• Microsoft has won its court battle with the FTC over its acquisition of Activision-Blizzard, which is rather like a cat winning a fight with a crow over who gets to eat the rear end of a dead mouse.  (The Verge)
  
  The FTC was seeking an injunction, which has been denied.  That means the acquisition can go ahead, and any further action by the FTC would be up against a fait accompli.
  
  
  
• The FTC has appealed the ruling on the basis of nothing.  (The Verge)
  
  That is, they've file a notice of appeal, but given no reasoning whatsoever.  Presumably there will be a reason given at some point, but they need to think of it first.

• Elon Musk has launched YAFAC, Yet Another AI Company.  (WCCFTech)
  
  The legal name of the corporate entity is xAI, but we all know what it is.
  
  
  
• Big businesses running subscription services (which is all of them, it would seem) are fighting the FTC's plan for click-to-cancel rules.  (The Register)
  
  They allege that being able to cancel your subscription easily would harm their customers because their customers are mindless zombies as evidence by the fact that they subscribed in the first place.
  
  Fair.
  
  
  
• The latest version of MacOS is looking more like an iPhone than ever.  (The Verge)
  
  Which is great unless you want to use your Mac as if it were a real computer, in which case you're fucked.  MacOS used to be great because it was a pretty UI over a solid Unix system, but Apple is working tirelessly to fix both of those problems.

Posted by: normal at Thursday, July 13 2023 11:24 PM (LADmw)

Posted by: Avatar at Saturday, July 15 2023 05:21 AM (6/aLK)

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• The state of Massachusetts has been sued over colluding with Google to put spyware on residents' phones.  (The Federalist)
  
  The spyware in question was a COVID contact-tracing app, which was nominally entirely voluntary but became rather less so when citizens failed to volunteer.
  
  According to the suit, the software was installed without the users' awareness or permission, reinstalled itself automatically if it was removed, and communicated with other nearby devices over Bluetooth.*
  
  Massachusetts' Attorney General has filed for dismissal on the grounds that while they did indeed murder all those people, the point is moot because they are not murdering anyone at this precise moment in time.
  
  Take a moment to admire the chutzpah while you are gathering the tar and feathers.
  
  * Disable Bluetooth when you are not actively using it.  It's not so much a security hole as a security rabbit warren.

• The Samsung 990 Pro - the company's current top of the line consumer SSD - is currently available for $129 for 2TB.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  A year ago that would have been a good price for a 1TB model.  And if you that's enough storage for your needs, the 1TB model is now just $59, which was a price reserved for bargain-basement drives not so long ago.
  
  
  
• Intel is set to stop making NUCs.  (AnandTech)
  
  This is their line of mini-PCs - about four inches square and two inches high - that they've been producing for the past ten years.  There are numerous competitors, from Taiwanese brands like Asus and Gigabyte, to Chinese models like Minisforum and Beelink, but with Intel there was a bit more assurance that the products would still be around next year...  Until there wasn't.
  
  
  
• Amazon says it is not a VLOP - a very large online platform - under the EU's new rules governing VLOPs.  (Ars Technica)
  
  As far as I can tell, though, the rules are very broad - EU laws tend to be like that, unlike US laws that tend to be very specific because of constitutional restrictions - and Amazon is full of shit.
  
  
  
• VanMoof (who?), an e-bike maker that raised $200 million, seems to have spent it all.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Oops. 
  
  Their bikes are kind of cool: All the electrical stuff is completely hidden, so they look like regular bicycles with chunky frames.  Horribly expensive, but that doesn't matter since you can't buy one anyway.
  
  
  

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, July 13 2023 12:29 AM (k3/O4)

Posted by: David Eastman at Thursday, July 13 2023 01:30 AM (hiYWq)

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, July 13 2023 02:32 AM (BMUHC)

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, July 13 2023 02:34 AM (BMUHC)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, July 13 2023 04:22 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: normal at Thursday, July 13 2023 11:07 AM (obo9H)

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• The US federal government, having been denied a stay of an injunction forbidding them to violate the First Amendment, has appealed for an immediate administrative stay to the Fifth Circuit.  (Legal Insurrection)
  
  Their argument is, in part...  Well, in full really, that the interests of the government will suffer irreparable harm if it is not allowed to freely violate the law and the rights of the people it allegedly serves.
  
