Daily Tech News 29 March 2023

• There's a bank run on Binance now. (WSJ)
  
  The crypto trading platform has seen outflows of $2 billion as thieves, scammers, and terrorists scurry for cover. But it's weathered similar outflows recently, so this doesn't necessarily mean doom.
  
  I'm sure the US authorities hope it does mean doom, because they hate crypto.
  
  For the wrong reasons.
  
  
  
• Meanwhile in brighter news Sam Bankman-Fried, disgraced CEO of bankrupt Ponzi scheme FTX, has been charged with paying $40 million in bribes to Chinese officials. (CBS News)
  
  No, you idiot. You take bribes. You don't pay them.

• In other good news Disney's layoffs of 7000 staff have wiped out its metaverse unit. (Deadline)
  
  Signs that someone at Disney is awake?
  
  
  
• You can now run Doom on the Commodore 64. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  By shoving an entire Raspberry Pi into the cartridge slot, but still.
  
  
  
• HP's Omen Transcend 16 has the Four Essential Keys. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  In fact, it has an entire ten-key desktop cursor pad - four arrow keys, the 4EK, plus Insert and Pause, plus another three keys above those.
  
  It would be hands down the best full-size laptop keyboard layout around except for some fucking reason the power button is sandwiched between F12 and Delete where you guaranteed to hit it with some regularity. This is particularly galling because there is an obvious location for it at top right where they have positioned the Print Screen key.
  
  PowerToys can probably fix that.
  
  Anyway, apart from that the laptop has up to an Intel 13900HX CPU (6P + 8E cores) or AMD 7940HS (8P cores), RTX 4070 graphics, 32GB of RAM, and 2TB of SSD, and a 2560x1600 16" display with mini-LED lighting.
  
  Prices start at $1670 though, so not exactly a budget item.
  
  
  
• Nvidia's RTX 4060 and 4060 Ti are expected to launch in May, after the 4070 arrives next month. (WCCFTech)
  
  The desktop models, that is; the laptop versions are already on store shelves. Inside laptops.
  
  These are expected to have 8GB of RAM. One of the good things about the existing 3060 is that it comes with 12GB of RAM. Well, not the laptop version, which only has 6GB, and not the butchered 8GB model, but the regular desktop card. That looks to have been cut with the new release.
  
  
  
• Intel's most expensive 4th generation Sapphire Rapids server CPUs can run Stable Diffusion image generation ten times faster. (WCCFTech)
  
  Ten times faster than what, you ask.
  
  Ten times faster than previous generation CPUs.
  
  But nobody runs Stable Diffusion on CPUs, you say.
  
  Well, yeah.

posted by Pixy Misa at 04:10 AM

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