Spyke

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The Real Reason Nvidia Has Abandoned PC Gamers

The analysis comparing GPU flagships and price/wattage is somewhat shallow because it hides another thing that has been going on, the reduction of fundamental specs of the various classes of card. It used to be the case that a x80 chip meant it had a 512 bit memory bus, that it was ~500mm^2 die and hence a fully maxed out GPU and you got all that for ~$400-500 or so. Then the 680 came out and its specs were more like an x70 card from the prior generations, its only 294mm^2 and a 256bit bus, it was a rename of the lower class card, they never produced a flagship for that particular generation and some of that degradation in specs carried over to the 780 ti as well which now only had a 384 bit bus but its die size was ~561mm^2.

An RTX580 is now 378mm^2, which is about an x70 in pre 2012 terms and 256bit bus which is also x60-x70 class.

That process has resulted in the titans and the x90 and the x80 ti all slipping above the x80 as its specs gradually decline and its price is still going up compared to the historical picture, enormously more than inflation. During the same period CPUs on the other hand have stayed fairly similar in price with a steady increase in performance at a price point. That 680 oddity in the historical area was the moment things changed and AMD had a big part to play in the reason why with their 7970 being priced so much higher. This process started then in 2012 and its been getting worse as time goes on.

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Google is cannibalizing the web to feed AI

The death of Stackoverflow is one of these events where the site has been completely killed by AI and yet its contents is completely necessary for AI to know about solving programming problems. Its death will mark the end of AIs ability to learn how to solve programming issues. Its cannibalizing itself in the process, as it destroys its sources it destroys its own ability to learn.

world

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Whooping cough’s back — and it’s Covid’s fault

"While the the Covid-19 pandemic officially ended last year"

It actually didn't, the WHO still has it as a pandemic https://www.who.int/europe/emergencies/situations/covid-19. They declared the emergency over because people had accepted the consequences of the disease, but its still a pandemic.

Everything is up especially strokes and heart attacks but especially infections of diseases. The vaccination percentage hasn't dropped much. TB is on the rise for example and its due to immune system damage that Covid causes in a lot of people. It can take a year or more to recover from the immune disturbances that Covid causes, its driving a lot of increased infection. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41590-021-01113-x

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Yes, It’s Still Really Worth Avoiding COVID—Even If You’ve Already Had It a Few Times

The recent study where they intentional infected a bunch of paid volunteers and tracked what happened over the next year is really concerning. All of them have lasting brain damage and none of them can tell this occurred. The Long Covid studies are struggling to find healthy controls because there are a lot of people now walking around with the metabolic and vascular problems that are found in Long Covid but appear asymptomatic. This virus is doing a lot of damage and everyone is one infection away from their life being destroyed by Long Covid.

The studying I am referring to https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(24)00421-8/fulltext

Bare in mind it's one in 400k such studies showing the damage of Covid it's no outlier it's just really dumb.

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Linus Tech Tips pauses production as controversy swirls | What started as criticism over errors in recent YouTube videos has escalated into allegations of sexual harassment, prompting the company t...

This has been coming for a long time. I have had issues with Linus and his channel for a long time including making a complaint about breach of advertising standards in Canada (which resulted in a change forced by the ASA). They have become the model of how to make money on Youtube but they do so in such an unethical way where they make or invest in competing products that they also review. They have never had any appearance of journalistic standards or integrity, they don't publish errata or corrections and they make a lot of mistakes and the abusive reviews have been going on for a long time.

I am not surprised to find sexual harassment as well as undue pressure being applied in the workplace. It all centres and comes from the Narcissist at the centre of it who has built a media group off the back of civil law breaches repeatedly and continues to push the limits.

Labs was a terrible idea mostly because Linus and his media group will corrupt the results for his personal profit and he and Yvonne are the only ones making big bucks in all this. This has been building for a very long time, the lack of basic morality has been on display since the beginning.

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Cheap proton batteries compete with lithium on energy density

Battery tech exists in a variety of stages. We have been using Li-ion for ages but there are two technologies coming out this year and next which are very much real (from CATL the worlds leader in battery sales) one of which you can buy today.

You can buy Sodium Ion batteries already, search for it on aliexpress and you'll see the cells are for sale and BYD is already selling cars with it in. Its similar power in weight and density as Li-ion but it doesn't catch on fire and its a lot more environmentally friendly. Its good a chance of being the main battery used for home/grid storage and cars and other big battery uses, it also lasts a lot of cycles something like 6000-8000 so it will work for decades and its cheap at $50/KWH (li-ion is more like $130).

The other type is a Li-ion advancement into solid state that is due next year and it doubles the power density. That is probably going to end up in laptops and phones and some high end cars with massive range or smaller/lighter batteries where the increased cost for power density is worth it. Not yet at commercial volumes it is well past the theoretical stage however and very much something that can be manufactured already.

All this battery tech in the lab might very well be in the mix in the future but we don't need them to pan out with Sodium Ion filling that space and quite cheaply due to the abundance of salt. I think for grid storage reflux batteries might see a resurgence for their versatility but it remains to be seen if they become price competitive. Li-ion as we use today is very soon to be replaced thankfully.

world

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Just Stop Oil activists throw soup at Van Gogh’s Sunflowers after fellow protesters jailed

I see a lot of confusion and misinformation in the comments about what Just Stop Oils demands are. Their website makes it very plain and you can read through the details yourself. The press has massively misrepresented the groups demands and goals so its best to read it for yourself. https://juststopoil.org/

These are the 3 demands they have.

✅ Demand 1: No New Oil and Gas Licences – WON!

🔥 Demand 2: Just Stop Oil by 2030.

🧡 We need a Fossil Fuel Treaty.

  • Demand 1 they only just won when the UK government changed to Labour who have committed the first item, so all their previous actions were with the goal of not expanding yet further the use of fossil fuels.
  • Demand 2 is to phase the use of fossil fuels out by 2030. The UK has a net zero goal of 2035 so this would bring that goal earlier but many other countries have a 2030 target in the EU.
  • Demand 3 is all about trying to get a world wide treaty signed to stop the use of oil to try and meet the Paris agreement to keep within 1.5C.

There is no immediate demand to stop or anything so extreme, they are largely what the UK has already agreed to do but is failing to achieve.

linux

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Raspberry Pi - Introducing: Raspberry Pi 5

Its not very price competitive now. Its moved into the low end N100 territory with ITX boards and while its smaller and a bit less power its no where near as performant. They will still have some use in smaller applications but 5V x 5A is a chunky cable. I am not convinced this is the way now.

linux

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Linux has over 6% of the desktop market? Yes, you read that right - here's how

Most technology adoption follows an S curve, it can often take a long time to start to get going. Linux has gradually and steadily been improving especially for games and other desktop uses while at the same time Microsoft has been making Windows worse. I feel more that this is Microsoft's fault, they have abandoned the development of desktop Windows and the advancement of support for modern processor designs and gaming hardware. This has for the first time has let Linux catch up and in many cases exceed Windows capabilities on especially gaming which has always been a stubborn issue. Its still a problem especially in hardware support for VR and other peripherals but its the sort of thing that might sort itself out once the user base grows and companies start producing software for Linux instead.

It might not be enough, but the switching off Windows 10 is causing a change which Microsoft might really regret in a few years.