Amid the push for technology independence, Chinese companies are pushing out more products to satisfy the need for the rapidly soaring demand for domestic data processing silicon. Today, we have information that Chinese Loongson has launched a 3D5000 CPU with as many as 32 cores. Utilizing chiplet technology, the 3D5000 represents a combination of two 16-core 3C5000 processors based on LA464 cores, based on LoongArch ISA that follows the combination of RISC and MIPS ISA design principles. The new chip features 64 MB of L3 cache, supports eight-channel DDR4-3200 ECC memory achieving 50 GB/s, and has five HyperTransport (HT) 3.0 interfaces. The TDP configuration of the chip is officially 300 Watts; however, normal operation is usually at around 150 Watts, with LA464 cores running at 2 GHz. China’s rapid improvement in microprocessors isn’t really all that interesting for us in other parts of the world, because chips from companies like Loongson don’t really make their way over here. What is interesting about this, however, is the implications this continued trend will have for the geopolitical state of the world. A China not dependent on Taiwan’s TSMC for its chips is a China that can more freely invade Taiwan.
Ampere has quietly launched its Altra developers kit aimed at software creators for cloud data centers. Along with Dev Kit featuring the company’s system-on-chips with up to 80 cores, the Ampere also offers a pre-built workstation running its 128-core SoC, according to Joe Speed, the company’s edge computing chief. An unexpected twist is that the workstation can run Windows and even has driver support for Nvidia’s GeForce RTX graphics cards. The Ampere Altra Developer Platform (AADP) is a prototyping system for general embedded applications, but it can obviously be used for building software for the cloud. The machine can use a variety of add-in boards, including Nvidia’s GeForce RTX cards. What is a bit surprising is that it can run Windows, making it perhaps the most powerful Arm-based machine that runs the consumer-oriented Microsoft operating system. Ampere’s ARM workstations have been high on my list of desirable hardware I cannot afford and have no use for.
Outlook on Windows has very much been the Internet Explorer of email clients. The Outlook desktop app on Windows, along with the Windows Mail app, were the only reason developers had to continue building emails with HTML tables. (Outlook apps on macOS, iOS, and Android are unproblematic.) Tables within tables within tables… It’s well past time that Outlook got a proper update, and it’s finally here. The new Outlook switches rendering engines from Microsoft Word to Edge. Support for CSS features in the new Outlook application appears to be identical to that of outlook.com, which is a great leap forward. I had to read that quite a few times before I really internalised that yes, Outlook for Windows used Microsoft Word to render HTML emails.
OpenBSD 7.3 has been released. As usual, there’s no nice write-up of the major new features and changes – as befits OpenBSD as a project, I’m not complaining – and since I’m not too well-versed in the world of OpenBSD, I don’t really know which of the massive list of changes impact the average OpenBSD user the most.
OpenVMS x86 is now available for (most) hobbyists! Almost a year after the official release most hobbyists can now login to the Service Portal to download their copy of OpenVMS 9.2 for x86, X86E921OE.ZIP and the PAK (license) files (x86community-20240401.zip), valid until April 2024. There seems to have been very little fanfare for this one, which seems odd considering the massive undertaking porting VMS to x86 has been. I definitely need to spend some time diving deeper into VMS and OpenVMS to prodive more useful blurbs than this one, but I fear this particular platform is a little beyond my pay grade.
Google announced today that it would enable WebGPU support in its Chrome browser by default starting in version 113, currently in beta. In development since 2017, WebGPU is a next-generation graphics API that aims to bring the benefits of low-overhead APIs like Microsoft’s Direct3D 12, Apple’s Metal, and Vulkan to web browsers and other apps. WebGPU support has been available but off by default in Chrome for a while now, because the API wasn’t finalized and things could break from update to update. Google says that Mozilla and Apple will eventually support WebGPU in Firefox and Safari, and browsers like Microsoft Edge and Opera that rely on the Chromium browser engine can presumably choose to switch it on just as Google has. Chrome 113 supports WebGPU on Windows, macOS, and ChromeOS to start, with “support for other platforms” like Linux and Android “coming later this year.” This browser version should roll out to all Chrome users sometime in May. I’ve never really needed any advanced 3D rendering in my day-to-day browsing, but that might just be a case of the chicken and the egg.
Java technology has been moving forward much faster in recent years with more frequent updates. Java 17 Long Term Support (LTS) was introduced in September 2021 and will be followed by Java 21 LTS in September 2023. With HaikuDepotServer (HDS) still on Java 11 introduced in September 2018, it was time to upgrade to 17 and then also make the transition from Spring 5 to SpringBoot 3 which was released in November 2022. Spring is a base technology for SpringBoot with SpringBoot providing more configuration and functionality by convention. These upgrades will bring HDS up to date with the current state of the art in backend Java and allow HDS to be maintained more easily going forward. An interesting look at the steps taken during this upgrade process. There’s also a brand new Haiku activity report with tons and tons of fixes, new features, and updates.
