• Good news: ChatGPT is not leaking private chat content between users.
  
  Bad news: Your account got hacked.  (Ars Technica)
  
  ChatGPT has no option for two-factor authentication.
  
  But if you're sharing confidential information with a chat bot you're an idiot in the first place.
  
  
  

Tech News

• Microsoft Edge stole my Chrome tabs.  (The Verge)
  
  Edge has a setting where it will automatically import all your data from Chrome.  And that setting sometimes mysteriously turns itself on.
  
  You can turn it off, but the option is hidden under a special URL that can only be accessed from within Edge.
  
  Gee, thanks.
  
  
  
• Take off and nuke the entire site from orbit.  (CNN)

  On the Oleato menu are two drinks: An oat milk latte infused with the extra virgin olive oil; and a new toffeenut iced shaken espresso with golden foam, which is vanilla sweet cream infused with extra virgin olive oil into a cold foam.

  
  
  
• There's a nasty local privilege escalation bug in multiple versions of Linux that I don't run.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  It's a relief to see something like this pop up and then realise that the bug was introduced a year after your newest server was set up.
  
  
  
• Cory Doctorow has a solution to what he calls the "enshittification" of technology.  (The Register)
  
  The solution is communism.
  
  
  

Posted by: PatBuckman at Thursday, February 01 2024 05:23 AM (r9O5h)

Posted by: J Greely at Thursday, February 01 2024 06:53 PM (oJgNG)

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• AMD's new Ryzen 8700G and 8600G are here.  (AnandTech)
  
  They provide pretty good CPU performance with pretty good integrated graphics.
  
  The 8700G in particular can provide 49 fps in Baldur's Gate 3 at 1080p low settings, where Intel's 14700K manages just 13.
  
  A cheaper CPU with a low-end graphics card will do much better for games, and you can get a 7900X for $399 which will do much better for productivity.
  
  But if you want something mostly for work that can also run games like Minecraft or Palworld (cough) it might do fine, and the graphics card market sucks right now.
  
  The 8600G and 8700G only have 20 lanes of PCIe 4 instead of 28 lanes of PCIe 5 on the mainstream Ryzen desktop chips, but that's still fine unless you want to run something like Asus's NVMe RAID card, which just won't work with this chip.
  
  The 8500G cuts that to 14 lanes of PCIe 4, though, which just isn't enough.
  
  
  

Tech News

• Microsoft has joined in the criticism of Apple's new app store rule.  (Thurrott)
  
  I'm sure they have.
  
  
  
• Samsung is expected to show off GDDR7 memory fore graphics cards next month.  (Tech Radar)
  
  Most interesting thing here is that like Thunderbolt 5, it communicates in trinary.
  
  Instead of 0 and 1, it uses -1, 0, and 1, making data transfer 50% faster.
  
  
  
• ICANN has proposed the creation of the .INTERNAL top-level-domain, 30 years after everyone started doing it themselves.  (The Register)
  
  The dirty secret of domain names - and IP addresses, and SSL certificates - is that you can create your own without paying anyone, if you can just get people to agree with you.
  
  Of course, it's often cheaper to pay for something than to try to get anyone to agree with you on anything.
  
  
  
• The Ame case is shipping.  I still can't get the Calli case.  Ugh.
  
  
  

• Good news, everyone: Japan's Moon lander is working.  (The Guardian)
  
  It landed more or less safely, but with the solar panels facing the wrong way, so it only had battery power.  (Since there's no atmosphere on the Moon, solar cells that aren't in direct sunlight produce no power at all.)
  
  Mission control shut it down, in the hope that after a few days the angle of the Sun would shift enough to reach the solar panels.
  
  It did.

Tech News

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, January 30 2024 12:28 AM (BMUHC)

Posted by: Timothy Fox at Tuesday, January 30 2024 07:52 AM (7lcFP)

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• Is your Apple II or Commodore PET just not delivering the joy it once did?  Enter the 65F02.  (e-basteln)
  
  This is a 100MHz drop-in replacement for the original 1MHz chip.
  
  Of course that wouldn't do much good with the original 1MHz RAM still in place, so it has 64k of 100MHz RAM on board as well.
  
  It automatically maps out the memory and I/O addresses of your computer so that devices like floppy drives and video still work, while everything else runs at full speed.

• Looking to connect your Raspberry Pi to a WiFi 6E or 7 network?  Hope you don't need to stay connected for more than 11 hours.  (Rachel by the Bay)
  
  Because you won't, and nobody knows why.  Well, it's because of limited WPA3 support, but the 11 hours part remains a mystery.
  
  
  
• Tesla is building a $500 million supercomputer in Buffalo, New York.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Why?  Because if you're building a huge computer, you want it somewhere cold and wet, and upstate New York is certainly that.
  
