April 22, 2016 - The WAN Show Document

[LinusTech]

 

Soundcloud Link: 

 

 

Main News Topics

 

Intel to Cut 12,000 Jobs PC Demand Plummets

Source 1: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/20/technology/intel-earnings-job-cuts.html?src

Source 2: http://www.anandtech.com/show/10261/intel-2016-workforce-reduction

• Laying off 12,000 people, about 11% of total workforce

• CEO Brian Krzanich said “Intel has been known as the PC company. It’s time to make this transition and push the company all the way over [to supplying chips for things like smartphones, cloud computing, sensors, and other devices]”

• To be clear, he does not mean that they are ceasing production on CPUs for PCs - they are diversifying their portfolio with a greater investment in cloud computing and mobile

• Intel still gets 60% of its revenue from PC CPUs

• With that said, most of the layoffs are expected to occur inside the PC business (speculation says that the majority should occur within departments that deal with supplying chips for bulk PC sales through companies like Dell or HP to corporate clients)

• Affected employees will be notified within 60 days

• Largest set of layoffs since 2006, when the company let 10,500 employees go

• Profit margins in Q1 were lower than expected, with net income of $2 billion (or 42 cents per share) on a revenue of 13.7 billion, with predictions showing revenue of 13.8 billion and earnings of 47 cents per share

• Krzanich mentioned that Intel is “continually striving to get back to two years” as a production schedule for new chips (getting back in line with Moore’s Law)

• Their next generation of chips is expected to have a production schedule of 2.5 years or longer

• Intel CFO Stacy Smith stated “We’re moving from a company that was at the center of the PC market to being a company at the center of cloud computing.”

• Smith was also named to run Intel’s sales, manufacturing, and operations, with some pundits speculating that this indicates a tighter relationship with “a few big cloud companies” like Amazon and Microsoft

 

Intel Announces Q1 Fiscal Year 2016 Results: Lower Margins Prompt Workforce Adjustment

Source 1: http://www.anandtech.com/show/10262/intel-announces-q1-fiscal-year-2016-r

Source 2: http://www.intc.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=965822

Q1 2015, Q4 2015, Q1 2016 Comparison

• Followed the job cuts up with releasing their first quarter results

• In Q4, Intel was reporting record revenues in the company's history

• Revenues were up 7% year-over-year in Q1

• Gross margin fell to 59.3% for Q1, down 1.2% from last year

• Operating income was flat at $2.6 billion

 

Researchers Accidentally Discover Nanowire-based Technology That Could Lead to Batteries Than Can Be Charged Hundreds of Thousands of Times

Source 1: http://www.pcper.com/news/General-Tech/What-do-you-mean-battery-immune-c

Source 2: http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2455715/scientists-accidentally-creat

• Mya Le Thai, explained in a paper published this week

• Nanowires, several thousand times thinner than a human hair, extremely conductive and has a large surface area to support storage and transfer of electrons

  • Extremely fragile and don’t usually hold up well to repeated discharging and recharging

  • Le Thai’s team fixed this by coating a gold nanowire in a manganese dioxide shell and then placing it in a Plexiglas-like gel to improve its reliability

  • ...by accident

• Reginald Penner, chairman of UCI’s chemistry department said: “Mya was playing around and she coated this whole thing with a very thin gel layer and started to cycle it”

• “She discovered that just by using the gel she could cycle it hundreds of thousands of times without losing any capacity”

• Was tested more than 200,000 times over a three-month span

  • Researchers reported no loss of capacity or power

• Breakthrough could lead to laptop, smartphone and tablet batteries that last forever

 

NerdSports - it launched on Vessel!

