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      China close to shipping 5 nm chips, despite Western curbs

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Tuesday, 6 February - 14:03

    The latest Huawei-designed Kirin processor was a 7-nanometer chip made for it by SMIC that appeared in the Mate 60 Pro smartphone in August.

    Enlarge / The latest Huawei-designed Kirin processor was a 7-nanometer chip made for it by SMIC that appeared in the Mate 60 Pro smartphone in August. (credit: James Park/Bloomberg)

    China’s national chip champions expect to make next-generation smartphone processors as early as this year, despite US efforts to restrict their development of advanced technologies.

    The country’s biggest chipmaker, SMIC, has put together new semiconductor production lines in Shanghai, according to two people familiar with the move, to mass-produce the chips designed by technology giant Huawei.

    That plan supports Beijing’s goals of chip self-sufficiency, with President Joe Biden’s administration tightening export restrictions for advanced chipmaking equipment in October, citing national security concerns. The US has also been working with the Netherlands and Japan to block China’s access to the latest chip tools, such as machines from the Dutch maker ASML.

    Read 16 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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      Ryzen 8000G review: An integrated GPU that can beat a graphics card, for a price

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Monday, 29 January - 19:50

    The most interesting thing about AMD's Ryzen 7 8700G CPU is the Radeon 780M GPU that's attached to it.

    Enlarge / The most interesting thing about AMD's Ryzen 7 8700G CPU is the Radeon 780M GPU that's attached to it. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

    Put me on the short list of people who can get excited about the humble, much-derided integrated GPU.

    Yes, most of them are afterthoughts, designed for office desktops and laptops that will spend most of their lives rendering 2D images to a single monitor. But when integrated graphics push forward, it can open up possibilities for people who want to play games but can only afford a cheap desktop (or who have to make do with whatever their parents will pay for, which was the big limiter on my PC gaming experience as a kid).

    That, plus an unrelated but accordant interest in building small mini-ITX-based desktops, has kept me interested in AMD’s G-series Ryzen desktop chips (which it sometimes calls “APUs,” to distinguish them from the Ryzen CPUs). And the Ryzen 8000G chips are a big upgrade from the 5000G series that immediately preceded them (this makes sense, because as we all know the number 8 immediately follows the number 5).

    Read 37 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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      Intel fixes high-severity CPU bug that causes “very strange behavior”

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Tuesday, 14 November - 20:57 · 1 minute

    Intel fixes high-severity CPU bug that causes “very strange behavior”

    Enlarge

    On Tuesday, Intel pushed microcode updates to fix a high-severity CPU bug that has the potential to be maliciously exploited against cloud-based hosts.

    The flaw, affecting virtually all modern Intel CPUs, causes them to “enter a glitch state where the normal rules don’t apply,” Tavis Ormandy, one of several security researchers inside Google who discovered the bug, reported . Once triggered, the glitch state results in unexpected and potentially serious behavior, most notably system crashes that occur even when untrusted code is executed within a guest account of a virtual machine, which, under most cloud security models, is assumed to be safe from such faults. Escalation of privileges is also a possibility.

    Very strange behavior

    The bug, tracked under the common name Reptar and the designation CVE-2023-23583, is related to how affected CPUs manage prefixes, which change the behavior of instructions sent by running software. Intel x64 decoding generally allows redundant prefixes—meaning those that don’t make sense in a given context—to be ignored without consequence. During testing in August, Ormandy noticed that the REX prefix was generating “unexpected results” when running on Intel CPUs that support a newer feature known as fast short repeat move, which was introduced in the Ice Lake architecture to fix microcoding bottlenecks.

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      Build your dream desktop with these Prime Day PC components deals

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Wednesday, 11 October - 19:15 · 6 minutes

    Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4080.

    Enlarge / Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4080. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

    If you're building a new PC, there's no time like Amazon's big Prime Day sale to grab a deal on PC parts. Components like fans, motherboards, CPUs, and GPUs are all on sale. Whether you're starting from scratch on building your own powerful gaming rig or workstation, or you're upgrading an existing build, we have some options.

