JUN 2022MAXIMU MPC 9
TRIUMPHS TRAGEDIES
FASTEST CARD LANDS
Nvidia’s RTX 3090 Ti has
launched, with a monster 10,
CUDA GPU, 24GB of GDDR6X,
450W, and a $2,000 price tag.OPEN SOURCE BIOS
A project to build Coreboot, a
configurable open source BIOS,
has got it running on an Alder
Lake board, albeit a Linux one.3D MODEL YOUR STUFF
Epic did a beta test of RealityScan,
which makes 3D models using
smartphone images.NO E3 THIS YEAR
Last year’s E3 was held online
but this year there’s no show.
It will return “reinvigorated”
next year, organizers say.DRONE CRASHES
Amazon’s $2bn drone program
is struggling with “safety
issues”. Insiders claim delivery
speed has been prioritized.SMART HOME BRICKS
Insteon shut its servers, killing
all its smart home gadgets and
showing how transient the kit is.A monthly snapshot of what’s good and bad in techTech Triumphs and Tragedies
THE GREAT GRAPHICS card drought
is nearly over and to highlight this,
Nvidia’s marketing campaign,
dubbed restocked and reloaded,
is spreading the word that its GeForce RTX 30 Series cards should be in
stock. In theory, you have a chance of getting cards at list price, though some
opportunistic scalpers are still at large, especially for the ‘hot’ cards.
A quick survey of resellers shows a trend of increased availability and
falling prices. The Radeon RX 6500XT and 6900 XT are now selling at just
shy of list price though, on average, you can still expect to pay an extra $200.
Nvidia’s 40 Series cards and AMD’s RDNA 3, are due at the end of the year.
Both companies will want to shift the previous generation before they are
rendered less desirable. It’s a tough call for consumers— jump on the new
stock or wait and get the next generation? At least you now have a choice. –CLGraphics cards are
back on the menuRESTOCKED
AND RELOADEDWINDOWS 11 UPDATES
APP SECURITY
MICROSOFT has a new security system dubbed Smart App Control, which aims to make
Windows as secure as possible for ‘hybrid’ working from home. The new system uses
cloud servers to monitor an application’s behavior, employing AI to spot anything
potentially malicious. Sounds good, but the problem is that it won’t work on any
application you’ve already installed, so you’ll need to wipe and start again. Ouch!
Having to reinstall Windows and all your applications is a big price to pay for that
extra layer of security. There are other issues too, because it doesn’t like unsigned or
unrecognized applications. Meaning your obscure utility or elderly application will set
alarms off. Until Microsoft figures out how to enable Smart App Control without a clean
system and adds more control, this new feature is going to be a pain to use.–CLTHE CATCH IS YOU HAVE TO
REINSTALL WINDOWS TO USE ITCRYPTOCURRENCIES are volatile, rife with
scams, and at the mercy of legislation,
but the concept remains sound. Which
currencies survive is another matter. Many
will die. In fact, nearly all of them will—
there are over 18,000 in existence, and a
good number aren’t worth the electricity
used to create them. Like many technical
developments before it, the original design
is no longer a good fit.
At its heart cryptocurrencies, or rather
the blockchain that supports the biggest
of them, has a problem. It uses a proof-
of-work (PoW) system. Transactions are
made using complex calculations which
the miners compete to finish to earn their
slice. All this works neatly on a small scale,
but as it gets bigger, it gets ridiculous.
Bitcoin consumes enough electricity to run
a small country, such as the Netherlands,
for example. This is clearly unsustainable
in the long term.
Enter PoS, proof-of-stake, which
debuted in 2012. This replaces the
near-endless number-crunching with a
system in which the validators controlling
transfers prove themselves by their
holdings in the cryptocurrency (that’s the
short version, it’s a bit more complicated
than that). There are plenty of PoS coins
about, including Cardano, which is ranked
number eight in terms of its overall market
value. However, Bitcoin and Ethereum
currently dominate the market, and both
currently use PoW.
Ethereum consumes about half the
power of Bitcoin and has been working
towards shifting to PoS since 2016. Its
developers have tested PoS on a ‘shadow
fork’ of the coin and, apparently, it works,
albeit with a few teething troubles. They
plan the full switch to PoS this year, dubbed
‘the Merge’. The result is an estimated 99
percent drop in power consumption. Good
news, if all goes smoothly.
All eyes now, of course, turn towards
Bitcoin, the one that started it all. Here,
there is reluctance: it is effectively owned
by the big miners and once it moves they’ll
lose much of their power and be left with
sheds full of unwanted hardware. However,
the big PoW miners won’t be missed: they
consume vast resources, and our precious
GPUs, to produce nothing with any physical
value. Moving a digital coin from one wallet
to another shouldn’t require the services
of a medium-sized power station. –CLMove to proof-of-
stake this yearETHEREUM
GOES GREEN
© ETHEREUM