• Google promised better search - now it's telling us to put glue on pizza. (The Verge)
  
  AI - the LLM version of AI, which is all that makes the news these days - requires human input to learn. It only takes a few iterations of training AI on AI output for it to turn completely to shit.
  
  Yes, even more than usual.
  
  Which is why OpenAI and Google made deals with Reddit to train their respective AI engines on that vast trove of human-generated data.
  
  Only problem is, Reddit is Reddit:

  Imagine this: you've carved out an evening to unwind and decide to make a homemade pizza. You assemble your pie, throw it in the oven, and are excited to start eating. But once you get ready to take a bite of your oily creation, you run into a problem - the cheese falls right off. Frustrated, you turn to Google for a solution.
  
  

  "Add some glue," Google answers. "Mix about 1/8 cup of Elmer's glue in with the sauce. Non-toxic glue will work."

  Google will literally tell you to do this, because it found that answer in a ten year old Reddit thread.
  
  Obviously it's a joke. Obviously it's a bad idea. But AI doesn't know those things, because AI doesn't know anything except, statistically, which words are likely to be found together.

  Look, Google didn't promise this would be perfect, and it even slaps a "Generative AI is experimental" label at the bottom of the AI answers. But it’s clear these tools aren’t ready to accurately provide information at scale.

  They work just fine if you don't care about the answers. They work just fine if an answer that looks right, is right.
  
  That's why AI is advancing rapidly in image generation (and in producing astoundingly mediocre music) but is absolute garbage at anything that requires a factual answer.
  
  It's not a bug. It's baked in to the design.
  
  
  

• TSMC is planning its A16 node - 1.6nm - for 2026. (AnandTech)
  
  Compared to current 5nm chips (and my new laptop is still 7nm) this process will reduce power consumption by 60 to 70%, or conversely deliver about three times the performance at the same power consumption.
  
  
  
• In an industry constantly producing overpriced products that nobody wants Apple is second to none. (WCCFTech)
  
  This time with a foldable laptop.
  
  ...
  
  I mean, yes, but here the whole laptop is screen - no keyboard - and it's the screen that folds.
  
  How do you type on that, you ask? Simple, you clip a keyboard over the screen.
  
  Which makes the entire venture pointless.
  
  
  
• Speaking of which MSI has announced a motherboard that uses CAMM2 memory. (WCCFTech)
  
  This appears to be limited to a single module instead of the usual four, but that's okay because CAMM2 modules cost about twice as much as regular memory.
  
  CAMM2 is designed to be compact and to provide dual channel memory from a single module. Perfect for laptops, pointless for desktops.
  
  
  
• AI engineers make an average of $100,000 more than real ones. (Quartz)
  
  Plus nothing they write is expected to work.
  
  
  
• Germany has too many solar panels operating when it's sunny, pushing energy prices into the negative. (Business Insider)
  
  The plan is to turn half the panels over so that they operate when it's dark.
  
  
  
• Samsung requires independent repair shops not only to report all details of their customers in order to obtain parts for repair, but even to immediately disassemble customer devices if they contain any non-Samsung parts. (404 Media)
  
  Well, fuck Samsung then.
  
  
  
• In completely unrelated news, repair site iFixit has ended its partnership with Samsung to support repairing your own devices. (The Verge)
  
  Because Samsung shipped repair parts glued together.
  
  Literally.

  Most importantly, Samsung has only ever shipped batteries to iFixit that are preglued to an entire phone screen - making consumers pay over $160 even if they just want to replace a worn-out battery pack. That’s something Samsung doesn’t do with other vendors, according to Wiens. Meanwhile, iFixit’s iPhone and Pixel batteries cost more like $50.

  Well, fuck Samsung then.
  
  
  
• Google says that companies should stop sending "phishing" emails to employees to make sure they aren't clicking on random links - because the test is too realistic. (PC Magazine)

  In Linton's view, simulated phishing tests are like forcing workers to quickly evacuate a building during a fire drill - except that real smoke and fire are being blown through the premises. "Once outside, if you took too long you're scolded for responding inappropriately and told you need to train better for next time. Is this an effective way to instill confidence and practice fire evacuation?"

  Well, yes. In an occupation where fires are an everyday event, that's precisely the type of training you will receive.
  
  
  
• Spotify is going to break every Car Thing device it has ever sold. (The Verge)
  
  Yes, Spotify is still in operation.
  
  Yes, you will still pay for your monthly description.
  
  Yes, they are trashing the device you bought directly from them.
  
