WMGroomAK

If you want to think about it positively though, you can get an X399 now on either platform.

Based on some of the information that they compiled, it would appear that the Spectre and Meltdown patches do have an impact on any software that relies on the HPET for timing... General idea I think that Anandtech was trying to do on the original testing methodology was to ensure that all the benchmark suites were using as close to the same method of calculating time as possible across platforms.

Now to wait for the rant on the confusion soon to come on Intel X399 vs AMD X399... Personally, I think that this is something AMD was counting on, but should be interesting to see if there is any legal issues from that.

From what I've read on this, that was on an old FAQ that had not been updated in 5+ years... http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/your-ryzen-processor-warranty-states-you-may-only-use-the-stock-cooler.html They have since updated this to basically if the Heatsink/Fan is not designed to support the operation of AMD processors to be within their conformance. https://www.pcper.com/news/Processors/AMD-Clarifies-Warranty-Terms-Ryzen-CPU-use-Third-Party-Coolers https://support.amd.com/en-us/warranty/rma/terms/pib

If I remember from the article correctly, it is also mentioned that overclocking software (e.g.: Ryzen Master) can force the HPET to be used. That means a reviewer using software unaware that it is enabling the HPET may actually be reporting lower than optimal values (or the benchmarking software is improperly calculating results)... Would be nice to know what applications are forcing the use of HPET and what the performance impact is in scenarios as well as whether this is being exasperated via the Meltdown/Spectre patches or if it is specifically exasperated via the HPET timer for Coffee Lake being different from how other HPET timers are set. (Specifically looking at page 2 of the article where most of the HPET timers listed show at 14.32 Mhz, while the 8700k timer shows 24.00 Mhz.) Honestly think that there could be a lot of testing done on this as a specific issue and while the way it was brought up is not ideal, it appears to be an important consideration...

Quoting the article: Basically goes back to Ian's overclocking roots and trying to ensure that individual motherboards are not creating an issue... Definitely encourage reading the whole article as there are a lot of details discussed that may not be considered. It would also be relevant to consider this issue when looking at other reviewers results, especially if a reviewer has an OC software that they've run on the system as that may have forced HPET on the system.

Updated the original post to reflect a potential report from the Chinese Government that is fairly critical of ZTE over the handling of this... Does not sound like their government is happy with how ZTE has managed this whole situation and some people may be out of business fairly soon, even if the government keeps the company going. https://qz.com/1259199/an-internal-chinese-government-report-slammed-telecom-giant-zte-for-lying-to-the-us/

He posted a video on an issue he had that killed his AMD SSD when he was getting ready to test... Troubleshooting the problem, it appeared to be a bad SATA power cable.

Can I say that I'm waiting for them to come up with this as a service and then use poorly secured AWS S3 buckets for servicing and storing the data they compile since I don't think I've gone more than two weeks this year without reading a story about one of those issues?

One clarification that I think should be made after reading the patent in a little bit of detail (will probably add an edit) is that the patent appears to be mainly for a way to combine multiple data sources and streams to create a more comprehensive data set for analytics and selling that as a service... Crypto is mentioned first in the following quote from the Patent Details:

It mentions bitcoin transaction data as an example of a type of information that the service could correlate data for... Currently still reading through the Patent description and one paragraph that is sticking out is: It would seem reading into this a bit more that it may be for a use case beyond just tracking crypto transactions and tying it to buyers and sellers...

