• Conservatives died more than liberals after the COVID vaccine rollout. (Ars Technica)

  The study is just the latest to find a connection between political party affiliation and deaths during the pandemic. But, it takes the connection a step further, going beyond county-level political leanings and looking at how party affiliation linked to deaths at the individual level. The authors—all researchers at Yale University—focused on Ohio and Florida because those were the only two states with readily available public data on voter registration.
  
  The study involved death data on 538,159 people in Ohio and Florida, age 25 and older, and their linked voter registration files. The researchers did not have complete data—the linked data didn't contain a cause of death or vaccination status. But, they could evaluate excess weekly deaths by age, state, county, and party affiliation. They found that the gap in excess deaths was larger in counties with lower vaccination rates, suggesting that lack of vaccination among Republican voters may partly explain the higher death rates.

  So they didn't have the cause of death or vaccination status, and if you read the study to the end (which they desperately hope you won't) they only had voter registration information for 57% of the people in the study.
  
  And they didn't control for any confounding factors at all, because the consumers of fascist fear porn don't give a shit.
  
  
  
• Indeed, all the studies so far trying to prove such a correlation have been complete garbage. (Marginally Compelling)
  
  A good blog about the mathematics of the pandemic (and other things) and how everyone has a vested interest in lying to you.

• The first room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor? (Arxiv) (PDF)
  
  Maybe. Good discussion on Hacker News.
  
  The researchers appear to have a good track record publishing less exciting papers in this field, and the superconductor as described would certainly be a breakthrough but not actually useful for industrial applications - it fails under high current loads, which is one of the main things you want superconductors for.
  
  But there's a history of superconducting materials being refined to support higher current loads, so if real, given time, this might change the world.
  
  
  
• The EU is planning to pile $47 billion in one place and set it on fire. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  This is the European Chips Act. Where Japan is making a very specific hedge against China fucking things up, building a leading-edge chip factory specifically for Japanese customers, Europe is engaging in its usual omnixenophobia and paranostalgia:

  "With the Chips Act, Europe will be a frontrunner in the world semiconductors race," said Héctor Gómez Hernández, Spanish Minister for Industry, Trade and Tourism. "We can already see it in action: new production plants, new investments, new research projects. And in the long run, this will also contribute to the renaissance of our industry and the reduction of our foreign dependencies."

  Wanna bet, Hector?
  
  
  
• Newegg's ChatGPT plugin helps you plan a PC build. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Very, very badly.
  
  
  
• OpenAI has shut down its AI detection tool. (Decrypt)
  
  Because just like its AI, it doesn't work.
  
  
  
• The Gulf Stream could collapse by 2005 according to a new study. (The Guardian)
  
  Wait, 2015. I mean, 2025!
  
  
  
• File under nobody cares: Actors out of work due to Hollywood disappearing into a Hellmouth of its own creation will not be permitted to launch podcasts discussing the prior output of the LA sewer system. (The Verge)
  
  Okay. Sure.
  
  
  
• Just like Twitter in the bad old days Threads will regularly switch back from a chronological feed to its shitty algorithm no matter what you do. (The Verge)
  
  You are not the customer. You are not the product. You are sand in the gears.

Posted by: normal at Wednesday, July 26 2023 11:51 PM (zx18t)

2 Grrr.  Third time:
Some "great" comments at Verge:  "[Don't force quit apps, peasants!] When you force quit an app, you're purging its cache so of course it resets your app's last state. How are tech challenged folks working at a tech site?"
This genius has never heard of an ini file.
Also, Akismet still barfs on cool characters like right single quote:
File "/home/minx/test/Form.py", line 647, in form_comment print('Akismet check %s in %0.3fs on %s %s %s "%s"' % ('error' if aki_err else 'accept' if aki_ok else 'reject', time.time()-taki, tags.get('form.name',''), tags.get('form.web',''), tags.get('form.mail',''), text)) UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode character u'\u2019' in position 182: ordinal not in range(12

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, July 27 2023 12:09 AM (BMUHC)

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, July 27 2023 12:10 AM (BMUHC)

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• If you're going to be evil, be all the way evil: Google's new Web Integrity API plans to lock you out of your own browser and track your activity everywhere with in-depth fingerprinting and unblockable DRM.  (Ars Technica)
  
  I've switched to Brave.  Finally.
  
