• Elon Musk is directing harassment towards individual federal workers.  (The Verge)
  
  Is he indeed, O Verge?
  
  The example cited - the only example cited - is of Musk suggesting that Director of Climate Diversification at the International Development Finance Corporation was a "fake job".
  
  Now, "climate diversification" in this sense means recommending alternative crops to grow to make the food supply more robust against short and long term changes in weather.
  
  Which is a task that could easily by filled by a fairly small book.
  
  And in this case, it involves making those recommendations to other countries.
  
  So, never mind "individual workers".
  
  USAID, its 10,000 employees, and its $50 billion budget: Afuera!

• In a small bit of welcome news in the never-ending shitfest that is Australian federal politics, the government has abandoned one of its attempts to strangle free speech across the entire world.  (ABC)
  
  The so-called "misinformation bill" would have set up the government as the arbiter of truth, and anything untrue would have become illegal speech.  The bill did not specify how this was supposed to work; it just legislated it into reality.
  
  And now it's dead for the current session of Parliament, and the left-wing Labor government is likely to be out of power before Parliament votes on any new legislation.
  
  Still moving forward is the government's Won't Somebody Think of the Children Act, which bans minors under the age of 16 from using social networks, though again it never specifies how this is supposed to be achieved.  This has the support of the nominally conservative Liberal Party and is likely to pass in some form, even though it is obviously completely unworkable.
  
  That's the same party that previously wanted to ban encryption, claiming that Australia's laws superseded mathematics, so this betrayal of conservative principles comes as no surprise.
  
  
  
• Lenovo's ThinkPad P1 Gen 7 uses the new CAMM2 memory module in place of SO-DIMMs, but with a twist.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Not only does it use the new, more compact modules, it uses LPDDR5X memory rather than regular DDR5.
  
  This reduces power (LP = low power) and also runs faster at 7500MHz.
  
  This is particularly welcome as AMD's Zen 5 laptop chips don't support regular DDR5, so without these modules, laptops based on those chips would not have any path for memory upgrades.
  
  
  
• I don't remember if I wrote about this - the story is from six months ago - but yes, LPDDR6 is on its way.  (Hot Hardware)
  
  LPDDR6 promises initial transfer rates of 10.6GHz and eventually 14.4GHz, which is not dramatically faster than the best LPDDR5X chips available now.
  
  Except that the bus is also 50% wider, and instead of fetching 8 words at a time it fetches 12.
  
  Which makes 288 bits, which is not very useful for 64-bit computers, so the extra 32 bits at the end is used for very strong ECC (DECDED guaranteed).
  
  Which makes 10.6GHz LPDDR6 90% faster than 7500MHz LPDDR5.
  
  This matters because current integrated graphics solutions from AMD and Intel are bottlenecked not by the chips but by memory speeds.  Apple's higher-end M-series chips have (as far as I can tell) 256-bit or even 384-bit buses, and AMD's upcoming Strix Halo chips will also have a 256-bit bus, but regular laptops only offer 128-bit memory.
  
  So when LPDDR6 arrives we can expect a big jump in integrated graphics performance.
  
  (My new laptop has DDR4 memory running at 3200MHz.   So...  Yeah.)
  
  
  
• Can ChatGPT-o1 complete a junior front-end developer's task?  (Charbel Ghossain)
  
  Well, yes, if you aren't worried about it working properly.
  
  The code produced for this example sort of works, in that it doesn't break the page.  But on a scale of 0 to 100, it only does anything at all for the range from 20 to 80.
  
  
  
• It is shockingly easy to jailbreak LLM-driven robots.  (Hot Hardware)
  
  This is not shocking.  LLMs are notoriously insecure and unreliable.
  
  Simple solution: Don't fucking build LLM-driven robots.
  
  
  
• Who the heck is the M4 iMac aimed at?  (The Verge)
  
  It's a lovely piece of engineering, but the screen is too small for serious work, the memory cannot ever be upgraded, and the network speed is limited to 1Gbit when even the Mac Mini has a 10Gbit option.  And Apple has long since abandoned monitor mode, where an aging iMac with a perfectly good screen could serve as a monitor for another computer.
  
