• Bluesky has blocked users from Mississippi over that's state's age verification requirements for social networks.  (Bsky)
  
  Rather than check if you are from that state, if the law applies to you, and if you are a permitted user, you are simply blocked.  Safer and simpler.
  
  Comically, the Tech Crunch article on situation is blocked if you are running an ad blocker.
  
  This is the first time such a law has survived preliminary injunctions in the US and it is already making a mess.

• 99,000 AI-generated songs are uploaded every day - including fake ones by established artists.  (BBC)
  
  It is becoming untenable.
  
  
  
• Google is running a sneak AI experiment that makes real videos look fake.  (Yahoo)
  
  Y tho?
  
  It may just be A/B testing on video sharpening algorithms.
  
  

Posted by: normal at Tuesday, August 26 2025 09:39 AM (e0fX0)

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• Who are the 400 million people who made Threads the second most popular discussion platform after only Twitter?  (Mashable)
  
  The article doesn't seem to understand its own conclusion: That these are the same people who made The Big Bang Theory the most popular show on television: Bipedal sphex wasps.
  
  In short, they don't exist, or at least not as recognisably individual human beings.  They are trivially interchangeable corporate drones, the same people who made CB (formerly Cracker Barrel, the nation's foremost fine dining cheese experience) a household name for all the wrong reasons.
  
  
  
• Speaking of households, I peeked out of mine this afternoon.  It was a warm winter's day, so I essayed out to tackle the easiest part of the garden - the patch of lawn nearest the house - which was dusted with small weeds and could do with a trim before the season kicks off for real next month.
  
  Even my smaller lawnmower (an 18V Bosch unit) could handle the task, though I did need to swap batteries at the midpoint because I had neglected to do so before putting it away for the winter.
  
  On the other hand, that virus really did a number on me, and I also needed to recharge half-way through mowing less than half the lawn.  It'll likely be weeks before I'm back to normal.
  
  
  
• Also had a migraine.  Just 'cause.

• Will Trump help 4Chan escape the UK's Thought Police?  (The Verge)  (archive site)
  
  Uncertain but hopeful. Certainly someone needs to drag the Latter Day Stasi to one side before they bring down the entire internet in civil war.
  
  
  
• Will the FTC help Europe escape its own catastrophic meddling in critical internet security protocols?  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  So many idiots, so little time.
  
  
  
• Coinbase's CEO explains why he fired engineers who didn't try AI immediately.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Because he's an asshole.

  "I jumped on this call on Saturday and there were a couple people that had not done it.  Some of them had a good reason, because they were just getting back from some tri p or something, and some of them didn’t [have a good reason].  And they got fired."

  And then Coinbase was nuked from orbit, and oh how we laughed.
  
  
  
• InnoDisk demonstrated DDR5 MRDIMMs running at capacities up to 128GB and speeds up to 12,800MHz.  (Serve the Home)
  
  These could be interesting in a second-generation AMD Strix Halo desktop - expandable memory and 50% more bandwidth than the soldered solutions currently available, which cap out at 8500MHz.

Posted by: David Eastman at Monday, August 25 2025 03:19 AM (aAyxl)

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, August 25 2025 06:44 AM (1zWbY)

Posted by: Mauser at Monday, August 25 2025 07:06 AM (QE7eq)

Posted by: stargazera5 at Monday, August 25 2025 09:41 AM (WM5vz)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, August 25 2025 01:34 PM (PiXy!)

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• The US government has signed a deal with Intel to convert $8.9 billion in planned but as yet unpaid grants under the CHIPS act into a 9.9% stake in the company.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  The previously planned grants did not offer the government an ownership stake, but came with technical goals that Intel may not be able to meet in the current climate, making the revised deal a palatable alternative.  Intel stock was up 5.5% after the news broke on Friday.
  
  
  
• In addition, if Intel decides to sell off a majority of its chip foundry division, the government will have the option to buy another 5% of Intel common shares at the same price of $20.  (WCCFTech)
  
  With great bargains come great responsibility.

