Archive for August 1, 2019

Thursday, August 1, 2019

Decoding Intel Chip Names

Sean Hollister (via Nilay Patel):

Particularly because not all these chips are equal: a Core i7-1060G7, Core i7-1065G7 and Core i7-1068G7 might sound roughly the same, but they’re really not.

[…]

The first two digits are always “10,” and they simply mean you’re looking at a 10th Gen Ice Lake processor with all the benefits that confers, like faster graphics and better battery life when playing HEVC video, but also often a lower base clockspeed than before. If you see a “9” or an “8”, you’re looking at an older Intel processor.

The third digit seems to be how high a chip sits on the totem pole in terms of speed. For instance, a Core i7-1065G7 is clocked 100MHz higher than a Core i5-1035G7, and can boost 200MHz faster for short periods of time.

But the fourth digit is weirdly more important than the third digit, because it tells you the entire class of processor you’re looking at[…]

Lightning Video Adapters

Lisa Braun:

Here is my little thread about Lightning video adapters – also known as Haywire – which are actually computers that feature Apple Secure Boot and run Darwin kernel

[…]

Both support up to 1080p video output according to Apple and make use of the same SoC – S5L8747. Its part number is H9TKNNN2GD and according to The iPhone Wiki it has 256MB of RAM. Not much else is known about it

Unfortunately, these adapters are of terrible quality. HDMI adapter got 2 out 5 stars on US Apple Store web-site and reviews are all like this one[…]

[…]

Haywire itself doesn’t store any firmware (well, except for SecureROM), so iOS has to upload it every time. Firmware bundle for it is very tiny, around 25MB uncompressed. Shipped as preinstalled asset with iOS and/or can be downloaded.

[…]

You can easily connect Haywire to PC because it’s basically an USB device. All you need to get to accomplish is Lightning and micro-USB female breakout boards and few connecting wires[…]

All these years later, and iOS video output over Lightning is still less reliable than using the old Dock connector adapter.

Previously:

Why Unsubscribing Can Take Time

Joe Pettersson:

I saw a tweet asking why sometimes when you unsubscribe from an email list it says it can ‘take a few days’. Buckle up, as I have a RIDICULOUS story about this happening in The Enterprise™️...

[…]

This web service sends an email to an internal email address every time it’s clicked. This happens 100s of times a day.

This email was originally sent to an individual. They left the bank five years before.

This mail address is now forwarded to an email group. They couldn’t change the address as it’s hard coded and they don’t have the code that was used to compile this Java 6 service.

[…]

If they’re a customer, they execute another SQL query that updates a customer record in a type of ETL staging area. Every one of these changes is reviewed (at 4pm UK time) by a team in an office in Scotland. If they approve it, it gets executed 24 hours LATER at 4pm

[…]

If they ARE a ‘high value prospect’ the marketing team MANUALLY sends an email asking if they REALLY REALLY want to unsubscribe? It looks like an automated email, but it ain’t.

[…]

IIRC this took FOUR BUSINESS DAYS on average.

Safari Won’t Load Google Sites

All week, Safari on my MacBook Pro hasn’t been able to access any Google sites. I first noticed the problem when using public Wi-Fi, but it persisted after I got back to my home network. Firefox and Google Chrome load the pages fine, as do third-party apps that use WebKit. And Safari on the same Mac works when it’s booted from a different macOS installation.

So, either this is a really weird bug, or something is messed up with my system. What’s odd is that the error is so generic:

Safari Can’t Connect to the Server

Safari can’t open the page “https://www.google.com” because Safari can’t connect to the server “www.google.com”.

so it’s not clear what the problem is, or even where to look. There’s no lock icon reporting a certificate problem, and the error does not even mention secure connections. Console only mentions error code -1004 (NSURLErrorCannotConnectToHost).

I don’t have any custom DNS settings, and I’ve tried resetting Safari’s cache and other files, as well as other voodoo like restarting and creating a new network location in System Preferences.

Previously: