• Does Gas Town 'steal' usage from users' LLM credits & paid services to improve itself?  Yes.  (GitHub)
  
  As everyone in the attached Hacker News thread notes, this is entirely in keeping with the Gas Town philosophy, and with the recent practices of project lead Steve Yegge: It's a Ponzi scheme that turns Ponzi schemes into more Ponzi schemes, without at any point approaching utility.
  
  Gas Town is an AI project for creating and managing AI projects, created and managed entirely by AI.  Nobody knows how or if it works, and in fact it mostly doesn't.  And now it spends your money on expanding itself.
  
  If you're thinking this all sounds like another crypto scam yes, it's that as well.

• Microsoft's Recall tool that watches everything you do, takes screenshots, and stores it all in one convenient place still isn't secure.  (Ars Technica)
  
  The vault itself is secure - now - but as the user you still have access to the vault, and the process that manages that isn't secured from the user.  So if you can be convinced to download some malware, it can lie in wait until you log in to Recall and then silently scoop up all your data.
  
  Microsoft responded promptly...  By saying this is not a bug and won't be fixed.
  
  
  
• The MSI Cubi NUC AI+ 3MG is a mini-PC using Intel's new Panther Lake laptop processors, but all models in this range use SO-DIMM memory so it doesn't offer the high-end B390 graphics option.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Apparently there will be a desktop processor with B390 graphics with the Nova Lake release later this year, but then you can only have four P cores.
  
  
  
• The B390 graphics in Intel's Panther Lake chips use the new Xe3 cores - the successor to the Xe2 cores used in dedicated graphics cards like the B580.  Details of upcoming Xe3 dedicated cards have leaked and can be summed up as "not for you".  (WCCFTech)
  
  Intel plans to launch Pro and AI-focused models...  Only.
  
  
  
• Spotify won a $322 million default judgement against whoever is running Anna's Archive.  (TorrentFreak)
  
  Since nobody knows who that is and it's doubtful they have $322 million, it may prove difficult to collect.
  

• China's leading flash memory producer, YTMC, is constructing two new factories in addition to the one already in progress.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Each factory will produce 100,000 wafers per month - equal to 50% of the company's current production - once it reaches full capacity, but that will take a while.  The first of the new facilities will come online this year but will take another year to reach 50% of planned capacity.
  
  In an interesting twist, half the capacity of the first of these factories will be assigned to DRAM rather than NAND, which is what YTMC normally produces.
  
  It won't be enough to fill the current shortage but every bit helps.

• Speaking of which, Microsoft is increasing prices of its Surface laptops by between 25% and 50%.  (Windows Central)
  
  This makes them worse value in almost every respect than Apple.
  
  
  
• The Internet Archive has started hosting a collection of 10,000 recordings of live concerts going back 40 years.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Until they get sued.  So if you see something you like, download it now.
  
  
  
• Speaking of the Internet Archive, major news outlets are cutting off its access because it inconveniently reports exactly what they said.  (Wired)  (archive site)
  
  And we can't have that.
  
  
  
• The PocketTerm35 is a handheld device with a 3.5" 640x480 display, a full QWERTY keyboard, and a Raspberry Pi Pico.  (Liliputing)
  
  The only shortcoming is that the Pi Pico just controls the, well, the controls.  It's powered by a full Raspberry Pi - model 4 or 5 - which costs as much as the PocketTerm itself.
  
  
  
• Meanwhile the Pilet, another Pi-powered handheld, is switching to using the Pi Compute Module rather than the regular Pi.  (Liliputing)
  
  The Compute Model is designed to be integrated into devices like this.  There's just one problem: Lots of people already have the Pi, and hardly anyone has the Compute Module, because it gets integrating into devices.
  
  Like this.

Posted by: normal at Thursday, April 16 2026 06:36 AM (LDKo5)

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, April 16 2026 09:02 AM (1zWbY)

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• Answering the questions nobody is asking: Can AI be a "child of God"?  (Washington Post / MSN)
  
  Something needs to be done about Anthropic.
  
  
  
• Sam Altman's home has been targeted by violent idiots for the second time in a week.  (SF Standard)
  
  That's not it, guys.

• A Stanford report highlights a growing disconnect between AI insiders and humans. (Tech Crunch)
  
  No, really?
  
  
  
• Festus, Missouri has fired half the town council and is working on firing the other half and also the mayor after they approved construction of a $6 billion datacenter.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  This is more it.
  
  
  
• Maine has banned construction of new datacenters entirely for 18 months.  (CNBC)
  
  Well, sure.  Maine only got electricity three years ago, so they can do that.
  