• In further addition, the government is looking at allocating $2 billion of the $8 billion unspent in the Biden Administration's CHIPs to break China's stranglehold on rare earth elements.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Rare earth elements are not particularly rare.  China has significant reserves, yes, but so do the United States, Brazil, India, Vietnam, Australia, and possibly Greenland.
  
  
  
• Minisforum is planning another of those AMD Strix Halo mini-PCs.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Same core specs as the rest: Sixteen CPU cores, 40 GPU cores that work well for games and very well for AI, and 128GB of RAM of which up to 96GB can be assigned to GPU tasks.
  
  This model also comes with why-the-hell-didn't they just call it USB5 - that is, UBS4 v2, which has the new 80GBps trinary data link found in Thunderbolt 5.  You can just plug two of those directly together to build a small but fast cluster.
  

Posted by: normal at Sunday, August 24 2025 02:35 AM (e0fX0)

Posted by: Joe Redfield at Sunday, August 24 2025 02:56 AM (KOtXO)

Posted by: Mauser at Sunday, August 24 2025 07:43 AM (QE7eq)

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• Australia's largest bank - the Commonwealth Bank - has been forced to rehire employees laid off in tests against their AI counterparts when it turned out that the tests had not been testing on anything like an even playing field.  (Ars Technica)
  
  Who knew?  Apart from everybody.
  
  Fortunately only 45 people had been fired by that point.  It could have been a lot worse, and soon will be.

• The Terramaster F4 is four-bay NVMe NAS with a 5Gb Ethernet port.  (Liliputing)
  
  The 5Gb port is a nice touch.  It can handle that transfer rate without any trouble at all.  Internally it can handle about 900MBps, close to the limit of 10Gb Ethernet.  Which it doesn't have.
  
  About $360 at the moment.
  
  
  
• Google says its AI systems barely sip water when answering questions, while "experts" say they are true water guzzlers.  (The Verge)  (archive site)
  
  The truth as always is somewhere off to one side in I don't care territory.
  
  
  
• We already got a Commodore 64 remake, and now it seems the company - or a company anyway - will be releasing a clone of the rather more capable Amiga 1200.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  With a Motorola 68020 CPU an an effectively 64-bit chipset, the A1200 offered about four times the performance of the original Amiga.

Musical Interlude

Posted by: Frank at Friday, August 22 2025 07:48 PM (+i6Xr)

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, August 22 2025 10:04 PM (1zWbY)

Posted by: normal at Saturday, August 23 2025 03:48 AM (e0fX0)

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• Copilot broke your audit log but didn't tell you.  (Pistachio)

  But what happens if you ask Copilot to not provide you with a link to the file it summarized?  Well, in that case, the audit log is empty.

  AI tools do this kind of thing a lot.
  
  
  
  

• Samsung has announced an 8TB version of the 9100 Pro SSD.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Given the pricing of 8TB SSDs and of PCIe 5.0 generally, it costs $1050.
  
  Just buy two 4TB PCIe 4.0 drives if that is an option.
  
  
  
• The CEO of AWS says that replacing entry-level tech stuff with AI is the "Dumbest thing I've ever heard".  (The Resigster)
  
  It's up there, I'll grant that.
  
  Labubu could make $1 billion this year.  (Tech Crunch)  (archive site)
  
  But not the dumbest.

• A three judge panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals handed a win to Tesla in its fight over prosecution by the NLRB when it ruled that the entire bureau was probably unconstitutional.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Oof.
  
  
  
• Meta is shaking up its AI group again.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  At some point it plans to launch AI products.
  
  Maybe.

• 95% of generative AI pilot programs are failing.  (Fortune)
  
  You gotta pump those numbers up.
  
  
  

Posted by: PatBuckman at Wednesday, August 20 2025 06:36 PM (rcPLc)

Posted by: J Greely at Wednesday, August 20 2025 09:56 PM (oJgNG)

Posted by: normal at Wednesday, August 20 2025 11:03 PM (LADmw)

Posted by: Frank at Thursday, August 21 2025 02:22 AM (+i6Xr)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Thursday, August 21 2025 02:55 AM (rcPLc)

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• If a Linktr.ee fell in a forest in India and nobody knew why, would it make a sound?  (Tech Crunch)||
  
  Because it did.
  
