Daily Tech News 23 July 2024

• The US is all-in on nuclear rockets. For realsies. (Ars Technica)
  
  The article starts with a review of past US experiments with nuclear rockets:

  The first of those reactors was called Kiwi-A. The test done on July 1, 1959, proved that the concept worked, but there were devils in the details. Vibrations caused by the flow of hydrogen damaged the reactor after just five minutes of operation at a relatively meek 70 megawatts. The temperature reached 2,683 K, which caused hydrogen corrosion in the rods and expelled parts of the core through the nozzle, a problem known as "shedding."

  Shedding, also known as "Fuck this I'm moving to Bouvet Island and you can contact me by albatross".
  
  The primary impetus for this renewed interest despite some issues with past attempts is China's growing space industry. Nuclear rockets make far more efficient use of the reaction mass than chemical rockets, but are only practical for general use once you pass a certain size - about the size of SpaceX's starship - because you can't make small nuclear reactors.
  
  Not unless you are willing to kill everyone who works on the project, anyway.

• Greece's land registry was hacked and 1.2GB of data stolen. (Bleeping Computer)
  
  If you think that's not a lot for a national government department, you're right. The attackers accessed the database but were stopped before they could steal more than 0.0006% of the data.
  
  
  
• An interview with the lead architect of AMD's Zen lineup, discussing Zen 5 which arrives in the next week. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  A couple of interesting points:
  
  First, the laptop versions do not have the full 512-bit version of AVX-512. They have a half-size version, the same as Zen 4.
  
  Second, the compact cores (AMD's equivalent of Intel's efficiency cores) are planned for desktop... Eventually. Not yet though.
  
  Third, Zen 5 will be launching on TSMC's 4nm process, but 3nm versions will follow relatively soon. No mention on which specific models will get the 3nm chips though.
  
  
  
• Wiz has turned down a $23 billion offer from Google. (Fortune)
  
  I would have taken the money and allowed Google to ruin my work. Google is Google, but $23 billion is $23 billion.
  
  
  
• Inside a 64-port 800Gb Ethernet switch. (Serve the Home)
  
  That's a whole lot of bits.
  
  
  
• Elon Musk's X and xAI have fired up their new training system. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  This training system has 100,000 of Nvidia's $30,000 H100 AI processors.
  
  That's a lot.
  
  
  

posted by Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM

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