• AI superintelligence will be here in 20 years says Sam Altman who would never ever lie about such a thing.  (Ars Technica)

  "It is possible that we will have superintelligence in a few thousand days (!); it may take longer, but I’m confident we’ll get there," he wrote.

  Wanna bet, Sam?

  It's easy to criticize Altman's vagueness here; no one can truly predict the future, but Altman, as CEO of OpenAI, is likely privy to AI research techniques coming down the pipeline that aren't broadly known to the public.

  No.  He's not.

  So even when couched with a broad time frame, the claim comes from a noteworthy source in the AI field-albeit one who is heavily invested in making sure that AI progress does not stall.

  No.  It doesn't.

  Elsewhere in the essay, Altman frames our present era as the dawn of "The Intelligence Age," the next transformative technology era in human history, following the Stone Age, Agricultural Age, and Industrial Age. He credits the success of deep learning algorithms as the catalyst for this new era, stating simply: "How did we get to the doorstep of the next leap in prosperity? In three words: deep learning worked."

  The problem with that is that "deep learning" hasn't worked, and can't.  There's no point making ever larger and more expensive models - if there ever was - because we've run out of data to feed them.

  Not everyone shares Altman's optimism and enthusiasm. Computer scientist and frequent AI critic Grady Booch quoted Altman's "few thousand days" prediction and wrote on X, "I am so freaking tired of all the AI hype: it has no basis in reality and serves only to inflate valuations, inflame the public, garnet [sic] headlines, and distract from the real work going on in computing."

  Yes.

• Redis users are considering jumping ship.  (The Register)
  
  Redis used to be open source.  Now it isn't.
  
  Which is a problem for Redis.
  
  
  
• Because now Valkey exists.  (Valkey)
  
  It only exists because Redis used to be open source, but Redis did use to be open source.
  
  Meaning that Valkey could take the last open source version of Redis, and create its own version.
  
  And then add features that Redis never had (like multi-threading) and then ship it as open source.
  
  The only thing Valkey can't do is stop being open source, which is a feature rather than a bug.
  
  
  
• The Arc browser: Why you need a better browser than Chrome.  (The Verge)
  
  Chrome used to be the best.  Now it's...  Meh.
  
  Arc is designed to be an operating system for web applications.  Should you try it?

  So, the origin of The Browser Company is I was a political appointee in the Obama White House and after the 2016 election, I was personally devastated by the result. I felt like technology and the technology industry had an impact on the things I didn’t like, and I was very motivated to try to do something about it.

  No.
  
  
  
• Intel's Razer Lake CPUs will follow after Nova Lake now that the Arrow Lake Refresh has been cancelled.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Look, I follow this stuff every single day, and if you told me that Veronica Lake was now set to follow Swan Lake because Rose Madder Lake had been cancelled I would have no idea whether that was real or not.

Posted by: normal at Wednesday, September 25 2024 01:24 PM (bg2DR)

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, September 26 2024 02:32 PM (pnaK4)

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• EU Bookburner General Terry Britain is gone, stabbed in the back by his political masters and dumped in an alley like a diseased dog even the Haitians won't touch, but the EU is still a giant socialist hagfish looking for its next meal, so what do America's big tech companies have to look forward to from his replacement?  (Ars Technica)
  
  We don't know.  This is a Wired article, so it is 100% content-free.
  
  Britain is being replaced by a Finnish center-right politician, Henna Virkkunen.  But she's been in the European Parliament for ten years now, plenty of time for the Helsinki to rub off and the Brussels to soak in.

• The entire human genome on a poker chip.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Ew.
  
  Etched by laser.
  
  Never mind.
  
  The storage device, using glass or quartz discs up to the size of a CD, can store up to 360TB and last more or less forever unless you hit them with a hammer.
  
  The problem is that you need a high power laser to write the data in the first place; you can't stamp them out in bulk.
  
  
  
• Keeping Firewire alive on Linux.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Recent versions of Windows and MacOS have abandoned Firewire entirely, so if you need to maintain support for some unusual hardware device, Linux is really your only option.
  
  Or stick with Windows 10.
  
  
  
• Running C code natively from JavaScript.  (The New Stack)
  
  You seem to be attempting to summon Cthulhu.  Would you like me to help with that?
  
  
  
• Are Facebook's Ray Ban smart glasses actually not terrible?  (The Verge)
  
  Yes, they're marketed as AI, but what's more important is that they contain a microphone, a camera, and speakers, all of which work - and reportedly work pretty well - without any AI bullshit.
  
