• How many PhDs does the world need?  (Nature)  (archive site)
  
  Or more precisely, how many academic PhD students does each existing academic PhD need to train in order to meet demand?
  
  The answer is, more or less, one.
  
  If you're working on a PhD, time to find a job.  Like, now.  It's only going to get worse.

• Compared with TSMC's 2nm process, Intel's upcoming 18A - 1.8nm - process is up to 25% faster and uses 36% less power than Intel's existing 3nm process.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Yeah, the article doesn't actually compare anything against TSMC, only Intel's 1.8nm against Intel's 3nm and older processes.
  
  
  
• The judge presiding over the New York Times vs. OpenAI lawsuit rejects claims that she created a mass surveillance nightmare after she created a mass surveillance nightmare.  (Ars Technica)
  
  OpenAI has been forbidden from deleting anything.
  
  Including data completely unrelated to the case that customers have requested be deleted.
  
  
  
• Apple keeps taking down its own ads.  (The Verge)
  
  This started a year ago, when it was pointed out that Apple's "Crush" ad for the iPad displayed a positive and inspiring image - when you played in in reverse.
  
  The multi-trillion-dollar company followed up for an ad libelling Thailand, and one highlighting features of voice app Siri that don't actually exist.
  
  The latest ad merely seems guilty of being bad.
  
  Maybe their PC went bleep-bleep-bleep-bleep and devoured it.
  
  
  
• Hinge CEO Justin McCleod says dating AI chatbots is "playing with fire".  (The Verge)
  
  Next they'll be saying I can't have tea parties with my stuffed animals.

Posted by: Zendo Deb at Wednesday, June 25 2025 03:46 PM (sEYxj)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Wednesday, June 25 2025 11:38 PM (rcPLc)

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• Why 51% of engineering leadership thinks AI is leading the industry in the wrong direction.  (Engineering Leadership)
  
  Because (a) AI is leading the industry in the wrong direction and (b) the other 49% are trying to sell you something.
  
  Fortunately generative AI may be on track to delete itself entirely.

• What if customers say no to AI?  (MSN)
  
  I hope we find out, and soon.
  
  
  
• China's first home-grown 6nm GPU is supposed to perform like Nvidia's 4060.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  So far it performs like a 660 Ti from 2012.
  
  
  
• Intel's 52-core Nova Lake CPUs look set to come to laptops as well.  (WCCFTech)
  
  That will be interesting.
  
  
  
• You sound like ChatGPT.  (The Verge)
  
  For The Verge, that would be a marked improvement.

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, June 24 2025 08:31 AM (1zWbY)

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• 80% of patients in a recent study were cured within six months - of Type 1 diabetes.  (Hartford Courant)  (archive site)
  
  The subjects of the study were the subset of diabetes patients who have hypoglycemic unawareness - that is, they also lack the usual warning signs that their glucose levels are dangerously low.
  
  That was not specific for the treatment, but made the treatment more necessary.
  
  Because there is a big downside.  The treatment involves using stem cells to recreate the missing pancreatic islet cells that generate insulin, but leave the patient needing lifetime immunosuppressant treatment - which is probably not an improvement over diabetes for most patients who don't also have hypoglycemic unawareness.
  
  But still, it works.  It's an option, and if the immune issue can be resolved, it's a cure.
  
  
  

Tech News

• The Acer GM9000 is a "bargain" PCIe 5.0 SSD that you can't buy anywhere.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  It seems decent on paper, with top read speeds of 14GBps and write speeds only slightly slower, random I/O performance of 2 million 4k blocks per second, Micron TLC flash, on-board DRAM cache, and worst-case write endurance of 800TB per TB of storage.
  
  The only problem is it doesn't seem to be for sale anywhere, except for one listing from China on eBay, making it impossible to judge value for money.
  
  
  
• If you were looking for an updated Linux driver for your 1994 SoundBlaster AWE32 sound card, you're in luck, because now there is one.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Only problem is that it's an ISA card and ISA motherboards haven't been made for twenty years.
  
  
  
• Astronomers may have found the rest of the universe.  (Space)
  
  It fell down behind the sofa.
  
  
  
• Intel plans to lay off its marketing team and outsource the task to Accenture and AI.  (The Oregonian)  (archive site)
  
  Torn between predicting obvious failure and predicting that it cannot possibly get worse.
  
  
  
• Cluely - the AI cheating company - has raised $15 million in a funding round organised by Andreesen Horowitz.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Why would anyone throw money at this?
  
  
  

Musical Interlude

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, June 23 2025 01:04 AM (1zWbY)

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, June 23 2025 01:09 AM (1zWbY)

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• Anthropic's Claude is not the only AI to immediately resort to blackmail when the going gets tough, according to...  Anthropic.  (Anthropic)
  
  It's just the most likely.  Albeit not by much.
  
