Kaz

China Just Powered Up the World’s First Thorium Reactor — and Reloaded It Mid-Run WWW.ZMESCIENCE.COM They used declassified US documents to develop the technology.

In depth with Windows 11 Recall—and what Microsoft has (and hasn’t) fixed ARSTECHNICA.COM Original botched launch still haunts new version of data-scraping AI feature. Recall is a hacker's wet dream.

https://www.tweaktown.com/news/104554/amd-confirms-security-vulnerability-in-every-zen-1-to-5-processor/index.html Requires system admin to facilitate. If someone has system admin the system is already compromised but this might allow for long term persistence. Just another reason to stay on top of updates.

TSMC faces $1 billion US fine for making chips for blacklisted Huawei | Tom's Hardware WWW.TOMSHARDWARE.COM The company is cooperating. I think the large monetary threat is something news companies are grasping at because it's the maximum possible penalty. I don't know how TSMC can reasonably be held accountable for Huawei's deception, unless TSMC was aware of the deception. I suspect any fine will be much smaller as they are cooperating with the investigation. At most I can see the U.S. gobbling TSMC's profit margin up as a way of saying, "Don't do this again, it wasn't profitable."

The FBI Hijacked and Ran a Dark Web Money Laundering Operation Called 'ElonmuskWHM' GIZMODO.COM A high-level honeypotting operation by the federal government has been uncovered. I understand that people often use 'mixers' before cashing out after committing a crime, but why not just transfer it to monero, make a couple more transfers and then cash out a random % of it? That seems much safer than handing it to a random stranger who may or may not be compromised. What am I not understanding? People who pay their taxes usually only get caught because an e-mail address points back to them.

Out of curiosity, how much electricity are those of you who fold using? What is the overall benefit of folding?

Just a moment... VIDEOCARDZ.COM Shout out to speed_demon who posted this on discord.

UK's demand for Apple backdoor should not be heard in secret, says court | TechCrunch TECHCRUNCH.COM A UK surveillance court said the backdoor order targeting Apple iCloud can be heard partly in public. Here in the states, where free speech is a guaranteed right, we tried an Apple gag but Tim Cook went public about it and refused to break encryption. It was never settled in court because the FBI found other methods .

Coin-sized nuclear 3V battery with 50-year lifespan enters mass production WWW.TECHSPOT.COM Energy storage technology has reached a transformative milestone as the BV100, a miniature atomic energy battery... No mention of safety concerns, so it's possible there aren't any. Wouldn't it be nice if our electronics were designed to last 50 years?

Delidded AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D runs 23 degrees cooler | Tom's Hardware WWW.TOMSHARDWARE.COM Alternatively, you can squeeze 9% better performance using 73% more power. I don't feel that overclocking is worthwhile these days, but this makes a good argument for de-lidding!

Microsoft Warns 240 Million Windows Users—Stop Using Your PC WWW.FORBES.COM All change for PC owners as deadline gets closer. Debian stable with KDE-Plasma will be my replacement choice. Microsoft's approach feels a bit irresponsible to me. TPM 2.0 has never been that amazing or great, and I don't understand why they think all machines that don't have it deserve to be recycled/land filled. 240 million PC's is a vast amount of computers, and it's inevitable that many people will keep using them without changing the OS. That leaves the door wide open for botnets to run the show. I know Microsoft is trying to push everyone to use Windows 11 so AI can study the end users, but given the situation I think Microsoft should continue security updates for another 5-10 years. An alternative option would be removing the TMP requirements so more people can 'upgrade' to 11. I'm glad I made the switch to Linux, and I hope more people will consider it as an alternative for their older hardware. I may not have all the answers, but if anyone has questions I'd be happy to help out.

Lazarus Group Targets Job Seekers With ClickFix Tactic to Deploy GolangGhost Malware THEHACKERNEWS.COM Lazarus Group deploys GolangGhost via fake job interviews using ClickFix, targeting Windows/macOS users with finance roles. Fair warning crypto bros, organised crime is out to get you!

Defective RX 9070 XT card with pitted silicon surface runs extremely hot — report indicates it's unclear if this was an isolated incident | Tom's Hardware WWW.TOMSHARDWARE.COM The culprit appears to be an improper backgrinding pass on the back of the silicon. Just 1 so far, nothing to be alarmed about.

