• A federal judge has ruled that Google is operating an illegal monopoly - again.  (Associated Press)
  
  Google's search engine was found in violation of antitrust laws last August, and the company's ad division has now joined it on the naughty list.
  
  This doesn't mean that either one is an absolute monopoly, and they're not.  But companies with a dominant market position are restricted from certain business practices that are no in themselves illegal, and that's where Google has run aground.
  
  Now the DOJ will be arguing for specific penalties (most likely forcing Google to spin off a small number of products into separate businesses) and Google will be trying to tie this up in appeals until the Sun goes out.
  
  
  

Tech News

• AGI is still thirty years away, like nuclear fusion.  (Dwarkesh Podcast)
  
  (There's a full transcript; you don't need to listen.)
  
  The host makes the point that we've had rapid advances in AI technology over the past decade; the guests respond that this progress has come at the expense of, well, expense.  The AI supercluster at xAI cost upwards of $2.5 billion to create, and similar installations exist at the other major AI companies.
  
  And we can't replicate that over the next ten years because nobody has $2.5 trillion to build a computer a thousand times more powerful, or 35,000 methane-powered generators to provide the hundreds of gigawatts needed to power the city-sized cluster.
  
  Now things get hard.
  
  
  
• There's a new Framework Laptop 13 in town, with a Ryzen 370 and up to 96GB (and probably 128GB) of SO-DIMM memory.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Still no Four Essential Keys though.
  
  
  
• A new GPS alternative from Australia is 10 to 50 times more accurate than existing alternatives.  (Interesting Engineering)
  
  When I first saw this it seemed to be claiming to be 10 to 50 times more accurate than GPS itself, but that's not it.  If GPS is unavailable for any reason - something that happens a lot more often than you might think - this system based on existing maps of the Earth's magnetic field is essentially impossible to jam and doesn't rely on any other systems being active.
  
  It's not as good as GPS, but it's better than other options when you don't have GPS.

Posted by: PatBuckman at Friday, April 18 2025 08:09 PM (rcPLc)

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• Nvidia's RTX 5060 Ti 16GB edition is here and it's eh.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  The other two cards announced today, the 5060 Ti 8GB edition and the 5060 non-Ti, are nowhere to be found.
  
  If you're not using ray tracing, it's about 10% slower than my Radeon 7800 XT and costs about 25% more at retail.  Retail prices may settle down eventually, but they haven't been great so far in Nvidia's 5000-series launch.
  
  If you are using ray tracing, it's about 5% faster than my Radeon 7800 XT - but still 25% more expensive.
  
  That retail price places it just 10% cheaper than AMD's new 9070 (non-XT) card, which averages 50% faster at 4k resolution.
  
  It does better at Stable Diffusion (AI image generation) and runs acceptably cool and quiet, but you should definitely wait to see what the Radeon 9060 delivers if you're in the market.
  
  
  

Tech News

• Some Synology consumer NAS models now require Synology-branded drives for full functionality.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  This applies to the 2025 Plus series - it was already true for recent enterprise NAS models.
  
  Allow me to take this moment to heartily unrecommend Synology.
  
  
  
• Charles Darwin's children drew vegetable battles on the manuscript of The Origin of Species.  (The Appendix)
  
  Most of the original manuscript is lost, but what remains is...  Colourful.
  
  
  
• CISA didn't end funding for CVE.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  I'm sure you will all find that comforting.
  
  
  
• Automattic, owner of blogging software WordPress, has been deploying watermarks on internal websites to catch leakers.  (404 Media)
  
  Which, I mean, sure, Automattic sucks and WordPress sucks and CEO Matt Mullenweg is a lunatic, but if you're leaking internal documents to the press you should expect to get caught.
  
  
  
• China's restrictions on rare earth element exports are a problem.  (The Register)
  
  Of course everyone has known for years that China was going to do this, because they've already done it, but nobody did anything about it.
  
  
  
• Spotify went down.  (The Verge)
  
  But it came back up.
  
  
  
• Zoom went down.  (The Verge)
  
  But it came back up.
  
  
  

Musical Interlude

• OpenAI is now building its own social network.  (The Verge)  (archive site)
  
  Prediction: This will work out just like Bluesky, only with even more deranged screeching.
  
  Might be a cool gig for the developers, as long as you have another job lined up for when the whole thing burns down, falls over, and sinks into the swamp.

