• The same pathetic losers who tried to organise a boycott against the Harry Potter game Hogwarts Legacy are at it again with Palworld.  (GGRecon)
  
  With similar results.
  
  Hogwarts Legacy sold 22 million copies last year.
  
  Palworld has sold 3 million copies in two days.
  
  
  

Tech News

• Overclocking your SSD can bring big performance gains.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  If you have a cheap no-name SSD that is underclocked to start with, and if you don't mind losing all your data.
  
  
  
• Intel's upcoming Arrow Lake desktop chips could be 5% faster than the current Raptor Lake models.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Intel is in the middle of launching four generations of CPUs in the same month, which is impossible for anyone to keep track of, but it doesn't matter since they all perform the same.
  
  
  
• For truckers driving EVs there is no turning back.  (Yahoo News)
  
  That's because the only truckers driving EVs are the ones on fixed short-to-mid-range routes where charging is readily available and the economics make sense.
  
  
  
• Can an AI become its own CEO after creating a startup?  No.  (INC)
  
  The co-founder of Google's DeepMind division thinks so, but he's an idiot.
  
  
  
• Node.js users download 2.1 billion deprecated packages every week.  (SC Magazine)
  
  If you're using Node.js, you've already made a really bad decision, so why not double down on that?

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, January 22 2024 02:28 AM (BMUHC)

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, January 22 2024 02:34 AM (BMUHC)

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, January 22 2024 04:31 AM (BMUHC)

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• The same pathetic losers who tried to organise a boycott against the Harry Potter game Hogwarts Legacy are at it again with Palworld.  (GGRecon)
  
  With similar results.
  
  Hogwarts Legacy sold 22 million copies last year.
  
  Palworld has sold 3 million copies in two days.
  
  
  

Tech News

• Overclocking your SSD can bring big performance gains.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  If you have a cheap no-name SSD that is underclocked to start with, and if you don't mind losing all your data.
  
  
  
• Intel's upcoming Arrow Lake desktop chips could be 5% faster than the current Raptor Lake models.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Intel is in the middle of launching four generations of CPUs in the same month, which is impossible for anyone to keep track of, but it doesn't matter since they all perform the same.
  
  
  
• For truckers driving EVs there is no turning back.  (Yahoo News)
  
  That's because the only truckers driving EVs are the ones on fixed short-to-mid-range routes where charging is readily available and the economics make sense.
  
  
  
• Can an AI become its own CEO after creating a startup?  No.  (INC)
  
  The co-founder of Google's DeepMind division thinks so, but he's an idiot.
  
  
  
• Node.js users download 2.1 billion deprecated packages every week.  (SC Magazine)
  
  If you're using Node.js, you've already made a really bad decision, so why not double down on that?

• Palworld, an independent game that can be best described as Pokemon with guns allowed a handful of vtubers a preview the past few days.
  
  Seems to have paid off because they sold a million copies in eight hours and reached half a million concurrent players in the first 24 hours - and it's still in pre-release.  (Kotaku)
  
  In case you're wondering, yes, those sheep have Browning M2s.

• Twitter has just launched support for audio and video calls via the Android app.  (Thurrott)
  
  I don't know that we want this, but having these features available from a platform not controlled by the usual Silicon Valley mafia is welcome.
  
  
  
• The group of crazed billionaires proposing that doomed planned community in Solano County in northern California has released, uh, a map.  (Hot Hardware)
  
  Well, that solves everything.
  
  
  
• One of JPMorgan Chase's CEOs - apparently they have several - has claimed that the company repels 45 billion hacking attempts every day.  (The Register)
  
  This is entirely plausible, if you count individual probes by everyone from random script kiddies to Russian and Chinese state hacking teams.  It really is that bad out there.
  
  
  
• Speaking of which, Russia hacked Microsoft, looking to find out what Microsoft knew about Russian hackers.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  And instead got the source code to Windows 8 and Clippy.  They are now pressing charges of war crimes in the Hague.
  
  
  
• Apple's Vision Pro, the company's absurdly overpriced VR headset, is up for pre-order.  (9to5Mac)
  
  Starting at $3499.
  
