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AMD Ryzen: The hype train is here, but should we get on?

A swath of AM4 motherboards and impressive demos—it may be time to get excited.

During AMD's "New Horizons" live stream, which served as a coming out party for the Ryzen CPU, the company showcased a brand new performance demo. It pitched a stock Intel Core i7 6900K processor—an eight-core Broadwell-E chip that retails for just shy of £1000/$1100—against an eight-core Ryzen CPU. Both chips were tasked with transcoding a short video clip into the "Apple TV 3" preset in Handbrake, a notoriously CPU-heavy workload that scales well across several cores. The result, according to AMD's demo, was a completion time of 54 seconds for Ryzen and 59 seconds for Broadwell-E; Ryzen was about 10 percent faster.

But the real kicker was that while the Broadwell-E chip ran with its standard boost enabled (up to 3.7GHz), the Ryzen chip was locked at its base clock of 3.4GHz. Not only did AMD claim to have caught up with Intel's multithreaded performance, it claimed to have surpassed it—and with TDP of just 95W compared to Intel's 140W.

Naturally, the Internet cried foul. Flick through the various subreddits dedicated to Zen, AMD, and Intel, and you'll find all manner of conspiracy theories about how AMD artificially capped performance on the 6900K by using a sub-par air cooler (it used the Intel-recommended part), or how there were differences in the video files used in the demo. Not all of these criticisms are without merit, of course. For example, it's not clear whether the Intel chip could have reached its full boost with all cores under heavy load. Or why not just lock the Intel chip at 3.4GHz for a straight IPC (instructions-per-clock) comparison?

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Aether Revolt review: New Magic set is powerful—if you can crack its puzzles

As Kaladesh’s MacGyver-like aetherpunks rebel, MtG looks very exciting indeed.

Magic: The Gathering continues its adventure in aetherpunk with the second half of the Kaladesh block, Aether Revolt (AER). As always, we’ve managed to spend some time with the set before its official release on January 20 and its prerelease on January 14-15. Read on for our full review.

The story thus far

Following on from Kaladesh last year, AER focuses on a classic conflict: corrupt authority versus a people’s rebellion. This is often a theme in traditional cyberpunk; Magic’s take on the formula is still a lot brighter and less cynical than the genre prescribes, but is a lot more blatant about making the government—the “Consulate”—the antagonists, compared to the first set's sparse hints. Cards like Thopter Arrest and Pacification Array hammer these themes home.

After a 2016 for Magic that was generally darker and edgier in tone, it’s good to see that this world hasn’t gone grimdark. AER manages to focus on conflict whilst still hitting the bright themes of Kaladesh: colour, ornateness, and most uniquely, the passion of invention and creation. This last point reflects on many Magic players; creating your own weird decks from unforeseen combinations is a big part of the fun.

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Almost Anywhere: Netgear bringt Switches an Wände, an Decken und unter Tische

Der Netzwerkhersteller Netgear stellt einen neuen Prosafe-Switch vor, der den Aufbau von dezentralen Netzwerken in Geschäftsräumen erleichtern soll. Möglich wird das durch das beiliegende Montagesystem mit dem Namen Almost Anywhere. Interessant ist dies jedoch eher für kleinere Büros. (Netgear, Netzwerk)

VKHLF: Nvidia veröffentlicht Framework zu Vulkan-Abstraktion

Eigentlich soll die Schnittstelle Vulkan einen möglichst großen und direkten Zugriff auf die Grafikkarte ermöglichen. Das ist aber so kompliziert, dass Nvidia ein experimentelles Framework zur Vulkan-Abstraktion mit Zusatzfunktionen bereit stellt. (Vulkan, Nvidia)

UK ‘Piracy Warnings’ Are Coming This Month; Here’s How it Works

This month UK Internet providers will start their long-awaited piracy alerts campaign. With help from copyright holders and support from the Government, ISPs will send email notifications to subscribers whose connections are allegedly being used to pirate content. Today we take a look at what’s in store.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

In an effort to curb online piracy, the movie and music industries reached an agreement with the UK’s leading ISPs to send “educational alerts” to alleged copyright infringers.

The piracy alerts program is part of the larger Creative Content UK (CCUK) initiative which already introduced several anti-piracy PR campaigns, targeted at the general public as well as the classroom.

The plan to send out email alerts was first announced several years ago and is about to kick off. According to ISPReview the first providers will start sending out emails later this month.

The four ISPs who are confirmed to be participating are BT, Sky, TalkTalk and Virgin Media, but other providers could join in at a later stage. Thus far CCUK hasn’t announced a lot of detail or specifics on how the program will operate exactly, but here’s what TorrentFreak has learned so far.

What will be monitored?

The “alerts” system will only apply to P2P file-sharing. In theory, this means that the focus will be almost exclusively on BitTorrent (including apps such as Popcorn Time), as other P2P networks have relatively low user bases.

Consequently, those who use Usenet providers, streaming services (such as 123movies), or file-hosters such as Zippyshare and 4Shared, are not at risk. In other words, the program only covers a part of all online piracy.

