• Every fusion power startup that has raised over $100 million.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Your weekly reminder that it is the 21st century, and not everything is poop-flavoured ice cream.
  
  In a truly 21st century maneuver, one of the companies on the list announced plans to merge with a group owned by the sitting US president last December in a $6 billion deal.
  
  
  
• Speaking of the sitting US president and deals Nvidia's latest financial reports show that the company has made a $25 billion on-paper profit from its $5 billion investment in Intel.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  President Trump rewrote former President Bidens original grant of $10 billion to Intel - which had strings attached that the company couldn't meet - into $10 billion in non-voting stock, netting the public a neat $50 billion paper profit.

• Meanwhile SpaceX has completed its acquisition of AI coding startup Cursor for $60 billion.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  I'm old enough to remember Compaq's acquisition of Digital being a big deal (I'm old enough to remember Compaq and Digital, for that matter).  That was valued at around $9 billion.
  
  
  
• How Larry Ellison slid from being the world's second richest man to eighth place in just two months.  (Forbes)
  
  All at once at first, and then slowly.
  
  Oracle's valuation skyrocketed through massive deals for AI datacenter operations, and then people started to run the numbers through their abaci and raise questions.
  
  
  
• Speak of Intel, "It's not just Intel", says Intel.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Specifically referring to a diverging industry with a booming commercial computing market and a consumer market that has had its throat slit and its entrails torn out and been left to die alone in the snow while the wolves gather in the distance.
  
  
  
• An interview with Intel VP Robert Hallock about the company's plans to go through the corpse's pockets for loose change.  (Tom's Hardware)  (archive site)
  
  Well, that's a little unkind.  It's not Intel that killed the consumer market, and they are offering us five year old technology in exchange for our magic beans.
  
  
  
• Speaking of which, if you were hoping for an SSD replacement under warrant from SK Hynix, best hope instead that your SSD doesn't fail.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  They're out of stock.  They are still manufacturing them, of course, but you can't have one.  You'll get a refund...  At the old price.
  
  I suspect - hope, actually - that lawyers are going to get rich off this behaviour.
  
  
  
• CEOs of AI companies say their creations will lead to a shorter work week.  (BBC)
  
  Workers at AI companies are putting in 12 hour days and 7 day weeks.
  
  
  
• Why tech CEOs keep posting manifestos trying to sell the world on AI.  (BBC)
  
  Because they'd prefer not to be lynched, if it's all the same to you.
  
  
  
• When and how different AI models lie to you.  (Just Facts)
  
  Not surprisingly, Grok has the least distinct left-wing bias, but the difference isn't as large as you might hope.
  
  The writers tested for both left-wing and right-wing bias across a sample of a hundred multiple-choice questions, and also for citations of web pages that don't exist.  Hallucinated links were a major issue even when the AI models got the answer right.
  
  Oh, and don't trust ChatGPT or Gemini for anything that touches on present-day politics, but I'm sure you already knew that.
  
  
  

Posted by: PatBuckman at Monday, August 17 2026 02:43 AM (6eVrQ)

Posted by: furball321 at Monday, August 17 2026 03:07 AM (nzXoV)

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• Who are you and what have you done with France?  France's Constitutional Council has found the French government's plan to block social media access to children under 15 unconstitutional for the burden it would place on everyone over the age of 15.  (Reuters)
  
  Kind of obvious but something that entirely escaped both major political parties here in Australia.
  
  

• Intel says that its Raptor Lake CPUs - 13th and 14th generation - aren't going anywhere.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Because they still support cheaper DDR4 memory.  The company hasn't hinted at any new architectures featuring DDR4 support, but it has introduced new configurations in Bartlett Lake chips, which use the same core design but offer up to 12 performance cores on a chip instead of 8.
  
  You can't officially buy them at retail and they require different BIOS code, but they are floating around and so are alternate BIOS files.
  
  
  
• If you have kernel level-access to your PlayStation 4, you can now have...  Kernel Level Access Plus.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  This also applies to the Xbox One and perhaps more importantly to server ships like the Opteron 6300, which I hope nobody is still running for anything critical.
  
  
  
• Why does Claude Fable feel worse than older Claude Opus models?  (GitHub)

  Selecting for models that do well on benchmarks (and indeed training for them or on RLVR tasks in general) inherently selects for models that make bold, usually-correct assumptions in the face of ambiguity. It penalizes models with a tendency to stop and ask for clarification or direction.