  Once Google was a tech company,
  They wrote a lot of code.
  But baby that was years ago,
  Before the advertising motherlode.
  
  For all their flaws Apple and Microsoft still make actual products.  Amazon at least ships products.  With Google, you are not the customer.

• A 2nm fab - chip factory - is under construction in Hokkaido, the northernmost of Japan's major islands.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  The venture, called Rapidus, is backed by the Japanese government and a who's who of major Japanese companies from NTT to Toyota, and is in large part a hedge against China fucking everything up.
  
  Worst case if cooler heads prevail and the world doesn't go up in radioactive smoke, they still have a home-grown, leading edge chip production facility.
  
  
  
• Intel's new AVX10 instruction set is AVX-512 without the 512.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  AVX-512 has two features: 512-bit operations and a better-designed instruction set than AVX and AVX2.  AMD actually implements it as two 256-bit operations in sequence, mostly using the existing AVX2 logic, and it still works very well.
  
  Intel implemented AVX-512 as a full 512-bit design and has been having problems with it ever since.  On servers it uses too much power and reduces clock speeds; on desktop CPUs it's simply broken.
  
  AVX10 solves these problems by making the hard stuff optional.  AMD's solution is still better, and proven to work, so it's not clear why Intel isn't following suit.
  
  
  
• Sam Altman-Fried's Worldcoin scans your eyeballs and puts them on the blockchain, because who wouldn't want to do that?  (Tech Crunch)
  
  This scheme from a third-rate Bond movie has raised $250 million so far.
  
  
  
• The Flipper Zero hacking security testing tool now has its own app store.  (Liliputing)
  
  Now your hacking tool can get hacked.  How convenient!
  
  
  
• Lenovo's Slim Pro 9i Gen 8 14 (a.k.a Yoga Pro 9i Gen 8 14) has a 3072x1920 14.5" display with 100% everything and an eye-searing 1200 nits maximum brightness.  (Notebook Check)
  
  It has soldered RAM, but there are options for 32GB and 64GB as well as the base 16GB, and those options are actually available in Australia.  Though if you choose the 64GB option here you also need to choose the fastest CPU and RTX 4070 graphics.
  
  It actually might be the laptop I was looking for except that (a) I spent all my laptop money already, (b) I'm fairly happy with the much cheaper HP I have now, and (c) there are no good photos of the keyboard I can find anywhere so the Four Essential Keys are stuck in a state of quantum indeterminism.
  
  The Yoga 9i 14 has four non-essential keys in the place of the Four Essential Keys, so PowerToys could turn it into something acceptable.  But judging from the corner of the keyboard in one photo I think the Pro model does away with them.

Posted by: normal at Wednesday, July 26 2023 02:36 AM (zx18t)

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, July 27 2023 02:21 PM (BMUHC)

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, July 27 2023 02:24 PM (BMUHC)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, July 27 2023 03:26 PM (PiXy!)

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• Telescreens: Not just behind the painting anymore.  (Forbes)
  
  What do you get when you deploy vast networks of traffic cameras and feed them all into AI systems to track, well, everything?
  
  One arrest and the eradication of privacy and Fourth Amendment rights.
  
  Welcome to the goldfish bowl.

• Solar panels built over irrigation canals could, like, do things.  (AP)
  
  They would reduce evaporation and generate electricity, so it's a twofer.  But the correction at the end of the article is a doozy:

  This story was first published on July 20, 2023 and was updated on July 21, 2023 to correct the erroneous statement that panels over California’s canals could provide 13 gigawatts of power, enough to supply the city of Los Angeles from January through October. The proper term of measurement would have been gigawatt-hours rather than gigawatts, but additionally, researchers now say the total amount of energy that would be generated has not yet been scientifically estimated.

  So if the corrected number is correct, it could power the city of Los Angeles for an hour each year.
  
  
  
• If you don't sign in to your Ubisoft account regularly, they will protect your privacy by deleting your account, and also your games.  (PC Gamer)
  
  Trying to win that coveted Worst Company in the World title away from EA?
  
  
  
• Testing seven M.2 2230 SSDs.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  I have two laptops with 2230-size slots (in addition to 2280 slots).  Recent Microsoft Surface tablets have 2230 storage, and so do some portable devices like the Steam Deck.
  
