• Microsoft: CrowdStrike mishap impacted less than 1 percent of Windows PCs.  (Thurrott)
  
  CrowdStrike's faulty update crashed 8.5 million Windows devices, says Microsoft.  (The Verge)
  
  It's the same number; there's something like 1.5 billion Windows PCs in use worldwide.
  
  The problem is that the computers running CrowdStrike are the ones used in critical roles by large organisations.  The 99% that went right on working weren't embedded in ATMs or airport terminals or healthcare providers.
  
  
  
• So how do we avoid a repeat of this?
  
  Dunno.

• A look at Western Digital's latest SN5000 4TB SSD.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  It's another DRAMless QLC model, and...  It doesn't suck.  It's pretty good actually.
  
  MSRP prices it higher than better drives so only buy it if the price is right.
  
  
  
• Intel says its 13th and 14th generation laptop chips are crashing but not for the same reason as its 13th and 14th generation desktop chips.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Oh.  Well, that's alright then.
  
  
  
• Intel has also announced a range of "E" series chips that have no "E" cores.  (WCCFTech)
  
  That makes sense.
  
  
  
• Large models of what?  (Arxiv.org)
  
  LLMs are bullshit:

  Work within the enactive approach to cognitive science makes clear that, rather than a distinct and complete thing, language is a means or way of acting. Languaging is not the kind of thing that can admit of a complete or comprehensive modelling. From an enactive perspective we identify three key characteristics of enacted language; embodiment, participation, and precariousness, that are absent in LLMs, and likely incompatible in principle with current architectures. We argue that these absences imply that LLMs are not now and cannot in their present form be linguistic agents the way humans are. We illustrate the point in particular through the phenomenon of 'algospeak', a recently described pattern of high stakes human language activity in heavily controlled online environments. On the basis of these points, we conclude that sensational and misleading claims about LLM agency and capabilities emerge from a deep misconception of both what human language is and what LLMs are.

  Verbing weirds language.
  
  
  
• I didn't know I was dead until I saw it on Google.  (The Guardian)
  
  Google is worth $2 trillion and has 90% of the global search market.  And ever since it started trying to answer questions itself rather than point you to the answers elsewhere, it has been going downhill fast.
  
  
  
• The judge in the SEC's lawsuit against SolarWinds regarding their 2020 security debacle has granted the company's motion to dismiss on most points.  (MSN)
  
  It was another massive power grab by a federal agency.  The SEC claimed authority to regulate all aspects of how companies manage computer and network security and the judge smacked them across the nose with a newspaper.
  
  The one claim not dismissed is that executives at the company lied about the adequacy of its security controls in public statement, which the SEC claims amounts to securities fraud, something the SEC does have the authority to police, since that's what the S stands for.
  
  
  
• Just a reminder that all the race-baiting and lies you see in the mainstream media infest the tech press as well: Some black startup founders feel betrayed by Ben Horowitz's support for Trump.  (Tech Crunch)

  "His reputation will definitely take a hit among well-thinking Black people because it shows that he doesn’t actually understand our lived experiences," David Mullings, founder of Blue Mahoe Holdings, told TechCrunch.

  Lived experiences?  David Mullings is a Jamaican multi-millionaire.

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, July 22 2024 12:22 AM (MItL9)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, July 22 2024 10:21 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Frank at Monday, July 22 2024 09:42 PM (5rlmi)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

• What is CrowdStrike, and what happened?  (The Verge)
  
  We were expecting Skynet, and all we got is this lousy antivirus update.
  
  
  
• Blue Screen of Death photos from around the world.  (The Verge)
  
  Thank you Microsoft and CrowdStrike for bringing us all together in shared loathing.
  
  
  

Tech News

• How to fix a computer affected by the CrowdStrike problem.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  The problem is you need direct access to each affected computer, which is a slight problem when there are thousands of them spread through a major airport, or worse, in ATMs across an entire country.
  
  
  
• CrowdStrike's market cap has fallen by $12.5 billion.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  "Oops", said CEO George Kurtz.
  
  
  
• Russia escaped the CrowdStrike debacle unscathed, because it is not allowed to run CrowdStrike.  (Yahoo)
  
  Small mercies.
  
  
  
• Tenstorrent's new Wormhole AI cards can deliver 466 FP8 teraflops at 300W.  (AnandTech)
  
  That's a little over a quarter the performance of Nvidia's H100, but the H100 costs $30,000 and the Wormhole costs $1400.
  