Amazon appears to be enjoying a news week this week between the deals with Best Buy and having over 100 Million Prime subscribers and now they have received approval on a patent filed back in 2014 that is designed to correlate cryptocurrency transactions data with shipping addresses and IP addresses in order to develop a system to identify users. The purpose of this correlation/tracking would be to create a subscription service for users like the IRS or law enforcement to use in order to identify the cryptocurrency owner. With the increasing amount of activity in the cryptocurrency field, I don't see Amazon sitting on a patent like this, especially if they can see a profit from either developing the system to use as a part of their payment methods or licensing it to a third party... Now though with the big public outcry on privacy, this could be a bit of a sticking point for some people, especially with the data tracking and collection. https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/d35eax/amazon-bitcoin-patent-data-stream-identify-cryptocurrency-for-law-enforcement-government US Patent Office filing: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.htm&r=1&p=1&f=G&l=50&d=PTXT&S1=9,947,033.PN.&OS=pn/9,947,033&RS=PN/9,947,033 EDIT: One clarification that I think should be made after reading the patent in a little bit of detail is that the patent appears to be mainly for a way to combine multiple data sources and streams to create a more comprehensive data set for analytics and selling that as a service... Crypto is mentioned first in the following quote from the Patent Details:

I've been trying to stay out of this conversation as I don't see it being productive or anyone being able to successfully convince you of any errors, however, I will point out that laws do have lots of room for interpretation and usually are written with that in mind... Statutes that are written by lawmakers and regulations that are adopted by executive branches of government to enact statutes usually have areas that are not specifically defined because you cannot account for every eventuality. The courts serve as the balance on this by interpreting the laws when specific cases are brought before it in order to set precedence or require that new statutes or regulations be adopted to define legal grey areas.

Fairly sure that they started work on those products prior to the denial order being enacted so they may have devices and SD845s already allocated and in the production cycle, however, they probably won't be able to get any more Qualcomm parts going forward until 2025. Anandtech also wrote up a bit on the finer details of what this involves... https://www.anandtech.com/show/12657/doc-zte-denial ... While I’m not too clear on the exact legal ramifications here and this is just my interpretation, it seems that if Qualcomm would be outright blocked from issuing ZTE an ECA, which is essentially an EAR waiver, and thus not able to sell any of its products to ZTE anymore. The ramifications could go even further because seemingly the EAR applies to re-exports as well, so any other company using US IP would in theory be blocked from selling to ZTE. Semiconductor companies such as SoC vendors make wide use of common foundation IP which often can come from US vendors, say from Cadence or Synopsys. If such products fall under the EAR, then the regulations could have a domino effect on the product chain and also involve non-US silicon vendors such as MediaTek or Samsung.

From reading the penalties part in the denial order, I think that they would have to completely change up their corporate structuring in order to do that and honestly don't see that as financially feasible...

In what can be viewed as a potential follow-up from a previous story (linked below), the US Dept. of Commerce has enacted a Denial Order related to a plea agreement last year concerning ZTE's providing telecomm equipment to North Korea and Iran. This denial order will prohibit American companies, like Qualcomm & Intel, from selling and exporting components to ZTE for up to 7 years. Hot Hardware Article: https://hothardware.com/news/us-bans-zte-from-buying-components-from-american-suppliers-including-qualcomm This would appear to me that it will effectively stop any new ZTE devices from being sold into the American Market at least, however, it will also probably really limit what ZTE can build hardware wise as it would appear they can no longer get any Qualcomm chips for their devices (at least through direct sales). While I'm sure the US market was probably only a small portion of their overall business, the potential loss of American company sales and exports of hardware would seem like a fairly significant issue... US Dept. of Commerce Press Release: https://www.commerce.gov/news/press-releases/2018/04/secretary-ross-announces-activation-zte-denial-order-response-repeated US Dept. of Commerce Denial Order: https://www.commerce.gov/sites/commerce.gov/files/zte_denial_order.pdf UPDATE: In an update to the Denial Order story, Quartz is reporting on an internal report by the Chinese State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) that appears to be fairly critical of ZTE and it's dealings with US Regulators. https://qz.com/1259199/an-internal-chinese-government-report-slammed-telecom-giant-zte-for-lying-to-the-us/ So it would appear that ZTE's leadership might be in some serious hot water at home, but that the Chinese Government will work to keep the company in operation due to potential economic and military security impacts.

Not that I've read. Appears to be more geared towards mobile gaming, especially with more games adding in mobile ports. Although the first 50,000 pre-orders get a free Gamepad accessory that docks onto the side.