  No, you don't get a refund.
  
  
  
• Note sure what's going on at The Verge, but credit where it's due: Some good straight tech reporting today.
  
  
  

Well, Fuck Samsung Then Video of the Day

• You can now install the next big update of Windows 11 early so you can find all the bugs and lose all your data.  (The Verge)
  
  I remember a time when I would download beta releases and try them out.
  
  ...
  
  No, actually, I don't.
  
  
  
• Microsoft Edge will begin blocking screenshots at work.  (PC World)
  
  So you can't take screenshots when you want to, but Windows will take screenshots when you don't want it to.  Got it.

• Boeing's Starliner's test launch is now on hold indefinitely.  (Ars Technica)
  
  Better than having the door fall off at 30,000 miles altitude, I guess.
  
  
  
• Governments may be bypassing WhatsApp's encryption and using the data to...  Stop terrorists.  (The Intercept)
  
  Rather telling that it's the latter point that seems to be The Intercept's primary concern.
  
  
  
• Meta's new AI council is comprised entirely of white men.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Also, all but one of them suffers from scoliosis.
  
  
  
• Whiny idiots with stupid names want the world to change for their benefit.  (The Guardian)
  
  Bah.  (Waves paw.)
  
  
  
• US lawmakers are working on a bill that will make it easier to pass regulations to make it illegal to export AI models which will achieve absolutely nothing.  (Reuters)
  
  Yay.
  
  
  
• Sustainable jet fuel is a pipe dream.  (The Guardian)
  
  Surprise!
  
  
  
• Amazon is planning to give Alexa an AI overhaul and a monthly subscription fee, then scrap it entirely and take up day drinking.  (CNBC)
  
  The company hasn't announce the final steps in this plan yet.
  
  
  

Posted by: J Greely at Thursday, May 23 2024 09:21 PM (oJgNG)

Posted by: furball321 at Thursday, May 23 2024 11:00 PM (As8gg)

Posted by: normal at Friday, May 24 2024 12:44 AM (zx18t)

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, May 24 2024 02:12 AM (BMUHC)

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, May 24 2024 02:16 AM (BMUHC)

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, May 24 2024 02:18 AM (BMUHC)

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, May 24 2024 02:22 AM (BMUHC)

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• Microsoft wants to make Windows an AI operating system.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  The problem with Windows 10 was that it worked.  When you have a product that works - and never wears out - all you have to bring in money is new users.
  
  So what you have to do is create a new version with new features that people are willing to pay for.
  
  Which Microsoft has singularly failed to do.
  
  
  
• Meanwhile Google is putting ads in AI search results.  (The Verge)
  
  AI search results are a complete waste of time, so of course they are putting ads in them.

• The only Copilot+ AI feature that matters is a huge privacy risk.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Yes.
  
  
  
• The new Qualcomm laptops otherwise look pretty good.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln...
  
  
  
• I want flexible queries, not RAG.  (Win Vector)
  
  RAG is the latest AI term; it stands for "retrieval augmented generation".  What this means is that AI search delivers garbage, and everyone knows it, so the solution is to replace the search results from the AI with the original search results, which raises the question of why we are using AI in the first place.
  
  In this case, the author was looking for a recipe for a Sicilian dish of rice and eggs that his mother grew up with.  ChatGPT helpfully provided a recipe from Naples, which is notable not in Sicily.
  
  After a great deal of searching, his wife found a book called Bruculinu, America, a sort of memoir in recipes.
  
  This had two recipes that looked likely.
  
  They made the first one, and his mother confirmed that it was what she remembered.
  
  The utility of AI in all this?  Zero.
  
  
  
• IGN has acquired a number of gaming news sites, including Eurogamer, Rock Paper Shotgun, and VG247.  (The Verge)
  
  Rock Paper Shotgun used to be the best games news site, period.
  
  Then they got woke and it all turned to shit.
  
  
  
• AMD has announced the low-end Epyc 4004 server CPU range.  (AnandTech)
  
  These are Ryzen 7000 CPUs.  They are literally Ryzen 7000 CPUs.
  
  That's not a bad thing.  Ryzen 7000 CPUs are great.  It's just what they are.
  
  
  

Anime Music Video of the Day

Posted by: Mauser at Thursday, May 23 2024 10:43 AM (nk1Z+)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, May 23 2024 06:06 PM (PiXy!)