You can check it out at http://vessel.com/nerdsports

1 episode coming every week for the next 4 weeks, after that the schedule is TBD

 

AMD to Receive $293M in Fresh Cash from a deal with the Chinese Government

Source 1: https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/585578-amd-to-receive-293m-in-

Source 2: http://www.guru3d.com/news_story/amd_china_x86_server_chip_joint_vent

• Chinese gov’t attempted (unsuccessfully) to come up with its own microprocessor architecture line “numerous times”

• AMD has made it clear in their marketing strategy that they are ready to customize modular CPU and SoC designs by the client’s specs (like they did with the makers of current-gen consoles)

• AMD is “likely” to fab “custom enterprise CPUs” for the Chinese gov’t

• This deal was mentioned in their latest quarterly results

• China wants to use their “own” hardware and software for government-funded institutions

• This was driven by the Snowden revelations and the cooling of the Chinese economy

• The deal would involve AMD licensing its x86 processor technology and the IP related to desiging an SoC like memory controllers, input-output and caching, but possibly not GPu technology

• Architecture has not been confirmed, but Forbes claims that it must be Zen as their previous server CPUs “[hadn’t] had much of any success.”

 

AMD Not Seeding Radeon Pro Duo GPUs to Gaming Press

 

Mosquito Killing Billboard

Source 1: https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/585093-the-mosquito-killer-billboard/ OP: ahhming

Source 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79uqMKUoIjE (1:42 Long)

Source 3: http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/21/11477008/mosquito-killer-billboard-brazil-zika-virus

• Kills mosquitos by mimicking human sweat

• Aims to help curb the spread of the Zika virus, one expert says it could backfire

  • More than 1.5 million Zika cases have been recorded since April 2015

• Located in Brazil

• Party of a campaign launched by two advertising agencies, Posterscope and NBS

• Emits carbon dioxide and a lactic acid solution to mimic human breathing and sweat

• Mosquitos that are lured to the billboard become trapped inside, and eventually die

• It can lure insects within a radius of up to 2.5 kilometers

• Chris Jackson, a pest control expert at the University of Southampton, told BBC that the billboard could inadvertently cause more people to be bitten, depending on where it’s placed

• Two billboards have been installed in Rio de Janeiro

  • Creators have called on others to install more

  • Using technical specifications they have published for free online

 

Rapid Fire

Android Beats Apple in Ditching the Headphone Port on Smartphones

Source 1: https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/584699-android-beats-apple- OP: YamiYukiSenpai

Source 2: http://pocketnow.com/2016/04/20/leeco-le-max-2-le-2-le-2-pro-official-specs-features

Source 3: http://www.androidauthority.com/first-phones-without-headphone-port-run-andro

• LeEco (formerly LeTV) revealed their new Le 2 range of smartphones, none of which have a 3.5mm jack

• Instead, the phone support USB Type-C digital headphones through the charging port

• Also launched a USB-C earphone SKU and a USB-C headphone SKU

 

Apple Updates 12-Inch MacBook with Skylake CPUs, Longer battery life and Rose Gold options.

Source 1: https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/584252-apple-launch OP: lots of unexplainable lag

Source 2: http://www.macrumors.com/2016/04/19/new-2016-12-inch-macbook-released/

Store Page

• Contains latest sixth-generation Skylake dual-core Intel Core M processors up to 1.3GHz

• Intel HD Graphics 515, delivering up to 25% faster performance

• Faster PCIe-based flash storage

• Additional hour of battery life

  • Achieved from more efficient Skylake processor, as well as a larger 41.4-watt-hour lithium-polymer battery

• Faster 1866MHz memory

• Available in Rose-Gold, as well as existing Gold, Silver and Space Gray colors

 

Mitsubishi Faked Fuel Economy Test

Source 1: https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/585163-mitsubishi-faked-f OP: NumLock21

Source 2: http://m.euronews.com/en/330591/

Source 3: http://www.bnn.ca/News/2016/4/22/Mitsubishi-Motors-mileage-scandal-w

• Shares plunged on Thursday following admission that they faked fuel economy data on cars sold in Japan

  • Ended up losing about $3.2 billion in market value over three days

• Japanese transport ministry officials have inspected their technical centre

• Mitsubishi apologized on Wednesday

  • Says they will make a sincere effort to make amends to car owners

• Transport minister Keiichi Ishii, wants Mitsubishi to look at the possibility of buying back the cars