  This review doesn't run the full suite of tests you usually see; just game loading times and basic read benchmarks, but all of the drives manage rates over 1.5GB per second, which is a lot for something the size of a postage stamp.
  
  
  
• AMD's Ryzen 7500F is a new 6 core model without integrated graphics.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  At $179 vs. $229 for the 7600 with integrated graphics, and 5.0GHz vs. 5.1GHz, it makes sense for a budget gaming build where you wouldn't use the integrated graphics anyway.
  
  Rumours are that Intel's upcoming 14100 could also be a six-core part (the 13100 has four cores) so that might be an even better budget part, but likely won't show up until January.

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, July 25 2023 02:11 AM (BMUHC)

Posted by: cxt217 at Tuesday, July 25 2023 10:01 AM (2tHvf)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, July 25 2023 11:17 PM (PiXy!)

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Posted by: Kuldeep at Monday, July 01 2024 05:28 PM (bn9vT)

Posted by: Kuldeep at Monday, July 01 2024 05:30 PM (bn9vT)

Posted by: John at Thursday, June 19 2025 01:09 AM (IlRtG)

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• Gabe Bankman-Fried, brother of failed Ponzi schemer Sam, tried to buy the nation of Nauru as a prepper camp.  (CNBC)
  
  "Nauru is not for sale", said Nauru, "at least, not at that price."
  
  (Nauru was briefly prosperous in the 70s and 80s thanks to phosphate mining by British and Australian companies, but the island is only eight square miles and the mining did a lot of damage.  At one point Australia offered the much larger Curtis Island as compensation, but the deal would have made them Australian citizens and they declined.)
  
  
  

Tech News

• The 16GB model of Nvidia's RTX 4060 Ti is here.  Don't buy it.  (Extreme Tech)
  
  It averages 3% faster than the 8GB model but is 25% more expensive.  Having 16GB of RAM means it will last a lot longer - current generation consoles also have 16GB of RAM so games are written with that in mind, and only having 8GB is already a problem.
  
  But the retail price overlaps that of the much better RTX 4070, which is also overpriced and underpowered but still a clear winner over the 4060 Ti.
  
  
  
• If you want to spend just a little bit of money upgrading a PC, the 1TB Intel 670p is now $36.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  This is a QLC drive but has a DRAM cache on board, so it's fine for typical desktop use.
  
  It cost $154 when it first appeared in 2021.
  
  
  
• Hundreds of drones gracefully landed in Melbourne's Yarra River when a light show for a women's football game didn't go entirely as planned.  (ABC)
  
  And, this being the Yarra River, immediately fossilised.
  
  
  
• Which would win, Apple's M2 CPU as found in the MacBook Air, or AMD's Z1 Extreme, aimed at low-power portable gaming devices.  (Phoronix)
  
  The tests are run under Linux, and Linux is terrible on current Mac hardware, but these are pure CPU tests and it's shouldn't matter that much.
  
  That said, the AMD chip clobbers the Apple hardware.
  
  
  
• Now there are 17 Phase Connect plushies I need to buy.  Pippa is the only one I watch routinely, but she's become one of my favourite vtubers as she's carved out her niche.  Tenma and Panko are fun too, and I've watched Lumi since she was with CyberLive.
  
  Still, kind of expensive, particularly since there are six Hololive plushies out as well, including Sana.
  
  
  

• Instagram's Twitter rival Threads definitely totally isn't dead, yet.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  This is a response to a Wall Street Journal article reporting that daily user logins are down by 70% and the duration of those logins is also down by 75%, so total user activity is down by more than 90%.
  
  Which is not the trend you want to see on your brand new platform.
  
  I pointed out previously when Threads crossed the 100 million user mark that the platform had fewer than 100 million posts total, so most of those users weren't doing anything at all.  Twitter's userbase averages 2 to 3 posts per day - and that's after 17 years, when the shine of a new platform has definitely worn off.
  
  
  

Tech News

• If you ask the new AI-powered search engines - Bing with ChatGPT and Google with it's home-grown Bard - for buying recommendations for computer hardware, they will point you to products that don't exist, and so does this article.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  It mentions AMD's 7950 XTX, which is not something you can buy anywhere.
  
