Friday, December 29
Daily News Stuff 29 December 2023
Scrubbidi Server Edition
Scrubbidi Server Edition
Top Story
- The New York Times is suing OpenAI and Microsoft over copyright infringement by ChatGPT and Copilot. (Tom's Hardware)
This suit seems more substantive than some earlier ones, with examples showing that ChatGPT will reproduce large chunks of NYT articles word-for-word.
Where the case falls down is the NYT's attempt to paint itself as, if not a paragon of virtue, at least a public good, when the organisation is the editorial equivalent of pancreatic cancer, if pancreatic cancer were communicable.
It's no real surprise that ChatGPT does this, of course. It's yet another weakness of building a language model rather than a fact model. Facts cannot be copyrighted.
Tech News
- Quariding Shire has resorted to putting up road signs telling drivers not to trust their GPS. (ABC)
Though to be precise, your GPS is not the issue; it's the mapping software connected to your GPS unit that is the problem. It does not distinguish between a dirt road and a sealed one, or in rainy season, a temporary river and a sealed road.
Quariding Shire is only two hours out of Perth so this has thus far merely inconvenienced people and not killed anyone, but further inland things could be worse. Although further inland there aren't any sealed roads, so it's harder to go wrong.
- PCIe 6.0 is coming next year, just not for you. (Tom's Hardware)
Which is absolutely fine, because there are no mainstream PCIe 5.0 cards yet. As in none. Zero. So 6.0 can wait a while.
- Nvidia's newish graphics cards will be here soon. (Tom's Hardware)
Depending on pricing, the 4070 Super and 4070 Ti Super might be interesting. Probably won't, but might be. The 4080 Super is entirely pointless.
- Minisforum's new MS-01 is touted as a mini-workstation or mini-server, but I'm not sure who would want it. (WCCFTech)
It has two 2.5GB Ethernet ports, and two 10Gb Ethernet ports - though those are SFP+; two USB4 ports albeit only up to 20Gbps, five regular USB ports, an HDMI port, and an audio jack. There are three M.2 slots though only one is PCIe 4, and a half-height, half-length, single-width PCIe slot. Oh, and two DDR5 SO-DIMM slots, all powered by an Intel 13900H.
It's okay, but it doesn't do anything particularly well.
- Inside Apples massive push to make the Mac a gaming paradise, after they completely killed off gaming on the Mac and almost killed off the Mac itself. (Inverse)
Yeah, good luck with that, idiots.
- UK retailers will be forced to pay for e-waste recycling from 2026. (The Guardian)
What's that? Prices on all your electronic gadgets just jumped by 20%? And it's only 2024?
Inconceivable.
Disclaimer: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
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Well, at least food will only cost 250% of what it cost back when Trump was in office. So there's that.
Posted by: normal at Friday, December 29 2023 09:36 PM (bg2DR)
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I grew up in a nearly-rural area where there were both gravel and dirt roads--in hilly terrain, too--so I'm not afraid of them. But I assume from the pictures that there may not be advanced warning if a stretch of the road is flooded, which is a bigger problem.
When I first moved to Texas, I lived on the edge of the Dallas Metroplex, and right behind my subdivision was a street that flooded in rain, and the city had put up gates on both ends of the flood-prone portion that they would close if necessary.
I used to live in Salem (the witch city, not the other one) and there were a couple of streets that would rarely flood relatively deeply--every 3 years or so there would be a storm at a high tide or something that would overwhelm the drains. The college had a parking lot that sloped enough that you'd usually find dozens of cars with water halfway or more up the doors, and once I watched an idiot race around a corner on a street that had a slight hill that had 6+ inches of water at the bottom after such floods, and it was...moderately entertaining to watch, because you could tell the exact moment the car became a boat.
When I first moved to Texas, I lived on the edge of the Dallas Metroplex, and right behind my subdivision was a street that flooded in rain, and the city had put up gates on both ends of the flood-prone portion that they would close if necessary.
I used to live in Salem (the witch city, not the other one) and there were a couple of streets that would rarely flood relatively deeply--every 3 years or so there would be a storm at a high tide or something that would overwhelm the drains. The college had a parking lot that sloped enough that you'd usually find dozens of cars with water halfway or more up the doors, and once I watched an idiot race around a corner on a street that had a slight hill that had 6+ inches of water at the bottom after such floods, and it was...moderately entertaining to watch, because you could tell the exact moment the car became a boat.
Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, December 30 2023 12:12 AM (BMUHC)
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The e-waste article says "consumers will benefit", and that the goal is for retailers to pay, not consumers. Now who should I believe, the Grauniad, or my lying eyes?
Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, December 30 2023 12:25 AM (BMUHC)
4
Re: PCIe 6, I saw an article a few days ago I think on Tom's Hardware, that mentioned Phison's announced a new PCIe 5 controller that's designed not to need active cooling or a 4-inch-high heatsink. The obvious downside (if you can call it that) is that the peak read rate's only about 10.5 GB/s instead of 14.5.
Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, December 30 2023 12:31 AM (BMUHC)
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Where that Minisforum mini box could be interesting is if you run a PCIe extender out the back and use an eGPU. Don't have to worry about the machine's power limits, nor heat, nor being limited to USB4/PCIe x4 (the slot is 4.0 x
.
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Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, December 30 2023 12:33 AM (BMUHC)
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At least one person died in Death Valley when GPS was new. The US National Park Service did work with the big vendors to fix the maps. But it really doesn't matter.
I don't live that far out into the middle of nowhere, and within about 10 miles of where I'm sitting there are 2 signs that basically say, "I don't care what your GPS says, this is NOT a road." One is in front of a bridge that has been out for more than 50 years.
There used to be 3 such signs, but in that 3rd location they did some landscaping to make it impossible for Jeep to pass.
People will listen to the voices in their heads, or coming out of their dashboards, either one.
I don't live that far out into the middle of nowhere, and within about 10 miles of where I'm sitting there are 2 signs that basically say, "I don't care what your GPS says, this is NOT a road." One is in front of a bridge that has been out for more than 50 years.
There used to be 3 such signs, but in that 3rd location they did some landscaping to make it impossible for Jeep to pass.
People will listen to the voices in their heads, or coming out of their dashboards, either one.
Posted by: Zendo Deb at Sunday, December 31 2023 03:07 PM (MfCOS)
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