  • Mitsubishi will also have to pay subsidies granted to consumers if data shows its cars do not meet necessary fuel economy standards

 

Microsoft’s Profits Have Dropped 25%, Reasons Mainly out of Their Control

Source 1: https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/585584-microsofts-profits OP: PhoenixArising

Source 2: http://money.cnn.com/2016/04/21/technology/microsoft-earnings/index.html?ii

• Due to higher taxes and they took a hit from a stronger US dollar

Profit

Q1, 2015 = $5 billion

Q1, 2016 = $3.8 billion

• Part of reason company’s profit fell 25% was due to higher than expected tax rate and strong U.S dollar

Sales

Q1, 2015 = $21.7 billion

Q1, 2016 = $20.5 billion

 

Windows

Q1, 2015 = Sales down across the board

Q1, 2016 = Sales for consumer version grew 15%, enterprise version declined 11%

 

Office 365

Q1, 2015 = Consumer base reached 12.4 million

Q1, 2016 = Sales of consumer products and cloud services climbed 6% and subscriber base grew to 22.2 million

 

Azure

Q1, 2015 = Total sales for commercial cloud products grew 106%, included Office 365 and other services under old reporting model

Q1, 2016 = Sales of Azure products grew 120%

 

Xbox

Q1, 2015 = Grew 30% to approximately 37 million

Q1, 2016 = Grew 26% to approximately 46 million

 

SteamVR Games Coming Soon to Your Cardboard with VRidge

Source 1: https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/584681-google-cardboard-vr-stea OP: LewisBloom

Source 2: https://riftcat.com/vridge

Source 3: https://www.reddit.com/r/GoogleCardboard/comments/4fcayx/steamvr_games_c

VRidge in Action (0:14 Seconds Long)

• Play Oculus Rift games wirelessly on your Cardboard viewer through your phone

• Currently in Beta

 

Province of Quebec (Canada) Considering Mandating All New Houses Be Equipped With 240V EV Charging Station

Source 1: https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/585799-province-of-que OP: GoodBytes

Source 2: http://www.engadget.com/2016/04/22/quebec-contemplates-mandating-home-ev-chargi

•  

 

Microsoft Ends Production of the Xbox 360

Source 1: https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/584803-microsft-ends-producti OP: goodtofufriday

Source 2: http://kotaku.com/microsoft-ends-xbox-360-production-1772042864

Source 3: http://news.xbox.com/2016/04/20/xbox-360-celebrating-10-years/

• Announced on the Xbox Wire, Apr 20th, 2016 by Phil Spencer, Head of Xbox

• Xbox Live will remain active

• Selling through existing inventory

• Xbox One supports backwards compatibility for some Xbox 360 games

 

BlackBerry CEO responds to critics’ RCMP encryption key concerns

Source 1: http://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/blackberry-ceo-responds-to-critics-rcmp-enc

Source 2: http://blogs.blackberry.com/2016/04/lawful-access-corporate-citizenship-and-doing-wh

• CEO John Chen published a blog post on the company’s website Monday

  • Noting that the company has always sought to “do what is right for citizenry, within legal and ethical boundaries”

  • “We have long been clear in our stance that tech companies as good corporate citizens should comply with reasonable lawful access”

• Chen pointed to a case from 2014, when the RCMP, with help of BlackBerry, was able to intercept messages between suspected Montreal gang members, leading to dozens of arrests

  • “In the end, the case resulted in a major criminal organization being dismantled”

• In a blog post from last year, Chen noted that gov’t officials have pleaded with tech companies for years to access criminals’ encrypted data

 

New Lytro Cinema 755MP Light Field Camera “The Green Screen Killer (One Day)”

Source 1: https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/585096-new-lytro-cinema-755mp-l OP: TheLarry

Source 2: http://blog.lytro.com/

Source 3: http://techcrunch.com/2016/04/11/lytro-cinema-is-giving-filmmakers-400-gigabytes-

