• AI web crawlers are destroying the web.  (The Register)
  
  And there's not even a nominal quid-pro-quo where they get your content but they index it for you and point it at your site.  They get your content and they basically just keep it.
  
  
  
• On the plus side, humans are now being hired to make AI slop look slightly less sloppy.  (NBC News)
  
  But not being paid very much.

• A look at the HP Zbook Ultra G1a.  (Hot Hardware)
  
  This model is build on the Ryzen AI Max 395+ - a chip with 16 CPU cores and 40 graphics cores, about the fastest thing you can find in a laptop these days.
  
  Performance is solid, and it has a 2880x1800 OLED display and almost the four essential keys to go with that CPU and 128GB of RAM.
  
  Not one I'd recommend unless you have a direct use for that 128GB of RAM and integrated GPU, which basically implies running LLMs locally.
  
  
  
• I may have mentioned in passing that my feets hurts due to edema - fluid retention - brought on by my recent high blood pressure.  The usual treatment for edema is diuretics, which help you reabsorb and pee out the unwanted fluid, and my doctor duly prescribed me such a medication which did very little for the first four days.
  
  Well, the pills finally kicked in.  And how.

• Maybe the real Earth-shattering kaboom was the friends we made along the way: The heat shield seems to have performed well on the latest Starship test.  (Ars Technica)
  
  And looking forward to the next ten test flights, with one more test of Starship V2 before they start in with Starship V3.
  
  Some of the commenters are crazy.  Ignore them.
  
  
  
• SpaceX had a busy week generally, with launches every day including one to reboost the ISS.  (Ars Technica)
  
  The latest Cargo Dragon delivery also included two Draco thrusters to gradually nudge the space station to higher orbit.
  
  
  

Tech News

• Scientists just created spacetime crystals made of knotted light.  (Science Daily)
  
  I'm sure they did.  Meanwhile I'm stuck with a half-disassembled door handle.
  
  
  
• Rick Beato is right to rant about music copyright strikes.  (Saving Country Music)
  
  Beato is a musician and record producer who has worked in the industry for more than 40 years, and has a YouTube channel full of great short documentaries, where he either knows the participants or was there personally.
  
  Universal Music Group has declared war on him.
  
  
  

Musical Interlude

Posted by: Mauser at Monday, September 01 2025 06:42 PM (QE7eq)

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• Do not drop a computer on your feet, or if you must, do not drop a computer on your feet and then complain about the pain. Pain is just a signal that everything is working, including your feet and your computer.
  
  Ow.
  
  
  

Tech News

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, August 29 2025 10:01 PM (1zWbY)

Posted by: MrHappy at Sunday, August 31 2025 02:13 AM (TCNOA)

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• How to break security on any modern LLM-based AI system: Just keep nagging it with idiocy until it gives up.  (The Register)
  
  Because of the many things that LLMs are not, high among them is security models:

  "The most practical mitigation today is not to rely solely on the model for safety. We advocate for a 'defense-in-depth' approach, using external systems like AI firewalls or guardrails to monitor and block problematic outputs before they reach the user. A more permanent, though much more difficult, solution would involve building safety into the model's foundational training from the ground up."

  LLMs inherently have no concept of security; they at best pretend that they do.
  
  If you want any kind of security, you have to implement it using something else.  LLMs offer no security themselves and never will.
  
  
  
• Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales - between begging for money - says the site could used AI.  (404 Media)  (archive site)
  
  Wikipedia editors say in unison, the hell we can.
  
  
  

Tech News

• Is GMP damaging Zen 5 CPUs  (GMPLib)
  
  Plausibly, yes, it you run GMP constantly for months on end.
  
  
  
• Google has eliminated 35% of its managers in the past year.  (CNBC)
  
  It's a start.
  
  
  

How Those Early Atari Computers Worked

Bacon Interlude

• Ow my feets.
• Have a plumber here today because things don't happen when it's convenient  for you.
• Already done a battery of tests for Mystery Medical Condition because see above.
• If you have kids or niblings, the trades are where it's at.
• Medtech might be a more reliable job than doctor, too.
• I have two plumbers here now.  That's either good news or someone's kids are getting braces.
• That sounded interesting.  Interesting to be inside the house above when it cut loose anyway.
• Venimus, vidimus, cloacas reseravimus.
  

Musical Interlude

Posted by: Mauser at Thursday, August 28 2025 01:24 PM (QE7eq)

Posted by: J Greely at Thursday, August 28 2025 02:29 PM (oJgNG)

3 Forgot to ask earlier - is that last bullet point giving the name of whatever you've been diagnosed with

Posted by: Frank at Friday, August 29 2025 10:43 AM (+i6Xr)

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• The Geekom A9 Max is a 5" square mini-PC with a Ryzen 370, up to 128GB of RAM, and room for a 2280 and a 2230 M.2 drive. (Liliputing)
  
  And dual HDMI, dual USB4, and dual 2.5Gb Ethernet. A pretty solid little system, though somewhat expensive at $999.
  
  
  
• The Geekom A9 Mega is an 8" square mini-PC with a Ryzen 395+, up to 128GB of RAM, and room for two 2280 M.2 drives. (Notebook Check)
  
  And dual HDMI, dual USB4, and dual 2.5Gb Ethernet. A pretty solid little system, though somewhat expensive at $1899.
  
  This looks like a Mac Studio next to a Mac Mini. Looks quite good actually.

• AMD and Intel have both cut the prices of their top server CPUs by up to 50%. (WCCFTech)
  
  Huh.

Posted by: PatBuckman at Tuesday, August 26 2025 02:45 AM (rcPLc)

Posted by: J Greely at Wednesday, August 27 2025 12:21 AM (oJgNG)

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• 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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