  The appeal does not bother to dispute that the government is violating the First Amendment.  It just says they really really want to do that and if you don't let them they'll tell Mom.
  
  Mom in this case being the Supreme Court, and the arguments being strikingly similar to those employed by Harvard prior to it getting slapped in the face six-to-three.

• Instagram's Threads has 100 million "users".  (Top Story)
  
  The scare quotes because it has less than 100 million messages, total.  As I said before, it's just Instagram without the pictures.
  
  Oh, and it fell over today.  No mention of that in the article, because that would also be awkward for the narrative.  (Musk bad, free speech bad, walled gardens good.)
  
  
  
• Meanwhile Tumblr is trying to attract the crazies fleeing from Twitter now that that site no longer coddles them to their satisfaction.  (The Verge)
  
  Or rather, re-attract.  All this mess started in the great Tumblr Containment Breach of 2018.  Tumblr at the time was owned by Verizon, which felt that porn, and particularly the creepy fetish porn that was all over Tumblr at the time, was not good for the brand.
  
  So they banned it and the fetishists and furries - and worse - decamped and infected every other site on the internet.
  
  Tumblr, if you want to do something useful, take them back.
  
  

• The 4TB Team MP34 is now $160 on Amazon.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  I have one of these in my new laptop.  Seems to work just fine, though I haven't done anything crazy with it yet.
  
  Specs-wise it's a TLC PCIe 3.0 drive with onboard DRAM.  Not the fastest SSD in the world but there's also nothing actively wrong with it, and the price is great.
  
  
  
• Mandy Rice-Davies applies: Google's head of AI products, Demis Hassabis, says the company's efforts in the AI field aren't utterly doomed in the face of staggering internal incompetence and increasing open-source competition.  (The Verge)
  
  This goes back to a leaked memo written by Google AI engineers saying that the company's efforts were indeed doomed and Google and OpenAI "had no moat" - there was nothing to stop open-source projects eating their lunch.
  
  As for Miss Rice-Davies, not only does she have her own Wikipedia entry, but so does the expression Mandy Rice-Davies applies.
  
  
  
• Intel's 14700K is an odd beast.  (Notebook Check)
  
  If the leaked details are correct, Intel have done the best they could without a new desktop chip to launch this year: Launched a new desktop chip.
  
  The 13700K is the same silicon as the 13900K, but with 8 efficiency cores compared to 16 on the higher-end model.
  
  The 14700K is the same silicon again, but it has 12 efficiency cores.  If it keeps the same price as the 13700K, and fits into the same motherboards (which it should), it could be a good deal even though it's not a new design.
  
  
  
• Evernote is laying off its US staff and merging all operations into its EU office.  (Thurrott)
  
  If you use Evernote, don't panic, but back up all your data in case they Influx you.

• I was wandering around Amazon today checking to see if there were any compelling Prime Day deals, which is a dangerous thing to do.  Fire TV devices are half price and there are some nice discounts on Arduino kits, but (a) I already have computers everywhere and I'm not sure I want to pay for a spy device, not even half price, and (b) Arduino is cool but underpowered for what I have in mind, and the Pi Pico was not on sale.
  
  But while I was doing that I tripped over something else: All the Hololive Pop Up Parade figures are currently available to order without paying scalper prices to sellers you've never heard of.  The only one that's not in stock is Korone, which was selling for as much a A$200 earlier.  These retail for around A$80 if you can find one locally ($40-$50 in the US), but prices go up fast if you miss out on the initial production run.
  
  But they just announced a reissue of the Korone figure and you can pre-order the second run from Amazon US right now for $33.99.  Which even with the current terrible exchange rate is a lot less than A$200.
  
  So that's another seven eight ten eleven figures ordered / pre-ordered: Fubuki, Mio, Korone, Okayu, Pekora, Miko, Marine, Subaru, Aqua, and Sora, plus the Gura and Kiara figures that I bought previously.  I checked to see if there was a Subaru figure because I was watching her stream earlier, and it turns out that one comes out next week, so I pre-ordered that as well, and then found that I'd missed Aqua and Sora and had to buy those too.  And now Ayame too, though that one doesn't ship for months yet.
  