  The big difference is that the Wormhole is built on an older 12nm process, where the H100 is built on a recent 4nm process.  That makes the Wormhole more power hungry but also much cheaper to produce.
  
  
  
• If this is the real pricing for AMD's Ryzen 9000 lineup, it's good.  (WCCFTech)
  
  $499 for the 9950X would make it a very attractive product, and an easy upsell over the $399 9900X.
  
  But none of this is confirmed yet.  And it would price the 9950X below the launch MSRP of the 7900X, which might be too good to be true.
  
  
  

1 Avoiding a repeat?  Based on past IT job experience, it will only happen when management takes quality and testing as required steps.  Said testing needing more than reading the specs and code while on the way to the quality inspection meeting.  Gotta keep meeting those keystroke requirements...  Should I mention meetings that consume time and deliver nothing to coders themselves, but check the boxes for management.  How about hiring practices

Posted by: Frank at Sunday, July 21 2024 06:34 PM (5rlmi)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

• Everything is down. (ABC) (no, the other one)
  
  Supermarkets, airports, petrol stations, universities, law firms, Bunnings, blood donation services, banks, government departments, Microsoft, police computer systems, NSW emergency services, 7-11 and the ABC's own video editing department are offline across Australia because security company Crowdstrike went splat.
  
  Reportedly any computer with Crowdstrike installed is now throwing the Blue Screen of Death after a bad update and the only solution is to boot into safe mode and remove the driver.
  
  Banks, airlines, and emergency services in the US are also affected.  (Twitter)
  
  And Europe.
  
  Fortunately hamsters are naturally immune.
  
  And so apparently is Twitter.

• AMD's latest 12-core laptop chip comes in just slightly behind Apples 16-core M3 Max on multi-threaded workloads.   (Tom's Hardware)
  
  And ahead on single-threaded tasks.
  
  No word on respective power consumption but the M3 Max is not a lightweight in that regard.
  
  It's up to 46% faster than Intel's Core i9 185H as well.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Can't buy it yet, but laptops are expected to be in stores before the end of the month.
  
  
  
• Type in Morse code by repeatedly slamming your laptop shut.  (GitHub)
  
  Take that, Bob from the NSA.
  
  
  
• Don't think I mentioned this one: Email addresses for 15 million Trello users have been leaked.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  We used this at work for a brief time, some years ago.
  
  It sucks.
  
  
  
• Google has ruined Fitbit.  (Ars Technica)
  
  Google has ruined Google, so that's no surprise.
  
  
  
• The DOJ's assault on Apple will harm consumers, says App...  Rand Paul.  (Reason)
  
  I respectfully disagree.  Or more precisely, respectfully don't give a damn.
  
  
  
• The USPS shared customer postal addresses with Facebook, LinkedIn, and Snapchat.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these asshats from violating your privacy.
  
  
  
• RealPage says it hasn't done anything wrong in building its illegal rental price-fixing scheme.  (Ars Technica)
  
  "Nobody is above the law, except us", explained a spokesman.
  
  
  
• Meta won't release it's new multimodal Llama AI in Europe, because fuck Europe.  (The Verge)
  
  The words they actually used were "the unpredictable nature of the European regulatory environment" but that translates to "fuck Europe".
  
  
  
• Russia has slammed Google's censorship while at the same time demanding Google remove 5.6 million search results just for mentioning VPNs.  (TorrentFreak)
  
  It's a free country.  Well, it's not, but...  I guess there really isn't a but.
  
  
  

Posted by: J Greely at Friday, July 19 2024 09:06 PM (oJgNG)

Posted by: normal at Friday, July 19 2024 10:48 PM (LADmw)

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, July 20 2024 12:22 AM (MItL9)

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, July 20 2024 12:22 AM (MItL9)

Posted by: Frank at Saturday, July 20 2024 01:39 AM (5rlmi)

Posted by: David Eastman at Saturday, July 20 2024 02:27 AM (rmrII)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Saturday, July 20 2024 04:43 PM (PiXy!)

Posted by: normal at Sunday, July 21 2024 07:29 PM (bg2DR)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

• The biggest data breaches of 2024.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  So far this year personal details have been stolen for a billion people.
  
  The internet was a mistake.
  
  
  
• After its multiple recent massive data leaks, senator are asking why AT&T is storing sensitive information like customer call logs in an "AI Data Cloud".  (Ars Technica)
  
  Specifically, Snowflake.  And it's a good question.
  