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• Microsoft Recall is the AI-powered future of PCs.  (The Verge)
  
  This new feature coming to Windows 11 lets you find and replay any moment in your PC's history...  By constantly taking screenshots.  Of everything.  Private email.  Passwords.  Personal chat messages.  Confidential business documents.  Credit card numbers.  Personal identification.  Everything.
  
  Not DRM-restricted content, though.  That would be taking things too far.
  
  And don't worry, all this information will be kept safe on your computer and Microsoft takes security very seriously.  (Tech Radar)
  
  
  
• I just set up two PCs running Windows 10.

• That Orwellian nightmare isn't coming to every computer , though.  You'll need a Copilot+ PC to inflict that upon yourself, which is a fresh hell unleashed by Microsoft today.  (Liliputing)

  Recall, specifically, sounds like it could be a privacy nightmare if your data were sent to the cloud for processing.

  Yes.  Yes it does.
  
  
  
• The first wave of these Copilot+ PCs are based on Qualcomm's new Snapdragon X chips.  In fact every new Snapdragon X laptop - and there are models from Dell, Acer, HP, Samsung, Asus, and Lenovo, as well as Microsoft itself, so this is a huge industry-wide push - every single one appears to be infected with this Copilot+ bullshit.
  
  In a single stroke, Microsoft has turned one of the largest advances in Windows laptops in years into a floating dumpster fire.
  
  
  
• Intel will be bringing out new laptop chips too.  (AnandTech)
  
  Congratulations, Intel.
  
  
  
• The 8GB iPad Pro models have 12GB of RAM.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Probably just because of which memory chips were available in volume, and these devices are completely locked down so you can't use that extra memory.  But it's there.
  
  
  
• Reminder: There are no security flaws in Microsoft products.  You do not need to worry about all your data being stolen.  (Security Week)
  
  Well, that's a relief.

• In the LXD service for managing containers and virtual servers, you can route individual ports from the public internet to specific containers.  If you have an email server in a container, you can route just the email ports (SMTP, POP, IMAP and so on) to it, without exposing anything else.
  
  If you want to preserve the public IP address - important in a lot of tasks - you have to set up this route in NAT mode.
  
  You can't do that; your container needs a static IP first.
  
  You can't add a static IP to your container; you can't override the network connection on the default bridge.
  
  You can't override the default bridge...  Wait, you can override the default bridge?  Why can I do that, but not just assign a static IP, which is a much more trivial operation?
  
  
  
• When setting up multiple blogs under WordPress, the first thing you need to do is edit the WordPress source code.
  
  Then you have to disable all your plugins.
  
  Then you can run the setup routine to configure a multi-site network.
  
  What that setup routine does is give you a list of additional changes you need to make to the WordPress source code - and to your Apache configuration.
  
  This makes my own blogging software feel like a beacon of light in a howling void, when at this point it's mostly kind of meh and seriously needs updating.

• This USB flash drive can only store 8kB of data but will last you 200 years.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Problem: The drive has 8kB of FRAM, which is very fast and robust but too small for most applications, and also 4MB of conventional flash to hold the firmware.
  
  How does it work when the FRAM is still good but the firmware has gone to the great bit bucket in the sky?
  
  
  
• AMD's Zen 6 will reportedly bring with it 32-core chiplets.  (WCCFTech)
  
  And in theory 64-core desktop CPUs - regular desktop, not workstation.
  
  And 384-core server CPUs.
  
  
  
• Hertz has been charging customers hundreds of dollars for fuel...  For Teslas.  (The Drive)
  
  That's gotta, uh, sting.
  
  
  
• Minisforum has announced a cheaper 16GB model of its V3 tablet to undercut the cheapest model of Microsoft's surface which is priced at $999.  (Notebook Check)
  
  The cheapest Surface only has 8GB of RAM making it landfill-ready straight from the box.
  
  The Minisforum V3 looks good and early reviews are positive.
  
  
  
• This article is idiotic garbage.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Do not read.

Posted by: normal at Monday, May 20 2024 08:27 PM (bg2DR)

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• LLMs - large language models, which form the basis for all current commercial "AI" research - are as secure as the telephone network in the 1970s.  (Schneier)
  
  And indeed they are secure in exactly the same way as the telephone network in the 1970s.
  
  Which is to say, it's a house of cards with the very finest locks, which are also made out of cards.

• Section 230 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act protects online platforms from most civil and criminal action if all they do is faithfully present data provided by their users (and take appropriate action when informed that action needs to be taken).
  
  But that law may not provide any protection at all when the data is rewritten using AI.  (MSN)
  
  Oh no.
  
  Anyway...
  
