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DudeAsInCool

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Posts posted by DudeAsInCool

  1. Of all of Nvidia's current-generation GPU launches, there hasn't been one that's been quite as weird as the case of the "GeForce RTX 4080 12GB."

    It was the third and slowest of the graphics cards Nvidia announced at the onset of the RTX 40-series, and at first blush it just sounded like a version of the second-fastest RTX 4080 but with less RAM. But spec sheets and Nvidia's own performance estimates showed that there was a deceptively huge performance gap between the two 4080 cards, enough that calling them both "4080" could have lead to confusion and upset among buyers.

    Taking the hint, Nvidia reversed course, "unlaunching" the 4080 12GB because it was "not named right." This decision came late enough in the launch process that a whole bunch of existing packaging had to be trashed and that new BIOSes with new GPU named needed to be flashed to the cards before they could be sold.

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  2. Pixel phones are broken again with critical storage permission bug

    Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson)

    It's almost hard to believe this is happening again, but Pixel users are reporting that an OS update has locked them out of their phones' internal storage, causing app crashes, non-functional phones, and a real possibility of data loss. Over in the Google Pixel subreddit, user "Liv-Lyf" compiled a dozen posts that complain of an "internal storage access issue" and blame the January 2024 Google Play system update.

    In October, Pixel phones faced a nightmare storage bug that caused bootlooping, inaccessible devices, and data loss. The recent post says, "The symptoms are all the same" as that October bug, with "internal storage not getting mounted, camera crashes, Files app shows no files, screenshots not getting saved, internal storage shows up empty in ADB Shell, etc." When asked for a comment, Google told Ars, "We're aware of this issue and are looking into it," and a Google rep posted effectively the same statement in the comments.

    In the October bug, users were locked out of their system storage due to a strange permissions issue. Having a phone try to run without any user access to your own storage is a mess. It breaks the camera and screenshots because you can't write media. File Managers read "0 bytes" for every file and folder. Nothing works over USB, and some phones, understandably, just fail to boot. The issue in October arrived as part of the initial Android 14 release and only affected devices that had multiple users set up.

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  3. Jason Bateman and Laura Linney in Ozark

    Enlarge / Jason Bateman and Laura Linney in the Netflix original series Ozark. (credit: Netflix/YouTube)

    Netflix subscribers can expect more price hikes as the company looks to grow revenue in 2024. In its Q4 2023 letter to shareholders, Netflix also revealed plans to eliminate the cheapest ad-free plan available to users.

    In the January 23 letter (PDF), Netflix said:

    As we invest in and improve Netflix, we’ll occasionally ask our members to pay a little extra to reflect those improvements, which in turn helps drive the positive flywheel of additional investment to further improve and grow our service.

    The statement will be unsavory for frugal streamers who have recently endured price hikes from Netflix and other streaming services. In January 2022, Netflix increased the price of its Basic no-ads tier from $8.99 per month to $9.99/month. In October 2023, that same plan went up to $11.99/month. Meanwhile, Netflix's Premium ad-free plan increased from $17.99/month to $19.99/month in January 2022 and then to $22.99/month in October.

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  4. Google’s Pixel 9 gets its first render, looks a lot like an iPhone

    Enlarge

    If Google sticks to the usual cadence of device releases, the Google Pixel 9 will come out in around nine months. That's a long way away, but still not so far away that it can't be leaked: the ever-reliable Steve Hemmerstoffer, aka OnLeaks, has a set of Pixel 9 Pro renders up over at MySmartPrice. Usually, these renders are based on the CAD files that accessory designers need before they can begin making products, so while all the major components should be correct down to the millimeter, the materials, colors, and some small details may be speculative.

    There are a lot of differences in these renders. First, the renders show a flat metal band around the sides, making it look a lot like an iPhone. Samsung also adopted this design for the Galaxy S24 and S24 Plus, so everyone seems to want to look just like their biggest rival. This allows the front and back of the phone to be completely flat slabs of glass, instead of the rounded glass back of the Pixel 8. The screen is also completely flat again.