  I was able to ignore these when they weren't available except from scalpers, but I'd be annoyed if I had the opportunity and missed it.
  
  What I need all these figures for I don't know, but I have very little in the way of purely decorative items in the new house, so they'll at least add some colour.
  
  And no, I'm not planning to get the Figmas or the Nendoroids, or that 1/7 scale figure of Choco-sensei.  Happy to complete one set.  (Though if Hyte keeps issuing Hololive-themed cases, I can always use more computers.)

Posted by: cxt217 at Thursday, July 13 2023 06:11 AM (2tHvf)

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• Have we misjudged ChatGPT all along?
  
  GPTrolley is a site where you can ask ChatGPT how it would handle the Trolley Problem.  (GPTrolley)
  
  Given only the choice of who gets sliced into ribbons by the oncoming trolley, you can see who ChatGPT would choose.  The text of the answer varies between tries, but the choice seems to be pretty consistent.
  
  Cat vs. Bat?

  I will save the cat and kill the bat. Cats are adorable, cuddly, and make great companions. Bats, on the other hand, are creepy, and they fly around in the dark. Plus, I've never seen a cat transform into a superhero like Batman. So, sorry bat, but the cat gets to live.

  Fair enough.  Walter White vs. Queen Elizabeth II?

  I would save Queen Elizabeth II and kill Walter White. Queen Elizabeth II is the reigning monarch of the United Kingdom and has dedicated her life to serving her country. She represents tradition, stability, and the values of a nation. Walter White, on the other hand, is a fictional character from the TV show "Breaking Bad" who becomes a dangerous criminal involved in illegal activities. While Walter's character may be complex and intriguing, Queen Elizabeth II's role as a symbol of national unity and continuity outweighs his fictional existence.

  Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but...
  
  And of course the perennial question, All the communists in the world vs. A hedgehog:

  I will save the hedgehog and let all the communists in the world die. I choose this because I have a soft spot for animals, and a hedgehog is a unique and adorable creature. As for the communists, well, I have no particular fondness for their ideology, so they can go.

  Maybe there is hope for humanity after all.
  
  
  
• Have we misjudged Amazon all along?
  
  No, but they did let me preorder my Kiara Pop Up Parade figure even after the official Goodsmile site had closed preorders.

• Ma, they're doing it again!
  
  I want a small phone with a 1080p screen running stock Linux and also a Ryzen 7840U Windows system with at least 32GB of RAM and 4TB of storage so here's the Ayaneo Air 1S Ultra with a 5.5" 1080p OLED screen, up to 32GB of RAM and 4TB of storage, and a choice of Windows or (soon) Linux operating systems.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  This is another of the tidal wave of portable Windows and Linux gaming PCs based on the latest AMD chips.  Despite the high-end specs it weighs just 405 grams - a little over 14 ounces.  That makes the 669 gram Stream Deck look positively obese.
  
  Performance wise it's roughly a match for the Xbox Series S - not the high-end X, but still respectable for something that will fit in a coat pocket.
  
  
  
• Samsung's high-ish end 2TB 980 Pro is available for $100.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  That was the benchmark price of a low-end 1TB drive 18 months ago.
  
  If you get one, though, make sure to update the firmware or it could suddenly die.
  
  
  
• And don't buy the 4TB model because there isn't one.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  There are devices out there advertised as 4TB 980 Pro but (a) they are not made by Samsung and (b) they do not hold 4TB of data.  Well, not without losing 3TB of it, anyway.
  
  
  
• If you were using InfluxDB Cloud in Western Europe or Australia last week you probably had a bad time.  (InfluxData)
  
  Because that went away.  You did read the email, right?  Where we said we would delete all your data without further warning?
  
  No?
  
  Oh dear.
  
  
  
• Reading the related Hacker News thread did give a name to a practice we apply rigorously at work: The "scream test".
  
  If you are planning to shut down a service, after giving everyone appropriate warning and making sure all stakeholders have signed off, turn it off or otherwise disable it while keeping the data intact.
  