While trying to fix my printer today, I discovered that a PDF copy of Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin whitepaper apparently shipped with every copy of macOS since Mojave in 2018. I’ve asked over a dozen Mac-using friends to confirm, and it was there for every one of them. The file is found in every version of macOS from Mojave (10.14.0) to the current version (Ventura), but isn’t in High Sierra (10.13) or earlier. A peculiar find indeed, considering the utter uselessness and wastefulness that is cryptocurrency.
The Verge: In other words, the impressive PSVR 2 hasn’t been as popular as Sony may have hoped, Meta Quest Pro sales barely scratch the surface of the Quest 2’s nearly 20 million units sold, and the ByteDance-owned Pico is struggling, too. There have already been some signs that high-end VR isn’t taking, especially Meta’s decision to cut the Quest Pro’s price from $1,500 to $1,000 just over four months after the product first launched. But given that Apple’s headset is rumored to cost around $3,000 — double the Quest Pro’s starting price — the iPhone maker could have a steep road ahead as it tries to get traction for its headset. I have my sincerest doubts about consumer VR/AR goggles, but at the same time – it’s generally not a good idea to bet against Apple.
Nintendo has agreed to offer free lifetime repairs of Nintendo Switch controllers experiencing the dreaded “Joy-Con drift” to consumers across the European Union. The move comes in response to years of organized complaints and a pressure campaign from the European Consumer Organization (BEUC). In a 2021 report, that organization logged “nearly 25,000 complaints” from European Switch owners regarding Joy-Con drift, which causes a Switch joystick to register phantom inputs even when it is untouched in the “neutral” position. The BEUC’s formal complaint cited the Joy-Con hardware for “premature obsolescence” and said that it’s “high time for companies to stop putting products onto the market that break too early.” It’s absolutely crazy that it has taken Nintendo this long to formally address this issue. It’s incredibly widespread – we, too, have drift on both of our Switches – and a clear, unambiguous design flaw that could be solved in a variety of ways. We’ve personally considered buying new Joy-Cons, but that just feels bad, as if we’re rewarding Nintendo’s incompetence and malice with more money. Instead, we may opt to buy and install third-arty hall effect sticks instead, to avoid the problem from returning altogether.
I come bearing great news for everyone waiting for Star64 – the SBC will be available for purchase on April 4th. Due to some last-minute logistics issues we failed to make the March launch date announced in February – our apologies for the slight delay. The boards have now finally been delivered and getting packaged and ready for dispatch. Let me just quickly reiterate the Star64 features: Quad core 64bit RISC-V, HDMI video output, 4x DSI and 4x CSI lates, i2c touch panel connector, dual Gigabit Ethernet ports, dual-band WiFi and Bluetooth, as well as 1x native USB3.0 port, 3x shared USB2.0 ports, PCIe x1 open-ended slot and GPIO bus pins (i2c, SPI and UART). The board also features 128M QSPI flash and eMMC and microSD card slots. The board will be available in two different RAM configurations – with 4GB and 8GB LPDDR4 memory for $69.99 and $89.99 respectively. I’ll await some reviews first, but this seems like a very obvious buy if performance is at least reasonable. I really want to support RISC-V hardware, but so far, it’s been rather slim pickings. Here’s top hoping it gets better soon.
FORTH is an early programming language developed by Charles H. Moore in the late 1960s. More developed FORTH on an IBM 1130 minicomputer, which had a 16-bit CPU and only 8 KB of RAM. To keep things simple and reduce memory consumption, he implemented FORTH as a stack-based virtual machine using the Reverse Polish Notation (RPN). But FORTH is much more than just a programming language. Because FORTH has a built-in interpreter, compiler and disk I/O support, a computer running FORTH is also called a “Forth system”. My4TH is such a Forth system. You can develop and debug your Forth programs directly on My4TH. You can enter your source code with the built-in text editor and store it in the on-board EEPROM memory. From there you can compile and run it directly on the My4TH board. This is well beyond my capabilities, but it seems like an incredibly cool piece of hardware. Niche, sure, but I wouldn’t be surprised if some of you were into this sort of thing.
So, there is basically little you can do with Windows out of the box but buy subscriptions and log into pre-installed social media apps. One thing I knew right on the spot: That’s not an environment I want my kid to make his first steps “on a real computer.” Not in a hundred years. Never. Some people recommended tools to me which can be used to switch most of those things off. But honestly: How do you trust a system (or its manufacturer) if you can’t even know if those settings, which you deliberately chose, persist? What if I remove app x for a reason, and it suddenly pops up again after the next Windows update? Or the news section in the search menu? No way. I can no longer see a good use case for it, at least not in my home. Windows 11 is a dystopian experience.
