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I'm Amelia, and you're late.
Thursday, June 20
Legs Of Justice Edition
Top Story
- A Meta (which is to say, Facebook) engineer was told to resign after calling out sexist practices in hiring and evaluating of female employees. (Ars Technica)
Maybe it's true. Maybe it's not. But if HR was on the ball they would have just asked him "what is a woman?" and then fired him no matter what his answer was.
Tech News
- DRAM and flash prices are... Not soaring as predicted. (Tom's Hardware)
The best of the bargains from last year have dried up, but prices are pretty steady now.
- Speaking of which, you can get a 1.5TB Optane 905P for $299. (Serve the Home)
Allegedly; the page shows $349 for me.
If you need these drives - they have a 10 microsecond access time, compared with 50 microseconds for a good flash SSD - you might want to stock up because nobody is making them anymore.
- The EU wants to scan all your messages - including the ones with end-to-end encryption. (The Verge)
The Telescreen is $299. The Telescreen with bundled ads is $199.
Both are behind the painting.
- Softbank plans to use AI to automatically mute calls from angry customers. (Ars Technica)
There is no way this could possibly go wrong.
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Wednesday, June 19
Into The Out Of Edition
Top Story
- The new Arm-based Copilot+ laptops are here - minus the threatened spyware - so time to test actual retail units. (Tom's Hardware)
It's a mixed bag. If you want to transcode video using handbrake, the hardware on the Qualcomm CPU absolutely demolishes the latest Intel chips, performing a nine minute task in under three.
- If you want to play games, though, you pays your money and you takes your chances. (Windows Central)
Some games work quite well - Qualcomm's integrated graphics are strong on paper - while others won't even let you download them.
Battery life, expected to be the standout feature, is good at 14 hours, but not amazing.
Tech News
- An AI product without so much AI in it: Gigabytes 2TB AI TOP 100E SSD has an endurance rating of 219PB. (Tom's Hardware)
I don't know what changes they've made to achieve that, but that is a lot. A typical drive in this category has an endurance rating around 1PB. With the Gigabyte drive you can use the entire disk 100,000 times before you have to start worrying about it wearing out.
Pricing not yet available, but if it's horribly expensive you'll know why.
- Meta (that is, Facebook) has announced a method to watermark AI-generated speech. (MIT Technology Review)
The code - available on GitHub - adds markers to an audio file that are inaudible to humans but easily detected by the same program.
Which of course means you can simply run the program to delete the markers, but who would do that?
- If you were hoping for an Arm model of the Framework laptop, sorry, but here's a RISC-V motherboard for it. (Liliputing)
With four 1.5GHz CPU cores it's not going to set any records though. Also, unlike regular Framework laptops, you can't expand the memory or the storage.
It's really just for people developing software for RISC-V embedded systems. Not a huge market but I'm sure they'll welcome this.
- I'd sooner swallow a wasp: An AI app called Butterflies promises to destroy social media forever. (The Verge)
When you sign up, you create an AI personality called a Butterfly that can post text and pictures on your behalf, and interact with other Butterflies on the platform, so that you can log out and go for a walk while your account that has all your personal information attached discusses homeschooling with an FBIfly.
Not At All Tech News
Not that I'm complaining, mind you.
The backstory is that they're a team of investigators dispatched to track down HoloEN Gen 3, whose backstory is that they're escaped supercriminals.
That will last for about 0.3 milliseconds before it devolves into chaos.
Uh, yeah, that's one of our terrifying supercriminals there.
Also, if you're looking for Reiny or Shizukou, two British indie vtubers who retired earlier this year, you might want to check Globie.
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Tuesday, June 18
Cartesian't Edition
Top Story
- The DOJ has filed suit against Adobe for hiding termination fees and making it difficult to cancel subscriptions. (Tech Crunch)
Well, sure, you do that. And when you're done, I've got a little list...
Tech News
- The Surgeon General wants to put tobacco warning labels on social media. (NBC)
Let's just pretend you never said that.
- Realtek has shown of its new 5Gb Ethernet switch chips. (AnandTech)
I mentioned just the other day that 5Gb Ethernet exists on PC motherboards, but 5Gb Ethernet switches don't exist at all.
The only option available is to find a 10Gb switch that supports 5Gb as well - not all of them do.
These new switches should be cheaper and use significantly less power than 10Gb, and 5Gb is still a pretty decent speed.
- Understanding SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, a simple guide, Volume 1 of 37. (GitHub)
Wouldn't it be cheaper just to target spammers with cluster bombs?
