• Why Johnny still can't read.  (APM Reports)
  
  Well, the original book examining that question was published in 1955, so one possible reason is that Johnny is now 75 and refuses to wear his glasses.
  
  But another reason is exactly what that book explained: Johnny can't read because teachers aren't teaching phonics - aren't teaching the relationship between written letters and spoken sounds.
  
  Back in 1955 the trend was to jump too quickly from phonics to sight reading - recognising an entire word and its pronunciation from memory.  If you were already a strong reader you were likely fine with this; if you were at all behind you would be left struggling.
  
  Fast-forward a few decades and we find new generations of children who still can't read because they have been trapped by new - or once new - trendy pedagogies.  Molly Woodworth was a poor reader as a child and came up with tricks to help make it through lessons, though the tricks never worked terribly well.
  
  When she looked at the reading lessons for her daughter Claire, she was horrified to discover that the tricks she created for herself - the same ones that didn't work for her - were being taught as standard practice.

  A couple of years ago, Woodworth was volunteering in Claire's kindergarten classroom.  The class was reading a book together and the teacher was telling the children to practice the strategies that good readers use.

  The teacher said, "If you don't know the word, just look at this picture up here," Woodworth recalled. "There was a fox and a bear in the picture. And the word was bear, and she said, 'Look at the first letter. It's a "b." Is it fox or bear?'"

  Woodworth was stunned. "I thought, 'Oh my God, those are my strategies.' Those are the things I taught myself to look like a good reader, not the things that good readers do," she said. "These kids were being taught my dirty little secrets."

  Why are teachers deliberately sabotaging reading skills?
  
  Enter Ken Goodman.

  The theory is known as "three cueing." The name comes from the notion that readers use three different kinds of information - or "cues" - to identify words as they are reading.

  The theory was first proposed in 1967, when an education professor named Ken Goodman presented a paper at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association in New York City.

  In the paper, Goodman rejected the idea that reading is a precise process that involves exact or detailed perception of letters or words.

  Goodman still believed that when this article was written in 2019 - the author requested and was granted an interview.
  
  The problem is, he was proven wrong fifty years ago:

  So, in 1975, Stanovich and a fellow graduate student set out to test the idea in their lab. They recruited readers of various ages and abilities and gave them a series of word-reading tasks. Their hypothesis was that skilled readers rely more on contextual cues to recognize words than poor readers, who probably weren't as good at using context.

  They couldn't have been more wrong.

  "To our surprise, all of our research results pointed in the opposite direction," Stanovich wrote. "It was the poorer readers, not the more skilled readers, who were more reliant on context to facilitate word recognition."

  Or to put it another way:

  Goldberg realized lots of her students couldn't actually read the words in their books; instead, they were memorizing sentence patterns and using the pictures to guess. One little boy exclaimed, "I can read this book with my eyes shut!"

  "Oh no," Goldberg thought. "That is not reading."

  Why did Goodman still believe in his failed ideas after all this time?  (At the time the article was written, he was 91 and had just published a new edition of his book.)
  
  Put as politely as possible, he was a dingbat:

  "Word recognition is a preoccupation," he said.  "I don't teach word recognition.  I teach people to make sense of language.  And learning the words is incidental to that."

  No, he really meant that:

  I pressed him on this.  First of all, a pony isn't the same thing as a horse.  Second, don't you want to make sure that when a child is learning to read, he understands that /p//o//n//y/ says "pony"?  And different letters say "horse"?

  He dismissed my question.

  "The purpose is not to learn words," he said. "The purpose is to make sense."

  He tripled down minutes later:

  In his view, three cueing is perfectly valid, drawn from a different kind of evidence than what scientists collect in their labs.

  "My science is different," Goodman said.

  And why is fashionable nonsense so entrenched in education?
  
  Lots of reasons, one primary reason, it seems to me, is that teachers don't have to live with their mistakes.  You have a child for a year, cause lasting harm, and then get handed a fresh batch of impressionable young minds the next year.

• Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  An article about companies that were hacked, and subsequently went bankrupt.  One paid the demanded ransom; the other did not.  The outcome was the same.
  
  Somewhat galling is that German police captured the criminals behind the first company's demise along with their crypto wallets, but refuse to return the ransom payment.
  
  
  
• Reddit is people, so its search function searches content created by people rather than AI slop, says Reddit.  (The Register)
  
  Two problems here:
  
  First, Reddit is not magically immune to AI slop.
  
  Second, about 80% of Reddit users are insane, climbing quickly to 100% on any of the major "subreddits".
  