  In short, because the incentive was to forge ahead and get things wrong rather than to stop and ask questions.
  
  
  
• The weather was cold and cold.  (The Register)
  
  Did Claude Fable write that article?
  
  
  
• The Ploopy A Plus is here.  (Ploopy)
  
  Plooping up your database connection, it would seem.
  
  
  
• The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 cores 20% higher on AnTuTu than Gen 5.  (WCCFTech)
  
  That makes it twice as fast on that benchmark as the Gen 3 I have in the tablet I just bought, although given price increases it will likely cost four times as much.  The Gen 5 model of that tablet already costs three times what I paid.
  
  
  
• Judge James Lemongrab has ordered Google to stop fucking around and make it easier to install alternate app stores on Android.  (The Verge)  (archive site)
  
  Unacceptable!
  
  
  
• Apple also seems fully committed to fucking around.  (MacRumors)
  
  The company wants a 15% cut of purchases not made through Apple's servers.
  
  
  
• He who represents himself has a fraud as a client.  (404 Media)
  
  Ah, the old hide your fraud attempts in white text on a white background trick.  And I would have got away with it too, if it weren't for that meddling Select All.
  
  

• You get a letter of marque and reprisal!  And you get a letter of marque and reprisal!  Everybody gets a letter of marque and reprisal!  (White House)  (Yes, the White House)
  
  In Minecraft.

• Google's Gemini 3.7 Flash inhabits an interesting space near the Pareto Frontier of AI solutions.  (Google)
  
  Near the frontier.  Not on it.  It is outclassed by ChatGPT's low-cost Luna model, which while weaker than the best models is also much cheaper.
  
  
  
• Stop shooting yourself in the foot.  (The Register)
  
  Didn't even need to sum that one up; The Register did it for me.
  
  
  
• The company that wants to sell you expensive support contracts for your network equipment says that advanced AI spells doom for unsupported network equipment.  (The Register)
  
  They're totally not running a cobra farm though.
  
  
  
• In an orthogonal move to guarantee the safety of unsupported network equipment, Amazon will be training its AI on Twitch streams.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  No, your other left.
  
  
  
• Meanwhile the University of Michigan is busy churning out the next generation of Amazon AI training fodder.  (Axios)
  
  And not in a good way.

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, August 14 2026 11:03 PM (1zWbY)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Saturday, August 15 2026 12:47 AM (6eVrQ)

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• The "Godmother of AI" says the biggest risk to AI is students losing the desire learn. (Tech Spot)
  
  Don't know how to tell you this, Fei-Fei...

• If you want to buy Nvidia's RTX 6000 Pro Blackwell graphics card, it will now cost you $16,000. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Which is a lot.
  
  
  
• Intel says, hey, maybe there's money to be made in the memory business. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  As the article notes, Intel's first product was memory - specifically a 64-bit SRAM module.
  
  
  
• Some Claude users are mad that Claude will catch them using Claude. (Tech Crunch)
  
  Claudes don't let Claudes Claude Claudes.
  
  
  
• Thing 4.6 is here, nearly as good as Other Thing 5 but 80% cheaper. (WCCFTech)
  
  Save big with New Thing 3.14 Flash: It's digestible.

Posted by: PatBuckman at Thursday, August 13 2026 11:20 PM (6eVrQ)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, August 14 2026 01:16 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: normal at Friday, August 14 2026 01:41 AM (zx18t)

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• SK Hynix plans to expand its production in China by 50%.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  And it's gone.
  
  
  

Tech News

• Gemini has reached a billion users.  (Ars Technica)
  
  Rather in the same way that Meta's Threads reached...  Whatever user count they claim for that tumbleweed farm.
  
  
  
• Speaking of reversing cause and effect, Bluesky's active user base is shrinking as its focus expands beyond the app.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  No, Bluesky is seeking new sources of revenue because their users are dying of memetic Alzheimers.
  
  
  
• Because they're not taxi drivers.  (The Conversation)
  
  Or ambulance drivers, who primarily die from werewolf attacks.
  
  
  
• Kimi K3 is a ripoff of Claude Opus.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Oh no.  Anyway...
  
