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User: edxwelch

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  1. Re:Gravity at 100km is only 3% less that sea level on Blue Origin Launches Its First Test Flight of 2018 (mashable.com) · · Score: 1

    > sort of a massive erect vomit-comet.
    So, these customers are paying for the privilege of vomiting in space?

  2. Depends which GPUs you're talking about on GPU Prices Are Falling (venturebeat.com) · · Score: 1

    Since the Monero branch, RX Vega cards have become the best value for mining Monero, and there's no chance of getting any of those cards at MSRP
    http://www.nowinstock.net/comp...

  3. virtually impossible to exploit on Zen on AMD Releases Spectre v2 Microcode Updates for CPUs Going Back To 2011 (bleepingcomputer.com) · · Score: 2

    It's worth noting AMD has said that Spectre 2 is virtually impossible to exploit on the Zen architecture. Even AMD engineers were unable to create a working exploit for it. Of coarse, they still have to release a patch for it to be on the safe side.

  4. The Chinese have the best one on April Fool's Day Roundup · · Score: 2

    The Chinese "Heavenly Palace" space station due to smash into the Earth within the next few hours. The ultimate April fools prank!

  5. Re:Can someone explain Vulkan? on Vulkan Graphics is Coming To macOS and iOS, Will Enable Faster Games and Apps (anandtech.com) · · Score: 1

    Multithreading is hard to implement, but you don't need to use multi-threading to get better performance. Draw calls have much lower overhead and then validation is done in a layer that is swiched off in release. That alone will get better performance. There are a lot of hidden work getting OpenGL to get performance. For instance, batching - I spent so much development time on this it's unreal. Those problems disappear in Vulkan, because of the low overhead.

  6. Here's an idea on Airlines Won't Dare Use the Fastest Way to Board Planes (wired.com) · · Score: 1

    Save time by start taxiing towards the runway as soon as the pilots are on board. The passengers run alongside the plane and clamber onto the boarding stairs as it moves. The taxiing is actually quite slow and if the passengers were fit enough they could easily make it before take off.

  7. five layers of DRM should be enough for everyone on Pirates Crack Microsoft's UWP Protection, Five Layers of DRM Defeated (torrentfreak.com) · · Score: 1

    This sounds a bit like those Gilette ads. What does layer 5 do that layers 1-4 could not already achieve?

  8. Solution on Will Cape Town be the First City To Run Out of Water? (bbc.com) · · Score: 4, Funny

    The obvious solution is to just drink beer.

  9. count yourself lucky then

  10. The decrease is performance only happens if you manage to update the BIOS and there's fat chance of doing that on a Haswell motherboard! It'll have reached non-support EOL long ago.

  11. "While on some discrete workloads the performance impact from the software updates may initially be higher, additional post-deployment identification, testing and improvement of the software updates should mitigate that impact."

    yeah, all you have to do is rewrite all software to avoid using system calls and the performance problem goes away

  12. Re:AMD: no boundary violations on Google's Project Zero Team Discovered Critical CPU Flaw Last Year (techcrunch.com) · · Score: 1

    I think I understand it better now.
    There are actually, 3 vulnerabilities: 2 spectre and 1 meltdown.
    AMD Zen CPU's are actually affected by the first spectre vulnerability and they admit to that: https://www.amd.com/en/corpora...

    The other Spectre vulnerability and the meltdown don't affect Zen. Meltdown is the vulnerability that needs the KPTI patch. Presumably there is some other patch on the way to fix spectre.

  13. AMD's newer CPUs are not affected on Google's Project Zero Team Discovered Critical CPU Flaw Last Year (techcrunch.com) · · Score: 1

    Google did not test these vulnerabilities on any Zen based CPUs. They tested only on older processors:
    "AMD FX(tm)-8320, AMD PRO A8-9600 R7"

    https://googleprojectzero.blog...

  14. Re:don't be silly the bible says on Scientists Confirm There Was Life On Earth 3.5 Billion Years Ago (qz.com) · · Score: 1

    Well, they were only off by 4,539,994,000 years.

  15. Re:doing a better review is key on First AMD Ryzen Mobile Laptop Tested Shows Strong Zen-Vega Performance (hothardware.com) · · Score: 1

    The video probably wasn't being hardware decoded, because of a driver / VLC issue with Raven ridge.
    If the reviewer had done some more work, like testing power consumption on other tasks like web browsing, or gaming he would have realised this.

  16. Maybe they should just design US destroyers with a huge rubber skirt, like bumper cars. Then cargo ships would just harmless bounce off them.

  17. Re:I wonder what their energy use is like... on AMD Unveils Ryzen Mobile Processors Combining Zen Cores and Vega Graphics (hothardware.com) · · Score: 5, Informative

    Anandtech has a good write up of the technical details: https://www.anandtech.com/show...
    The power management is considerably improved from desktop Ryzen. They are using linear LDO regulators to manage power for each component independently.

  18. Most devices aren't vulnerable to hijacking on WPA2 Security Flaw Puts Almost Every Wi-Fi Device at Risk of Hijack, Eavesdropping (zdnet.com) · · Score: 1

    There's a pretty good write-up at Anantech: https://www.anandtech.com/show...
    Basically, they say the vulnerability is worse for some configurations more than others. If you use Android, or WPA-TKIP, or 802.11ad the attacker can do more damage. Normally it's only evesdropping of one side of the communication.

  19. What could possibly go wrong? on Hawaii Approves Telescope On Volcano Sacred To Indigenous People (reuters.com) · · Score: 1

    So, build a telescope on sacred ground and risk disturbing the dormant, but mighty Hawaii god of fire and destruction. Right on the tip of a volcano, where his powers are the greatest. I'm pretty sure I've seen a movie that had a plot like this and I tell you, it didn't turn out well for the scientists.

  20. Re:This is why I jumped off the Apple treadmill on Apple's Swift 4.0 Includes A Compatibility Mode For 'The Majority' Of Swift 3.x Code (infoworld.com) · · Score: 1

    No they're not, but I take it you've never developed for iOS

  21. Re:This is why I jumped off the Apple treadmill on Apple's Swift 4.0 Includes A Compatibility Mode For 'The Majority' Of Swift 3.x Code (infoworld.com) · · Score: 2

    That's exactly what I felt when I was doing iOS development. All my code was littered with yellow "depreciated" warnings. Trying to keep stuff "current" was an exercise in futility, because they would just depreciate a load of other stuff with the next iOS release.

  22. Re:Just famous or famous and going away? on AskSlashdot: How Do You See Your Life After Firefox 52 ESR? (mozilla.org) · · Score: 1

    Last time I tried Firefox with CTR it was so slow, it was unusable. I think it must have been the CTR plugin slowing down, because this was on a fresh profile.

    I now use Palemoon and Chrome for the websites where Palemoon doesn't work.

  23. Re:So whats with the laptops then? on SpaceX Will Deliver The First Supercomputer To The ISS (hpe.com) · · Score: 1

    Maybe they should have use Epyc, which has much better RAS features than Broadwell: http://www.amd.com/system/file...

  24. Re:Real Developers never Deserialize into objects on Deserialization Issues Also Affect .NET, Not Just Java (bleepingcomputer.com) · · Score: 1

    You are 100% correct.
    Unfortunately, going by the amount of projects affected by the bug, it seems that most programmers are not "real programmers"

  25. 9-5 is only a 7 hour day, unless you work non stop without any lunch break.