- Hackers are trying to extort money from Snowflake customers. (Bloomberg)
At least ten companies have received extortion demands. As many 165 companies have been affected by the breach, which Snowflake is still blaming on security practices of its users - none of whom have reported recent breaches unrelated to Snowflake.
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Monday, June 17
Street VGA Edition
Top Story
- Emulating a Macintosh on a Raspberry Pi... Pico. (axio.ms)
A rather neat little project.
The original Mac had 128k of RAM, and the Pi Pico has 256k of main memory, so in theory this should be possible. All you need to do is squeeze a Motorola 68000 emulator and the Mac ROMs and hardware emulation into that remaining 128k.
Oh, and that hardware emulation includes the video, and the Pi Pico has no video hardware.
No problem, not with the help of some street cables and a bit of inspired cheating.
Tech News
- Asus has promised to stop doing what it promised to stop doing a year ago and didn't. (Gamers Nexus)
A year ago the news sites gave them the benefit of doubt. This time, not so much.
- The future is bright for electric vehicles, say analysts as they switch their personal investments into oil and gas. (Yahoo)
A global survey conducted by consulting firm McKinsey, also released Wednesday, included this shocker: 29% of EV owners told McKinsey they plan to replace the EV they bought with a gasoline or diesel car, a figure that jumps to 38% for U.S. EV owners.
This is why California is planning to outright ban all non-E Vs. Can't have the peasants choosing what works for them.
- Cases of flesh-eating bacteria are skyrocketing in Japan. (MSN)
More cases have been reported so far this year than in all of 2023, and the mortality rate is 30%.
It's just streptococcus, but streptococcus caused a whole host of nasty diseases before readily-available antiseptics and antibiotics, many of them fatal.
- Minisforum has a couple of new midi-PCs. (Liliputing)
These are eight inches square and two inches tall - much bigger than NUCs which are around four inches square, but not big. The Mac Mini is about this size.
The AMD model takes a low-power desktop CPU, up to 96GB of RAM, and four M.2 SSDs, and has two 2.5Gb Ethernet ports, USB 4, OCuLink, HDMI, DisplayPort, and the usual swarm of USB 3 ports.
The Intel model includes a choice of 12th and 13th generation laptop chips, and supports 64GB of RAM, two M.2 slots, a half-height PCIe slot, two USB 4 ports, two 10Gb SFP+ Ethernet ports, two 2.5Gb Ethernet ports, plus HDMI and the usual USB 3 and USB 2 ports.
If you want something small but with more flexibility than a NUC, these might suit.
- Apple has joined the race to find an AI icon. (Tech Crunch)
And they mean that in the technical sense, a little graphical symbol that says "You are stupid and racist, now give me your credit card."
I suggest a mugger wearing an N95 mask.
- How can we convert OpenAI's pricing page into a news article? (Tech Crunch)
Oh how we will laugh when you are all replaced by the very systems you pretend to report on.
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Sunday, June 16
Voyaging Edition
Top Story
- Voyager 1 is communicating again. (The Register)
The probe launched in 1977 and completed its primary mission - flybys of Jupiter and Saturn - in 1980, and since then it has been travelling deeper into space just chilling (literally) and enjoying the view.
Only four of the original eleven instruments on board are still operational, but that's enough for it to return interesting data for a little longer.
Both Voyager probes are powered by short-lived radioisotope generators, and within the next decade the power output will have been reduced to a point where none of the instruments will work. Shortly after that they will pass beyond the range of the Deep Space Network and we will lose contact until 2270.
Tech News
- Tuxedo Computers has shown off a prototype of its new laptop based on the Qualcomm X Elite chip that powers Microsoft's new Copilot Plus laptops. (Beta News)
Tuxedo's version comes without Copilot Plus, though, because it runs Linux by default rather than Windows.
It includes 32GB of RAM, a 2560x1600 14" display covering 100% sRGB colour, USB4, and one M.2 slot.
And also the Four Essential Keys, which I didn't see on any of the Copilot Plus laptops being launched.
I'm not sure of the exact state of Linux on this chip, but it is officially supported by Qualcomm so this might be a good option if you don't absolutely require Windows.
- The integrated graphics on AMD's latest laptop chips are about as fast as an RTX 2050. (WCCFTech)
I have little idea how fast an RTX 2050 is, so I looked it up.
It's only a little slower than the RX 580 I was running up until a couple of years ago, and about eight times faster than the Radeon 4850 I used to play Dragon Age and Mass Effect back when computer games were still good.