    GPU deals on RTX graphics cards

    • ZOTAC Gaming GeForce RTX 3060 Twin Edge OC for $261 (was $340) at Amazon
    • ZOTAC Gaming GeForce RTX 4080 16GB Trinity OC for $990 (was $1,300) at Amazon
    • PowerColor Fighter AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT Gaming Graphics Card with 12GB GDDR6 Memory for $300 (was $350) at Amazon
    • ZOTAC Gaming GeForce RTX 4070 AMP AIRO Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse Inspired Graphics Card Bundle for $585 (was $700) at Amazon
    • EVGA GeForce RTX 2060 SC GAMING for $200 (was $360) at Amazon
    • Intel Arc A750 Limited Edition 8GB PCI Express 4.0 Graphics Card for $200 (was $220) at Amazon
    • ASUS Dual NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 OC Edition Gaming Graphics Card for $230 (was $300) at Amazon
    • ASUS ROG Strix NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Gaming Graphics Card for $870 (was $950) at Amazon
    • XFX Speedster QICK319 Radeon RX 6750XT Gaming Graphics Card for $350 (was $430) at Amazon
    • XFX Speedster SWFT319 Radeon RX 6800 Gaming Graphics Card for $400 (was $490) at Amazon
    • ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4060 Ti OC Edition Gaming Graphics Card for $415 (was $460) at Amazon

    Storage and RAM

    • Lexar NQ100 480GB 2.5-inch SATA III Internal SSD for $18 (was $33) at Amazon
    • Lexar NQ100 1.92TB 2.5-inch SATA III Internal SSD for $62 (was $88) at Amazon
    • Crucial P3 Plus 4TB PCIe Gen4 3D NAND NVMe M.2 SSD for $180 (was $226) at Amazon
    • Crucial P3 4TB PCIe Gen3 3D NAND NVMe M.2 SSD for $160 (was $230) at Amazon
    • Crucial MX500 4TB 3D NAND SATA 2.5 Inch Internal SSD for $165 (was $204) at Amazon
    • Crucial Pro RAM 64GB Kit DDR4 3200MT/s for $100 (was $142) at Amazon
    • Lexar NM790 SSD 2TB PCIe Gen4 NVMe M.2 2280 Internal Solid State Drive for $87 (was $125) at Amazon
    • Lexar NM790 SSD 1TB PCIe Gen4 NVMe M.2 2280 Internal Solid State Drive for $45 (was $70) at Amazon
    • Lexar NM790 SSD 512GB PCIe Gen4 NVMe M.2 2280 Internal Solid State Drive for $37 (was $50) at Amazon
    • Lexar ARES RGB 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4 RAM 3600MT/s CL18 Desktop Memory for $55 (was $80) at Amazon
    • Crucial T700 4TB Gen5 NVMe M.2 SSD for $390 (was $600) at Amazon
    • Crucial T700 4TB Gen5 NVMe M.2 SSD with heatsink for $410 (was $630) at Amazon
    • Lexar NQ100 960GB 2.5-inch SATA III Internal SSD for $33 (was $48) at Amazon
    • Lexar ARES RGB 32GB (2x16GB) DDR5 RAM 6000MT/s CL34 Desktop Memory for $76 (was $120) at Amazon
    • Lexar ARES RGB 32GB (2x16GB) DDR5 RAM 5600MT/s CL32 Desktop Memory for $72 (was $110) at Amazon
    • PNY CS2241 4TB M.2 NVMe Gen4 x4 Internal Solid State Drive for $175 (was $220) at Amazon
    • CORSAIR VENGEANCE RGB DDR5 RAM 32GB (2x16GB) 5200 MHz CL40 for $90 (was $100) at Amazon

