This wouldn't have happened with Gainsborough or one of those proper painters.

Monday, October 07

Geek

Daily News Stuff 7 October 2024

For Whom The Vacuum Vacuums Edition

Top Story

  • Insecure "Deebot" vacuum cleaners made by Chinese company Ecovacs are recording you and taking pictures and measuring every corner of your house and sending the data back to the manufacturer.  (ABC)  (no, the other one)

    But you agreed to this when you were silly enough to buy one of their products.
    The Chinese home robotics company, which sells a range of popular Deebot models in Australia, said its users are "willingly participating" in a product improvement program.

    When users opt into this program through the Ecovacs smartphone app, they are not told what data will be collected, only that it will "help us strengthen the improvement of product functions and attached quality".

    But I can use the app to delete my data, right?
    It also states that voice recordings, videos and photos that are deleted via the app may continue to be held and used by Ecovacs.
    But at least the data doesn't go any further, right?
    Cybersecurity researcher Dennis Giese reported the problems to the company last year after he found a series of basic errors putting Ecovacs customers' privacy at risk.

    "If their robots are broken like that," he asked, "how does their back-end [server] look?

    "Even if the company's not malicious, they might be the victim themselves of corporate espionage or nation state actors."

    But... Lerian Jihad time.

     



Tech News

Disclaimer: D-14 and counting.

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Sunday, October 06

Geek

Daily News Stuff 6 October 2024

Dexanthanisation Edition

Top Story

  • Back at the dawn of time - which is to say, a few years ago - when an AI didn't know how to answer a question it would say it didn't know how to answer the question.  Either that or tie itself into knots, spit out an entire ream of gibberish, and crash.

    AIs today are much more sophisticated.  Like many humans when they don't know how to answer a question, they lie.  (Ars Technica)

    This is what you get when you reward answers rather than accuracy.  It's the comment spam problem all over again.

    What's worse, the more advance the AI - the larger its training set - the stronger the tendency to lie.

    And the more effort that is put into supervising the AI after the bulk training - a process called alignment - the stronger the tendency to lie and get away with it.

    It's not really lying, of course, since the current crop of commercial AIs have no intentionality.  It's just that they also have no concept of truth, and the way they are trained rewards giving answers, not just giving the right answer.

Tech News


Totally Not Tech News

If you want to make gluten-free fried chicken, the trick is to use tapioca starch rather than general-purpose gluten-free flour.  Tapioca starch would be a major ingredient of the flour, along with cornflour and rice flour, but it also contains xanthan gum to replace the missing gluten and make your bread hold together.

But by the same measure xanthan gum will make the coating on your fried chicken chewy rather than crisp.

Doesn't hurt either that tapioca starch is cheaper than the flour blend.  I tried straight cornflour as well, which was fine, but the tapioca worked better.



Disclaimer: Senzawa is following Dooby3d and all is right with the world.

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Saturday, October 05

Geek

Daily News Stuff 5 October 2024

The Magic Word Is Tapioca Edition

Top Story

Tech News


Pixy Is Reading

Quality Assurance in Another World.

The anime makes it through the end of volume five of the manga, out of thirteen volumes published so far.  It's completely faithful to the material, with only minor changes where the anime could handle things better - where the details of how things moved or sounded were the key to a scene.  The manga had to spell it out, where the anime could show you.

Volume six explains a couple of things that happen earlier, not in the retcon sense, but in the the-author-obviously-had-that-in-mind-all-along sense.

Still solid.  Not Frieren or Apothecary Diaries level, but well worth the time.


Disclaimer: N7 forever.

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Friday, October 04

Geek

Daily News Stuff 4 October 2024

Yesterday Is Another Day Edition

Top Story

  • A federal judge has issued a temporary injunction blocking California's new law against "AI deepfakes" noting that the law is overbroad and subjective.  (Tech Crunch)

    The judge is, as the kids would say, based.
    While a well-founded fear of a digitally manipulated media landscape may be justified, this fear does not give legislators unbridled license to bulldoze over the longstanding tradition of critique, parody, and satire protected by the First Amendment. YouTube videos, Facebook posts, and X tweets are the newspaper advertisements and political cartoons of today, and the First Amendment protects an individual’s right to speak regardless of the new medium these critiques may take.