For integrated graphics that's pretty impressive.
This is from AMD's Strix Point chips. They have another model called Strix Point Halo on the way, with twice the memory bandwidth and two and a half times the graphics hardware, which should put it roughly in line with a current-generation RTX 4060.
- Western Digital has announced its 2 terabit flash memory chips, the world's first chips at that capacity. (WCCFTech)
These stack the memory cells 218 layers deep. We take this for granted now, but not so long ago flash memory was facing disaster: Manufacturers couldn't make memory cells any smaller without making them too unreliable for use.
The solution was to build higher rather than smaller, and flash memory cells now are actually larger (and hence more reliable) than they were at that turning point.
- Asus has announced its new line of compact Nvidia GPUs for small form factor PCs. (Tom's Hardware)
Someone's been editing the dictionary again because these are full-height full-length cards that take up two and a half slots. They are small compared to, say, NASA's Vertical Assembly Building, but many things are.
- The iPad should fold in half. (The Verge)
It does. You just need to make the effort.
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Saturday, June 15
Never Say Anything Edition
Top Story
- In its ongoing drive to earn public trust OpenAI has appointed the former director of the NSA to its board. (CNBC) (archive site)
Yep, that's gonna work.
- In a recent AI study, 270 humans failed the Meta-Turing test. (Live Science)
The reason: They judged ChatGPT to be human.
Tech News
- Newton's thunder bird finally has a face. (Natural History Museum)
The Australian bird - seven feet tall and weighing over five hundred pounds - was first discovered as partial fossil remains in 1896, with a complete skull found in 1913. But that skull was so distorted that it was hard to identify precisely what kind of bird it was.
Now much better-preserved examples have been found.
It's a goose.
- Meta has scrubbed plans to train AI on data from European users. (Tech Crunch)
In response to questions, Meta shrugged and simply said "Europe".
- A single modern AI GPU can use 3.7MWh of power per year. (Tom's Hardware)
420W. That's about 420W continuously.
So... Yes. I bet it can.
- ASRock's new AMD Siena server motherboard supports 32 SATA drives. (Serve the Home)
And only comes with 1Gb Ethernet. They're just doing this to annoy me, aren't they?
- India's Twitter alternative Koo, billed as a Twitter alternative for India, is kind of dead. (Rest of World)
Has that trick ever worked? I mean, without spending trillions of dollars on a nightmare surveillance state so that you can ban the original?
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Friday, June 14
Antiantivirus Edition
Top Story
- Microsoft will be launching its new range of Copilot Plus laptops minus a key feature: Spyware. (The Verge)
Yes, Recall, widely considered to be one of the classic blunders right alongside never get involved in a land war in Asia and never go up against a Sicilian when death is on the line is miraculously delayed.
- The first retail benchmarks of the new Copilot Plus laptops - based on Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite chip - are disappointing. (Tom's Hardware)
This is probably a nothingburger though, because the scores are exactly what you would expect if the CPU was stuck at the 2.5GHz base clock and not boosting up to 4GHz.
Tech News
- Everything you ever wanted to know about the Snapdragon X Elite microarchitecture. (AnandTech)
8-wide decode feeding into 6 ALU, 4 FPU, and 4 load-store pipelines.
By comparison AMD's Zen 4 is a 4-wide decode.
- Designing a website without 404s. (Pillser)
The software figures out what the closest live URL is to what you are requesting, and redirects you.
Which is a great idea right up until it isn't. An incorrect URL could change content completely at any moment when an unrelated page with a slightly closer URL is created.
And never mind what happens when you get scraped by a poorly-behaved web spider that finds that every nonsensical random URL is giving it useful data...
- If you want better graphics in your next NUC and don't care how ugly it is - seriously, what the hell - The Asus ROG NUC might be just the thing. (Serve the Home)
It's a standard laptop CPU but adds a laptop RTX 4070.
- French courts have ordered Google, Cloudflare, and Cisco to poison their wells. (TorrentFreak)
Or more precisely, the public DNS entries for certain scofflaw websites.
VPNs, baby, I'm telling you.
- The generative AI version of Alexa isn't ready for release. (The Verge)
The problem? People expect it to work, and generative AI eats flaming hot Cheetos out of a sewer dumpster out of a sewer dumpster out of a sewer dumpster.
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Thursday, June 13
Disemdelawarisationism Edition
Top Story
- Has Elon Musk finally lost Tesla shareholders? (New York Magazine)
In the balance: Shareholder votes on whether to restore Musk's $50 billion compensation package, and to tell the state of Delaware to go fuck itself and reincorporate in Texas.
