Summary week 20 January 2020

[cobito]

Scientists discover the definitive memory

Today we have a small dose of a revolutionary discovery that will probably not go anywhere. It is a new type of non-volatile DRAM memory that consumes 1% of what current memory consumes. This type of memory has not been manufactured but only simulated, so there are many things left to know, such as its manufacturing cost.

About malvertising

Sometimes it happens that when you click on a link from Google, you are redirected to the typical page that says you have won something for being the millionth visitor or that your PC has a virus and you have to use a tool to clean it. If you try to access the same link for the second time, it is likely that you will no longer see that but the information you were looking for. The interesting thing is that this happens on legitimate pages whose purpose is none other than to show their content without bothering the visitor. The reason why this happens is because they are trying to show advertising, without abusing it. But sometimes that advertising is malicious and ends up occupying the entire screen. This is not the fault of the webmaster but of the advertising services.

Security flaw in SHA-1

Secure Hash Algorithm 1 has officially become obsolete after 25 years with us. Security researchers from France and Singapore have found a way to breach the algorithm in a much faster and less expensive way than before.

Analysis of the Pinebook Pro

Someone has done an analysis of this ARM laptop for 200€ aimed at being used with Linux. It comes with a Rockchip RK3399 SoC, a Mali T860 MP4 GPU, 4Gb of RAM and a 1080p screen. According to the author, the computer runs smoothly for basic tasks like browsing, watching videos, developing apps and writing. It could be seen as a tablet with a keyboard that gives the flexibility to install the ARM operating system you want.

Zhaoxin 7-Series are vulnerable to Spectre

These Chinese x86 processors that come from VIA are not immune and, in particular, a patch has been published for variant two of this vulnerability in speculative execution.

A spaceship game on the Linux console

Someone has made a small game for the Linux terminal that, considering the limitations, is really good.

Firefox will have video acceleration in Wayland

While hardware video decoding is something that has been with us for a long time on Windows, in Firefox for Linux it is something that has been requested for quite a few years, especially for Intel iGPUs. It seems that with Wayland the issue is going to change.

New power standard for PCs

The new power supplies will be called ATX12VO where the O stands for Only 12V. What they have done is remove the 3.3 and 5V to leave only 12. In addition, the 24-pin connector will be changed to a 10-pin one. To obtain other voltages, the motherboard will have to mount its own DC-DC converters, which opens up the possibility for devices such as storage drives to be powered directly from the motherboard (perhaps using the same data cable) instead of having to use a connector coming from the power supply.

Windows 7 goes out with a bang

As we already know, last week Windows 7 stopped receiving support. The last update it received, KB4534310 of the same January 14, came with a bug that causes some users to be unable to put a wallpaper and instead a black screen appears.

Wine 5.0 available

The set of dynamic libraries and APIs that allow Windows programs to run on Linux has reached a new milestone. This version comes with support for PE (Portable Executable), multi-monitor systems, support for the Xbox XAudio2 audio API, and compatibility with Vulkan 1.1.

Intel 100.7755 drivers

The new version of Intel's graphics drivers comes with support for the newly released version of Vulkan, 1.2. It also brings improvements in some games such as Unravel and Oninaki among others.

RESH remembers your console history

Rich Enhanced Shell History is a small tool that remembers the commands used in a different way to how it is done using the scroll keys. What it does is remember commands based on context such as the directory in which we are located. It also allows you to synchronize the history between different machines.

The transistor gate size no longer means anything

In SemiEngineering they have published an article that talks about the beginning of the battle for 5 and 3nm. It seems that the nomenclature to designate the nodes is becoming less and less meaningful. In the case of 3 and 5nm, there is no element in the transistor that has that size.

Contributions to Linux by Intel and AMD

Phoronix has published a comparison between AMD and Intel in terms of contributions over the years to the Linux kernel. In reality, it is only about patch submissions that can be anything from a driver for all GPU models to the correction of a character in a comment. In any case, Intel has traditionally been a good contributor to the kernel although AMD has changed its strategy in recent years. In fact, this evolution is appreciated in a graph that represents the contributions since 2010.