• Lytro is taking its rich, volumetric 3D camera capture tech to TV and film

• 755MP megapixels

• Up to 16 stops of dynamic range

• Can record up to 300fps

  • Takes in as much as 400 gigabytes per second of data

• Uses “Light Field” technology

  • Uses data on all of the available light in a photo to separate objects by depth and store them in a three-dimensional grid

  • Will allow creation of VR-ready navigable 3D spaces

  • Enabling filmmakers ability to achieve detail and flexibility in gathering shots and making post production edits that weren’t possible before

• Things like changing depth of field, focus position, shutter speed or dynamic range can now take place after the fact

• Lytro says rental packages start at $125k for the hardware/software suite

 

Opera Offering Free VPN Service in its newest browser Version

Source 1: https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/585089-opera-offering-free-vpn- OP: lisek991

Source 2: http://thenextweb.com/apps/2016/04/21/operas-browser-comes-free-vpn-servi

Source 3: http://www.opera.com/developer?utm_source=PR&utm_medium=news&ut
Opera VPN Video

• You don’t need to sign up for an account

  • Have to turn the VPN on through settings menu

• Dev release currently includes three options: US, Canada and Germany

  • More countries coming in the stable version

• No third-party extensions to install

• No monthly fee and no cap on how much you can use it

• Opera says its VPN offers 256-bit encryption and replaces your IP address with a virtual one

• An editor from TNW (The Next Web) spent time with it, and ran into problems where they could access region locked sites but couldn’t play geo-blocked video content

• Available now through developer version of Opera

 

Free Cellphone Service is Here, Few Canadians Have Signed Up

Fongo = Free Calls + Free Texts

Source 1: http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/cellphone-free-mobile-app-1.3545053

• Mobile app offers free phone calling over Wi-Fi or data connection

 

Western Digital Introduces WD Gold HDDs for Data Centers

Source 1: http://www.anandtech.com/show/10259/western-digital-introduces-wd-gold-hdd

Source 2: http://techgage.com/news/western-digital-introduces-new-datacenter-hdds-wd

• Soon to replace the current generation of WD Re drives

  • Launch brings three new capacities of 4, 6 and 8TB

• More efficient, 15% better than existing Re drives

  • Will all be 7200RPM and have 128MB of cache as well

• All three models have an MTBF of 2.5 million hours, not just helium model

• Tuned similarly to WD Red drives

  • Limited retry error correction, preventing RAID arrays from failing due to timeout when the HDD hits an error

• Drives do not make use of SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording), but use a more common PMR method

• Rated for 24/7 use and workloads up to 550TB a year

• 5 year warranty

 

Survival Game “Rust” Players Outraged After Half Given Female Avatars

Source 1: http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/rust-avatar-gender-race-assigned-1.3535949

Source 2: http://motherboard.vice.com/read/this-game-is-forcing-some-players-to-be-women-a

• Survival game implemented a feature that randomly (and permanently) makes your character a man or woman

  • Randomizes features for your permanent character like skin color, limb length, and penis size

• Developers Garry Newman and Taylor Reynolds expected this backlash

• Addressed it on their community dev blog, screengrab below:

 

Counter-Strike hacked to run on Android phones

Source 1: https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/584594-counter-strike-16-now OP: Stryder721

Source 2: http://www.dailydot.com/esports/counter-strike-android/?fb-=es

Source 3: http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/19/11457516/counter-strike-android-play

Counter Strike 1.5 Running on Android Video (1:34 Long)

• Work of programmer Alibek Omarov

  • Experienced in making old PC games run on Android

• Has created touchscreen controls for the game

• To get it work on your Android device

  • Download Xash3D software

  • Have the games on your Steam account to copy across files

• Port does support peripherals

 

(Rumor) Sony’s plan for PlayStation 4K - Codenamed ‘Neo’

Source 1: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2016-sonys-plan-for-playsta

Source 2: http://www.giantbomb.com/articles/sources-the-upgraded-playstation-4-is-codenamed

Source 3: http://www.techradar.com/us/news/gaming/could-this-leaked-specs-list-for

