• Having destroyed the original city, tech billionaires are planning to build their own San Francisco, with blackjack, and hookers.  (Associated Press)
  
  They've bought up 78 square miles of land between Travis AFB and Rio Vista in Solano County, about sixty miles northeast of San Francisco and safely out of shitting range.

  But Princess Washington, mayor pro tempore of Suisun City, said residents deliberately decided to protect open space and keep the area around Travis Air Force Base free of encroachment given its significance.

  I included that quote solely because of the mayor's name.

  She’s suspicious that the group’s real purpose is "to create a city for the elite” under the guise of more housing.

  Well, yes.

  "Economic blight is everywhere. So why do you need to spend upwards of a billion dollars to create a brand new city when you have all these other things that can be achieved throughout the Bay Area?” she said.

  I would assume this is because Solano County (a) is cheaper - though with median house prices around $600k, not cheap - and (b) has less crime, drugs, and human excrement, though again this is California so I might be incorrect there.
  
  Unfortunately for the project, while buying up all the land, the planners appear to have forgotten to buy the residents or the politicians:

  "You big wealthy Silicon Valley billionaires, you’re party to all of this. This is the kind of people you are? This is how you want to operate?” he said. "What they’ve managed to do is to totally poison the well.”

  In order: Yes, yes, yes, and yes.

• You can't run MongoDB 5.0 or later under Linux under VirtualBox on Windows 11 because the built-in Windows virtualisation (as used by Windows Services for Linux, for example) - part of Microsoft's Hyper-V - doesn't pass through AVX support.
  
  But you can run MongoDB 5.0 under WSL, because Hyper-V does pass through AVX support to that.
  
  But WSL assigns itself a random IP address from a random subnet every time it starts.  Static IPs?  DHCP?  Never heard of that, sorry.
  
  So kind of useless for anything that requires a network connection.
  
  
  
• Is Scrum cancer?  Yes, but is cancer always bad?  Also yes.  (Devops)
  
  There you have it.
  
  
  
• Western Digital's Blue SN580 SSD is a slightly faster Blue SN570 SSD.  (Serve the Home)
  
  Perfectly adequate for most tasks, but if you're writing terabytes of data on a regular basis you'd be better off with the Black SN850X - once you exhaust the SLC cache it's three times faster than the Blue model.
  
  If you don't routinely write terabytes of data, the 580 should be fine.
  
  
  
• [company] has [verb] its [name-of-ai-project] after [details-of-embarrassing-screwup]   (CNN)
  
  Literally.
  
  
  
• After completely failing to destroy its automated lunar lander in a catastrophic collision with the Moon, India has been merrily buzzing around on the lunar surface.  (Reuters)
  
  Well, their rover has anyway.  And now it's being put to sleep.
  
  For two weeks, until the sun comes up again and the solar panels start working.
  
  
  

Holotori Dance Music Video of the Day

Don't Call Them Gen 7 Music Video of the Day

Posted by: Joe Redfield at Tuesday, September 05 2023 03:16 AM (KOtXO)

Posted by: Frank at Tuesday, September 05 2023 02:15 PM (JqCHh)

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• A maker of "smart" chastity belts left users' details - including names and delivery addresses - exposed on the internet.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  The company's website itself was also exposed to hackers, so the researcher who discovered this, on getting no response from the company, edited the sight to add a warning.
  
  The company removed the warning, but did nothing to fix the vulnerabilities.

  The company sells a chastity cage for people with a penis that can be linked to an Android app (there is no iPhone app). Using the app, a partner — who could be anywhere in the world — can follow their partners’ movements, given that the device transmits precise GPS coordinates down to a few meters.

  Normally I'd mock the insanely woke "people with a penis" line, but in this one case it is apropos.
  
  
  

Tech News

• PyPI is Tensorflow and noise.  (PyCode)
  
  PyPI is the Python Package Index, a central repository of freely available Python code.
  
  TensorFlow is a popular general-purpose machine learning library for Python.  Not just generative AI, but actual useful stuff too.
  
  TensorFlow is not just one of the largest libraries on PyPI; it is four of the five largest libraries on PyPI, totaling 8.8TB all by itself.  The other entry in the top five is LALSuite, a library for gravitational wave analysis, a relative lightweight at a mere 1.1TB.
  
  Which used to be a lot.  
  
  In total, PyPI contains over 200 billion lines of code, which still is a lot.
  
  And about 10,000 assorted API keys that aren't supposed to be there at all.
  