  Also Tesla already owns an enormous empty building there.
  
  The supercomputer will be used to train software for autonomous vehicles among other projects.
  
  
  
• Don't post bomb threats on social media.  (BBC)
  
  Just...  Don't.
  
  
  
• Seagate's new 24TB hard drives are here.  (Serve the Home)
  
  With the rate at which SSD prices were dropping last year, hard drives appeared to be doomed.  But those price cuts appear to have stalled for now, and predictions are that SSD prices will actually increase this year.
  
  
  
• AMD's new Ryzen 8600G and 8700G will be here in a few days.  (WCCFTech)
  
  The 8600G offers 6 CPU cores and 8 graphics cores for $229; the 8700G offer 8 CPU cores and 12 graphics cores for $329.  Each is around 30% faster than its 5000-series predecessor on multi-threaded tests.
  
  There's also an 8500G model at $179, but that cuts back to 4 graphics cores and about half the PCIe lanes, so it's a lot less interesting.

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, January 29 2024 02:12 AM (BMUHC)

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, January 29 2024 10:10 AM (BMUHC)

Posted by: Craft at Wednesday, April 17 2024 12:18 PM (XJA3c)

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• Apple has outlined its new fee structure under the new rules the company has been forced into by EU regulations.  (The Verge)
  
  Taking as an example an app that has 10 million installs and makes $10 million in revenue per year - pretty normal stuff - the new fee structure would entail:
  
  - A 3% transaction fee on purchases.
  - A 10% commission on sales.
  - A 49% "Core Technology Fee" on because fuck you, that's why.
  
  So the new relaxed rules would double Apple's cut of your revenue.
  
  And if your app makes less than 57 cents per user on average - again, pretty normal with a free app - you would end up paying Apple for the privilege of them doing nothing for you.
  
  
  
• The EU's Bookburner General, Thierry Breton - yes, that guy again - is warning Apple of "strong action" if the company's new terms are utter bullshit which they are.  (Reuters)
  
  Unlike Twitter which can operate from the US and safely ignore EU posturing, Apple could face an outright ban of its devices from one of its largest markets if the EU got serious.
  
  Apple claims that 99% of apps would save money under the new terms listed above...  Which means that 99% of apps have no users.
  
  It's also entirely self-serving, because what it hides is that the 1% of apps that are actually successful would be worse off.
  
  
  
• That poison pill also applies to third-party app stores.  (The Verge)
  
  Developers are not impressed.

• So why would anyone use Apple in the first place?
  
  Microsoft accidentally granted global admin privileges to a random legacy test account.  (Ars Technica)
  
  Which then got hacked by Russia.
  
  Granting the hackers read access to every Office 365 account in the world.
  
  From the comments at Ars Technica:

  To summarize the fuckups:
  
  

  • Created test tenant with access to prod data
  • Created test account with weak password
  • Made test account accessible from internet
  • Never enabled 2FA on test account
  • Gave test account admin role
  • Did not monitor for slow password sprays (a known technique)
  • Failed to disable test account at end of testing
  • Failed to monitor for unused/test accounts in production environment
  • Did not monitor executives' accounts for surreptitious access
  • Did not monitor internal test account (that apparently hadn't been accessed in years) for "unusual login activity"

  Did I miss anything? By my count, that's ten fuckups.  It's kind of impressive!

  Genuinely useful comments at Ars Technica?  What is the world coming to?
  
  

• California lawmakers are pushing for a blatantly unconstitutional watermark requirement for AI-generated images.  (Bloomberg)
  
  The obvious illegality of such a requirement is of course no hindrance to the California state legislature.
  
  
  
• AMD's Zen 5 desktop CPUs could be arriving as early as Q2 this year, rather than the more usual Q4.  (Hot Hardware)
  
  We've seen leaks that the chips are already on the production line at TSMC, so given lead times of five to six months for current-generation chips, this makes sense.
  
  The real action though is with the new laptop chips, and those aren't expected until the end of the year, with the Strix Point Halo - 16 CPU cores and PlayStation 5 level graphics - pushed back to next year.
  
  
  
• Tech layoffs are back, baby!  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Much as I enjoy shitting on the idiocy of the tech press, this is at least the second time that Tech Crunch has mocked itself for its September article proclaiming that tech layoffs were "almost a thing of the past".
  
  Good for them.

1 Pills - And the ones that mother gives you don't do anything at all

Posted by: Frank at Sunday, January 28 2024 12:43 AM (cARBX)

Posted by: normal at Sunday, January 28 2024 09:10 AM (bg2DR)

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• Apple is bringing third-party app stores and side-loading to the iPhone.  (The Verge)
  
  But only in the EU.
  
