Daily Tech News 11 August 2022

• Too many employees, but few work. (Business Standard)
  
  Mark Zuckerberg:

  Realistically, there are probably a bunch of people at the company who shouldn't be here. And part of my hope by raising expectations and having more aggressive goals, and just kind of turning up the heat a little bit, is that I think some of you might just say that this place isn't for you. And that self-selection is okay with me.

  Sundar Pichai:

  There are real concerns that our productivity as a whole is not where it needs to be for the head count we have. [We need to] create a culture that is more mission-focused, more focused on our products, more customer-focused

  Maybe you should have thought of that before you spent ten years hiring communists and destroying your respective companies from the inside.
  
  
  

• Intel's Arc A750 video card competes with Nvidia's RTX 3060. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Couple of caveats:
  
  1. You can't get the A750 yet.
  2. The 3060 is due for replacement soon.
  3. The benchmarks were run by Intel.
  4. To quote Gamer's Nexus:

  Intel's Arc GPU driver software is completely and utterly broken. Although the drivers work 'fine' for some gaming, as we showed in our initial review, the actual driver suite is a buggy and embarrassing mess that Intel should be afraid to even upload for use. Many of its features, like Intel Smooth Sync (which we tested here) and Intel Arc Control cause artifacting, flickering, crashes, or are just otherwise useless.

  Avoid.
  
  
  
• LG's new 97" OLED TV needs no speakers. (Ars Technica)
  
  Because the entire screen is a speaker. It allegedly supports 5.1 surround sound, which is odd because 5.1 means there are rear speakers which in this case means you'd need a rear screen.
  
  
  
• While Intel was losing money for the first time in decades, AMD posted a 70% year-on-year revenue increase. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Except that AMD just acquired Xilinx, as evidenced by the 10,538% growth of their embedded sector revenues, so the results aren't directly comparable.
  
  They still made a profit, and grew market share in ever sector, so not a bad quarter.
  
  
  
• GM has made the OnStar subscription plan a mandatory option on many new models. (The Drive)
  
  That will be an extra $1500, thanks. On top of your regularly scheduled price increases.
  
  
  
• If you want to spend far too much on a small Android tablet with a visible crease down the middle of the display which is uncomfortably wide in any case now is your chance. (Hot Hardware)
  
  About A$2500 on pre-order though they do offer a free upgrade from 256GB to 512GB - which is good because this doesn't appear to offer any options for upgradeable storage.

posted by Pixy Misa at 04:43 AM

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