  
  
• The Burning Man site has been cut off by rain.  (Reno Gazette Journal)
  
  Oh no.
  
  The original headline said something to the effect of roads being closed in both directions, which was a wonderful snark magnet, but sadly they fixed it.
  
  
  
• AMD's 8000-series model numbers will be even more annoying.  (Guru3D)
  
  The 8040 range will be rebadged current 7040 models.  We don't yet know if there will be 8035, 8030, or 8020 models to muddy the waters as well.
  
  The 8050 family will be new Zen 5 chips with up to 12 CPU cores and 16 RDNA3.5 graphics cores.  Since Zen 5 is expected to be a major upgrade, these could be twice as fast for multi-threaded apps as current 7040 mainstream laptop chips.
  
  The 8055 family will replace the 7045 range - desktop chips fitted into a smaller socket and with reduced power envelopes, with 16 Zen 5 cores replacing 16 Zen 4 cores, and likely still just two graphics cores.
  
  And then there's Sarlak, which doesn't have a number because they're out of numbers.  This is the monster chip with 16 Zen 5 cores and 40 RDNA3.5 graphics cores.  
  
  To give you an idea of how that will cope with games, the PlayStation 5 has 36 older RDNA2 graphics cores - and just 8 Zen 2 CPU cores.
  
  No prices or dates yet, these are all 2024 products.
  
  
  
• If you need to pack eight E1.S form factor server SSDs into your desktop PC, well, now you can.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  The card from Highpoint costs $1500, but might still be the most cost-effective way to add 120TB of solid-state storage to your windows desktop, since E1.S drives seem to be surprisingly inexpensive.

Posted by: Frank at Sunday, September 03 2023 08:40 PM (JqCHh)

Posted by: Brickmuppet at Monday, September 04 2023 12:26 AM (liVFZ)

Posted by: normal at Monday, September 04 2023 02:07 PM (obo9H)

Posted by: Mauser at Tuesday, September 05 2023 03:56 AM (BzEjn)

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• At least three hundred, and possibly as many as five hundred people have been infected with Aeromonas hydrophila after competing in a Tough Mudder event.  (Ars Technica)

  Hundreds of people who participated in a recent Tough Mudder event—a very muddy obstacle course race—held in Sonoma, California, have fallen ill with pustular rashes, lesions, fever, flu-like symptoms, nerve pain, and other symptoms, local health officials and media outlets report.

  Sounds nasty.  How did this happen?

  The Sonoma event was reported to include 21 obstacles on one of the race days, including a mud-soaked crawl under barbed wire, rope climbs over a muddy slope, a knee-deep mud pool to wade through, and an obstacle called the "mine shaft" that one participant said smelled like manure.

  Crawl through barbed wire and then swim in mud.  Yep, that'll do it.

  "All necessary protocols were followed in preparation for, and during, the event," the spokesperson said, "except of course for not crawling through barbed wire and swimming in mud.  We didn't think of that."

  Uh huh.

  "Our thoughts are with those affected and we are actively investigating to understand exactly what occurred, so long as we get to blame someone else."

  
  

• Samsung is starting production of 32Gb DDR5 memory chips this year.  (AnandTech)
  
  That means 64GB modules, 128GB laptops, and 256GB desktops.
  
  Or 8GB soldered in place because manufacturers suck.
  
  
  
• Nvidia has cut the price of the 4060 Ti 16GB edition by $50 ahead of AMD's launch of the 7800 XT, which is better in every way.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Still about $100 too expensive, but it's heading in the right direction.
  
  
  
• There's another catastrophe-level vulnerability in VMWare.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  The problem is extremely subtle, but to simplify things drastically, every copy of VMWare's Aria Operations management tool has the same key.
  
  Actually, it's not subtle at all and that is precisely what happened.
  
  
  
• Lenovo has announced a glasses-free 3D 4K monitor.  (Ars Technica)
  
  Neat.
  
  That costs $3000.
  
  Next!
  
  
  
• Lenovo's Legion go is an 8.8" tablet with a 2560x1600 screen for $699.  (Liliputing)
  
  Which is pretty expensive but it has no competition whatsoever.
  
  It also has AMD's Z1 Extreme CPU (8 Zen 4 cores and 12 RDNA3 graphics cores), 16GB of LPDDR5X-7500 RAM, an M.2 2242 SSD, two USB4 ports, a microSD slot, a headphone jack, and two detachable game controllers - rather like a chunky version of the Nintendo switch.
  