  I worked in telco billing systems for a while.  That data did not go anywhere outside of our in-house datacenter, except as encrypted tapes in a locked box to a secure backup location.
  
  

• A tiny flaw in Cisco's Smart Software Manager allows anyone to alter any user's password.  (Ars Technica)
  
  And by anyone I mean anyone - you don't need to be logged in.
  
  And by any user I mean any user - without logging in you can change the admin password, and then log in.
  
  I don't think the rate of data breaches is going to slow down any time soon.
  
  
  
• More 9950X benchmarks at various power levels.  (WCCFTech)
  
  We already know there's no point running it at 320W, since it offers performance barely better than the default boost power of 230W.
  
  This chart shows that you also don't want to run it at 40W.  Below 60W the performance craters.  You can probably improve on that by adjusting the clock details, but with the automated settings the sixteen core 9950X runs like a six core 5600X.
  
  
  
• Checking out the Crucial P310 - a 2TB M.2 2230 SSD.  (Serve the Home)
  
  These drives are the size of a postage stamp, and fit in portable devices like the Steam Deck and ultra-slim laptops like Microsoft's Surface line.
  
  This one is QLC and DRAMless, a combination I would generally recommend avoiding, but on these benchmarks it holds up very well.  Read speeds up to 7GB per second, and write speeds up to 6GB.
  
  Under sustained heavy write loads it will slow down, but in all other cases it actually looks good.
  
  
  
• You can now run Windows NT on a PowerMac.  (The Register)
  
  I have a couple of PowerMacs in the garage.  I'm not really inclined to try this out though.
  
  
  
• Looking to build a mini-ITX storage server?  This motherboard from (random AliExpress vendors) might be what you need.  (Liliputing)
  
  For $130 it has a four-coure Intel N100, two M.2 slots, six SATA ports, 10Gb Ethernet, dual 2.5Gb Ethernet, HDMI and DisplayPort, and the usual complement of USB ports.
  
  And one memory slot.
  
  There may be an eight-core N305 model on the way if you need a little more power.

Posted by: normal at Thursday, July 18 2024 06:42 PM (bg2DR)

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, July 19 2024 03:29 AM (MItL9)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, July 19 2024 04:55 PM (PiXy!)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

• Microsoft's former DEI leader has blasted the company in an internal email after the entire team was laid off, sort of.  (IGN)
  
  Yes, a Microsoft DEI team leader did indeed blast the company in an internal email after their entire team was laid off.  That is true.
  
  But don't celebrate just yet.  Microsoft has many DEI teams.
  
  The email though is exactly what you would expect from these parasites:

  Unofficially in my opinion, not specific to Microsoft alone, but Project 2025 looms and true systems change work associated with DEI programs everywhere are no longer business critical or smart as they were in 2020. Hence the purposeful and strategic 3-5 year shelf life of many company's inclusion commitments post the murder of George Floyd are being reevaluated.

  Fire them all.
  
  
  

Tech News

• Marc Andreesen and Ben Horowitz, co-founders of Bay Area venture capitalist firm Andreesen Horowitz, which I am assured is purely a coincidence, have made an announcement with respect to the coming election.  (Tech Crunch)

  "I wish we didn’t have to pick a side," said Horowitz, who also acknowledged that his political choice would upset many of his friends and even his mother. "We literally [believe] the future of our business, the future of technology, and the future of America is at stake."

  The comments are about what you'd expect.  There's less shrieking that you'd find at The Verge, because Tech Crunch focuses on the money side of tech where The Verge focuses on the intersection of tech and politics from an explicitly leftist viewpoint.
  
  
  
• Western Digital has announced an 8TB model of its high-end SN850X SSD.  (AnandTech)
  
  It's more than three times the price of the 4TB model.
  
  
  
• Cloudflare reports almost 7% of internet traffic is malicious.  (ZDNet)
  
  And 92% is garbage.
  
  
  
• Google has resolved the dual crisis of SEO spam and AI spam by, uh, not indexing your site.  (Vicent Schmalbach)
  
  Looking for something on the internet?  Try, well, AltaVista is dead, but MetaCrawler is still around. 
  
  And it seems to be active too; a search on "Pixy Misa" found a page of hits for the anime character, and then yesterday's tech thread from this very blog.  No visual clutter, no spam that I saw, no AI crap, and commendably fast.
  
  
  
• MySQL 9.0 is here, apparently.  (The Register)
  
  It hasn't made much of a splash despite being what Oracle calls an "Innovation Release".  Partly because it doesn't innovate very much, and partly because what little innovation there is, is found only in the paid version.
  