    CPU deals on Intel and AMD processors

    • Intel Core i5-12600KF Desktop Processor 10 (6P+4E) Cores for $163 (was $199) at Amazon
    • Intel Core i7-12700K Desktop Processor with Integrated Graphics for $239 (was $276) at Amazon
    • Intel Core i5-12600K Desktop Processor with Integrated Graphics for $179 (was $194) at Amazon
    • AMD Ryzen 9 5900X 12-core, 24-Thread Unlocked Desktop Processor for $297 (was $570) at Amazon
    • Intel Core i7-13700K Desktop Processor with Integrated Graphics for $373 (was $419) at Amazon
    • AMD Ryzen 9 7900X 12-Core, 24-Thread Unlocked Desktop Processor for $382 (was $549) at Amazon
    • AMD Ryzen 9 7950X 16-Core, 32-Thread Unlocked Desktop Processor for $509 (was $699) at Amazon
    • AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D 16-Core, 32-Thread Desktop Processor for $599 (was $699) at Amazon
    • AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D 8-core, 16-Thread Desktop Processor for $307 (was $319) at Amazon
    • Intel Core i7-12700KF Desktop Processor for $219 (was $259) at Amazon
    • Intel Core i9-12900K Gaming Desktop Processor with Integrated Graphics and 16 (8P+8E) Cores for $327 (was $379) at Amazon
    • AMD Ryzen 7 5800X 8-core, 16-Thread Unlocked Desktop Processor for $215 (was $449) at Amazon
    • Intel Core i9-12900KF Desktop Processor for $318 (was $373) at Amazon
    • Intel Core i9-12900KS Gaming Desktop Processor for $349 (was $400) at Amazon

    Motherboards

    • ASUS Prime B550-PLUS AMD AM4 Zen 3 Ryzen 5000 & 3rd Gen Ryzen ATX Motherboard for $100 (was $140) at Amazon
    • GIGABYTE B650 Gaming X AX (AM5/ LGA 1718/ AMD/ B650 for $162 (was $200) at Amazon
    • ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 Hero (WiFi 6E) LGA 1700 (Intel 13th & 12th Gen) ATX Motherboard for $540 (was $609) at Amazon
    • Gigabyte B550 AORUS ELITE AX V2 for $144 (was $190) at Amazon
    • ASUS Prime Z790-A WiFi 6E LGA 1700 (Intel 13th & 12th) ATX Motherboard for $250 (was $310) at Amazon
    • ASUS TUF Gaming Z790-Plus WiFi D4 LGA 1700 (Intel 12th & 13th Gen) ATX Motherboard for $200 (was $230) at Amazon
    • ASUS Prime X670E-PRO WiFi Socket AM5 (LGA 1718) Ryzen 7000 ATX Motherboard for $290 (was $350) at Amazon
    • ASUS Strix STRIX Z790-A WIFI D4 Desktop Motherboard for $285 (was $350) at Amazon
    • MSI MPG Z690 Edge WiFi DDR4 Gaming Motherboard for $220 (was $300) at Amazon
    • GIGABYTE Z790 AORUS Elite AX DDR4 for $207 (was $260) at Amazon
    • MSI B550 Gaming GEN3 Gaming Motherboard for $100 (was $120) at Amazon
    • ASUS Prime X670-P Socket AM5 (LGA 1718) Ryzen 7000 ATX Motherboard for $200 (was $270) at Amazon
    • ASUS Prime H770-PLUS D4 Intel H770(13th and 12th Gen) LGA 1700 ATX Motherboard for $100 (was $160) at Amazon
    • ASUS ROG Strix B550-A Gaming AMD AM4 Zen 3 Ryzen 5000 & 3rd Gen Ryzen ATX Motherboard for $160 (was $180) at Amazon
    • MSI PRO Z790-A Wi-Fi ProSeries Motherboard (Supports 12th/13th Gen Intel Processors) for $190 (was $280) at Amazon
    • MSI MEG Z690 Unify Gaming Motherboard for $290 (was $330) at Amazon

