• Framework, the company behind - logically enough - the upgradeable/repairable Framework laptop, had a couple of announcements today.
  
  First is an AMD version of what is now called the Framework 13.  (Frame.work)
  
  This is something people have been asking for since the first Framework laptop appeared.  It will come with a six or eight core Ryzen 7000 CPU with Zen 4 cores and RDNA2 graphics, plus up to 64GB (and maybe 96GB) of DDR5 RAM in two SO-DIMMs.
  
  There's also a 13th generation update to the Intel version, and that model still uses DDR4 RAM in case you have 64GB of spare SO-DIMMs just lying around like I do.
  
  If you have an earlier Intel version, you can buy just the new motherboard and swap it in, and they have a $39 case so you can re-use the old motherboard as a desktop PC.
  
  Still lacks the Four Essential Keys.  Otherwise I'd have bought one already.
  
  
  
• The other new announcement is the reason the Framework laptop is now the Framework 13: The Framework 16.
  
  This is a 16" version of the same idea, with a few extra features enabled by the larger design.
  
  The Framework 13 has four interchangeable I/O modules so that you can get whatever mix of I/O you need.  If you want three 2.5Gb Ethernet ports on your laptop you can do that.
  
  The Framework 16 uses the same modules but supports six of them.
  
  It also has a PCIe 4.0 x8 slot for a graphics module (or another device, like a dual M.2 slot adaptor).
  
  And while it still lacks the four essential keys, it has interchangeable input modules, so there's an optional numeric keypad if you want it, and other user interface modules on the way.

• I mentioned 96GB of RAM as a possibility for the AMD Framework laptop because 96GB will shortly be an option on AMD systems.  (WCCFTech)
  
  You need a BIOS update but people running a beta version of the update report it works perfectly with up to 192GB of RAM.
  
  Intel motherboards already work with this.
  
  
  
• Need a cheap 2.5Gb Ethernet switch?  Here's a handy roundup.  (Serve the Home)
  
  2.5 is the new 1.
  
  
  
• Google's new AI chatbot, Bard, is here, and it's an ultra-woke lying piece of shit just like ChatGPT.  (Not the Bee)
  
  Burn it all.

• The SEC has issued what is called a Wells notice to crypto exchange Coinbase, warning of likely regulatory action against the company.  (CNBC)
  
  What the notice did not say is what the regulatory action might be for, leading Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong to go on something of a tirade on Twitter.  The company has been asking the SEC to provide regulatory guidelines for them to follow, but the SEC seems to think it is better to rule by fear than by, well, rules.
  
  Having failed utterly to take action against FTX the SEC is now determined to put all the horses back into the barn and then set fire to it.

• There's a looming replication crisis in AI research.  (AI Snake Oil)
  
  More specifically there's a looming replication crisis for any research that involves the products of ChatGPT creator OpenAI, which in reality is anything but open.  OpenAI is shutting down access to its Codex AI, giving researchers three days notice before a hundred scientific papers were consigned to the reproducibility dustbin.
  
  That site looks interesting; it throws cold water on a number of overheated subjects in the AI space.
  
  
  
• Nvidia's RTX 4000 SFF is a half-height Ada Lovelace professional graphics card.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Perfect if you need a second graphics card but your special edition Hololive PC case only has half-height slots after the first one.
  
  It has 20GB of RAM and four mini-DisplayPort ports, delivers roughly the performance of the previous generation's RTX 3070, and uses just 70W of power.  The 3070 itself has 8GB of RAM and uses 220W of power, so that's a pretty substantial improvement.
  
  The price is, unfortunately, $1250.  It would be quite a good card otherwise.
  
  
  
• Meanwhole Nvidia's H100 NVL has 188GB of RAM and fills four full-height PCIe slots.  (AnandTech)
  
  And uses around 800W of power.
  
  Price is not even mentioned, but if you assume it will cost somewhere between a new car and a new house you won't be disappointed.  If you wonder who is in the market for such a thing, Nvidia's marketing says it offers "12x the GPT3-175B inference throughput as a last-generation HGX A100".
  
  Yeah, it's aimed squarely at OpenAI.
  
  
  

• 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.
  
  
  

Posted by: David Eastman at Thursday, March 23 2023 10:44 AM (hiYWq)

Posted by: normal at Thursday, March 23 2023 11:48 PM (LADmw)

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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.

• 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.

Posted by: Zendo Deb at Monday, March 20 2023 12:46 PM (4GWUj)

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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.

• 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).

Posted by: normal at Monday, March 20 2023 08:32 AM (obo9H)

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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.
  
  

• 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.
  
  
  

• 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.

Posted by: normal at Friday, March 17 2023 09:40 PM (obo9H)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Saturday, March 18 2023 03:25 PM (r9O5h)

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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.
  
  
  

Posted by: StargazerA5 at Thursday, March 16 2023 10:37 PM (zR9mW)

Posted by: exanter at Friday, March 17 2023 06:48 AM (XPlEl)

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, March 17 2023 11:17 AM (BMUHC)

Posted by: exanter at Wednesday, March 22 2023 02:57 AM (XPlEl)

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