  
  
• Apple will allow full versions of Firefox and Chrome browsers to run on the iPhone, instead of just hastily-drawn skins on top of Safari.  (The Verge)
  
  But only in the EU.
  
  
  
• Epic Games will make its app store and the game Fortnite available on iPhones.  (The Verge)
  
  But only in the EU.
  
  
  
• Twitter has been flooded with risque AI-generated images of Taylor Swift.  (The Verge)
  
  But only in the EU.  Wait.
  

• The Pokemon (with a little thing on the e) Company has announced it intends to investigate Palworld (over eleventy billion sold).  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Except that The Pokemon (with a little thing on the e) Company announced no such thing.  Tech Crunch includes the full text of the announcement, and it's lawyer boilerplate that TPwaltoteC will take legal action against infringing content.
  
  Palworld has been in development for three years now.  No action from TPC.
  
  A mod that made Palworld look just like Pokemon came this week out and it was taken down the same day.
  
  
  
• Microsoft has announced layoffs - A Thing of the Past (TM) - of 1900 Xbox and Activision staff.  (The Verge)
  
  Including the president of Blizzard, which is part of Activision, which Microsoft owns.
  
  
  
• The Hugo Awards are in the spotlight again, for the usual reasons: They are complete garbage and have been for the past decade.  (The Guardian)
  
  In this case, the 2023 awards were held in China, and multiple award nominations that received enough votes to be on their respective shortlists...  Weren't.
  
  The head of the awards jury, Dave McCarty issued a particularly blatant non-denial:

  There was no communication between the Hugo administration team and the Chinese government in any official manner.

  But unofficially...

  "After reviewing the constitution and the rules we must follow, the administration team determined those works/persons were not eligible." He declined to elaborate on what the rules were.

  The rules that let us get out of the country with our kneecaps.
  
  
  

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, January 27 2024 01:11 AM (BMUHC)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Saturday, January 27 2024 02:40 AM (r9O5h)

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, January 27 2024 03:32 AM (BMUHC)

Posted by: Mauser at Saturday, January 27 2024 06:14 PM (nk1Z+)

Posted by: J Greely at Sunday, January 28 2024 02:59 AM (oJgNG)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Monday, January 29 2024 07:34 AM (r9O5h)

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• You're censoring it wrong: Yoel Roth, former deputy chief propagandist at Twitter, and Mike Masnick, former free speech advocate turned totalitarian nutcase, joined the CEO of Bluesky Social, some guy I've never heard of, to discuss how to prevented the unwashed masses from having unapproved thoughts.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Tech Crunch is avid for this.
  
  Actual Masnick quote:

  "Unfortunately, you can’t turn a Nazi into not a Nazi. But we can limit the impact of the Nazis," Masnick said. "Let’s limit their ability to wreak havoc. I think that leads to a better place in the long run."

  Yeah, Mike, about that...
   

• Top Harvard cancer researchers have been accused of scientific fraud across 57 research papers.  (Ars Technica)
  
  The Harvard-affiliated Dana-Farber Cancer Institute is retracting six papers and issuing corrections to another 31.
  
  Authors of the papers include the institute's president and CEO, two vice presidents, and the research integrity officer.
  
  
  
• AMD's Radeon 7600 XT is here, and it's definitely a graphics card.  (Ars Technica)
  
  If you play games at 1080p and don't care about ray tracing, it should do fine.  But then so would a 7600 from the previous generation.
  
  If you do care about ray tracing, it's a bad choice, but so is every other card in its price range.
  
  If you want to play games at 4k, forget this one.  The 7800 XT costs 50% more but will run twice as fast at that resolution.

Posted by: PatBuckman at Friday, January 26 2024 02:44 AM (r9O5h)

Posted by: Online at Wednesday, April 17 2024 12:16 PM (XJA3c)

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• Google Chrome is to gain AI features including a writing helper, a theme creator, a tab organiser, a baby shower planner, and that one annoying relative who simply can't take a hint.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Brave and Vivaldi have announced they are not doing this.  Or will.  Probably.

• Nvidia's RTX 4070 Ti Super is here and it's...  Well, it's...  Yeah.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  It's not a lot faster than the 4070 Ti except in a few edge cases, but since it's the same price as the original 4070 Ti, has more memory, and is faster, even if not much, the only downside is that it uses more power.
  
  In fact, it uses more power than the original 4080, but since that cost 50% more and is also on the chopping block, it's probably not all that relevant.
  
  Compared with paying $1199 for the 4080 it's a clear win, but $1199 was a ridiculous price for the 4080.
  
  
  
• AFMF is now available in WHQL providing up to a 103% improvement in frame rates in thousands of DX11 and DX12 titles, similar to FSR and DLSS.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  It does this by making shit up.
  