  Go with MariaDB instead if you can.
  
  Or PostgreSQL if you have the time and inclination.
  
  
  
• Personal data for 2.2 million customers has been stolen from Rite Aid.  (The Register)
  
  This only affects purchases from June 2017 to July 2018, so it sounds like a backup copy of a database was left lying around somewhere not properly secured, and then forgotten until this incident.
  
  
  
• Elon Musk is moving the headquarters of Twitter and SpaceX from California to Texas.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  He specifically cited Gavin Newsom as the reason.
  
  
  

Posted by: normal at Wednesday, July 17 2024 07:56 PM (bg2DR)

Posted by: cxt217 at Thursday, July 18 2024 12:20 PM (ZLF73)

Posted by: Mauser at Thursday, July 18 2024 01:59 PM (nk1Z+)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

• The Sixth Circuit has issued an administrative stay on the FCC's latest Net Neutrality nonsense pending a decision on a permanent stay.  (The Verge)
  
  As I've been saying for at least a decade, the FCC doesn't have and cannot be permitted the authority to enact net neutrality without new legislation.
  
  Fortunately the recent Chevron decision cut the FCC's legs out from under it in this regard, if it didn't amputate them entirely.  Even The Verge admits that the FCC is likely to lose this one.
  
  As usual, the comments over there are full of foaming illiterates, but there are only a few this time.
  
  
  

Tech News

• The FBI has gained access to the would-be assassin's cell phone.  (The Verge)
  
  Unlikely that this will change anything, of course.
  
  Best comment: Reddit is leaking.
  
  
  
• Microsoft's CTO denies the obvious, that AI is facing exponential scaling costs.  (Ars Technica)
  
  He denies this in the face of exponential expenses in AI training.  He's lying, badly.
  
  Best comment: Always listen to the Chief Tulip Officer's advice about investing in tulips.
  
  
  
• A look at AMD's Zen 5 microarchitecture.  (AnandTech)
  
  Zen 1 through Zen 4 had the same basic design, able to issue and retire four instructions per cycle.  Zen 4 also introduced a 256-bit half-width version of Intel's AVX-512 vector processing.  Intel's own consumer CPUs lack AVX-512 in any form.
  
  With Zen 5 the issue width has been increased to eight instructions per cycle, and the AVX-512 unit is now a full 512 bits wide.
  
  If your code is poised perfectly to take advantage of the improved hardware it could run twice as fast on Zen 5 as Zen 4, but that's unlikely.
  
  The performance charts attached to this article show the 12 core 9900X running Handbrake video processing tasks 41% faster than Intel's 24 core 14900K, at half the power consumption.
  
  Of course Intel will have new chips itself later this year, but those are expected to focus on fixing the power issues more than increasing performance.
  
  These chips are due to show up...  Basically now.
  
  
  
• Also on the AMD front, testing the graphics performance of the new Ryzen HX 370 laptop chip.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  It's basically level with the desktop GTX 1070, laptop GTX 1650 Ti, or the Radeon RX 480.  I used an RX 480 myself from 2017 to 2022, and it's a perfectly competent card.  For integrated graphics performance it's amazing.
  
  AMD has another, much more powerful laptop CPU in the wings, with at least twice the graphics performance.  No word yet on when that one will ship.

Posted by: normal at Tuesday, July 16 2024 10:53 PM (LADmw)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Wednesday, July 17 2024 12:51 AM (rcPLc)

Posted by: Rick C at Wednesday, July 17 2024 11:22 AM (MItL9)

Posted by: Mauser at Wednesday, July 17 2024 03:08 PM (nk1Z+)

Posted by: asabinn at Tuesday, November 05 2024 07:59 PM (I9eMS)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

• To avoid sea level rise, some researchers want to put barriers around the world's most vulnerable glaciers to slow them down.  (Science)
  
  Uh.
  
  What?
  
  In 2008, the Ilulissat Glacier in Greenland had a calving event in which it shed a single iceberg covering three square miles.  It sheds 35 billion tons of icebergs in the average year.
  
  And moving glaciers don't leave much of anything in their wake, except rubble.
  
  I mean...  Okay, it's not impossible.  If you want to build an anti-glacier barrier, go right ahead.  Yes, I'll make popcorn, but if you succeed I'll gladly give you credit.
  