  And they're glasses; they don't cover most of your face and make your neck hurt.  If you already wear glasses you can get them with your prescription.
  
  And they cost $299, not $3499.
  
  What they don't have in their current iteration is a display.  There are other smart glasses like this that do have displays - not full VR but little HUDs, which can be very useful.
  
  If these features can come together maybe the Apple Vision Pro can quietly die and be forgotten.

Something Important Was Forgotten Video of the Day

Posted by: normal at Monday, September 23 2024 09:08 PM (bg2DR)

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, September 26 2024 02:35 PM (pnaK4)

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• If you want to run Final Fantasy XVI at 4k 60Hz, you will need at least an RTX 5090, a graphics card that does not exist.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Well, if you turn on AI upscaling and frame generation an RTX 4090 will do it - just barely, and if you can find one.
  
  If you have a mere mortal video card like the RTX 4070 - not at all a slow card - you're looking at 1080p medium settings with upscaling and frame generation, and 41fps 1% lows.
  
  Why is a pretty normal game so demanding?  Nobody knows.

• How to run your own generative AI instances on your own computer.  (Nature)
  
  Still useless - this is a how article, not a why article - but at least it doesn't steal all your data and sell it to the lowest bidder.
  
  
  
• 80% of software developers are unhappy.  (ShiftMag)
  
  The other 20% are day drinking.
  
  
  
• Beelink's new Ryzen AI 9 370 mini-PC delivers great performance and soldered RAM for just... $999.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  It is a lot faster than the models I have, but I have three of those and this costs about five times as much.
  
  
  
• Minisforum's UM890 is a lot cheaper but also a lot slower.  (Liliputing)
  
  It's a previous generation Ryzen 8945HS.  Eight CPU cores rather than the twelve in the Beelink model - but half the price.
  
  
  

Not At All Tech News

Posted by: cxt217 at Wednesday, September 25 2024 09:44 AM (ZLF73)

Posted by: muddasir96 at Monday, September 30 2024 10:25 PM (qpRrH)

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• Qualcomm is reportedly in talks to acquire Intel.  (The Verge)
  
  Intel's stock price is in the toilet after years of mismanagement, which is what makes this at all viable.  The company is valued at less than Nvidia or AMD, and half as much as Qualcomm.
  
  Which is a little odd because none of those other companies have Intel's massive manufacturing capacity, and is testament to how badly Intel has screwed up.
  
  I very much doubt this deal will go anywhere.  Intel is betting everything on its upcoming 18A and 14A process nodes (1.8nm and 1.4nm respectively).  If those are successful then all is forgiven.  If not, then who would want to buy them?

• Speaking of AMD the company's upcoming Strix Point Halo laptop chip has been spotted in a test sample of an HP ZBook Ultra.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Specifically the Ryzen AI 390 variant with 12 Zen 5 CPU cores and 40 graphics cores.
  
  Since it's a ZBook - HP's workstation line - it will not be cheap, but it does come with 64GB of RAM standard.
  
  
  
• Which is just enough to run the latest edition of Microsoft Flight Simulator.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  The game recommends 64GB of RAM, at least a 12-core CPU, and an Nividia RTX 4080 or AMD Radeon 7900 XT.
  
  Which is a lot.
  
  
  
• Concord reportedly cost a total of $400 million to develop.  (PlayStation Lifestyle)
  
  This is the game that Sony shut down less than two weeks after launch, at which point it had around 100 players.  Total.  Worldwide.
  
  Insiders have said that the game had already cost $200 million to develop by the start of 2023, at which point it was in a "laughable state".  Sony spent another $200 million getting additional studios to clean it up and create pre-rendered content.
  
  That part seems to have worked because the problem when it launched last month was not bugs - it appeared to be technically competent - but that the game was ugly and boring.  
  
  And that part was because nobody was permitted to offer any criticism, for the entire eight years it was in development, what the article calls "toxic positivity".  No-one was permitted to speak out, and no-one dared to blow the whistle because they were dealing with the kind of people who would follow them to their next job just to libel them to HR.
  
  
  
• You can now reprogram the Windows Copilot key if (a) you are stuck with a Windows version with Copilot and (b) your keyboard has a Copilot key.  (Tom's Hardware)
  

  We discovered that the Copilot key returns the F23 key, a key hearkening back to the IBM era when IBM keyboards came equipped with function keys from F1 all the way to F24.

