereo audio via AV output, digital audio via HDMI, and optical S/PDIF
- Video Playback
- Codecs
- AV1 up to 4K @ 120 fps
- H.265 HEVC MP-10 up to 4K @ 75fps
- VP9 up to 4K @ 75fps
- AVS2-P2 up to 4K @ 75fps
- H.264 AVC up to 4K @ 30fps
- MPEG1/2/4 ASP, WMV/VC-1, RealVideo8/9/10,
- HDR – HDR 10, HLG, PRIME HDR, TCH PRIME, options HDR10+, optional Dolby Vision
- Connectivity – Gigabit Ethernet, dual-band 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi 5 and Bluetooth 5.0
- USB – 1x USB 3.0 port, 1x USB 2.0 OTG port
- Misc – Power button; IR expansion port; reset pinhole
- Power Supply – TBD (likely 5V via Micro USB or USB-C)
- Dimensions – 110 x 62 x 22mm
[...] Ugoos X4 Cube is available for pre-order now, but somehow only in Ukraine, for 2,599 UAH including 20% VAT (TBC), or about $97. The Google translation reads “Ugoos X4 CUBE on the new Amlogic S905X4 processor is expected at the end of the year”, so it may take a while before Ugoos X4 Cube, and other Amlogic S905X4 become widely available.
Suitable for a CoreELEC install.
Also, I've noticed more devices supporting hardware decode of 4K H.265/etc. at up to 75 FPS instead of 60 FPS. Is there actually any content encoded and distributed at 75 FPS?
Australian Labor Party MP Raided Over China Allegations
'I have done nothing wrong': NSW MP Shaoquett Moselmane breaks silence after ASIO raids
NSW upper house MP Shaoquett Moselmane says he will not access his parliamentary office or use his work email, computer or phones while federal police investigate allegations Chinese government agents have infiltrated his office.
Mr Moselmane, who was suspended from the Labor Party on Friday just hours after his Rockdale home and Macquarie Street office were raided by Australian Federal Police, has taken indefinite leave from Parliament.
In his first public statement since the raids, Mr Moselmane said he had been told he was not a suspect in the investigation. "I have done nothing wrong", he said.
His statement came after Labor leader Jodi McKay said on Sunday she would move to have Mr Moselmane suspended from Parliament if he did not agree to step aside. The government also intends to move a motion to have him suspended.
NSW Labor's Shaoquett Moselmane says he is not Asio suspect
Making his first public comments since his suspension from the NSW ALP after his Rockdale home was searched on Friday, Moselmane defended his repeated trips to China and meetings with Chinese Communist party members as about delivering aid to disabled children.
[...] He said his comments praising Beijing’s handling of Covid-19 – views which saw him stand down as assistant president of the NSW upper house in April – were consistent with those expressed by Donald Trump and the World Health Organisation.
[...] Moselmane also said he had paid for airfares to travel to China for several trips. He said six of his nine trips to China as a politicians involved the delivery of wheelchairs to disabled children.
“Let me say it in plain English. I have never ever been on a Chinese government-sponsored trip. Never. I paid for all my own private overseas trips,” Moselmane said.
He also said China was just one of several countries he has worked to deliver 4,000 children’s wheelchairs to, naming Pakistan, Palestine and Lebanon as other nations.
[...] As the Guardian previously reported, in 2018 Moselmane gave a speech proclaiming a “new world order” was needed for China to reach its potential and appointed John Zhang to his parliamentary office at the beginning of 2019.
Zhang is listed as a vice-chairman of Australia China Economics, Trade and Culture Association on the organisation’s now-defunct website, which some China experts say has become a leading Chinese Communist party-aligned organisation in Australia.
Shaoquett Moselmane (what's his birth date?!! lol)
Mary Had a Little Lamb
According to this source:
The story of Mary Had a Little Lamb originates from a true story. It happened to a 14 year old girl whose name was Mary Sawyer [ . . . ]
There are some theories that the poem or part of it would be written by a young John Roulstone who was visiting the school that day.