  Update: Skip the first four paragraphs of the article and go to the fifth, which explains things a lot more clearly.  They don't want to build an anti-glacier barrier, but a barrier for warm ocean currents to shield glaciers at the point they enter the sea.

• The new Asus ExpertBook lacks the Four Essential Keys and its Lunar Lake CPU will get crushed by AMD's new Strix Point (non-Halo) chips when they arrive later this month.  (WCCFTech)
  
  It's not actively terrible but I wouldn't bother.
  
  
  
• Once a new security exploit is made public, system administrators around the world have 22 minutes to update all their servers.  (Bleeping Computers)
  
  That's how fast hackers pounce on new exploits.
  
  
  
• Speaking of exploits "superhuman" AI Go players turn out to be so dumb that a child can beat them.  (Ars Technica)
  
  If the child knows the right exploit.  Even after researchers updated the AI to handle this, it only won 22% of the time.

  Improving these kinds of "worst case" scenarios is key to avoiding embarrassing mistakes when rolling an AI system out to the public. But this new research shows that determined "adversaries" can often discover new holes in an AI algorithm's performance much more quickly and easily than that algorithm can evolve to fix those problems.

  As with AI chat bots that are easily tricked into selling $50,000 cars for $5, the companies behind them will just blame you.
  
  
  
• Possibly as part of the ongoing Snowflake debacle, barcodes for around ten million event tickets from Ticketmaster have been leaked.  (HackRead)
  
  In theory the barcodes cannot be refreshed.
  
  In practice, anything can be refreshed if the alternative is a billion dollars going up in smoke.
  
  
  
• Google is reportedly in talks to acquire cloud security company Wiz for $23 billion.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  I have never heard of Wiz and have no idea what they actually do.  $23 billion should be a lot of money, so presumably they do something.

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, July 15 2024 11:45 PM (MItL9)

Posted by: normal at Tuesday, July 16 2024 12:08 AM (LADmw)

Posted by: normal at Tuesday, July 16 2024 12:12 AM (LADmw)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, July 16 2024 09:05 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, July 16 2024 12:02 PM (MItL9)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

• Meet the soft robots that can amputate limbs and fuse with other robots.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  I for one welcome our Mengelean Borg overlords.

  In one demo video, we see a soft quadruped robot crawling along when a falling rock traps a back leg. The reversible joint attaching the leg is heated with current, allowing the robot to break free of its leg and escape. Although it’s not shown in the video, the limb can be re-attached, as well.

  Oh.  They can amputate their own limbs.  That's still slightly horrifying, but much less so.
  
  Kind of like a lizard that drops its tail, uses it as a club to beat a frog to death, and the reattaches the tail and eats the frog.
  
  

   

• The goggles do nothing!  Pushing the 9950X to 320W doesn't really help much.  (WCCFTech)
  
  At 120W it's essentially tied with the 253W Intel 14900K, and at any power level above that it rapidly breaks away.
  
  Interestingly the upcoming sixteen core laptop chip codenamed Strix Point Halo is rated at 120W, so that will deliver what is currently considered leading-edge desktop performance.
  
  
  
• Speaking of the 14900K, I wouldn't.  (Tech Radar)
  
  The problems with Intel's high-end chips persist.
  
  A study of crash logs for video games showed that for some types of problem, 90% of all recorded errors happened on the 13900K and 14900K.  Those chips are just pushed too hard and run too hot.
  
  This is not an Intel problem in general;  it only seems to affect the company's top-of-the-line consumer desktop chips.  But that's bad.  If you buy their most expensive chips you don't expect to get dramatically worse reliability.
  
  
  
• Disney's internal Slack was allegedly hacked, with 1.1TB of data exfiltrated.  (HackRead)
  
  I haven't encountered this site before, but it looks the Web3 is going great of online services.
  
  Bookmarked for later reference.
  
  
  
• Signal is downplaying a security flaw that it has now fixed after a Twitter drama.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  This was a local security issue, rather than an online one.  Anyone with access to your computer could read your Signal history without needing your password.  The local database was encrypted, but the encryption key was sitting right there for anyone to use.
  
  
  
• Linksys Velop routers send your WiFi passwords to servers in the US.  (StackDiary)
  
  In plain text.
  
  Yay.
  
  
  
• Speaking of which, I just picked up a mesh wifi system for the new house - a D-Link M32 Eagle Pro three node setup.  I've been running a router I had before the move, but the coverage is not that great.
  
  I probably went a little overboard, though.  The bundle was 75% off on a one-day sale so I bought two, which should be enough to cover the house, the garage, the entire garden, and a couple of my neighbours.
  
