Daily Tech News 4 May 2022

• Chinese state hackers are targeting the Russian government. (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Yes, and everyone else on the planet as well, but it's worth noting that China and Russia are not allies. At best they momentarily share some of the same enemies.
  
  China has also been caught hacking Ukraine. Not sure if Russia has been caught recently hacking China, but I have no doubt they are doing so.

• AMD has confirmed the rumoured Dragon Range laptop CPU due next year. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  This will be a Zen 4 chip for high-end gaming laptops - probably with 16 cores.
  
  Intel already has 16 core parts but those are 8 performance cores plus 8 much slower efficiency cores. The AMD design will have 16 performance cores.
  
  
  
• Speaking of high-end gaming laptops the Gigabyte Aero 16 is one. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Well, sort of. It has a Core i7 12700H and an Nvidia 3070 Ti (Max-Q) which are good but not top-of-the-line parts, but it also has a 3840x2400 OLED display, dual RAM slots, dual M.2 slots, dual Thunderbolt 4 ports, and the Four Essential Keys.
  
  It's about 20% faster single-threaded than my Dell Inspiron 16 Plus, but unfortunately costs twice as much in Australia. I'm in no hurry to upgrade.
  
  (The Inspiron 16 Plus doesn't have dedicated keys for the FEK, but it has a numeric keypad which does double duty.)
  
  
  
• The 3080 Ti is selling at MSRP. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  A mere $1200.
  
  For a card that will be obsolete in a few months.
  
  
  
• Axios is garbage. (Axios)
  
  In their why free speech is bad article, they note that without some moderation, social networks die. But they also make it very clear that they are arguing in bad faith:

  Why it matters: Even much smaller social networks that aimed to minimize content moderation have found that an "anything goes if it's legal" policy quickly devolves into a miasma of violence, spam, fraud and bullying.

  Speech is violence and violence is speech.
  
  
  
• Overshooting the target: NASA requires the Artemis Moon lander to be able to deliver a payload of 865kg to the lunar surface; SpaceX's Starship can deliver 100 tons. (Ars Technica)
  
  That completely changes what is possible for future Moon missions. Just shove everything and the kitchen sink onto the rocket; it doesn't matter if it turns out you don't need it.

posted by Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM

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