Daily Tech News 4 July 2021

• Happy Independence Day, everyone!
  
  
  
• Windows 11 is all about security. (PC Perspective)
  
  For Microsoft. Not for you.
  
  It's kind of refreshing to see a blatant money grab instead of a company refusing to take your business because you once were within 400 yards of someone who expressed an unapproved opinion.
  
  Because when a corporation only cares about money, the problem can be solved with money.
  
  
  
  

• Samsung has a new small tablet - the 8.7" 2021 A7 Lite. (Tom's Guide)
  
  8.7" is rather pushing the boundary of small, and this is heavier than my 2013 Nexus 7. That's not the problem, though; it's still smaller and lighter than my 10.4" Lenovo tablet
  
  It uses the same CPU as the Lenovo - an 8-core A53 - so it's not super fast. But it's adequate. That's not the problem either.
  
  It's not sold in Australia, so I have to import it, which gives a budget tablet a mid-range price. That's still not the problem.
  
  The problem is that it has a 1340x800 screen. That's essentially the same as the original model of the Nexus 7 from 2012, and everyone remarked how much better the 2013 model was with its 1920x1200 screen.
  
  That resolution is not good enough for reading books or web pages on a screen that size. The defects in the typography are very noticeable. You can maybe get away with it on a 6" phone screen, but I went with the Oppo A91 specifically because it had a 1080p screen and most of the competition at that price point didn't.
  
  Though they did last year. Things have gone backwards.
  
  Given the cost of importing this, I might as well get Lenovo's 8" tablet at less than half the price. It also has an inadequate screen, but at least it's priced to match.
  
  
  
• If you can't get a graphics card right now the Ryzen 5700G provides the fastest desktop integrated graphics around without skimping on the CPU. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  You can't get the 5700G either, or not as a retail part. It's shipping in prebuilt systems already and should be available as a retail component next month.
  
  Really looking forward to seeing what Rembrandt can do. The 5700G can play current games on low settings at reasonable frame rates - but at 720p. Rembrandt updates the graphics hardware to RDNA2 - the same as used by the current Xbox and PlayStation - and supports DDR5 RAM. That should deliver the same frame rates as the 5700G but at 1080p.
  
  
  
• What's the difference between the Snapdragon 888 Plus and the original Snapdragon 888? (WCCFTech)
  
  In short, one CPU core is 5% faster.
  
  Yay.
  
  
  
• Qualcomm is going back to custom CPU cores. (Thurrott.com)
  
  They shut down their internal CPU design team after the Snapdragon 820 - which wasn't great - and have been sticking to Arm designs since then.
  
  Recently they bought Arm server chip startup Nuvia for $1.4 billion. (Android Authority)
  
  Nuvia was founded by two of the top CPU architects at Apple, and Apple's CPU designs - while not as good as the tame Apple press likes to claim - are genuinely good.
  
  I hope Qualcomm succeeds with this. The quality of Apple's hardware designs is irrelevant to me because their software environment is locked down to the point where I can't use it for the work I do. Getting something equally good out into the open market and running Linux, or even Windows, will be a big advance.
  
  I questioned the move at the time, but if the best they can do with a mid-cycle refresh using Arm's core designs is a 5% speed bump, you can see why it was worth over a billion bucks.
  
  
  
• Intel might be bringing their next-gen Sapphire Rapids server platform to the desktop as well. (WCCFTech)
  
  Right now Intel has abandoned the workstation market to AMD. Intel's workstation parts peak at 28 cores, while AMD goes up to 64 cores. The new chips are expected to ship in Q2 of next year and go up to 56 cores.
  
  Only problem is, later next year AMD is expected to release 128 core CPUs for both servers and workstations.
  
  This goes back to why Intel is signing up to produce CPUs at TSMC. Without that they're locked out of key markets by the delays in updating their own fabs.
  
  
  
• Swedish supermarket chain Coop had to close 500 stores after the company running their cash registers got hit by that ransomware attack I mentioned yesterday. (Bleeping Computer)
  
  <deep breath>
  
  STOP OUTSOURCING CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE!
  
  
  
• Here's a handy list of Apple devices to steer clear of if you have a pacemaker. (ZDNet)
  
  Yes, the list includes pretty much everything Apple makes. But the safe distance is 6-12 inches. So just don't go to sleep with your iThis or MacThat resting on your chest and you should be fine.
  
  
  
• Out: Death panels. In: Death algorithms. (The Guardian)
  
  "Sure, we left you alone to see whether you'd starve or freeze first", said a government spokesman. "But it wasn't us, it was the algorithm."
  
  
  

posted by Pixy Misa at 02:15 AM

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