• Windows crashes three times as often as MacOS.  (TechSpot)
  
  MacOS is that bad, huh?
  
  Some glitches with the sites aside, this server has been running nonstop for two years, and that's pretty typical for Linux.  It only reboots when you reboot it.
  
  
  
• Meanwhile some people at Microsoft are fighting to bring an end to mandatory online accounts for Windows.  (Windows Centra)
  
  Nice to have a hobby.
  
  I'm not expecting them to succeed here.

• LG is shipping 1Hz display panels for laptops.  (PC World)
  
  That is they can refresh as little as once per second, if you're just sitting there looking at a static screen - or up to 120Hz if the display is active.
  
  Apple's new MacBook Neo has a phone CPU that uses as little as 4W, but still has fairly mid-tier battery life.  What's draining all that power?  
  
  You guessed it.
  
  The panels are already shipping as the default choice in Dell's latest XPS models.
  
  
  
• SK Hynix, the third of the big three memory manufacturers, is planning a US IPO this year to raise funds for expansion.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  The share offering is expected to be small - about 2% of the total stock - but will value the company at $500 to $700 billion.
  
  SK Hynix reported 50% revenue growth and 100% growth in profits in 2025 - and only the last couple of months of that were in the DRAM Apocalypse - so I don't think they'll have a hard time finding buyers.
  
  
  
• Meanwhile production constraints at TSMC are pushing customers to look to Samsung for their chips.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Not that TSMC is having problems, just that demand is outstripping supply.
  
  To the point that Tesla is building its own chips foundry.
  
  
  
• On the AI side of things, it's not all slop.  (The Register)
  
  Recent reports of open-source projects - including Linux - being overwhelmed by useless AI-generated bug reports have ameliorated into useful AI-generated bug reports.
  
  Nobody knows exactly why the change, but this is something I am personally in favour of.  Testing in-depth is time-consuming and painfully boring, precisely the sort of job you'd give to an junior developer with clinical OCD in the good old days.
  
  Now everyone has a junior developer with clinical levels of OCD.

• Intel has been delivering interesting new products lately, with the Core 250K and Core 270K processors and the B70 Pro graphics card all providing solid performance at unmatched prices.  The Core 290K processor, though - the planned new top of the line - has been unceremoniously - and now, officially - cancelled.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  The 290K was to replace the existing 285K.  But since the new 270K has already been upgraded to match the core counts of the 285K, the 290K could only offer higher clock speeds...  And Intel can't offer higher clock speeds, not with these particular chips.
  
  
  
• Also spoiling Intel's plans is AMD with is long-awaited Ryzen 9950X3D2.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  AMD's X3D chips have what they call "3D V-Cache", because it has triple the usual amount of cache memory, with a second memory die stacked on top of the CPU - or in the latest iteration, underneath it.  Vertically.  In 3D.  Which is slightly redundant, yes.
  
  The new X3D2 variant applies that to both the CPU dies in a 16-core processor.  The increased cache provides its biggest performance gains for computer games - often running 30% faster than anything else - which only really use eight cores since that's what the current generation of consoles have.
  
  The 9950X3D2 is aimed more at workstation users and for most tasks will be barely faster (and possibly slightly slower) than the existing 9950X3D.
  
  AMD plans a breakthrough with its upcoming Zen 6 family, which will offer 50% more of everything, cores and cache alike.

• Reddit has a bot problem and plans to tackle it by verifying the notbots.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  The notbots are rioting at the thought of being verified.
  
  
  
• Wikpedia has banned AI-generated articles.  (Engadget)
  
  Like Reddit, Wikipedia has as large a problem with its humans as its inhumans, but this is not intrinsically a bad idea.
  
  
  
• Tracy Kidder, a storyteller (as he described himself) and author of the classic tech story The Soul of a New Machine about the creation of the Data General Nova minicomputer, has passed away.  (The Guardian)
  
  He was 80.
  
  
  
• Also late is Apple's Mac Pro.  (9to5Mac)
  
  It was introduced in 2019.
  