  This being Apple, you need an iPhone just to order it.
  
  
  
• Third-party platforms are flocking to the Vision Pro, with native applications available from...  Nobody.  (MacStories)
  
  YouTube, Netflix, Roku, Facebook, and TikTok have all announced a profound lack of interest, though Reddit has announced some kind of support.
  
  You can open your Numbers spreadsheet in glorious 4D though, so there's that.

Posted by: Craft at Wednesday, April 17 2024 12:20 PM (XJA3c)

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• Mark Zuckerberg has made it is goal to develop AGI - artificial general intelligence - with Meta now joining OpenAI and Google in the race.  (The Verge)
  
  What a shame then that none of those companies are actually working on AGI.
  
  They're all putting a lot of effort into LLMs, but going from that to making actual working artificial intelligence is like trying to build houses by practicing caber tossing.  With an enormous amount of effort you might eventually produce something vaguely house shaped that somebody could live in, but it's so obviously stupid that nobody would ever try.

• Microsoft has set 16GB as the minimum memory for AI-enabled Windows PCs.  (WCCFTech)
  
  I'd recommend 32GB as the minimum for any Windows PC, unless you're fortunate enough to still be running Windows 7, in which case you can comfortably get away with half that.
  
  The laptop I'm typing this on has 16GB.  It's using 40GB.  And it's not doing very much.
  
  
  
• Leaked benchmarks of Nvidia's upcoming 4070 Ti Super show it just 10% behind the 4080.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Considering the 4080 was $1199 and the 4070 Ti Super will be $799, that's a good deal.  Well, it would be a good deal at $499; at $799 it's as good a deal as you will find right now.
  
  
  
• YouTube hasn't made the site worse for adblock users just recently - that is, not in the past week.  Recent reports of worsening problems are due to people running multiple ad blockers at once.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Don't do that unless you know exactly what you are doing.  Like running multiple anti-virus programs, it's likely to cause weird problems and slow your computer down.
  
  
  

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, January 20 2024 12:54 AM (BMUHC)

Posted by: Mauser at Saturday, January 20 2024 04:58 PM (nk1Z+)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Sunday, January 21 2024 03:43 AM (r9O5h)

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• Can special lightbulbs end the next pandemic before it starts?  (Vox)
  
  1. It's Vox.
  2. Betteridge's Law.
  3. Uh, maybe?
  
  They're talking about zapping rooms with far-UV light when they're not in use, which basically, uh, works.  Far-UV is not particularly friendly to your skin or eyes, so there certainly safety considerations.  And installing it is not particularly cheap.
  
  But between the disease and the response the US lost about $14 trillion to COVID, so it sounds like it's worth a shot.
  
  Just try to keep it away from idiots.  (MSNBC)
  
  
  
• Or you could go outdoors, where the UV light is free, and you can't sue anyone.
  
  
  

Tech News

• Cable companies have argued to the FTC that customers can't be allowed to quickly and easily cancel their services because then they would.  (Ars Technica)
  
  Well, yes.
  
  
  
• There's a leopard stalking the Infosys corporate campus.  (The Register)
  
  This may make more sense if you know that Infosys is based in India.
  
  
  
• Google has told its employees that they're all fired, just not yet.  (The Verge)
  
  That's sure to boost morale.
  
  
  
• Even if you physically block the camera, your phone can take pictures of you using the ambient light sensor.  (IEEE Spectrum)
  
  If you sit very still.
  
  It has a time delay and a resolution that makes early daguerreotypes look like wonders of modern technology.
  
  
  
• ChatGPT is particularly useful to these three types of workers, says Sam Altman.  (CNBC)  (archive site)
  
  1. Bad programmers.
  2. Lazy teachers.
  3. Doctors who want to pass off their malpractice lawsuits to OpenAI.
  
  Great marketing, Sam.