• Nvidia has announced its new RTX 5060 Ti starting at $379 and RTX 5060 starting at $299.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  With the teeny tiny drawback that actual retail prices start at $529 and you won't be able to buy one at all.
  
  Even hardware review channels with 16 million followers can't get hardware to review.
  
  Play
  
  About the only thing this launch does is put a cap on the price AMD can charge for its 9060, and it doesn't even do a good job of that.
  
  
  
• 4chan got hacked.  (Ars Technica)
  
  It sounds like it got hacked a lot.
  
  
  
• Figma sent a cease-and-desist letter to no-code startup (don't ask) Lovable (seriously, don't ask) demanding that the latter company remove the term "dev mode" from its product, because somehow Figma has a trademark on that term.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  What.
  
  
  
• Just a reminder: Nanashi Mumei is Shachimu, and Gawr Gura is Senzawa.
  
  In both cases their old channels have over a million subscribers already so they won't have any problems if they decide to pick up where they left off.  Though Shachimu has already said not to expect such a thing, at least not any time soon.  Chronic health issues do not resolve themselves with a change of avatar.

Posted by: Joe Redfield at Thursday, April 17 2025 03:27 AM (KOtXO)

Posted by: normal at Thursday, April 17 2025 08:54 AM (bg2DR)

Posted by: normal at Thursday, April 17 2025 09:00 AM (bg2DR)

Posted by: normal at Thursday, April 17 2025 09:01 AM (bg2DR)

Posted by: cxt217 at Thursday, April 17 2025 02:24 PM (ZLF73)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, April 17 2025 08:42 PM (PiXy!)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Friday, April 18 2025 12:55 AM (rcPLc)

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• AMD is moving to TSMC's N2 process (2nm) for its Zen 6 cores next year, jumping straight over 3nm.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  This rumour comes from...  AMD and TSMC during an official announcement that AMD has the first Zen 6 silicon in house for testing.
  
  So probably legit.
  
  N2 is 15% faster than the current N3 node, only AMD's CPUs and GPUs are all still on the N4 node which is older again.
  
  Also mentioned during the announcement is that AMD has qualified TSMC's fabs in Arizona to start manufacturing its current 4nm chips.

• Apple doesn't upload all your data to the cloud to feed it into their AI systems like pretty much everyone else.  Instead they download their AI onto your phone where it can feast on your data directly and send the results home.  (MSN)
  
  Yes.  That's much better.
  
  
  
• Silver Lake has bought a majority stake in Intel's Altera FPGA division.  (Serve the Home)
  
  Altera - along with Xilinx - was one of the leading players in the FPGA space, producing chips where you can redesign the hardware on the fly in software.
  
  Intel bought Altera and has now sold off half of it.
  
  AMD bought Xilinx and seems to be having a better time of things.
  
  
  
• AMD's upcoming 9060 has half the hardware of the current 9070 XT but reportedly clocks around 20% faster.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  It all depends on price.  The 16GB model with 60% of the 9070 XT's performance and 100% of the VRAM is unlikely to leave you change from $400.
  
  
  
• Meanwhile the 16GB model of Nvidia's upcoming 5060 Ti looks set to have an MSRP of $429 and a street price of $529 - if you can find one at all.  (Notebook Check)
  
  It's not supposed to work like that but it do.
  
  If AMD can come in below that MSRP and actually have cards in stock, they will cement their GPU-comeback-in-progress.

Posted by: cxt217 at Wednesday, April 16 2025 03:47 PM (ZLF73)

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• Facebook recently announced its new Llama 4 AI platform, with industry-leading scores.  They lied.  (Neowin)
  
  The test results were from an unreleased experimental version.  The actual scores put Llama 4 in 32nd place.

• You can now melt your power cable and destroy your video card cheaper than ever before.  (Notebook Check)
  
  Latest victim was an RTX 5070.
  
  This problem is predictable with the RTX 5090, which draws 575W over a connector rated for a maximum of 600W.  5% out of tolerance and your card is fried.
  
  It shouldn't happen on the 250W 5070 though.
  
  
  
• Meanwhile the upcoming 5060 Ti could be better than the 4060 Ti.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  The 4060 Ti was held back because the relatively powerful chip was being throttle by the 128-bit memory bus.  The 5060 Ti still has a 128-bit bus, but appears to use 28Gbps GDDR7 memory rather than 21Gbps GDDR6.
  
  This should also give it a lead over AMD's upcoming 9060, which still uses GDDR6.
  