  Apple has indicated that there will be no future Mac Pro models, or anything to fit that gap in the market.
  
  
  
• The Langflow visual framework for building AI workflows has of course been compromised.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  This is not a burn-your-house-down panic situation like some recent incidents, but if you're using it, update immediately.
  
  
  
• Don't cross the streams.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Speaking of recent incidents, LiteLLM, which as I reported yesterday is recovering from being very thoroughly hacked, previously received two security certifications marking it as safe to use.
  
  From Delve.

  Even so, as engineer Gergely Orosz pointed out on X when he saw people snickering about it online, "Oh damn, I thought this WAS a joke. … but no, LiteLLM *really* was 'Secured by Delve.'"

  As for LiteLLM, CEO Krrish Dholakia had no comment on the use of Delve. He's still busy cleaning up the unfortunate mess from being a victim of attack.

  The attack on LiteLLM was indirect via Trivy and GitHub, so users of the software probably were safe...  Right up until the entire project was compromised.
  
  

Posted by: normal at Friday, March 27 2026 10:11 PM (LADmw)

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• The long-running court case by Sony and the global music cartel against the internet and free people everywhere, represented here - somehow - by Cox Communications, has met an end.  (CBS)
  
  Most recently upheld by the Fourth Circuit, it finally reached the Supreme Court which just handed down its decision, saying, no you dumbasses, just because you don't make it impossible for someone to do something bad doesn't make you complicit.
  
  You may wonder with such a divided court what the split was in this decision.
  
  The split was 9-0.
  
  Even the concurrence by the court's special needs justices Sotomayor and Jackson agreed with the majority opinion on this point of law and on the decision generally.

• Intel's big Battlemage graphics card is finally here, but there is no B770 card in sight.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Instead we have the B65 Pro and B70 Pro, which both feature 32GB of RAM on a 256-bit bus.  So they are definitely not targeting gamers looking for performance on a budget, but with MSRP for the B70 Pro starting at $949, it is the cheapest 32GB graphics card by a solid margin.
  
  AMD's Radeon 9700 Pro has a list price of $1299, and while Nvidia's 5090 has an MSRP of $1999, even that is a complete fiction and you'll be be paying twice that if you can find one at all.
  
  
  
• Not everything in computing is insanely expensive.  This gigabit switch for example is less than ten bucks.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  That's not a remarkable savings, it's just a useful datapoint.
  
  
  
• The new Seagate Firecuda 540R is an SSD focused on endurance, with about twice the liefspan of comparable mainstream desktop drives.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  And with today's market, it's MSRP makes it a reasonable option.
  
  If it were available at MSRP.
  
  It's not.  It's about twice that.
  
  
  
• The same hackers who recently hit the vulnerability scanner Trivy have now done the same to Python AI library LiteLLM.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  It's likely that they broke into LiteLLM using the Trivy hack.
  
  Reports are that half a million more users were compromised via LiteLLM, so things are only going to get worse.
  
  
  

Musical Interlude

• OpenAI has shuttered its Sora AI-generated video app just six months after it first launched.  (Hollywood Reporter)
  
  Disney was planning to invest $1 billion in OpenAI and license some of its IP to be used in Sora.  That deal is as dead as the app itself.
  
  
  
• OpenAI's "Instant Checkout" feature that allowed used to purchase products from within a chat session has likewise been deprioritised.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  K-i-l-l-e-d, deprioritised.

• Arm has announced its first AGI CPU, dubbed reasonably enough the Arm AGI CPU.  (Arm)
  
  It has 136 Arm Neoverse N3 cores running at 3.7GHz, 96 lanes of PCIe Gen 6 - yes, 6, and support for DDR5-8800 memory, which is pretty fast for a server.
  
  That's all nice, but you might be wondering where the AGI comes into it.
  
  That's the neat part.  It doesn't.
  
  
  
• The FCC has banned imports of new routers made in other countries, which is where imports come from.  (Liliputing)
  
  This follows an unending series of massive exploits of consumer networking equipment in recent years.
  