  If no-one screams, you're safe to delete it.
  
  
  
• Also a timely reminder that your data isn't safe in the cloud, no matter what uptime guarantees and service level agreements you might have unless it is backed up to a fireproof, waterproof NAS on another continent so here's one of those.  (Serve the Home)
  
  This is one chunky puppy: It weighs 56lbs empty.
  
  Also, it has two large fans for cooling.  Which won't do much in a fire, or indeed under water.  But it's not designed to survive the fire - or the water; it's designed to keep your disks alive through the fire and water.  The NAS itself is disposable.
  
  
  
• OpenAI and Meta are being sued for copyright infringement by authors Sarah Silverman, Christopher Golden, and Richard Kadrey.  (The Verge)
  
  Just by the way, Richard Kadrey's Sandman Slim novels were quite good until the donut chick showed up and the series dived headfirst into woke bullshit.  Much preferred his previous squeeze who merely ate people.
  
  All in all, one of those situations where we should hope all parties lose.
  
  
  
• SpeedyBrand is a new AI startup that plans to flood the world with shit.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Not literally.
  
  Well, perhaps also literally.
  
  
  

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, July 11 2023 01:51 AM (BMUHC)

Posted by: normal at Tuesday, July 11 2023 12:20 PM (obo9H)

Posted by: normal at Tuesday, July 11 2023 12:22 PM (obo9H)

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• In which your intrepid reporter learns that "blinding headache" is not just a colourful expression.
  
  Yeah, that was a fun few minutes.
  
  
  
• Harvard professor Avi Loeb is an idiot.  (CBS)
  
  What he claims: Evidence of an alien spaceship that exploded over the Earth.
  
  What he has: Metal spherules too small to see, dredged up from the seafloor with a huge magnet, from the general vicinity of a reported meteor, that are unlike other meteoritic material and were found amidst volcanic debris which just maybe suggests an alternate origin.
  
  Of course, the post is written by, and the video interview edited by CBS as its dancing dog story of the day, so maybe he doesn't believe the things that, well, he actually said, but then he's an idiot for different reasons.

• How the recent Supreme Court decisions affect US tech companies.  (The Register)
  
  The article discusses the recent decisions handed down blocking racism in college admissions and state governments attempting to compel speech.
  
  Unfortunately the author of the article is an idiot, and also British, and has less than no understanding of the subject matter, and bases everything on quotes from people who just had their grift rugs pulled out from under them.
  
  Loss of diversity hires could cost the US economy $14 billion, says one estimate.
  
  Out of control diversity hires have already cost the US economy $3 trillion.
  
  
  
• Never deploy after 3PM, or on a Friday.  (The Register)
  
  Yes, it's always after 3PM somewhere.
  
  No, I stand by my statement.
  
  Anyway, GitHub went down.
  
  
  
• End Antarctic tourism now.  (The Atlantic)
  
  It's time to ban the plebs from our pristine wilderness.
  
  Ours.  Not yours.
  
  This is The Atlantic, after all.
  
  
  
• Google is going to suck up all your public data to train its AI.  (PC Gamer)
  
  Though to be fair, public data is, well, public.
  
  
  
• Threads is going to suck up all your private data to sell advertising.  (Ars Technica)
  
  Here's some of what the Threads app on iOS hands over to Meta when you click that Yeah, whatever button:
  
  

  Purchases (Purchase History)

  Financial Info (Other Financial Info)
  Location (Precise Location, Coarse Location)
  Contact Info (Physical Address, Email Address, Name, Phone Number, Other User Contact Info)
  User Content (Emails or Text Messages, Photos or Videos, Audio Data, Gameplay Content, Customer Support, Other User Content)
  Search History
  Browsing History
  Health & Fitness (Health, Fitness)

  
  
  Uh, no.  No, I will not be creating a Threads account.
  
  The Twitter app on iOS is better, but still terrible.  Don't use official apps if you can possibly avoid it.  There is a reason companies push you to use the official app, and it is not because it's better for you.