  
  
• Bungie's new shooty-game Marathon (no relation to Bungie's old shooty game Marathon) looks set to be Sony's next $400 million write-off.  (Hot Hardware)
  
  It looks remarkably unappealing.
  
  
  
• Jack Dorsey is an idiot.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  That's it.  That's the message.

Posted by: bob in houston at Tuesday, April 15 2025 12:01 AM (YBLgY)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Tuesday, April 15 2025 03:20 AM (rcPLc)

Posted by: normal at Tuesday, April 15 2025 11:12 AM (bg2DR)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, April 15 2025 07:05 PM (PiXy!)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Tuesday, April 15 2025 10:41 PM (rcPLc)

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• President Trump has once again scrambled the plans of the Chinese Communist Party and Democrat prophesiers by temporarily waiving the new 125% tariff on selected goods from that country.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  The 20% basic tariff remains in effect, but the new tariff will not be applied to electronic components or devices like phones and laptops.
  
  Everything else gets whacked with a 145% impost which has small businesses in China in a panic.  Deliveries already booked and produced are now being refused, and there is simply no substitute market to turn to.
  
  And while it takes time to ramp up a mobile phone production line, products like clothing and homewares are already produced in dozens of countries like India, Pakistan, Vietnam, and Indonesia, who will be only too happy to produce more.
  
  
  

Tech News

• Oh, and you know all those attacks China has launched on American infrastructure over the past few years?  Turns out China was behind them.  (WSJ / MSN)
  
  Who knew?
  
  
  
• The Asus X870 Max Gaming Wifi7 motherboard is, well, a motherboard.  (WCCFTech)
  
  An X870 motherboards, meaning AMD.  With four full-length PCIe slots, only one is PCIe 5.0 x16, with the others being 4.0 x4, 4.0 x1, and 3.0 x1.
  
  I don't know where those 3.0 lanes come from, but my motherboard has a PCIe 3.0 x1 slot as well.
  
  It also lacks optical audio output and USB 4.0, but it does seem to have three HDMI ports.
  
  Price TBA but somewhere in the $200-ish range.
  
  
  
• Google's Chrome team is planning to fix a bug that's been around for 23 years.  (The Register)
  
  By feeding your browser a list of links, and then checking what colour each one is, a web site can figure out which other sites you have previously visited.
  
  They're not supposed to be able to do that.
  
  
  
• If you want an Asuka Langley from Evangelion themed mini-laptop, you can now get one starting at $1650.  (Notebook Check)
  
  And also ending at $1650.
  
  That gets you an Intel 255H CPU (6 P-cores, 10 E-cores), 64GB of RAM, 2TB of SSD, and a keyboard.  Screen is a 10.95" 2560x1600 "gaming display", so a reused tablet model.
  
  
  

Musical Interlude

Posted by: furball321 at Monday, April 14 2025 06:53 AM (As8gg)

Posted by: Mauser at Monday, April 14 2025 08:59 AM (QE7eq)

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• Never get involved in a land war in Asia: Adobe tried to promote its services to artists on Bluesky.  They promptly deleted their posts after realising that everyone on Bluesky is insane.  (PetaPixel)
  
  I could have told you that, Adobe.
  
  Also, you suck.  Just...  Less than Bluesky.  Like you're diptheria and they're anthrax.

• The Pentagon is cancelling $5.1 billion in IT contracts with the big IT contractors.  (Reuters)  (archive site)
  
  These contracts are almost always vastly overpriced and incredibly unproductive.
  
  
  
• If you're a racist, Marxist, screaming lunatic, South of Midnight might just be the game for you.  (The Verge)  (archive site)
  
  The game is doing better than Dustborn, but not a whole lot.  And it looks good and sounds good, it's just written by people who should not be permitted with 500 yards of a keyboard.
  
  And yes, Sweet Baby Inc was deeply involved in this one, with utterly predictable results.
  
  It's also apparently quite short, but I won't knock it for that.  Not every game needs to last 80 hours.  Gris is only a few hours long and it's a masterpiece.
  
  
  
• You don't need websockets if you're not doing anything that needs websockets.  (Hunter Lovell)
  
  Uh, thanks?
  
  Cool Shuba Duck though.
  
  
  
• xAI is not using illegal generators to power its datacenter.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  xAI has 420MW of generator capacity, but only 40% of it has long-term permits.  The rest of it is using a short-term rule that allows a temporary generator to operate for 364 days without that permit.
  
