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8BitDo M Edition mechanical keyboard is a modern take on IBM’s Model M

  • 8BitDo's IBM-like M Edition keyboard. [credit: 8BitDo ]

8BitDo is releasing an IBM-inspired look for its $100 wireless mechanical keyboard. Keyboard enthusiasts love regaling normies with tales of IBM’s buckling spring keyboards and the precedent they set for today's mechanical keyboards. But 8BitDo's Retro Mechanical Keyboard M Edition doesn't adopt very much from IBM's iconic designs.

8BitDo’s Retro mechanical keyboards come in different looks that each pay tribute to classic tech. The tributes are subtle enough to avoid copyright issues. Similar to 8BitDo's ‘80s Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and Commodore 64 designs, the M Edition doesn’t have any official IBM logos. However, the M Edition's color scheme, chunkier build, and typeface selection, including on the Tab key with arrows and elsewhere, are nods to IBM’s Model M, which first succeeded the Model F in 1985.

Of course, the keyboard’s naming, and the IBM behemoth and floppy disks strategically placed in marketing images, are notes of that, too:

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IBM Sells Cybersecurity Group

IBM is selling its QRadar product suite to Palo Alto Networks, for an undisclosed—but probably surprisingly small—sum.

I have a personal connection to this. In 2016, IBM bought Resilient Systems, the startup I was a part of. It became part if IBM’s cybersecurity offerings, mostly and weirdly subservient to QRadar.

That was what seemed to be the problem at IBM. QRadar was IBM’s first acquisition in the cybersecurity space, and it saw everything through the lens of that SIEM system. I left the company two years after the acquisition, and near as I could tell, it never managed to figure the space out.

So now it’s Palo Alto’s turn.

IBM introduces entry-level Power10 server and tower

Each S1012 node has a single Power10 processor, which can have 1, 4, or 8 cores activated, which suggests that it is the same single chip module (SCM) implementation of the Power10 processor that was used in the Power S1022s entry machine. The Power S1012 node has four ISDIMM memory slots (using the differential signaling created by Big Blue for its Power10 memory) with a maximum capacity of 256 GB. The node has four half-height, half-length PCI-Express 5.0 slots and room for four NVM-Express U.2 drive bays that come in a maximum 1.6 TB capacity each for a total of 6.4 TB of storage.

[…]

The eight-core version of the Power10 SCM is only available in the rack configuration, while the one-core and four-core versions are available in rack or tower configurations. The four-core and eight-core versions can run IBM i, AIX, or Linux, but the one-core version can only run IBM i and it has its main memory capped at the same 64 GB that other single-core Power Systems machines have been subjected to. We have suggested that 128 GB or even 256 GB is more appropriate given modern workloads, but Big Blue is standing its ground here. If you need more memory than 64 GB, then this machine is not for you.

↫ Timothy Prickett Morgan at IT Jungle

I understand full well that these machines are by no means meant for people like you and I, sitting at home playing with our toys. That being said, I still wish there was some way for IBM to offer unique hardware like this – perhaps in a more standard, paired-down configuration – so more people than just enterprises could explore and use them.

It wouldn’t make any economic sense for IBM to do so, and even in a more standard, paired-down configuration they’d probably still be ungodly expensive, but when I look at this unique tower, with its POWER10 hardware and the ability to run AIX, desires are stirred within me that are banned in at least 46 countries. Such a machine would surely be wasted on someone like me, who would just be shoehorning whatever desktop tasks he could into it, but what a grand ol’ time we would have.

There is absolutely, positively, unequivocally zero percent chance IBM would ever send one of these over for review to someone like me, but I wonder if I should try anyway. I’ve got nothing to lose. Does anyone here work at IBM? Perhaps IBM wants to sponsor OSNews? How about like 12 weeks of free sponsorships in exchange for a tower model of the Power S1012? I also have two POWER9 machines to compare it to!

It’s the only way you’ll ever get a Power S1012 screenfetch screenshot go viral on nerd social media, and we all know that deep down, that’s all you IBM folks really want.

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