A spokesperson from CCUK’s “Get it Right” campaign stressed that the alerts represent only one part of the broader program, which also aims to reach other infringers through its other initiatives.

How many people will be targeted?

The system will apply to everyone whose Internet account has been used to share copyrighted material via P2P networks.

That said, copyright holders and ISPs have agreed to cap the warnings at 2.5 million over three years. This means that only a fraction of all UK pirates will receive a notice.

Some people may also receive multiple notices if their account is repeatedly used to share copyrighted material.

“This ensures that people who might have missed an earlier email receive another one – but also allows time for account holders to take steps to address the issue,” a Get It Right spokesperson informed us.

What’s in the notices?

While the exact language might differ between ISPs, the notices are primarily meant to inform subscribers that their accounts have been used to share infringing material, while pointing them to legal alternatives.

“The purpose is to educate UK consumers about the many sources of legal content available, highlight the value of the UK’s creative industries and reduce online copyright infringement,” we were told.

Who will be monitoring these copyright infringements?

While ISPs take part in the scheme, they will not monitor subscribers’ file-sharing activities. The tracking will be done by third-party company MarkMonitor, who are also the technology partner for the U.S. Copyright Alert System.

This tracking company collects IP-addresses from BitTorrent swarms and sends its findings directly to the Internet providers. The lists with infringing IP-addresses are not shared with any of the rightsholders.

Each ISP will keep a database of the alleged infringers and send them appropriate warnings. In compliance with local laws and the best practices of the Information Commissioner’s Office, recorded infringements will be stored for a limited time.

Will any Internet accounts be disconnected?

There are no disconnections or mitigation measures for repeat infringers under the UK copyright alerts program. Early reports suggested that alleged file-sharers will get up to four warnings after which all subsequent offenses will be ignored.

This is in line with the overall goal of the campaign which is not targeted at the most hardcore file-sharers. The program is mostly focused on educating casual infringers about the legal alternatives to piracy.

Can the monitoring be circumvented?

The answer to the previous questions already shows that users have plenty of options to bypass the program. They can simply switch to other means of downloading, but there are more alternatives.

BitTorrent users could hide their IP-addresses through proxy services and VPNs for example. After the U.S. Copyright Alert Program launched in the U.S. there was a huge increase in demand for this kind of anonymity services.

So how scary are the alerts?

CCUK’s “Get it Right” stresses that the main purpose of the system is to inform casual infringers about their inappropriate behavior and point them to legal alternatives.

The focus lies on education, although the warnings also serve as a deterrent by pointing out that people are not anonymous. For some, this may be enough to cause them to switch to legal alternatives.

All in all the proposed measures are fairly reasonable, especially when compared to other countries where fines and internet connections are on the table. Whether it will be successful is an entirely different question of course.

The Creative Content UK team is confident that they can drive some significant change. Several benchmark measurements were taken prior to the campaign, so its effectiveness can be properly measured once the first results come in.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

Videobrille: Avegants Glyph kommt nach Deutschland und zur Lufthansa

Verfügbarkeit hierzulande und in der Business-Lounge: Avegant arbeitet daran, die Glyph in Deutschland auf den Markt zu bringen. Statt über Drittanbieter bei Amazon soll es direkt über den Hersteller bezogen werden können. (Avegant Glyph, Kickstarter)

Chris Lattner: LLVM-Gründer wird Teslas Autopilot-Chef

Der Gründer des Compiler-Projekts LLVM, Chris Lattner, ist bei Tesla künftig führend für dessen Autopilot-Software zuständig. Zuvor arbeitete Lattner über ein Jahrzehnt bei Apple an den Entwickertools, zuletzt hauptsächlich für die Sprache Swift. (Tesla Motors, Apple)

Wi-Fi-Inflight: Telekom bietet Onboard-Internet erst einmal gratis an

Für einige Monate kann das über Bodenstationen ausgesandte LTE-Onboard-Internet der Telekom gratis ausprobiert werden. Lufthansa und Austrian Airlines bieten es mit bis zu 75 MBit/s im Downlink an. (Internet im Flugzeug, WLAN)

Youtube: So wird die Elbphilharmonie-Eröffnung in 360 Grad gestreamt

Keine Karte für das Eröffnungskonzert der Hamburger Elbphilharmonie gewonnen? Rund 100.000 anderen ging es genauso. Das Konzert kann aber trotzdem live erlebt werden – als 360-Grad-Stream im Internet. Wir haben uns die Vorbereitungen angeschaut. (Elbphilharmonie, H.264)

Keine Karte für das Eröffnungskonzert der Hamburger Elbphilharmonie gewonnen? Rund 100.000 anderen ging es genauso. Das Konzert kann aber trotzdem live erlebt werden - als 360-Grad-Stream im Internet. Wir haben uns die Vorbereitungen angeschaut. (Elbphilharmonie, H.264)

US-Wahl: US-Geheimdienste warnten Trump vor Erpressung durch Russland

Ist der künftige US-Präsident erpressbar? US-Geheimdienste sollen Donald Trump genau davor gewarnt haben. Die Debatte um die Geheimdienstberichte nimmt damit an Schärfe zu. (Trump, Wikileaks)