  
  
• England has declared war on 4Chan.  (Think Broadband)
  
  This seems unwise.  4Chan is a US company so England has less than no authority here.

• Japanese investment company Softbank has invested $2 billion in Intel - about 2% of the company.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Chicken feed as such things go but I wouldn't say no.
  
  
  
• How the new CEO of Obsidian went from superfan to, uh, CEO.  (The Verge)
  
  What?  Oh, different Obsidian.  Don't care, didn't ask.

Posted by: PatBuckman at Wednesday, August 20 2025 12:40 AM (rcPLc)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, August 20 2025 03:40 PM (PiXy!)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Wednesday, August 20 2025 05:39 PM (rcPLc)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, August 20 2025 06:10 PM (PiXy!)

Posted by: SundogUK at Saturday, August 23 2025 04:30 PM (6G3ff)

Posted by: normal at Sunday, August 24 2025 02:28 AM (e0fX0)

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• At a tech press dinner Thursday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman mention that the company continues on its path to invest trillions on new AI datacentres and looks set to break $10 billion on gross revenue this year.  (The Register)
  
  That's up from last year, when the company lost $5 billion on revenues of $5 billion.
  
  Asked if this was a bubble, Altman responded yes.

• Is the Alldocube iPlay mini Ultra an affordable alternative to the scarce high-end compact tables like Lenovo's Legion Tab?  (Notebook Check)
  
  Yes.  Maybe.
  
  It roughly matches the specs of last year's Legion Tab, though it is not drastically cheaper.
  
  But then there is this from last year.  (Alldocube)
  
  The update firmware for the previous model was hack so owners got a surprise free virus.
  
  
  
• Wifi destroys the environment.  (Tom's Hardware).
  
  This new from the same mob that pleaded with you to delete your photos as the English drought entered its second desperate hour.

Posted by: PatBuckman at Tuesday, August 19 2025 02:44 AM (rcPLc)

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• A federal judge has blocked the FTC's investigation into Media Matters' illegal activity.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan - I swear I am not making this up - said that nothing Media Matters was doing was illegal and in any case they had already stopped with most of the illegal stuff.
  
  
  
• A brazen attack on air safety is under way.  (The Verge)  (archive site)
  
  If you saw "The Verge" and guessed they were screeching inanely about the Trump administration, you can collect your Kewpie doll in aisle five, next to the mayonnaise.

• Sony seems to be learning, slowly: Fairgame$, set to be the company's next computer game mega-flop (Sony earlier released Concord, which cost $400 million to make and earned $0) has been quietly strangled.  (WCCFTech)
  
  A huge loss of all the news channels who were looking forward to making fun of this one.
  
  
  
• SD Express is a new standard for mini storage.  (Liliputing)
  
  Slightly larger than micro SD, it supports PCI Express 4.0 x2 for transfer rates up to 3.7GB per second.  Launch devices have capacities up to 2TB.
  
  Both of which used to be a lot.

Posted by: PatBuckman at Sunday, August 17 2025 11:25 PM (rcPLc)

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• GPT-5 is getting warmer and friendlier.  (The Verge)
  
  Not better, mind you.  Indeed. they seem to have rather embraced the shambles of a rollout.
  
  But what can you do except not use it which I already am doing.  Or not doing, depending on how that works.
  
  
  
• How to avoid your AI therapy driving you crazy.  (WCCFTech)
  
  You know, there seems to be a theme here.

• GitHub now supports BMP and TIFF file attachments.  (GitHub)
  
  And they're working on WebP.  At this rate you can expect it in 15 to 20 years.
  
  
  
• Is Proton - as in ProtonMail and ProtonVPN - leaving Switzerland?  (TechRadar)
  
  Very probably.  The country, once a safe haven for secure data, has become significantly less so.
  
  
  

Posted by: Mauser at Sunday, August 17 2025 12:27 PM (QE7eq)

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