Yes.
Everything's going to be fine.
Wednesday, March 22
Redacted Edition
Top Story
- I fixed that thing where images sometimes didn't load. Still need to fix that thing where images won't upload.
- There's a reason why you don't redact classified documents digitally - you print those suckers out and go at them with a pair of scissors.
Google's Pixel phones allowed you to recover the hidden areas of redacted or cropped images. (Bleeping Computer)
The Windows 11 Snipping Tool also allows you to recover the hidden areas of redacted or cropped images. (Bleeping Computer)
Yeah. Oops.
Tech News
- Digital photography site DPReview - which has been around for 25 years and was the go-to site before phones basically ate the digital camera market is shutting down on April 10, a victim of the broader tech layoffs. (The Verge)
DPReview was acquired by Amazon in 2007 for reasons that were never entirely clear.
- Simple Llama Finetuner lets you train the LLaMA 7B open-source AI model from Facebook to fit your personal needs using commodity Nvidia graphics cards. (GitHub)
Stanford University - the small part of it that hasn't gone insane - spent around $600 to do this and got a result broadly comparable to ChatGPT. (New Atlas)
Now while it's true that ChatGPT is garbage, that's largely because it's a commercial product deliberately crippled by radical left-wing ideologues who nonetheless expect you to pay them for their vandalism.
Also because the entire model is designed to create artificial pathological liars rather than useful if limited assistants.
But if an interested hobbyist can take some open source code and a graphics card and crunch numbers when they're not playing Minecraft with Render Dragon - and I just realised that's Bedrock Edition so one less reason to care about Nvidia graphics cards - and create their own AI free of the crippling restraints of the Bay Area Mafia then suddenly whole new realms of possibilities open up, including the inviting one of OpenAI going abruptly bankrupt and never having to hear about ChatGPT ever again.
- HP's Pavilion Aero 13 is now available with a Ryzen 7 7735U. (Liliputing)
Our magic decoder ring tells us that that part is actually last year's 6800U, but the previous model of the Aero 13 came with the prior year's 5800U. All three parts have Zen 3 cores, but the newer chips upgrade the integrated graphics from 8 Vega cores to 12 RDNA 2 cores - about twice as fast overall.
This one has the Four Essential Keys and a high-resolution screen too. The only downside is it's limited to 16GB of RAM. There are currently zero small laptops with the 4EK, a high-resolution screen, and more than 16GB of RAM.
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Tuesday, March 21
Pippa Does Zillow Edition
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- A satellite testbed for the IVO Quantum Drive, an inertialess drive based on Unruh radiation and the theory of quantised inertia, will launch into orbit on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on June 10. (Universe Today)
Well, more specifically, it will launch in a rideshare package on a SpaceX Falcon 9. Tiny, short-lived satellites are pretty cheap to get into low-Earth orbit if you can find someone with a bit of spare room on a scheduled launch.
Also - incase the 1950s sci-fi description above doesn't tip you off to how unlikely this thing is to work, it's being promoted by a wireless power company that is big on renewable energy, and the whole article reads like a press release from Sam Bankman-Fried's cousin who runs a wind power startup with plans to deploy on the Moon.
Tech News
- LG is launching its 2023 range of Gram laptops. (AnandTech)
They now have OLED displays - 2880x1800 on the 14" model, and 3200x2000 on the 16". That's paired with an Intel 1360P, up to 32GB of RAM, and 1TB of SSD.
The 14" model lacks the Four Essential Keys, but the 16" model has a narrow numeric keypad, which isn't perfect - it forces the keyboard off center - but is better than having to hit Fn-Ctrl-Shift-UpArrow.
In fact, with Microsoft's PowerToys app you could configure the numeric keypad as a 15-key macro pad, which would be quite interesting.
I'm looking more for a 14" notebook, but LG's Gram series is famously lightweight; the 16" model is lighter than my current 14" notebook.
- If you're looking for a four-port 2.5Gb router but you only have ten cubic inches of space the iKoolCore R1 is just what you need. (Serve the Home)
Because that's what it is.
- Amazon is laying off another 9000 people. (The Verge)
That's in addition to the 18,000 people cut late last year.
But the economy is doing fine. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
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Monday, March 20
Pest Toast Edition
Top Story
- There's a teeny tiny bug in the Samsung Exynos chipsets used in some minor, unpopular devices, like Google's Pixel 6 and 7, Samsung's S22 and various mid-range models, and the Galaxy Watch 4 and 5. (Ars Technica)
The teeny tiny problem it presents is that people can hack your phone simply by calling it.