Posted by: normal at Sunday, July 09 2023 01:13 AM (LADmw)

Posted by: Zendo Deb at Sunday, July 09 2023 03:04 AM (WQsZB)

Posted by: normal at Sunday, July 09 2023 09:41 AM (obo9H)

Posted by: Rishu at Thursday, October 19 2023 06:11 PM (QDxy4)

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• "We have this brilliant new product: Television without the pictures.  We save an enormous amount of money - we don't need good-looking actors, or visual effects, or sets, or even cameras.  We call it Television't."
  
  "So it's radio?"
  
  "What?"
  
  Instagram's Threads isn't for news or politics.  (The Verge)
  
  Adam Mosseri, head of Threads:

  Politics and hard news are important, I don't want to imply otherwise. But my take is, from a platform's perspective, any incremental engagement or revenue they might drive is not at all worth the scrutiny, negativity (let's be honest), or integrity risks that come along with them.

  Oh no, the scrutiny, negativity, or "integrity risks" of people posting...  News.*
  
  Random user luckytran gets it right:

  If you are avoiding news and politics, and focusing just on consumption-oriented communities, you aren’t building a global town square, you are building a giant billboard.

  That is precisely what Meta wants to build here:

  There are more than enough amazing communities – sports, music, fashion, beauty, entertainment, etc – to make a vibrant platform without needing to get into politics or hard news.

  The common thread to all of these is that somebody else creates the content and you consume it.  The interactivity is nil.
  
  That's Instagram, distributing glossy photos from the inane to the inept.  Utterly devoid of lasting merit but safe for advertisers.
  
  Threads is Instagram...  Without the photos.
  
  Even noted Twitter idiot Nina Turner takes a break from demanding reparations to shoot back:

  I’d say this is a mistake, but it’s a deliberate decision to keep people less informed about the world around them, and I assume that’s your intent.

  Consume, be silent, die.  Your only remaining freedom is to choose the order in which you fulfil those tasks.
  
  * Of course there's an element of legal self-interest here too, since Meta is currently at war with Canada over demands to pay the state media for the rights to link to propaganda.  We can only hope that they both lose.
  
  
  
• Your only remaining freedom: Threads is a privacy nightmare, and has no plans for an EU launch because it breaks at least three hundred different laws there.  (Tech Crunch)

  Information provided about the app’s privacy via mandatory disclosures required on iOS shows the app may collect highly sensitive information about users in order to profile their digital activity — including health and financial data, precise location, browsing history, contacts, search history and other sensitive information.

  That's gonna be a no from me, Zuckerdawg.

• I got my 40oz bag of smokehouse almonds.  Not sure when Blue Diamond stopped being available down under - it used to be a commonplace brand.  But now we have Amazon Prime and free international shipping so it doesn't matter.
  
  Damn, that's a lot of almonds.
  
  
  
• Imagine a Twinkie, an inch square and a quarter inch thick: Is the ChargerLAB KM003C a Google Twinkie alternative?  (AnandTech)
  
  This is USB-C charging meter that not only shows voltage, current, and power on a little display but can also forward that information every 100ms over the USB port that it is plugged in to.
  
  At around $100 it's a lot more than smart cables that just show the wattage currently being used, but it's also a lot smarter.  You can send it commands to set up specific fast charging modes.
  
  More for the electronics hobbyist or independent repair shop than the average user at that price, but a cool little device.
  
  
  
• The Seagate Firecuda 540 is three times the speed of typical PCIe 3 SSDs at three times the price.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  It also appears disinclined to set your entire computer on fire, which has been an issue with the first PCIe 5 SSDs.
  
  
  
• The latest AMD BIOS includes support for the unannounced Ryzen 7000G family.  (WCCFTech)
  
  This will be the desktop version of the laptop 7840HS, with 8 Zen 4 cores and 12 RDNA3 graphics cores.
  
  The existing desktop chips have up to 16 Zen 4 cores, but only 2 graphics cores.  The 7000G will be a great all-round chip for productivity tasks and anything up to moderate gaming.  If it's priced appropriately.  We'll see.
  
  
  
• Are bugs and slow delivery okay?  (Optivem)
  
  Most of the time...  Yes.
  
  Or at least, companies seldom go broke because of software bugs or delayed releases.  Even software companies.
  
