Daily Tech News 28 October 2023

• Tech layoffs are back with a vengeance. (Tech Crunch)
  
  Not just in the "big tech" firms that are 90% diversity hires at this point, but real companies building real products like Nokia, SiFive, and Solidigm (the name of Intel's SSD unit now that it's owned by SK Hynix).
  
  Wait, you say, didn't Tech Crunch tell us tech layoffs were a thing of the past?
  
  They did indeed, last month. And this article actually calls out their own previous reporting rather than hiding it under the rug:

  Last month, Alex wrote that tech layoffs were pretty much a thing of the past. Shouldn't have said that, buddy, you jinxed it.

  Blame Alex.
  
  
  
• My notebook unpooped itself. Not entirely sure what happened there, but I did get a new notebook set up last night just in case. (One I bought last year but haven't used much yet.)

• Asus has a big new Threadripper motherboard. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Five PCIe slots (three of them PCIe 5), four ECC Registered memory slots, three M.2 slots, optional IPMI for remote management, and... Stuff. They don't have the full tech specs up yet since release isn't until next month.
  
  Only having four memory slots is a bit meh; in practical terms that means you can have 256GB of RAM where you can easily get 192GB on a regular motherboard. There are probably larger modules out there but they're not easy to find.
  
  Price TBA. Chance of me getting one: Slim.
  
  
  
• The Threadripper Pro is getting benchmarked and is impressive. (WCCFTech)
  
  The 64 core and 96 core models now hold the top two positions on Passmark, 60% faster than Intel's fastest chip.
  
  And the 24 core 7965WX outruns the 64 core 3995WX, which is... Well, probably a quirk of the benchmark, because the individual cores are not twice as fast.
  
  
  
• Intel's new 7529 pin CPU socket doubles as a waffle iron. (Serve the Home)
  
  You'll want to put it into low-power mode though or you risk burning your waffles.
  
  
  
• Sam Bankman-Fraud says he didn't steal customer funds. (Tech Crunch)
  
  Rather, Alameda (which he controlled) borrowed the funds from FTX (which he controlled) without authorisation by the customers and with no plan to pay them back.
  
  Totally different!
  
  
  
• Almost what I want: The Pimoroni Picovision has two RP2040s: One as the CPU and one as the video chip. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  The RP2040 is the chip used in the Raspberry Pi Pico. It has no dedicated video hardware, but the chip is so well-designed that not only can it generate video without external hardware, it can generate an encoded HDMI stream without external hardware. And the chip costs a dollar.
  
  This device is a main board with an RP2040 and an HDMI socket, plus a connector for a regular Pi Pico, plus 16MB of external RAM because if you're doing video the Pico's internal 256k fills up pretty fast.
  
  I'd like to see a single board with the two RP2040s and all the necessary connectors, but in the meantime this will do fine.

posted by Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM

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