• Perplexity AI has offered to buy Chrome from Google for $34.5 billion. (Tech Crunch)
  
  Perplexity doesn't have $34.5 billion.
  
  Minor detail.
  
  
  
• In a world of vibe-coding startups, Uno Platform is one.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Good for them I guess.
  
  
  
• Anthropic has offered all branches and agencies of the federal government unlimited use of its services for $1.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  For one year.
  
  First year is free.

• Training AIs to be warm and empathetic makes them sycophantic idiots.  (ArXiv)
  
  Whoever would have guessed?
  
  
  
• So-called "reasoning" AI models aren't.  (Ars Technica)
  
  The models can explain their reasoning, but the explanations bear only surface resemblance to the actual reasoning.
  
  
  
• And generally, don't ask AI models why they did what they did: They don't know.  (Ars Technica)
  
  And they don't know because when this information was added during testing, they could no longer do what they did.
  
  The key to solving some problems is not knowing it's impossible.
  
  I'll need to read this one more closely; it sounds even worse than I thought.
  
  
  
• PayPal can now only be used on Steam in EUR, CAD, GBP, JPY, AUD, and USD.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Why?  We don't know.  Neither PayPal nor Stream have offered a full explanation.
  
  
  
• In theory AMD's Radeon 9060 - a graphics card currently only found in prebuilt systems - should perform between Nvidia's 5050 and 5050.  In practice that's exactly what it does.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  TDP is a fairly modest 135W.  It's only available in an 8GB model, but at a suitably attractive price it could be a win for budget builds.
  
  
  
• The UK's National Drought Group says you should delete old emails to save water.  (The Verge)
  
  For once it's not The Verge itself I'm mad at.

• Thomas Dhomke, the GitHub CEO who just told programmers to either adopt AI for development or leave the industry, has left the industry.  (GitHub)
  
  He'll be leaving GitHub at the end of the year.

• Wikipedia lost its challenge against the UK government's requirement that all the site's moderators must be registered with the government.  (BBC)
  
  This is required by the Online Safety Act which ostensibly was created to prevent children from seeing porn.  It's obviously complete bullshit because there is no porn on Wikipedia, and the moderators aren't children.
  
  Almost as if this was never about the porn.
  
  
  
• LLMs aren't world models.  (Yosef K)

  A friend who plays better chess than me — and knows more math & CS than me - said that he played some moves against a newly released LLM, and it must be at least as good as him. I said, no way, I’m going to cRRRush it, in my best Russian accent. I make a few moves – but unlike him, I don't make good moves, which would be opening book moves it has seen a million times; I make weak moves, which it hasn't. The thing makes decent moves in response, with cheerful commentary about how we're attacking this and developing that — until about move 10, when it tries to move a knight which isn't there, and loses in a few more moves. This was a year or two ago; I’ve just tried this again, and it lost track of the board state by move 9.

  This aligns with recent posts of leading AI tools losing chess matches to an Atari 2600.
  
  The Atari doesn't know much, but it does encode the rules of chess.  The LLMs...  Don't.
  
  
  

Musical Interlude

Posted by: PatBuckman at Wednesday, August 13 2025 01:27 AM (rcPLc)

Posted by: Rick C at Wednesday, August 13 2025 03:20 AM (3E5Rg)

Posted by: Mauser at Wednesday, August 13 2025 01:39 PM (QE7eq)

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• AOL is closing its dial-up internet service next month, bringing the Eternal September to an end after thirty-four years.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Good.  But a little too late.

• The internet is facing unprecedented levels of censorship around the world from governments and private industry alike.  But The Verge wants to whine about Elon Musk.  (The Verge)  (archive site)
  
  Good to see that nothing has changed.
  
  
  
• Security flaws in an unnamed carmaker's website let anyone steal anybody's car from anywhere.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  This has reportedly been fixed.

• OpenAI has priced GPT-5 so low it may spark a price war.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Chance would be a fine thing.
  
  
  
• OpenAI's GPT-5 comes with up to 80% fewer hallucinations.  (The Register)
  
  Fewer hallucinations are good, or so the voices tell me.
  
  

• OpenAI's GPT-5 is one hundred percent convinced that "blueberry" is spelled with three b's.  (Kieran Healy)
  
  Oops.

• I have RSV - respiratory syncytial virus - and putting a name to it doesn't help at all to be perfectly honest.
  
  I bought a COVID test because I was starting to suspect this wasn't just a cold, and the particular test also tested influenza A and B - it didn't feel like the flu, but okay - and RSV, which hadn't crossed my mind at all.
  
  Good news: My lifetime 100% COVID-free rating remains untouched.
  
  Bad news: RSV is bloody annoying.
  
  The common symptoms in adults match mine precisely, so I haven't developed an idiosyncratic reaction.