  Companies can apply to a conditional approval program to continue to sell products to the United States, but that comes with certain caveats, like upgrading device security to be "not total shit".
  
  Security experts that are usually critical of government inaction in this area appear stunlocked at seeing all their recommendations enacted in one fell swoop.
  
  
  
• Telling an AI that it is an expert programmer makes it worse.  (The Register)
  
  To nobody's surprise.

Posted by: PatBuckman at Wednesday, March 25 2026 08:03 PM (s6adZ)

Posted by: Rick C at Wednesday, March 25 2026 09:37 PM (1zWbY)

Posted by: Frank at Thursday, March 26 2026 05:14 AM (zCiG7)

Posted by: J Greely at Thursday, March 26 2026 07:52 AM (oJgNG)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, March 26 2026 05:59 PM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Frank at Thursday, March 26 2026 06:17 PM (zCiG7)

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• Intel's Arrow Lake Refresh desktop CPUs are here - the 250K and 270K Plus.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Are they fast?  Yes.  They close in on the regular AMD parts for gaming, and the 270K competes with the 9950X for heavy desktop workloads.
  
  Are they power-efficient?  Not especially, but they are a big improvement over Intel's notoriously power-hungry 13th and 14th generation chips.
  
  Are they good value?  Definitely.  $200 for the 250K with 6P and 12E cores, and $300 for the 270K with 8P and 16E cores would make them hard to resist if you could buy the rest of the components for a system.
  
  Should you buy one?  Probably not.  These run in Intel's Socket 1851 platform and that will be retired within a year for Nova Lake and its Socket 1954.
  
  If that's not a concern - and particularly if you already have DDR5 memory sitting around - then yes, these look worth considering.

• GrapheneOS has refused to comply with new age verification laws that target operating systems.  (Tom's Hardware)

  If GrapheneOS devices can't be sold in a region due to their regulations, so be it.

  Meanwhile fuck systemd.
  
  
  
• Walmart tried using ChatGPT and in-chat purchases.  It failed.  Hard.  (Search Engine Land)
  
  Sales rates were one third of just directing people to the website.
  
  
  
• There are new exploits circulating that can trivially hack any iPhone or iPad running iOS 18 or older.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  But there's only about half a billion of those so no need to worry.
  
  
  
• Google's new Pixel 10a phone is a Pixel 9a.  (Notebook Check)
  
  Is it a bad phone?  No.  Is it a new phone?  Also no.

1 Musical Interlude song - saw a reaction video to this song being done by a gal. After listening to the lyrics for a while she started blushing. Almost fifty years later, and still getting special effects

Posted by: Frank at Tuesday, March 24 2026 06:18 PM (zCiG7)

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, March 24 2026 09:50 PM (1zWbY)

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• Elon Musk has announced TeraFab, a Tesla-SpaceX joint venture to bring the various companies' (including xAI and I guess Twitter) chip manufacturing together under one very large roof.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  $20 billion buys a lot of roof.
  
  Primarily it will be producing local AI chips for robots - vision processing and similar systems, and large scale general purpose AI chips for orbital datacenters.
  
  This is the 21st century I asked for.  Certainly more so than anything OpenAI has delivered.

• Trapped in a closet self-driving taxi with Vanna White a screaming homicidal leftist lunatic outside.  (Seattle Times)
  
  Don't go to San Francisco, and if you do, don use self-driving taxis, and if you do, pack a nuclear-powered flamethrower.
  
  
  
• Corsair is offering a 25% discount on some DDR5 memory kits.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  So they're only at a 200% over the past six months rather than 300%.
  
  
  
• An extremely awkward workaround for the Crimson Desert's extremely awkward inventory system.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Or you can just wait a month while they fix this and other issues.
  
  
  
• Cursor's new coding model was built on top of Moonshot AI's Kimi. (Tech Crunch)
  
  Who?