Posted by: J Greely at Friday, January 19 2024 10:55 AM (oJgNG)

Posted by: normal at Friday, January 19 2024 03:02 PM (bg2DR)

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, January 20 2024 12:52 AM (BMUHC)

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• Apple has unveiled its response to the Epic lawsuit that ended with the company being required to allow developers to use third-party payment providers.  (MacRumors)
  
  Some notable features:
  
  1. Developers are only allowed to use third-party payment providers with the express written permission of Apple.  Requests for permission may be filed by registered mail that must be sent and received on the sixth Sunday of any given month.
  
  2. When a user is redirected from the developer's application to an external website to process a payment, the application is required to warn in 40 point text that the user "will probably be devoured by wolves" upon leaving Apple's walled garden.
  
  3. Apple still insists on a 70% cut of any payment made by any means at any time, from anybody, to anybody.  Bobby didn't forward Apple their cut, and Bobby's store burned down the next day.  While he was in it.  Don't be like Bobby.
  
  I am exaggerating only slightly.

• Nvidia's 4070 Super is in the hands of reviewers and it's not awful.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  It would be a great card at $399.
  
  It costs $599.
  
  That's just the way the graphics card market is right now.
  
  Also, groceries.
  
  
  
• I'm not saying Microsoft's latest version of Outlook is spyware, but...  (Proton)
  
  I mean, it says up front that it's going to share your data with Microsoft and 772 other companies.  Would any self-respecting spy tell you that?
  
  And this time, I am not exaggerating.
  
  
  
• Google search really has gotten worse.  (404 Media)
  
  Perverse incentives.  The longer it takes you to find what you want, the more ads you are forced to scroll past.
  
  
  

Now There's a Voice I Haven't Heard in a While Video of the Day

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, January 18 2024 12:56 AM (BMUHC)

Posted by: J Greely at Thursday, January 18 2024 12:51 PM (oJgNG)

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• Microsoft is offering a $20 monthly subscription that adds an AI copilot to Office apps including Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.  (The Verge)
  
  PowerPoint: Do you want me to just make some shit up?
  You: Yeah, the meeting is 4PM Friday so nobody is going to make it past slide 3 anyway.
  PowerPoint: You got it, boss.
  
  Hang on, that doesn't sound entirely awful.

• There's another critical vulnerability in GitLab.  (The Register)
  
  Three things about GitLab:
  
  1. It's great.
  2. It's free.
  3. Run it on your VPN, far away from the public internet.
  
  
  
• AMD's Zen 5 CPUs are reportedly already in mass production.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Unless they're not.
  
  If they are, that suggests we might see a Q3 launch rather than Q4.  Given manufacturing schedules, AMD should have time to get the chips back, tst them, package them, and ship them out to retailers before September.
  
  
  
• Should I try to manufacture toasters?  (Hacker News)
  
  Hell no.
  
  I can get a toaster for A$7.50 at Kmart.  You can't come within a factor of ten of that.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Wednesday, January 17 2024 04:24 AM (liVFZ)

Posted by: normal at Wednesday, January 17 2024 07:29 AM (bg2DR)

Posted by: Mauser at Wednesday, January 17 2024 02:34 PM (nk1Z+)

Posted by: J Greely at Wednesday, January 17 2024 08:56 PM (oJgNG)

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, January 18 2024 01:01 AM (BMUHC)

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• FAQ to the Future: How we defeated deepfakes.  (MSN / LA Times)  (lolcow division)
  
  Apart from the obvious failure - the article is actually titled "An FAQ from the future" - and the manifold technical absurdities, the glorious idea promoted by the article is a digital Ministry of Truth:

  The newest phones, tablets, cameras, recorders and desktop computers all include software that automatically inserts the FACStamp code into every piece of visual or audio content as it's captured, before any AI modification can be applied. This proves that the image, sound or video was not generated by AI. You can also download the FAC app, which does the same for older equipment. The FACStamp is what technologists call "fragile": The first time an image, video or audio file is falsified by AI, the stamp disappears.

  This of course is totally voluntary - for about five minutes:

  A bipartisan group of senators and House members plans to introduce the Right to Reality Act when the next Congress opens in January 2029. It will mandate the use of FACStamps in multiple sectors, including local government, shopping sites and investment and real estate offerings. Counterfeiting a FACStamp would become a criminal offense. Polling indicates widespread public support for the act, and the FAC Alliance has already begun a branding campaign.