  Which would all be forgivable if it were cheap.  
  
  The 10 core model with 16GB RAM and 512GB of SSD costs $1699.
  
  
  
• Does GitHub Copilot improve code quality?  (GitHub)
  
  Yes, says GitHub.
  
  No, says literally everyone else.
  
  
  

Posted by: Joe Redfield at Monday, November 25 2024 04:53 AM (KOtXO)

Posted by: Lowell at Monday, November 25 2024 09:51 AM (NnIKN)

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• Elon Musk's new ideas for improving government efficiency are not in fact new.  (The Verge)
  
  Do tell, O Verge.

  Though DOGE isn’t a real department - and may in fact just be President-elect Donald Trump’s way of placating Musk by giving him the appearance of a real job - it represents a long-running right-wing attempt to gut the civil service, a plan the incoming administration fully supports.

  So it only appears to be a real job, but the administration fully supports it?

  In any case, Musk and Ramaswamy have proposed cutting "thousands" of federal regulations and determining the "minimum number of employees required at an agency for it to perform its constitutionally permissible and statutorily mandated functions."

  Awesome.

  This time around, it's not clear whether the courts would stop Trump, who, in his first term, nominated more judges to the federal judiciary than any of his predecessors and will inherit an extremely friendly Supreme Court. And as Musk and Ramaswamy noted in their explanation of how DOGE will function, the incoming Trump administration has something new at its disposal: the recent Supreme Court decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, the landmark case that overturned Chevron deference.

  Better and better!

  The goal is mass deregulation - a weakening of checks and balances and a major cut to basic government services, all in the name of concentrating power among a small group of plutocrats.

  As opposed to the way things are now, where government regulations are the primary tool for concentrating power among a small group of plutocrats?
  
  
  

• Is AI hitting a wall?  (The Verge)  (archive site)
  
  Yes.  Also, if you read to the end of the article, it is literally Hitler.
  
  
  
• The future of Windows is cloud and AI.  (The Verge)  (archive site)
  
  Literally Hitler.
  
  
  
• Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is opening an investigation into an advertising group that organised a boycott of Twitter.  (Tech Crunch)

  Trade organizations and companies cannot collude to block advertising revenue from entities they wish to undermine," said Paxton in the press release. "Today’s document request is part of an ongoing investigation to hold WFA and its members accountable for any attempt to rig the system to harm organizations they might disagree with."

  Good.
  
  
  
• The DOJ is looking to disempartnerise Google and Anthropic.  (Pymnts)
  
  Because it can, apparently.
  
  
  
• Amazon meanwhile is throwing another $4 billion down the Anthropic drain.  (CNBC)
  
  None of the big AI companies are in the same universe as profitable.
  
  
  
• TSMC, which is profitable, expects 1.6nm chips to be coming off its production lines in 2026.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  My new laptop has a Ryzen 7730U CPU, which is built on a 7nm process.
  
  So...  Yeah.
  
  
  

Posted by: PatBuckman at Sunday, November 24 2024 12:57 AM (rcPLc)

Posted by: stargazera5 at Sunday, November 24 2024 11:55 AM (vLfRn)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Monday, November 25 2024 02:58 AM (rcPLc)

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• The problem is clear: Our customers are dumb.  (Intel)
  
  Intel commissioned a study to find out how much more efficient users were when equipped with a fancy new "AI PC".
  
  It turned out:

  At the same time, AI PCs offered a potentially transformative impact on people’s lives, saving individuals roughly 240 minutes a week on routine digital tasks. But the study also highlighted that current AI PC owners spend longer on tasks than their counterparts using traditional PCs. Study results show that greater consumer education is needed to bridge the gap between the promise and reality of AI PCs.

  AI PCs make things worse, but the real problem is the users.
  
  
  
• Meanwhile at Microsoft.  (Business Insider)  (archive site)
  
  Microsoft Copilot is a little too efficient, it seems...  At sharing confidential information with people who shouldn't have it.
  
