Month: June 2023

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

Chipmaker TSMC said on Friday that one of its hardware suppliers experienced a “security incident” that allowed the attackers to obtain configurations and settings for some of the servers the company uses in its corporate network. The disclosure came a day after the LockBit ransomware crime syndicate listed TSMC on its extortion site and threatened to publish the data unless it received a payment of $70 million.

The hardware supplier, Kinmax Technology, confirmed that one of its test environments had been attacked by an external group, which was then able to retrieve configuration files and other parameter information. The company said it learned of the breach on Thursday and immediately shut down the compromised systems and notified the affected customer.

“Since the above information has nothing to do with the actual application of the customer, it is only the basic setting at the time of shipment,” Kinmax officials wrote. “At present, no damage has been caused to the customer, and the customer has not been hacked by it.”

Enlarge (credit: Mark Garlick/Science Photo Library/Getty)

In June 2021, GitHub announced Copilot, a kind of auto-complete for computer code powered by OpenAI’s text-generation technology. It provided an early glimpse of the impressive potential of generative artificial intelligence to automate valuable work. Two years on, Copilot is one of the most mature examples of how the technology can take on tasks that previously had to be done by hand.

This week GitHub released a report, based on data from almost a million programmers paying to use Copilot, that shows how transformational generative AI coding has become. On average, they accepted the AI assistant’s suggestions about 30 percent of the time, suggesting that the system is remarkably good at predicting useful code.

(credit: GitHub)

The striking chart above shows how users tend to accept more of Copilot’s suggestions as they spend more months using the tool. The report also concludes that AI-enhanced coders see their productivity increase over time, based on the fact that a previous Copilot study reported a link between the number of suggestions accepted and a programmer’s productivity. GitHub’s new report says that the greatest productivity gains were seen among less experienced developers.

Enlarge / AMD's Ryzen 5 5600X3D. (credit: AMD)

A surprise twist for owners of older AMD PCs using socket AM4: AMD is announcing one last (?) processor for the aging socket, a six-core Ryzen 5 5600X3D that brings the company's 3D V-Cache chip stacking technology to a $229 chip.

The catch? The new CPU will only be available through Micro Center, a brick-and-mortar tech retailer that doesn't ship most of what it sells to online buyers. The chip will only be sold for as long as Micro Center's supply holds out, though Tom's Hardware reports that the company will have "several months'" worth of stock.

Like the Ryzen 5800X3D, the 5600X3D combines a regular Zen 3 processor die with an extra 64MB chunk of L3 cache stacked on top. Relative to its regular Zen 3 counterparts—in this case, the Ryzen 5 5600 and 5600X—the chip will consume slightly more power and run at somewhat lower clock speeds, which can make it slower than the non-X3D chips in tasks that don't benefit from the extra cache. They also have limited support for overclocking and undervolting. However, games in particular tend to like the extra cache a lot, benefitting people who want to pair a high-end GPU with the cheapest CPU that won't hold it back.

Enlarge / AMD's Ryzen 5 5600X3D. (credit: AMD)

A surprise twist for owners of older AMD PCs using socket AM4: AMD is announcing one last (?) processor for the aging socket, a six-core Ryzen 5 5600X3D that brings the company's 3D V-Cache chip stacking technology to a $229 chip.

The catch? The new CPU will only be available through Micro Center, a brick-and-mortar tech retailer that doesn't ship most of what it sells to online buyers. The chip will only be sold for as long as Micro Center's supply holds out, though Tom's Hardware reports that the company will have "several months'" worth of stock.

Like the Ryzen 5800X3D, the 5600X3D combines a regular Zen 3 processor die with an extra 64MB chunk of L3 cache stacked on top. Relative to its regular Zen 3 counterparts—in this case, the Ryzen 5 5600 and 5600X—the chip will consume slightly more power and run at somewhat lower clock speeds, which can make it slower than the non-X3D chips in tasks that don't benefit from the extra cache. They also have limited support for overclocking and undervolting. However, games in particular tend to like the extra cache a lot, benefitting people who want to pair a high-end GPU with the cheapest CPU that won't hold it back.

Enlarge / A be-hatted person, tipping his brim to the endless amount of text generated by the conflict of corporate versus enthusiast understandings of the GPL. (credit: Getty Images)

When CentOS announced in 2020 that it was shutting down its traditional "rebuild" of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) to focus on its development build, Stream, CentOS suggested the strategy "removes confusion." Red Hat, which largely controlled CentOS by then, considered it "a natural, inevitable next step."

Last week, the IBM-owned Red Hat continued "furthering the evolution of CentOS Stream" by announcing that CentOS Stream would be "the sole repository for public RHEL-related source code releases," with RHEL's core code otherwise restricted to a customer portal. (RHEL access is free for individual developers and up to 16 servers, but that's largely not what is at issue here).

Red Hat's post was a rich example of burying the lede and a decisive moment for many who follow the tricky balance of Red Hat's open-source commitments and service contract business. Here's what followed.

Enlarge / A be-hatted person, tipping his brim to the endless amount of text generated by the conflict of corporate versus enthusiast understandings of the GPL. (credit: Getty Images)

When CentOS announced in 2020 that it was shutting down its traditional "rebuild" of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) to focus on its development build, Stream, CentOS suggested the strategy "removes confusion." Red Hat, which largely controlled CentOS by then, considered it "a natural, inevitable next step."

Last week, the IBM-owned Red Hat continued "furthering the evolution of CentOS Stream" by announcing that CentOS Stream would be "the sole repository for public RHEL-related source code releases," with RHEL's core code otherwise restricted to a customer portal. (RHEL access is free for individual developers and up to 16 servers, but that's largely not what is at issue here).

Red Hat's post was a rich example of burying the lede and a decisive moment for many who follow the tricky balance of Red Hat's open-source commitments and service contract business. Here's what followed.