  Scratch a journalist, find a fascist.
  
  Never fails.

• Framework's accountant got phished.  (Hot Hardware)
  
  If you have an open pre-order for a Framework laptop, be wary of emails purporting to be from Framework asking for money.  The data leak was caught in half an hour and if you were on the list you've probably already received an email from Framework telling you to be wary of emails from Framework.
  
  
  
• A ship carrying silverware has sailed.  (DPL Docs)
  
  The D programming language was created in 2001 as a successor to C that did things right, producing simple elegant code like this:
  
  

      result = reduce!((a, b) => (b <= pivot) ? a + b : a)(chain(a1, a2));

  
  
  No, I have no idea what that does either.
  
  Anyway, after spending 21 of those 22 years fighting among themselves (as far as I can tell) the D community has split and created OpenD (pronounced OpenD) as an open version of D.
  
  
  
• Yes, there's not much news today.  How could you tell?
  
  
  
• Penrose allows you to create diagrams just by typing in text.  (Penrose)
  
  The text is a program that tells Penrose what to draw, but still, it's pretty neat.  Oversold, but neat.  And free.
  
  
  
• IO Crest has a six-port version of their four-port 2.5Gb Ethernet card.  (Serve the Home)
  
  Great if you want to build a home datacenter and need multiple network segments with different routing and filtering rules and don't for some reason want to go with second-hand Cisco gear.
  
  
  
• Tech layoffs are a thing of the past, part eleventy: Google's latest round of layoffs are just the beginning.  (The Verge)  (archive site)

  Since 12,000 people were axed a year ago, smaller layoffs have continued to roll through the sprawling conglomerate at a steady clip, creating a feeling of unease. Not all of these prior cuts have been covered publically [sic], such as a roughly 10 percent downsizing of the public policy group in mid November.

  Only 10%?  Would anybody notice if you fired the entire public policy group?
  
  Google lost its way in 2014, and there's no sign that it will ever find it again.

Posted by: normal at Monday, January 15 2024 09:41 PM (bg2DR)

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• Why is my LG washing machine downloading 3.7GB of data a day?  (Twitter)
  
  This is rather like giving your eight year old your credit card details and wondering why your house is full of Lego.  Why did you do that if you didn't want that result?
  
  And also like it in that you can't remove the WiFi settings from your LG washing machine once it's been set.
  
  So don't do that.
  
  (I have an LG washing machine.  It has WiFi.  Its total downloads to date are zero.)

• Bought a couple of Beelink mini-PCs on sale - the 5560U model.  I have memory and SSDs sitting around that I can use in them, and the entry level model with 8GB RAM and a 500GB SSD was pretty cheap.  Their cheapest 5560U model is $289 on Amazon US right now, but the price I paid was closer to $200.
  
  Plan is to run Linux on them so I don't have to mess around with Windows 11's problems with virtualisation anymore.
  
  
  
• Those new desktop APUs from AMD - what they call their CPUs with advanced integrated graphics - come with a catch.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Two catches.  Three catches.
  
  First, there's no PCIe 5, since they're laptop chips and PCIe 5 eats power.  PCIe 5 isn't all that much use though; graphics cards don't use it at all, and the SSDs that do are expensive and run hot.
  
  Second, there are fewer PCIe 4 lanes, so if you get the 8600G or 8700G you can only have 8 lanes to your graphics card.  Still, that's enough for most tasks, and if you end up wanting more performance you can upgrade to something like a 7900 while keeping your motherboard, memory, and so on.
  
  Third, if you get the low-end 8300G or 8500G chips, you only get 4 lanes to your graphics card, and 2 to your SSD.  That's not good.  Avoid those.
  
  The 8500G looks to have essentially the same specs as the 8600G at $50 less, but longer term you might regret it.
  
  
  
• I also bought a new breadmaker.  I threw out the old one when I moved, since it had been sitting in the cupboard unused for about ten years after I was diagnosed with celiac disease.
  
  And there are plenty of gluten-free bread mixes available now, right?
  
  ...
  
  Two.  There are two.  At least, available locally.
  