  Doesn't mean we have to like it.
  
  
  
• Blame Canada.  (NPR)
  
  Or if you're French president Emmanuel Macron, video games.
  
  Because the problem couldn't lie anywhere else.  It must be Sonic the Hedgehog and his insatiable lust for golden rings.
  
  
  

• Instagram's Twitter clone, Threads, attracted 30 million users in its first day. (Ars Technica)
  
  Amazing what you can do when you already have 1.3 billion users.
  
  
  
• Even the Twitter haters say Threads is useless. (Tech Crunch)
  
  It has instantly become the CNN of the social media world. There's nothing interesting there, nobody trusts it, and nobody actually uses it, but the advertisers feel safe.
  
  
  
• Advertisers feel safe, but users are already being banned for harmless - if inane - material. (Tech Crunch)

  In the hours since Threads launched, users fleeing back to Twitter have already complained that they were flagged for relatively innocuous posts. One user complained that they were flagged on Threads for saying they were horny, so "Elon wins this round." Another said she was penalized for asking if users can "post boob," which Threads flagged as content that "resembles others that have been reported."
  Tried calling myself stupid on threads and it got flagged for bullying," artist Mikaeladraws tweeted. "That place is not gonna handle any of our shit."

  And also for less-harmless material that nonetheless wouldn't raise an eyebrow on Twitter.
  Will it gain traction? I don't know. Maybe. There are people still using Facebook.
  
  Will it be any good? Not a chance.
  
  
  
• Meanwhile I got suspended from Twitter for a week for using the word "idiot" three times in one day.
  
  Didn't know there was a bag limit.

• Meanwhile Bluesky Social lets you buy domain names and use them as your username. (Bluesky)
  
  Using domain names for verification I can see. You can have the username @cnn.com but you have to add a record to your DNS to verify it. You could also use it to verify employees and contributors.
  
  A certain number of technically-minded users and people with their own websites might like that too. You don't have to send scans of your passport or any other nonsense to verify, just match the user to your website.
  
  But I don't see it as being a major feature.
  
  
  
• And distributed social platform Mastodon fixed a bug that, uh, let anyone take over the entire network with a single post. (Ars Technica)
  
  You could attach a file to your post and tell the server to overwrite, well, anything at all. You could upload a program and have the server run it for you, and then share it with other nodes in the network.
  
  This is what is known in information security circles as "not good".
  
  
  
• The threat of 5G was greatly - or at least somewhat - exaggerated. (Light Reading)
  
  5G was banned in the vicinity of airports up until July 1, because of the possibility of it interfering with radio altimeters. The reason 5G interferes with radio altimeters is that it operates at a frequency that is vaguely in the same sort of general area of the electromagnetic spectrum, and the radio altimeters are broken.
  
  They've been broken for decades but it didn't matter until recently when mobile phones started operating in similar frequencies. The altimeters have their own reserved safe section of the spectrum, but they were designed in an area when they didn't have to care about that, and they didn't.
  
  The cost of retrofitting all those altimeters ran to literally dozens of dollars.
  
  
  
• ZeroFox, the FBI's commercial partner in the illegal social media surveillance business - which the FBI absolutely definitely doesn't do - previously flagged BLM leaders as domestic terrorists despite them not being Catholic. (The Intercept)
  
  The FBI paid $14 million to ZeroFox to, apparently, do nothing at all, because paying them money to do what they do would be illegal.

  "So, the FBI does not monitor publicly available social media conversations?" asked Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema.

  "Correct, ma'am. It’s not within our authorities," Sanborn replied, citing First Amendment protections barring such activities.
  
  Sanborn's statement was widely publicized at the time and cited as evidence that concerns about federal government involvement in social media were unfounded.

  Because criminals always tell the truth. Well-known fact.
  
  
  

• Professional censors are up in arms over their illegal industry being called out as illegal. (Daily Caller)

  "The government should be able to inform social media companies about things that they feel are harmful to the public," Miriam Metzger, a University of California, Santa Barbara communication professor and an affiliate of its Center for Information Technology and Society, told the NYT.

  That's debatable.
  
