Summary of the week of June 14, 2021

[cobito]

AMD patents a method for big.LITTLE transitions

The results of the M1 have sparked a war for efficiency that AMD wants to defend with heterogeneous CPUs. It is possible that the first implementation of this strategy in x86 will come from the Zen 5.

Managing secrets in the console

In this guide of best practices, they teach how to make a script in bash while keeping sensitive information secure.

Leak-proof liquid cooling system

This system creates a small negative pressure in the circuit that prevents the leakage of liquid. It also includes a pressure sensor with which it is possible to detect minuscule pressure variations in case of a leak. It costs €140.

Doom in an Ikea light bulb

Someone has managed to run DOOM in a smart LED light bulb. It has a Cortex M33 at 80MHz with 108Kb of RAM. Apart from the challenge of having to reduce the game to fit in that memory, a screen and a button panel had to be added to the bulb.

700,000 GPUs for mining

In the first quarter of 2021, more than half a million graphics cards have been sold and destined for mining. This, along with the shortage of semiconductors, is what has multiplied the price of hardware in recent months.

First images of Windows 11

The Windows 10 update comes with a renewed taskbar.

Consumption of different distros

Someone has measured the power consumed by their PC with different distros and made a ranking. It is a very specific comparison for the hardware of the person who did this (who is also unknown), but it gives an idea of the differences that exist between desktop environments and other software components.

The problem of mice and new tensions

Until recently, mice operated at 5V. Over time, that voltage has been reduced to 3.3V which, along with a reduction in current, has allowed the life of the batteries to be significantly extended. The problem is that some manufacturers have maintained some components such as the buttons that are designed for 5V. This has made their useful life considerably reduced since the appearance of a small layer of oxide on the surface of the contacts causes a resistance high enough for the 3.3V to not be enough to detect the closure. Mice that used to work for many years can now fail within a few months in humid environments.

A different shell for Linux

Someone has developed a command interpreter similar to PowerShell for Linux.