Ryzen 5 prices announced! MATE 1.18 is out, Rambox enables cross-platform messaging, and Purism neutralizes the Intel Management Engine. All this, plus your feedback.
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Notes:
Colour key – Venn Pedro Mathieu Jordan
News
- The WebAssembly stuff is going to be interesting
- Google has released a new version of Hangouts for enterprise users, similar to Slack. They will also update the regular Hangouts to work with plain WebRTC.
- And the why Hangouts still needs a third party extension for it to work outside of Chrome, still eludes me.
- And by elude I mean I don’t believe Google needs an extension to spy on people using Hangouts.
- Google, I love you but you have a long history of nerfing products for sport.
- That mixed with the fact the you missed the Slack train will probably result in little if no interest in the enterprise hangouts.
- And why… WHY ARE YOU KEEPING FLASH?!
- If you’re gonna nope the old API, nuke it from orbit! Go fullmetal scorched earth policy on that business!
- Let people who want Flash and all the NPAPI stuff use the ESR version.
- As we learned Saturday 52.0 no longer works with Hangouts.
- You will have to use Firefox from the ESR channel to get the functionality back.
Intel managment
https://puri.sm/posts/neutralizing-intel-management-engine-on-librem-laptops/
- Didn’t know about Management Engine, it’s neat and creepy at the same time.
- Purism are doing a pretty good job on removing any kind of proprietary code from their computers!
- Also, getting rid of the microcode, while awesome for the “freedom” aspect, not so good for performance.
- And if you do get rid of the proprietary microcode, you will need to code your open version of it which gives you similar functionality.
- And good luck with that.
- Can I still play my closed source DRM riddled games?
AMD Ryzen 5 Lineup & Dates
http://imgur.com/a/FGkBF
- Show me the benchmarks!
- They are comparing the 1600X performance to the i5 7600K which is about 20% faster than my 8150 in single threaded performance.
- And no, kids, these will not be faster in gaming.
- If that were the case we would have known by now.
- It’s the Celeron of the AMD world but with a higher price tag (ok, maybe the i3)
Protip
https://github.com/chipsec/chipsec
- That’s less creepy than Intel Management Engine
- I like these projects and it’s good to see this one specifically is still being maintained after three years.
- Wait, this is provided by Intel?
GTk 3-
http://mate-desktop.org/blog/2017-03-13-mate-1-18-released/
- Just in time for Ubuntu Mate 17.04!
- Errythin’ goes GTK3, which framework wars aside, is the better version of GTK in terms of future proofing.
- Especially since Mir is totally coming you guys… Ahahahahahahaahahahahah!
- In a more serious note, if you’re on 16.04 like yours truly, you won’t see 1.18 officially.
- According to Martin, it would compromise the stability principle of the whole LTS thing and it would take far too long and be too much work to get it stable enough to where it wouldn’t compromise the LTS.
- I don’t understand people who want the latest versions of software but still want to run an LTS
RamBox
http://rambox.pro/
- Electron app of the week!
- We talked about another electron app that did the same thing a long time ago.
- I might run this so I can Discord while I Hangout.
Use?
https://itsfoss.com/termbox-linux-web-app/
- I can see that being useful from time to time. Mostly to check for availability of commands or packages in different distros.
- Would be even better if it worked!
- Dump new Linux users into the CLI, that will get them interested.
Tangential Gaming
https://twitter.com/Plagman2/status/841403765114593280
- VALVe, for all the flak we give them in that other weekly show, is still very much playing and paying for this whole Linux as a gaming platform thing.
- That involves not just the games and the Steam client, but also hiring people to work on the OS itself and improve stuff.
- This time, they’ve brought Keith Packard from X11 in to help with more VR stuffs.
- What I really want to come out of this is a Vulkan replacement for GLX.
- For those who don’t know Keith Packard is the grand guru of X11, he’s to display servers what Ryan Gordon is to video games.
Slice of Pi
Pi4
http://www.itpro.co.uk/strategy/28278/eben-upton-why-its-a-long-road-to-the-raspberry-pi-4
- The Pi 3 is a 40nm part… For comparison, this FX 8370E I have running this box was built with a 32nm process and my cheapo laptop’s Haswell i3 is 22nm.
- Still, if phones and tablets can get decent thermals with 16 or 14 nm processes, I don’t think that’s the biggest issue with the Pi.
- In my internet dumbass opinion, the biggest issue is manufacturing costs for those smaller processes.
ChiPi
https://liliputing.com/2017/03/lichee-pi-zero-tiny-linux-computer-module-6-crowdfunding.html
- The amount of modules this (prototype) computer has is amazing
Click
http://m.imgur.com/gallery/5b4Vx
- I’m with the commenters on this one, WHY WOULD YOU STORE YOUR SPARE HOUSE KEY UNDER YOUR BIKE SEAT?
- What about not storing the bike outside?
- This reeks of “I made a thing and need to come up with a story so I can show it off”
- You have the know how to set up a motion activated security system with a RasPi, how one track minded are you?
Feedback
