TORONTO (Reuters) – Conservative Canadian website The Rebel said its domain provider cut its internet registration, making the site inaccessible to some users around the world on Monday as the company scrambled to get back online using a second provider.
Month: August 2017
Mitch McConnell: ‘Most News Is Not Fake’
Monday at a Louisville Chamber of Commerce event, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) offered a defense of the press by saying that it was his view “that most news” was not “fake” in response to a question about the label frequently used by President Donald Trump. McConnell said, “My view is that most news is not fake, but I do try to look at a variety of sources every morning before I get to work. Everything from The New York Times to offbeat publications that have certain niche audiences.” He added, “I try not to fall in love with any particular source.” (h/t The Hill) Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
Gun-Controlled Chicago: at Least 63 Shot, Eight Killed over Weekend
At least 63 individuals were shot and wounded and eight were killed over the weekend in gun-controlled Chicago.
AMD Releases Beta Graphics Driver for Better Cryptocurrency Mining
A few days ago, AMD released the “Radeon Software Crimson ReLive Edition Beta for Blockchain Compute” driver. According to the release notes on the tech giant’s website, the software optimizes the performance for “Blockchain Compute Workloads,” thereby boosting the efficiency of cryptocurrency mining rigs that are using a GPU for mining (eg., Ethereum mining rigs).
Currently, the graphics driver can be downloaded from AMD’s official website. The beta software supports desktop GPUs from AMD Radeon HD 7700, and it can be installed on 64-bit Windows 7 (Service Pack 1 or higher required) and 64-bit Windows 10 systems. AMD highlighted in the release notes that the graphics driver is not intended to boost users’ gaming performance. The company added that since this is a beta software, it will not be “supported with further updates, upgrades or bug fixes.”
AMD’s new beta driver is designed to fix an issue related to the DAG (directed acyclic graph) size. As the number of blocks in the Ethereum blockchain increases (taking roughly 14 seconds to generate a block), so does Ethereum’s epoch (a 100-hour window). For every epoch, or 30,000 blocks, a DAG is generated. As the DAG size grows, the memory requirements for mining Ethereum increase. Since the memory footprint of the workload is increasing, it will, at a certain time, overflow from the graphics card’s memory and will be stored in the main system memory. The main system memory is much slower than accessing the GPU’s VRAM. If a mining rig is slower to access the memory, it will result in performance penalties concerning the miners’ hashrate.
AMD’s new beta driver appears to have fixed the DAG issue. According to TechPowerUp, there is only a minimal difference between mining different DAG sizes with the beta software. Compared to the old driver, the AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 8GB (1546 MHz/945 MHz) experienced an 81 percent increase in the hashrate mining DAG 199.
The Reddit community has also confirmed that AMD’s new update is resulting in greater hashrates for their GPUs.
“My RX Vega went from 31 to 37Mh/s mining ETH only. Very nice improvement,” wrote a user named “Hot-Diggity-Daffodil.”
“Just got these new drivers installed on one of my 6 gpu rigs. MSI RX 580 8GBs confirmed back up to 29.5 from 27.5. Installing on other rigs now. Using BBT modded ROMs,” another user called “TheHansGruber” wrote in the /r/EtherMining subreddit.
AMD’s beta driver will boost the performance of Ethereum mining rigs for a while. However, if Ethereum evolves from proof of work to proof of stake, with a first step toward this model expected on November 1, GPUs will be less needed over time. At the instance of proof of stake, the mining is based on coin ownership rather than hash power.
The post AMD Releases Beta Graphics Driver for Better Cryptocurrency Mining appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.
With ESPN in the Rear-View, Britt McHenry Eyes Making the Jump From Sports to Politics
ESPN’s huge wave of layoffs back in April and May, caused many former employees of the Bristol-based sports giant to scramble for other jobs in the sports industry. However, one former ESPN employee took the layoff as a chance to get away from sports entirely.
Mike Allen: Trump’s Afghan Plan ‘Will Have the U.S. Not Winning, but Not Losing’
U.S. President Donald Trump’s Afghanistan war plan is expected to include an increase in the number of American troops fighting terrorists in the country, prompting some analysts to suggest the “new strategy” is only an extension of the failed status quo.
Elon Musk Leads the Call for UN to Ban Killer Robots
Tesla’s Elon Musk and Google-parent Alphabet’s Mustafa Suleyman join a total of 116 names from the cutting edge of modern technology to ask the United Nations for a worldwide ban on autonomous warfare.
Poll: Mitch McConnell’s Kentucky Approval Rating Plummets to 18 Percent
The approval rating of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has plummeted to just 18 percent, a survey from Public Policy Polling has found.
Poll: 90 Percent Oppose Removal, Erasure, of Thomas Jefferson, George Washington
Almost nine-out-of-10 Americans oppose the erasure of George Washington’s and Thomas Jefferson’s statues and names from public places, says a poll from Rasmussen Reports.
A Political Guide to Chelsea Manning: ‘Tradition’ Is Fascist, ‘Imagine a World’ Without Borders, Police, Prisons
Convicted leaker and left-wing transgender icon Chelsea Manning has turned full activist since her release from prison, expressing support for violence against “fascists” and the abolition of borders, the police, and prisons.