    The other major visible difference is the camera bar, which used to stretch from side to side across the back of the phone, but now is a floating bar that isn't connected to the sides. That makes the camera bar closer to the Pixel Fold design. The Pixel Fold camera bar was a rounded rectangle, but this is a full-on pill shape, which, in these renders, follows the shape of the camera glass cover. Besides the camera lenses, the bar has an LED flash and a second mystery sensor circle. On the Pixel 8, the circle under the LED is a temperature sensor. I feel like the temperature sensor has been either panned or forgotten about, so it wouldn't surprise me to see it cut, but the realities of the smartphone development cycle might make it too early for that.

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  5. We don't need a long intro for this one: AMD's new Radeon RX 7600 XT is almost exactly the same as last year's RX 7600, but with a mild bump to the GPU's clock speed and 16GB of memory instead of 8GB. It also costs $329 instead of $269, the current MSRP (and current street price) for the regular RX 7600.

    It's a card with a pretty narrow target audience: people who are worried about buying a GPU with 8GB of memory, but who aren't worried enough about future-proofing or RAM requirements to buy a more powerful GPU. It's priced reasonably well, at least—$60 is a lot to pay for extra memory, but $329 was the MSRP for the Radeon RX 6600 back in 2021. If you want more memory in a current-generation card, you generally need to jump into the $450 range (for the 12GB RX 7700 XT or the 16GB RTX 4060 Ti) or beyond.

    RX 7700 XT RX 7600 RX 7600 XT RX 6600 RX 6600 XT RX 6650 XT RX 6750 XT
    Compute units (Stream processors) 54 (3,456) 32 (2,048) 32 (2,048) 28 (1,792) 32 (2,048) 32 (2,048) 40 (2,560)
    Boost Clock 2,544 MHz 2,600 MHz 2,760 MHz 2,490 MHz 2,589 MHz 2,635 MHz 2,600 MHz
    Memory Bus Width 192-bit 128-bit 128-bit 128-bit 128-bit 128-bit 192-bit
    Memory Clock 2,250 MHz 2,250 MHz 2,250 MHz 1,750 MHz 2,000 MHz 2,190 MHz 2,250 MHz
    Memory size 12GB GDDR6 8GB GDDR6 16GB GDDR6 8GB GDDR6 8GB GDDR6 8GB GDDR6 12GB GDDR6
    Total board power (TBP) 245 W 165 W 190 W 132 W 160 W 180 W 250 W

    The fact of the matter is that this is the same silicon we've already seen. The clock speed bumps provide a small across-the-board performance uplift, and the impact of the extra RAM becomes apparent in a few of our tests. But the card doesn't fundamentally alter the AMD-vs.-Nvidia-vs.-Intel dynamic in the $300-ish graphics card market, though it addresses a couple of the regular RX 7600's most glaring weaknesses.

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  6. A large Google sign seen on a window of Google's headquarters.

    Enlarge / Exterior view of a Googleplex building, the corporate headquarters of Google and parent company Alphabet, May 2018. (credit: Getty Images | zphotos)

    Google/Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai wasn't kidding when, earlier this month, he said more layoffs are coming. The latest group to be hit is Alphabet's X Lab, which is losing "dozens of employees," according to a new report from Bloomberg. This is something like the 11th Google layoff announcement we've covered in the past 12 months and the fourth one this month.

    The X Lab is Alphabet's "moonshot" experimental group, which is responsible for wild concepts like a wearable head-up display, a self-driving car, smart contact lenses, flying Internet balloons, and delivery drones. This is the age of Google cost-cutting, and you'll notice none of those projects is a rip-roaring commercial success. On Google's financials, the X Lab is part of Alphabet's "Other Bets" group, which burns through around a billion dollars every quarter. It's a research arm, so the hope is that spending all this money will someday lead to new revenue streams. For the short-term Wall Street types, though, it's a money loser, quarter to quarter, and that makes it a prime candidate for cuts.

