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Posted by: PatBuckman at Monday, September 11 2023 02:31 AM (r9O5h)

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, September 11 2023 03:24 AM (BMUHC)

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• After a district court handed down an injunction in a First Amendment case basically forbidding the federal government from talking to social networks at all the government appealed to the Fifth Circuit.
  
  The Fifth Circuit just handed down a ruling narrowing the injunction to only forbid many parts of the government - particularly the White House and the FBI - from communicating with social networks in any way that implied or could be reasonably inferred to coerce infringement of protected speech.  (Washington Post / MSN)
  
  The government is now appealing to the Supreme Court, saying that it can't function if constitutionally-protected rights are allowed to be protected by the Constitution.

  This case and recent probes in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives have accused government officials of actively colluding with platforms to influence public discourse, in an evolution of long-running allegations that liberal employees inside tech companies favor Democrats when making decisions about what posts are removed or limited online.

  Hunter Biden's laptop was not immediately available to comment.
  
  
  

Tech News

• Your Wyze webcam might have let other people see inside your house.  (The Verge)
  
  For about half an hour, if both of you were on their web portal at the same time.  There was a caching issue that misdirected video streams during that short interval.
  
  So not a case of a company that cannot be trusted, but one that made a mistake and immediately fixed it.
  
  Except:

  In March 2022, Wyze revealed that it had been aware of a security vulnerability for three years that could have let bad actors access WyzeCam v1 cameras, but quietly discontinued the camera rather than telling customers about it.

  There's always an except.
  
  
  
• Node.js 20.6 is out, a bugfix and feature upgrade to Node.js 20, which is like saying a new improved version of colon cancer.  (Dev Class)
  
  Node.js is bad.  It's possibly not the worst thing ever, compared with say the Black Death or the Mount Toba eruption which was so devastating that it may have left fewer than 10,000 surviving humans on the entire planet.
  
  But it's pretty close.
  
  
  
• Need a good motherboard with lots of PCIe slots?  Spending someone else's money?  ASRock has you covered.  (Serve the Home)
  
  This is an EEB-sized server motherboard - even larger than E-ATX - so you'll need to look around for big desktop cases, but they exist.
  
  It has eight PCIe slots - seven x16 and one x8 - and eight DIMM slots.  It supports AMD's Epyc Genoa, Genoa-X, and Bergamo CPUs for up to 128 cores, up to 1TB of RAM (more if you can find a source for 256GB DIMMs), two M.2 slots, two 10Gb Ethernet ports, two USB ports, and VGA and serial ports.
  
  It is a server motherboard after all, so you're going to need to add cards for anything else.
  
  Still it's entirely feasible to build a high-end workstation out of this.  Or a 16-port 100Gb router.  The world is your mollusc.
  
  
  
• Ban all the things! (Torrent Freak)

  Speaking with IBClast week, Sheila Cassells, Executive VP at the Audiovisual Anti-Piracy Alliance, warned that entertainment companies need to be very concerned about "any technological development” which can be used to access pirated content.

  Very concerned?

  "At a basic level – and common to all the technical devices mentioned – AAPA would like to see the production, marketing and distribution of any device which can be used to infringe IP made illegal.”

  Oh, very concerned.
  
  That would include all computers of every description, including all cell phones made since about 1998, all printers, scanners, cameras, and photocopiers, good old VCRs and cassette tapes, and of course the entire Internet.
  
  Sure. You go with that, Sheila.
  
  
  
• Cetabyte Ceramic is poised to unveil an entirely new generation of tape drives with storage capacities in the range of tens of petabytes, with exabyte capacities forecast in the next decade.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  That would allow you to store every movie and TV show ever produced in a bread box.
  
  It's essentially optical tape, writing microscopic (and for higher densities, sub-microscopic) patterns onto the tape, and reading them back with optical or electron microscopes.