• An Ohio datacenter planned by Japanese company SoftBank will cost $40 billion to build - and require a new 9.2GW gas turbine generator complex that will cost another $33 billion.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Or, as the article notes, 9 nuclear reactors, though that option is off the table due to the excruciatingly long lead times thanks to a thousand layers of bureaucratic nonsense.
  
  Which is ironic considering that the site chosen for the datacenter near Piketon was used to produce nuclear fuel from 1956 until 2001.

• Jeff Bezos is in talks to raise $100 billion to buy existing manufacturing companies and automate them using AI.  (MSN)
  
  That's probably better than letting the companies slowly go broke.  Maybe.  I guess.
  
  
  
• AMD has released its updated FSR 4.1 AI-based upscaling technology - the company's equivalent to Nvidia's DLSS.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Reports are that it's genuinely good.
  
  But AMD is still keeping a pillow firmly over the face of FSR 4 for older RDNA2 and RDNA3 graphics cards, even though following an accidental leak of the source code it is known to work perfectly well.  Not as efficiently as on RDNA4, but still fine.
  
  And it's not as if you can just buy a top-of-the-line Radeon 9070 XT below MSRP right now.  I mean, you can, and I did, but I'm an idiot when it comes to money.
  
  
  
• Crimson Desert is here and AMD used it to demonstrate FSR 4.1.  Should you buy it?  Nnngh.  (PC Gamer)
  
  Reviews are mixed, with some calling it the greatest thing since cut cheese and others calling it a buggy mess, and Intel graphics card owners crying in their soup - because the game simply won't start.
  
  One of the strongest criticisms apart from that comes from leaked internal conversations that allege the company didn't decide on the plot of the game until shortly before release.  Which rings true because the developer, Pearl Abyss, is best known for it's MMO title Black Desert.  In fact, I'm not sure they've released anything else.
  
  
  
• It does run at 50 fps on a MacBook Neo, though.  (Notebook Check)
  
  Albeit at 180p, upscaled to 540p - in testing the reviewer had to cut the desktop resolution to salvage something - and with frame generation to create fake frames with AI.
  
  The game fully supports Mac systems, but recommends at least an M3 CPU.  And even the just-released and seriously M5 Max is hardly a gaming powerhouse, requiring both upscaling and frame generation to perform acceptably.
  
  
  
• You know sometimes you see something for sale that is obviously, painfully useless and simultaneously has an eye-watering price tag, and you wonder who could possibly be the target market?  (The Verge)
  
  
  
• Trivy supply chain attack triggers self-spreading CanisterWorm across 47 NPM packages.  (The Hacker News)
  
  What?
  
  
  
• Widely-used Trivy scanner compromised in ongoing supply-chain attack.  (Ars Technica)
  
  Slightly better.
  
  
  
• Trivy vulnerability scanner backdoored with credential stealer in supply-chain attack.  (CSO Online)
  
  The best headline I've seen so far, because it explains what Trivy (it scans for vulnerabilities in your software) and what the attack does (it steals your login sessions).
  
  That's horrifying.  The very people most interested in making sure systems were secure were the target here.  If they built Trivy into their code testing process, it would have automatically pulled in the compromised version and stolen their GitHub credentials (this targeted GitHub) and used that to spread the chaos further.
  
  That's what led to the CanisterWorm attack on those NPM packages - and that is probably a very incomplete list.
  
  More at Socket and Wiz.
  
  The maintainers of Trivy posted a thread on GitHub to communicate the details to their users - which the attackers promptly deleted since they had effective control over the Trivy GitHub account at that point.
  
  
  
• Fuck systemd.  (It's FOSS)
  
  
  
  

Musical Interlude

Posted by: PatBuckman at Sunday, March 22 2026 08:24 PM (s6adZ)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Sunday, March 22 2026 08:38 PM (s6adZ)

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• Press X to doubt: Microsoft says it is fixing Windows 11.  (Nerds.xyz)
  
  Almost everything on the list is reversing changes that they push on users against vehement objections, or side effects of those changes.
  
