• Had to renew the server's SSL certificate.  It was actually easier than usual, except for the part where I forgot to do it until after it expired, which wasn't so good.
  
  
  
• Sam Altman has done the 100% expected and redefined AGI (artificial general intelligence) into uselessness.  (The Verge)
  
  Sam Altman recently said that AGI was coming within "thousands of days".
  
  He now says it will likely arrive next year, but they'll be simulating the typical leftist who already responds like a low-grade LLM in any case, so you won't notice any difference.
  
  Well, he didn't say that part out loud.  He said this:

  "My guess is we will hit AGI sooner than most people in the world think and it matter much less," he said during an interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin at The New York Times DealBook Summit on Wednesday. "And a lot of the safety concerns that we and others expressed actually don't come at the AGI moment. AGI can get built, the world mostly goes on in mostly the same way, things grow faster, but then there is a long continuation from what we call AGI to what we call super intelligence."

  Translation: AI is useless, and your job is safe unless you are useless, like the quote design team unquote working at Jaguar in which case you are totally fucked.

• If you have an older computer without a TPM 2.0 module, you can't use Windows 11, says Microsoft.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  The TPM 2.0 module is absolutely essential to Windows 11's functioning even though it does exactly nothing and was not needed at all by Windows 10.
  
  Also, support for Windows 10 will end next week year.
  
  Joy.
  
  
  
• Solana's web3 library for JavaScript - which is downloaded 50,000 times per day - got hacked.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  It gets downloaded 50,000 times per day because JavaScript has no place on the server and everyone who works with it either started out or ended up insane.
  
  Anyway, if you have versions 1.95.6 or 1.95.7 your private keys are gone and your security is toast.  Since this is the blockchain your private keys can never be changed or revoked either.
  
  
  
• How can Enron be real if our birds aren't real?  (CNN)
  
  It's a joke.

Posted by: PatBuckman at Friday, December 06 2024 08:12 AM (rcPLc)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

• As expected, Intel's second-generation "Battlemage" graphics cards are here.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  The B580 comes with 12GB of VRAM and costs $249, while the B570 comes with 10GB and costs $219.
  
  The B580 will be on sale next week, while the B570 will wait until next month, though for $30 you might as well go with the faster model.
  
  Intel has released a lot of updates for it's graphics drivers since the rather shaky launch of the previous generation "Alchemist" cards and now looks like a viable alternative to Nvidia or AMD at the low end.

• South Korea has replaced 10% of its workforce with robots.  (The Business Standard)
  
  The country reportedly plans to extend this program very soon to its president who seems to have stripped a gear somehow.
  
  
  
• You can now get a paid subscription to The Verge including a free print copy of CONTENT GOBLINS.  (The Verge)
  
  Uh.  No.  Thank you.
  
  
  
• You can also just buy The Verge print magazine, which is actually CONTENT GOBLINS.  (The Verge)
  
  Seriously, no.  I'm fine.  Thanks.
  
  
  
• Samsung is preparing to launch 400-layer flash memory chips that will deliver PCIe 6.0 16TB M.2 SSDs.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Which will be extremely expensive and require liquid cooling.  Probably.

Posted by: PatBuckman at Wednesday, December 04 2024 09:33 PM (rcPLc)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

• Pat Gelsinger, CEO of Intel and the guiding light through the company's attempts at a recovery over the last three years, will be stepping down from the role at the end of November.  (Serve the Home)
  
  And that's not a typo.  He was gone as of December 1, but the departure was so sudden that Intel didn't get an announcement out until the following day.
  
  There's no word as to the reason.  Short notice like this is often for health reasons, but Gelsinger was doing customer visits and photo ops just last week.

• AMD's fastest CPU, the recently announced 192 core Epyc 9965, just received a 33% price cut.  (MSN)
  
  It still costs $10,000, but that's not a bad price for that powerful a chip.
  
  No scores on CPUBenchmark for this chip just yet; the fastest chip they have listed is the 96 core Epyc 9655P.
  
