They are my oldest and deadliest enemy. You cannot trust them.
If Hitler invaded Hell, I would give a favourable reference to the Devil.

Wednesday, July 31

Geek

Daily News Stuff 31 July 2024

No Kids Allowed Edition

Top Story

  • Kids have been banned from the internet.  (The Verge)

    That's not what they are saying, but that's the likely result of the Senate passing the Kids Online Safety Act, which requires online services to actively monitor children using their services and protect them from all possible sources of harm, real or imaginary.

    Which is more than parents do.

    Far cheaper and easier to just ban children outright.

    Of course this nonsense passed by a 91-3 majority.  Senator Rand Paul called it a "Pandora’s box of unintended consequences."  

    I call it dogshit.

    There is a matching bill in the House but the article doesn't indicate the current status except that it hasn't been passed yet.

Tech News

Disclaimer: Even more than IPFS I hate meetings.

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Tuesday, July 30

Geek

Daily News Stuff 30 July 2024

Don't Make Me Tap The Sign Edition

Top Story

  • AI has been determined by the State of California to cause rats in laboratory cancer: SB-1047 - legislation introduced by Scott Wiener, so you know it's bad - aims to make it illegal for AI to do things which are illegal in the first place and which it cannot possibly do in the second place.  (Ars Technica)
    The bill lays out a legalistic definition of those safety incidents that in turn focuses on defining a set of "critical harms" that an AI system might enable. That includes harms leading to "mass casualties or at least $500 million of damage," such as "the creation or use of chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear weapon" (hello, Skynet?) or "precise instructions for conducting a cyberattack... on critical infrastructure." The bill also alludes to "other grave harms to public safety and security that are of comparable severity" to those laid out explicitly.
    It's illegal to kill people, even in small numbers.

    It's illegal to destroy property that is not your own, even when it's less than half a billion dollars in damage.

    It's illegal to create chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear weapons.

    It is trivially easy to find information on how to do any of these things, and that information cannot be erased, because people have done all of these things.


Tech News


Disclaimer: Skill issue.

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Monday, July 29

Geek

Daily News Stuff 29 July 2024

Bit Rot Edition

Top Story


Tech News

Disclaimer: I hate IPFS.

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Sunday, July 28

Geek

Daily News Stuff 28 July 2024

Rat Tart Without So Much Rat In It Edition

Top Story


Tech News

  • Intel's Arc A750 graphics card lines up against AMD's RX 6600.  (Tom's Hardware)

    The cards are roughly equal at 1080p, with the Intel card pulling strongly ahead at 4k resolutions.

    Though at 4k even the Intel card can't manage 30fps, so you might want to look at spending more than $200 on a video card if that is your goal.


  • Wizards of the Coast (owner of Dungeons and Dragons) wants to ship one or two computer games per year starting in 2025 or maybe 2026.  (WCCFTech)

    This is going to be a disaster.
    It's not the first time we heard [CEO Chris] Cocks talking about a push toward the videogame industry, particularly for the Dungeons and Dragons franchise. However, last year Wizards of the Coast canceled five games, including two D&D projects in development at Hidden Path Entertainment and OtherSide Entertainment.
    So that's negative five so far.
    Wizards of the Coast is also in talks with various partners to continue the Baldur's Gate franchise following Larian's decision to find its own path elsewhere.
    The popular Baldur's Gate series of games recently returned after twenty years, with Baldur's Gate III seeing huge success - 2.5 million copies sold in early access, and over 10 million to date..

    The developer, Larian, hated working with Wizards of the Coast so much that they refused to consider a sequel or even an expansion, even though they were guaranteed hundreds of millions of dollars in sales.


  • LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman has brain damage.  (The Register)

    He recently contributed $7 million to a Kamala Harris PAC, stating that he regarded Harris as better for business than Trump, with the demand attached that Harris fire FTC chairman Lina Khan.

    Hoffman is apparently unable to grasp that (a) Harris is a Marxist, and (b) the easiest way to get Lina Khan out of Washington is to elect Trump.


  • Decrappifying Windows with Windows.  (Notebook Check)

    This is something you need to do at install time, and if you install a lot of Windows systems you'd already know this, but by dropping an Unattended Windows Setup file onto your install drive you can get rid of almost all of the crap Microsoft wants to shovel at you.


Disclaimer: But only almost.

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Saturday, July 27

Geek

Daily News Stuff 27 July 2024

Takin My Chances With Lamarck Edition

Top Story

  • Journalistic Lysenkoism: What a Kamala Harris presidency would mean for science. (Scientific American)

    Starvation, slavery, misery, and death. Possibly not in that order.
    As the daughter of a cancer researcher, Kamala Harris would bring a lifelong familiarity with science to the presidency, experts say.
    The same type of experts caused millions of people to starve to death in the 20th century. Wikipedia:
    Lysenko claimed that the concept of a gene was a "bourgeois invention", and he denied the presence of any "immortal substance of heredity" or "clearly defined species" ... Instead, he proposed a "Marxist genetics" postulating an unlimited possibility of transformation of living organisms through environmental changes in the spirit of Marxian dialectical transformation...
    Sound familiar? Sound like what gets thrown up by the mainstream media every single day?