  
  
• AMD's Threadripper Pro 7985WX is also not something you can buy, but someone out there has one because it's showing up in benchmark data.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Zen 4 Threadripper and Threadripper Pro chips are expected to be available this quarter.  There were never any Zen 3 regular Threadrippers, just the more expensive Threadripper Pro models.
  
  
  
• What is Reddit CEO Steve Huffman-Fried doing?  (The Verge)
  
  Making friends and influencing people. 
  
  Just like Hitler.

Posted by: normal at Sunday, July 23 2023 12:20 AM (obo9H)

Posted by: Rick C at Sunday, July 23 2023 01:34 AM (BMUHC)

Posted by: Rick C at Sunday, July 23 2023 01:39 AM (BMUHC)

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• AI generated clickbait will lead to the demise of search and web publishing/  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  This is so obvious that you have to wonder why anyone does it.
  
  
  
• We tried using OpenAI to generate "marketing strategies" and it worked.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Oh.  That's why.

• Alleged pricing for AMD's Radeon 7700 and 7800 has leaked.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  The rumour puts the 7700 at $450 and the 7800 at $550, which is probably true because both prices are $50 too high.
  
  At $400 the 7700 would compete directly against Nvidia's 8GB RTX 4060 Ti and crush it, and at $500 the 7800 would face up against the 16GB 4060 Ti model and make mincemeat out of it.
  
  It was AMD's fight to lose and they did.
  
  
  
• Solidigm has announced 60TB QLC SSDs for the datacenter.  (AnandTech)
  
  Prices are not mentioned in the article, but one of the comments has the details: You can expect this to be around $4000.  Which is a lot of money, but only 20% more per TB than the list price of the 4TB Team MP34.
  
  If you need over a petabyte of fast storage in a 2U server, it's now easy.
  
  
  
• At the other end of the scale you can get a 2TB WD SN850X at Best Buy for $99.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  It's a good drive and that's a great price.  If you need 2TB of storage, no reason to wait.  Prices will probably continue to trend downwards, but when it's already under $100 there's only so much further it can go.
  
  
  
• Apple is threatening to remove online services from the UK if planned surveillance legislation passes.  (BBC News)
  
  This isn't even a "maybe they both can lose" situation.  Apple is right; the legislation is awful.
  
  It would make it legal for British police and intelligence agencies to do everything their US equivalents currently do illegally.
  
  
  

Posted by: normal at Friday, July 21 2023 09:30 PM (obo9H)

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, July 21 2023 11:53 PM (BMUHC)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Saturday, July 22 2023 02:02 AM (r9O5h)

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• OpenAI has not made GPT-4 dumber, says OpenAI.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  However, GPT-4's ability to figure out whether the number 17077 is prime (it is) has fallen from 97.6% in March to 2.4% in June.
  
  This highlights a couple of problems with the whole notion of GPT-4 and other Large Language Models:
  
  1. They literally know nothing.  It's all word games.  If you understand what a prime number is it might take you a few minutes to run through the possible factors on a calculator and get the right answer, or even better program a computer to do it for you.  GPT-4 is incapable of doing that.
  
  2. They literally learn nothing.  If someone keeps asking you if 17077 is prime (it is) you might want to remember the answer, maybe even write it down.  GPT-4 is incapable of doing that as well.

• Linux now accounts for nearly half the desktop Linux market.  (The Register)
  
  The other half of the desktop Linux market is owned by ChromeOS, which is also Linux but pretends not to be.
  
  
  
• Intel's N50 CPU, with two E cores, is very slow.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  That's it.  That's the story.
  
  
  
• A balanced article about Robert Oppenheimer.  (Science)
  
  Not quite the Fauci of the day.  He was actually a competent scientist - maybe second-tier, but the first tier was people like Einstein and Dirac and Fermi, so that is no shame.  But he was also a communist who craved the sense of power.
  
  He is not on record as having tortured dogs, which is another plus in his column.
  
  
  
• Genoa-X and Bergamo put to the test.  (Hot Hardware)
  
  Genoa is AMD's current mainstream sever CPUs.  Genoa-X is the same design with extra cache dies stapled to the top to deliver up to 1152MB of cache per socket.  And Bergamo is a more compact design running at lower clock speeds but increasing core counts from 96 to 128.
  
  Interesting to see how they each fare on a long list of different tasks.  Bergamo is ideal for cloud providers like AWS, while Genoa-X runs away from the pack but only in certain very specific benchmarks.
  