    ...

    California’s interest and the hardship the State faces are minimal when measured against the gravity of First Amendment values at stake and the ongoing constitutional violations that Plaintiff and other similarly situated content creators experience while having their speech chilled.
    Indeed.


  • Amelia Watson Hyte Y40 Limited Edition PC Case Status: Acquired

    Sitting in the front hall right now.


  • Calliope Mori Hyte Y40 Limited Edition PC Case Status: Order confirmed

    Hyte confirmed that the order was processed before things fell apart, and they've fixed it.  I've now received the confirmation email and the order is showing in my account on their site.

    I'm not sure that I want to go through all that again for the Dokibird case.  It ended up costing me an extra $200 to air freight a PC case to the other side of the world, and a regular Hyte Y40 only costs $130.


Tech News



Pixy Is Reading

Quality Assurance in Another World.

Looks like the anime was consistently covering two chapters per episode, which worked well.  There's 77 chapters out now, so nearly three seasons worth.

I'm reading through the part the anime covers and the adaptation is completely faithful.  No material added, changed, or removed; just brought to life.  Even the little interstitials explaining various things from the world they're in come straight from the manga.



Disclaimer: If you're still using PHP in 2024 you really need to evaluate what you are doing with your life.  Matt.

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Thursday, October 03

Geek

Daily News Stuff 3 October 2024

Well Of Course Edition

Top Story

  • Eric Adams' phone pleads the Fifth.  (The Verge)

    The FBI obtained two of the New York mayor's phones under a warrant served almost a year ago, but they still haven't managed to access any data.

    Adams changed the password after the warrant was served - to prevent staff from deleting information that was required for the investigation, he says - and then promptly forgot it.


  • The Amelia Watson Hyte Y40 PC limited edition PC case is winging its way toward me as we speak.  Or as I write and you read.  Or trucking its way.

    The shipment of Calliope Mori Hyte Y40 limited edition PC cases to Australia disappeared into the Nether, so I broke down and finally ordered it directly from the US, exorbitant shipping and all.

    The site took my money and then promptly crashed, because of course it did.


Tech News




Disclaimer: Would you rather program one core the size of a dinner plate, or 900,000 dinner plates the size of a core?

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Wednesday, October 02

Geek

Daily News Stuff 2 October 2024

Rat Attack Edition

Top Story

  • After Broadcom bought VMWare, there were numerous stories of smaller customers being pushed to the wayside.  Broadcom's general approach to marketing products is to have 600 customers and ignore everyone else.

    Broadcom now seems to be experimenting with pushing everyone to the wayside.  (The Register)

    Court filings in a suit from AT&T say that Broadcom sought to increase prices by 1050% while also blocking its reseller channel from doing business with AT&T at all.

    AT&T says that the proposed pricing makes the payoff time for moving from VMWare to literally anything else short enough that they see it as an investment rather than an expense.

Tech News

  • A Chicago lab scooped up $83 million in federal payments for fake COVID tests.  (Ars Technica)

    The DOJ gave the lab owner a deal where he pled guilty to a single count of wire fraud.

    I wonder who he knows.


  • AMD's Epyc 8004 embedded server family is here.  (Serve the Home)

    I'm not sure what makes these specifically embedded, as they're socketed and work just fine in conventional rackmount servers.

    These are lower-end and cheaper than the 9004 series, with 6 memory channels and 96 lanes of PCIe 5.0.

    The processors are only available configured with Zen 4c cores, which are slower and use less power than Zen 4.  Not a lot slower in a server CPU; these are clocked at 3GHz where Zen 4 chips run at up to 3.6GHz.