  
  
• The NSA has rediscovered the tape of computing pioneer Admiral Grace Hopper's 1982 lecture, but says it lacks the ability to read it.  (MuckRock)
  
  It's one inch Ampex reel-to-reel video tape, which is hardly uncommon.  It took me two minutes to find a commercial service that will convert an entire tape to digital format for $150.
  
  
  
• The Sipeed Lichi Pi 3A is a development board for RISC-V programmers.  (Liliputing)
  
  RISC-V itself is an open-standard competitor to Arm.  Anyone can build their own processors with no licensing fees, which makes it attractive to companies like Western Digital, who need to embed multiple processor cores into ever SSD they make.
  
  The board itself starts at $49 for a bare module with 4GB of RAM, going up to $139 with 16GB of RAM, 32GB of storage, and a carrier board with two M.2 slots.
  
  This is slightly confusing because the Lichee Pi 4A already exists and is more powerful, just lacking those two M.2 slots.
  
  
  
• Journalists for Censorship strikes again: Shooting conspiracies trend on X as Musk endorses Trump.  (The Verge)
  
  Following the assassination attempt on Donald Trump at his rally in Pennsylvania, the left did what the left does best: Act like crazy people in public.

  On X, neither trending topic about the shooting is flush with particularly robust or coherent conspiracies; clicking through, you’ll largely find short posts from X users saying that the shooting looks fake or is a stunt. (There is no evidence of either.) But by placing the subjects into X’s trending topics area, the conspiracies are elevated to more people.

  The complaint here seems to be that Twitter is not censoring Democrats.
  
  I can see how this would be bad for the Democrats.
  
  
  

Posted by: PatBuckman at Monday, July 15 2024 02:06 AM (rcPLc)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Monday, July 15 2024 02:07 AM (rcPLc)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, July 15 2024 12:02 PM (PiXy!)

Posted by: bravokilo at Monday, July 15 2024 05:04 PM (BuMbr)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

• That's going to leave a mark: Call and text records for the past six months for almost all AT&T customers have been stolen in the slow-motion train wreck that is the Snowflake breach.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Snowflake was an online data analytics platform with some major customers including Ticketmaster and Santander Bank.  Technically I think Snowflake is still operating but I wouldn't expect them to be around for much longer.
  
  While Ticketmaster is international and the number of customers affected far outweighs AT&T, in that breach the hackers got your name, address, last four digits of your credit card, that kind of stuff.
  
  In this hack they got the phone numbers of everyone 110 million people called or texted over a period of six months.  And it's all out there, forever.
  
  It does not (according to AT&T) include the contents of the text messages, and calls even if recorded for whatever reason would not be stored in this kind of database.  I hope.  That would raise it from a mere disaster to a catastrophe.
  
  And if you're not an AT&T customer you might still be affected if your phone company uses the AT&T network behind the scenes.

• Meta has dropped the special restrictions it had placed on Donald Trump's Facebook and Instagram accounts.  (The Verge)
  
  You can enjoy the screaming in the comments there, if you like.
  
  
  
• Emmanuel Goldstein's X faces big EU fines as paid checkmarks are ruled deceptive.  (Ars Technica)
  
  Sorry, I mean Elon Musk.  It's pure coincidence that every Ars Technica article mentioning SpaceX, Twitter, Tesla, or Starlink has the name ELON MUSK in it as a signal for the zombies to swarm.
  
  Anyway, the headline is a lie.  There is no such ruling.
  
  But EU Bookburner General Terry Britain claims that blue checkmarks used to denote trustworthy sources of information which is either a direct lie or a sign of galloping early-onset Alzheimer's.
  
  Musk fired back asserting that the EU offered Twitter an illegal secret deal under which they would hold off on fines if the company would enact secret censorship under their direction.
  
  Terry Britain claimed that the EU doesn't do that, but...  It does.
  
  Also interesting to see on that article, Ars Technica's creative director Aurich Lawson getting savaged by his own mob.
  
  
  
• Don't run your Ryzen 9 9950X at 60W.  (WCCFTech)
  
  More leaked benchmarks, but there's something interesting here because the same tests were run at power levels of 60W, 90W, 120W, 160W, and 230W, with the last of those being the maximum boost power setting without manual overclocking.
  