  I'll believe it when I see it.  Or six months after that, really.
  
  Meanwhile the Windows 10 IoT Enterprise Edition still exists (and there's a Windows 11 version that is also less broken than the Home edition, if you need support for recent features like Ethernet-over-Thunderbolt.)

• Opera GX is here for Linux.  (Nerds.xyz)
  
  This is not the browser you are looking for.  Opera is now owned by a group whose primary business is payday loans in Africa.  The entire technical team left and launched Vivaldi.
  
  I'm not saying that Opera GX is actively scamming users; I'm just saying that I would not need to borrow Sarah Hoyt's shocked face if that turned out to be the case.
  
  
  
• Blue Origin has filed an application with the FCC to launch 51,600 datacenters into space.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  That seems to be rather a lot.
  
  
  
• Suspicious compliance: The story of Delve.  (Substack)
  
  Who will certify the certifiers?
  
  
  
• Trump's AI framework targets state laws, sifts child safety burden to parents.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Well.  I had mixed feelings about this: Tenth Amendment notwithstanding, state legislation on complex technical issues is usually bad, but federal legislation on complex technical issues is also usually bad.  And in this particular case, the people working and reporting on the complex technical issues are also usually bad.
  
  But if Tech Crunch is against it, I'm sold.
  
  
  
• Another day, another state: Don't-call-it-gambling agency Kalshi is banned in Nevada.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Not that Nevada is against gambling, just that the state demands its cut.
  
  
  

Musical Interlude

Posted by: Frank at Saturday, March 21 2026 06:19 PM (zCiG7)

Posted by: Rick C at Sunday, March 22 2026 12:18 AM (1zWbY)

Posted by: normal at Sunday, March 22 2026 01:20 AM (SV7Jd)

Posted by: Rick C at Sunday, March 22 2026 05:24 AM (57+IP)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, March 22 2026 04:00 PM (PiXy!)

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• Bluesky, one-time social network and latterly psych ward for those who can't cope with the harsh truths dished out daily by CNN and whatever MSNBC is called today has raised $100 million in a new funding round.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  That's million with an M.  Almost enough to buy -
  
  
  
• Your new car might need 300GB of RAM.  (The Register)
  
  Said US memory maker Micron, whose most recent quarterly results showed three times the revenue and nine times the profit of the same period the previous year.

• Walmart is flooded with previous generation Nvidia RTX 4000 series graphics cards.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  At reasonable prices, so as you might expect the flood has been mopped up pretty damn quickly.
  
  If you're in Australia and don't have easy access to Walmart, look around for Radeon 9070 XT cards which for some reason are steeply discounted right now, sometimes selling for less than the slower Radeon 9070.
  
  I expected shortages and price increases, and some Nvidia 5000 series cards have all but disappeared from US store shelves, but overall...  Not so much.
  
  
  
• A rogue AI cause a security incident at Meta.  (The Verge)
  
  Again.
  
  
  
• UK censorship agency Ofcom tried to levy fines against 4Chan again.  (BBC)
  
  They got a picture of a giant hamster instead.
  
  
  
• Kitten TTS is a text-to-speech model.  (GitHub)
  
  That's not remarkable, at least not in the 22nd century where we find ourselves when we're not being stupid which is rarely.
  
  Where was I?
  
  Oh, right.  What's remarkable is the whole thing fits in 25MB.  Megabytes with an M.
  
  
  
• Half the size of the front page of the New York Times website.  (Daring Fireball)
  
  That page on Daring Fireball uses 0.1% that much bandwidth.
  
  
  
• The Verge is having another normal day.  (The Verge)
  
  By which I mean they are barking at the moon.
  
  
  
• Can I run Crimson Desert?  (Notebook Check)
  
  Well, probably.  It runs at more than 60 fps at 1080p native using high settings on five year old midrange cards like the 3060 Ti or 6750 XT.