  (Genoa-X is the server edition of the 7800X3D, currently the fastest gaming CPU available, but actually slower than a regular 7800X for other tasks.)
  
  
  
• Elon Musk is annoying all the right people once again by increasing Tesla's revenues by 50% year-on-year.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Margins are down due to price cuts, but the company actually is making it up on volume, with sales increasing more than enough to compensate.
  
  Tesla stock is down 5% in after-hours trading because no good quarterly report goes unpunished.
  
  
  
• Meanwhile the District of Columbia has awarded a $680,000 contract to fit all its electric vehicles with pine-scented prayer beads.  (Ars Technica)
  
  Rather, they awarded the contract for a blatant free energy scam, which has significantly less utility than pine-scented prayer beads.
  
  
  
• The Cyber Trust Mark is a voluntary IoT label coming in 2024. What does it mean? Absolutely nothing.  (Ars Technica)
  
  It's a voluntary label with federal government involvement, so possibly less than nothing.

• Framework's new 16" laptop - dubbed reasonably enough the Framework Laptop 16 - is now available for pre-order.  (The Verge)
  
  If you want one you'll be waiting a while because the first five production batches sold out in the first day.
  
  It comes with a Ryzen 7840HS or 7940HS CPU, up to 64GB of DDR5 RAM (and probably 96GB, but that depends on BIOS support), up to 6TB of SSD (10TB if you install your own), and optional Radeon 7700S graphics with 8GB of VRAM.
  
  The screen is a solid all-rounder: 2560x1600, 165Hz, 100% DCI-P3 colour, and 500 nits brightness.  The CPU isn't high-end - it has eight cores while AMD now offers 16 core laptop chips - but should be plenty for most users.
  
  And the optional dedicated GPU is truly optional: It works without it, you can add it later if you want, you can remove it, and you can upgrade it later on.  There's a plan for a storage module with two more M.2 slots to go in that expansion bay if you don't need the advanced graphics.
  
  It also has six little I/O modules, supporting a choice of USB-C, USB-A, DisplayPort, HDMI, microSD, 2.5Gb Ethernet, storage modules up to 1TB, and/or a headphone jack.  Only three of the module bays support external video, so you can't put anything anywhere, but it is very flexible.
  
  The keyboard is also modular.  The default keyboard lacks the Four Essential Keys, but you can add a numeric keypad or a 24 key macropad.  Or you can get both and swap between them on a whim.  The keyboard modules are programmable and each has an embedded RP2040 - the chip in the Raspberry Pi Pico.
  
  And everything is designed to be user-replaceable eith just a screwdriver and some patience.
  
  It's not cheap, but neither is the MacBook Pro, its polar opposite in terms of serviceability.

• Logitech has acquired Loupedeck, maker of fancy control surfaces for audiovisual editing that look great but kind of suck.  (The Verge)
  
  This is probably good, because Loupedeck had great ideas but lacked the money and engineering depth to bring them fully into fruition.
  
  
  
• Intel has stopped making NUCs - now Asus will make them instead.  (Serve the Home)
  
  Asus has bought the existing designs and the rights to manufacture and sell them, plus the rights to the brand and to produce future designs.
  
  Which is good because NUCs were generally decent designs.  Not world-shattering, but not awful.
  
  
  
• The largest lithium mine in North America has been cleared to start operations in Nevada.  (NPR)
  
  This is NPR, so naturally they think this is a bad thing, and they are switching their cars to run on unicorn farts.
  
  
  
• Neopets is relaunching with $4 million in fresh funding.  (BBC)
  
  Nobody tell Pippa, she has enough obsessions already.
  
  In the scheme of things, with how much money has been flushed down the drain on much dumber ideas (Juicero burned through $120 million trying to sell a juicer that created juice from, well, juice) this seems like a 24 carat investment.
  
  
  
• No, the Radeon 7800 isn't just a 16GB Radeon 7700.  (Notebook Check)
  
  My fault, I misread the article in Tom's Hardware yesterday.  The 7800 should be a 20-25% upgrade over the 6800, and the 7700 a 20-25% upgrade over the 6700 XT.  Nothing amazing, but the only amazing cards in this generation are the RTX 4090, which is amazingly fast and amazingly expensive, and the MooreThreads MTT S80, which is amazingly awful.