• Intel's new B390 integrated graphics, featured in certain Panther Lake laptop processors, are genuinely a huge leap forward.  (Notebook Check)
  
  Previously the best mainstream integrated graphics were found in AMD chips, like the 780M and 890M units that are included in a three nominal generations of processors.  Intel's latest graphics unit runs rings around them - 50% faster or more.
  
  AMD still holds a convincing lead with its Ryzen AI Max family, but those are not cheap or widespread.
  
  The one major catch here is that the B390 is only available in laptops with soldered memory.  No exceptions.  If you user-upgradable RAM you get graphics running at one third the speed, half the speed of comparable AMD systems.
  
  
  

Tech News

• Television is one hundred years old today.  (Diamond Geezer)
  
  Happy birthday, television!
  
  
  
• After two years of vibe coding, I'm back to writing everything by hand.  (Atmoio)

  It's not until I opened up the full codebase and read its latest state cover to cover that I began to see what we theorized and hoped was only a diminishing artifact of earlier models: slop.
  
  It was pure, unadulterated slop. I was bewildered. Had I not reviewed every line of code before admitting it? Where did all this... gunk.. come from?

  Technical debt as a service.

  In retrospect, it made sense.  Agents write units of changes that look good in isolation.  They are consistent with themselves and your prompt.  But respect for the whole, there is not.  Respect for structural integrity there is not.  Respect even for neighboring patterns there was not.

  What there is, is code spam.
  
  
  
• We have met the enemy and he is slop: A new digital divide?  Coder worldviews, the "Slop economy," and democracy in the age of AI.  (TandFOnline)
  
  Okay, one moment.
  
  Ctrl-F "democracy"
  
  54 hits.  Never once do they specify what they mean, but it readily becomes apparent:

  On one side are the 'digital elites' - those with the means, skills, or institutional support to obtain high-quality information and online experiences. This group enjoys reliable news sources, can afford ad-free subscriptions or premium content, and benefits from platforms and regulations that attempt to uphold standards of accuracy, privacy, and democratic values.  Their internet experience includes credible journalism (e.g., The New York Times, BBC), fact-checked content, and fewer mis/disinformation traps.

  Stalin or Mao.  Those are your only options, apparently.
  
  
  
• Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, creators and operators of Claude AI, is a fuckwit.  (Dario Amodei)

  A country of geniuses in a datacenter could divide their efforts among software design, cyber operations, R&D for physical technologies, relationship building, and statecraft.

  Yeah, "geniuses in datacenters" have a remarkable track record on relationship building and statecraft.
  
  Just... Remarkable.

  It is clear that, if for some reason it chose to do so, this country would have a fairly good shot at taking over the world (either militarily or in terms of influence and control) and imposing its will on everyone else- or doing any number of other things that the rest of the world doesn’t want and can’t stop.

  Everyone has a plan until they get a Hellfire missile to the face.
  
  
  
• Dell's 52" 6K ultra-widescreen monitor is a... 52" 6K ultra-widescreen monitor.  (Hot Hardware)
  
  And it has a 120Hz refresh rate, which is a bit of a surprise.
  
  And it only costs as much as a dozen 27" 4K monitors.
  
  
  
• Google Gemini can now help you find the best meeting time for all attendees.  (Digital Trends)
  
  All it needs to know is the full schedules of all of everyone, and then it becomes an easy task.
  
  Of course, it already was if everyone's schedule is in a computer, so I'm not sure what problem AI is pretending to solve here.
  
  
  
• Google is set to pay $68 million to settle a lawsuit alleging that it recorded private conversations.  (BBC)
  
  Oh, that problem.  If no conversation is private, you can't sue Google for recording it.
  
  
  
• The Trump administration is planning to use Google Gemini to draft transport regulations.  (ProPublica)

  The answer from the plan’s boosters is simple: speed.  Writing and revising complex federal regulations can take months, sometimes years.  But, with DOT's version of Google Gemini, employees could generate a proposed rule in a matter of minutes or even seconds, two DOT staffers who attended the December demonstration remembered the presenter saying.  In any case, most of what goes into the preambles of DOT regulatory documents is just "word salad," one staffer recalled the presenter saying.  Google Gemini can do word salad.

  Great.  Now it's regulatory spam.
  

Posted by: PatBuckman at Wednesday, January 28 2026 01:05 AM (rcPLc)

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