  I think the company will likely be able to get those permits if it needs them later this year, so the article is a nothingburger.
  
  
  
• Ubisoft cancelled online services for its game The Crew.  And removed the game from users' libraries.  And deactivated physical copies.  And issued nothing even slightly resembling refunds.
  
  And now that it's facing lawsuits the company is pointing out that customers don't own what they buy.  (TechSpot)
  
  Ubisoft seems to have violated specific laws in California in all of this.  Of course that's true of everyone on the planet and most people not on the planet, but it doesn't particularly help the company's defense.
  
  
  
• I wasn't particularly planning to spend any more money on my new PC but I accidentally bought a QNAP QM2-4P-384.
  
  The motherboard I have supports up to four M.2 slots, though two share bandwidth with the PCIe 5.0 x16 slot, reducing it to x8, and one shares bandwidth the the PCIe 4.0 x4 slot, reducing it to PCIe 4.0 xnothing.
  
  You can get cheap four-slot M.2 cards but they require a full x16 slot to work, because they are wired up logically as just four four-lane devices and rely on the CPU figuring that out.  If you have a graphics card in your x16 slot, or you have M.2 cards sharing its bandwidth, they're basically useless.
  
  You can also get more expensive four-slot (or even eight-slot) M.2 cards that will work even if you only have a single PCIe lane left over, because they have hardware onboard to split up whatever PCIe you have and divide it among the M.2 slots on the card.  But those are full-height cards and the Hyte Y40 and Y60 cases only have full-height space for the graphics card.
  
  But the QNAP QM2-4P-384 is a half-height card because it's built for smaller NAS devices - though it also works on PCs.  It's PCIe 3.0 x8 which is not something my motherboard has, but with the onboard chip it will still work just fine.
  
  So now I can have 28TB or even 32TB of internal SSD (if I use that fourth motherboard slot).
  
  And then another 16TB of SSD in my external storage array.  Oh, and four SATA SSDs in my PC.  And four 3.5" hard drives (or again SATA SSDs) in the storage array.
  
  So I'll probably run out of money before I run out of space to put drives.

• Google is challenging Anthropic's Cursor AI programming assistant with its new Firebase Studio, pushing "vibe coding" to a whole new level.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  "Vibe coding" is the modern equivalent of giving your credit card to a group of North Korean hackers and telling them to build you an app.
  
  
  
• Firebase Studio is a great example - of why AI can't replace humans.  (The Register)

  "The AI part of the app is basically useless," wrote UK-based developer Oscar Molnar, in a Hacker News post.  "After two hours of 'vibe coding' a chess clock Flutter app, I got basically nothing in the end.  It broke more and more [with] each message.  I tried fixing stuff myself but it would mess it up again.  I would not recommend anyone to use it."

  I've worked with people like that.

• Microsoft's Recall - a.k.a the Telescreen was behind the operating system - is now part of the latest "insider builds".  (The Verge)
  
  Ave atque vale, insiders.  We hardly knew ye, but pretty soon we'll know your credit card numbers and search history.
  
  
  
• The USA can't manufacture phones.  It's a fantasy.  Also, here's how the Liberty Phone is manufactured in the USA.  (404 Media)
  
  It's overpriced because nothing in it is sourced from or assembled in the third world, and pretty much everyone gave up on that idea years ago.  Including China.
  
  
  
• Speaking of which new Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan has investments in 600 companies in China including some linked to to the Chinese army.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Yeah, good fucking call there Intel.
  
  
  
• The founder and former CEO of shopping app Nate has been indicted on fraud charges over using actual intelligence instead of the artificial kind.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  His app promised to find and buy whatever you wanted using the latest AI services.
  
  It was actually a call center in the Philippines.
  
  
  
• China is retaliating against reciprocal tariffs imposed by the US by - you're not going to believe this - reducing the number of insufferable woke communist Hollywood propaganda films it allows to screen in the country.  (The Guardian)
  
  "Oh no," President Trump is reported to have said.
  
  (Actually he said "I've heard of worse things.")

Posted by: normal at Friday, April 11 2025 06:26 PM (bg2DR)

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, April 12 2025 02:55 AM (1zWbY)

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, April 12 2025 03:02 AM (1zWbY)

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• The cost to query advanced AI APIs has dropped 99.7% in the past 18 months.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  That's a pretty dramatic shift.  What's causing it seems to simply be competition.
  
  Hardware costs have come down - a bit - and the new hardware is also more energy efficient - a bit.
  