  This took me a minute.  They're not talking about PC keyboards, they're talking about mainframe terminals.
  
  Apparently I'm not that old just yet.
  
  
  
• You can get a 1.5TB Intel 905p for $299.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Why would you want to do that?  That sounds expensive.
  
  The answer is, you probably wouldn't.  This is one of Intel's Optane models, and there's a reason the company doesn't make them anymore.
  
  But if you have an application that is very sensitive to read latency, these drives are five times faster than any flash-based SSD, and last basically forever.
  
  For sequential transfer rates, though, it is five times slower than the latest PCIe 5 M.2 drives.
  
  
  

Posted by: SMM Panel at Tuesday, September 24 2024 05:55 PM (0o5Nk)

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• Elon Musk's reposts of Kamala Harris AI parodies may not fly under California's new law banning Elon Musk from reposting Kamala Harris AI parodies.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Space rocks.
  
  
  
• The creator of said Kamala Harris AI parody has sued California over its law banning the creation of Kamala Harris AI parodies, noting that the law not only violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments, but wipes its bum with them and then blows its nose on what remains.  (Politico)
  

  Newsom spokesperson Izzy Gardon said in a statement that Kohls had already labeled the post as a parody on X.

  "Requiring them to use the word "parody" on the actual video avoids further misleading the public as the video is shared across the platform," Gardon said. "It's unclear why this conservative activist is suing California. This new disclosure law for election misinformation isn’t any more onerous than laws already passed in other states, including Alabama."

  At time of writing, there are zero major social networks headquartered in Alabama.

• As mentioned yesterday, Nintendo and the Pokemon Company have filed suite against Palworld developer Pocketpair over patent violation.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  The question remaining is, what patent?
  
  Nintendo has somehow forgotten to include that information.
  
  
  
• The Ryzen AI Max appears to be on its way.  (WCCFTech)
  
  This is AMD's new high-end laptop chip with up to 16 Zen 5 CPU cores and 40 graphics cores in the top-of-the-line Ryzen AI Max 395+.
  
  That compares to 4 Zen 5 and 8 slower Zen 5c cores with 16 GPU cores in the current Ryzen AI 370.  So this will be a beast.
  
  
  
• You are in a maze of twisty little licenses, all alike.  (CSVBase)
  
  A review of an a rant about open source licenses.
  
  
  
• Earth is set to get a mini-moon for a couple of months.  (CBS)
  
  Are those Moon months or mini-moon months?
  
  
  

Not At All Tech News

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, September 20 2024 10:40 PM (pnaK4)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Saturday, September 21 2024 07:13 PM (rcPLc)

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• Nintendo and the Pokemon Company are officially suing Palworld creator Pocketpair.  (WCCFTech)
  
  At issue is the idea of catching and training weird animals, that Nintendo asserts it stole fair and square.
  
  Japanese patent law is a bit weird and unlike western patents, so whether they have a case is uncertain.  One major problem is that Pocketpair now has a billion dollars to fund its defense.
  
  
  
• Speaking of western patents Congress has decided that now is the perfect time to fuck everything up.  (Ars Technica)
  
  The Supreme Court has already thrown out entire categories of patent.  You can't patent something that is already commonplace "but on a computer", and you can't patent people's genes.
  
  The proposed bill is supported by the larger pharmaceutical companies and opposed by literally everyone else.

• Congress is also working on legislation that would require AM radios in all new cars made in the US.  (The Verge)
  
  As standard equipment, with no bullshit.
  
  Car makers are upset because this could add as much as a dollar to the cost of building a car.
  
  It's not for music or talk radio, but to provide a standard method for emergency broadcasts.
  
  
  
• When you run AVX-512 tasks on AMD's new Ryzen 9950X it slows down from 5.7GHz to 5.3GHz.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  That's hardly anything given that AVX-512 runs twice as fast on the new CPUs than on Zen 4.  And Intel's implementation of AVX-512 - before they killed it on consumer CPUs - could cut clock speeds in half.
  
  
  
• SpaceX plans to sue the FAA over its ongoing bullshit.  (Axios)
  
  The FAA twice announced at the last minute that it could not process SpaceX's plan requests in time for launch, and then fined SpaceX when it went ahead with the launches as planned.
  
  No other company is getting this treatment, though it's true that no other company operates at the scale of SpaceX.
  