In a bid to give Razor a bit of competition (or add more PUBG mobile players I guess) Xiaomi has announced their plans for a Gaming Smartphone. This phone will be running a Snapdragon 845 with an Adreno 630 GPU and 8 GB of RAM and using a 5.99-inch IPS display with 97% coverage of DCI-P3 color space a 550 nit brightness. One of the features I thought sounded unique is that they supposedly have some sort of multi-stage direct contact liquid cooling system, which can supposedly drop CPU temps by 8-degrees C. Hot Hardware: https://hothardware.com/news/xiaomi-blackshark-android-gaming-phone-snapdragon-845-8gb-ram-128gb-storage Techspot: https://www.techspot.com/news/74149-xiaomi-launches-black-shark-compete-razer-phone.html Wonder if this would perform any better than the Liquid Metal mod that Linus did on the Razor Phone... Also wonder how good the battery life is on this given that they are going with a 4000 mAH. Although the 20 MP front and back facing cameras make for some impressive specs.

Just going to point this out from my observations is that people enjoy being outraged on a topic, even if they don't understand it or truly care about fixing the issue... They just want to have the satisfaction that they were outraged at Facebook's policy. As a side note IMO, there is no such thing as a 'free' service... If the service is free, then they are probably supporting it by performing some sort of data collection, analysis and sale of information. This is why a smart user either avoids entering data online or ensures that they are not putting sensitive data out where it can be harvested or viewed by the public at large.

It would appear that Apple's Homepod may not be living up to the sale numbers that Apple is hoping for as they are slashing orders of monthly devices by 60% from 500k units to 200k. At the same time, they are also looking into making a second, smaller, cheaper smart speaker... https://gizmodo.com/looks-like-nobody-wants-to-buy-apple-s-homepod-1825207301 While I have no interest in the Homepod myself as I have no want to go back into Apple's ecosystem in general, it would seem that the biggest limiting factor on the Homepod is more related to limited software features with a high price compared to what others may be looking for in a smart speaker. Should be interesting to see if they do actually produce something like an Apple Homepod Dot or whatever they want to call it (Homedot?), especially if they focus on sound quality...

Sasa Marinkovic is supposed to be taking over. Depending on the lea way he is given to talk and direct, it might prove to be interesting since he helped with overhauling the AMD graphic driver software. He has also been with the company for 20+ years. https://www.fudzilla.com/news/46035-amd-hands-product-marketing-reins-to-sasa-marinkovic

I could definitely see shipping high density luxury items (GPUs & other electronics maybe?) as a potential starting market that will definitely help to improve the technology. One primary issue would be ensuring that there is either a trade route or return cargo availability.

I agree that auto accidents do have the higher yearly/overall mortality rate, it's just that air accidents usually have the higher instantaneous mortality rate... I would really love to know what safety procedures/technology SpaceX would consider in case of a catastrophic rocket accident. Best guess is that the passenger compartment/module would have emergency deployment rockets and a parachute.

Probably not so much new news as more confirmation of the direction that SpaceX may be taking in their quest for sustainable rocketry, however SpaceX's COO, Gwynne Shotwell, has confirmed at TED 2018 that they are planning to be using the Big Falcon Rocket as an International Travel platform within the next decade and they feel that they could be competitive with a standard Business Class ticket for travel to the other side of the world. https://www.fastcompany.com/40557831/spacex-wants-to-replace-long-haul-flights-with-rocket-travel-in-the-next-10-years Now don't get me wrong, this is exciting and I'm hoping that they are successful at this endeavor, but I have some serious safety concerns myself given aviation history and how markets and safety tend to operate... My general impression is that a demand for volume can lead to cutting corners in order to deliver and the last thing that I would want cutting corners is a rocket that I'm using for travel around the world. Might have to up ticket prices a bit.

It has nothing to do with current US or Canadian issues, however it does impact the ability to share information on the internet, which would affect the ability to get information within the US or Canada. I also worry that if it passes, it may inspire the US and Canadian politicians to give it a try themselves...