  If present, symptoms are generally isolated to the upper respiratory tract: runny nose, sore throat, fever, and malaise.  In most cases, nasal congestion precedes the development of cough.  Unlike other upper respiratory infections, RSV is more likely to cause new onset wheeze in adults.

  Still annoying.

• HTTP is not a simple protocol.  (Haxx)
  
  It drives everything and is implemented everywhere but it is rarely if ever entirely correct.  The original 1.0 version in 1997 ran to 18,615 words; the later 1.1 version currently runs to 95,740 words, as much as a substantial novel.
  
  
  
• HTTP/2: The sequel is always worse.  (Portswigger)
  
  It just is.
  
  
  
• Microsoft Lens - Window's free text-scanning app - is being replaced with AI.  (Thurrott)
  
  That's "blueberry" with three b's.
  
  

Musical Interlude

Posted by: Mauser at Monday, August 11 2025 06:18 AM (QE7eq)

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, August 11 2025 11:10 PM (nRhcb)

Posted by: Mauser at Tuesday, August 12 2025 02:29 PM (QE7eq)

4 ddu is Display Driver Uninstaller, a program that can reboot to safe mode and remove all traces of your driver, so you can do a clean install of a new one. It's especially nice, as I said, when you're switching between AMD and Nvidia and vice versa (and now Intel.)  Googling it should give you a link to the download on guru3d.com, but since everything's working for you you probably don't need it.  It's potentially quite useful if you have problems.
Also, your new card sounds like an excuse for a high-refresh-rate monitor.

Posted by: Rick C at Wednesday, August 13 2025 03:24 AM (3E5Rg)

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Posted by: PatBuckman at Saturday, August 09 2025 11:57 PM (rcPLc)

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• The Framework Desktop is here and it is the perfect machine for a very specific subset of users.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  The 16 core CPU is as fast as you'd expect, and the 40 core integrated graphics are quite capable of playing your games at 2560x1440.
  
  But where it really excels is when you need 96GB of memory on your GPU.  That would cost you $10,000 or more on a dedicated graphics card, while this entire PC is just $2000.
  
  If you don't need 96GB of memory on your GPU, it's still nice, but you're probably be better off with a system with dedicated graphics.
  
  
  

Tech News

• Silicon Motion offered a sneak peek of is PCIe 6.0 consumer SSD controller.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  But Pixy, didn't you say that PCIe 6 wouldn't be coming to the consumer market for at least three years?
  
  Yes.  It won't.  Expected in 2028.
  
  
  
• The Radeon Pro W7400 is AMD's latest graphics card, sort of.  (Notebook Check)
  
  It's not super fast, but it's a half-height, half-length, single-slot card with 8GB of RAM four mini-DisplayPort outputs, and it uses on 55W of power so it can draw all its needs from a standard PCIe slot.
  
  
  
• The CWWK X86-P6 NAS is an N355 eight-core mini-PC designed for NAS duties.  (Serve the Home)
  
  With four M.2 slots and...  An external fan.
  
  
  
• The Xyber Hydra is a GMK Nucbox G9 - a tiny four-bay NAS - but with better cooling.  Which is to say, any cooling.  Liliputing)
  
  That being the Achilles heel of the Nucbox.  The Achilles everything, really.
  
  Does it solve the problems?
  
  Mostly, yes.  The Nucbox has serious thermal throttling problems, while this model only shows throttling at the end of a long test, with default fan settings, and the CPU running at 100%.
  
  The current model Hydra offers a four-core Intel N150 and 16GB of RAM.  A model with an eight-core N305 and 32GB of RAM will follow.  The reviewer does offer a word of caution if you hope to run all eight cores at 100% with the current cooling solution though.

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, August 09 2025 12:27 AM (1zWbY)

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• Ron Deibert, the director of Citizen Lab, a group monitoring the intrusion of government surveillance into the private internet, has woken up confused from a fifteen-year coma and ready to fight. (Tech Crunch)

  Ahead of his talk, Deibert told TechCrunch that he plans to speak about what he describes as a "descent into a kind of fusion of tech and fascism," and the role that the Big Tech platforms are playing, and "propelling forward a really frightening type of collective insecurity that isn’t typically addressed by this crowd, this community, as a cybersecurity problem."

  You mean like banning the country's oldest newspaper from all social networks over a factually accurate article?

  
  No?

  "I think that there comes a point at which you have to recognize that the landscape is changing around you, and the security problems you set out for yourselves are maybe trivial in light of the broader context and the insecurities that are being propelled forward in the absence of proper checks and balances and oversight, which are deteriorating," said Deibert.

  What?

  Deibert, who this year published his new book

  Oh.  So that's what this is about.

• In the future all food will be cooked in a microwave and if you can't deal with that then you need to get out of the kitchen. (Colin Cornaby)
  
  Yeah, developers are not welcoming yesterday's comments by the GitHub CEO.
  