[ . . . . ] Today Mary’s Little Lamb statue can be found in Sterling, MA, after a fire destroyed Mary’s native house in August 2007.
Also her school, known as Redstone School (1798) has been removed, and can be found in Sudbury, MA on Longfellow’s Wayside Inn land.
The lyrics of “Mary had a Little Lamb” were the first words in the history captured by a phonograph. Thomas Edison recorded his own voice reciting the rhyme, around the year 1877.
After reviewing this poem, I can only conclude that it is the sad story of how a backward school was intolerant and unwelcoming of emotional support service animals.
Something must be done!
Shirley, there must be a lawyer willing to take this worthy case.
Princeton Removes Woodrow Wilson's Name From Building
Princeton to remove Woodrow Wilson's name from public policy school
Princeton University to remove Woodrow Wilson's name from building
Woodrow Wilson: Race relations
Wilson was the first Southerner to be elected president since Zachary Taylor was elected in 1848, and his ascension to the presidency was celebrated by southern segregationists. The federal government had pursued racist policies for decades, not limited to early defenses of slavery, treatment of Native Americans, intervention policies in Latin America, and immigration policies that specifically prevented Africans and Asians from immigrating to the United States. Several historians have spotlighted consistent examples in the public record of Wilson's overtly racist policies and political appointments, such as segregationists he placed in his Cabinet. Ross Kennedy writes that Wilson's support of segregation complied with predominant public opinion, and A. Scott Berg argues that Wilson accepted segregation as part of a policy to "promote racial progress... by shocking the social system as little as possible." Historian Kendrick Clements argues that "Wilson had none of the crude, vicious racism of James K. Vardaman or Benjamin R. Tillman, but he was insensitive to African-American feelings and aspirations."
Wilson continued to appoint African Americans to positions that had traditionally been filled by blacks, overcoming opposition from many southern senators. However, the Wilson administration escalated the discriminatory hiring policies and segregation of government offices that had begun under President Theodore Roosevelt, and had continued under President Taft. In Wilson's first month in office, Postmaster General Albert S. Burleson urged the president to establish segregated government offices. Wilson did not adopt Burleson's proposal to segregate all government departments, but he allowed Cabinet members to segregate their respective departments. By the end of 1913, many departments, including the navy, had segregated work spaces, restrooms, and cafeterias. There was almost no opposition in Congress toward these policies, most of which would stay in place for years afterward. Wilson's African-American supporters, who had crossed party lines to vote for him in 1912, were bitterly disappointed, and they protested these changes. Wilson defended his administration's segregation policy in a July 1913 letter responding to civil rights activist Oswald Garrison Villard, arguing that segregation removed "friction" between the races.
Wilson's War Department drafted hundreds of thousands of blacks into the army, giving them equal pay with whites. But in accord with military policy from the Civil War through the Second World War, they segregated them into all-black units with white officers, and kept the great majority out of combat.In response to the demand for industrial labor, the Great Migration of African Americans out of the South surged in 1917 and 1918. This migration sparked race riots, including the East St. Louis riots of 1917. In response to these riots, but only after much public outcry, Wilson asked Attorney General Thomas Watt Gregory if the federal government could intervene to "check these disgraceful outrages." However, on the advice of Gregory, Wilson did not take direct action against the riots. In 1918, Wilson spoke out against lynchings, stating, "I say plainly that every American who takes part in the action of mob or gives it any sort of continence is no true son of this great democracy but its betrayer, and ...[discredits] her by that single disloyalty to her standards of law and of rights." In 1919, another series of race riots occurred in Chicago, Omaha, and two dozen other major cities in the North. The federal government did not become involved, just as it had not become involved previously.
Wilson also lamented over the contamination of American bloodlines by the "sordid and hapless elements" coming from southern and eastern Europe.
