Daily Tech News 10 April 2022

• Couple more house notes:
  
  
• 9' ceilings. I'd forgotten to ask, though it was clear from things like the hanging kitchen lights and the amount of wall above doorways that they were more than 8'.
  
  My current place has 8' ceilings, and in the ensuite which is directly under the main bathroom upstairs, only 7'. A little less in fact because the floor is raised by the tiles. I can stand in the shower and place the palm of my hand flat against the ceiling, and I am not particularly tall.
  
  
• What the heck is going on with those power points in these photos? Zoom. Enhance. Aha, USB!
  
  Forgive me if I test those with my oldest and least favourite device first. Wonder if I can get a cheap USB power tester for that matter.
  
  Handy though.
  
  
• Chilled and boiling water on tap in the kitchen. Nice. Oh, and a digital shower temperature thingy in the ensuite. Which I expect will fail after a few years and cost a fortune to replace.
  
  There's a reason this one cost 10% more than the other house the same size: They filled it up with neat toys. And I don't dislike neat toys.
  
  
• Double glazing throughout. Never lived in a place with that before; never needed it before. But in May last year - not even winter - there were already six nights below freezing up in - well, it's not a huge secret; there aren't many towns in Australia above 3000 feet elevation. One of those few.
  
  Come to think of it, double glazing would be great where I am right now - not for thermal insulation but for noise. Why are there toddlers screaming in the driveway at 1am?
  
  
• All electric except for the stovetop, but with a big solar array to cut down on bills. Ducted HVAC and also underfloor heating, which again I've never had before.
  
  
  
• AMD's "Raphael" Ryzen 7000 desktop CPUs go into mass production this month. (WCCFTech)
  
  That would put them on track to be in retail in September or October, assuming no hiccups.
  
  New features to look forward to:
  
  
• Zen 4 core - about 25% faster than Zen 3
• DDR5 and PCIe 5 support
• Built-in USB 4 / Thunderbolt 3 with dedicated PCIe lanes
• Integrated graphics included on (all?) CPU parts as well as "APUs"
• Max TDP increased from 105W to 170W
  
  
That last item is important because the 16-core 5950X is clearly thermally limited on heavy multi-threaded workloads. There will still be low-power 65W models; you just won't have to exceed the rated specs to get maximum performance from the high-end models.

• From Lothar of the Hill People:

  Tech question; Hardware RAID Problem. Dell T1700 Workstation Service Tag JT1YB42 with Intel Premium RST Controller and BIOS.
  
  ISSUE: Win 10 64 bit 2021 2H update failed, leading to a very long automatic Windows system rollback / restore. The Intel Driver assistant also installed a different driver and at the same time dis-abled the desktop app used for managing the RAID Array (Raid 1 Mirror with 2 HDD). Worse, the failed update broke one drive in the array. I installed a new drive, and used the Intel boot BIOS to join the new HDD to the array. It joined but never rebuilt and because the Intel Raid Management App was then disabled, and is now not supported by Intel, I can't use any app to tell the RST controller to rebuild the array. I'm running on one HDD.
  I've bought 2 more drives, but cannot proceed until I find a compatible RST hardware driver and an associated Intel app that can be installed on this machine.
  
  My questions are: 1. How can I find the correct recent driver with it's desktop management app for this chipset? Intel has dozens, Dell hasn't helped.

  Well, that's certainly a question. I'd suggest posting on the Dell subreddit.
  
  An alternative that should be possible with Windows 10 - I think - would be to use Storage Spaces to mirror your existing drive. That doesn't care about the RAID controller or drivers or management software; it's all done by Windows itself.
  
  
  
• From Pixy Misa:

  Anyone have experience with Roombas and similar robot vacuum cleaners?
  
  This house is twice the size of my current house, and all on one level except the garage, so it seems like a reasonable thing to get, where it would be entirely useless where I live now.

  Your best bet is to - wait a minute.

• GitHub can now alert you to supply-chain vulnerabilities in the dependencies (third-party libraries) in your code. (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Well, that would just be an alarm that goes off all the time, so more relevant is that it can tell you where these issues are and what you can do about them.
  
  
  
• California is looking to regulate AI-based employee hiring systems. (The Register)
  
  At multiple levels, such that both the customers and the vendors could face legal liability if the software is found to unfairly discriminate.
  
  I'm of two minds about this, because on the one hand most of this software is complete crap, and on the other hand California.
  
  
  
• How does a high-end SSD from 2018 fare when reviewed in 2022? Not great. (Serve the Home)
  
  Though to be honest, this is still not a bad drive. If I had one in an working system I would not feel any burning need to replace it.
  
  
  
• I hate Windows 11. Can I downgrade to Windows 10? (ZDNet)
  
  This question came up here recently, and this is a fuller answer than I gave.
  
  You can't roll back from pre-installed Win 11 to Win 10, but the two releases use the same activation keys (at least so far). If Windows 11 works on your PC you can download and install Windows 10. It will still be supported with regular updates through 2025.
  
  
  
• Amazon is fighting its warehouse employees' plans to unionise. (The Washington Post / MSN)
  
  First time as tragedy, second time as farce. This is Microsoft's news site republishing a story by the Amazon-owned* far-left Washington Post about corporate-left Amazon fighting to destroy its working-class left employees.
  
  There is not enough popcorn.
  
  * Yes, Bezos rather than corporate, whatever.

posted by Pixy Misa at 05:00 AM

| Access Comments