  That screen is a 144Hz IPS model with 97% coverage of DCI-P3 colour and 500 nits max brightness, so nothing missing there either.
  
  Only problem with using this as a regular tablet - apart from the price - is that at 640 grams it's seriously chunky.  Lenovo's own Legion Y700, an Android tablet with the same 8.8" screen that the company stubbornly refuses to sell outside China, weighs 375 grams.

• HP has announced two new Pavilion Plus models: An update Pavilion Plus 14 with AMD's Ryzen 7840H CPU, and some 16" piece of junk.  (Liliputing)
  
  The 14" model has a beautiful 2880x1800 120Hz display, the Four Essential Keys, the aforementioned 7840H CPU, and up to 32GB of LPDDR5-6400 RAM.
  
  Yes, the RAM is soldered in place, but at least there's 32GB of it.
  
  Apart from that there's a 5MP camera with a physical privacy shutter, two USB-C ports, two USB-A ports, HDMI, and a headphone jack.  
  
  This is what I've been looking for for the past year.

• A judge has issued a temporary injunction against the Texas age verification law.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  The judge has a reasonable take on this:

  "The Court agrees that the state has a legitimate goal in protecting children from sexually explicit material online," wrote judge David Alan Ezra in the junction. "But that goal, however crucial, does not negate this Court’s burden to ensure that the laws passed in its pursuit comport with established First Amendment doctrine."

  The EFF has a reasonable take on this:

  "Once information is shared to verify age, there’s no way for a website visitor to be certain that the data they’re handing over is not going to be retained and used by the website, or further shared or even sold," explains the Electronic Frontiers Foundation, a nonprofit advocating for civil liberties online.

  The Free Speech Coalition is a bunch of frauds:

  "We're pleased that the Court agreed with our view that HB1181’s true purpose is not to protect young people, but to prevent Texans from enjoying First Amendment protected expression," said Free Speech Coalition Executive Director Alison Boden in a statement.

  Two out of three ain't bad.
  
  
  
• The US Copyright Office wants public comments on the questions surrounding AI and copyright.  (The Verge)
  
  They won't once they start seeing the comments, because people are crazy.
  
  
  
• The ACLU has joined with whores - by which I mean sex workers, not other leftist non-profits - to file a complaint with the FTC over Mastercard making it harder to pay that $20, same as in town.  (404 Media)
  
  All the other shit payment processors have pulled over the years, not a peep.
  
  Donate to the wrong charity, you'll be lucky if you only go to jail.
  
  But God forbid that you can't put a blowjob on your Mastercard.
  
  
  
• The Church of Scientology is seeking to block the availability of circuit diagrams and spare parts for E-Meters.  (404 Media)
  
  Right-to-repair laws would seemingly require the availability of both diagrams and spare parts, but the "Church" - or rather, Author Services, Inc, a wholly grifting subsidiary, is claiming that the E-Meter is not an electronic device based on scientific principles, but a religious artifact and therefore exempt...  And also an electronic device based on scientific principles.
  
  

Posted by: PatBuckman at Friday, September 01 2023 10:40 PM (r9O5h)

Posted by: J Greely at Saturday, September 02 2023 10:51 AM (oJgNG)

Posted by: Rick C at Sunday, September 03 2023 05:24 AM (BMUHC)

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• OpenAI has disputed the claims in a class action suit brought by various authors such as Richard Kadrey, and "authors" such as Sarah Silverman, responding with your momma is a derivative work.  (Ars Technica)

  Authors claim generative AI is just a "grift" that repackages original works.

  The first half of this is self-evident.
  
  The second half is like saying steak is just repackaged carbon dioxide.  Yes.  Grass absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to grow.  Cows eat grass.  People eat cows.
  
  But the carbon dioxide is free, so it's irrelevant.
  
  In just the same way, authors - and "authors" - repackage the work of previous authors.  We accept this if they're sufficiently subtle about it, and the flavour comes out different, just like cows and grass.
  
  We don't expect grass to pay for the right to absorb carbon dioxide from the air, nor do we require authors to pay commercial licenses for the books they read as they learn to write.
  
  But if we are served a plate of alleged steak, and it is green and leafy, we tend to riot and burn the restaurant down.  Metaphorically.
  
  Much as I loathe OpenAI as a bunch of useless grifters, what they are doing is clearly fair use under US law.  Which doesn't mean they will win in court, and certainly doesn't mean that that the law won't end up changing.
  
  It just means that they are right.