    Prices start at $409 for an 8 core chip, and range through $855 for 24 cores, up to $4950 for 64 cores.

    The 24 core model looks good if your needs lean more towards memory capacity or I/O bandwidth than CPU performance, since it would be slower than a 16 core desktop chip.

    Even the 64 core version only draws 200W, which is another advantage.


  • Microsoft Copilot can now read your screen and talk to you.  (Tech Crunch)

    Not if you uninstall it.


Disclaimer: It was the best of rats.  It was the other best of rats.

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Tuesday, October 01

Geek

Daily News Stuff 1 October 2024

Chiku Taku Edition

Top Story

Tech News

  • AMD has increased the performance of the Ryzen 9600X and 9700X models by increasing the TDP. (Tom's Hardware)

    These currently run at 65W by default, but with a new BIOS update will be configurable to run at 105W, with the 60% extra power giving that 10% extra performance.

    You could do the same thing with overclocking, of course, so the only real change is that this is fully supported under warranty.


  • AMD has also released two small language models. (Tom's Hardware)

    These are just like large language models, only small. With 135 million tokens, they will run on any functioning graphics card; you don't need an RTX 4090.


  • Star Wars Outlaws has sold a million copies. (WCCFTech)

    For a major game release, that's not good. Dwarf Fortress has sold a million copies, but that has two developers, not hundreds.

    Ubisoft needs to sell at least four million copies of this game to break even on the development costs, never mind the licensing costs. That won't happen.

    Their next big title, Assassin's Creed Shadows, is looking to be an even bigger failure. The company's shareholders are rioting.


  • Google has won a lawsuit against scammers who filed false DMCA takedown requests to remove their competitors from the search index. (TorrentFreak)

    Filing a false DMCA request is perjury, which is a felony, but I'm not aware of anyone ever being charged with that crime in such a case.

    Here Google was awarded a default judgement because the scammers never responded.


  • Epic Games is suing Google, again, and also Samsung. (The Verge)

    Epic Games got a court order forcing Google to allow third-party app stores on Android devices.

    So Google and Samsung collaborated to introduce new security features that effectively prevent users from installing unauthorised applications, while not providing any means for applications to become authorised.

    Again, I don't like Epic, but Google and Samsung need to be smacked down hard here.


Not At All Tech News


Hololive's Amelia Watson, who left the group today (mostly) as drawn by also Hololive's Elizabeth Rose Bloodflame. (Yes, the names sometimes get a little melodramatic.)

The flower represents the 20 members of Hololive's English branch - the colours and patterns match each of the talents' costumes.


Frieren Season Two Production Trailer of the Day


No date yet but production has started.


Not At All Tech News Video of the Day


I was watching this stream earlier on but had to switch because one of Ame's final streams was airing at the same time.  So I missed this pure Pippa moment.

No, I have no idea.


Disclaimer: Put your hands on your head and step away from the gerbils!

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Monday, September 30

Geek

Daily News Stuff 30 September 2024

Desert Bus Stop Edition

Top Story


Tech News

  • MSI has confirmed that CUDIMMs work with AMD as well as Intel processors.  (Tom's Hardware)

    These are memory modules with clock regenerator chips onboard, allowing them to run stably at higher speeds - up to 9.6GHz currently, with even faster speeds promised.

    The problem is that they are otherwise still standard DDR5 modules, so to hit those speeds they have to run at much higher than normal voltages.


  • Kia's online dealer portal could be used to steal with the click of a button.  (Bleeping Computer)

    This has reportedly been fixed but who the hell thought that was a good idea?


  • Are software developers gaining from the miracle of generative AI?  No.  (CIO)

    Productivity has not improved, bugs have not been reduced, and developer burnout is as bad as ever.

    If anything, unfamiliar AI-generated code is making the situation worse.


  • Lenovo's 2024 Legion Y700 tablet is here.  (Liliputing)

    This is the only good small Android tablet on the market.  And when I say "on the market" I mean not on the market, because it is almost impossible to buy outside of China.