  
  
• In a very slow-moving flash of insight, I realised I need a humidifier.
  
  Never needed one all the years I lived in Sydney, but up here in the mountains you're not struggling to keep the air dry and cool, you're struggling to keep it warm and wet.  Warm I have covered, but I completely skipped the wet part, leaving the air very dry indeed.
  
  Ordered a cheap model from Amazon.  Shipped today so I'll have it this week.
  
  
  

Musical Interlude

Posted by: J Greely at Sunday, August 03 2025 10:40 PM (oJgNG)

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• UK premium luggage service Airportr, which provided door-to-door service and worked with ten European airlines, was not hacked, exactly.  (Wired)  (archive site)
  
  Because it had no security at all.  Anyone could look up anyone's personal information, or even log in as an administrator and redirect their luggage.

  The vulnerabilities resulted in complete confidential private information exposure of all airline customers in all countries who used the service of this company, including full control over all the bookings and baggage. Because once you are the super-admin of their most sensitive systems, you have have the ability to do anything.

  It was found by security analysts before anyone took advantage of it.  The CEO of security group Cyber9X is quoted above.

• Three senior executives are retiring from Intel Foundry, Intel's foundry division.  (Tom's Hardware)

  The departures come as Intel implements a major cost-cutting plan, aiming to reduce its global workforce by 15%. The company expects to close the year with approximately 75,000 employees worldwide, which means that the company will have fired 30,000 people in 2025.

  Those numbers don't add up because Intel has already laid off 15,000 staff this year.
  
  
  
• Titan Quest II is out in early access right now, available on Steam at 50% of the planned launch price of $50.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Titan Quest was a great game - linear, yes, but a very long line - but that was all the way back in 2006.
  
  Titan Quest II is reportedly good as well, though the playable content in the early access release so far only lasts about four hours.
  
  
  
• Google has filed an emergency motion in its failed case against Epic, arguing that it needs more time to make the changes ordered.  (Thurrott)
  
  Google has been given only 14 days to deliver, which is not a lot of time, true.
  
  But the lawsuit started five years ago, and Epic won the case - on all counts - twenty months ago.
  
  Time for Google to pull an all-nighter.
  
  
  
• Atlassian - Australia's largest tech company as far as I know - fired 150 of its European staff via prerecorded video.  (Cyberdaily)
  
  I used to kind of like Atlassian because small companies could buy any of their products for $10 and host them on they own servers.  They did get their fangs into you as you grew, of course.
  
  Now it's just loathing all the way down.

Posted by: Rick C at Sunday, August 03 2025 12:16 AM (1zWbY)

Posted by: Rick C at Sunday, August 03 2025 12:22 AM (1zWbY)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Sunday, August 03 2025 04:29 AM (rcPLc)

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• Epic just won its lawsuit against Google.  Again.  (The Verge)
  
  Google plans to appeal - again - to either an en banc sitting of the 9th Circuit or the Supreme Court.
  
  But Google no longer has a stay on the lower court's ruling, and Epic plans to put its own app store inside the Google Play store as soon as tomorrow.
  
  
  

Tech News

• Vibe code is legacy code.  (Val.Town)
  
  And everyone hates legacy code.
  
  
  
• Seagate has started selling 28TB HAMR external drives.  (Serve the Home)
  
  The bare drive costs around $570.
  
  The external drive in a USB case with a power adaptor costs $330.
  
  Why?  Because.
  
  Does it work the same?  Yes.
  
  
  
• Intel has rolled out the Core 5 120 which looks just like the Core i5 12400 including the support for DDR4 memory.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Looks just like it because that's what it is.
  
  
  
• How did they create the Universal Pictures animated logo in 1936.  (Stack Exchange)
  
  Today it looks like a simple bit of 3D CGI, but that was a little less common 90 years ago.
  
  So how did they do it?
  
  They built it.  It really existed.
  
  

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, August 01 2025 11:08 PM (1zWbY)

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, August 01 2025 11:16 PM (1zWbY)

Posted by: normal at Saturday, August 02 2025 04:04 AM (XUcVo)

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• Spotify collects your private information and then leaks it.  (The Verge)  (archive site)
  
  Which doesn't sound so bad except that Spotify collects a lot more than your playlists.
  
  
  
• So do your sneakers.  Here's why that's a good thing.  Maybe.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Skechers makes kid's shoes that have a hidden compartment for an Apple AirTag.  Which is great if your child has a habit of wandering off or you live in a crime-ridden left-wing shithole.