    There's a reason for that.

    Back to the article:
    Health and science have been a part of Harris’s life since an early age: her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, who Harris cites as a major influence, was a leading breast-cancer researcher who died of cancer.
    This is what led to Kamala atttending Stanford Medicine, passing near the top of her class, and becoming a star pharmaceutical researcher with a well-regarded blog spanning more than twenty years.

    Oh wait, that's someone else.
    As senator, Harris co-sponsored efforts to improve the diversity of the science, technology, engineering and medicine (STEM) workforce.
    Nothing to improve science. Everything to improve "diversity".


Tech News

  • A federal judge just ruled that while the US CBP can search your bags and vehicle at the border for contraband and/or Nickelback CDs, it cannot search your electronic devices without probable cause and a warrant. (Reason)

    That's a pretty strong ruling, and Reason also italicised the and there. A border officer might just claim probable cause post-facto, but it's a lot harder to claim a warrant where none exists.

    This is the fourth such ruling in recent years, all pointing in the same direction, so this is likely headed to the Supreme Court soon.


  • There is no fix for Intel's crashing 13th and 14th generation chips - any damage is permanent. (The Verge)

    I mentioned this before, but this is a good summary and it's time to throw the poor Verge a bone for getting one right.

    If you have one of these chips and it's not dead yet, it's probably a good idea to update the BIOS. Of course, updating your BIOS is not risk-free either, but in this case not updating your BIOS may be worse.

    But if you have one of the bad chips suffering from via oxidation (the wires inside the silicon are called "vias" and in some of Intel's chips they are rusting), or if your chip has already started crashing, all you can do is hope it doesn't get worse.

    In light of AMD delaying a major launch to run further tests on chips before they are sold to customers, what is Intel doing for chips that have already been sold?
    Intel has not halted sales or clawed back any inventory. It will not do a recall, period. The company is not currently commenting on whether or how it might extend its warranty. It would not share estimates with The Verge of how many chips are likely to be irreversibly impacted, and it did not explain why it’s continuing to sell these chips ahead of any fix.

    Intel’s not yet telling us how warranty replacements will work beyond trying customer support again if you’ve previously been rejected. It did not explain how it will contact customers with these chips to warn them about the issue.

    But Intel does tell us it’s "confident” that you don’t need to worry about invisible degradation.
    So we've got that going for us, which is nice.


  • Boeing's Starliner is still stuck at the ISS. (Ars Technica)

    At some point you just gotta jump.


  • SpaceX meanwhile is back in operation after a recent failure with a second-stage booster. (Ars Technica)

    The failure was as unspectacular as they come, just leaving a group of satellites in too low an orbit. SpaceX engineers identified the problem within hours - a redundant sense line cracked due to engine vibration and a loose clamp - and worked with the FAA to mitigate this in future launches and get approval to restart.

    Successfully:
    And by all measures, it performed. The first stage booster, B-1069, made its 17th flight into orbit before landing on the Just Read the Instructions drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean. Then, a little more than an hour after liftoff, the rocket's second stage released its payload into a good orbit, from which the Starlink spacecraft will use their on-board thrusters to reach operational altitudes in the coming weeks.
    Amazing what you can achieve if you don't hire communists.


Disclaimer: Snakes. Why did it have to be snakes?

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Friday, July 26

Geek

Daily News Stuff 26 July 2024

Just Say No To IPFS Edition

Top Story

  • OpenAI has unveiled its Google rival, SearchGPT.  (Tech Crunch)

    Kill it with fire.
    OpenAI seems to have taken note of the blowback and says it’s taking a markedly different approach. In a blog post, the company emphasized that SearchGPT was developed in collaboration with various news partners, which include organizations like the owners of The Wall Street JournalThe Associated Press, and Vox Media, the parent company of The Verge. "News partners gave valuable feedback, and we continue to seek their input," Wood says.
    Kill it with fire and sow the ground with salt.
    The rapid advancements by OpenAI have won ChatGPT millions of users, but the company’s costs are adding up. The Information reported this week that OpenAI’s AI training and inference costs could reach $7 billion this year, with the millions of users on the free version of ChatGPT only further driving up compute costs. SearchGPT will be free during its initial launch, and since the feature appears to have no ads right now, it’s clear the company will have to figure out monetization soon.
    Though maybe if we just wait a bit they'll encounter the delicious salty fires of bankruptcy.


Tech News



Disclaimer: IPFS sucks.

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Thursday, July 25

Geek

Daily News Stuff 25 July 2024

Oopsed Edition

Top Story



Tech News



Disclaimer: And commercial AI isn't permitted to start out with a representative idea of anything.

