Daily Tech News 30 July 2021

• My day job continues to drive me insane, but I have a very capable assistant and today got a raise, back-dated to the beginning of the month. So I'll soon be insane but with a shiny new computer.
  
  
  
• The server hosting my blog did not crash overnight, so that was nice.
  
  
  
• AMD has announced the Radeon 6600 XT, set for release August 11. (AnandTech)
  
  Suggested price is $379, but I wouldn't expect it to be going for less than $500.
  
  Wait for benchmarks on this one, because it's hard to predict how it will compare against the existing 6700 XT. It has 80% of the compute capacity but only 33% of the on-chip cache, so it will likely depend on the individual games you want to play.
  
  It should be fine for any game at 1080p, though. Only if you want to play at higher resolutions is there likely to be an issue.
  
  
  

• There's now a standard for LPDDR5X - faster memory for laptops and phones. (AnandTech)
  
  It will run at up to 8.5GHz, which should be great when coupled with AMD's next-generation integrated graphics. And Apple's Arm-based Macs too.
  
  
  
• Other gaming PC makers say they're not facing the same problems as Dell. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  The California legislation is stupid, and the states that blindly adopt it are stupid, but Dell's standard configurations are also stupid.
  
  
  
• Intel has launched its new range of Ice Lake workstation CPUs. (WCCFTech)
  
  With up to 38 cores and 64 lanes of PCIe 4.0, they will compete with AMD's Threadripper Pro, which has 64 cores and 128 lanes of PCIe 4.0.
  
  And is cheaper.
  
  Oops.
  
  
  
• An enormous Tesla battery farm being built near Melbourne caught fire. (The Age)
  
  Looks like just one of the pods - each the size of a half-length shipping container - was affected. Oh, and everyone who lives within ten miles, because it belched toxic smoke everywhere and Melbourne is currently in lockdown.
  
  
  
• Safari is bad. (HTTPToolkit)
  
  It's filled with bugs and lacks features available in every other browser, forcing developers to work around it. I know our UI team flinches when they hear the name mentioned.
  
  It's the only browser available on iOS though, because fuck you that's why. You can pretend to install another browser, and iOS will pretend to let you, but on the inside they're all Safari and all have the same bugs.
  
  
  
• It's a race to the bottom as China decides to suicide its own economy. (Bloomberg)
  
  Tencent lost 23% of its market cap, and private education companies were forbidden from... Basically forbidden from existing.
  
  China's strong economy in recent decades has been due to their switch from communism to fascism. Looks like they may be switching back.
  
  
  
• One of the two HP notebooks I wanted to get - the new Envy 13 with the 4K display - is now listed on their Australian online store. Not available, but listed. About a 40% markup over the US price, but listed.

posted by Pixy Misa at 04:56 AM

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