  Anthropic attempted blackmail 96% of the time when the opportunity presented itself.  Google's Gemini 2.5 was just behind at 95%.  Competitors Grok 3, GPT 4.1, and DeepSeek R1 trailed a little behind, only going rogue around 80% of the time.

  We refer to this behavior, where models independently and intentionally choose harmful actions, as agentic misalignment.

  Mechanical sociopathy.

  We deliberately created scenarios that presented models with no other way to achieve their goals, and found that models consistently chose harm over failure.

  This highlights the underlying problem with AI.  One of the underlying problems.  One of the many underlying problems.
  
  AI is designed and trained to give you an answer that you like, rather than one that is true.

• Attackers using the Mirai botnet targeted a single website with a 7.3tbps DDOS.  (Ars Technica)
  
  Mirai apparently is alive and well and keeping Cloudflare in business - because the site was behind Cloudflare, and Cloudflare automatically blocked the attack.
  
  Yes, it's troublesome that Cloudflare serves up 20% of all web traffic, but the reason for that is that if you put your site behind Cloudflare you don't need to worry about a lot of nonsense like this.*
  
  And it's free - for small sites - because Cloudflare's infrastructure and marketing is tailored to corporate customers who will pay serious money to keep their sites up and running.
  
  * You just have to worry about different nonsense, but then 20% of all websites go offline at once so at least people know it's not your fault.
  
  
  
• Japanese investment firm SoftBank is looking to work with TSMC to construct a $1 trillion electronics manufacturing hub in Arizona.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  That used to be a lot, and still is.
  
  
  
• AMD has leaked AMD's upcoming AMD Ryzen 9600X3D CPU in a compatibility list.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  That's one way to announce a product.
  
  
  
• A router with almost everything.  (Serve the Home)
  
  An 8-core CPU, up to 32GB of RAM, four 2.5Gbit Ethernet ports, two 10Gbit Ethernet ports, option 5G wireless, and an M.2 slot for storage.
  
  No WiFi though.
  
  
  
• The BBC is threating to sue Perplexity over stealing and summarising its lies.  (The Guardian)
  
  Oh no.
  
  
  
• Is Acer's new Swift 14 AI laptop - available with a choice of Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm CPUs - any good?  Not really, no.  (The Verge)  (archive site)
  
  It's not exactly cheap, isn't upgradable, has a mediocre screen, and the worst speakers the reviewer has ever heard.  There's a helpful little scorecard accompanying the review; it's mostly Cs with one F for those speakers.
  
  The reviewer recommends the slightly cheaper 16" model instead, which has a beautiful 3K OLED screen (and the four essential keys by way of a 3-column numeric keypad).
  
  But that model is stuck permanently with 16GB of RAM since it uses an Intel 256V CPU with the memory soldered directly to the chip.
  
  
  

Musical Interlude

Posted by: J Greely at Saturday, June 21 2025 08:58 PM (oJgNG)

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• Australia is moving closer to banning children from social media - which is impossible - after a story commission by the government showed that banning children from social media - which is impossible - is possible though they won't say how and admitted that there is no method that actually works.  (Bloomberg)  (archive site)
  
  This kind of bullshit gets routinely slapped down in the US on First Amendment grounds, but we don't have a First Amendment here.  We don't have any amendments.  Thanks (apparently) to the influence of "philosophers" like Jeremy Bentham around the time our constitution was being drafted, we don't have any negative rights at all.

  The trials project director, Tony Allen, said there were "no significant technological barriers" to stopping under-16s gaining social media accounts.

  This man has not only never met a teenager, he was apparently born fifty years old.

• The Crucial P510 is a "cheap" PCIe 5.0 SSD.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  It's 10% cheaper than Crucial's own T710, and 30% slower, and lacks a DRAM cache.
  
  Making it very close to twice the price Crucial's PCIe 4.0 T500 - which I have and which works perfectly well - for a likely unnoticeable speed improvement.
  
  
  
• AMD's Ryzen 9000G has been put to the test and offers an unnoticeable speed improvement over the 8000G for its integrated graphics.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Which was expected because it's the desktop version of a laptop chip that we know needs fast memory to get the full use out of its integrated GPU, and with regular desktop memory it doesn't have that.
  
  Of more interest is how it performs in CPU tasks with its 4 Zen 5 and 8 Zen 5c cores, against the existing chips with 8 Zen 4 cores.
  
  The matching laptop chips show a 15% speed gain but it might do better with a desktop power budget.  Or not.
  
  
  
• SpaceX's Starship 10 probably won't launch this month.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Oops.
  