Posted by: normal at Saturday, September 09 2023 11:49 PM (obo9H)

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Posted by: Billie at Friday, March 08 2024 12:22 PM (3MHjG)

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• Grindr has found a simple way to rid itself of an entire useless 45% of its workforce: Tell them to show up to work.  (New York Post)
  
  The company requires workers to actually appear two days a week, which led to mass resignations, saving the company millions and immediately weeding out the troublemakers.
  

• Framework has cut the prices for its 11th generation Intel motherboards - available as spare parts - by more than 50%.  (Liliputing)
  
  The 1135G7 board is now available for $199 - down from $449 - making it an interesting DIY option.
  
  But this comes without memory, storage, IO, or a case.  You can configure it any way you want - though you'll want at least one USB-C port for charging - but once you do it will cost about the same as an 1135G7 NUC.
  
  Models with the 1165G7 and 1185G7 are available at $299 and $399 but are probably not worth considering.  The 1185G7 is only 6% faster than the cheapest model.
  
  
  
• MediaTek has announced tape-out of its first 3nm mobile processor.  (Notebook Check)
  
  It sounds like this is simply a shrink of the company's current high-end processor, but it's 18% faster and uses 32% less power, so it's a pretty good shrink.
  
  
  
• Artists have signed an open letter saying that generative AI is good actually.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  This is an interesting contrast to the writers who are up in arms over generative AI, because AI can generate attractive art (so long as you don't have even slightly exacting requirements), but cannot produce worthwhile writing at all.
  
  But neither can most writers.
  
  
  
• X's new terms of service insist the company is called X!  (The Verge)
  
  "We are not obsessed!" added a Verge staff writer, using sign language because they were holding their breath.
  
  
  
• BMW has given up on its plans to charge subscription fees for heated seats after a pitchfork-wielding mob burned down their third factory in the space of a week.  (The Drive)
  
  "We had no idea that people wouldn't embrace this offering that came with only the best of possible intentions," said a BMW spokesman hiding under a desk.  "Lol.  Don't write that down."
  
  
  

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, September 09 2023 01:51 AM (BMUHC)

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• A Rube Goldberg chain of failures led to breach of Microsoft-hosted government emails.  (The Verge)
  
  Microsoft had eight layers of security to prevent this sort of attack.
  
  All of them were broken.
  
  Insecurity in depth.

• Toyota shut down 14 factories because they ran out of disk space.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Oops.
  
  
  
• Samsung's 2TB 980 Pro is now available for $99.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  18 months ago that was the price of an entry-level QLC 1TB drive.
  
  Maybe someone could send one to Toyota.
  
  
  
• Also Samsung now offers a 4TB model of their 990 Pro.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  That's $345, which is not particularly cheap, but would have been an amazing bargain just last year.
  
  
  
• AMD's Radeon RX 7800 XT is here and it's pretty good.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Faster (mostly) and cheaper (mostly) than Nvidia's RTX 4070.
  
  It is a little slower than the previous generation's 6800 XT, so you wouldn't want to upgrade.  But the 6800 XT was a $649 card three years of inflation ago, and the 7800 XT is $499 now.  If you find a 6800 XT still on the shelves at around $500, that's worth considering, but they're fast disappearing.
  
  The 7700 XT is out too.  It's a great $399 card, but costs $449.  It's only another $50 for the 7800 XT, which is really a no-brainer unless the 7800 XT sells out...  Which is probably what will happen.
  
  
  
• Clubhouse is trying to make a comeback.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Clubhouse was the hottest place in town during the Wuhan Bat Flu Death Plague Global Super Ultra Lockdown when it was brand new, only available on iPhones, and invitation only.
  
  As soon as it opened up to more users - immediately after investment money flooded in - everybody left.
  
  
  

• Just 14% of AI experts correctly say that AI cannot be regulated.  (Axios)
  
  Anyone with a half-way decent graphics card - or a high-end phone - can run their own LLM.  Right now.
  