• Australia's government has dropped planned age-verification legislation for online porn - which is to say, the entire internet - and will instead leave it to the online porn industry - which is again to say the entire internet - to muddle through somehow.  (The Guardian)
  
  Apparently a factor in this decision was the argument that such legislation would unfairly burden the LGBTQ+ community.
  
  Which, well, whatever.  Use their own rules against them.  A win is a win.
  
  
  
• You can track anyone's travels on the New York subway with just their credit card details.  (404 Media)
  
  An MTA official responded to the report, saying "Was that wrong?  Should we not have done that?"
  
  
  
• I've quoted articles from new news site 404 Media a couple of times recently, so I checked to see if they were worth following.
  
  Internal emails show superintendents struggling to comply with "Don't Say Gay" law.
  
  No, it's the usual hyperpartisan liberal dogshit.  Like The Verge, but with worse typography.
  
  
  
• The EPA has removed protections for most of America's wetlands.  (NPR)
  
  Not because they are suddenly pro-development, but because they claimed control over every damp patch and mud puddle in the country, and got a Stinger missile to the face from the Supreme Court.
  
  
  
• If you save - not bookmark, but save, which is a different mechanism somehow - a link in Google Chrome, and Google doesn't like it, they will delete it.  (TorrentFreak)
  
  Thanks Google.
  
  
  
• We all know Threads is dead.  But what exactly killed it?  (Tech Crunch)
  
  The problem is twofold: First, Twitter already exists.  You can't just build a better Twitter.  If it was still the Day of the Failwhale, maybe.  When it was still under the control of Vijaya Gadde and her Stalin Youth Squad, maybe.  But right now, it's...  Mostly adequate.
  
  Second, people online are mostly either boring or awful, and the ones fleeing freedom of expression on Elon Musk's version of Twitter - the ones flocking to Threads in those heady first minutes - are both.
  
  The article doesn't come to either of those conclusions, though, because it is written by those same people.
  
  

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, August 31 2023 11:48 PM (BMUHC)

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• The fan forums for the game War Thunder have once again seen the release of restricted military documents, this time the flight manual for a variant of the Eurofighter Typhoon.  (Cybersecurity Connect)
  
  To be fair, while officially NATO restricted, the manual is available for purchase online...  From Russia.
  
  This follows on from postings of restricted documents covering F15 and F16 avionics and weapons systems on the same forums earlier this year.

• Yes, a pigeon can still outrun the internet.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  At least out to a distance of 500 miles, after which the bird runs out of puff.
  
  The pigeons in this case were carrying three 1TB USB drives, weighing 5 grams each.  They could do a lot better with microSD cards, which weigh almost nothing.
  
  Always make sure to wash your pigeons thoroughly before eating them.
  
  
  
• A New South Wales woman suffering from a curious array of medical symptoms, ranging from lung and liver lesions to depression and forgetfulness, has been cured after a three-inch roundworm was pulled from her brain.  (Ars Technica)
  
  This particular species of roundworm has never before been found in a human, much less a human brain, because it is endemic to carpet pythons.
  
  Always make sure to wash your carpets thoroughly before eating them.
  
  
  
• At Hot Chips, Intel has announced a new RISC processor.  (Serve the Home)
  
  It has 8 cores, 528 hardware threads (66 per core - the article has a diagram explaining this strange number), 32MB of on-chip and 32GB of off-chip RAM, and 32 optical interfaces each running at 32GB per second.
  
  Each optical port is as fast as a full x16 PCIe 4 slot.
  
  And Intel plans to bundle sixteen of these chips into a sled (the individual chips use a relatively modest 75W, mostly for those optical links), and then 100,000 sleds into a massive supercomputer.
  
  For close to a billion hardware threads in a single system.
  
  Which used to be a lot.
  
  Price not mentioned.

Posted by: normal at Thursday, August 31 2023 10:48 AM (obo9H)

Posted by: normal at Thursday, August 31 2023 10:53 AM (obo9H)

Posted by: Frank at Thursday, August 31 2023 11:00 AM (JqCHh)

Posted by: zoya at Tuesday, September 12 2023 09:20 PM (i6GOX)

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• Kias and Hyundais are too easy to steal, so cities are suing the manufacturers.  (Vice)
  
  Already this year, lawsuits have been filed by Seattle (mayor: Democrat), Baltimore (mayor: Democrat), Cleveland (mayor: Democrat), New York (mayor: Comm...  wait, Democrat), Chicago (mayor: Lizard Person), St. Louis (mayor: Democrat), and Columbus (mayor: Democrat).
  
  Wonder what the common factor might be that all these cars are getting stolen.
  