  I can get gluten-free flour for a quarter the price I pay for gluten-free bread, though, and yeast is yeast.  I used to love experimenting with different types of bread, and I'd like to do that again.
  
  
  
• The best of CES.  (The Verge)
  
  Any other year these wouldn't even have rated a nomination, much less an award.  They'd be in the "also appearing" wrap-up that nobody bothered to read.
  
  
  
• The creator economy is ready for a workers' movement.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  We'll go on strike!
  
  That's right!  You'll have a national TikTok and Instagram influencer strike on your hands!
  
  And whom will that inconvenience?
  
  
  
• The Funimation dub for Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid is infamously awful - or should I say AWFL - not so much for the voice acting as for the translation, which inserts the usual incoherent grab bag of left-wing complaints where they don't belong.  (Not that they belong anywhere.)
  
  So a fan redubbed it with a proper translation using AI.  (Niche Gamer)
  
  Looks like an entire useless communist-infested industry is dead.

Posted by: J Greely at Sunday, January 14 2024 08:22 PM (oJgNG)

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, January 15 2024 02:43 AM (BMUHC)

Posted by: Zendo Deb at Tuesday, January 16 2024 04:58 PM (65Nl0)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, January 16 2024 05:53 PM (PiXy!)

Posted by: normal at Wednesday, January 17 2024 02:13 AM (LADmw)

Posted by: cxt217 at Wednesday, January 17 2024 11:16 AM (ZLF73)

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• Well, that was probably the lamest CES ever.
  
  The one bright spot was - oddly - Nvidia's "Super" series of video cards.
  
  The 4070 Super is 20% faster than the 4070 at the same price.  The 4080 Super is not even 5% faster than the 4080, but is $200 cheaper.
  
  And the 4070 Ti Super is 90% of a 4080, but $400 cheaper.  True that it's no longer competing against the 4080, but the 4080 Super, so it's only $200 cheaper, but it's still a top-of-the-line gaming card (excluding the 4090 as a semi-professional card) at an only mostly insane price.
  
  
  
• Still trying to get a Calliope Mori limited edition case from Hyte, and the Amelia Watson case is supposed to launch this month, and they look to be launching three Nijisanji-branded cases as well.
  
  I'd particularly like to get the Calli and Ame cases because there are matching custom keyboards available, and there's no Pomu in the Nijisanji lineup so I'm less worried about those.  But Hyte seems determined to save me money.
  
  
  

Tech News

• Space X has revealed why the second Starship test flight blew up: Too much fuel.  (WCCFTech)
  
  They loaded extra fuel to simulate the mass of a payload, and were in the process of venting liquid oxygen when the fire and resulting explosion happened.
  
  So the take-away here is don't do that.
  
  
  
• The FiiO CP13 is a portable cassette player that charges over USB-C.  (Liliputing)
  
  It costs $165, which is not cheap but is also not remotely in the crazy audiophile price range, making it doubly odd.
  
  This is one of the standout products of CES.  That's how lame it was.
  
  
  
• Do 480Hz monitors actually make any perceptible difference at all?  The answer may surprise you.  It's yes.  The answer is yes.  (The Verge)
  
  The difference is small, but it is perceptible to normal humans.   I'd rather see reasonably-priced 5K monitors - again, the difference is small but perceptible - but at least they aren't chasing stuff that makes no difference at all.
  
  
  
• Just thinking about those Neuro-sama videos I posted the other day.
  
  Sure, she's kind of dumb - "The architecture and landscape suggest Scandinavia, probably Sweden" when looking at a palm tree - but let's consider what she can do, albeit not consistently:
  
  - Respond to verbal instructions
  - Talk
  - Read
  - Remember things
  - Identify foreign languages including non-Latin alphabets
  - Analyse images
  - Use Google
  
  She correctly identified Portugal from a road sign when I was guessing Spain, and northern Italy the same way when I was guessing Switzerland.
  
  If she were a five-year-old she'd be a prodigy, though clearly still a five-year-old.
  
  What Vedal is doing here is more interesting than the combined efforts of OpenAI and Amazon and Google.