  
  
• Twitter is using Cloudflare to provide service in Brazil.  (The Guardian)
  
  Cloudflare handles something like a quarter of the web traffic in the world, so blocking Cloudflare would cause complete chaos for Brazil's internet users.
  
  

Posted by: SMM World Panel at Thursday, September 19 2024 07:47 PM (0o5Nk)

Posted by: Mauser at Thursday, September 19 2024 08:07 PM (nk1Z+)

Posted by: madrocketsci at Thursday, September 19 2024 11:33 PM (hRoyQ)

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, September 20 2024 09:56 AM (pnaK4)

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• Well, that happened.
  
  
  
• OpenAI's new AI called o1 is the same garbage but more expensive.  (The Verge)
  
  It still makes shit up, because it's a language model (a bad one) and not a fact model.  It is somewhat improved in making excuses for its lies, but that's about it.

  "What worries me more is that in the future, when we ask AI to solve complex problems, like curing cancer or improving solar batteries, it might internalize these goals so strongly that it becomes willing to break its guardrails to achieve them," Hobbhahn told me.

  No, really?
  

• The 2019 Nobel Prize winner in Physiology or Medicine has now had thirteen papers retracted after duplicated or manipulated images were found. (Retraction Watch)
  
  Repeat from yesterday for absolutely no reason and totally unconnected to the above story.
  
  
  
• It you recently plonked down $4000 for one of the two laptops available with Thunderbolt 5, you can now get a Thunderbolt 5 docking station for $400.  (Liliputing)
  
  It also works with Thunderbolt 3, Thunderbolt 4, and USB4 ports, so if you just want to future-proof yourself it's fine for that.
  
  
  
• AMD has fixed the cross-chip latency regression in Zen 5.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  That is unlikely to correct the weird benchmark results we've seen, because those also show up on Zen 5 chips with a single CPU chip.
  
  
  
• TCL has been accused of selling quantum dot TVs without any quantum dots.  (Ars Technica)
  
  TCL says the quantum dots are only there when you're not looking for them.
  
  
  
• VirtualBox, Parallels, and VMWare Fusion (for Mac) and Workstation (for Windows) have all received upgrades.  (The Register)
  
  VirtualBox is free, and Fusion and Workstation are also free for personal use.  VMWare basically doesn't care about you if you're not one of their top 600 customers, so much that they don't even bother to charge you for their low-end products.

Posted by: cxt217 at Thursday, September 19 2024 08:31 AM (ZLF73)

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, September 19 2024 01:31 PM (pnaK4)

Posted by: normal at Thursday, September 19 2024 02:08 PM (bg2DR)

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• Intel will be receiving up to $3 billion in direct funding under the CHIPS Act.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Does Intel deserve government handouts?  Eh.
  
  Is this what the CHIPS Act is intended to do?  Actually, yes.
  
  Is it less wasteful than 90% of government programs?  Also yes, but that's not saying much.
  
  
  
• Intel has also signed a multi-billion dollar deal to manufacture custom server and AI processors for Amazon.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Amazon already buys a lot of chips from Intel, so it's not clear how much bigger this is than existing contracts, but Amazon was not using Intel to make its custom chips previously, so it is at least a new market.

• Still with Intel the company reportedly lost out to AMD on a $30 billion deal to create the chips for the upcoming PlayStation 6.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Since AMD has produced the last two generations of chips for both PlayStation and Xbox, the company was the clear favourite to pick up this contract as well.
  
  
  
• MacOS 15 Sequoia is here.  (Ars Technica)
  
  It brings with it a bunch of stuff you don't want and breaks the cool little apps that make MacOS bearable to use.
  
  Again.
  
  
  
• Oracle is here to spy on you.  (The Register)
  
  Rest assured, though, that your mandatory bodycam will keep right on recording when you've turned it off.
  
  
  
• The 2019 Nobel Prize winner in Physiology or Medicine has now had thirteen papers retracted after duplicated or manipulated images were found.  (Retraction Watch)
  
  Oops.
  
  
  
• Brazilian judge Tomas de Torquemada has fined Starlink to cover the fines levied against Twitter.  (Ars Technica)
  
  Since this is not a rocket thread, the Ars commentariat is has dialed its usual Two Minute Hate up to 11.

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• The Polaris Dawn mission, operated by SpaceX and funded by tech billionaire Jared Isaacman, was a huge success and an important step forward in making manned spaceflight truly practical and not just a weapon of the Cold War.  (Ars Technica)
  
  Just watching the resources put into the capsule recovery was impressive, and that was one of the simpler components of the project.
  