With the benefit of hindsight, seems misconceived on just about every level. Six years in development, it was repeatedly delayed and when it was finally launched it was too slow and hardly sold at all. It was officially cancelled in 19861, just five years after it first went on sale. It’s not an exaggeration to call it a commercial disaster. So whilst it’s interesting to look at the reasons why the iAPX432 failed, it’s also useful to consider why Intel’s senior management thought it would work and why they got it wrong. If they could make these mistakes, then anyone could. We’ll look at the story of the iAPX432, examine some of its technical innovations and failures, and then try to understand why Intel got it wrong. An excellent deep dive into iAPX432, an architecture most of us will have zero experience with. Considering the recent passing of Gordon Moore, take some time to understand one of his company’s major bets that didn’t work out.
The project is codenamed CorePC and is designed to be a modular and customizable variant of Windows for Microsoft to leverage different form factors with. Not all Windows PCs need the full breadth of legacy Win32 app support, and CorePC will allow Microsoft to configure “editions” of Windows with varying levels of feature and app compatibility. The big change with CorePC versus the current shipping version of Windows is that CorePC is state separated, just like Windows Core OS. State separation enables faster updates and a more secure platform via read-only partitions that are inaccessible to the user and third-party apps, just like on iPadOS or Android. That’s definitely pretty cool and if they can pull it off, it will greatly improve the Windows update experience. That being said, Microsoft’s track record at modernising Windows hasn’t been exactly littered with success, and it often comes with major hiccups, problems, and upset users (Vista, Windows 8, Windows on ARM). I would love for them to succeed with this one, because in the end, it would benefit a lot of users.
While ChatGPT has become what seems like a household name, the AI model’s method of data collection is somewhat concerning and has some clear negative connotations. With that being the case, Italy is moving forward with legal action to stop ChatGPT from operating for the time being. Good. These corporate, for-pay tools are built upon the backs of untold numbers of writers and other artists who have not been asked if they want their works to be used. For instance Microsoft will stomp any misuse of its codes or trademarks into the ground, but at the same time, it’s building entire profit streams on the backs of others. This is wrong.
Ars Technica reports: Meta announced that starting next Wednesday, some Facebook and Instagram users in the European Union will for the first time be able to opt out of sharing first-party data used to serve highly personalized ads, The Wall Street Journal reported. The move marks a big change from Meta’s current business model, where every video and piece of content clicked on its platforms provides a data point for its online advertisers. People “familiar with the matter” told the Journal that Facebook and Instagram users will soon be able to access a form that can be submitted to Meta to object to sweeping data collection. If those requests are approved, those users will only allow Meta to target ads based on broader categories of data collection, like age range or general location. This immediately feels like something that shouldn’t be legal. Why on earth do I have to convince Facebook to respect my privacy? I should not have to provide any justification to them whatsoever – if I want them to respect my privacy, they should just damn do so, no questions asked. It seems I’m not alone: Other privacy activists have criticized Meta’s plan to provide an objection form to end sweeping data collection. Fight for the Future Director Evan Greer told Ars that Meta’s plan provides “privacy in name only” because users who might opt out if given a “yes/no” option may be less likely to fill out the objection form that requires them to justify their decision. “No one should have to provide a justification for why they don’t want to be surveilled and manipulated,” Greer told Ars. Exactly.
During my search, it became evident how uncommon the SF1 deluxe cabinet really was (pneumatic version or otherwise). There was also a paucity of knowledge about the machine—and especially about its pneumatic controls. Pictures and parts were scarce, and a video of a working pneumatic machine didn’t even exist on the Internet. It seemed that there was still so much unknown about the original arcade game that launched my favorite game series. In a way, the challenge of gathering this information was motivating—why not try to make a working pneumatic machine and share what I have discovered? In any case, my kids would love it. And so began this undertaking. I had no idea that the original Street Fighter had these pneumatic controls, but it does seem to be a brilliant idea – until you start thinking about it a bit more and realise the amount of beating these buttons would take.
A bit of background. When macOS Monterey was announced, Apple added an orange dot indicator that appears on top of everything whenever the microphone is in use. Kidding, it was quite a nice privacy addition actually. We could finally see in realtime when an app used the microphone, and what app that is. But this wasn’t something that everyone wanted. And so begins a detailed article about to hide the orange dot indicator. Can it be done without disabling System Integrity Protection?
This article is a year old, but I came across it and want to highlight it anyway. On 27 March 2017, Apple made one of its biggest corporate gambles. When it rolled out iOS 10.3 that day, the installer silently converted the storage in each iPhone and iPad to the first release of Apple’s new file system, APFS. Had a significant percentage of conversions gone wrong, Apple would have had a disaster on its hands, particularly as it didn’t admit to doing this until WWDC just over two months later, when it announced that APFS was coming to macOS 10.13 High Sierra that September. The conversion of god knows how many iPhones and iPads to APFS, entirely silently, is one of those moments where Apple really flexed its engineering muscle. Since file systems are a bit of an archaic topic these days, I find that Apple really isn’t getting the recognition it deserves for this silent migration to APFS.