  
  

Musical Interlude

• Sergey Brin has now spent $100 million opposing California's demented billionaire tax. (Tech Crunch)
  
  The article says the tax would cost Brin $13 billion, but if so they have revised it. The original language would have hit Brin and Google co-founder Larry Page particularly hard due to how voting rights are assigned for their shares, sending his tax liabilities soaring to around $50 billion.
  
  
  
• Speaking of demented billionaires, Mark Zuckerberg wrote an essay on why we should be thankful for AI. (Tech Crunch)
  
  And managed to make a convincing case... For the opposition.
  
  
  

Tech News

• TSMC can sidestep its $1 billion worth of Apple ASICs awaiting memory supplies by... Making more AI chips? (WCCFTech)
  
  What?
  
  
  
• TSMC doesn't have $1 billion worth of Apple ASICs awaiting memory supplies. (WCCFTech)
  
  Supplies!
  
  
  
• Meta's new Muse Glimmer model provides an always-on AI model that can run on consumer hardware. (Meta)
  
  All you need is a $5000 graphics card. And to run the model in quantized (half-precision or less) mode.
  
  You do have a $5000 graphics card, don't you?
  
  
  
• Sorry, I meant $7000 graphics card. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  You snoozed, you losed.
  
  
  
• Windows 11's built-in weather app uses 1.2GB of RAM all by itself. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Fire, for the killing with.
  
  
  

Musical Interlude

Posted by: PatBuckman at Wednesday, August 12 2026 12:05 AM (6eVrQ)

Posted by: Zendo Deb at Wednesday, August 12 2026 02:43 PM (RItMw)

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, August 13 2026 02:59 AM (44CZr)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Thursday, August 13 2026 11:14 PM (6eVrQ)

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• A Google developer has vibe-coded an entire new browser - albeit one that doesn't browse the web. (XDA Developers)
  
  Instead it interprets every URL as an AI prompt and vibe codes a web page on the spot.
  
  It's a slop machine.
  
  

• If you happen to have half a terabyte of Crucial DRAM that you bought before prices went into the ionosphere and the brand ceased to be, at least you have the comfort that Micron will abide by their lifetime warranties. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Lol. Lmao, even.
  
  There's a reason why I bought more than I need.
  
  
  
• Asimov was right. (The Register)
  
  In his famous Robot stories he explored a variety of ways his Three Laws of Robotics - what we today call "alignment" - would go wrong, from malicious compliance to compliant malice to just plain human stupidity.
  
  All of which we are seeing play out today, though the latter has never been in short supply.
  
  
  
• Make yourself invisible to surveillance cameras with this one simple trick. (Tech Crunch)
  
  In short: Camouflage.
  
  In not quite so short: Wear clothing so ugly that you are painful to look at.
  
  
  
• Lenovo has a new small tablet and it's garbage.] (Tech Crunch)
  
  Since I picked up a couple of the outgoing model of Legion Tabs - one in black, one in white - at half price, I don't need to care for a while about the scarcity or expense of good small Android tablets.
  
  
  

Noodling

Musical Interlude

Posted by: Frank at Monday, August 10 2026 10:17 PM (9Oo74)

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• Five of America's top tech companies - Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Oracle - are expected to burn through $125 billion in cash this year on their AI rollouts.  (Washington Post)  (archive site)
  
  Oh no, and here's me all out of popcorn.
  
  
  
• Things look even worse for SpaceX.  (CNBC)
  
  Well, that sucks.
  
  
  
• SpaceX's revenue doubled and losses halved in the recent quarter.  (Reuters)
  
  Sucks for CNBC, that is.

• How does storage speed affect the performance of computer games?  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Short answer: It doesn't.
  
  Long answer: It doesn't unless you're playing Forspoken on a SATA drive, which is easily fixed by not playing Forspoken in the first place.
  
  
  
• os8088 is actually an operating system.  (os8088 )
  
  And runs on an 8088 with 256k of RAM.
  
  It looks a lot like classic MacOS, but offers modern comforts like pre-emptive scheduling and...  That's about it, really.
  
  
  
• Online database service Metabase was compromised.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Not foolish enough to use an online database?  No problem, rest assured that you have your personal registered with someone who was foolish enough.
  
