• With the tech world embroiled in AI frenzy and every major chipmaker hitching its wagon to the fashion and recording record sales and record profits while the bubble lasts, it is comforting to see one company bucking the trend and...  Recording declining sales and an unprofitable quarter.  (Thurrott)
  
  Take a bow, Intel.  
  
  Though to be fair Intel showed off new consumer products at CES when AMD and Nvidia couldn't be bothered, and the integrated graphics on Intel's latest Panther Lake chips looks to be faster than AMD's fastest mainstream models (though slower than the Ryzen AI Max if you use it for gaming and not AI.)
  
  
  

Tech News

• Why does SSH send 100 packets per keystroke?  (Eieio)
  
  Basically it's obfuscating your typing patterns to block side-channel attacks.  Though your data is encrypted, if it just sends one packet each time you press a key a lot can be inferred from the timing.
  
  
  
• For everything else, there's Telnet.  (The Register)
  
  Where in this case "everything else" includes "instantly gaining root access to any server silly enough to expose Telnet to the internet".
  
  And the bug has been around since 2015 before anyone noticed.  Noticed officially, anyway.
  
  Nobody sane offers public telnet, anyway.
  
  
  
• There's a tidal wave of spam headed your way thanks to a Zendesk attack.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Companies affected include Discord, Tinder, Riot Games, and Dropbox.  With this attack you can receive spam from their official Zendesk servers even if you're not a customer.
  
  
  
• Are AI agents ready for the workplace?  (Tech Crunch)
  
  (shake shake)
  
  Signs point to fuck no.

  Faced with queries from real professionals, even the best models struggled to get more than a quarter of the questions right. The vast majority of the time, the model came back with a wrong answer or no answer at all.

  It can't replace junior programmers and it can't replace anyone else.
  
  If not bubble, why bubble shaped?
  
  
  
• The world's largest advertising network is surprised that ChatGPT is adding ads.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  I'm sure.
  
  
  
• The EU Parliament has called for a mass migration from US cloud and AI services to European ones that don't exist.  (Heise)  (archive site)
  
  These are not serious people.