Monthly Archives: January 2020

Coronavirus Impact: Overview and Updates

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The novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) was first detected in Wuhan City, China. Although scientists do not have a complete clinical picture regarding the new coronavirus, the spread and sometimes fatal symptoms have shocked the world, impacting everything from travel to the economy. So far there have been thousands of confirmed cases, mostly in China, with over […]

The post Coronavirus Impact: Overview and Updates appeared first on TGDaily.



Source: TG Daily – Coronavirus Impact: Overview and Updates

CBS makes Star Trek: Picard pilot free on YouTube for a limited time

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Episode 1 of Star Trek: Picard on YouTube.

CBS has made the entirety of the first episode of its new series Star Trek: Picard freely and publicly available as a YouTube video. This is an opportunity for viewers curious about the show to see if Picard is worth subscribing to the network’s streaming service, CBS All Access, to watch the rest of the series.

The episode on YouTube is the same as the pilot episode that premiered on CBS All Access last week. The second episode of Picard began streaming on CBS All Access yesterday, and the network plans to release episodes at a weekly cadence. CBS has not said whether it plans to make other episodes available for free on YouTube in the future, but it seems likely.

The description for the video says the episode will only be available “for a limited time” and that it’s presented by Geico. It does not, however, clarify how long “a limited time” is or when the video might become unavailable.

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Source: Ars Technica – CBS makes Star Trek: Picard pilot free on YouTube for a limited time

Luigi’s Mansion 3 Developers Explain Why Their DLC Is Multiplayer

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The developers of Luigi’s Mansion 3 say they didn’t strongly consider making single player expansions for the hit Switch game, but they promise that the recently announced $10 multiplayer add-ons will satisfy players. They’re aware that it might be a tricky sell.

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Source: Kotaku – Luigi’s Mansion 3 Developers Explain Why Their DLC Is Multiplayer

Valve's ACO Helps Put New Life Into Radeon GCN 1.0 GPUs With ~9% Better Linux Gaming Performance

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Among many other Valve ACO back-end improvements for Mesa 20.0, one of the notable additions is this AMDGPU LLVM alternative now working for Radeon “Southern Islands” / GCN 1.0 graphics cards. With this, these original AMD GCN graphics cards may have some extra life out of Linux gaming boxes thanks to slightly higher performance some eight years after these graphics cards first launched in the Radeon HD 7000 series.

Source: Phoronix – Valve’s ACO Helps Put New Life Into Radeon GCN 1.0 GPUs With ~9% Better Linux Gaming Performance

Nintendo Switch Soars Past SNES in Lifetime Sales

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Nintendo says the Switch has hit 52.5 million sales in its lifetime, already surpassing that of the SNES. From a report: In becoming the company’s fifth best-selling console of all-time, the Switch has helped to boost Nintendo — the company reported a $2.75 billion operating profit, up from the previously predicted $2.38 billion. Previous forecasts had Switch sales for the fiscal year, ending March 31, at 18 million. That number has now jumped to 19.5 million. And, 10.8 million of those were sold during the holiday season alone, leading to a 22.5 percent increase by December of the previous year.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



Source: Slashdot – Nintendo Switch Soars Past SNES in Lifetime Sales

Damn: The Aftermath Of A Bear Ransacking A Car For Food

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bear-vs-car-result.jpg

This is a video of the alleged aftermath of a car that was ransacked and pooped in by a bear because the owner left food in the car overnight. Who leaves food in their car overnight? BUY A REFRIGERATOR. Also, I almost fell for this before my master detective intuition told me this is an obvious case of attempted Farmers Insurance fraud, although I have to admit this man eating a bunch of berries and shitting in his own backseat almost got me.

Keep going for the video.

Source: Geekologie – Damn: The Aftermath Of A Bear Ransacking A Car For Food

ASRock’s X570D4I-2T: A Mini-ITX AMD X570 Motherboard with Intel’s 10 GbE Controller

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ASRock Rack has revealed a rather interesting Mini-ITX motherboard for AMD’s Ryzen 2000 and 3000-series processors with Intel’s X550 10 GbE controller. The X570D4I-2T platform can be used both for high-performance desktops and for small form-factor servers/NAS with robust storage capabilities.


The ASRock Rack X570D4I-2T motherboard is based on AMD’s X570 chipset and supports all the latest AMD Ryzen 2000/3000-series processors with up to 16 cores and a 105 W TDP. The platform has four DDR4 SO-DIMM slots supporting up to 64 GB of DDR4-2400 memory with or without ECC, one PCIe 4.0 x4 slot for graphics cards (when used with an appropriate CPU), one M.2-2280 slot supporting PCIe 4.0 x4 or SATA SSDs, and two OCulink connectors that bring support for eight SATA 6 Gbps ports (controlled by the X570). Since the Mini-ITX motherboard can be used for servers, it also carries the ASpeed AST2500 BMC.



On the I/O side of matters, the ASRock Rack X570D4I-2T has two 10 GbE ports (controlled by the Intel X550-AT2), a GbE port for remote management, two USB 3.1 Gen 1/2 (depends on redriver) Type-A connectors, one USB 3.1 Gen 1 header for front panels, and a D-Sub display output.