  
  
• We don't need to fear Skynet.  Just mention Jonathan Turley and the whole system will reboot.  (Tech Crunch)

  Users of the conversational AI platform ChatGPT discovered an interesting phenomenon over the weekend: the popular chatbot refuses to answer questions if asked about a "David Mayer." Asking it to do so causes it to freeze up instantly. Conspiracy theories have ensued - but a more ordinary reason may be at the heart of this strange behavior.

  This was circulating on Twitter, but Tech Crunch actually did a bit of digging:

  Which brings us back to David Mayer. There is no lawyer, journalist, mayor, or otherwise obviously notable person by that name that anyone could find (with apologies to the many respectable David Mayers out there).

  There was, however, a Professor David Mayer, who taught drama and history, specializing in connections between the late Victorian era and early cinema. Mayer died in the summer of 2023, at the age of 94. For years before that, however, the British American academic faced a legal and online issue of having his name associated with a wanted criminal who used it as a pseudonym, to the point where he was unable to travel.

  So that's why there are restrictions on ChatGPT disseminating information about these individuals; they're victims of various types of identity fraud.  But why does it crash?
  
  Because AI is itself a fraud:

  The whole drama is a useful reminder that not only are these AI models not magic, but they are also extra-fancy auto-complete, actively monitored, and interfered with by the companies that make them. Next time you think about getting facts from a chatbot, think about whether it might be better to go straight to the source instead.

  ChatGPT behaves like nightmare hodgepodge of nonsense held together by duct tape and an inflated share price, because that's precisely what it is.
  
  

• AMD's upcoming Radeon 8800XT might be dramatically more powerful than the current 7800XT.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Claimed numbers put it 45% faster on ray tracing.  But 45% faster than the 7900XTX, a much more expensive card.
  
  And it's also claimed to compete on non ray traced gaming with the RTX 4080, another much more expensive card.
  
  But the question of how much the 8800XT itself will cost is open.  If it is also a much more expensive card, none of that means anything.
  
  
  

Posted by: Rick C at Wednesday, December 04 2024 02:24 AM (nUXd1)

Posted by: Joe Redfield at Wednesday, December 04 2024 04:54 AM (KOtXO)

Posted by: cxt217 at Wednesday, December 04 2024 10:58 AM (ZLF73)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, December 04 2024 05:13 PM (PiXy!)

Posted by: normal at Wednesday, December 04 2024 09:07 PM (bg2DR)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

• The most valuable gemstone on Earth is not blue diamond, or Padparadscha sapphire, or imperial jadeite.  It's a little-known mineral called kyawthuite.  (ScienceAlert)
  
  Composed of an unusual formulation of bismuth antimonite and formed in cooling magma flows, it gets its value from its scarcity.
  
  There's exactly one stone, and it's less than a quarter of an inch long.

• How should we treat beings that might be sentient?  (Ars Technica)
  
  Olive oil, pepper, and garlic.
  
  
  
• The joy of upgrading from an iPhone 8 to the latest model iPhone 16.  (Bearblog)
  
  Spoiler: There was no joy.
  
  
  
• Low code tools are still bad.  (Radan Skoric)
  
  Programming using a programming language is going to work out better than programming using something that is not a programming language.

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, December 03 2024 09:30 AM (NEIix)

Posted by: stargazera5 at Tuesday, December 03 2024 01:59 PM (r9lDC)

Posted by: Rick C at Wednesday, December 04 2024 02:22 AM (nUXd1)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

• What will a less psychotic SEC mean for crypto over the next four years?  We asked a dozen experts and here's what dribbled out of them.  (The Register)
  
  Molly White runs the invaluable Web3 is Going Just Great which lists all the frauds and failures of the crypto space.
  
  Turns out that beyond that she's basically just another leftist lunatic.
  
  
  

Tech News

• The OpenWRT One router is now available at $89.  (Software Freedom Conservancy)
  
  You can install OpenWRT on many common routers, but this one is designed to just work.  It has 1Gb and 2.5Gb Ethernet ports, WiFi 6, USB, and an M.2 2242 NVMe slot if you want it.
  
