Daily Tech News 18 May 2021

• On June 8 the signal goes out and millions of Amazon Alexa and Echo devices will start turning everything around them into paperclips. (Inc)
  
  Well, more precisely, every single Alexa and Echo device that hasn't been explicitly opted out will combine to form a single world-spanning mesh network.
  
  This was the plot of a Matt Smith episode of Doctor Who. In fact, this was the plot of two Matt Smith episodes of Doctor Who, and also two David Tennant episodes, and a William Hartnell story, and a couple of Jon Pertwee stories as well.
  
  
  

• Intel's Tiger Lake-H high-end laptop parts are here-ish. So how do they perform? (AnandTech)
  
  That's kind of complicated. They're not bad, performance-wise, but they sure are power-hungry. Configured with a 65W TDP they compete evenly with a 35W AMD part.
  
  On the one hand, they seem to be held back from their full potential because the reference laptop design overheats when running at 65W.
  
  On the other hand, the reference laptop design overheats when running at 65W.
  
  
  
• Ah, Amazon S3 access policies, you're just as fucked up as the day we met, about two trillion dollars ago.



• There may be a very minor Ryzen 5000 refresh on the way. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Similar to the 3000XT models. The advantage this refresh would have is that it could bump AMD over the 5GHz line, which they haven't crossed since the FX-9590, a 220W monster that despite its power draw was only just competitive with Intel's chips of the day.
  
  
  
• Breakthrough research has finally linked Linear A to Linear B. (Greek Reporter)
  
  Linear B was used in Mycenaean Greece, and is the oldest form of written Greek. Once it was determined that the language was in fact Greek, scholars in the 1950s - well, actually it was initially one English architect - were able to map certain words to place names that persist today and from there decipher the entire script.
  
  Linear B is adapted from Linear A, the script used to write inscriptions in Minoan Crete. We have over 1400 such inscriptions and clay tablets, but no-one knows how to read any of them.
  
  The breakthrough shows the mapping between the older Linear A and Linear B, and it turns out to be closer than expected. This means that the the place name trick can be used again - once we recognise a place name in a Linear B script, we can map it to Linear A and find it in the older tablets.
  
  Essentially we can now read Linear A. We just don't know what it means, because the Minoans didn't speak Greek.
  
  
  
• Apple is devoted to inclusivity, privacy, and civil liberties unless there's money involved in which case they will happily climb in bed with a genocidal fascist dictatorship. (New York Times)
  
  And worse, they will do this even when it costs them money.
  
  And still lecture you endlessly on how much more enlightened they are.
  
  
  
• LinkedIn - owned by Microsoft - also appears to be censoring critics of the Chinese regime. (Bloomberg)
  
  Microsoft is generally the least worst of Big Tech, but that's all relative. In absolute terms, they are - most of the time - an uncaring behemoth that will squash you like a bug if you get in the way.
  
  
  
• Android 12 is on its way. (ZDNet)
  
  Generally between versions 4 and 8 of any software, users switch from "can't wait" to "oh fuck, not another one".
  
  With Android, I think it was 7. 6 introduced some critical missing capabilities, though OEMs - including Sony and Samsung - fucked it up anyway.
  
  
  
• Apple announced in court that it didn't take a cut of $400 billion of goods it didn't sell. (The Verge)
  
  People are acting as if Apple made a coherent point.
  
  
  
• Parler is back on the App Store. (Reuters)
  
  At this point the glow can probably be seen from Alpha Centauri.
  
  
  

posted by Pixy Misa at 04:27 AM

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