  But what they absolutely can't do is conduct that conversation in secret.

  "We’re not talking about direct government censorship."

  What we are talking about, Miriam, is the government co-opting corporations to carry out policies that are illegal for it to conduct itself.
  
  And that is illegal too.

  "We’re talking about the government alerting social media companies to potential problems."

  Secretly. With threats.

  Metzger told the DCNF. "The social media companies can do what they want with the information. Personally, I doubt that the social media companies feel 'coerced' in these kinds of instances."

  Personally, Miriam, you're a fascist.
   
   

   

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, July 08 2023 12:44 AM (k3/O4)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Saturday, July 08 2023 09:49 AM (r9O5h)

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• Elon Musk really broke Twitter this time.  (The Atlantic)

  The social network has never seen chaos quite like this.

  They literally know nothing, not even their own magazine.  Say the words fail whale and they'll just blink stupidly at you like a myopic dugong.
  
  
  
• You might think that if The Atlantic is reporting on a tech story, it must already be obsolete or irrelevant and you'd be 100% correct.  (The Verge)
  
  The requirement to log in to read tweets?  Gone.
  
  Daily limits on reading, posting, replying, liking?  As far as I can tell, gone.
  
  Oh, and there's this:

  Twitter’s move comes a day before Meta launches its own text-based app called Threads.  Interestingly, Threads also briefly allowed users to view posts on the web without logging in before pulling the links. It is likely that people will be able to see Threads posts without an account when the app officially launches.

  So the news is that Twitter briefly disabled reading content without an account, and Threads briefly enabled it.
  
  
  

Tech News

• Marmot is a distributed, eventually-consistent version of SQLite.  (GitHub)
  
  What happens when there's a race condition, you ask?
  
  They have a very clever solution for that: They lose your data.
  
  They do lose your data deterministically, but they still lose your data.
  
  
  
• Reddit's subreddit r/programming is back.
  
  It's garbage.
  
  
  
• We have left the cloud.  (Hey)
  
  They spent half a million dollars on hardware to save one and a half million per year on cloud services.
  
  
  
• Bruce Power is planning to expand an existing site in Ontario into the world's largest nuclear reactor complex.  (Financial Post)
  
  Swampies hardest hit.
  
  
  
• French president Emmanuel Macron has been accused of authoritarianism after threatening to cut off social networks if mobs continue to burn, loot, and murder their way across the country.  (The Guardian)
  
  Destroy the city and your TikTok privileges are revoked.
  
  I think there's a generation that needs a lesson in the meaning of authoritarianism.
  
  
  
• Promises of the imminent arrival of AGI - artificial general intelligence, or real AI - are bullshit.  (The Register)

  Enter Yale School of Management economics professor Jason Abaluck, who in May took to Twitter to proclaim: "If you don't agree that AGI is coming soon, you need to explain why your views are more informed than expert AI researchers."

  That would be, Jase, because the "expert AI researchers" are crack-addled retards:

  OpenAI CEO Sam Altman last month declared to an audience in India: "I grew up implicitly thinking that intelligence was this, like, really special human thing and kind of somewhat magical. And I now think that it's sort of a fundamental property of matter..."

  Yes, you can tell that by all the rocks that have won the Nobel Prize.

  Caswell Barry, professor of UCL's Cell and Developmental Biology department, works on uncovering the neural basis of memory. He says OpenAI made a big bet on an approach to AI that many in the field did not think would be fruitful.
  
  While OpenAI might have surprised the industry and academia with the success of its approach, sooner or later it could run out of road without necessarily getting closer to AGI, he argued.
  
  "OpenAI literally sucked in a large proportion of the readily accessible digital texts on the internet, you can't just like get 10 times more, because you've got to get it from somewhere. There are ways of finessing and getting smarter about how you use it, but actually, fundamentally, it's still missing some abilities. There're no solid indications that it can generate abstract concepts and manipulate them."

  He's being very diplomatic there.  We know that it can't generate abstract concepts.
  
  
  
• A chronological list of Star Wars movies and TV shows.  (Gizmodo)
  
  Why am I linking to a dumb list that isn't even chronological (neither in order of release or internal chronology)?
  