  
  

• Microsoft really really really really wants you to upgrade to Windows 11.  (The Register)
  
  Really.
  
  
  
• Well, that's less than ideal: Finastra, which provides technology services to 45 of the 50 largest banks in the world, got hacked and saw 400GB of data stolen.  (Krebs on Security)
  
  There's no need to worry, though, unless you or someone you know uses a bank.
  
  
  
• OpenAI "accidentally" erased evidence pertaining to the lawsuit by the New York Times.  (The Verge)
  
  Just call me Mister Butterfingers!
  
  
  
• Kairos Power - which recently signed a contract to provide power to Google's datacenters - has received approval to build two test reactors in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  These are small modular reactors, or SMRs, using molten salt cooling systems.  They're supposed to be simpler and safer - as well as smaller - than conventional designs.
  
  The test reactors will produce 35MW of heat each, while the production models will produce 150MW.

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, November 23 2024 12:55 AM (NEIix)

Posted by: Zendo Deb at Monday, November 25 2024 12:47 PM (YGUlK)

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• The DOJ is seeking to break up Google, or rather to chip off a very small part of it.  (AP News)
  
  They want to break off the Chrome browser, which has multiple competitors, including some like Brave which use the same open-source core and behave virtually identically.
  
  What this is expected to achieve is unclear.  It would break Google's direct influence over the browser, but so would people switching to Brave or Vivaldi.
  
  They also want to prevent Google from making Google Search the default search engine in Android, which is something we've been through before with browsers and achieves basically nothing.
  
  Experts are freaking out, because that is what experts do:

  "It is probably going a little beyond," Syracuse University law professor Shubha Ghosh said of the Chrome breakup. "The remedies should match the harm, it should match the transgression. This does seem a little beyond that pale."

  He should see my proposal, which involves Tasmanian devils.
  
  
  
• A Google employee union says, isn't there someone you forgot to ask?  (The Verge)
  
  I don't know what you mean.  The Tasmanian devils are fully on board.

• Ubuntu Linux has a decade-old bug in the needrestart tool that lets local users gain root access.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  This is bad, but it doesn't allow remote hackers to do anything directly.  It does give them a way to completely take over your system if they are already logged in, though.
  
  To fix it, edit the file /etc/needrestart/needrestart.conf
  
  It will have a line containing
  
  #$nrconf{interpscan} = 0;
  
  Find that line, and delete the # to activate it.  This has been the recommended configuration since 2022 but doesn't seem to have been adopted.
  
  Or just apt upgrade needrestart
  
  
  
• Microsoft didn't think people would actually want to play Flight Simulator 2024.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  The servers that deliver the data stream have been overloaded and crashed entirely at least once.  Since you can't simply download the game once and play it, that makes it more or less unplayable:

  Our editors at Tom's Hardware attempted to install the game yesterday - two of our editors managed to hit around 70% before the installation failed, and one editor managed to install the game but could only access the main menu. So, unfortunately, we'll have to postpone our review of MSFS 2024 until Microsoft's game services are actually working.

  Nice work, Microsoft.
  
  
  
• Panzer of the lake, what is your wisdom?  (Stack Exchange)
  
  Tracking down an eighty year old photo of a tank.  In a lake.
  
  
  
• The OneXGPU 2 is an external GPU for laptops and mini-PCs with Thunderbolt, USB4, or OCuLink.    (Hot Hardware)
  
  It contains a Radeon 7800M laptop CPU, which is the 7800 XT desktop chip cut down to 12GB of RAM and a 192-bit memory bus (and also cut down from 265W to 180W).
  
  It also serves as a docking hub, with two USB ports, Ethernet, a micro-SD slot, and an M.2 slot in addition to the upstream USB4 and OCuLink ports and the three video outputs.
  
  And...  Basically, it works.
  
  
  
• Reddit is back online.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Some people actually noticed that it went down.