    Power Supply Units

    • ASUS ROG STRIX 1000W Gold PSU, Power Supply for $160 (was $210) at Amazon
    • Cooler Master MWE Gold 850 V2 Full Modular for $95 (was $100) at Amazon
    • EVGA 100-N1-0650-L1, 650 N1, 650 W for $44 (was $65) at Amazon
    • EVGA Supernova 1600 G+, 80+ Gold 1600 W for $210 (was $350) at Amazon
    • Thermaltake Toughpower GF1 850 W 80+ Gold SLI/ CrossFire Ready Ultra Quiet 140mm Hydraulic Bearing Smart Zero Fan for $100 (was $140) at Amazon
    • Thermaltake Toughpower 750 W 80 Plus Gold Semi Modular PSU ATX for $80 (was $110) at Amazon
    • Thermaltake Toughpower GF3 850 W for $110 (was $160) at Amazon
    • EVGA SuperNOVA 1300 GT, 80 Plus Gold 1300 W for $180 (was $250) at Amazon
    • ASUS ROG Thor 850W Platinum II for $170 (was $250) at Amazon
    • EVGA Supernova 1000 P3, 80 Plus Platinum 1000 W for $210 (was $250) at Amazon
    • EVGA Supernova 1000 G7, 80 Plus Gold 1000 W for $180 (was $240) at Amazon
    • Thermaltake TOUGHLIQUID 360 ARGB Motherboard Sync All-in-One Liquid CPU Cooler for $100 (was $140) at Amazon
    • GIGABYTE GP-UD850GM PG5 Rev2.0 850W PCIe 5.0 Ready for $97 (was $140) at Amazon
    • Thermaltake Toughpower GF3 1350W for $208 (was $260) at Amazon
    • Corsair HX1000i Fully Modular Ultra-Low Noise ATX Power Supply - ATX 3.0 & PCIe 5.0 Compliant for $230 (was $260) at Amazon

    Fans and coolers

    • Cooler Master Hyper 212 Halo Black CPU Air Cooler for $33 (was $45) at Amazon
    • MSI MAG CoreLiquid 360R V2 - AIO ARGB CPU Liquid Cooler for $95 (was $140) at Amazon
    • NZXT Kraken 280 RGB - RL-KR280-B1 - 280 mm AIO CPU Liquid Cooler for $142 (was $200) at Amazon
    • Cooler Master MasterLiquid 360L Core 360 mm Close-Loop AIO Liquid Cooler for $101 (was $120) at Amazon
    • Cooler Master MasterLiquid 240L Core 240 mm Close-Loop AIO Liquid Cooler for $85 (was $100) at Amazon
    • AORUS WATERFORCE X 360 AIO Liquid CPU Cooler for $187 ($240) at Amazon
    • ASUS ROG RYUO III 360 ARGB All-in-one AIO Liquid CPU Cooler 360 mm Radiator for $245 (was $290) at Amazon
    • MSI MAG CoreLiquid C240 - AIO ARGB CPU Liquid Cooler - 240 mm Radiator for $90 (was $120) at Amazon
    • Thermaltake Riing Quad 120 mm 16.8 Million RGB Color 9 Blades Hydraulic Bearing Case/Radiator Fan for $90 (was $120) at Amazon

    Cases and towers

    • ASUS TUF Gaming GT501 Mid-Tower Computer Case for up to EATX Motherboards for $135 (was $180) at Amazon
    • ASUS TUF Gaming GT502 ATX Mid-Tower Computer Case for $140 (was $170) at Amazon
    • Thermaltake Tower 200 Mini-ITX Computer Case for $100 (was $130) at Amazon
    • CORSAIR Crystal Series 680X RGB High Airflow Tempered Glass ATX Smart Case, Black for $193 (was $275) at Amazon
    • Corsair 5000D Tempered Glass Mid-Tower ATX PC Case - White for $165 (was $175) at Amazon
    • Thermaltake Core P3 Pro E-ATX Tempered Glass Mid Tower for $120 (was $160) at Amazon
    • Antec NX200 M, Micro-ATX Tower, Mini-Tower Computer Case for $44 (was $65) at Amazon
    • Corsair iCUE 220T RGB AIRFLOW Tempered Glass Mid-Tower Smart ATX Case for $70 (was $125) at Amazon
    • Corsair Carbide Series 175R RGB Tempered Glass Mid-Tower ATX Gaming Case for $53 (was $85) at Amazon

    Ars Technica may earn compensation for sales from links on this post through affiliate programs .