  
  
• Someone bought 30 WordPress plugins and planted a backdoor in all of them.  (Anchor)
  
  One of the problems with WordPress - one of the many problems with WordPress - is that the security model for plugins consists of "trust me, bro".
  
  
  
• CopprLink is a PCIe 5.0 x16 cable that provides PCIe 5.0 x16 bandwidth to external GPUs. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Would it have killed you guys to put in the e?
  
  
  
• Linux 7.0 is here.  (Linuxiac)
  
  It includes...  Things.
  
  
  

Musical Interlude

Posted by: PatBuckman at Tuesday, April 14 2026 08:08 PM (s6adZ)

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, April 14 2026 11:45 PM (gjabc)

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, April 14 2026 11:46 PM (gjabc)

Posted by: normal at Wednesday, April 15 2026 09:16 AM (LDKo5)

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• DC.  Suicide Squad is a DC property, not Marvel.
  
  
  
• The peril of laziness lost.  (Dtrace)
  
  AI makes it easy to generate millions of lines of code.
  
  What it doesn't make it is a good idea.
  
  It used to be that laziness by itself placed a brake on the wheel of code churn.  Now you also need to know what you are doing.  And that is hard work to begin with.

• Don't buy the Ultra 7.  (Notebook Check)
  
  Dell's new XPS lineup comes in Ultra 5, Ultra 7, and Ultra X7 models.
  
  The Ultra 5 and 7 have almost indistinguishable performance.  The X7 is significantly faster for CPU-intensive tasks, and enormously faster for graphics.
  
  
  
• Twitter is cutting payments by 60% or more to clickbait accounts.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Good.
  
  
  
• Europe is not a serious country.  (Hacker News)
  
  In this case, a programmer in Spain couldn't access Docker images on Cloudflare because a football match was on.
  
  
  
• If you wanted to play the new game Crimson Desert but couldn't because it didn't run on Intel graphics, now you can.  (WCCFTech)
  
  They fixed it.
  
  ...
  
  Yeah, that's about it, really.  They've released three major updates - including Intel graphics support - in four weeks.
  
  
  

Musical Interlude

• Sam Altman may control our future.  Can he be trusted?  No.  (New Yorker)  (archive site)
  
  As the article goes on to explain, fuck no.
  
  
  
• My baby deer plushie told me that Mitski's dad is a CIA operative.  (The Verge)
  
  Nobody ever expects the Butlerian Jihad.

• The AI RAM shortage is also affecting SSD prices.  (The Verge)
  
  The Verge definitely has its thumb on the pulse of the tech world here.
  
  
  
• You can save 57% on a Corsair 96GB memory kit at just $499.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  No you can't.  Just kidding.
  
  
  
• On the other hand, reader Rick C checked online prices at Micro Center and they are 60% lower than the sticker prices shown in yesterday's article.  Or rather, the sticker prices were inflated by 150%.
  
  Micro Center doesn't deliver online orders; you have to pay for and pick up the item in person.  Still I'd expect a bigger fuss if prices in store were that much inflated over the prices they advertise online.
  
  
  
• If you were planning to start your own manned space program in this time of precented memory prices, you're in luck: NASA has released the Apollo code as open source.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Core memory is back, baby!
  
  
  
• Installing every Firefox extension.  (Jack.Cab)
  
  As the article notes, not all of them.  8 were deleted by Mozilla while the download was running and 42 couldn't be found, but still around 84,000 extensions.
  
  And...  It worked.  Kind of.
  
  It did use 37GB of RAM just to load the start page.
  
  
  
• Samsung's memory business is now more profitable than Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, or Microsoft.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Though it still falls a little short of Apple.
  
  
  
• Qualcomm is working with CXMT to develop custom RAM for smartphones.  (WCCFTech)
  
  While the Big Three memory manufacturers are making bank, the two former also-rans - China's CXMT and Taiwan's Nanya - are grabbing everything they can.
  
  
  
• Flash storage maker Sandisk just invested a billion dollars in Nanya, for example and Kioxia, formerly Toshiba's SSD division, invested around half a billion.  (Simply Wall St, Evertiq)
  
  SSDs - at least, good ones - need DRAM cache.  Sandisk and Kioxia don't make DRAM.  Nanya does, and not only that, but 90% of its production is still DDR4 which is not what current computers use but is what SSD controllers use.
  
  
  
• ProPublica journalists walk off the job in the first US newsroom strike over AI.  (NiemanLab)
  
  "We'll go on strike!"
  "That's right!  You'll have a national journalists' strike on your hands!"
  "And whom will that inconvenience?"
  