    Bloomberg has a copy of the memo announcing the cuts to the X Labs staff, and there's more in there than just layoffs. X Lab CEO Astro Teller writes: "We’re expanding our approach to focus on spinning out more projects as independent companies funded through market-based capital. We’ll do this by opening our scope to collaborate with a broader base of industry and financial partners, and by continuing to emphasize lean teams and capital efficiency." Basically, Google wants these money losers to find their own funding somewhere else, at least partially.

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  7. Snapinsta.app_420300509_1772613829869246

    More than three years ago, around the time of its 20th anniversary, a YouTube account called POPBOX uploaded an 86-minute compilation of unreleased outtakes from Madonna’s sessions for her 2000 album Music. Now the set, titled Almost Gone: The Unreleased Songs From “Music,” has made its way to William Orbit, the producer who was working closely with Madonna in those days. On his social accounts, including Instagram and Twitter/X, Orbit has shared a lengthy statement commenting on the leaked material.

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  8. xzibit-pimp-my-ride-snl-1705951174.jpg

    Xzibit made an appearance in a Saturday Night Live cut-for-time sketch parodying Pimp My Ride, the MTV television show that the rapper hosted in the 2000s. Jacob Elordi, the host of this past weekend’s episode, plays a 30 Rock janitor who gets his van pimped out by the Please Don’t Destroy guys. Xzibit sends a message via the car’s LCD screen: “Whatever you do, don’t drive that fucking car.” Here’s the clip:

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  9. GEdcBFBa8AAxDbi-1705947185.jpeg

    The electronic-oriented Lightning In A Bottle festival is coming back to Buena Vista Lake in Southern California this spring. Centered on Memorial Day weekend, the fest will run May 22-27, with headliners including Skrillex, Labrinth, Lane 8, James Blake, and M.I.A. Among the many other names on the bill, some highlights include Fatboy Slim, Overmono, Mura Masa, Bomba Estéreo, Floating Points, Machinedrum, Aluna, and a sunset set from Tycho. Check out the full lineup below, and get ticket info here.

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  10. image00114263101-1704240178.jpg

    Verity Den formed in early 2023 and are based in North Carolina via Bellingham, Washington. The band is made up of Casey Proctor of Haruspex Palace and Holy Sons, Trevor Reece and Mike Wallace of Drag Sounds, plus Reed Benjamin of Calapase and No One Mind for live performances. Today, Verity Den are announcing their debut self-titled album and sharing “Priest Boss,” a five-minute excursion into scrappy, celestial shoegaze.

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  11. Office printer with

    Enlarge (credit: Getty)

    Last Thursday, HP CEO Enrique Lores addressed the company's controversial practice of bricking printers when users load them with third-party ink. Speaking to CNBC Television, he said, "We have seen that you can embed viruses in the cartridges. Through the cartridge, [the virus can] go to the printer, [and then] from the printer, go to the network."

    That frightening scenario could help explain why HP, which was hit this month with another lawsuit over its Dynamic Security system, insists on deploying it to printers.

    Dynamic Security stops HP printers from functioning if an ink cartridge without an HP chip or HP electronic circuitry is installed. HP has issued firmware updates that block printers with such ink cartridges from printing, leading to the above lawsuit (PDF), which is seeking class-action certification. The suit alleges that HP printer customers were not made aware that printer firmware updates issued in late 2022 and early 2023 could result in printer features not working. The lawsuit seeks monetary damages and an injunction preventing HP from issuing printer updates that block ink cartridges without an HP chip.

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  12. just-like-heaven-lineup-2024-1705944386.

    The Goldenvoice-backed nostalgia festival Just Like Heaven has announced its 2024 lineup. The Postal Service are headlining the single-day event as another stop on the joint Death Cab For Cutie tour where the Ben Gibbard-led bands perform Give Up and Transatlanticism in full for their 20th anniversaries. DCFC will also perform at the fest.

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