Month: October 2019

Enlarge / Ryzen 3000's RDRAND function—what should be a high-quality pseudo-random number generator—just returns 0xFFFFFFFFF every time, until its microcode is patched. (credit: Adobe)

This weekend, I was excited to deploy my first Ryzen 3000-powered workstation in my home office. Unfortunately, a microcode bug—originally discovered in July, but still floating around in large numbers in the wild—wrecked my good time. I eventually got my Ryzen 3700X system working, and it's definitely fast. But unfortunately, it's still bugged, and there's no easy way to fix it.

Not long after the product launch, AMD Ryzen 3000 customers started noticing problems with their shiny new CPUs. Windows users couldn't successfully launch Destiny 2 (due to a power-management bug, unrelated to the one sidelining my system), and Linux users in many cases couldn't even get their system to boot. Jason Evangelho covered the initial discovery and report of the bug at Forbes back in July, and an AMD representative provided him a statement by email:

AMD has identified the root cause and implemented a BIOS fix for an issue impacting the ability to run certain Linux distributions and Destiny 2 on Ryzen 3000 processors. We have distributed an updated BIOS to our motherboard partners, and we expect consumers to have access to the new BIOS over the coming days.

This sounds happy and upbeat, but the reality isn't quite so simple. When there's a bug in the CPU microcode, you're at the mercy of your motherboard vendor to release a new system BIOS that will update it for you—you can't just go to some download link at AMD and apply a fix yourself.

Enlarge / Jason Momoa's character in See would like to axe you some questions. They're mostly about what the heck things look like, because his character is blind. So is pretty much everyone else. (credit: Apple)

When Apple TV+ launches on November 1, it brings with it five original titles: four TV series and one movie. This seems like a modest start, but it's four more titles than Netflix had when it first started hocking original programming in February 2013.

The difference is Netflix's first release, House of Cards: it was an out-of-the-box critical hit (and landed in a cozy bed of other familiar TV and film options). For Apple TV+, things aren't so clear cut. Of the four series on offer, the most ambitious is the science-fiction story See. Apple never came directly out and said this show was its Game Of Thrones-like series, but the size and scope (and the casting of Jason Momoa) draw natural comparisons. Of the three episodes screened for review, that ambition is absolutely on display.

But See is no Game of Thrones. It's closer in nature to the campy fantasy of the 1980s or a SyFy Saturday night movie like Zombie Tidal Wave, albeit with a much larger budget.

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  Can you get more all-American than a red-white-and-blue trio of Mustang Shelby GT500s? [credit: Jonathan Gitlin ]

LAS VEGAS—The Ford Motor Company made headlines earlier this year with the news that it's done with cars, at least here in the United States. Mostly. The Fiesta and Focus and Fusion might have all gone to the great parking lot in the sky, but one car nameplate remains on the Blue Oval's roster—the Mustang. It's been an icon for the company ever since the first Mustang rolled off the production line in 1964.

The Mustang has such cachet that Ford's first long-range battery-electric car will wear pony car styling cues. But we'll have to wait until next month to learn more about the Mach-E, with even longer to go until we get to drive it. Today's Mustang is the polar opposite of that car. It's not electric, it's not a crossover, and while you could drive it every day on the street, it's really designed with the race track in mind. It is the uber-stang. It is the Mustang Shelby GT500.

The name comes from Carroll Shelby, a Le Mans-winning driver who turned his hand to vehicle development after a heart condition put an end to his racing days. Shelby famously dropped a Ford V8 into AC's lithe little Ace coupe, creating the AC Cobra, and he was the man Ford turned to when it wanted to make the Mustang go as fast as it looked. Back in the '60s, you could buy two different flavors of Shelby Mustang; the GT350, and the GT500. The former was meant for circuit racers, with lightweight parts, uprated suspension, and a more powerful engine. Meanwhile, the GT500 was developed with the drag strip in mind, with a massive 7.0L V8 under the hood.