    Why?  I have no idea.

    Anyway, this model appears to remove the microSD card.  The previous update removed the headphone jack.

    Why?  Because fuck you, that's why.


  • After Unity committed suicide with its overbearing and larcenous new licensing terms, open-source competitor Godot had its moment in the sun.

    It just committed suicide in a very messy and public way.

    Godot's community manager went psychotically woke on Twitter, not just affirming LGBTQIA+ bullshit over everything else, but blocking users and hiding replies from anyone who dared to question this in even the most polite terms.

    Hundreds of people.  It just keeps going.

    And the CEO of Godot has gone into hiding.


Disclaimer: Fork Godot.

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Sunday, September 29

Geek

Daily News Stuff 29 September 2024

Virtual Aquarium Edition

Top Story

  • In the ongoing legal dispute between Apple and Epic Games over Apple's theft of 30% of everything, Apple was ordered to produce a million documents relating to changes to the App Store.

    Apple asked for an extension to that deadline, following its habit of dragging out unfavourable cases forever.  (Tech Crunch)

    The judge was not having it.
    As Epic constantly points out, this document production is all downside for Apple because it relates to Apple’s alleged lack of compliance with the Court’s injunction. It is not in Apple’s interest to do any of this quickly. This is a classic moral hazard, and the way Apple announced out of the blue four days before the substantial completion deadline that it would not make that deadline because of a document count that it had surely been aware of for weeks hardly creates the impression that Apple is behaving responsibly.

    Apple’s request for an extension of time is DENIED. The deadline for the substantial completion of document production is Monday, September 30. It’s up to Apple to figure out how to meet that deadline, but Monday is indeed the deadline.
    Good to see.  I have no particular love for Epic Games, but Apple acts like a classic monopolist, constantly skirting the edge of open illegality.

Tech News



Pixy Was Watching

Quality Assurance in Another World.

The season ended as I expected, with nothing really resolved, but at least with most of our reluctant heroes reunited and Nikola taking a well-earned level in Badass.

No announcement of a second season, just a "To be continued?" card at the very end.

Fortunately, there is the manga, which apparently runs to about three seasons worth of material.




Disclaimer: No, there is no CharybdisDB.  I checked.

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Saturday, September 28

Geek

Daily News Stuff 28 September 2024

Scorched Almond Edition

Top Story

  • What is going on in the WordPress war, from a former WP Engine employee.  (Josh Collinsworth)

    Matt Mullenweg is a co-founder of WordPress, and now heads up both WordPress.org, the open-source foundation that creates the WordPress application, and WordPress.com, the company that commercialises blog hosting.

    WP Engine is a competitor that also offers blog hosting, and has done for nearly fifteen years.  This is entirely legal because WordPress is open source.

    So Matt, fed up with a competitor existing at all, has used his position as head of the open-source project to benefit his position has head of the commercial operation by carpet-bombing that competitor:
    Matt had a problem with the landlords, so he carpet bombed the neighborhood.  He didn’t like Alderaan’s leaders, and so he fired the Death Star.  And now it doesn’t really matter what his original point was; he’s made himself the bad guy.
    And I do mean carpet-bombing:
    That post, crucially, went up on WordPress.org, which on its own seems questionable. WordPress.org is ostensibly the website for the nonprofit foundation; it’s supposed to exist topreventany one for-profit company from having too much power over the WordPress ecosystem. It’s supposed to be agnostic.

    Not only was that boundary ignored, but since the post was published as WordPress news, it was then syndicated to each and every WordPress admin dashboard in the world.

    Now, the WordPress software is garbage - not as much as it used to be, but still terrible - but until recently they weren't notably a garbage organisation.

    Now they've fixed that, and there are growing calls for Mullenweg to be tossed overboard before he sinks the ship.



Tech News



Disclaimer: Fire the Ripper Ray!

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