  And I think rather than adding engine immobilisers to budget cars, manufacturers should look into deploying rabid wolverines.
  
  
  

Tech News

• Asus is not shutting down its Zenfone division, and the Zenfone 10 will not be the last model in the range.  (Android Authority)
  
  So there's that.
  
  
  
• GitHub Copilot is great - unless you're trying to get something done.  (Technically a Blog)
  
  Like so many other mis-designed tools, it adds noise more than it helps with the process.  In fact, that's the quickest diagnosis for a mis-designed tool.
  
  
  
• That Snake game has gotten even smaller.  (GitHub)
  
  Here's the entire binary in base-64 encoding:
  
  
  /cVMBKAPALgDAM0Qv9AHieblQJMhyzgvdPeID+RgQNQE1SgEB5hr
  2Pwp3znPd9jR+41BAvbxIOR0zTgtdMlXOA2ILXTMJq2TiCfr0A==
  
  It's playable; I've tried it.  It's not very good, but it does only use 0.00000011% of the RAM on my budget laptop.
  
  
  
• Are your Python strings too slow?  Stringzilla can chew through text data a hundred times faster than the built-in string type.  (GitHub)
  
  It uses SIMD instructions so it won't work if you're running an original model Pentium, but it does support modern x86 and Arm CPUs, meaning anything from the last 12 years or so.
  
  Unless you're running Linux under VirtualBox on Windows 11, in which case it probably just goes splat like MongoDB 5.
  
  
  
• Intel presented more details on its upcoming 144 core server processors this week at the Hot Chips conference.  (AnandTech)
  
  That's an advance over AMD's current 128 core chips...  Except Intel's version uses efficiency cores - E cores - which run at roughly half the speed of full cores.
  
  The details of these E cores are interesting, at least; they look a lot like the fastest high-end cores from just a few years ago.

Posted by: J Greely at Tuesday, August 29 2023 11:58 PM (oJgNG)

Posted by: normal at Wednesday, August 30 2023 08:28 AM (obo9H)

Posted by: J Greely at Wednesday, August 30 2023 01:40 PM (oJgNG)

Posted by: normal at Thursday, August 31 2023 10:45 AM (obo9H)

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• The creators of seven popular programming languages - Python, Java, Smalltalk, Turbo Pascal, Delphi, C#, and Typescript - will be presenting together in Seattle on September 19th.  (Pydata)
  
  That's four presenters - Anders Hejlberg has been a busy boy over the years.
  
  Guido van Rossum will be talking about Python, James Gosling about Java, Adele Goldberg will be representing the original Smalltalk team (all of whom appear to still be with us, and mostly still active, some forty years later), and Anders the rest.
  
  Almost worth going to Seattle for.
  
  
  
  

Tech News

• Gigabyte has announced its new Brix Extreme range of NUCs.  (Liliputing)
  
  Mostly these are 4 and 6 core Ryzen 7035U chips - that is, Zen 3 CPUs with RDNA2 graphics.  Adequate but hardly groundbreaking.
  
  But the last model is a Ryzen 7840U: 8 Zen 4 cores and 12 RDNA 3 graphics cores.  This is one of the first 7840U devices I've seen; mostly manufacturers have been using the slightly faster but significantly more power-hungry 7840HS, or the rebadged Ryzen Z1 Extreme.
  
  Anyway, apart from the CPU it offers two SO-DIMM slots for a nominal 64GB of RAM, though 96GB should work, one M.2 slot, two HDMI ports, mini DisplayPort, USB-C with DisplayPort (so a total of four monitors), plus another USB-C without video, and five USB-A ports.  And 2.5Gb Ethernet and a headphone jack.
  
  If that's not enough there's a tiny expansion bay where you can add a module for another 2.5Gb Ethernet port, a second M.2 slot, and for some reason, a serial port.
  
  Prices were not mentioned.
  
  
  
• AMD's Radeon RX 7600 is now available at Micro Center for $229.  (WCCFTech)
  
  It's not a high-end card, but that's not a high-end price.
  
  
  
• Amazone just sent a Dear John letter to users of its Honeycode service.  (Honeycode Community)
  
  This was a platform that allowed people who didn't understand how to build applications to build applications that they didn't understand.
  
  The results were rather predictable.

• There's nothing like spending a Sunday afternoon sitting in your favourite chair with a warm cup of 9Gbps DDOS attack.
  
  
  
• Running Linux on a Commodore 64.  (GitHub)
  
  With a memory expansion module.  You can't actually run Linux in 64k of RAM.
  