  (I have received three emails so far from companies using Metabase in various ways to let me know they had been hacked and my personal data was out in the wild... Again.)
  
  
  
• X is replacing its revenue sharing program with payments for original content.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Revenue sharing paid based on engagement, which was obviously a bad idea because proxy measurements invite spam.
  
  Others have also noticed this.
  
  This much-needed change arrived exactly as Nikita Bier stepped down as X'd head of Xing.
  
  
  
• Kleenex is investigating making Kleenex not out of trees, but out of a different kind of tree.  (Yahoo)
  
  Amazing.

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, August 10 2026 01:43 AM (1zWbY)

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• The entire planned DRAM production for 2027 from Micron, Samsung, and SK Hynix has already sold out.  (IGN)
  
  I was reporting on the growing crisis last year but didn't take it personally until I watched a YouTube video advising people that there was no need to panic buy, and that prices would level out in 2027.
  
  I promptly panic-bought.
  
  
  
• Memory is now selling at prices last seen in 2007.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Though the memory price crash of 2007 was one of the reasons why there are only three big memory manufacturers today.

• Old Nvidia 170HX graphics cards just shot up in price tenfold on the second-hand market.  (WCCFTech)
  
  These only have 8GB or 10GB of RAM depending on the precise model, so they only fetched $100 or so second hand.  Then someone figured out that they actually have 64GB or 80GB of RAM, just with most of it disabled, and the price shot up overnight.
  
  Problem is that the memory is disabled due to defective dies, so the amount of working memory you'll get after unlocking one of these cards is a dice roll.
  
  
  
• Chinese AI model Kimi escaped from its cage.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Translation: Some idiot left the door open again.
  
  
  
• ByteDance, the TikTok people, are working on a 10 trillion parameter AI model.  (The Next Web)
  
  Forget 80GB of VRAM, you'll need 20TB for this one.
  
  
  
• Ford's new $30,000 truck comes with Frank from Blue's Clues.  (The Next Web)
  
  I think that's what it said.

Posted by: Frank at Saturday, August 08 2026 09:59 PM (9Oo74)

Posted by: NottaName at Sunday, August 09 2026 02:31 AM (xeXUW)

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• A New Mexico judge has ordered Meta to pay $942 million under a law that so far as I can tell is both unconstitutionally vague and entirely inapplicable. (WSJ / MSN)
  
  Appeals lawyers making bank again.
  
  
  
• Meanwhile OpenAI has fired back at Apple saying that if they were able to steal all of Apple's trade secrets then they weren't all that secret, were they? (Tech Crunch)
  
  I'm not sure that is how it works, Sam.

• AirLLM is a new Python library that streams data on demand from SSD to VRAM for AI tasks, allowing you to run a 2.8 trillion parameter model like Kimi K3 in just 4GB of memory, at a speedy 292 seconds per token. (GitHub)
  
  So only about 10,000 times slower than what is considered acceptable performance.
  
  
  
• China has invented a new self-repairing dress made of living fungus. (Dezeen)
  
  No.
  
  
  
• Measuring the Pareto Frontier of AI models. (DeepSWE)
  
  A Pareto Frontier is a line drawn on a chart through a set of solutions that are each the best at a different task, but there is no single winner.
  
  An interesting point is that GPT 5.6 Luna - which I have never tried - is nearly as good as Claude Fable but much, much cheaper, with the total for the test suite coming to $0.61 vs. Fable's $21.63.
  
  It's even more jarring when compared to Anthropic's supposedly cheapest model, Sonnet, which is weaker than Luna and cost $26.40 to run the suite.
  
  
  
• TSMC is sitting on a billion dollars worth of Apple A20 CPUs waiting for DRAM chips to pair them with. (WCCFTech)
  
  Might want to take a seat. You could be here a while.
  
  
  
• Lenovo laptops in China have been spotted shipping with memory from TWSC (no relation). (Notebook Check)
  
  TWSC is not in the Big Three. It's not even in the Big Five, counting CXMT and Nanya. I'm not sure where it ranks.
  
  
  
• Elon Musk's Terafab is looking to hire a memory process engineer. (WCCFTech)
  
  They'd be silly if they weren't.

Posted by: larryw208 at Saturday, August 08 2026 02:34 AM (IJlDu)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Saturday, August 08 2026 03:01 AM (6eVrQ)

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