• Micron has announced its first PCIe 6.0 SSDs.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  These are not for desktop computers - there are no PCIe 6.0 desktop computers after all - but rather for high-end servers.
  
  There are also no PCIe 6.0 servers, but PCIe is backward compatible so they'll work fine with ten year old PCIe 1.0 hardware.
  
  The drives can transfer data at up to 28GB per second and will be available in capacities up to 245TB, both of which used to be a lot.
  
  
  
• The future is self-hosted.  (Drew Lyton)
  
  The article title says the opposite.
  
  The article title is wrong.
  
  
  
• Well, that's sneaky: There was a bug in Google's "refresh outdated content" button that let anyone delete anything.  (Ars Technica)
  
  If you adjusted the capitalisation of the URL it would raise a 404 internally  when it tried to refresh the link because URLs are usually case-sensitive.
  
  But Google's system was not case-sensitive, so on seeing the 404 it would consider it a dead link and remove it from the search index.
  
  

Mostly Not Tech News

• Was able to sleep soundly last night.  Added to the previous three nights, that put me back to...  About half of normal.
  
  
  
• Ruri Rocks continues to be worthwhile.
  
  In episode three, our grad student promised Ruri a sapphire.
  
  This week she found one.
  
  It was the size of a grain of sand.  And she spent a whole day hunched over a microscope looking for it.
  
  Also we were introduced - sort of - to the fourth member of the team, who will presumably be making her entrance proper next time.

Musical Interlude

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, August 01 2025 06:51 AM (Xf/Q5)

Posted by: normal at Friday, August 01 2025 07:21 AM (XUcVo)

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, August 01 2025 12:38 PM (1zWbY)

Posted by: cxt217 at Friday, August 01 2025 02:50 PM (ZLF73)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Saturday, August 02 2025 03:21 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, August 02 2025 09:29 AM (1zWbY)

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• What's up with Steam and Itch.io suddenly vanishing all those games and books and art and stuff?  (The Verge)  (archive site)
  
  Proximate cause: Visa and Mastercard deciding they have to act as global fun censors.
  
  Distal cause: Some group of Australian Stalinist nutcases called Collective Shout who have for years believed they have to act as global fun censors.

  As a result of Collective Shout's actions, in tandem with the payment processors, over 20,000 games, books, comics, and other creative works - confirmed via the Internet Archive - functionally ceased to exist on the site (though purchased content remains in users' libraries so long as it doesn’t violate itch.io's new guidelines), imperiling the creators who depend on sales from itch.io. In addition to NSFW content, notable projects that didn’t have the tag were caught up in the purge as well.

  Anything not mandatory is forbidden.

  Whenever a platform announces a blanket ban on adult content, LGBTQ+ creators are almost always disproportionately affected, harming queer artists and invariably queer people.

  This is true, because "queer" artists and "queer" people are sex-obsessed lunatics, but I'll support them before a bunch of Stalinist fun censors who are probably from Melbourne anyway.
  
  Update: Nope.  Sydney.  Well, I moved out of there just in time.

• AMD finally announced a Ryzen 9000 12 core chip with a 65W TDP.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  The Ryzen 9 Pro 9945 is a lower power Ryzen 9900X.
  
  The company also has - I only learned this today but it was announced a couple of months ago - the Epyc 4545P, which is a Ryzen 9000 16 core chip with a 65W TDP.
  
  This is aimed at small servers, but it goes in Socket AM5 boards, the standard for AMD's desktop chips.
  
  The 9950X, the full power desktop model, uses 170W of power by comparison.  But it is 20% faster on average.
  
  
  
• Corsair has announced its own version of the Ryzen AI Max mini desktop PC.  (Liliputing)
  
  These are really aimed at running AI on large models on your own hardware, because they can give you 128GB of video RAM for not much money.
  
  I'm a little surprised that so many companies are bringing out models given that, at the price of $2000 for a 128GB model, there wouldn't seem to be that large a market.

Posted by: cxt217 at Thursday, July 31 2025 10:53 AM (ZLF73)

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• Tea is the gift that keeps on gifting.  (The Verge)  (archive site)
  
  Not only is it good with honey when you have a nasty cold which I do right now, but just when you thought it couldn't get any more hacked, it do.
  
  Now 1.1 million "private" messages have escaped into the wild.

  While the company initially insisted that the hack only affected its "legacy" database and users who signed up before February 2024, according to the independent researcher and data trove reviewed by 404 Media, Tea remains unsafe, way beyond the scope of the original hack, and private messages sent as late as last week are accessible and vulnerable to further exposure.