The choice of the 10 GbE controllers may seem a bit odd since we are talking about an AMD-based motherboard, but it looks like ASRock Rack originally developed the X570D4I-2T for a particular customer that required an Intel NIC, but wanted to take advantage of AMD’s latest desktop platform. In fact, the latter does have a unique set of features not available elsewhere: a support for a 16-core (reasonably priced) CPU, eight SATA ports, and 20 PCIe 4.0 lanes. Using the X570D4I-2T, it is possible to build an extremely advanced desktop PC with discrete graphics card and vast storage capabilities, or a small form-factor server/NAS featuring 128 TB of SATA storage and terabytes of ultra-fast NVMe storage that can be accessed using 10 GbE ports.






















Brief Specifications of ASRock’s X570D4I-2T
  X570D4I-2T
CPU AMD Ryzen 2000 and 3000-series CPUs with up to 105 W TDP
PCH AMD X570
BMC ASpeed AST2500
Memory  4 × SO-DIMM slots, up to 64 GB of DDR4-2400
Storage M.2 1 × M.2-2280 SSD with SATA or PCIe 4.0 x4 interface
SATA 8 × SATA HDDs or SSDs
Wi-Fi –
WWAN –
Ethernet 2 × 10 GbE connectors (Intel X550-AT2)

1 × GbE (Realtek RTL8211E)
Display Outputs 1 × D-Sub
Audio –
USB Internal 1 × USB 3.0
External 2 × USB 3.1 Gen 1/2 Type-A
Additional I/O –
Power 8-pin (DC-IN) + 4-pin (ATX) + 4-pin (HDD PWR)
Temperatures Operating 10°C ~ 35°C
Storing -40ºC – 70°C
OS Windows, Linux

Compatible with other operating systems

The ASRock Rack X570D4I-2T motherboard is now listed at the company’s website, so expect it to be available shortly. Considering all the peculiarities of the platform, it is hard to tell whether this one will be available widely in retail (if at all), but at least it can be ordered directly from the company.


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Source: ASRock Rack (via Hermitage Akihabara)



Source: AnandTech – ASRock’s X570D4I-2T: A Mini-ITX AMD X570 Motherboard with Intel’s 10 GbE Controller

US government sees renewables passing natural gas in 20 years

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Image of wind turbines in the waters beyond an island.

Enlarge / The United States’ first offshore wind farm. (credit: University of Rhode Island)

Each year, the US Energy Information Agency is required to track trends in the nation’s energy markets and project those trends forward. Projections based on 2019’s trends were released this week, and for the first time, the EIA’s default projection places renewables as the largest single source of electricity generation, with renewables surpassing natural gas somewhere around 2040.

These reports are very conservative due to some of the assumptions that are included in the projections, and they’ve done a terrible job projecting the rapid growth of renewable power. And despite the current report showing steady growth of renewables, there are indications it may still be underestimating renewables’ potential. But the report is still worth looking at, as it can help to understand how more realistic assumptions could change the future direction of the United States’ energy mix.

How to project

Some of the issues with the EIA’s projections are baked into the system. For example, the reports are required to assume existing government policies are the only ones that apply. So while there is some talk of extending tax credits for renewable energy facilities, which has happened in the past, the report assumes that these policies will terminate in the near future as planned.

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Source: Ars Technica – US government sees renewables passing natural gas in 20 years

Lego Masters' Superstar Tells Us How to Become a Professional Builder

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Wanting to make a show about Lego is one thing. Actually making a show about Lego is something else. You’d need an expert. Someone to make sure you were doing things right and had everything you need. You’d need someone like Nathan Sawaya.

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Source: io9 – Lego Masters’ Superstar Tells Us How to Become a Professional Builder

Google's New 'Tangi' Service Can Help You Learn DIY Skills

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Google’s newest service, Tangi, is a short-form video platform that can help you learn and share new creative skills. It’s currently available as a website and an iOS app—no, it’s not ready for Android yet, which is strange given that it’s Google’s service, but there you go.

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Source: LifeHacker – Google’s New ‘Tangi’ Service Can Help You Learn DIY Skills

Google Stadia’s latest free game only has a few thousand total players

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Screenshot from video game Thumper.

Enlarge / Only a few thousand people are seeing free scenes like this streamed via their Stadia Pro subscriptions, according to leaderboard data. (credit: Drool)

The Google Stadia version of Thumper, which is being offered for free to all paid Stadia Pro subscribers, has only seen a few thousand players, based on leaderboard data reviewed by Ars Technica. The numbers suggest significant struggles as the new streaming gaming service from Google, launched in November, tries to attract players away from traditional gaming platforms.

Thumper, along with Rise of the Tomb Raider, was a free Stadia Pro title for the month of January, meaning everyone who paid $129 for the service’s “Founder’s Edition” and “Premiere Edition” bundles has access to it (those bundles, which are the only current way to access Stadia, include three months of Stadia Pro service). As of this morning, though, only 5,515 people have registered a score on the leaderboards for the first stage of the Stadia version of the game, which separates such leaderboards by platform. That number was at 4,563 on January 15, when Ars conducted a spot check.

That doesn’t mean that Stadia Pro only has 5,515 users, of course. For one thing, not everyone who has played the game has finished the first stage (which takes about 10 minutes to complete, depending on personal performance). Trophy data for the Xbox One and PS4 versions of the game, though, suggests that almost 70 percent of all Thumper players do manage to pass this low bar, which would translate to about 8,000 total players so far for the Stadia version.

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Source: Ars Technica – Google Stadia’s latest free game only has a few thousand total players