  
  
• AMD's beastly Strix Point Halo CPU could be even more of a beast than previously anticipated.  (Hot Hardware)
  
  This chip - or rather, module, since it seems to consist of three smaller chiplets - will have 16 full Zen 5 CPU cores (rather than the anticipated Zen 5c, which is fully compatible but smaller and slower) and 40 RDNA3 graphics cores, with a 256-bit bus.
  
  It will also have some number of Zen 5c cores on the graphics part of the module, though we don't yet know how many.
  
  It's basically a PlayStation 5 except with three times the CPU performance.
  
  (AMD also designed the chip for the PlayStation 5.  And the Xbox Series X and S.)
  
  
  
• It's not a bubble!  With AI startups booming, the rest of the Silicon Valley bullshit is back too.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  It's a bubble.
  
  
  
• LXD can do anything.
  
  You just have to be prepared to jump through seventeen flaming hoops to get there.
  
  Was having a lot of trouble preserving client IP addresses coming into a containerised proxy.  This is the solution:
  
  1. Forget binding public IPs to your containers; use LXD's proxy devices wheich are more specific and hence more secure.
  
  2. To preserve the client IP the proxy device must be running either in NAT mode or proxy protocol mode.
  
  3. Proxy protocol mode doesn't work at all with Caddy, at least in default settings.  It just turns every request into a 400 error.
  
  4. To configure NAT mode just add nat=true to your proxy commands, e.g.
  
  lxc config device add $MY_CONTAINER http-proxy proxy listen=tcp:$PUBLIC_IP:80 connect=tcp:$CONTAINER_IP:80 nat=true
  
  5. This will fail.
  
  6. You need to make CONTAINER_IP a static address - by default it's picked up from the hosts file.
  
  7. You can't.
  
  8.  Unless...  You delete and then re-add the container's network device following the instructions here.
  
  9. Now your proxy server will keep the client IP addresses.
  
  10. Yay.  I only spent five hours on that.
  
  
  

Anime Music Video of the Day

• Slack is taking customer data and using it for AI training.  (Security Week)
  
  "You can opt out", said Slack, which didn't actually bother to tell anyone it was doing this in the first place.  "You just have to call customer support."
  
  "The data is not shared with third parties and never leaves Slack's trust boundary" added a Slack representative, missing the point that Slack's trust boundary is now zero.
  
  
  

Tech News

• Reddit has signed a deal with OpenAI to train ChatGPT on its users' content.  (The Verge)
  
  This deal and a similarly lucrative one with Google put Reddit's financial future on a solid foundation.
  
  Reddit's moral foundation is more like a house of cards in a hurricane.
  
  
  
• How DeviantArt died.  (Slate)
  
  AI and greed.  Greed and AI.  A story as old as time, or 2022, whichever came first.
  
  
  
• Three years after acquiring Biritish open access science publisher Hindawi, American publishing group Wiley is shutting it down and writing it off.  (The Register)
  
  What happened in between was Wiley retracting over eleven thousand scientific papers published in Hindawi journals because they were AI-generated garbage.
  
  
  
• The Mac vs. PC war is back on, says some idiot.  (The Verge)
  
  Macs aren't even an afterthought in the global PC market at this point.  Even Apple doesn't want to sell them.
  
  
  
• CSC ServiceWorks operates a million washers and dryers in hotels and apartment builds that charge residents and guests automatically on use - a nationwide digital laundromat.  So far so good.
  
  Not so good: You can use the machines without paying.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Even less good: CSC has been aware of this for some time.
  
  I mean, bad for CSC.  Great for everyone else.
  
  
  
• Adobe has sent a legal threat to game emulator Delta claiming that the software steals Adobe's logo.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Does anyone remember what Adobe's logo looks like?  Anyone?
  
  
  
• France has banned TikTok in New Caledonia following widespread riots which in turn follow changes to voting laws that will allow non-citizen residents to vote after ten years.  (Politico)
  
  Critics - which is to say TikTok - warned that this set a dangerous precedent.
  
  
  
• Staff leaving OpenAI are subject to a life-long non-disclosure and non-disparagement agreement.  (Twitter)
  
  If they don't sign within sixty days, they permanently lose any ability to sell their already-vested stock, which would have been a larger part of their compensation package than their salary.
  
  This sounds like a field day for whichever law firm lands the class action suit.
  