  To be charitable, 14% of AI "experts" who responded to an idiotic Axios poll correctly say that AI cannot be regulated.
  
  9% believe that Joe Biden is the best person to regulate it, which gives you an idea of the kind of intellect we are dealing with here.

• Intel's 14th generation Something Lake range is on its way, with 10% speed increases and 15% price increases.  (WCCFTech)
  
  The meh that was heard around the world.
  
  
  
• Gizmodo has fired its Spanish staff and switched to an AI translator.  (Ars Technica)

  Previously, Gizmodo en Español [Men's Fashion Spain] had a small but dedicated team who wrote original content tailored specifically for Spanish-speaking readers, as well as producing translations of Gizmodo's English articles.

  The surprising thing is that Gizmodo still exists.
  
  
  
• WE DON'T CARE ABOUT ELON MUSK!  (The Verge)
  
  WE DON'T CARE AND WE AREN'T GOING TO TALK ABOUT IT!
  
  
  

Posted by: bob in houston at Wednesday, September 06 2023 11:25 PM (YBLgY)

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, September 07 2023 05:55 AM (BMUHC)

Posted by: David Eastman at Friday, September 08 2023 03:11 AM (R7Z4D)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, September 08 2023 02:05 PM (PiXy!)

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• The EU is preparing to push for a global phase out of fossil fuels at the COP28 climate summit.  (Euro News)
  
  I guess LARPing at ruling the world is less effort than actually doing so.
  
  
  

Tech News

• Sapphire has shown off a Radeon 7800 XT card that isn't an awful blinged-up ultraviolet catastrophe.  (WCCFTech)
  
  It's a little chunky - a 2.5 slot model by the look of it - but otherwise unobjectionable.
  
  $499 unless Nvidia does something drastic in the next few hours.
  
  
  
• Performance looks to be pretty good - but definitely wait for reviews.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  The 7700 XT clobbers the 4060 Ti, and the 7800 XT is convincingly faster than the 4070, except for ray tracing benchmarks, and even there both cards actually win some of the comparisons.
  
  The one game where both the AMD cards lose badly is Cyberpunk 2077 with ray tracing set to medium or higher.  At the ray tracking "overdrive" setting the game is unplayable on either of the AMD cards - but the 4070 only manages 18 fps, so while much better it's still terrible.
  
  
  
• Writing a C compiler in 500 lines of Python.  (Vgel)
  
  Not a complete implementation, but a working compiler nonetheless.
  
  It targets WebAssembly rather than any native instruction set, but the author thinks that actually made it harder, because WebAssembly is a very poor fit for C.
  
  
  
• Why are Germany's wild boars radioactive?  (Washington Post / MSN)
  
  Because they eat radioactive truffles.
  
  And why are the truffles radioactive?
  
  Because they grow underground and cesium from nuclear testing in the 50s and 60s is slowly leaching through the soil, where the mushrooms absorb it.
  
  Result: Glowing green eggs and ham.
  
  
  
• Invasive species cost humans $423 billion each year.  (The Guardian)
  
  Close the border then.
  
  
  
• Llamas vs. chinchillas.  (GitHub)
  
  I'm sure this is very informative if you know what a cosine schedule is, but the article doesn't tell you.
  
  It's about the time spent training LLMs compared against the quality of the results, and it seems that smaller models are better at every point.
  
  

Posted by: normal at Tuesday, September 05 2023 09:17 PM (obo9H)

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Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, September 05 2023 11:46 PM (BMUHC)

Posted by: David Eastman at Wednesday, September 06 2023 01:24 AM (R7Z4D)

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Posted by: Mauser at Wednesday, September 06 2023 02:28 PM (BzEjn)

Posted by: normal at Wednesday, September 06 2023 09:30 PM (obo9H)

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• 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.

Posted by: Alice12 at Thursday, September 19 2024 07:20 PM (B+Tao)

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• 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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