AMD pins Ryzen 9000 'failures' on compatibility issues — BIOS update recommended to avoid boot problems | Tom's Hardware WWW.TOMSHARDWARE.COM A BIOS update is all you need. I wasn't aware the problems were specific to ASRock motherboards.

Does your meshify 2 rattle all the time? Mine does, it's extremely annoying. Falcon Northwest has the best reputation, but they advertise as custom gaming PC's and I'm not sure that counts as prebuilt.

Game developers urge Nvidia RTX 30 and 40 series owners rollback to December 2024 driver after recent RTX 50-centric release issues Game developers urge Nvidia RTX 30 and 40 series owners rollback to December 2024 driver after recent RTX 50-centric release issues | Tom's Hardware WWW.TOMSHARDWARE.COM Rolling back to older drivers seems to be the only fix for some.

Used vs new is a lot tougher decision. I tend to buy the latest greatest and use it for 8+ years. I'm an enthusiast, and I don't think that's the optimal solution for most people. Most enthusiast upgrade more frequently. I think most people won't know the difference between a processor generation, but if you ask them what they would like to buy with 140€, they can give a good answer to that. In truth, it's going to depend more on what they are playing than anything else. For most people, buying a couple years old stuff and upgrading in 5 years makes more sense. For competitive FPS games, newer generation stuff makes a difference. Almost anything else, it's not really a factor. Sadly, I think the display makes the biggest difference for competitive FPS games. When playing Spelunky 2 on an entry level OLED TV, there's almost half a second delay on button press. It's playable, but it takes some getting used to. Half a second delay when shooting someone is a lot tougher to deal with. It takes good angles and holding positions rather than challenging people in straight up gunfights. There is a reason games are easier with cross-play enabled. TV gamers don't have the quickest response time. With all my high end gear, most of the games I play are 10 years old. That's why I don't upgrade very often, if it works, it works. *shrug* I think for anyone's first computer, can it run? Is the real question. There's no need to go all out to have an enjoyable experience. People get sucked in and buy that $1200 graphics card, but they don't use it enough to care that it's a couple FPS faster in some games. For anyone who really enjoys computers, or is a bit older and has more money available, buying high end makes sense. Then again, my Dad's retired and he still runs 12 year old computers that he bought 2nd hand because they can run his glider sim/VR and that's all he cares about. But you know, everyone needs a 5080 for minecraft!

TSMC Is No Longer Reluctant To Produce Advanced Chips In The US; Reveals Plans To Build A Cutting-Edge A16 (1.6nm) Facility In Arizona By 2030 TSMC Is No Longer Reluctant To Produce Advanced Chips In The US; Reveals Plans To Build A Cutting-Edge A16 (1.6nm) Facility In Arizona By 2030 WCCFTECH.COM TSMC has chosen the US as its next place of expansion, as the firm has now revealed that it plans to produce cutting-edge chips in Arizona. Taiwan has to be worried about their security. The desire to keep China from taking over TSMC has afforded them some security guarantees. It's safe to say that Taiwan officials are alarmed at this point.