• Rumors that Sony would release an upgraded version of the PS4

  • Referred to as the ‘PS4.5’ or the ‘PS4K’ by fans and press

• “Multiple sources” have confirmed with Giantbomb the details of the project

  • As well as it being referred to internally as ‘NEO’

Details

• NEO will feature a higher clock speed than the original PS4

• Improved GPU

• Higher bandwidth and memory

• HDD in NEO is same as the one in the original PS4

• Starting in October, every PS4 game is required to ship with a “Base Mode” and a “NEO Mode” for use between both consoles

• Games running in NEO mode will be able to utilize hardware upgrades

• NEO will support 4K image output, but games themselves are not required to be 4K native

• PS4 and NEO will use the same PSN store, connects to same online communities, etc

• Will be “no NEO only games”

 

 

[Energycore]

Glad to see the VOD up since the stream was unstable.

[LynxThe1st]

wow, that's one hell of a post

[ThinkWithPortals]

WAN Show's up! Brilliant!

[ZetZet]

Timestamps all kinds of wrong

[Guest]

Personally, the reason I'd say Channel Superfun isn't as popular as you expected it to be is you don't seem to be having all that much fun with it. No offense, but most of the LTT crew don't really seem to be the types who would enjoy taking active part in costumed over-the-top role playing for example.

Instead of asking yourself what would you have the most fun doing, you ask yourself what would make for some cool shots, which is an approach that could work if you had 3 times the production value and/or 3 times as many Nicky Vs as you do now.

[JulesTKirk]

So... Who's DAVID? 

[stevenbarta09]

Guys, specifically Linus, if I remember correctly, when you tried to sell us on Vessel you promised that there will be NO product reviews that will come to Youtube later than on Vessel and that there will be NO exclusives and nothing will change for the Youtube audience ... of course, I might be wrong, but I will look for the WAN show where you talk about Vessel and if true, even though I like you guys, I will turn adblock on only for your videos on Youtube. FYI most of the time I was letting ads run to the end on your channels (not switching tabs or muting them, because I wanted to support you). And, yes, you do have the right to do these, but do not promise things you do not plan to keep.

So, I was right, you are an asshole Linus, not better that any other company like other media production companies (like Comcast), which you criticise all the time (you said all Linus Media Group content):

 

Edited April 25, 2016 by stevenbarta09
Spelling mistake and updata

[Samfisher]

13 hours ago, Svinsparbriivu said:

Personally, the reason I'd say Channel Superfun isn't as popular as you expected it to be is you don't seem to be having all that much fun with it. No offense, but most of the LTT crew don't really seem to be the types who would enjoy taking active part in costumed over-the-top role playing for example.

Instead of asking yourself what would you have the most fun doing, you ask yourself what would make for some cool shots, which is an approach that could work if you had 3 times the production value and/or 3 times as many Nicky Vs as you do now.

They used to have fun with it, but I guess with how busy they are, they don't have too much time to research potential games enough.

[komaru]

Yoko made a great co-host.

[BoredErica]

That pillow costs $40 for me (US). That's expensive. I wanted one for research purposes.

 

Thanks for opening my eyes to the world of Waifu pillows, Linus. Best WAN show ever.

[Samfisher]

Colton stole my mention for posting the Intel thread! *shakes fist*

[LAwLz]

How long before Linus is bored of his Vive? Judging by the quality of content for it I'd say maybe a week if he played two hours a day (so about 14 hours in total). The more I see about it, the less hyped I get. The handful of games that seem decent, like Job Simulator, are things you play once and then never again.

 

 

3 hours ago, Dark_wizzie said:

That pillow costs $40 for me (US). That's expensive. I wanted one for research purposes.

 

Thanks for opening my eyes to the world of Waifu pillows, Linus. Best WAN show ever.

40 dollars and it's not even a good one. What you really want is a full size (150x50) and then a two way tricot cover. Quite expensive (like 80 dollars) but soooo good to sleep with. I would highly recommend it even if you don't want to sleep with an anime character (just get a blank cover). The support it gives and the way it feels is amazing.