  
  
  

Musical Interlude

Posted by: three-humped camel at Sunday, April 12 2026 10:44 PM (a3b4L)

Posted by: Rick C at Sunday, April 12 2026 11:38 PM (1zWbY)

Posted by: Rick C at Sunday, April 12 2026 11:40 PM (1zWbY)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Monday, April 13 2026 04:29 AM (s6adZ)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Monday, April 13 2026 04:34 AM (s6adZ)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, April 13 2026 06:00 PM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, April 13 2026 10:00 PM (1zWbY)

Posted by: cxt217 at Tuesday, April 14 2026 03:18 AM (ZLF73)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, April 14 2026 01:54 PM (PiXy!)

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• Look around, find the worst price!  But don't buy before you come to Micro Center because we can't be beat!  Our prices are insane!  (WCCFTech)
  
  And not in a good way.  Elsewhere it would cost you an eye-burning $1600 to buy 128GB of RAM right now.
  
  At Micro Center it's over $4000.
  
  Western Digital and Samsung SSDs meanwhile have tripled in price in just the last three months, and there's little relief there with even cheaper brands using YMTC flash increasing by 50% or more.
  
  
  

Tech News

• Anthropic has banned the creator of OpenClaw from accessing Claude, labeling him a treacherous idiot commie weasel who smells bad.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Fair enough.
  
  
  
• Google, Meta, Snap, and Microsoft have excoriated the European Parliament over abandoning a law that created a carve-out in privacy laws to allow online platforms to scan user content for evidence of sexual abuse and have vowed to continue to do so.  (The Guardian)
  
  Because under a separate law, the platforms are legally responsible for user content that contains evidence of sexual abuse.
  
  They're just no longer allowed to regulate it.
  
  A very, very European thing to do.
  
  
  
• The latest bit of software to get indirectly hacked to deliver malware have been the CPU-Z and HWMonitor tools from the CPUID project.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  The software itself was fine, but the website was hacked to randomly deliver malware instead of the software you tried to download.  If you downloaded either package in the last couple of days - the poisoned versions were online between April 9 and 10 - you might have a problem.
  
  
  
• Cutting off the tail of DRAM latency at the cost of, well, cost.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Tail Slayer is a neat bit of software that avoids having critical memory accesses delayed by DRAM refresh cycles.
  
  But it does this by replicating your data across multiple channels of memory so you are never forced to access the memory module that is being refreshed at this precise instant.
  
  Which works, yes, but is a very expensive solution.
  
  
  

Musical Interlude

Posted by: Rick C at Sunday, April 12 2026 07:49 AM (1zWbY)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, April 12 2026 03:49 PM (PiXy!)

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• A hacker has reportedly broken into the National Supercomputing Center in Tianjin, China, and made off with...  Carry the twelve...  Ten petabytes of data.  (CNN)
  
  That's the equivalent of 70 billion Apple II floppy disks, or the total data in all the DNA strands of six and a half dromedaries.*

  CNN cannot verify the origins of the alleged dataset and the claims made by FlamingChina, but spoke with multiple experts whose initial assessment of the leak indicated it was genuine.
  
  The alleged sample data appeared to include documents marked "secret” in Chinese, along with technical files, animated simulations and renderings of defense equipment including bombs and missiles.

  Oops.

  Hofer, who reviewed the sample of the leak, said he was able to contact on Telegram a person who claimed they had carried out the hack.  The attacker claimed to have gained access to the Tianjin supercomputer through a compromised VPN domain.
  
  Once inside, the attacker told Hofer they deployed a "botnet" - a network of automated programs that were able enter the NSCC's system and then extract, download and store the data.  The extraction of 10 petabytes of data took around six months.

  One question arises: Where did the hacker get 70 billion Apple II floppies?**
  
  * Content may settle in shipping.
  ** Or six and a half dromedaries, for that matter.

Tech News

• Negative views of Broadcom are driving thousands of customers to abandon VMWare for literally anything else.  (Ars Technica)
  
  "Negative views" here meaning "They increased our bill by 3000%".

  Western Union exec says there were "challenges" working with Broadcom.

  "Challenges" here meaning "When we asked for a discount they laughed at me and burned my house down".
  
  
  
• Kill it, gut it, and wear its skin as a suit.  (EFF)
  
  La EFF est mort.
  
  
  
• Anthropic has lost an appeal in its attempt to stop the Pentagon from blacklisting it for being a bunch of - and I quote, or something like that - "treacherous idiot commie weasels who smell bad".  (CNBC)
  
  I'm not sure what Anthropic expects to achieve here.  If you factually are treacherous idiot commie weasels who smell bad, and a government department chooses not to work with you, even if you win in the court system you are still treacherous idiot commie weasels who smell bad.
  
