Daily Tech News 24 November 2021

• Bad news: DDR5 availability is a bad joke at this point. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Good news: It doesn't make any difference to typical workloads anyway, and where it does you'd be better off with a Threadripper or Threadripper Pro. For games, DDR4 averages about 2% faster than DDR5 because of the high latency of early DDR5 modules.
  
  I checked two Australian online stores plus Amazon and Newegg, and none of them have any DDR5 RAM. On eBay scalpers are charging between $25 and $80 per GB. Decent DDR4-3600 modules from Corsair, Geil, G.Skill, and Team are readily available at less than $4 per GB.
  
  
  

• No P-cores for you! (WCCFTech)
  
  If the listing here is correct, Intel is planning to flood the zone with low-power E (for efficiency) cores, while P (for power) core counts will remain static at 8. The new 12900K has 8 P and 8 E, while next year's 13900K is expected to have 8 P and 16 E, and the future 15900K 8P and 32 E.
  
  That's... Kind of mixed. The advantage is that Intel's E-cores are half the speed of the P-cores (actually a bit more) while using one quarter the power and die area, so on multi-threaded test you are potentially better off with this flood the zone approach.
  
  The downside is that you have huge disparities in individual thread performance depending on which core a task lands on. Bad enough on the desktop; chaos on a server.
  
  On the third side, while AMD offers a 16 core desktop CPU right now - since last year, though early on supply was pretty tight - it is clearly thermally constrained and would run faster given a higher power budget.
  
  
  
• GoDaddy leaked user profiles for 1.2 million WordPress sites. (The Daily Swig)
  
  Sounds like rather a mess. Usernames and passwords were exposed - plaintext passwords in some cases because they're stored in config files for the app, along with private keys for SSL certificates.
  
  
  
• You can't trust App Store review scores. (The Verge)
  
  I mean, yes, we all knew that, but this is an interesting case.
  
  

  How did “Apple Podcasts” suddenly go from 1.8 to 4.6 stars? Is Apple manipulating their own app ratings now? https://t.co/bSAr8sFKqQ pic.twitter.com/5kJKYd54VP

  — Kosta Eleftheriou (@keleftheriou) November 17, 2021

  
  

  All the new positive reviews appear to be talking about specific podcasts, instead of the app: pic.twitter.com/HCo7WCcmH3

  — Kosta Eleftheriou (@keleftheriou) November 17, 2021

  
  
  Yep. All the positive reviews are reviews of the podcasts, not of Apple's podcast app, which people still hate.
  
  
  
• Samsung is building a new $17 billion chip factory in Taylor, Texas, just outside Austin. (Yahoo)
  
  Not clear if this is for leading-edge production or for bulk production of older chips for embedded and automotive tasks - both are in short supply right now - but the price tag suggests it will be pretty up-to-date.
  
  
  
• India is planning to propose banning all private cryptocurrencies. (Bloomberg)
  
  Yeah, well, that's just, like, your opinion, man.
  
  
  
• The US is playing me too. (Bloomberg)
  
  The Federal Reserve, FDIC, and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency which I hadn't even heard of until Uncle Joe decided to nominate an unreconstructed Stalinist to the post, are working on regulations to roll out next year.
  
  On the plus side that might destroy the entire industry.
  
  
  
• How retarded are the retards at Axios? All the retarded. (Axios)
  
  They do eventually concede that there might be concerns with China's new privacy law, which places no restrictions whatsoever on the government while hampering private business.
  
  
  
• Russia meanwhile is demanding hostages from all foreign tech companies if they want to continue operations in the country. (9to5Mac)
  
  That's a hell no from me.
  
  
  
• Apart from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the new Macbook? (Hot Hardware)
  
  PC reviewer reviews the MacBook Pro, is not impressed with that stupid notch.

posted by Pixy Misa at 03:14 AM

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