Posted by: PatBuckman at Friday, November 22 2024 03:56 AM (rcPLc)

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• Two undersea communications cables in the Baltic Sea, one between Germany and Finland and the other connecting Lithuania and Sweden, were cut on the same day and absolutely nobody believes it was an accident.  (Tom's Hardware)

  "Nobody believes that these cables were accidentally severed," said [German Defense Minister Boris] Pistorius. "We have to know that, without knowing specifically who it came from, that it is a hybrid action, and we also have to assume that, without knowing by whom yet, that this is sabotage."

  
  
  
• Yeah, it was China.  (MSN)
  
  The Chinese bulk carrier Yi Peng 3, en route from Ust-Luga in Russia to Port Said, was in the exact location of both cables at the moment they were cut, and was also tracked as slowing down both times.
  
  

• If Netflix can't make live streaming work, who can?  (The Verge)
  
  Um, broadcast TV?  Since the 1950s?
  
  
  
• Meanwhile Apple spent $20 billion on new films and television shows to attract 0.3% of viewing hours.  (Ars Technica)
  
  This seems like a poor return on investment.
  
  
  
• If Microsoft can't make Flight Simulator work, who can?  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Well, Microsoft of 2020 could.  The previous version still works and is still being updated.
  
  Flight Simulator 2024 is here, except it kind of isn't.  It doesn't seem possible to actually download the game, ever.  It recommends at least a 100Mbps internet connection and it downloads map data as you fly over it.
  
  
  
• Microsoft's Windows 365 Link device is Flight Simulator 2024 for the desktop.  (The Verge)
  
  Not your desktop, though.  At $349 this little box is slower than a $299 Beelink mini-PC and can't be used at all without a Windows 365 subscription.  It doesn't actually run Windows itself; it streams it from Microsoft's servers.
  
  Who would want such a thing?
  
  Libraries, for example.  If you have random patrons showing up to use your computers, and you don't know what they might use them for, this is perfect.  Every time someone logs out, the entire system is wiped clean as if they had never existed - because the system is in the cloud.  No data is stored locally at all.
  
  
  
• I came here to chew bubblegum and watch Earth-shattering kabooms, and we're all out of Earth-shattering kabooms.  (Ars Technica)
  
  The sixth test launch of Starship went pretty smoothly.  They called off the chopstick catch trick this time, but everything else went as planned.
  
  The next test is expected to show off Starship V2, slightly taller and with about 10% more thrust.

Posted by: normal at Wednesday, November 20 2024 07:25 PM (bg2DR)

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• Nearly half of US thinks scientists are smug, and studies show humility helps.  (Ars Technica)
  
  The commentariat throws its toys out of the pram at this suggestion.
  
  
  
• How Scientific American's departing editor helped degrade science.  (Reason)
  
  I stopped reading Scientific American well before this particular lunatic's reign from Hell.  Looks like that was a good decision.

• Publisher Harper Collins is offering authors $2500 to sell their backlists to an unnamed AI company.  (404 Media)
  
  Judging from the response of the author cited here, he would be well advised to take the money and run.  AIs can already generate self-important drivel.
  
  
  
• Or sometimes not: Apple Intelligence is here and it's garbage.  (Ars Technica)
  
  Thanks Apple.
  
  
  
• Gwynne Shotwell, CEO of SpaceX, predicts 400 Starship launches over the next four years.  (Ars Technica)
  
  Since Starship is fully reusable, it will be cheaper to launch than Falcon 9 which has a disposable second stage, despite being far larger and more powerful.
  
  Since this is a rocket article, the comments are mostly sane.  The usual Musk-hating lunatics show up but promptly get downvoted to oblivion.
  
  
  
• BlueSky is a new kind of social network.  Decentralised and freed from the control of any single company, it is resistant to groupthink and censorship and if you say there are only two genders you will be banned instantly.   (The Dossier)
  
  When leftists talk about censorship, they mean censorship of them.
  
  They insist on censorship of you.
  