  
  
• If you bought Intel at the bottom a year ago, congratulations, you've had a return of 250% in your investment.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Huh.
  
  
  
• The Korean government is taking action over soaring DRAM costs/  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Since two of the Big Three memory manufacturers are based in Korea, the action consists largely of monitoring the situation and watching number go up.
  
  
  
• The picoZ80 is a drop-in replacement for the very venerable Z80 processor.  (engineers@work)
  
  It drops straight into the classic 40-pin DIP socket and works just like the original.
  
  Except that it's actually emulated on a dual-core Arm chip running at up to 300MHz with hardware assist to drive all the pins at the precise timing in the specs.  And it has 8MB of RAM, with half of that addressed as 64 banks of 64k.  And an MMU that allows 512 byte pages to be remapped arbitrarily.  Oh, and 16MB of flash storage.  And wifi and Bluetooth and a microSD card - yes, all of that fits within the 40 pin package.
  
  And there's a pico6502 model.
  
  And yes, they've tested both in classic hardware and they really work.
  
  
  
• BunnyCDN has been silently losing our production files for 15 months.  (Reddit)
  
  I looked at BunnyCDN, mostly because it's one of the cheapest CDNs around - if you stick to the volume network (which doesn't cover Australia) it's one twentieth the cost of AWS Cloudfront.
  
  It's also been promoted recently as a European alternative to American solutions that actually work.
  
  Because, apparently...
  
  
  
• With TSMC's new 2nm node, phone processors are set to approach 5GHz.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Not you, China.

Posted by: PatBuckman at Saturday, April 11 2026 02:01 AM (s6adZ)

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Saturday, April 11 2026 02:06 AM (dLZLE)

Posted by: Joe Redfield at Saturday, April 11 2026 03:34 AM (KOtXO)

Posted by: Rick C at Saturday, April 11 2026 03:47 AM (1zWbY)

Posted by: normal at Saturday, April 11 2026 04:23 AM (e0fX0)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Saturday, April 11 2026 07:36 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: normal at Saturday, April 11 2026 09:01 AM (e0fX0)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Saturday, April 11 2026 04:33 PM (PiXy!)

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• Apple MacBooks slow down after 49 days due to a MacOS time bomb.  (Notebook Check)
  
  Not just MacBooks.  Anything running MacOS:

  This bug means that after exactly 49 days, 17 hours, 2 minutes and 47.296 seconds from the moment a Mac is switched on, network connections are no longer terminated correctly.  This initially leads to an increase in CPU utilization, because after some time hundreds or even thousands of connections are managed that should actually have been terminated.  As soon as the available ports, usually 16,384 in number, are used up, no more new connections can be established.

  49 days, 17 hours, 2 minutes, and 47.296 seconds?
  
  That number might ring a bell for the 29 year olds in the audience, because the same bug caused Windows 95 and 98 to crash outright when they were running for just shy of 50 days: It's a 32-bit unsigned integer counting milliseconds.
  
  Of course Windows 95 and 98 had the saving grace that they would usually crash for some other reason well before that time ran out.

• Amazon is ending support for older Kindles.  (The Verge)
  
  Where by "older" when mean 2012 and earlier.
  
  The devices will continue to work, but you won't be able to load new content onto them from the Amazon store.
  
  
  
• Iran is demanding payment in Bitcoin or iTunes gift cards for ships that want to pass through the Strait of Hormuz.  (CoinDesk)
  
  Do not redeem!
  
  
  
• The CIA used long-range quantum magnetometry to find the lost airman during the rescue mission in Iran.  (NYPost)
  
  Cool story, bro.
  
  
  
• Apple's MacBook Neo is made using defective A18 chips that would otherwise be discarded.  Problem: It's selling so well that Apple is running out of defective chips.  (MacRumors)
  
  The solution in these cases is to use working chips, so it's not likely that the Neo is going to disappear.
  
  
  
• AMD's Ryzen 9950X3D2 has a price tag: $899.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Expensive, but it is a workstation chip, not a gaming chip.  And it's cheaper than the RAM you'll want to attach to it.
  
  
  
• Continuous glucose monitoring made me continuously crazy.  (The Verge)
  
  No, dear, you were always crazy.
  
  
  
• The 2026 Moto G Stylus has a Snapdragon 6 Gen 3 processor, 8GB of memory, a 6.7" 2712x1220 120Hz OLED display, and a stylus.  (Liliputing)
  
  $499.
  
  The stylus includes touch sensitivity and tilt detection and lasts for 4 hours of writing or 100 hours on standby.  A bit of an advance over my Palm Tungsten T3.
  