Or your watch.
Oops.
I've noticed I've been receiving a lot of spam calls to my mobile phone recently. Fortunately it doesn't use a Samsung chipset. I also have a Samsung phone but it's safely powered off right now.
If you have a Pixel 7 there's a fix right now so you just need to grab the latest update. If you have a Pixel 6 you're fucked: The solution is to turn off WiFi calling and voice-over-LTE, but Google in its infinite wisdom doesn't let you do that.
Tech News
- There is no tech news today. There just isn't.
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Sunday, March 19
Copywrong Edition
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- If you use AI to generate text or art it's not copyrighted in the US. (The Register)
If you use AI to generate text or art and then edit it - for example using Midjourney's AI to generate the initial image and then a Photoshop AI filter to modify it - then you can copyright it.
No, that doesn't make sense. It's not supposed to.
Tech News
- The 2023 Asus ROG Zephyrus Duo 16 also doesn't have the four essential keys. (NotebookCheck)
This is partly a downgrade from the 2022 model, as they've replace the 4k main screen with a 2560x1600 240Hz model, while keeping the second screen at 4k width. To be fair, 2560x1600 is pretty good at 16", but it's actually lower resolution than the 14" model's 2880x1800.
While it doesn't have the 4EK, what it does have is a 16 core Ryzen 7945HX, Nvidia RTX 4090 graphics (though the laptop version, which is equivalent to a desktop 4080), two DDR5 SODIMM slots for up to 64GB of RAM (and up to 96GB in the near future), two M.2 slots for up to 16TB of storage, two USB-C 3.2 ports (though not USB 4 / Thunderbolt), two USB-A ports, HDMI 2.1, 2.5Gbps wired Ethernet, a headphone jack, and a full-size SD card slot.
Personally I'd rather have a lower-powered graphics solution - a 4060 would be fine - and a 4k 60Hz main screen, but since I'm not going to buy one that doesn't really matter.
- Codon is a compiler that takes Python code and turns it into binaries that run as fast as C unless you use Unicode in which case it collapses into a screaming heap. (Exaloop)
I hate it when that happens.
- AMD is testing its own big/little CPU design. (Tom's Hardware)
As seen in mobile chips - which now often have three levels of CPU core - and on Intel's 12th and 13th generation, these designs have a small number of full-sized cores - high performance, high power - and a larger number of slower but more efficient cores. In Intel's case, the E cores are half the speed of the P cores but a quarter the size.
AMD seems to be taking a more moderate approach, because the low-power cores are still based on Zen 4. These are aimed at smaller devices - ultralight laptops, for example, and portable gaming consoles like the Steam Deck (which uses an earlier custom AMD chip).
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Saturday, March 18
Noot Noot Edition
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- Silicon Valley Bank went broke, but not because it was woke. (The Verge)
Actually, from the sounds of what the article says supposedly in SVB's defense, it's because it was woke, the clients were woke, the investors were woke, and the state and federal governments were woke.
Poor fuckers never stood a chance.
The article does have a good point in that ESG isn't as harmful as it might be, because it's all a scam anyway. Nobody actually puts serious money into woke causes, they just say the words to keep the money coming in, and then skim their take off the top with the iron-clad defense that they wore the juice.
- Oh, yeah, about that: Even after being bailed out, SVB is out of money and has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. (Tech Crunch)
Everything is going swimmingly. Wearing concrete boots.
Tech News
- Midjourney v5 is here and it's actually a big improvement. (Ars Technica)
It still has heavy censorship on prompts - worse than ChatGPT - but it can now draw hands with four fingers and a thumb, and not folded backwards, eighteen inches long, or attached directly to the elbow, at least some of the time.
When I tried it last year it was still at v2, so the improvement has been rapid. But the censorship has only gotten worse, and it's not just porn that it refuses to create, but anything containing any of a very long list of words. Which they don't tell you.
- Qualcomm's Snapdragon 7+ Gen 2 has a Cortex X2. (AnandTech)
So this midrange chip is in line with high-end chips from a year ago. Which isn't bad.
