Mine Your Own GPU Business
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| Mine Your Own GPU Business | |
| Number | 3209 |
| Broadcast Date | JANUARY 30, 2018 |
| Episode Length | 28:43 |
| Hosts | Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane |
| Guests | Ryan Shrout |
Spectre and Meltdown have put a dampener on processor performance. But what does it mean for folks looking to upgrade their hardware; should you upgrade today or wait a few months? Amazon and Berkshire Hathaway, and JP Morgan team up to provide affordable healthcare for their employees. And are high GPU prices due to crypto-currency mining?
Guest
Quick Hits
- Sources tell Bloomberg that Verizon is dropping plans to carry Huawei phones. The US government is also pressuring Verizon to end collaboration with Huawei on 5G standards.
- Snapchat has added 40 skin tones, 50 hair colors, 50 hair treatment options and more to its Bitmoji avatars. Bitmoji Deluxe launched in Snapchat Tuesday and gives users more customization options.
- Facebook is banning any ad that promotes cryptocurrencies to try to prevent people from advertising what the company is calling “financial products and services frequently associated with misleading or deceptive promotional practices.” The ban includes currencies like bitcoin, initial coin offerings or ICOs, and binary options.
Top Stories
- Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JP Morgan Chase are forming a healthcare company to cut the cost of providing health care to employees. The company will not aim to make a profit focusing on providing “simplified, high-quality and transparent healthcare” for their more than 500,000 U.S. employees.
- 100 child experts from multiple child welfare organizations in the US and UK signed an open letter to Facebook asking it to end its Messenger Kids app. The Kids app was meant as a safe way for children to message friends and family with parental approval and supervision while younger than 13. The experts are concerned that Messenger exposes children to social networking too early which has been shown to cause harm. They argue existing phone and text messaging services are enough and a Facebook messaging app for children is not necessary. Facebook says its app was designed in cooperation with online safety experts.
- A preliminary report on the FCC's investigation into the mistake Hawaii missile warning was released Tuesday. The report cites a written statement from the employee who sent the false alert saying the employee meant to send the warning believing the internal announcement about and inbound threat waS real. Previously it was believed the employee mistakenly selected the wrong menu option. The midnight shift supervisor ran a spontaneous drill at the 8 AM shift change in order to practice handling a crisis at a hectic time. However the day shift supervisor was not informed and not in position to supervise. The call started with the phrase "exercise exercise exercise" but the second part of the call used the phrase "this is not a drill," though it did end with exercise, exercise, exercise" again.
Right before the show, the AP reported that according to Maj. Gen. Joe Logan Vern Miyagi, the administrator for the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency has resigned, the employee who sent the alert has been fired and another employee will be suspended without pay.
- A preliminary report on the FCC's investigation into the mistake Hawaii missile warning was released Tuesday. The report cites a written statement from the employee who sent the false alert saying the employee meant to send the warning believing the internal announcement about and inbound threat waS real. Previously it was believed the employee mistakenly selected the wrong menu option. The midnight shift supervisor ran a spontaneous drill at the 8 AM shift change in order to practice handling a crisis at a hectic time. However the day shift supervisor was not informed and not in position to supervise. The call started with the phrase "exercise exercise exercise" but the second part of the call used the phrase "this is not a drill," though it did end with exercise, exercise, exercise" again.
- Axios reports that Apple is delaying some iOS features until next year to focus on addressing performance and quality issues.... such as a refresh of the home screen and in-car user interfaces, improvements to core apps like mail and updates to photo editing. New features still on schedule for 2018 include improvements in augmented reality, digital health and parental controls. Software head Craig Federighi announced the revised plan to employees at a meeting earlier this month.
- Mid to high-end graphics cards from AMD and Nvidia are in short supply due to cryptocurrency miners buying them in bulk. That's driving up prices sometimes doubling them. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies require "miners" to solve increasingly difficult math problems in order to create a coin. Miners use stacks of GPUs to do the math. The more coins that are mined, the harder the problems and the more cards are needed. Nvidia is asking retailers to prioritize gamers. Some outlets like microcenter are giving discounts if cards are bought alongside other parts needed to build gaming machines.
The space is moving toward Application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) cards that mine at unprecedented speeds while consuming much less power than FPGA or GPU mining rigs. South Korea's The Bell reports Samsung is making ASICs for a Chinese mining equipment provider and may start mass production.
- Mid to high-end graphics cards from AMD and Nvidia are in short supply due to cryptocurrency miners buying them in bulk. That's driving up prices sometimes doubling them. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies require "miners" to solve increasingly difficult math problems in order to create a coin. Miners use stacks of GPUs to do the math. The more coins that are mined, the harder the problems and the more cards are needed. Nvidia is asking retailers to prioritize gamers. Some outlets like microcenter are giving discounts if cards are bought alongside other parts needed to build gaming machines.
Discussion
With the recent Spectre/Meltdown processor flaws still fresh in the minds of folks we thought we ask Ryan Shrout from PC Perspective to give us an overview of how the Spectre/Meltdown affects PC users. Let's start with the main question I hear from folks. Should an average consumer delay upgrading their PC hardware?
- - which processors (intel/amd) have fixes for Spectre/Meltdown
- - what exactly causes the performance degradation of fixes
- - how much a of slowdown are we talking about in real world tests
- - Intel has said it will be releasing new processors with fixes in silicon for Spectre/Meltdown. Should buyers looking to upgrade wait for those processors to arrive?
- - AMD has said the affects of Spectre are not as severe with their products. Does it currently make them a better buy?
Mailbag
- Writing to you about a clarification regarding Aadhar usage in India. It is indeed mandatory to link it to bank accounts and credit cards and there’s now a deadline of March 31, 2018 before which accounts without a linked Aadhar card get frozen automatically.
I’m an Indian citizen living in California and Indian expatriates are not allowed to get an Aadhar when living abroad and hence, my bank account is exempt.
Love the show, keep it up! - Sent by Gouthaman
- Writing to you about a clarification regarding Aadhar usage in India. It is indeed mandatory to link it to bank accounts and credit cards and there’s now a deadline of March 31, 2018 before which accounts without a linked Aadhar card get frozen automatically.
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Mine Your Own GPU Business |
Followed by: "Subscribed to Life" |