  
  
• The Oppo Pad Mini has a Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 processor, an 8.8" 2880x1920 144Hz OLED display, and up to 16GB of RAM.  (Notebook Check)
  
  And weighs in at a svelte 279 grams.  Svelte for a tablet of that size, anyway.  It would be on the chonky side for a phone.

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, April 09 2026 10:54 PM (Ul4rC)

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, April 09 2026 11:10 PM (Ul4rC)

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, April 10 2026 02:34 AM (HTbvf)

Posted by: normal at Friday, April 10 2026 04:25 AM (e0fX0)

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, April 10 2026 05:58 AM (HTbvf)

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• Anthropic has unveiled Claude Mythos, a version of its AI system aimed at security analysis.  (Security Week)
  
  This is good and bad.
  
  Good because developers can use it to find security flaws in their code.
  
  Bad because so can everybody else.
  
  
  
• Meanwhile AMD's AI director has slammed Claude Code for becoming dumber and lazier.  (The Register)

  'Claude cannot be trusted to perform complex engineering tasks' according to GitHub ticket.

  Neither can anyone attempting to use it that way.

• Google's AI Overviews tell millions of lies a day.  (Ars Technica)
  
  You gotta pump those numbers up.  Those are rookie numbers in this racket.
  
  
  
• Following its decision in the Cox vs. Music Cartel case, the Supreme Court has vacated the stupid decision in a similar case against Grande Communications.  (TorrentFreak)
  
  It has been sent back to the Fifth Circuit with a note saying "be less stupid this time".
  
  
  
• The Asus Zenbook A16 is here with the new Snapdragon X2 Elite.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Finally, some good Arm hardware that isn't from Apple.  It's an 18 core CPU, so while still a little slower on single-threaded tasks than Apples M5 CPU, it's a lot faster in multi-threaded work.
  
  Battery life is still lacking, somehow.
  
  Oh, it has an OLED display.  That'll do it.
  
  

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, April 09 2026 01:57 AM (+U6C5)

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• A critical security vulnerability has been discovered in the leaked version of Claude Code.  (Adversa)
  
  If you've used Claude Code, you've noticed that it loves running shell commands to examine your codebase, rather than, say, reading it.  Or having simple fixed-function code built into the software to do it on your computer.
  
  And it also loves to ask you for permission to run those shell commands.
  
  The vulnerability comes into play when a very long string of shell commands are run together.  For the first fifty commands it will check - manually if needed, and in its history of permitted and denied commands if it's in there already.
  
  And on the fifty-first command, it rests.  And executes it regardless.
  
  So if someone triggers a long string of commands and the first fifty are innocuous, after that they can take full control of your computer - because Claude Code runs on your computer, and just communicates with the Claude AI service as needed.
  
  The particularly lovely thing here is that Anthropic already fixed this.
  
  But both versions are present inside Claude Code and it using the broken one.
  
  
  
• The cult of vibe coding is insane.  (Bram Cohen)
  
  Claude Code is the preeminent vibe coding tool.
  
  Guess how it was coded?  Guess how that horrible bug stayed in, even how it was fixed.
  
  You'll never guess.
  
  Oh, you guessed.

• Why the majority of vibe coded projects fail.  (Reddit)
  
  It's a war zone in that thread, between the crusty old hardboiled engineers and the idiots vibe coders no, idiots.
  
  
  
• Intel's Bartlett Lake CPUs are here - sort of - and the top of the line 12 core model competes with AMD's 9900X3D and Intel's own 13900K.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Bartlett Lake has up to 12 performance cores, the most of any mainstream Intel processor.  Except that while it runs on common Socket 1700 motherboards, it's not a mainstream processor and only sells to industrial users, and is not supported by common Socket 1700 motherboard BIOSes.
  
  Except it turns out that by changing one digit in the BIOS and reflashing it, it works fine.
  
  
  
• OpenAI is once again calling for public funds to clean up the mess it is creating.  (Business Insider)
  
  The best time for a Butlerian Jihad is now.
  
  
  
• What various Nova Lake models bring to the table.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Anything from 6 cores at 15W to 52 cores at 200W.
  
  Base TDP.  Intel's peak TDP can be several times higher.
  
  
  

Musical Interlude

Posted by: at Tuesday, April 07 2026 07:30 PM (+0ym7)

Posted by: Robin Munn at Tuesday, April 07 2026 07:31 PM (+0ym7)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, April 08 2026 10:28 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Rick C at Wednesday, April 08 2026 11:11 AM (1zWbY)

Posted by: Mauser at Wednesday, April 08 2026 01:24 PM (XWgGM)

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