  
  
• The OnePlus 12 is a good phone that isn't overrun with AI crap.  (The Verge)
  
  Though it costs $799, so I would hope so.
  
  My old phone (not the Samsung, but the one before that; I keep a second phone just in case) just died of battery bloat, and I replaced it with a Motorola G14, which worked out to about $118 including tax.  Runs fine.
  
  
  

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, January 25 2024 09:43 AM (BMUHC)

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, January 25 2024 09:46 AM (BMUHC)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, January 25 2024 05:52 PM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, January 26 2024 12:58 AM (BMUHC)

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• Don't buy HP printers: They're hopelessly insecure piles of garbage, says...  HP's CEO?  (Ars Technica)
  
  He was trying to argue that if you buy third-party ink cartridges they could contain a virus that could take over your entire network, but you'd have to have delegated your design efforts to middle-schoolers in Myanmar to fuck up that badly.
  
  Or use Node.js.  That would do it too.
  
  He's lying.  Or at least, I really hope he's lying, because I'm using an HP laptop right now and I don't want it turn burn my house down.

• Palworld is a hit, and it's easy to see why.  (The Verge)
  
  In which the article is relatively sane and the comments are a mud-wrestling match of crazy people, none of them weighing less than three hundred pounds.
  
  The argument going on in the article is that one of the 3D models used in the game has very similar proportions to one of the 3D models used in one Pokemon game...  Because they're both fucking wolves.
  
  The argument going on in the comments is that Palworld is nothing but a direct ripoff of another game...  Though nobody can agree which other game.
  
  
  
• Oh, and it's now sold 6 million copies with a peak of 1.5 million simultaneous players.
  
  
  
• Meanwhile Apple may have sold 180,000 units of its Vision Pro high-gloss e-waste device.  (Engadget)
  
  Which is and isn't a lot.  At a minimum price of $3499 that's a lot of idiots who just set their money on fire.  On the other hand, with an estimated 1.2 billion users worldwide, just 0.015% of Apple's customers have shown an interest in the Vision Pro.
  
  I don't think VR goggles are pointless, but consumer-grade VR goggles at $3499 a pop definitely are.
  
  
  
• A hacker has cloned a Game Boy Advance game by crashing the console at just the right time.  (Engadget)
  
  So that instead of playing a single sound from the game's ROM cartridge, it played the entire contents of the 16MB ROM cartridge over the speaker.  So all he had to do was record it, spend a couple of days cleaning up the recording, and then more time debugging the issues with the resulting code, and then it booted, albeit with bugs.
  
  Of course, you can also just read the ROM cartridge over a parallel interface in about four seconds, but where's the fun in that.
  
  
  
• Terraform Labs has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  At first I thought this was Terraform the Docker management thing, but that's owned by HashiCorp.  There is no corporation named "Terraform" associated with the product "Terraform".
  
  No, this is the Terraform associated with the Terra "stablecoin", which imploded in 2022 and took the company's market cap from $40 billion to zero inside of a week.
  
  I'm surprised they still exist.  Their former CEO is in jail in Montenegro after fleeing the country, awaiting extradition back to the US.

Posted by: Frank at Wednesday, January 24 2024 12:06 AM (ijGbY)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Wednesday, January 24 2024 03:36 AM (r9O5h)

Posted by: Rick C at Wednesday, January 24 2024 06:26 AM (BMUHC)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, January 24 2024 05:34 PM (PiXy!)

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• What the heck is Broadcom doing with VMWare?  (MSN)
  
  After Broadcom - which makes small boring chips in huge volumes - acquired VMWare for $69 billion, it laid off hundreds of staff, cancelled perpetual license in favour of subscriptions, and removed almost all product offerings.
  
  Why?
  
  As the article explains, it's because Broadcom only wants 600 customers for any of their business units.  If you're not in the top 600 for that market, you simply don't exist, and your needs are irrelevant.
  
  The company made $14 billion in profit last year so this approach seems to be working for them.
  
  But if you're the 601st company on their list and reliant on VMWare, you're paying a lot of attention to competitors' products right now.

• The boycott, it does nothing!  (Twitter)
  
  Palworld has sold four million copies in three days.
  
  
  
• NASA has found Ingenuity.  (NPR)
  
  Not the abstract concept, but the helicopter.
  
  It's on Mars.
  
  Which is where they left it.
  
  
  
• An AI chatbot swore at a customer and derided its company as useless...  After the customer asked it to do so.  (Time)
  
  Yep.  That'll happen.
  
  
  
• What is the solution to gridlocked EV charging sites?  (Sacramento Bee)  (archive site)
  
  Nope.  Sorry.  Can't think of anything.  No way at all to solve that problem.  Nope.  Nothing.

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, January 23 2024 09:12 AM (BMUHC)

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, January 23 2024 09:16 AM (BMUHC)

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