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, March 20 2026 09:44 PM (1zWbY)

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, March 20 2026 09:48 PM (1zWbY)

Posted by: Sponge - F*ck Cancer at Saturday, March 21 2026 03:28 AM (Zz0t1)

Posted by: Sponge - F*ck Cancer at Saturday, March 21 2026 03:29 AM (Zz0t1)

Posted by: Sponge - F*ck Cancer at Saturday, March 21 2026 03:30 AM (Zz0t1)

Posted by: Sponge - F*ck Cancer at Saturday, March 21 2026 03:39 AM (Zz0t1)

Posted by: Sponge - F*ck Cancer at Saturday, March 21 2026 04:06 AM (Zz0t1)

Posted by: normal at Saturday, March 21 2026 04:10 AM (LADmw)

Posted by: Sponge - F*ck Cancer at Saturday, March 21 2026 04:17 AM (Zz0t1)

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, March 21 2026 04:32 AM (1zWbY)

Posted by: Sponge - F*ck Cancer at Saturday, March 21 2026 04:47 AM (Zz0t1)

Posted by: normal at Saturday, March 21 2026 05:12 AM (LADmw)

Posted by: Sponge - F*ck Cancer at Saturday, March 21 2026 05:20 AM (Zz0t1)

Posted by: Sponge - F*ck Cancer at Saturday, March 21 2026 05:23 AM (Zz0t1)

Posted by: bob at Saturday, March 21 2026 05:33 AM (koMdH)

Posted by: Sponge - F*ck Cancer at Saturday, March 21 2026 05:36 AM (Zz0t1)

Posted by: at Saturday, March 21 2026 06:39 AM (Puq9y)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Saturday, March 21 2026 08:58 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Saturday, March 21 2026 12:25 PM (s6adZ)

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• A bipartisan gaggle of US senators is looking at blowing up DMCA Section 230, the law that makes modern social networks - and to a certain degree, blogs and forums - possible.  (The Verge)
  
  Section 230 shields website operators from lawsuit over the behaviour of commenters.  But it also serves as a shield for website operators that deliberately inculcate certain behaviours in their users - or that censor users to block behaviour they find undesirable.
  
  It's a people problem, basically.  There is not single technical or legislative answer to this mess.

• Federal cybersecurity experts thought Microsoft's cloud service offering to the government was "a pile of shit".  (ProPublica)
  
  They approved it anyway.
  
  
  
• Apple dropped the Musi app - which streams music from YouTube, apparently without paying anyone or making ads visible - from its app store.  A judge ruled they can do that.  (Ars Technica)
  
  And sanctioned Musi's lawyers for making shit up.
  
  
  
• AI job losses aren't particularly high, unless you're writing for a fourth-tier news outlet that prevents people from reading your articles, in which case you're boned.  (404Media)
  
  Sign up to access this post?
  
  No, I don't think I shall.
  
  
  
• SK Hynix says memory shortages will last until 2030.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Production currently only covers 80% of demand, and nobody is rushing to fill the gap because everyone who behaved that way went bankrupt in previous memory boom/bust cycles.
  
  
  
• Remove your Ring camera with a claw hammer.  (How Things Work)
  
  From the same tertiary syphilis patient who brough us such hits as The Subway Is Not Scary, Quit Your Evil Job, and Things You Can Lie About.
  
  
  
• A new font-rendering trick hides malicious commands from AI tools.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  That is, the commands are visible to humans but invisible to AI agents.
  
  I'm more concerned about the opposite approach, where invisible-to-human instructions are fed to AI agents, but I see no reason why this couldn't be used that way as well.

Musical Interlude

Posted by: Frank at Thursday, March 19 2026 06:26 PM (zCiG7)

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, March 19 2026 11:14 PM (2wuHw)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Friday, March 20 2026 12:01 AM (s6adZ)

Posted by: David at Friday, March 20 2026 01:05 AM (FAnMG)

Posted by: Joe Redfield at Friday, March 20 2026 02:57 AM (KOtXO)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Friday, March 20 2026 03:30 PM (s6adZ)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, March 20 2026 05:23 PM (PiXy!)

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