    Read on Ars Technica | Comments

    Thanks to Kevin, a friend from France, I recently discovered "hetrixtools" (link attached) which lets you monitor one or more hosts for free (there are limitations but they are not strict): without installing any software on your machines, you can do #PING, #Website, #SMTP and #Heartbeat checks over your hosts; then if you install their agent (it's really straightforward but #CPU usage was an issue for my single-core VPS) you can get a lot more, from services to ports monitoring, to disk health checks.

    So, after I saw that installing the agent was not feasible for me, I decided to try a local run monitoring service and I choose #Monit, which is well documented and all in all quite easy to set up once you get the way it works.

    I've got #notifications directly to my #INBOX, via my own #email server and here you can see what I'm monitoring so far.. https://i.imgur.com/uqDceAa.jpeg Each of those items is click-able and gives a lot of detailed info. I cannot see any difference in #CPU usage on my host and am quite satisfied by the results.

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      Intel’s biggest laptop CPU update in years is a huge departure from past designs

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Wednesday, 20 September, 2023 - 18:16 · 1 minute

    An Intel Meteor Lake processor, which will come to market under the "Core" and "Core Ultra" banners later this year.

    Enlarge / An Intel Meteor Lake processor, which will come to market under the "Core" and "Core Ultra" banners later this year. (credit: Intel)

    Intel’s next-generation Meteor Lake laptop processors are nearing release—the company announced this week that the first processors will launch on December 14. It’s unclear whether actual Core and Core Ultra systems will be available to buy on that date, but at a bare minimum, the official announcement will pave the way to many laptop announcements at CES in January.

    We already know a lot of basic facts about Meteor Lake; it uses a combination of chiplets manufactured by both Intel and TSMC rather than a single monolithic die, and it will mark the retirement of Intel’s “nth-generation” and i3/i5/i7/i9 branding. We also know that it won’t be ready for desktops and that the next round of Core desktop CPUs will be very similar to the 12th- and 13th-generation chips.

    But at Intel's Innovation event this week, the company dove a little deeper into some of Meteor Lake’s advancements, describing more about how the chips would balance E-cores and P-cores and announcing its most substantial integrated GPU upgrade in years. We’ll hit some highlights below, though it’s worth watching or reading the full presentation to find out more.

    Read 15 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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      You’re the OS is a game that will make you feel for your poor, overworked system

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Tuesday, 15 August, 2023 - 17:49 · 1 minute

    Screenshot of You're the OS game, with multi-colored processes and gray memory pages

    Enlarge / If I click the "I/O Events" in the upper-left corner, maybe some of the frozen processes with a little hourglass will unfreeze. But how soon? Before the other deep-red processes die? I can't work under these conditions! (credit: Pier-Luc Brault)

    I spent nearly 20 minutes this morning trying to be a good operating system, but you know what? People expect too much of their computers.

    I worked hard to rotate processes through CPU slots, I was speedy to respond to I/O requests, and I didn't even let memory pages get written to disk. But the user—some jerk that I'm guessing keeps 32 shopping tabs open during work—kept rage-quitting as processes slid in attrition from bright green to red to "red with a frozen face emoji." It made me want to get four more cores or potentially just kill a process out of spite. If they were a writer, like me, I'd kill the sandboxed tab with their blog editor open. Learn to focus, scribe!

    You're the OS! is a browser game that combines stress, higher-level computer design appreciation, and panic-clicking exercise. Creator Pier-Luc Brault says specifically that the game "has not been created with education in mind," but it might introduce people to principles like process scheduling and memory swapping—"as long as it is made clear that it is not an exact depiction." Brault, a computer science teacher himself, writes that they may use the game to teach about cores, RAM shortages, and the like.

    Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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      The last generation: Intel has new labels for its next major CPU architecture

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Thursday, 15 June, 2023 - 13:00

    Intel's Core CPUs are about to get a bit more Ultra.