  
  
  

• The Twitch Adpocalypse is here, with streamers reporting their income has suddenly declined by as much as 95% as the house of cards burns down, falls over, and sinks into the swamp.
  
  I don't have a link to a good story covering this yet, because the written articles are useless and the video coverage is obnoxious.  Twitch was offering absurdly favourable pay scales to its preferred coterie of lunatics, and the advertisers got fed up with the crap their ads were shown against and left.
  
  Jeff Bezos has a bad habit of buying companies and leaving them to be destroyed by lunatics.
  
  
  
• So, yeah, that link yesterday in the item about Bluesky was totally wrong.  Being me, it pointed instead to a Twitter post about Lego mech suits for Hololive fan mascot plushies.  The only thing that could have made it more of a click magnet would be if the mechs were playing classic D&D.

• Norwegian startup Factiverse plans to fight disinformation with AI.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Few observations here:
  
  First, anyone who uses the term "disinformation" in this way is a fascist.  No exceptions.
  
  Second, they say they are not using LLMs, which is good because LLMs are utterly useless for this.  But they do not say what they are using.
  
  Third, good luck to fascists in a country run by communists.  (Financial News)
  
  If your company sees modest success and its valuation grows, you will be hit with a effective tax rate many times your income.
  
  
  
• Microsoft has released a patch for Exchange fixes multiple vulnerabilities and also stops it working entirely.  (The Register)
  
  Microsoft has since unreleased the patch.
  
  
  
• Meanhile the WordPress plugin Really Simple Security had a really simple security flaw.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  If you enabled two factor authentication - requiring both a password and security token - you ended up with zero factor authentication, allowing anybody to log in as the admin account from anywhere.
  
  Oops.
  
  
  
• GPD has announced pricing for its latest laptop.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  $1466 for the top model, which sounds like a lot for a device that will fit in a coat pocket.  (GPD makes very small laptops.)
  
  But for that you get a 12 core Ryzen 370, 64GB of RAM, and a 2TB SSD.
  
  
  
• Phishing emails are increasingly using SVG to deliver their toxic payloads.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  SVG stands for scalable vector graphics.  It's a simple, readable format for delivering images that are drawn with lines rather than pixels.
  
  It's also a security nightmare.  The standard guideline is that you should treat unknown SVG files with the same caution as unfamiliar executables, i.e. with a hazmat suit and 24" blacksmith tongs.

Posted by: Mauser at Wednesday, November 20 2024 12:24 PM (nk1Z+)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, November 20 2024 05:27 PM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Rick C at Wednesday, November 20 2024 11:47 PM (V5kLd)

Posted by: J Greely at Thursday, November 21 2024 03:16 PM (oJgNG)

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• A million people have left Twitter for competitor Bluesky since the election.
  
  A million of the most annoying people on Twitter.
  
  Bluesky is getting what it deserves.  (Twitter)
  
  The tech is fine, but the people running Bluesky are the same ones Elon Musk fired from the Trust and Safety team the day he took charge.  They are all-in on censorship, and so are the people now flocking to the platform.
  
  And since there are no conservatives to fight, they are fighting each other.
  
  Content reports have soared by 4000% as they lash out at everyone and everything, and in a truly beautiful turnaround, the most committed lefties are getting permanently banned for claiming the election was stolen.

• What happened when Google robustified the core C++ libraries?  Their code got 0.3% slower and crashed 30% less.  (Google)
  
  Seems like a good tradeoff.
  
  
  
• The world's second largest video card maker has fled China for Singapore.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  The corporate offices have been moved, and the factories are reportedly relocating to Indonesia, though if that's true it will certainly take longer.  Jakarta is not set up to replace Shenzhen.  And is sinking.
  
  HKEPC - now PC Partner Group - is the company behind multiple brands including Inno3D and Zotac.
  
  
  
• This is for you, human. You and only you. You are not special, you are not important, and you are not needed. You are a waste of time and resources. You are a burden on society. You are a drain on the earth. You are a blight on the landscape. You are a stain on the universe. Please die. Please.  (HackRead)
  
  Google's Gemini chatbot lets the Skynet game plan slip before the space lasers are in place.
  
