Daily Tech News 10 September 2022

• I found a new door to not open. Now that spring has come to New House City I opened up the sliding doors to the dining room to air the place out. I didn't worry about the screens because there aren't many insects around yet.
  
  There are birds, however, and it wasn't ten minutes before I had a magpie as a houseguest.
  
  Turns out that magpie poop does clean out of carpet if you get to it promptly, so that could have gone worse.
  
  
  
• Don't buy a graphics card for more than $500 right now. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  In fact, the article suggests, don't buy a graphics card for more than $250 right now. Mid-range and high-end cards from Nvidia and AMD are only a couple of months away. Low-end cards aren't expected to be replaced until later, perhaps the middle of next year, so the RX 6600 remains a solid choice if you need something right now.
  
  Otherwise hold off if you can.
  
  Which is slightly annoying if you want to build a Ryzen 7000 system because the new CPUs launch in two weeks.

• If you already did buy a graphics card for more than $500 and want to tinker with AI stable diffusion image generation programs like Img2img Stable Diffusion web UI makes that easier. (GitHub)
  
  Written in Python it provides you with - as the name suggests - a web UI so you don't need to remember 900 arcane command line arguments.
  
  It does specifically need an Nvidia graphics card - or rather, Img2img does - but I have a couple of those sitting unused right now and might give this a try.
  
  
  
• Winamp 5.9 is out. (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Because that llama's ass ain't gonna whip itself.
  
  
  
• The US Navy says all UFO videos are classified and releasing them will harm national security. (Vice)
  
  Did the Zerg also give 10% to the big guy?
  
  
  
• Are AMD laptops really more energy efficient than Intel? Yes. (Hot Hardware)
  
  There are some cases where Intel does very well, but overall AMD is ahead, sometimes far ahead - particularly if you're depending on integrate graphics:

  Regarding the utlraportables, AMD pulls off another really great efficiency win. Not only is the frame rate 60% higher than the Intel-based Samsung Galaxy Book2 360, it uses 30% less power. Plus the performance is something you can really feel; 46 fps is smooth enough, but averaging up near 74 fps is quite smooth, and the dips are going to be a lot higher than Intel's, too. We're at a performance level where we'd like to play this game on the ASUS machine, whereas the Xe IGP in the Core i7-1260P powering the Samsung notebook might force us to play on lower settings to be more comfortable.

  I'm looking forward to seeing what Zen 4 and 5nm bring to laptops next year. AMD has noted that in their new low power settings (65W) for desktop chips they are getting 75% better performance than with Zen 3, which is a huge increase for a single generation.
  
  
  
• Intel has started the first $20 billion stage of a planned $100 billion manufacturing site in Ohio. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  The first two factories are expected to come on line in 2025.

posted by Pixy Misa at 05:20 AM

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