  Training costs for creating new models have soared, on the other hand - DeepSeek's bullshit notwithstanding - but investor money keeps pouring in to cover that.
  
  
  

Tech News

• Nintendo has explained why Switch 2 hardware and software costs so much.  (Ars Technica)
  
  "Because", Nintendo said.
  
  
  
• Whistleblower-as-a-service Sarah Wynn-Williams has accused Facebook of building a Nazi base on the dark side of the Moon.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Or something.
  
  
  
• Is Nvidia's priority access program for RTX 5000 cards finished?  (Hot Hardware)
  
  Yes.
  
  
  
• Hackers spied on emails of the Office of Comptroller of the Currency - which is apparently a real thing somehow - for over a year.  (Straits Times)
  
  This is distinct from the hackers who were spying on the emails of the Treasury Department.
  
  
  
• Windows 11 has a new feature that lets Copilot watch while you work with other apps.  (Bleeping Computer)

  When you share your screen with AI, Copilot can then help analyze, offer insights, answer your questions, and speak to you in real time.

  I see you are attempting to uninstall Copilot.  This incident has been reported.
  
  
  
• Google is making some AI employees sign non-compete agreements.  (Business Insider)  (archive site)
  
  Since these have often been ruled unenforceable, Google has tried a new tack: After an employee resigns, their employment continues for another year.  They continue to be paid but they don't need to work, they are just not allowed to work for a competing company.
  
  
  
• Turns out there are still motherboards around with a good number of PCIe slots.  AMD's business-oriented B840 boards mostly have five slots, which is not bad considering that the maximum for a standard ATX system is seven.
  
  They're mostly PCIe 3.0 x1 electrically (x16 physical slots) so not great if you want a 100Gb network card but fine for most other uses.

Musical Interlude

Posted by: Joe Redfield at Friday, April 11 2025 03:05 AM (KOtXO)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Friday, April 11 2025 09:46 AM (rcPLc)

Posted by: normal at Friday, April 11 2025 03:31 PM (bg2DR)

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• Bluesky has become a home for humourless left-wing scolds, says Wired, which has long been a home for humourless left-wing scolds so they know a thing or two about it.  (Wired)  (archive site)
  
  Also it's paywalled.  Wired.  Paywalled.  Humourless left-wing scolds who are...  Never mind.

  What Brown experienced is familiar to any former Twitter/X user gathering their bearings on the young and decidedly more earnest social network Bluesky: a distinct humor-detection issue.

  Yes.
  
  Why has Bluesky become such a dumpster-fire of anauralia outpatients?

  Bluesky also got a big boost in users from mainstream television: MSNBC ran multiple segments about the social network, including bumps on Morning Joe, The Weekend, All In With Chris Hayes, and The Rachel Maddow Show.  Regular MSNBC viewers who took the plunge might not be as familiar with the tenor and style of online conversation on the smart-ass social web.

  Oh.  Well, yeah, that'll do it.

• AI mandates are driving developers to the drink.  (LeadDev)
  
  Oh, brink.  Potato, potahto.
  
  AI tools for developers are much the same as AI tools for anyone else: The make easy things easy and hard things impossible.  But when senior management sees an easy thing done easily using AI, they start demanding that hard things be done the same way.
  
  
  
• Sam Altman says that AI won't be used to replace programmers (it will) but instead will make them more productive (it won't).  (Windows Central)
  
  It's Bangalore on demand.
  
  
  
• The CEO of Shopify says that nobody can be hired without the department first proving that the task can't be done by AI.  (CNBC)

  "I've seen many of these people approach implausible tasks, ones we wouldn’t even have chosen to tackle before, with reflexive and brilliant usage of AI to get 100X the work done," Lutke wrote.

  WHY AREN'T YOU ALL SELF-SACRIFICING GENIUSES, YOU WORTHLESS SLACKERS?!
  
  
  
• Samsung has a new 32" 2560x1440 colour e-ink display.  (Notebook Check)
  
  It's battery-powered and lasts up to 200 days between charges, which is a lot.
  
  Design for in-store displays.
  
  Price not stated, assume expensive.
  
  
  

Musical Interlude

Posted by: bob in houston at Wednesday, April 09 2025 11:29 PM (YBLgY)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, April 10 2025 12:06 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Joe Redfield at Thursday, April 10 2025 03:18 AM (KOtXO)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, April 10 2025 09:48 AM (PiXy!)

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