    Enlarge / Intel's Core CPUs are about to get a bit more Ultra. (credit: Intel)

    As part of an effort to "simplify the Intel brand portfolio," Intel has announced some changes to its processor branding starting with its next-generation Meteor Lake CPUs.

    The smallest change is that Intel's mainstream CPUs are losing their "i," shifting from Core i3/i5/i7/i9 to simply Core 3/5/7/9. Intel will also stop using "generational" messaging in its processor branding—none of the new CPUs will be announced, released, or advertised as "14th-generation" anything.

    Intel's generational branding has always been a bit arbitrary, anyway. The "first-generation" Core chips followed several generations of Core and Core 2 processors, the branding Intel started using for its chips in the mid-2000s at the end of the Pentium 4 era. And the Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad branding was used for several distinct generations of chips that used different manufacturing technologies and revised architectures.

    Read 14 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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      Revivez l’expérience des anciens geeks avec PCjs

      news.movim.eu / Korben · Friday, 31 March, 2023 - 07:00 · 1 minute

    Mis au point par Jeff Parsons qui a eu le plaisir de découvrir l’informatique dans les années 70/80, PCjs est un code en javascript qui est capable d’émuler toute une série de matos et de logiciels comme la calculatrice TI-57, le premier Space Invaders (1978), évidemment Multiplan d’IBM (1982), Windows 1.0 jusqu’à 95 ou encore des jeux comme Wolfenstein 3D (1992) ou Dune II (1992).

    Cela va vous permettre de vive l’expérience de ces vieux coucous avec leurs CPU ultra pas rapides, des sons bippés à couper le souffle et leurs interfaces hautes en couleurs, tout ça sans avoir à quitter votre navigateur. Et oui car tout est accessible directement via ce site : https://www.pcjs.org .

    PCjs - émulateur de système d'exploitation vintage des années 80

    L’idée évidemment est de préserver un petit peu de ce patrimoine informatique et logiciel et bien sûr de se faire plaisir sans galérer à retrouver de vieilles disquettes ou même un logiciel de virtualisation compatibles.

    Voici tout ce que vous allez expérimenter sur PCjs :

    • Calculatrice programmable TI-57 (1978)
    • Ohio Scientific Challenger 1P (1978)
    • Space Invaders (1978)
    • Microsoft Adventure (1981)
    • DONKEY.BAS de PC DOS 1.00 (1981)
    • VisiCalc (1981)
    • Multiplan 1.0 (1982)
    • Executive Suite (1982)
    • PDP-11/70 avec RT-11 4.0 (1982)
    • CP/M-86 (1983)
    • COMPAQ Portable avec graphiques monochromes (1983)
    • Zork I: The Great Underground Empire
    • Exploring the IBM Personal Computer (1983)
    • Adventures in Math (1983)
    • Lotus 1-2-3 (1983)
    • Norton Utilities 2.0 (1983)
    • Fantasy Land EGA Demo (1984)
    • Microsoft Word 1.15 (1984)
    • Nine Princes in Amber (1985)
    • Rogue (1985)
    • Microsoft Windows 1.0 (« Premiere Edition »)
    • Microsoft Windows 1.1 sur CGA (1985)
    • Microsoft Windows 1.1 sur EGA (1985)
    • Balance of Power (1985)
    • IBM OS/2 1.0 (1987)
    • VGA Black Book Tests (par Michael Abrash)
    • Microsoft Windows/386 2.0 (1987)
    • Microsoft QuickPascal 1.00 (1989)
    • Microsoft Windows 3.0 (1990)
    • Life & Death II: The Brain (1990)
    • The Oregon Trail (1990)
    • Commander Keen (1991)
    • Wolfenstein 3D (1992)
    • Dune II (1992)
    • Microsoft Windows 3.1 (1992)
    • Microsoft Windows 95 (1995)
    PCjs - simulateur de machine de bureau MS-DOS et Windows 3.0

    Toutes les sources du projet sont sur Github et vous pouvez contribuer. Chacune de ces machines est codée entièrement en javascript et utilisent un format XML qui défini les composants à activer ou non, donc vous pouvez aussi vous approprier le truc et créer vos propres machines assez simplement.