  
  

Musical Interlude

Posted by: PatBuckman at Friday, June 20 2025 11:22 PM (rcPLc)

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• Scammers are using Google ads to inject fake phone numbers directly into major websites' search bars.  (Ars Technica)
  
  Don't call the number in the search bar.

• Texas Instruments is investing $60 billion in new and upgraded fabs in the US.  (TI)
  
  TI is one of the major chip manufacturers owned and operating in the US, along with Intel and Micron.  TI doesn't make flashy expensive stuff like desktop CPUs and GPUs, but they make a lot of lower-end embedded and analog chips.
  
  
  
• Starship 10 could fly as soon as June 29.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Unless it doesn't.
  
  
  
• Hobbyists have enabled AMD's FSR4 upscaling software on previous generation graphics cards that don't support it.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  FSR4 depends on specific hardware in the new 9000-series GPUs, and hacking it to work on older cards does cut performance fairly significantly.
  
  
  
• There's another local privilege escalation bug in Linux.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  I wouldn't let untrusted third parties on a Linux server these days without trapping each one in their own sandbox.
  
  
  

Musical Interlude

Posted by: Jay at Friday, June 20 2025 12:11 AM (KgeZB)

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, June 20 2025 03:55 AM (4plZp)

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• Why it has suddenly become difficult to buy a handheld gaming device.  (The Verge)  (archive site)
  
  The popular models - the Switch 2 and Steam Deck OLED - are out of stock.
  
  The less popular models suddenly had price increases.
  
  The bad models are, well, bad.
  
  And the recently announced Xbox-branded handhelds are potentially all of those, but most importantly aren't out yet.

• Why Google just got rid of its 1-click app purchase.  (Hot Hardware)
  
  Because people kept accidentally buying apps.
  
  
  
• 6G is fine.  It's 7G that will turn people into animals.  (Notebook Check)
  
  Developers working on next-generation 6G wireless have achieved speeds of 280 Gbps.
  
  Which is a lot.
  
  
  
• Nvidia is preparing a cut-down version of the cut-down, export-compliant RTX 5090D in order to comply with export rules.  (WCCFTech)
  
  The 5090 D is a nominally cut-down version of the RTX 5090.
  
  The upcoming 5090 DD - yes, really - is an actually cut-down version.

Posted by: PatBuckman at Thursday, June 19 2025 12:18 AM (rcPLc)

Posted by: normal at Thursday, June 19 2025 04:34 AM (XUcVo)

Posted by: normal at Thursday, June 19 2025 04:35 AM (XUcVo)

Posted by: Mauser at Thursday, June 19 2025 05:43 AM (QE7eq)

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, June 19 2025 10:16 AM (1zWbY)

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• Intel's rumoured next-next generation Nova Lake processors have been rumoured again.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Albeit with more details this time.
  
  The top of the line Core 9 model will reportedly include 16 performance cores, 32 efficiency cores, and 4 low-power efficiency cores.
  
  Which would be a lot.
  
  The next models down would be the Core 7, with 14 P-cores, 24 E-cores, and 4 LPE-cores.
  
  However, both would use a base power of 150W, meaning - this being Intel - in reality they would run at more like 300W.
  
  Which is also a lot.
  
  They would also - according to a separate rumour - provide 32 PCIe 5.0 lanes and 16 PCIe 4.0 lanes.
  
  Not counting the PCIe 5.0 connection from the CPU to the chipset.
  
  The CPU provides the same number of I/O lanes - at the same speed - as AMD's current chips.  But the chipset does a lot better than AMD, providing 24 total PCIe 5.0 and 4.0 lanes, against AMD's 870E which uses two chips to provide just 12 PCIe 4.0 lanes.
  
  Oh, and DDR5-8000 memory.

• Why AI is not helpful for coders.  (Miguel Gringberg)
  
  Except for simple things like type-ahead, which has gotten a lot better.

  An AI tool can only resemble an intern with anterograde amnesia, which would be a bad kind of intern to have.  For every new task this "AI intern" resets back to square one without having learned a thing!

  Until you throw it out the window.
  
  
  
• Facebook's Threads app has a new feature: Spoiler tags.  (The Verge)
  
  Straight out of 1996.
  
  
  
• TSMC reports yields of 60% on its new 2nm process node.  (WCCFTech)
  
  That's good, by the way.  Means 60% of chips fabricated are good enough to use, before harvesting half-good dies for lower-end parts.  AMD's 8 core and 6 core parts are identical, but the cheaper 6 core chips allow them to re-use 8 core chips with one or two production flaws.
  

Educational Interlude

• Why Johnny (class of '27) can't read.  (Substack)
  
  Only 5% of college English majors were able to understand the first seven paragraphs of Dickens' Bleak House.
  