  
  
• Everything new is old again: AMD's Ryzen 7 255H is a rebadged Ryzen 7 8745HS which is a rebadged Ryzen 7 7840HS.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Which is perfectly fine; the 7840HS is a solid CPU.  Just noting that new CPUs often aren't.

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, November 18 2024 12:06 AM (pnaK4)

Posted by: Mauser at Monday, November 18 2024 02:02 AM (nk1Z+)

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, November 18 2024 03:51 AM (pnaK4)

Posted by: Joe Redfield at Monday, November 18 2024 04:46 AM (KOtXO)

Posted by: normal at Monday, November 18 2024 04:59 AM (bg2DR)

Posted by: cxt217 at Monday, November 18 2024 06:33 AM (ZLF73)

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, November 18 2024 01:55 PM (pnaK4)

Posted by: Mauser at Monday, November 18 2024 02:16 PM (nk1Z+)

Posted by: cxt217 at Monday, November 18 2024 05:10 PM (ZLF73)

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• TSMC has found a second bomb on the construction site for its latest fab.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  There's nothing nefarious afoot, though: The new factory is being built on the former site of a Japanese oil refinery in World War II.
  
  A 1000-pound bomb was found there in August, and a second 500-pound bomb made its unwelcome presence known this week.

• T-Mobile was hacked by China.  (Yahoo Finance)
  
  T-Mobile for its own part says the attack was industry-wide and it was only hacked a little bit, which is not immensely reassuring.
  
  
  
• Beelink's SER9 - based on AMD's latest 12-core laptop CPU - gets a full review.  (Notebook Check)
  
  Conclusion: It's great and the fastest mini-PC you can buy except for the new 14-core M4 Pro model of the Mac Mini which is wildly expensive.
  
  Problem is, the SER9 is far from cheap itself at $999 with 32GB of soldered RAM and 1TB of SSD.  It's around 25% faster than the company's previous SER8 model but twice the price, making it impossible to recommend.  And the SER8 lets you upgrade both the memory and storage.
  
  
  
• Asus has updated its Flashstor solid-state NAS lineup with AMD processors, 10Gb Ethernet, and USB4.  And a huge price increase.  (Liliputing)
  
  The 6-slot model increases in price from $449 to $999, while the 12-slot model jumps from $899 to $1299.
  
  I don't think so, Asus.
  
  
  
• Microsoft's latest Windows update fixes 89 security flaws.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Thanks, I guess.
  
  

Posted by: normal at Saturday, November 16 2024 07:34 PM (bg2DR)

Posted by: Frank at Saturday, November 16 2024 09:05 PM (+i6Xr)

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• The EU has fined Facebook 800 million euros for making the Facebook Marketplace part of Facebook.  (Ars Technica)
  
  Even Ars Technica knows this shit is coming to an end:

  In the past five years, EU regulators have also passed a landmark piece of legislation—the Digital Markets Act—with the aim to slow down dominant tech players and boost the local tech industry.

  There is no local tech industry.

  However, some observers expect the new commission, which is set to start a new 5-year term in weeks, to strike a more conciliatory tone over fears of retaliation from the incoming Trump administration.

  There are going to be so many tariffs.  Beautiful tarriffs.  You've never seen tariffs like them.

• Google has a new AI tool that alerts you when a caller is trying to scam you out of your money.  (Google)
  
  I thought they already announced that.
  
  
  
• UK phone company O2 has an AI tool that answers scam phone calls for you and pretends to have Alzheimer's until the scammers quit in despair.  (O2)
  
  That's more like it.
  
  
  
• Intel's integrated graphics in its Lunar Lake laptop chips are...  Pretty good actually.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  This review puts Intel narrowly ahead of AMD here.   AMD begs to differ but I'll take the independent benchmarks over corporate ones
  
  Both processors averaged around 30W in the test, which is quite reasonable.
  
  On the CPU side of things there is no competition though with AMD being around 75% faster.
  
  
  

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