In terms of Reconstruction, Wilson held the common southern view that the South was demoralized by northern carpetbaggers and that overreach on the part of the Radical Republicans justified extreme measures to reassert democratic, white majority control of Southern state governments. During Wilson's presidency, D. W. Griffith's film The Birth of a Nation (1915) was the first motion picture to be screened in the White House. Wilson agreed to screen the film at the urging of Thomas Dixon Jr., a Johns Hopkins classmate who wrote the book on which The Birth of a Nation was based. The film, while revolutionary in its cinematic technique, glorified the Ku Klux Klan and portrayed blacks as uncouth and uncivilized. Wilson, and only Wilson, is quoted in the film (three times) as a scholar of American history, and made no protest over the misquotation of his words. Nonetheless, after seeing the film, Wilson felt betrayed by Dixon, as he felt that Dixon had misrepresented his views. Wilson's book did try to explain why many Southerners joined the Klan, but Wilson personally rejected the Ku Klux Klan and lynching as un-American. After the screening, Wilson issued a public statement stating that he had been "unaware of the character of the play before it was presented and has at no time expressed his approbation of it. Its exhibition at the White House was a courtesy extended to an old acquaintance." Historians have generally concluded that Wilson probably said that The Birth of a Nation was like "writing history with lightning", but reject the allegation that Wilson also remarked, "My only regret is that it is all so terribly true."
The League of Nations was not enough to save Woodrow Wilson. But it's not over until Washington, D.C. is renamed to the Douglass Commonwealth (Autonomous Zone).
More Judges are needed
It seems that our court system is backed up. Not enough judges to handle all the court cases efficiently.
Consider this worthy case the text of which is hear.
Twitter Summary:
A Twitch viewer is suing the Amazon-owned platform because the female streamers are too sexy so he:
a) has felt compelled to use a Fleshlight that has chafed his penis
b) has bloodshot eyes from ogling
c) shortcircuited his monitor by ejaculating on it
Quoted from court filing:
4. Introduction/Statement of Facts
The plaintiff has been a Twitch Prime and Turbo subscriber for years now, who also suffers from Depression, OCD, Panic Disorder, Agrophobia and Crohn's Disease. And because of these maladies, he heavily relies on the internet for all his entertainment purposes as many others do during this difficult time. And due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many people HAVE TO STAY HOME FOR ENTERTAINMENT and are quarantining themselves, including the particularly vulnerable - children. As for the plaintiff, he only leaves his house for Inflectra infusions having to deal with hos Crohn's disease; otherwise, he's always on the computer constantly using and watching Twitch. [ . . . . ] Twitch has extremely exacerbated his condition by displaying many sexually suggestive women streamers through Twitch's twisted programming and net code making it nearly impossible for the plaintiff to use Twitch without being exposed to such sexual suggestive content. [ . . . . ]
[ . . . . many mini NSFW images in court filing omitted . . . . ]
6. Claims and Harm
The plaintiff who suffers from Sexual Addiction has suffered much worse given that Twitch has exacerbated his condition. The plaintiff's username on Twitch is [ . . . ] Twitch an be held liable for their misconstrued and devious actions if done with extreme disregard for the customer's well-being through negligence or fallible company policies. [ . . . .]
One can only be saddened and sympathetic for such an individual who has been so horribly victimized by Twitch's (owned by Amazon) callous and thoughtless actions and web site programming. To add insult to stupidity injury, this guy's case will no doubt have to wait in line with many other court cases that are far less worthy of the court's consideration.
With so many court cases what other possible solution can there be except to appoint more judges. Hopefully these judges will have the wisdom to carefully consider each case diligently, giving each one all the careful attention it deserves.
Please Mr. President, appoint more judges so that all of these worthy court cases can be heard without delay with appropriate justice.
Not noticing any attorney representing the Plaintiff, I believe this would be a Pro Se litigant. This also brings up the issue that the courts should be able to appoint attorneys for plaintiffs in civil cases as well as criminal cases. Just imagine how many people might file civil lawsuits but don't, because they lack the skill to represent themselves, or the financial resources to hire the very most expensive law firms in the nation to represent them. Imagine how wonderful it would be if the courts (the taxpayers) could provide the financial resources to enable such harmed litigants to avail themselves of the very finest (and most expensive) teams of lawyers for their worthy cases and complaints.