  At first glance, the app has no security whatsoever and never did.
  
  The Verge tries to make a big deal of the nefarious actions of the elite hackers, but the fact is that all of the data was public the entire time.

• I was so congested the last couple of nights that I couldn't really sleep.  A couple of minutes after I lay down, my brain would go into panic mode insisting I had stopped breathing.  (I checked.  I hadn't.)
  
  Got maybe an hour Sunday night, and then three hours sitting up last night.
  
  Hoping I can do a bit better than that tonight, because even for me a full work day on that little sleep was a bit rough.
  
  
  
• Nvidia's RTX 5050 is faster than the classic 1080 Ti.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  An enthusiast by the name of TrashBench set out to show the old high-end card was still a capable competitor in 2025.
  
  Turns out it ain't.
  
  
  
• Samsung has signed a $16.5 billion deal to build AI chips for Tesla.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  These are not to answer stupid questions but to handle assisted driving and full self-driving functions - collating all the data from the cars' myriad sensors and trying not to run into things.
  
  The actually useful kind of AI.  Potentially useful anyway.
  
  
  
• Nvidia's B200 AI chip is 217 million times faster than Intel's 4004.  (WCCFTech)
  
  To be fair, the 4004 was introduced in 1971, built on a 10 micron process, and used less than half a watt of power.
  
  The B200 came out last year, is built on a nominal 5nm process, and uses 1kW of power.
  
  
  
• The SZBox DS156 is a 15 inch laptop with an embedded 7 inch tablet.  (Liliputing)
  
  The main screen is 1920x1080 and the tablet is only 1200x800, so it's not high-end stuff, but if you have spare memory and an M.2 SSD lying around the bare-bones model is around $250 which is not a high-end price.
  
  
  

Musical Interlude

Posted by: ahd at Tuesday, July 29 2025 10:16 PM (KLCB2)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Tuesday, July 29 2025 10:47 PM (rcPLc)

Posted by: normal at Wednesday, July 30 2025 01:28 AM (LADmw)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Wednesday, July 30 2025 02:00 AM (rcPLc)

Posted by: J Greely at Wednesday, July 30 2025 04:53 AM (oJgNG)

Posted by: Rick C at Wednesday, July 30 2025 05:17 AM (RG1Uw)

Posted by: Matthew Dixon Cowles at Wednesday, July 30 2025 11:52 AM (irynM)

Posted by: Mauser at Wednesday, July 30 2025 01:47 PM (QE7eq)

Posted by: Rick C at Wednesday, July 30 2025 05:43 PM (1zWbY)

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• Intel's network and edge ("NEX") division is headed out the door to join Altera as the company cuts everything that isn't nailed down and some things that are.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  It's not being shut down, just spun off.  Intel will keep a major though not necessarily a majority stake.
  
  Intel's share price is down 8% on the latest quarter's results following a $2.9 billion loss.

• How Clorox got wiped.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Clorox suffered a major ransomware attack recently, because - allegedly - the internal tech support team run for them by Cognizant was, well, this:

  "Cognizant was not duped by any elaborate ploy or sophisticated hacking techniques," the lawsuit asserts. "The cybercriminal just called the Cognizant Service Desk, asked for credentials to access Clorox's network, and Cognizant handed the credentials right over."

  Oops.
  
  
  
• Allianz Life also had an oops.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  The company's CRM was hacked, leaking data for the majority of customers and staff.
  
  
  
• How to make Postgress run 42,000 times slower.  (Byte of Dev)
  
  As a challenge, you can only edit the config file.
  
  
  
• Is ChatGPT making us stupid?  (The Conversation)
  
  I don't use ChatGPT.  I became stupid through hard work and determination.
  
  
  

Posted by: furball at Wednesday, July 30 2025 09:58 AM (As8gg)

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• OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says that AI is not a licensed therapist, doctor, or lawyer and there are no legal privacy guarantees for its users.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Sam thinks there should.
  
  But not for any reason other than it would benefit him personally.
  
  
  
• AI is also not a programmer.  (Mashable)
  
  Though to be fair it was Google Gemini this time that blindly deleted a user's entire project.

• In lighter news, ChatGPT also gave detailed instructions on how to join a cult of Moloch.  (Yahoo News / The Atlantic)
  
  No, despite the attempt to make it appear that way, it did not give instructions on how to slit your wrists.  It explained how to avoid slitting your wrists if you needed to draw blood from that area.
  