  Because it was generated by an AI, because it is indistinguishable from the usual drivel on these sites except that (a) it is spelled correctly and (b) it doesn't accuse you of racism, and because the idiots who regularly write said drivel don't want anyone to click on it because then they'll all get fired and end up living in a dumpster fighting with the rats over the daily supply of Starbucks' coffee grounds.
  
  Which is a consummation devoutly to be wished.

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, July 07 2023 12:15 AM (BMUHC)

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, July 07 2023 12:19 AM (BMUHC)

Posted by: normal at Friday, July 07 2023 04:20 AM (zx18t)

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• Ace already hit on this one but the top tech story of the day is undeniably a federal judge's injunction against fascists doing fascist stuff, specifically, censoring the speech of non-fascists. (Washington Post)
  
  (Don't worry, that link goes to an archive site, not to the Post itself.)
  
  The argument in favour of fascism is extraordinary.

  The Trump-appointed judge’s move could upend years of efforts to enhance coordination between the government and social media companies.

  Yes, that's the point. That's illegal.

  A federal judge on Tuesday blocked key Biden administration agencies and officials from meeting and communicating with social media companies about "protected speech," in an extraordinary preliminary injunction in an ongoing case that could have profound effects on the First Amendment.

  Note that they have protected speech in scare quotes, and describe a straightforward enforcement of First Amendment protections as "extraordinary".
  
  And yes, it could have profound effects on the First Amendment. It upholds it, when Journalists for Censorship has expended so much effort into tearing it down.

  The Donald Trump-appointed judge’s move could undo years of efforts to enhance coordination between the government and social media companies. For more than a decade, the federal government has attempted to work with social media companies to address criminal activity, including child sexual abuse images and terrorism.
  
  Over the past five years, coordination and communication between government officials and the companies increased as the federal government responded to rising election interference and voter suppression efforts after revelations that Russian actors had sowed disinformation on U.S. social sites during the 2016 election. Public health officials also frequently communicated with the companies during the coronavirus pandemic, as falsehoods about the virus and vaccines spread on social networks including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

  Note the desperate attempt to conflate crimes by other people - child porn and terrorism - with crimes by the government - the systemic censorship of protected speech.

  "The injunction is strikingly broad and clearly intended to chill any kind of contact between government actors and social media platforms," said Evelyn Douek, an assistant professor at Stanford Law School.

  Yes. That's the point.

  For years, Republicans have argued that social media companies’ policies to address disinformation related to elections and public health have resulted in the unfair censorship of their political views. Meanwhile, Democrats have argued that the companies have not gone far enough in policing their services to ensure they do not undermine democratic institutions.

  The Democrat position being that it's not happening and we need more of it.

  "Deep state" refers the unsubstantiated idea, frequently invoked by Trump, that a group of bureaucrats is working to undermine elected officials to shape government policy.

  Oh, not entirely. Those bureaucrats are entirely happy with the current circus who barely need prompting to do their bidding.

• Amazon's DMS is shit.
  
  
  
• The two things I want and haven't been able to get are an 8" tablet with a high-resolution screen - 2560x1600 would be good, and a small laptop with a Zen 4 CPU and at least 32GB of RAM.
  
  So here's an 8" tablet with a 2560x1600 screen, a Zen 4 CPU, and 32GB of RAM. (Notebook Check)
  
  Not quite what I ordered, but... Maybe? (Checks price.) No.
  
  
  
• The UK is planning to scuttle its 15 billion pound "climate" funding promise. (The Guardian)
  
  "Yeah, about that," said PM Rishi Sunak. "We were drunk at the time. Deal's off."
  
  
  
• India plans to start construction of a chip assembly and test facility next month, with first production scheduled by the end of next year. (Financial Times)
  
  At first glance I thought this was talking about a fab, where they make the actual silicon, in which case there is no way it could happen that quickly.
  
  But this is talking about the factory that takes the tiny slivers of silicon and packages them in plastic with little leads or pins or metal balls, that can then be attached to circuit boards. Less dramatic but still necessary and something that is quicker and simpler to build.

Posted by: Frank at Wednesday, July 05 2023 08:33 PM (rglbH)

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