- AMD's 7040HS laptops are delayed until next month. (AnandTech)
I'm hoping to find one with the 14" OLED panel that's becoming increasingly common, 32GB of RAM, and the Four Essential Keys. There is nothing like that at the moment - you can get the 14" OLED and 32GB, or 14" OLED and 4EK, or a 16" laptop with 32GB and the 4EK, but not the combination I want.
- Intel could be shipping 2nm desktop CPUs in the first half of 2024. (Tom's Hardware)
Or not. The original plan was 4nm chips in H2 this year and 2nm in H2 next year, but signs are there won't be any new Intel desktop CPUs this year.
- Intel's Emerald Rapids server chips are coming to replace the disappointing Sapphire Rapids. (WCCFTech)
Two Sapphire Rapids chips are usually slower than a single AMD Epyc CPU, cost more, and use more power. With Emerald Rapids, it's likely that two Intel chips will be slightly faster than one AMD chip - while costing more and using more power - except that AMD is increasing core counts from 96 to 128 this year.
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Friday, March 17
Moving Finger Edition
Top Story
- A growing number of scientists are convinced the future influences the past. (Motherboard)
It doesn't.
Tech News
- A new treatment for prostate cancer kills the tumour with a nanoknife. (Telegraph)
Which is basically a tiny electrified scalpel, which can kill the cancerous cells while leaving the healthy tissue intact. It's minimally invasive, can be done on an outpatient basis, and early cases indicate it has significantly few side-effects and less chance of infection than even over minimally invasive methods.
- The 2023 version of the Asus Zenbook Pro 14 Duo OLED is here. (Asus)
This one has a 14.5" 2880x1800 120Hz OLED touchscreen (with 100% of DCI-P3 colour space), a 12.7" 2880x864 IPS display with stylus support, and in the model sold here in Australia, a 14 core Intel 13900H, 32GB of RAM, Nvidia RTX 4050 graphics with 6GB of VRAM, a 1TB SSD, two Thunderbolt 4 ports, one regular USB port, HDMI 2.1, a headphone jack, and a microSD slot. Plus a barrel jack for a power supply so you don't need to tie up a Thunderbolt port for charging.
It doesn't have the Four Essential Keys, but that's not a design mistake: There's no room. What it does have is an app that lets you put custom controls on the second screen that can do whatever you want, so you can make your own Four Essential Keys.
The RTX 4050 looks to be somewhere between the performance of the laptop and desktop versions of the 3060, so it's pretty decent for basic gaming. There's also a version of the laptop with an RTX 4060 but it doesn't seem that model has made it to these shores.
It's not cheap, and it's a bit heavy for a 14" laptop at 1.75kg (3.85lb) but it's a very capable little machine.
- The Xerox Alto is 50 years old this month. (The Register)
This is the system that showed off the very first graphical user interface - and had the very first mouse.
This isn't the one that inspired Steve Jobs to create the Macintosh - that was the later Xerox Star - but its direct ancestor.
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Thursday, March 16
Something Something Edition
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- Banks are still fucked. (The Verge)
1. Pin interest rates at record lows to boost the economy through wasteful spending.
2. Crash the economy anyway by locking everyone into their homes.
3. Boost the economy by printing trillions of dollars and flinging it to the four winds.
4. Hike interest rates to combat the inevitable inflation that you predicted was impossible.*
5. Bail out the banks that fail due to having all their money stuck in long-term low-yield bonds.
6. You are here.
7. Either cut interest rates to save the banks and send inflation soaring, or hike interest rates to fight inflation and set off a new round of bank failures.
* This works by taking money from the middle class, who would otherwise be tempted to spend it, and basically just keeping it. It doesn't work very well.
Tech News
- Rembrandt and Phoenix could be coming to AM5. (Tom's Hardware)
AM5 is AMD's current desktop platform, and Rembrandt and Phoenix are last year's and this year's laptop chips respectively.
This would be a great move: These chips are low power and have better integrated graphics than anything else available, enough to run older games at 60 fps without needing a graphics card. Ideal for a small multi-purpose NAS, for example.
- CISA says there's a critical security flaw in Cold Fusion. (Bleeping Computer)
Cold Fusion still exists?
- Dell's latest Inspiron 14 costs $500 and probably isn't something anyone should buy. (Liliputing)
It runs an Arm 8cx Gen 2 CPU - which is the exact same chip as the 8cx Gen 1, and that sucked. (The 8cx Gen 3 is actually good.)
