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BREXIT Thoughts
As an EU citizen and an American citizen, here are my thoughts. The UK should leave on 29 March 2019 with or without a deal. The entire process has been flawed from the beginning, but the UK Parliament allowed the people to vote in a referendum, and then agreed with their decision to leave the EU. It is only reasonable to see the UK leave the EU on the date set by Prime Minister Theresa May when she had a letter delivered to the EU Council triggering Article 50 of the Treaty of
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Upgrade to the AMD Ryzen 2700x
I have been very happy with my Ryzen build from last year where I was using the 1800x. I really did not need to upgrade, other than to take advantage of some of the improvements that AMD made in the Zen architecture. There is a slight speed difference between the two chips, which also is nice, though, I would have like to see a bigger bump in speed. The new 2700x includes a fan, but I am using water cooling, so no big deal for me. In 10 minutes I had opened the case, pulled out the old CPU,
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Amazon Fire TV Cube is meh
If you already have a Fire TV and an Echo device, then the Fire TV Cube will not really be that appealing to you. I have a first generation Fire TV, and Echo devices in every room in the house, except the bathroom. There is nothing I cannot do with the new Fire TV Cube that cannot be done with an Echo device and another Fire TV device, except turn on my TV and AV receiver, which is nice. I bought the Fire TV Cube to finally upgrade to 4K. which my first generation Fire TV does not support.
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Programmers are the security problem
Larry Ellison of Oracle has spoken numerous times about how bad security is in the industry. However, I don’t think he acknowledged the problem; Programmers are under skilled and require guidance. Anyone can be a Java, C or C# programmer, but how good are they at their job? Unfortunately, businesses are asking the wrong questions when hiring individuals, especially granting highly coveted visas to these individuals. Sure it is easy enough to program Java, but do they know how to program an enterprise Java application? Most likely not. That’s not an issue when the management has a very talented
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AMD’s 16-core ‘Threadripper’ CPU is built for ultra-high-end PCs
I may have built a new Ryzen system, but this is very interesting, and my system may be getting a upgrade very shortly. The new Ryzen chips work great for my development work and will make some of my transcoding work even faster. Hooray for AMD, finally! Source: AMD’s 16-core ‘Threadripper’ CPU is built for ultra-high-end PCs
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I’m upgrading to Ryzen
My main server at home is running Linux that I use for compiling code, analyzing dumps, running my Plex server, running some VMWare instances, and used as a sandbox for other applications. I have been running a fairly old AMD FX 8350 8 core system with 32 GB of memory. At the time, this was one of the fastest AMD processors I could buy, and it has served me very well. Since AMD’s new Ryzen 7 was released, I’ve decided to upgrade. There is plenty of information on the web about Ryzen 7 performance against Intel Core i7 while
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Cool does not equal usefulness
Apple is not listening to its users, and is falling behind with its products being cool and useful. The new Macbook Pro is anything but a professional machine. It maybe can replace some desktops, but not all. It can certainly replace the 2013 Mac Pro, which is supposed to be the top of the line professional computer from Apple. For some reason Apple takes years to update its computers. I would love to spend another $5400 on a new Mac Pro with more modern CPUs and GPUs, but I do not have that option. (more…)
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Dongles are Apple’s new business model
I am extremely disappointed with the new Apple Macbook Pro laptops. Sure the new Touch Bar is a cool gimmick, and that is exactly what it is, but killing all the ports that pros actually use is a huge mistake. I am not even sure Apple knows what people do with their laptops. I use Apple products for work. I have Mac Pro computers at home that are powerful enough to handle running multiple VMWare Fusion virtual machines, while I am coding in Eclipse and may be editing photos in Lightroom or Photoshop. Sorry Apple but the Photos
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The iPhone and The FBI
I find it hard to believe that the FBI cannot crack an iPhone. After ten attempts the phone might wipe itself, which is what the FBI is afraid might happen. Maybe they do not use Macs in the FBI, but with Xcode, a tool from Apple to create code for OS X and the i devices, it is possible to emulate Apple devices. So how could an iPhone be emulated? Easy! Dump the memory from the phone. I used to do this with Atari 2600 cartridges in the 1970s. While the method is different today, the basics are the