  The communists in the Ars Technica comments are livid.
  
  And they're getting downvoted to oblivion by the mere socialists who thing spaceflight is cool.
  
  
  
• So, after a year of trying to order the Calliope Mori Hyte Y40 case here in Australia, it finally showed up for pre-order.
  
  I placed my order.
  
  It disappeared from the site.
  
  They just cancelled.
  
  I tried to order directly from Hyte despite the horrifying expense, but they no longer know where Australia is.
  
  Fuck.

• Asgard just announced the world's first DDR5-9600 CUDIMMs.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  These use a clock regenerator chip on the module to synchronise the clock signal and keep everything, um, in sync.  They are compatible with regular DDR5 memory controllers in CPUs, though, assuming your CPU can run memory at 9600MHz.
  
  They also run at 1.5v, where DDR5 nominally runs at 1.1v.  So that's rather a lot.
  
  
  
• There's a new model of the Lenovo Legion Y700 tablet coming out next month.  (Notebook Check)
  
  Another product that will be impossible to buy.
  
  
  
• A look at the UGREEN NASync DXP480T Plus.  (Liliputing)
  
  This is a little NAS/media unit.  It has an Intel 1235U mobile CPU with Thunderbolt, USB, HDMI, and a headphone jack, and a 10Gb Ethernet port.
  
  On the NAS side there's an M.2 2242 drive for the operating system, and four M.2 2280 drives for storage.  Since laptop chips have a limited number of PCIe lanes, those only run at PCIe 4.0 x2, so they're each limited to...  About three times the maximum speed of that 10Gb Ethernet port.
  
  Probably not a problem.
  
  Liliputing found that the hardware is solid and well-designed, but the software - a custom Linux distro called UGOS - is still a bit rough.
  
  You can install your own operating system - you can even remove the operating system disk and keep it as a backup in case you make a mess - but that is not officially supported.  Which is fair enough.
  
  
  
• DryMerge is an AI powered application connector, like IFTTT (If This Then That) or Xapier, only you talk to it.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Which could be a great idea if it works, but right now it mostly doesn't.
  
  
  
• Lexar has announced its new 1TB SD 8.0 memory card, that delivers transfer rates of up to 1.7GB per second in compatible devices.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  There are no compatible devices.
  
  Well, it should work in anything with a full-size SD card slot, but it will fall back to an older, slower version of the SD protocol.
  
  Also, at full speed it might melt.  That can't readily be confirmed of course since no consumer product exists that can run it at full speed.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Monday, September 16 2024 09:38 PM (3NtfN)

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, September 17 2024 10:40 AM (pnaK4)

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• The Kneecap Loophole: Twelve defendants have been sentenced over a highly technical criminal scheme to steal people's cryptocurrency.  (DOJ)
  
  The scheme worked like this: They'd break into your house, tie you up, and torture you until you gave up your password.
  
  Yeah.
  
  
  
• Further update to the Boeing strike story: I have a copy of the bargaining agreement, but it's 336 pages and I haven't had time to wade through it yet.  There's certainly a lot more give and take than just a 25% pay rise.

• Intel's latest Ultra 7 258V laptop chip - coming out later this month - is 32% faster in some game benchmarks than AMD's previous generation Z1 Ultra chip used in handheld devices.  (WCCFTech)
  
  If - and this does rather matter - you turn the graphics off.  With graphics on, the Z1 Ultra is slightly faster.
  
  I'll wait for better benchmarks, thanks.
  
  
  
• AMD's laptop chips are better on paper than anything from Intel, so why does Intel still dominate the laptop market?  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Supply and support.  AMD consistently lags on both critical points.
  
  
  
• Underpromise and overdeliver: The NASA story.  (Ars Technica)
  
  NASA needs to get out of the rocket business and focus on building clever space robots.
  
  
  
• Why Google scuttled its AI robot project after pouring untold millions of dollars into it.  (Axios)
  
  After seven years of effort the robots sorted trash during the day and improvised dances at night, like minimum wage workers on TikTok.
  
  Beyond that, generative AI is a dumpster fire and giving it control of a physical body is just asking to have your eyeballs replaced with grapes to improve the colour balance in your group photo.
  
  
  
• The Polaris Dawn mission is headed back for splashdown any moment now.
  
  Update: The crew is currently talking about space pirates.
  
  
  
  

Posted by: normal at Monday, September 16 2024 03:15 AM (bg2DR)

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