Daily Tech News 10 March 2024

• The Pentagon is not hiding aliens or UFO technology from the public, said government spokesman Jybben Xylyn. (The Guardian)
  
  "We would not lie to you", added Xylyn, as he blinked his nictitating membranes. "As xeno... As humans we are congenitally unable to tell mistruths."
  
  
  
• The Pentagon is hiding aliens and UFO technology from the public, said Professor Avi Loeb of Harvard University. (WGBH)
  
  "See, these tiny specks of rock prove it", said Loeb. "These specks have bits in. You would not find bits like this anywhere other than alien spaceships."

• Watching the anime 16bit Sensation which is set (mostly) in a tiny third-rate game development studio in 1992.
  
  The details are pretty good - the computers are recognisable models that were available in Japan at the time, and among the many PC-9801s there's even a Sharp X68000.
  
  The programmer is working in real X86 assembler, and while the paint software the artists use is fictional its features are real enough. A bit lacking, really; I'm pretty sure automated dithering was a common feature by then.
  
  
  
• Speaking of the X68000 there's now an X68000Z mini available. (Retrolike)
  
  It's an emulator, of course, using a 1.3GHz Arm CPU to do the work, inside a miniature version of the famous dual-tower X68000 case. Reproducing the hardware itself would be far too costly for a crowdfunding campaign.
  
  But they have precisely reproduced the original keyboard and mouse.
  
  Wonder if I can pick one up.
  
  Wonder if the operating system is available in English.
  
  
  
• The Macbook Air is lightweight and completely silent - there's no fan - and the CPU hits 114C under load and runs 33% slower than a Macbook Pro with the exact same chip - there's no fan. (WCCFTech)
  
  This was true of prior Macbook Air models as well. Apple's CPUs are genuinely good, but they're not magic.
  
  
  
• Intel's Core i9 14900KS is 3% faster than the 14900K, 30% more expensive, and consumes up to 400 watts. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  It can also make crepes.
  
  In fact, it makes crepes even if you don't want it to.
  
  
  
• Nvidia's next-generation graphics cards - which we might see before the end of the year - could have 50% faster memory and 50% more memory. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  This is because they'll be using GDDR7 memory, which is 50% faster (it's trinary) and can also be 50% larger than GDDR6 (24Gb per chip instead of 16Gb).
  
  Just taking that and adding it to a card like the RTX 4060 would fix a lot of problems, so expect Nvidia to raise prices as well.
  
  
  

posted by Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM

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