TRST_Blog

I honestly thought that the CPU wars were over and we’d reached a reasonable plateau. Maybe there would be efficiency gains between generations of silicon, but this is bananas.

AMD’s current high-end desktop Threadripper CPU has 16 cores and 32 threads. Which is insane in its own right. While the new version doubles that core and thread count, respectively, and it honestly looks like there’s room for more over the next generation or so. Moreover, this is created with a seven nanometre process, which has to be getting close to the boundaries of current physics, right?

Intel tried to make waves just before this announcement with a similarly ridiculous 28 core chip (which based on very little research on my part, looks to be a repurposed workstation part). I’m happy overall that there is competition at all in x86 land, but I do wonder to what benefit. Besides 3D rendering, scientific applications and some other niche applications that I clearly don’t know about, will an average consumer benefit from the additional core counts? I suppose that’s not really the point. These high-end components are meant to be drool-worthy: to attract the awe of the scene while serving as a test bed for trickle down innovations for more mainstream parts.

All that said, if I am ever considering building a PC in the future—who knows these days, honestly—then perhaps I’ll take a close look at AMD’s offerings.

If you’re into the Apple side of technology, you’ve no doubt listened to endless hours of hot takes about the WWDC keynote. I really enjoyed the viewpoint in this episode. Their guiding star? A focus on what will make their current products more humane and provoke better emotions throughout their lives. As you might imagine those features the hosts Jon and Drew are most excited about probably overlap your own, what’s different is why and that difference makes for an entertaining listen.

From the horse’s mouth:

Developer-signed Safari extensions are not supported in Safari 12. Safari extensions distributed in the Safari Extension Gallery are deprecated, and Safari 12 is the last release to support them. Safari by default will turn off Safari extensions using canLoad. Instead, use Content Blocker extensions. New submissions to the Safari Extensions Gallery will be accepted until the end of 2018.

From what I can tell there will still be some form of extensions, they’ll just depend on different, read: more secure, APIs. Some more unofficial reassurance from the peanut gallery on Hacker News (via floatingatoll):

Safari Extensions appears to run as JavaScript code in an internal webpage instance that has unrestricted DOM access to your tabs and their content. Safari App Extensions appears to separate “in-page JS code” from “out-of-page Objective-C code” and introduces a sandbox that protects the in-page JS code from inspection or alteration by the out-of-page ObjC code. If I understand that correctly, then I feel this is a clear security win. It forces extensions to run in-process (with DOM access) only the code that they shipped at build time, with only a simple data structure channel available to communicate with their out-of-process component. I’m not sure what attacks on Safari using the old extension model led Apple to sandbox and secure this, but given the “App Store” hint, it seems likely that in-browser malware extensions exist and are being installed into Safari without user consent to spy on surfing and exfiltrate data for tracking. This would be a gold mine for a government-backed attacker, as the extensions are silent once installed and effectively invisible to most users. By introducing mandatory App Store review of all extensions, Apple could then analyze the in-page JavaScript code to ensure that it does not perform malicious actions. This explicitly protects against advertising and tracking attacks: any that escape initial analysis will be reported by users and security researchers. As we’ve seen on iOS, when someone finds an attack vector in one app, Apple can find and destroy all apps that exercise that vector. They would now be able to do the same with any malicious extensions that somehow survive the App Store review process.

Noted for the next time I want to flush an entire weekend down the toilet configuring desktop environments before burning the whole thing down and starting over.

I don’t think this point is original (at least I’m pretty sure I’ve across it before) but the act of browsing is pretty rough these days. However, if you give up some autonomy and arguably some of the reward from discover, then you can cover a lot more of the Internet’s ever growing map.

That said, I do not feel that time on the internet has become an inferior experience. It’s just that these days you find most things by Twitter. You don’t have to surf, because this aggregator performs a surfing-like function for you.

My favourite quip out of context:

Try hating yourself instead!

There’s a lot going on in this post. But, that said, this is the kind of thinking that I adore: a strange lens on what it means to be human in today’s online context. I know very little about Fortnite, and gaming generally (something I need to rectify), but so many of these new possibilities to connect between humans could only come about through the collision of gaming, the Internet and an inventive spirit.

Most “connections” made through battle royale styled games are probably any where from mildly abusive to outright destructive, or following on from friendships made outside the game. I do want to note that I have heard that Fortnite has a generally positive culture surrounding it. I hope that's true but no matter the culture, the mechanics of this digital universe require that competition outweighs cooperation—yes, I also realise there are different team modes, but I don't believe that’s the environment that Robin Sloan was writing about. What is interesting about the article, is the subversion of that default expectation:

Mostly, it didn’t work. I would holster my weapon, throw up my heart, and ... get blasted in the face.

Worse, and predictably: I’d offer my heart and it would be accepted—I knew this because I received a heart in return, sometimes a merry dance emote—and then, delighted with our teamwork, I would turn around and ... get blasted in the back.

I tried this negotiation many times with no success at all and my “Is this it?” curdled into “Is this us?” These were just the rules of the game—its very design—but even so. What a dire environment. What a cruel species!

Then, one night, it worked. And, in many games since, it’s worked again. Mostly I get blasted, but sometimes I don’t, and when I don’t, the possibilities bloom. Sometimes, after we face off and stand down, the other player and I go our separate ways. More frequently, we stick together. I’ve crossed half the map with impromptu allies.

I wonder how deep that final paragraph as a metaphor goes.

Have you ever themed anything on your own computer? It’s a thrill, honestly. It’s also pretty easy to create something horrible and a huge pain to boot. This tool helps you generate the config files, fetch wallpapers and create a colour scheme based on an image, another theme, etc.

Be warned, this rabbit hole goes deep.

(Via Dylan Araps and on Patreon)

The short film was incredible, but if you’re a nerd of any stripe, please watch the making-of video. I loved every moment of it.