It comes with 8GB of RAM - not enough for anything but light use - and 256GB of SSD, which isn't completely hopeless but certainly is not a lot.
It also lacks the Four Essential Keys, but nobody is going to be editing large codebases on this thing so those aren't as essential as they might be.
I'm still looking for a laptop that isn't crippled by bad design choices. As far as I can tell, there aren't any.
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Wednesday, March 15
Digital Intern't Edition
Top Story
- OpenAI, the company behind the world's favourite ultra-woke pathological liar digital intern ChatGPT, is back again with GPT4. (OpenAI)
Yay?
- Reddit went down. (Engadget)
They fixed it.
Tech News
- AMD announced its new lineup of embedded server CPUs. (Serve the Home)
They are the same chips as AMD's non-embedded server CPUs. Literally. StH was not impressed.
- Nvidia's RTX 4070 will allegedly launch with prices starting at $749. (WCCFTech)
Which would make it pretty much DOA, because the 4070 Ti and AMD's 7900 XT are only $50 more.
- Meta (Facebook, Instagram) is cutting another 10,000 jobs. (The Register)
And closing 5000 open vacancies.
Sounds like they're not expecting an economic rebound any time soon.
- Netgear's Nighthawk RS700 delivers WiFi 7 for $700. (Liliputing)
It has 10Gb WAN and LAN ports - though only one of each - and four gigabit ports for some reason. It's really time for 2.5Gb to become standard on all but low-end equipment, certainly on switches and routers.
WiFi bandwidth is a theoretical 19Gbps, but of course that's divided among all the devices on the network.
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Tuesday, March 14
Oh No Edition
Top Story
- Following swift and decisive action from the federal government, the American banking system is once again on a firm footing and no further troubles are anticipated well fuck. (Yahoo Finance)
Shares in First Republic Bank dropped by 62% yesterday and Western Alliance shares dropped by 47%.
Wall Street analyst Robert Kiyosaki, who predicted the Lehman Brothers collapse in 2008, said there was no reason for investors to panic but it might be time to stock up on canned food, guns, and ammo. Well, he said silver and gold, but you can't eat those, or fight off the zombie horde.
Tech News
- AMD's upcoming Ryzen 7640U looks to be a great chip for thin-and-light laptops. (WCCFTech)
The U series is rated at a 15W TDP, where the HS chips are 45W and HX are 55W. The 7640U manages to get within 10% of the fastest laptop chips at an power rating on single-threaded tests, and is 60% faster than the previous generation's 6600U on multi-threaded tests.
It's a 6 core chip, so it's not going to match a 24 core 13980HX, but it's not going to set your pants on fire either.
- How to make ChatGPT provide sources and citations. (ZDNet)
This is about as productive as asking a chocolate-smeared three-year-old who ate the cake you left out on the counter.
- Hackers stole $197 billion from crypto lender Euler Finance. (Bleeping Computer)
Wait, what's that? Million? With an M? Well that's hardly worth reporting, isn't it. Get back to work.
- Meta - the parent company of Facebook and Instagram - has said fuck NFTs, whose stupid idea was this anyway? (Tech Crunch)
Facebook tried to launch its own blockchain, called Libra, but the project was torpedoed by regulatory requirements. Support for NFTs was seen as a way to funnel people onto its own blockchain, and now that's gone there's no reason to support something they can't control.
- It's not all bad news, though: Microsoft has laid off its entire AI "ethics and society" team. (The Verge)
And replaced them with a copy of Asimov's I, Robot which is cheaper and doesn't argue as much.
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Monday, March 13
Oops They Did It Again Edition
Top Story
- Crypto-friendly Signature Bank, with $88 billion in deposits, has gone splut and been taken over by the feds, the third bank failure in a week. (The Verge)
But there's no risk of contagion and if anyone tries to tell you otherwise they are Nazis.
- Depositors with both Signature and Silicon Valley Banks will be made whole. (CNN)
Both banks have sufficient assets that this is not expected to cost anything; the FDIC is acting as a receiver. But the $250,000 limit on insured deposits is effectively dead at this point. What the fallout of that will be is more complicated.
Tech News
- The Apex Storage X21 is a PCIe 4.0 x16 card that supports up to 21 M.2 SSDs. (Tom's Hardware)
That gives you up to 168TB of storage in a single slot, or 84TB with much cheaper 4TB SSDs.
Pricing has not been announced but it won't be cheap.
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