Slashdot Mirror

physburn writes: The Register has spoken to some experts to get a better understanding of the risk quantum computers present to the existing encryption systems we have today. Richard Evers, cryptographer for a Canadian security biz called Kryptera, argues that media coverage and corporate pronouncements about quantum computing have left people with the impression that current encryption algorithms will soon become obsolete. But they will not be ready for at least 10 years, he said. As an example, Evers points to remarks made by Arvind Krishna, director of IBM research, at The Churchill Club in San Francisco last May, that those interested in protecting data for at least ten years "should probably seriously consider whether they should start moving to alternate encryption techniques now." In a post Evers penned recently with his business partner Alastair Sweeny, he contends, "The hard truth is that widespread beliefs about security and encryption may prove to be based on fantasy rather than fact." And the reason for this, he suggests, is the desire for funding and fame.

On Monday, Intel unveiled the 9th Gen Core i9-9900K, which will rival AMD's Ryzen 2700X when it goes on sale in two weeks. We will soon be reading reviews of the 9th Gen Core i9-9900K, which Intel claims is the "world's best gaming processor," to see how exactly it fares against its AMD counterpart. But as reviewers test the new CPU and comply with an NDA/embargo (non-disclosure agreement) with Intel, which requires them to not share performance data of Intel's new CPU for another few days, surprisingly, one publication has already made a bold claim. In a story published this week, news outlet PCGamesN said, "Intel's Core i9 9900K is up to 50% faster than AMD's Ryzen 7 2700X in games." The publication cites data from an Intel-commissioned report [PDF] by third-party firm Principle Technologies to make the claim. TechSpot explains the issues with this: So Intel can go and publish their own "testing" done suspiciously through a third party ten days before reviews, while reviewers are prohibited from refuting the claims due to the NDA. First bad sign. Scrolling down PCGamesN says the following when looking over Intel's commissioned benchmarks. "But the real point of all this is for Intel to be able to hold out the 9900K as hands down the best gaming processor compared with the AMD competition, and in that it seems to have excelled. On some games, such as Civ 6 and PUBG, the performance delta isn't necessarily that great, but for the most part you're looking at between 30 and 50% higher frame rates from the 9900K versus the 2700X."

Right away many of the results looked very suspect to me, having spent countless hours benchmarking both the 2700X and 8700K, I have a good idea of how they compare in a wide range of titles and these results looked very off. Having spotted a few dodgy looking results my next thought was, why is PCGamesN publishing this misleading data and why aren't they not tearing the paid benchmark report apart? Do they simply not know better?

Over at the Principled Technologies website you can find the full report which states how they tested and the hardware used. Official memory speeds were used which isn't a particularly big deal, though they have gone out of their way to handicap Ryzen, or at the very least expose its weaknesses. Ryzen doesn't perform that well with fully populated memory DIMMs, two modules is optimal. However timings are also important and they used Corsair Vengeance memory without loading the extreme memory profile or XMP setting, instead they just set the memory frequency to 2933 and left the ridiculously loose default memory timings in place. These loose timings ensure compatibility so systems will boot up, but after that point you need to enable the memory profile. It's misleading to conduct benchmarks without executing this crucial step.

Steam Play -- Valve's name for its cross-platform initiative -- is getting a major update, adding built-in tools that would allow users to run Windows games on Linux. It's now available in beta. From a report: The new tools run on Proton, which is custom distribution of the widely-used Wine compatibility tool. In the most practical terms, this means you can now download and install Windows games directly from the Steam client without any further fuss. Valve is currently checking "the entire Steam catalog" and whitelisting games that run without issue, but you can turn off those guidelines and install whatever you want, too.

Proton should provide enhanced performance over Wine in many cases, according to Valve. DirectX 11 and 12 implementations are now based on Vulkan, and performance in multi-threaded games "has been greatly improved compared to vanilla Wine." You'll also see better fullscreen and controller support with Proton. It's also fully open source.

According to a report on DigiTimes, a former TSMC engineer has been accused of stealing the secrets of their 28nm manufacturing process and taking them across the Taiwan Straits to Chinese rival, HLMC. "The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) produce the chips for the great and the good of the PC hardware market, specifically Nvidia and latterly AMD," reports PCGamesN. From the report: The report claims the former engineer, known only as Hsu, has been accused of taking details and materials relating to TSMC's 28nm manufacturing process and handing them over to Shanghai Huali Microelectronics (HLMC) after being offered a job there. The engineer was arrested before he even had a chance to start his new job on mainland China. This isn't the first reported instance of potentially shady dealings involving HLMC. DigiTimes previously reported that the Chinese foundry had headhunted a team of up to 50 research and development engineers from Taiwan's first semiconductor company, United Microelectronics (UMC), to help them get their 28nm production process up to speed. DigiTimes also alleges that some Chinese memory manufacturers have been doing the same thing, headhunting Taiwanese talent to get their own fabs off the ground, and that Micron are taking legal action against some of their Taiwan partners for allegedly nicking their tech and handing it over to China-based RAM companies.

Reader He Who Has No Name writes: We've seen brain-dead, overzealous, and entirely over-automated DMCA takedown requests bring down music and videos, but this may be the first case of an entire video game being knocked out. Earlier today David Prassel, creator of Trek Industries and developer of the not-without-controversy ORION: Dino Horde / Prelude and the early-access Guardians of ORION, posted that his current project had been entirely removed from Steam after a questionable DMCA allegation from Activision. Prassel explains further, "We've made Steam our primary platform, but this has put a definite scare into us going forward considering our entire livelihood can be pulled without a moment's notice, without any warning or proper verification. I cannot even confirm that the representative from Activision is a real person as absolutely no results pop up in any of my searches." Image comparisons against at least two of the weapon models claimed to be infringing were posted by Prassel and in at least one thread on a forum.
What's more, it appears Activision is alleging not a vertex-for-vertex and texel-for-texel theft and duplication of the Call Of Duty: Black Ops 3 2D -- 3D art assets, but in fact an infringing artistic similarity and design of separately created art content -- something that the DMCA does not cover (and which more would likely fall under copyright or possibly trade dress). Since this takedown falls directly in the middle of the Steam Summer Sale -- which probably is not a coincidence -- it will profoundly impact Trek Industry's potential sales.Polygon has more details.