  I like this summation over at Reddit:

  As someone who’s been using AI for work it’s been great though.  Before I would look up documentation and figure out how stuff works and it would take me some time.  Now I can ask Claude first, get the wrong answer, then have to find the documentation to get it to work correctly. It’s been great.

  AI assistants are great if you already know the answer.
  
  
  
• One of Google's corporate Salesforce instances got hack.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Using known social engineering techniques.
  
  
  
• Atlassian has redesigned project management tool Trello for the modern audience.  (The Register)
  
  I've used Trello.  It was awful.  It's kind of impressive that everyone agrees that the new version is infinitely worse.

  "People are comparing this to the worst software updates in history," the post says. "One user said, 'This is the worst UI update I’ve ever seen, including Windows 8.' If you’re being measured against Windows 8, that should say something."

  Ouch.

Posted by: Joe Redfield at Friday, August 08 2025 03:21 AM (KOtXO)

Posted by: Frank at Friday, August 08 2025 06:07 AM (+i6Xr)

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, August 09 2025 12:29 AM (1zWbY)

Posted by: Mauser at Sunday, August 10 2025 01:21 PM (QE7eq)

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• Intel is reportedly struggling with yields on its latest 18A (1.8nm) process.  (Reuters)  (archive site)
  
  Intel has said it plans to use this process for consumer chips, but that could prove difficult if yield really are bad.
  
  
  
• Meanwhile the US government has reportedly asked TSMC to buy 49% of Intel in return for tariff relief.  (Notebook Check)
  
  Well, that's one way to fix things, I guess.

• Sandisk has announced a 256TB enterprise QLC SSD.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  If you have to ask, you can't afford it.
  
  
  
• The CEO of GitHub says programmers must eithe embrace AI or quit.  (FinalRound)
  
  How nice that he gives us the option.
  
  
  
• As programmer usage of AI grows, trust across all platforms continues to decline.  (Ars Technica)
  
  As users grow more familiar what it has to offer, satisfaction has slid from 40% last year to 29% now.
  
  
  
• PCI-SIG has announced plans for PCIe 8.0, which will be twice as fast as PCIe 7.0.  (Liliputing)
  
  A full PCIe 8.0 x16 slow will offer 1TB per second of bandwidth, which used to be a lot.
  
  
  

Musical Interlude

• The Moon is a harsh parking lot.  (Engadget)
  
  NASA's Trailblazer mission ended in disappointment.
  
  After just one day.
  
  When the batteries went flat.
  
  
  
• NASA is planning to build a nuclear reactor on the Moon.  (Politico)
  
  No scrounging though the kitchen drawers for AAA cells on Christmas morning for these guys.

• Details have leaked of AMD's Radeon 9060 non-XT mode, which has the same GPU chip but slightly slower clock speeds and memory.  (WCCFTech)
  
  But -
  
  
  
• AMD has officially announced the Radeon 9060 non-XT only the information above is wrong and you can't buy one.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Strictly for prebuilt systems.
  
  
  
• AMD may be preparing a 9950X4D model with extra cache chips attached to both CPU dies.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  The company already does this for server CPUs, but hasn't done it before now on the desktop because the performance gains for typical desktop apps are limited.
  
  
  
• What the Amiga looked like before it got its famous custom chips.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Big and complicated and likely to fail if a gnat farted nearby.

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, August 05 2025 10:54 PM (/vuXS)

Posted by: Frank at Tuesday, August 05 2025 11:45 PM (+i6Xr)

Posted by: Rick T at Wednesday, August 06 2025 12:24 AM (xeXUW)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Wednesday, August 06 2025 12:26 AM (rcPLc)

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• Did Craigslist really kill newspapers?  (Poynter)
  
  Yes.  Sort of.  Maybe.  But also mostly no.
  
  Newspapers had been in slow decline for thirty years when Craigslist launched in 1995.
  
  What the site did certainly do was accelerate a process started by the newspapers themselves.
  
  

• FCC chairman Brendan Carr is Literally Worse Than Hitler.  (The Verge)  (archive site)
  
  His crime?
  
  Nobody watches Stephen Colbert.
  
  Constant outrage must be really tough on brain cells.
  
  
  
• The acquisition of Commodore by Christian "Perifractic" Simpson and his backers has been completed.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  I don't have any particular association with the classic 8-bit Commodore machines - I was an Amiga kid - but this is still welcome news.
  
  I wonder if FPGA hardware-emulated Amigas might be in the works in the future through a collaboration with Amiga Inc. and Cloanto, which publishes the software-level emulator Amiga Forever.
  
  
  
• Early versions of Microsoft Recall were pulled from distribution when it was discovered they collected all your most sensitive information in one database where it was convenient for hackers to steal it.  It still does that.  (The Register)
  
  Do not want.

Posted by: normal at Tuesday, August 05 2025 06:03 AM (XUcVo)

Posted by: Mauser at Sunday, August 10 2025 01:23 PM (QE7eq)

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