Daily Tech News 9 August 2024

• The Raspberry Pi Pico 2 is here. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  This model increases the RAM from 264k to 520k and the ROM from 2MB to 4MB. The existing Arm Cortex M0+ cores have been replaced by two new dual-mode cores, that you can select to run either Arm code as Cortex-M33 cores, or RISC-V code as Hazard3 cores. Either way the clock speed has been bumped up slightly from 133MHz to 150Mhz.
  
  The new model also adds floating point support, something the entry-level M0+ core lacked, and also DSP extensions.
  
  The board costs $5 and the new chip it uses, the RP2350, starts at $0.80 in quantity.
  
  If you want just the chip it is available with 2MB of stacked QSPI flash - so you don't need a second chip for that - and as either a 60-pin chip with 30 available I/O pins or an 80-pin chip with 48 I/Os.
  
  It still has the fancy PIO controller - the feature that let the Pi Pico output HDMI video without any video hardware - and that has been upgraded from 8 state machines to 12. So in theory you could run three monitors off this version.

• BIOS updates for Intel motherboards are starting to show up. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  If your CPU hasn't started crashing yet you will want to update the BIOS to keep it that way, though you might want to wait a week or two to let other poor saps find out if there are any bugs.
  
  Initial testing suggests that the update doesn't change performance at all which leaves me to ask why the hell was Intel cooking people's CPUs for the past couple of years?
  
  
  
• A sixteen year old bug in all major browsers opens potential security vulnerabilities on MacOS and Linux. (Notebook Check)
  
  Not so much on Windows, because it depends on the precise semantics of the Unix network stack.
  
  The bug was identified in 2008, but you know how it is when you're multi-trillion dollar company.
  
  
  
• Apple has discarded its universally hated Core Technology Fee that it put in place to smother new app marketplaces - that Apple is required to support by EU regulations. (Tech Crunch)
  
  And replaced it with two new fees that are more complicated and more expensive.
  
  In addition to stealing all their money, Apple also requires that new app stores to hand over all information on their customers.
  
  Expect the EU to seize this opportunity to slap Apple with another multi-billion dollar fine.
  
  
  
• FTX will be paying customers back every single penny stolen in Sam Bankman-Fried's record-breaking swindle. (Ars Technica)
  
  About $12.7 billion in total.
  
  
  

posted by Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM

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