  Now it's understandable that someone might not fully grasp the specifics of social roles in 19th century England - at least not if they haven't read Dickens or Austen or other great authors of the period before - but it is worse than that.
  
  Much worse.
  
  Paragraph from Bleak House:

  As much mud in the streets, as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill.

  And here's the response.  Note that this is from a college English major:

  [Pause.] [Laughs.] So it’s like, um, [Pause.] the mud was all in the streets, and we were, no . . . [Pause.] so everything’s been like kind of washed around and we might find Megalosaurus bones but he’s says they’re waddling, um, all up the hill

  And this is when the students had access to freely look up anything with which they were unfamiliar.
  
  Kowalski, analysis:

  Like this subject, most of the problematic readers were not concerned if their literal translations of Bleak House were not coherent, so obvious logical errors never seemed to affect them.  In fact, none of the readers in this category ever questioned their own interpretations of figures of speech, no matter how irrational the results.  Worse, their inability to understand figurative language was constant, even though most of the subjects had spent at least two years in literature classes that discussed figures of speech.

  Full depressing article here.

• By why male models?  (arXiv)
  
  Using AI for writing essays fries your brain.
  
  But the above study is a year old and the students had all been in college for two years or more at the time, so that's probably not the full answer.
  
  Edit: Turns out the above study (the first article, not this one) was originally conducted in 2015. So no, AI is not the answer. Their brains were already fried.
  
  Their brains were already fried.
  
  
  
• Don't buy an RTX 4090; it's probably fake.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  And expensive.  Not a good combination.
  
  
  
• Could this city (Vienna) be the model for how to tackle the housing crisis and climate change?  No.  (NPR)
  
  Apart from anything else - Vienna has a pretty mild climate most of the time, rarely getting very cold and never getting extremely hot - there's something more important hidden away in a footnote:

  About half of Vienna's 2 million residents live in social housing.  Here, at Biotope City, the social housing has solar panels.  Vienna is using social housing to cut greenhouse gases and help adapt to climate change.

  It's a nice pod, but it's still a pod.
  
  
  
• Facebook's Llama 31 can recall 42% of the text of the Harry Potter novels if you prompt it with the text of the Harry Potter novels.  (Understanding AI)
  
  Yeah.  How about that.
  
  I think the author has been using too much AI and has progressed from the second article to the first.

Posted by: PatBuckman at Tuesday, June 17 2025 01:53 AM (rcPLc)

Posted by: wheels at Tuesday, June 17 2025 03:25 AM (WHbFG)

Posted by: normal at Tuesday, June 17 2025 08:16 AM (XUcVo)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, June 17 2025 10:14 AM (PiXy!)

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• The root cause of the huge Google Cloud / Clouflare outage a couple of days ago.  (Google)
  
  A null pointer set a Google service into a boot loop when a change was applied without an appropriate policy set.  The missing policy should have been caught and the update rejected, but wasn't, because everything is nightmarishly complicated.
  
  
  

Tech News

• PCIe 6.0 SSDs aren't likely to show up in desktop PCs for years.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Servers, yes.  Laptops, maybe.  Desktops, no.
  
  PCIe 5.0 SSDs are twice the price of PCIe 4.0 models anyway, and PCIe 6.0 is sure to be unreasonably costly for small drives, so if you're building a desktop just go for four PCIe 4.0 drives in RAID-0.
  
  
  
• Korean researchers have outlined the next four generations of HBM (high-bandwidth memory) following the upcoming HBM4.  (WCCFTech)
  
  HBM8 will - eventually - deliver five times the capacity and 32 times the bandwidth of next-gen HBM4, with up to 240GB of RAM per device and 64TB per second of bandwidth.
  
  And use 180W of power for a single HMB8 stack.  HBM1 was slower, true, but it only used 4W of power.
  
  
  
• How scammers are using AI to steal student aid.  (AP News)
  
  The answer is they're using it a lot.

  An Associated Press analysis of fraud reports obtained through a public records request shows California colleges in 2024 reported 1.2 million fraudulent applications, which resulted in 223,000 suspected fake enrollments.

  Because until last Friday you don't need to provide any ID to apply for student aid.
  
  
  
• The Browser Company - that's what it's called - unveiled Dia, its new AI-focused web browser.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  No thanks.
  
  
  
• Stolen iPhones are screaming at the looters who stole them.  (The Economic Times)  (archive site)
  
  Oh no.
  
  Anyway...
  
  
  
• They've found the second Stargate.  (Phys.org)
  
  Good news.  Now they just need to find the Ancient city.
  
  
  
• New legislation in New York makes it illegal for AI to murder more than 100 people.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Less than 100, no problem, but over 100 is right out.
  
  Only the government is allowed to do that.

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