- No. (Yahoo News)
Both votes at the Tesla AGM have reportedly passed by substantial margins.
Ars Technica commentariat hardest hit.
Tech News
- Stable Diffusion 3 is here and it is comically bad. (Ars Technica)
Did you miss those nine-digited hand-feet that you got with the earliest iterations of AI image generators?
Well, they're back, now in glorious 4K photorealism.
Some commenters suspect that in their efforts to stamp out porn, Stable AI stamped out human anatomy entirely. It's plausible because almost everything else in the sample images is convincing.
- Smaller than big, bigger than small: ASRock's Deskmate X600 can fit a desktop Rzyen CPU, four memory modules, and two SSDs. (Liliputing)
Four DIMM slots is rare in small form factor systems - this one is a little larger than mini-ITX - so that is welcome, though less necessary now that you can get 48GB modules.
- Demented communists are suing SpaceX for creating a workplace hostile to demented communists. (The Verge)
These people display warning signs like a broken arrow frog. Never, ever hire them.
- Intel is trucking a 916,000 pound refrigeration unit across Ohio at an average speed of a little under one mile per hour. (Tom's Hardware)
If you live nearby you might want to schedule a day off while traffic clears.
- Why Swift is not. (Daniel Chase Hooper)
Broken type inferencing:swiftc spends 42 seconds on these 12 lines on an M1 Pro2, only to spit out the notorious error: the compiler is unable to type-check this expression in reasonable time; try breaking up the expression into distinct sub-expressions. In the same amount of time, clang can perform a clean build of my 59,000 line C project 38 times.
They tried to get clever, and failed miserably, ending up with a compiler that can be a thousand times slower in 2024 than Turbo Pascal was in 1984.
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Wednesday, June 12
Retromingent Jaguars Edition
Top Story
- Twitter is about to hide likes. (The Verge)
Which is to say, the like button will still be there, and the like count will still be there, and you'll be able to see which posts you liked and who liked your posts.
But you won't be able to see who liked someone else's posts. Just the count.
And the psychopathy rampant in The Verge's comment section shows that Elon Musk is entirely correct in pushing for this change.
Tech News
- MSI has two Epyc 4004 motherboards. (Serve the Home)
These are fairly boring low-end Ryzen 7000 motherboards, except that they have remote management and depending on the model either dual 10GbaseT or dual 25Gb SFP28 Ethernet ports.
- Brazil's government is turning to OpenAI to combat skyrocketing court costs. (Reuters)
What could possibly go wrong?
- News site BNN Breaking turns out to be utterly fraudulent, and, worse, not paying journalists to generate its fake news. (The New York Times) (archive site)
You can understand how the Times would be upset. Getting upstaged is one thing. Getting upstaged by fifty lines of BASIC is another.
- Silicon Valley salaries are shrinking as the recession deepens. (Mercury News) (archive site)
How about that.
- Zen 5 is slightly slower than the Zen 4 X3D chips for gaming. (Notebook Check)
Okay.
- Flow claims its chip can make any CPU twice as fast, and in some cases, one hundred times as fast. (Tech Crunch)
As far as I can tell, this is just a binary-incompatible parallel CPU. It won't work at all without updated software, and it won't do anything at all for sequential tasks.
It may well be useful, but it's certainly not novel.
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Tuesday, June 11
Escape From New Hampshire Edition
Top Story
- Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference is on now. Here are the biggest announcements. (The Verge)
* AI bullshit
* A password app
* Bringing the UI up to parity with Android 4 from 2011
Tech News
- Perl 5.40.0 is out. (Perldoc)
Yay.
- The New York Times' source code was stolen using an exposed GitHub token. (Bleeping Computer)
Yay.
- The word "bot" is increasingly used as an insult by deranged leftists on social media. (New Scientist) (archive site)
I've never been sure whether it's just being adopted as a slur or if the people using it are so stupid that they think a Perl script just argued them into the ground.
- Department of Rent Seeking: ISPs are asking the FCC to tax Big Tech - no, the other Big Tech, not them - and give the money to ISPs to fund their private islands in the Caribbean. (Ars Technica)
This is so blatant you almost have to admire the artistry.
Anime
I don't know why, but we can't.
Update: Also the commenters on Crunchy love to refer to this as "the grandfather of isekai" because the novel series started in.... 2012. Get off my lawn.
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