  And even then, it's only been tested in emulators.  It works by running a RISC-V emulator on the Commodore 64, and running Linux in that.  The developer estimates that it would take about a week to boot on real hardware; it takes two hours on an accelerated emulator.
  
  
  

Tech News

• South Yorkshire Police accidentally lost three years of bodycam footage.  (The Independent)
  
  This likely scuttles dozens of prosecutions.  
  
  Rotherham is in South Yorkshire.  So is Hillsborough, where 97 people died back in 1989 as a direct result of police mishandling crowd control.
  
  Back then they used VHS tapes, which couldn't be deleted at the touch of a button.
  
  The VHS tapes of the incident were somehow stolen.  From a locked cupboard, in a locked room, protected by a burglar alarm...  That didn't go off.
  
  Turns out they were the wrong tapes anyway; it was a different set of tapes that proved the police were lying about the event.
  
  
  
• Did you know they have the internet on computers now?  Threads is available on the web.  (ZDNet)
  
  Both the remaining users are reportedly pleased by this news.
  
  
  
• Speaking of losing important files, a crypto startup has gone bankrupt after losing the keys to its main wallet.  (404 Media)
  
  Its main wallet containing customer funds.
  
  They've known about this since December.
  
  Of 2021.
  
  And only now are bothering to tell anyone.
  
  Based on the numbers given in the article, the company was bankrupt even with the contents of that wallet; they're just extra double bankrupt without it.

• The EU's Digital Services Act goes into effect today.  Here's what that means.  (The Verge)
  
  It means, "Europe who?"
  
  
  
• How big tech really feels about the EU's crackdown.  (The Verge)
  
  Europe who?

• AMD announced its new Radeon 7700 XT and 7800 XT graphics cars, shipping September 6.  (AnandTech)
  
  I predicted pricing of $449 and $549 respectively, $50 too much in each case to be truly competitive, and I was half right.
  
  The 7700 XT with 12GB of RAM and 54 CUs (cluster units - graphics cores) is $449, slotting in precisely between the 8GB and 16GB models of Nvidia's 4060 Ti while generally outperforming both.
  
  The 7800XT with 16GB of RAM and 60 CUs, on the other hand, is $499, the same price as the 16GB 4060 Ti, which it demolishes, and $100 cheaper than the 4070, which it competes against fairly evenly.
  
  The 7700 XT might receive a small price adjustment before it hits retail (like the 7600), but it's a decent card.  It's just outshone by its big brother.  For an extra $50, just go for the 7800.
  
  
  
• Reviewing the Fanxiang (who?) S770 2TB SSD.  (Serve the Home)
  
  It's a perfectly adequate middle-of-the road PCIe 4 SSD, with a couple of bugs.
  
  Like the fact that the temperature sensor always returns the same reading.
  
  I wouldn't buy one, but it appears to be basically functional.
  
  
  
• The College Board, which administers the SAT and Advance Placement exams, also helpfully shares your data with Facebook and TikTok if you access their website.  (Gizmodo)

  "We do not share SAT scores or GPAs with Facebook or TikTok, and any other third parties using pixel or cookies," said a College Board spokesperson.  "In fact, we do not send any personally identifiable information (PII) through our pixels on the site. In addition, we do not use SAT scores or GPAs for any targeting."

  Well, that's good to hear.

  After receiving this comment, Gizmodo shared a screenshot of the College Board sending GPAs and SAT scores to TikTok using a pixel. The spokesperson then acknowledged that the College Board’s website actually does share this data.

  Oh, that TikTok.

  "Pixels are simply a means to measure the effectiveness of College Board advertising," the spokesperson said. "If a student uses the college search tool on CB.org, the student can add a GPA and SAT score range to the search filters. Those values are passed in the pixel, not because we configured the pixel that way but because that’s how the pixel works."

  We don't share user data with Facebook or TikTok, except when we do, in which case that's just how things work.
  
  Props to Gizmodo here for slapping the College Board in the face with the cold, wet Trout of Fact.
  
  
  
• Why Meta is the only AI company that matters.  (Phind)
  
  Meta's CodeLlama-34B scored 48.8% on the HumanEval test when it was first released.
  
  Phind's fine-tuned version scores 67.6% on the same test.
  
  CodeLlama was released yesterday.
  
  
  
• Everyone involved in web scraping is a hypocrite.  (Eric Goldman)
  
  Many of the most litigious actors against web scraping don't actually own the content they are protecting.