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Daily Tech News 4 January 2023

Top Story

• Turns out Intel didn't want to wait for CES to officially start either, and they just announced a couple of new CPUs, for suitable large values of "couple".
  
  For a start there are sixteen new desktop processors. (AnandTech)
  
  You can basically ignore that because there's only two you need to care about: The $134 i3-13100, and the $232 i5-13500.
  
  The 13100 is a simple but capable four core chip. Four cores isn't a lot these days but until late 2017 it was the most Intel provided in mainstream desktop chips, not the starting point.
  
  The 13500 is a fourteen core chip, though that's six full-size Performance cores and eight half-size Efficiency cores, so effectively ten cores worth of performance. The price is up about 15% over last year's 12500 but the multi-threaded performance is up by 50%. It's even 30% faster than the ten core 10900K from three years ago, while being much cheaper and using much less power.
  
  The 13400 is slower without saving much money and the 13600 is more expensive without being much faster. Neither one is bad but the 13500 is the sweet spot.
  
  
  
• Still watching Natsuki Subaru Dies a Lot. One of the things I noticed reading the manga after season one ended was that it can get dull when Subaru isn't dying a lot.
  
  Fortunately for Subaru's mental health he gets a brief respite in episode 33. Fortunately for keeping the story moving, in episode 34 he gets eaten by rabbits and commits suicide.
  
  Also still passing kidney stones. Not the worst I've ever experienced, but definitely the most. But I'll take a dozen small stones over one large one any day. I mean, that's what they do to you in hospital anyway, so it's really saving on the medical bills.

Tech News

• Intel also announced 32 new laptop chips. (AnandTech)
  
  That's too many to even hope to track, so here are some ground rules:
  
  1. Don't buy an HX model without dedicated graphics. This is a desktop chip running in low power mode and the integrated graphics hardware comes in either crappy or extremely crappy configurations.
  2. The H models (and the single HK model) mostly have okay graphics and are decent workhorses but power hungry.
  3. The P models all have okay graphics and are decent workhorses but still power hungry.
  4. The U models suck.
  
  
  
• Finally the N series are low end chips with only the half-size Efficiency cores. (AnandTech)
  
  These are the new cheap and cheerful Atom chips but they are by far the best Atom chips Intel has ever produced. If they are actually cheap - which will depend on the deals Intel provides manufacturers, because the list price is absurd - they should be perfectly fine for basic computing tasks. I look forward to seeing some benchmarks on these.
  
  
  
• Nvidia announced the 4080 12GB edition. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  They're calling it the 4070 Ti now and they did in fact cut $100 off the price. That makes it one of the better deals of the latest generation of graphics cards though at $799 it's not at all cheap.
  
  
  
• Dell announced a new 6K monitor. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Dell already has an 8K monitor but it costs around $4000 and is hard to find. 6K seems to be a comfortable mid-way point for high-resolution video editing - high-end video cameras target that resolution, as does Apple's Pro Display XDR.
  
  It has Thunderbolt/USB-C and DisplayPort support, a USB hub that works as a KVM switch for connecting two computers, a bundled 4K webcam - a removable 4K webcam - and built-in 2.5Gb Ethernet so it can be a all-in-one laptop dock.
  
  No price yet and no availability more specific than the first half of this year.
  
  
  
• AMD's Dragon Range laptop chips look an awful lot like their Raphael desktop chips. (WCCFTech)
  
  Up to 16 cores and 80MB of cache, combined with just 2 graphics cores - the current Rembrandt laptop chips have 12 - means that like Intel's HX range you really don't want this in a laptop without dedicated graphics.
  
  Still, 16 core laptops.
  
  Likely of more interest will be AMD's Phoenix range of laptop chips, expected to merge Zen 4 with RDNA 3, and rumoured to deliver twice the integrated graphics performance of any current laptop chip. AMD's keynote will be on the 5th, so more details then - or not, if the rumours were all false.
  
  
  
• Speaking of laptops, Asus announced a whole bunch. (WCCFTech)
  
  None of them (so far as I can tell) have the Four Essential Keys, but one model in the lineup - the ROG Strix G16 - has four keys where the FEK should be so a quick application of Windows PowerToys will fix that. It also has five bonus macro keys above the regular row of function keys, so you're not going to run out.
  
  The Zephyrus G14 in particular continues to be an annoyingly almost perfect small laptop. (Liliputing)
  
  
  
• Ruby 3.2 is out and averages 41% faster than 3.1. (Medium)
  
  This is something the Ruby team has spent a lot of time on. While 41% doesn't sound like that much, invert it and think of being able to save 30% on your server bills without needing to do any work. If you run a lot of Ruby software, anyway. Shopify does, and reported a 39% speedup on their code.
  
  
  
• QNAP, agai... Wait. Et tu, Synology? (Bleeping Computer)
  
  A maximum severity vulnerability in Synology VPN routers. I didn't even know they made routers.
  
  
  
• Sam Bankman-Fried, disgraced CEO of crypto Ponzi scheme FTX who stole $10 billion in customer funds and set it all on fire, has pleaded not guilty to being the disgraced CEO of a crypto Ponzi scheme who stole $10 billion in customer funds and set it all on fire. (CNBC)
  
  Since the next two most senior executives of crypto Ponzi scheme FTX have turned King's evidence he is very likely what is known in legal parlance as fucked, though we are still waiting to see whether this is merely Ghislaine Maxwell fucked or all the way Jeffrey Epstein fucked.
  
  Given that he is physically incapable of shutting up, my money is on the latter.
  
  
  
• We wish you a Merry Christmas,
  We wish you a Merry Christmas,
  We wish you a Merry Christmas,
  And please fill out this form expediting benefits for terminally ill cancer patients. No reason. (The Register)
  
  A British medical clinic got its wires slightly crossed when sending out 8000 season's greetings and instead told everyone they had metastatic lung cancer.
  
  
  

Congratulations on Your Purchase of a Lifetime License of Our Software, Time to Die Video of the Day

A farce in three four acts. First, Filmora applied terms for one license to an entirely different license, forcing people who had already paid for free lifetime upgrades to pay again.



Second, they said oops, sorry, we messed up, our bad. Just kidding, they said the terms of the license you agreed to no longer apply because fuck you that's why.



Oh, and third? They filed copyright strikes against channels discussing this malicious behaviour.



Against one of their own former brand ambassadors.
Fourth, after pissing off a large part of their userbase, they basically caved... And also threatened legal action against their own customers.



It's just... Why? It's like saving a dog from a burning building and then throwing it under a bus on live television.


Disclaimer: Nice lifetime license you have here. Shame if anyone retroactively modified the terms.