  At 60W the CPU ran cool at 41C and managed 4GHz on all cores.  Bumping it up to 90W pushed the temperature to 49C but the clock to just over 5GHz.  At 160W it reaches 5.55GHz and at 230W 5.6GHz, so there's no real point in going over 160W.
  
  
  
• Emmanuel Gold - sorry.  SpaceX's Falcon 9 has been grounded after issues with a second stage caused the latest cluster of Starlink satellites to miss their orbital target.  (Reuters)
  
  They are trying to boost the satellites into the correct orbit with the on-board ion drives - really - but even if that works it will reduce their service life.
  
  This comes after, if you weren't keeping track, 365 consecutive Falcon 9 launches without issue.
  
  
  
• Looking to buy a Z80 computer before supply of the chip runs out forever?  Tindie (who) and Zeal have you covered.  (Tindie)
  
  For $180 you get a 10MHz Z80, 256k of flash storage, 512k of RAM, VGA graphics, and four voice sound synthesis.
  
  It's kind of neat if you're into retrocomputing.
  
  
  
• Speaking of retrocomputing the German navy is working on phasing out eight inch floppy disks.  (Ars Technica)
  
  I have no idea why they are used because the ships involved were commissioned in the mid-nineties, by which time even 3.5" floppies had been around for a decade, and eight inch models had been dead for years.
  
  
  
• A "red team" from CISA broke into another federal agency and had free rein in its network, undetected, for five months.  (The Register)
  
  Wait, the federal government noticed a massive problem in only five months?
  
  
  
• Peer review is essential for science.  Unfortunately it's fucked.  (Ars Technica)
  
  Well, they use the term broken, but I felt it needed a little more oomph.

  The practice of peer review was developed in a different era, when the arguments and analysis that led to a paper’s conclusion could be succinctly summarized within the paper itself. Want to know how the author arrived at that conclusion? The derivation would be right there. It was relatively easy to judge the "wrongness" of an article because you could follow the document from beginning to end, from start to finish, and have all the information you needed to evaluate it right there at your fingerprints.
  
  That's now largely impossible with the modern scientific enterprise so reliant on computers.

  Specifically because scientific papers very rarely include the code used to analyse the data.  All the assumptions - and the errors - in that code are hidden from reviewers.
  
  Noting that peer review is f - broken, the author, not a journalist but real life astrophysicist Paul Sutter, moves on to science's second line of defense, replication, where things are no better:

  There's a complex swirling septic tank of problems that all contribute to the replication crisis, but the first issue is that replication isn't sexy. You don't get to learn new things about the world around us; you just get to confirm whether someone else learned new things about the world around us. As an added ugly bonus, non-results often don't even get published. Novelty is seen as a virtue, and if you run an experiment and it doesn’t provide a positive result, journals are less likely to be interested in your manuscript. Additionally, because replication isn't seen as sexy, when it is done, it isn't read. Replication studies do not get published in high-impact-factor journals, and authors of replication studies do not get as many citations for their work. This means that their h-index is lower, which lowers their chances of getting grants and promotions.

  What's the solution?  I'm glad you asked:

  Altogether, the scientific and technical publishing industry rakes in about ten billion dollars a year, often with double-digit profit margins. Of course they don't want this ship to change course. I can't really blame them; they’re just playing by the accepted rules of their own game.

  Yes, there isn't one.
  
  
  
• Despite selling literally dozens of units, several of which were not returned, developers are ignoring Apple's wildly expensive and basically useless Vision Pro AR headset.  (Ars Technica)
  
  Not even porting existing iOS apps.
  
  
  
• OpenAI is reportedly working on an AI that can reason, instead of just regurgitating pre-digested Reddit posts and telling you that backpacks are as safe as parachutes when jumping out of a plane.  (Ars Technica)
  
  Well, first up, Terry Winograd, SHRDLU, 1968.

  Person: Had you touched any pyramid before you put the green one on the little cube?
  Computer: YES, THE GREEN ONE.
  Person: When did you pick it up?
  Computer: WHILE I WAS STACKING UP THE RED CUBE, A LARGE RED BLOCK AND A LARGE GREEN CUBE.
  Person: Why?
  Computer: TO GET RID OF IT.
  Person: Why did you do that?
  Computer: TO CLEAN OFF THE RED CUBE.
  Person: Why did you clear off that cube?
  Computer: TO PUT IT ON A LARGE GREEN CUBE.
  Person: Why did you do that?
  Computer: TO STACK UP THE RED CUBE , A LARGE RED BLOCK AND A LARGE GREEN CUBE.
  Person: Why did you do that?
  Computer: BECAUSE YOU ASKED ME TO.

