Category Archives: News

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Intel’s ‘One API’ Project Delivers Unified Programming Model Across Diverse Architectures | Intel Newsroom

Posted on 2019-11-21 by Published articles

Source: Published articles

Even the press release can't make it look like something other than Khronos' SYCL C++ extensions with a bulky coat of paint. It could be uglier, and Intel with open washing might be enough to unseat CUDA, so ...OK?

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Regional offices in Kentucky to issue Real ID licenses

Posted on 2019-11-19 by pappp

Source: Kentucky.com -- State

Article note: This is feeling clusterfuck-y. RealID _is_ kind of ridiculous, but Kentucky's continued botched handling is even worse.

A Kentucky transportation official says the state plans to set up 12 regional offices to issue special driver’s licenses that will be needed in less than a year to board … Click to Continue »

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Half-Life: Alyx: What we know about Valve’s upcoming full-length VR game

Posted on 2019-11-18 by pappp

Source: Ars Technica

Article note: Huh. I've been _deeply_ unimpressed by VR so far, but if anyone can make something compelling...
Yep, it's real—and here's what we know so far.

Enlarge / Yep, it's real—and here's what we know so far. (credit: Aurich Lawson / Valve)

For a certain class of video game fan, no news could be bigger than today's: Half-Life is back. In VR. As an entirely new game from the series' creators at Valve.

We're here to connect the dots between what has been announced, what has been rumored, and what we've heard from well-placed sources. Rise and shine, Half-Life fans. We have a lot for you today.

Months of rumors, then a TGA leak

We should probably begin with the game's name, as revealed in a leaked Game Awards 2019 presentation and confirmed hours later by an official post from Valve. Half-Life: Alyx is a brand-new game in the Half-Life universe designed exclusively for PC virtual reality systems (Valve Index, Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Windows Mixed Reality).

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Vegans sue Burger King over meat contamination of Impossible Burger Whopper

Posted on 2019-11-18 by pappp

Source: Boing Boing

Article note: On one hand, this is an obviously absurd demand. On the other hand, I'm now worried that restaurants are going to contaminate their grills with coconut from the fake burgers, and I'm going to have a surprise allergic reaction.

Some vegans have filed a lawsuit against Burger King because they cook the Impossible Burger Whoppers on the same grill as their meat burgers. According to the suit, the Impossible Whopper is not a vegan option and the restaurant doesn't disclose the meat contamination on their menu. Of course, vegans and vegetarians have been quite vocal about this issue since the Impossible Whopper's introduction.

According to TMZ, plaintiff Philip Williams "not only wants damages ... he wants the judge to order Burger King to stop cooking Impossible Burgers and the OG burgers on the same grill. Read the rest

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Intel end-of-lifing BIOS and driver downloads for dusty hardware

Posted on 2019-11-18 by pappp

Source: The Register

Article note: Really Intel? You can't afford a dusty static ftp so your legacy drivers don't become a Honeypot for shady malware filled file hosts?

You have four days left to nab what you need

Intel is removing drivers and BIOS for its old desktop boards so anyone running an old Pentium-based PC has four days to get hold of anything they might need.…

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Intel disables Hardware Lock Elision on all current CPUs

Posted on 2019-11-14 by pappp

Source: Hacker News

Article note: Getting a twofer today on "Intel processors get noticeably slower with each microcode update, as they are forced to disable sloppy bullshit that they shipped to win the numbers game." Latest microcode turns off all the TSX Hardware Lock Elision features in all processors, plus turns off a (probably exploitable) fast path for all JCC (Jump Conditionals) that happen to end on or across a 32-bit boundary (see: https://twitter.com/damageboy/status/1194751035136450560 ).
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Player three has entered Cray’s supercomputing game: First AMD Epyc, now Fujitsu’s Arm chips

Posted on 2019-11-13 by pappp

Source: The Register

Article note: I got a little look at the A64FX stuff at SC this year, and chatted with a Cray rep in front of a sample board; a year ago I was curious about Fujitsu's Post-K ARM plan announcement, now it's a goddamn impressive chip that is already here. A bunch of ARM cores with SVE (nice SWAR extensions) and memory interfaces that beat the pants off anything you can get in or out of accelerators has both serious performance potential and should be drastically easier to program to squeeze that performance out of than most current contenders. It sounds like Cray has only very preliminary plans to put them on the fancier interconnects, but even still, after years of present but not really, this suddenly makes ARM HPC very credible.

A64FX: Big in Japan, big in the US, UK at this rate

Cray has said it will build a family of supercomputers for government research labs and universities. The kicker? The exascale machines will be powered by Arm-compatible microprocessors.…

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Google wants to be your new bank

Posted on 2019-11-13 by pappp

Source: Engadget

Article note: Oh boy! Banking with google so you can get locked out of your inadequately regulated pseudo-bank because someone got butthurt about a internet shitpost! That seems like a GREAT idea. /s
It's not just Apple and Facebook diving headlong into the financial world. Google has revealed plans to offer checking accounts in 2020 through a project nicknamed Cache. The search giant won't handle the actual underpinnings -- Citigroup and a cre...
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US violated Constitution by searching phones for no good reason, judge rules

Posted on 2019-11-12 by pappp

Source: Ars Technica

Article note: Yeah! It's a little narrower and much, much later than I'd like to see, but the legal process is showing signs of functioning.
US Customs and Border Protection agents participate in a training exercise at the border with Mexico.

Enlarge / US Customs and Border Protection agents participate in a training exercise at a vehicle entry point along the border with Mexico on November 5, 2018, in Hidalgo, Texas. (credit: Getty Images | Andrew Cullen)

The United States government violated the Fourth Amendment with its suspicionless searches of international travelers' phones and laptops, a federal court ruled today.

The ruling came in a case filed "on behalf of 11 travelers whose smartphones and laptops were searched without individualized suspicion at US ports of entry," the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said today. The ACLU teamed up with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) to fight the government on behalf of plaintiffs including 10 US citizens and one lawful permanent resident.

The order from a US District Court in Massachusetts limits what searches can be made by US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

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More South Korean academics caught naming kids as co-authors

Posted on 2019-11-12 by pappp

Source: Hacker News

Article note: In case that there was any remaining doubt that the academic prestige game is a meaningless Goodheart's law artifact; preemptively priming your children's E-Peen for competitive advantage.
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