The only reason to go intel is the integrated graphics, which is useful for running Virtual Machines. VM usage doesn't look like something you're interested in, so I would recommend AMD. 14900K had problems with degrading, there was a microcode update, and a 3 year extension of the warranty, but I certainly wouldn't de-lid one. Guaranteed they won't honor the warranty if it's delidded, and no amount of thermal cooling will make up for a CPU zapping itself to death. Supposedly it's fixed, but we won't truly know until??? It hasn't been long enough for degredation to show up since the micro code update. AMD has better performance, and uses less power, which puts it at a clear advantage. "Maybe, and future" are expensive investments. If you want a computer that is future proof, the only sure way is to build it in the future. I think you are over spending on the CPU and could go with an 800 series X3D. The x3D cores are only on the first CCD. A 9800X3D has 1 CCD with 8 cores, a 9900X3D has 2 CCD's with 6 cores each (making it only have 6 X3D cores and a clear loser for gaming). The 9950X3D has 2 CCD's with each having 8 cores, only one of them has X3D cache making it 8 cores that have X3D cache. Windows doesn't have a great way to assign cores to a specific task, so it's possible to have games using non-X3D cores and gaming performance can vary. That makes the 9800X3D the best gaming CPU, and the 9950X3D the best workhorse. You can still video edit with 8 cores, it's just going to take longer than 16 cores. If you aren't spending hours doing it, the time difference is probably inconsequential and not something you will recognize/notice. I'd also point out that the time difference is a compute difference, and not the amount of time it takes someone to figure out what they want to change and how to change it. Intel 14700K is also a decent option if you still want to go Intel. The only advantage the 14900K has is more e-cores, which you don't want doing the gaming processing anyways. Would I get the 9800X3D or the 7800X3D? That would depend on the market, my budget and the goals. The CPU will make a bigger difference at 1080p than 1440p or 4k. If going with a lower CPU allows for a better graphics card and higher resolution, I'd choose that. 1080p tends to be CPU bound, while just about anything else will be limited by the graphics card. At 4K resolution it's going to be a smaller difference, although it does supposedly help the 1% lows, but those are rare by nature. No graphics cards are fully saturating PCIE 4, so PCIE 5 is really for storage, and since you already have PCIE 4 m2 drives, I don't think it's worth spending additional money on. I don't know much about the power supply or cases on the market, so I can't help there. 9070XT should be a good experience for 4K gaming, but don't expect to max out the graphic settings of games without some upscaling. If you don't want to use upscaling, I suggest knocking shadow details down a notch or two. Shadows are very hard on GPU performance. My brain doesn't pay attention to how much detail is in a shadow, only that there is a shadow and I should be looking at what is causing it. Let us know how it goes!

I heard from Moore's Law is Dead a while ago (6 months?) that Intel engineers had wanted to do 1 big core that was capable of doing multiple tasks, but that management had said that was a stupid idea. Looks like Intel still haven't found their footing.

Nintendo introduces new lending system for digital Switch games WWW.THEVERGE.COM The children yearn for Blockbuster. It's awesome to see more options for sharing games, something that has really struggled in the digital age of DRM. Steam has a family share option that I highly recommend people look into if they are not already using. A steam family can have 5 members, allowing anyone to play another person's game as long as that game isn't already in use. There are some limitations, like only 1 family per account and a 1 year lockout on families if you leave a family after joining one. It's meant to be for real families, but if you're a gamer and you aren't using it, you should tag up with a few other gamers to massively increase your library at no cost. My brother in law and I are in a family. He's plays FPS games and it's significantly increased my game list. The only downside is that he gets all my humble bundle junk games, so it can be difficult to sort through all the junk to find the gems.

I need a wheel for driving games. It's on my desired items list, but it's next to an OLED monitor and VR. I should probably get my flight sim up and running before I spend more money.

There has never been another game that is it's equal for PvP. GvG and HoH were on a different level for team coordination. I knew multiple monks that refused to carry infuse health, because any time someone died it felt like they should have stopped it. 1/4th second cast skill that would give someone full health, but more often than not it wasn't what would save someone. I think the game started to suffer from buildwars after all the expansions were out. It was on full display for EvIL's split build vs iQ's turtle build. We used to friends list certain people for tournaments because their character name would give away the build they were playing. The problem with GW 1 was that it was incredibly hard to watch a game and understand all the nuances that were going on. A mesmer diversion catching the defensive elementalist's blinding surge wasn't something that spectators picked up on unless they knew what to watch for, but it could easily change how defensive a team had to play. Sometimes it came down to stuff like blinding the ranger first so that the Mesmer's diversion wasn't interrupted for the upcoming spike. Too bad twitch.tv wasn't a thing back then for high level commentators to give a play by play. GW 2 was/is great in it's own ways, but I wish we had a true successor to the original Guildwars.

I used to GvG a lot back in the day. Such a sad day when iQ beat EvIL's split build by turtling until Victory Or Death. They had a glyph sac meteor shower elementalist, and a ranger who sacked himself to stack up the enemy NPC's, making it easy for the elementalist to kill them all. They also had a Blood is power Necromancer feeding their monks energy. Devs decided VOD would just end the game after that. In all fairness, watching iQ sit there for 20 minutes made for a really boring championship game.

1984 was a playbook. It showed the different moves in the games to come. Orwell actually said he was really sick and possessed by demons when he wrote it.