  It did give instructions on how to sacrifice large animals.
  
  And also a very direct allegory on the problems of abortion to which the writer was and remains completely oblivious.
  
  
  
• And then there's Microsoft Copilot. (Eye)
  
  "Open all the airlocks please Hal."
  "Sure thing Dave."
  
  
  
• AMD has announced its Threadripper 9000 non-pro lineup.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  The 24 core 9960X is priced at $1499, which is cheaper than the 16 core 9965WX.
  
  The non-pro models only have 80 PCIe 5.0 lanes and quad-channel memory, compared to 128 PCIe lanes and eight-channel memory, but for the 24 and 32 core models that's probably not a significant limitation.
  
  
  

Musical Interlude

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, July 28 2025 02:06 AM (1zWbY)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Monday, July 28 2025 05:24 AM (rcPLc)

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• Tea, an app for women to share the private data of men, was hacked - if you can use that term for an application that appears to have had no security whatsoever - and the personal information of all the users has been leaked online - if you can use that expression when all the personal information was already public if you knew to look.  (WCCFTech)
  
  And being a "women-only" app, it required users to upload government-issued photo ID for their protection.  So a site dedicated to doxing other people just doxed all its own users.
  
  This is why we can't have nice things.
  
  
  
• Meanwhile, Britain, which as of yesterday requires all its subjects to provide government-issued photo ID to view porn on Twitter, is already using the technology to block reports of anti-illegal immigration protests.  (Twitter)
  
  1984.0.0.1.
  
  

• Meanwhile over at Amazon, "security first" means about as much as "talent first" did with VShojo.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Hackers were able to inject a persistent vulnerability into an Amazon AI coding tool by, uh, asking it to do it for them.
  
  
  
• WiFi 8 is on its way.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Raw speeds are exactly the same as WiFi 7.  Rather it's designed to deliver better real-world speeds by reducing errors and dropped packets in, uh, the real world.
  
  
  
• How did GPD manage to cram a Ryzen AI Max 395+ and 128GB of RAM into a handheld device?  Apparently they left out the battery.  (The Verge)
  
  Instead it draws power from either a large external battery or a 180W laptop charger.
  
  Hope the oven mitts are coordinated.
  
  
  
• Echelon home gym equipment can no longer be used without a monthly subscription, an internet connection, and probably government-issued photo ID stored on a public server.  (Ars Technica)
  
  Hackers are working on hacking it.
  
  
  

Posted by: Mauser at Sunday, July 27 2025 07:34 AM (QE7eq)

Posted by: Rick C at Sunday, July 27 2025 08:07 AM (1zWbY)

Posted by: Rick C at Sunday, July 27 2025 08:09 AM (1zWbY)

Posted by: cxt217 at Sunday, July 27 2025 09:12 AM (ZLF73)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, July 27 2025 02:03 PM (PiXy!)

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• Intel plans to lay off up to 30% of its employees.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Things are bad.
  
  
  
• And to cancel processes beyond 18A (1.8nm) unless it can find a major external customer.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Very bad.

• AMD reports that equivalent chips made in TSMC's US factories are between 5% and 20% more expensive than those made in Taiwan.  (Bloomberg)  (archive site)
  
  Which they state is worth it for not relying on a single overseas source, even if it is nominally the same company.
  
  
  
• Guess it's finally tech news: VShojo is gone.  (The Verge)
  
  All those "allegedly" claims I mentioned in the first announcement a couple of days ago now seem to have been confirmed by the company officially - including misappropriating half a million dollars of funds raised for a charity drive.
  
  Which is a big no no.
  
  
  
• Indiegogo is being acquired by board game funding platform Gamefound.  (The Verge)
  
  Which is one of those acquisitions which just seems backwards.
  
  
  
• The Honor Pad X7 is cheap junk.  (Notebook Check)
  
  It's a small Android tablet with a crappy low-resolution screen, which is not something in short supply.
  
  
  
• The GPD Win 5 is a handheld gaming device...  With a Ryzen AI Max 395+.  (Liliputing)
  
  What.
  
  That chip uses 80W in low power mode.
  
  Does it come with oven mitts?

Posted by: Joe Redfield at Saturday, July 26 2025 03:24 AM (KOtXO)

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, July 26 2025 05:06 AM (1zWbY)

Posted by: cxt217 at Saturday, July 26 2025 01:05 PM (ZLF73)

Posted by: Mauser at Sunday, July 27 2025 08:01 AM (QE7eq)

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