  Second, that parachutes and backpacks thing is really an answer given by Google's AI Overview.  (Fast Company)
  
  And it's based on a real result from a real scientific study.  (NPR)
  
  But it's a study of whether people actually read scientific papers.
  
  The plane was parked on the ground.

Posted by: normal at Saturday, July 13 2024 08:11 PM (bg2DR)

Posted by: normal at Saturday, July 13 2024 08:13 PM (bg2DR)

Posted by: J Greely at Saturday, July 13 2024 09:52 PM (oJgNG)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Saturday, July 13 2024 11:06 PM (PiXy!)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Sunday, July 14 2024 01:44 AM (rcPLc)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Sunday, July 14 2024 01:54 AM (rcPLc)

Posted by: Rick C at Sunday, July 14 2024 07:48 AM (MItL9)

Posted by: Rick C at Sunday, July 14 2024 07:51 AM (MItL9)

Posted by: Rick C at Sunday, July 14 2024 11:34 AM (MItL9)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

• Could AIs become conscious? Right now, we have no way to tell.  (Ars Technica)
  
  Because we haven't properly defined the terms.
  
  What kind of AI?  SHRDLU from 1968 (yes, I keep mentioning that) displayed more evidence of consciousness than ChatGPT, and examining its abilities we see clear indications of a primitive level of conscious.
  
  There's a term in AI, sphexishness, referring to the golden digger wasp, Sphex ichneumoneus.  Like many wasps, the sphex wasp will paralyse its prey to serve as food for its larvae.  In this case it will paralyse an insect, drag it back to its burrow (it's a digger wasp), check that the burrow is safe, and then put the prey in the burrow to serve as a larder for the baby sphexes.
  
  The thing is, if you move the paralysed insect while the sphex is checking the burrow, it will move it back next to the burrow, inspect the burrow again, and then drag it into the burrow.
  
  And if you move the insect again while the sphex is re-checking the burrow, the cycle will repeat.  No matter how many times you do this, the sphex will not change its behaviour.
  
  SHRDLU was able to explain why it did what it did, step by step.  It didn't get angry at being given repeated nonsensical orders, but it could account for every action that it took.
  
  Anyway, can computers become conscious?  Well, they are already more conscious than insects, and have been for decades.
  
  Can computers become conscious with all the complexity as human consciousness?  Certainly not currently; they are not remotely powerful enough.
  
  Can LLMs become conscious?  A single LLM, no.  LLMs are designed specifically to avoid that.
  
  A pair of LLMs in a feedback loop?  Maybe, yes.  But likely also psychotic.

• Why The Atlantic signed that deal with OpenAI.  (The Verge)
  
  Money.
  
  
  
• Ben Faw, the harbinger of AI slop.  (The Verge)
  
  He made his mark pushing ads for his buddies' businesses unnoticed into online newspapers and magazines, and it was all downhill from there.
  
  
  
• A data breach at mSpy exposed the personal information of millions of customers.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  mSpy sells spyware.
  
  
  
• TSMC is another big beneficiary of the AI bubble, with its market share topping $1 trillion for the first time.  (Reuters)
  
  While still well behind the leading US bubblers like Apple, Microsoft, and Nvidia, it is nonetheless the most valuable company in Asia.
  
  
  
• The most important video game you've never heard of.  (A Critical Hit)
  
  The Sumerian Game.  It ran on the IBM 7090 mainframe ($2.9 million for 100 kiloFLOPs) and it was, well:

  Sir, I am sorry to report that 150 bushels of grain have rotted or been eaten by rats this past season.

  Hammurabi.  It's Hammurabi.
  
  
  
• The man who destroyed Wikipedia.  (Tracing Woodgrains)
  
  David Gerard, the man behind longtime lolcow dumpster fire RationalWiki, has also been systematically rotting away the credibility of Wikipedia for twenty years.
  
  Everything bad you've seen from terminally online leftists, he represents, and he's been at it for longer than most.  He has his good points - he hates blockchain, for example, but he hates it from a doctrinaire liberal perspective, not because of the specific and often astoundingly ill-considered technical decisions that make working with it an unending misery.

Posted by: normal at Friday, July 12 2024 07:06 PM (bg2DR)

Posted by: CanajunXYZ at Saturday, July 13 2024 02:57 AM (4MQvG)

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, July 13 2024 01:00 PM (gFAd+)

Hide Comments | Add Comment