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Wednesday, July 24

Geek

Daily News Stuff 24 July 2024

Ameliope Morson Edition

Top Story

  • SpaceX is cheaper and more capable than any other rocket company, and it's not even close.  Here's why that's a bad thing.  (Ars Technica)

    NASA estimated that de-orbiting the ISS in 2030 would cost $1.7 billion.

    SpaceX gave them a fixed-price quote of $680 million.

    The closest competitor, Northrop Grumman, came in around NASA's estimate.

    Sure, it would be great if we had a couple of other companies capable of competing with SpaceX.  But the key here is scale, and SpaceX is creating its own scale with Starlink.  It's not at all clear how another company is going to compete.


  • Local Hyte distributor expects the Calliope Mori and Amelia Watson Hyte / Hololive limited edition cases in stock in the next few days.  I've been chasing the Calli case for an entire year at this point, and was looking at having to spend hundreds of dollars to ship one by air from the US.

    They still won't be cheap, but they'll be a lot cheaper this way.

    There's a Dokibird model coming out in November but I think I'll have enough cases after these two.  If it was Sana or perhaps Maid Mint I'd consider it, but while I like Doki I'm not sure I $300 like Doki.

    Or Pippa, but I don't need ants.


Tech News

  • Visual effects studio ModelFarm says fuck this we're going AMD.  (Tom's Hardware)

    They say 50% of their 13900K and 14900K CPUs have failed, and their new systems will all be based on the Ryzen 9950X.


  • The Intel problem - as finally confirmed by Intel, is twofold:

    First, the CPUs ask the motherboard for voltage levels high enough to fry their circuits.
    Second, the chips rust from the inside.



    Not a great combination.

    Intel is pushing out a microcode update next month to fix the first problem, but if your chip is already affected, this comes much too late.

    Intel has also been rejecting warranty returns despite knowing of these problems internally for some time.

    My most recent Intel system is a 12th gen laptop, so I escaped this one.


  • AMD's new 9900X is slower than the 7800X3D for gaming.  (Tom's Hardware)

    Not sure exactly how relevant this is, because AMD's 12 core chips are not ideal for gaming.  Current generation consoles have 8 cores on a single chip, and AMD's 12 core CPUs have 6 cores on each of two chips, so they have cross-chip latency for games that need 8 cores.

    If you're focused on gaming, get the cheaper 9700X, or the 9800X3D when it arrives, or if you run heavy productivity workloads as well as games, go all out and get the 9950X.


  • Facebook's new Llama 3.1 405b LLM is billed as the world's largest open-source AI model.  (The Register)

    As a 16-bit model it requires 810GB of video RAM to run.

    There's also an 8-bit version that brings that down to 405GB.

    Which used to be a lot, and still is.


  • 1 bit LLMs can be nearly as good though.  (IEEE)

    These are typically 1 trit models though - they are trinary, so each element can have a negative, positive, or zero weighting.

    This would reduce Llama 3.1 405b down to around 80GB of video RAM.

    Which, yes, is still a lot.


  • GitHub is starting to feel like legacy software.  (Misty's Internet)

    Not entirely accurate.  Legacy software often works very well, because nobody dares touch it in case it blows up.

    GitHub feels like legacy software that someone is pasting an ill-considered flashing interface over.  

    Because it is.


  • The Minisforum V3 tablet - the 32GB / 1TB model - is currently $949 on Amazon.  (Liliputing)

    That's a pretty good price, though I don't know if I'd spend that much on a single device from a company in that tier.

    Though my Beelink PCs were about $250 each and they work perfectly, so maybe I'm overly cautious.


Disclaimer: Everyone has eleven unused PC cases in their bedroom closet, right?

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Tuesday, July 23

Geek

Daily News Stuff 23 July 2024

Beans Lots Of Beans Edition

Top Story

  • The US is all-in on nuclear rockets.  For realsies.  (Ars Technica)

    The article starts with a review of past US experiments with nuclear rockets:
    The first of those reactors was called Kiwi-A. The test done on July 1, 1959, proved that the concept worked, but there were devils in the details. Vibrations caused by the flow of hydrogen damaged the reactor after just five minutes of operation at a relatively meek 70 megawatts. The temperature reached 2,683 K, which caused hydrogen corrosion in the rods and expelled parts of the core through the nozzle, a problem known as "shedding."
    Shedding, also known as "Fuck this I'm moving to Bouvet Island and you can contact me by albatross".

    The primary impetus for this renewed interest despite some issues with past attempts is China's growing space industry.  Nuclear rockets make far more efficient use of the reaction mass than chemical rockets, but are only practical for general use once you pass a certain size - about the size of SpaceX's starship - because you can't make small nuclear reactors.

    Not unless you are willing to kill everyone who works on the project, anyway.


Tech News


Disclaimer: It can not only play Crysis, it can beat the game for you.

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Monday, July 22

Geek

Daily News Stuff 22 July 2024

Slow News Week Edition

Top Story



Tech News

Disclaimer: Blop.

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