  
  
• When an 8-core 11900K beats a 24-core 14900KS.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  This despite the 11900K running its DDR4 memory at 3.9GHz and the 14900KS running DDR5 at 9.3GHz.  Sometimes it's the small numbers that matter (latency settings) more than the big ones (bandwidth).
  
  
  
• All my computers are running DDR4.
  
  
  
• Intel's new Falcon Shores processor uses 1500W.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  That used to be a lot.
  
  
  
• Asus has vowed to "improve clarity" over its blatantly illegal handling of warranty claims.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Oh.  That's alright then.

Posted by: Braenyard at Sunday, May 19 2024 03:03 AM (lCWOD)

Posted by: at Sunday, May 19 2024 04:42 AM (MEbkQ)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, May 19 2024 08:59 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: at Sunday, May 19 2024 09:13 AM (MEbkQ)

Posted by: wheels at Sunday, May 19 2024 10:32 AM (rUROc)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, May 19 2024 05:38 PM (PiXy!)

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• Western Digital has announced a 6TB 2.5" hard drive.  (AnandTech)
  
  That's their first new model of 2.5" drive since 2017.
  
  
  
• Ampere has announced a 256 core Arm server CPU.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Shipping next year.  Don't ask the price.
  
  
  
• NetBSD has banned AI-generated code.  (NetBSD)
  
  Not because AI-generated code is intrinsically bad, but because of potentially disastrous copyright and patent issues.
  
  
  

Anime Music Video of the Day

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, May 18 2024 09:25 AM (BMUHC)

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• Google is adding an AI feature to Android that will listen in on your calls and interrupt you.  (Ars Technica)
  
  Specifically it will interrupt you if it thinks you are being scammed.
  
  Which, well, I don't need it since I never answer the phone.
  
  You don't need it.
  
  But there are certainly people who would benefit from this, and there's a slim chance that Google won't screw this up, so let's see what happens.
  
  
  
  

Tech News

• Making a Postgres query 1000 times faster.  (Mattermost)}
  
  Okay, yes, fine, but the answer was completely obvious.
  
  
  
• Swift sucks at web serving - or does it.  (Wade Tregaskis)
  
  A little more in depth - particularly when the author finds bugs in the benchmarking tool - but if you're going to test thousands of simultaneous network connects you really should check that your computer allows you to make thousands of simultaneous network connections.
  
  
  
• Introducing F-UTF-8.  (GitHub)
  
  F-UTF-8 is 100% UTF-8 compliant while being as annoying as possible.
  
  And while UTF-8 is compatible with ASCII and F-UTF-8 is compatible with UTF-8, F-UTF-8 is as far from compatible with ASCII as it is possible to be.
  
  
  
• Two MIT students stole $25 million from arbitrageurs on Ethereum in the span of twelve seconds in a combination front-running / transaction sequencing attack and then got caught because they didn't pay taxes on it.  (Ars Technica)
  
  Oops.

Posted by: normal at Friday, May 17 2024 07:45 AM (K4jh7)

Posted by: Mauser at Friday, May 17 2024 12:22 PM (nk1Z+)

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• Qualcomm is bringing support for its upcoming Snapdragon X CPUs to Linux, and by "is bringing", I mean "has brought".  (Liliputing)
  
  I hope these chips are as good as they seem on paper.  They'll likely be slower than Apple's M4, but you'll be able to buy them and do whatever you want with them, without paying a 1200% markup on RAM upgrades.
  
  You can run Linux on Arm-based Macs too, but Apple's involvement in that project only goes as far as not suing the people working on it.
  
  
  

Tech News

• Samsung and Hynix have stopped making DDR3 RAM, focusing instead on the far more profitable HBM3 modules for AI systems.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  I didn't know they were still actively producing DDR3 memory.  It's available for sale, but since DDR4 appeared in 2014, I assumed that was just old stock they couldn't shift.
  
  
  
• VMWare's Workstation and Fusion desktop virtualisation packages are now free for personal use.  (The Register)
  
  These are generally pretty good, though I don't know how much effort Broadcom will put into updating them going forward.
  
  
  
• Amazon has a trailer up for season two of its half-billion-dollar flop, The Rings of Power.  (Ars Technica)
  
  Nobody knows why.
  
  
  
• Google's new Gemini Pro in Workspace Labs summarises your email so you can delete it without reading either the email or the summary.  (Ars Technica)
  
  As a paid upgrade it will just lose your email automatically.

Posted by: Rick C at Wednesday, May 15 2024 11:49 PM (BMUHC)

Posted by: Kristophr at Thursday, May 16 2024 06:44 AM (iYdVP)

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