Daily Tech News 24 October 2021

• Intel's upcoming Alder Lake 12900HK laptop part is faster than Apple's M1 Max. (WCCFTech)
  
  On Geekbench, yes, but it wins on both single and multi-threaded tests, so that is comparing rotten apples to rotten apples. Plus Alder Lake is built on Intel's 10nm process (now called Intel 7 because marketing) where the M1 is built on TSMC's 5nm, so that's some solid work by Intel's CPU design team.
  
  
  
• Speaking of which, Apple's M1 has a PassMark score. (CPUBenchmark.org)
  
  I didn't even think to look.
  
  Compared to, oh, the Ryzen 5700U, to pick a competing chip totally at random, it has substantially better single-threaded performance but slightly worse multi-threaded performance at the same TDP.
  
  I trust PassMark more than GeekBench because it very closely tracks the measured performance of Python for the code I write. This may not mean anything to anyone else but makes it a handy guide for my own purchases.

• With two Dell notebooks purchased for me by my day job and one of them with an RTX 3060, which while not high end is perfectly adequate for the games I play, which is to say, Minecraft, I was looking to add a couple or three Intel NUCs or similar Asus mini PCs to act as local servers, and then turf all my legacy desktop computers. (The iMac, two old Dell all-in-ones, and an even older regular ATX system.)
  
  The problem - well, not problem so much - the thing is, if you're looking at one of the faster NUCs, and also looking at laptop prices, you can often find a complete laptop not far from the price of the NUC (which comes without memory, storage, display, keyboard, or operating system).
  
  And if that laptop has an eight core Ryzen CPU and user-replaceable memory and storage, it's basically a high-end NUC with a built-in UPS.
  
  So my desktop computer setup might shortly consist entirely of laptops. Lack of wired Ethernet is a problem, but I can get 2.5GbE USB adaptors pretty cheap.
  
  The model I'm looking at - Dell's new Inspiron 14 with the eight core Ryzen 5700U APU - lacks the Four Essential Keys, but it's 80% of the speed of my big laptop for 40% of the price, and it's going to be parked on my desk pretty much permanently, so the keyboard doesn't matter so much this time.
  
  
  
• Fucking magnets, how do they work? YouTube has banned a rap song, claiming that it contained "medical misinformation" (Fox)
  
  If you're getting your medical information from rap music then I don't think I can help you.
  
  
  
• Microsoft removed .NET hot reload support for CLI developers. (Microsoft)
  
  
  
• Microsoft apologised and restored .NET hot reload support for CLI developers, saying, and I quote, Wait, people are using that? (Microsoft)
  
  
  
• GitHub has added Copilot support for JetBrains tools. (GitHub)
  
  This includes their flagship IntelliJ and also apparently the language-specific IDEs like PyCharm and CLion.
  
  Just make sure you don't use any of Copilot's 7000 banned words, like "man" or "woman".
  
  
  
• More details on the Node.js apocalypse yesterday. (Bleeping Computer)
  
  The good thing is, the hackers were dumb enough to try to mine Monero through their exploited NPM package. That ensured they were noticed pretty much instantly. A smarter bunch could have hung around undetected for days or weeks.
  
  
  
• After being caught using monopolistic practices against Roku, and then being caught lying about it, Google is tripling down and pulling the YouTube app from Roku devices. (Thurrott.com)
  
  Google is already under antitrust investigation. They're just dumb.
  
  
  
• An Egyptian art robot was arrested by border security. (The Guardian)
  
  Allegedly because she had a modem.
  
  
  
• The Enhancer 2.1 update for AmigaOS 4 has been released. (Amiga.org)
  
  Wait, that thing is still alive?
  
  
  
• There's another Facebook whistleblower, and just like the first, it's gaslight all the way down. (Washington Post)
  
  The WaPo is breathlessly reporting what appears at best to be a non-story and at worst libel per se.

posted by Pixy Misa at 03:09 AM

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