  CPU is a dual-core 1.3GHz Arm A54 with 1GB of RAM, which should do the job just fine.
  
  
  
• Intel looks set to launch two graphics cards next week.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  These are the second-generation "Battlemage" models, the B580 with 12GB of VRAM, and the B570 with 10GB.  Expected to list for $250 and $200 respectively.
  
  The main catch with the previous "Alchemist" range was concerns whether Intel would continue to develop and support the hardware.  The answer would appear to be yes.
  
  
  
• An anti-spam WordPress plugin from CleanTalk lets anyone from anywhere do anything to your site.  (MSN)
  
  Oops.
  
  WordPress itself has fewer security problems these days, though it is run by crazy people.  The plugins are a different matter.

Posted by: PatBuckman at Monday, December 02 2024 09:55 AM (rcPLc)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, December 02 2024 05:48 PM (PiXy!)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

• When you read about million dollar bananas, expect money laundering, not conceptual art.  Cryptocurrency entrepreneur Justin Sun eats $9.5 million banana artwork Comedian by Maurizio Cattelan.  (ABC / MSN)

  A cryptocurrency entrepreneur has eaten a $US6.2 million ($9.5 million) banana artwork he purchased.

  This is the Australian ABC, so it's really only a $6 million dollar banana, not a $9 million dollar banana.

  The debut of the edible creation at the 2019 Art Basel show in Miami Beach sparked controversy and raised questions about whether it should be considered art - Mr Cattelan's stated aim.

  And no, the banana wasn't five years old.  The banana wasn't part of the "art".  There was merely the concept of a banana:

  The artwork owner is given a certificate of authenticity that the work was created by Mr Cattelan as well as instructions about how to replace the fruit when it goes bad.

  This is banana.  Is taped to wall.  Replace when become drippy.

  The 34-year-old crypto businessman was last year charged by the US Securities and Exchange Commission with fraud and securities law violation in relation to his crypto project Tron.

  Yeah, no shit.

• Vintage digicams aren't just a fad they're an artistic statement.  (Wired / Ars Technica)
  
  Uh.  Well, maybe.  Old-fashioned point-and-shoot digital cameras, with larger lenses and sensors and without the AI processing glorp of modern phone cameras, did produce images with a distinctly different look to what you see on Instagram.
  
  Of course, you can just turn off the AI processing glorp on your phone and get much the same result.
  
  
  
• Canada's largest news organisations, including the Yellowknife Typewriter and the Saint-Louis-de-Gonzague-du-Cap-Tourmente Post-Intelligencer, are suing OpenAI for stealing their content.  (Toronto)
  
  OpenAI responded, saying Merde.
  
  
  
• Meta (Facebook) is planning to build a $10 billion cable linking the US west coast and east coast - the long way round.  (MSN)
  
  Via South Africa, India, and Australia, avoiding temperamental regions where cable breaks are common, such as pretty much everywhere else.
  
  
  
• Apple will reportedly be using an updated 3nm process for its next-generation M5 chips rather than jumping immediately to 2nm.  (WCCFTech)
  
  This doesn't mean much for Apple - just that the M5 will be a little slower, a little more power-hungry, and a little cheaper than it might have been - but may be more significant for TSMC, which manufactures all of Apple's CPUs.
  
  For years Apple has been the first customer on every new process node TSMC has made available, guaranteeing full order books as soon as the new technology comes online.
  
  TSMC is running at 100% capacity on its mainstream 7/6/5/4nm processes, so this is not a huge drama, but may slow plans for the subsequent 1.6nm process expected in 2026.
  
  
  

Posted by: normal at Sunday, December 01 2024 12:20 AM (bg2DR)

Posted by: Joe Redfield at Sunday, December 01 2024 04:17 AM (KOtXO)

Posted by: cxt217 at Sunday, December 01 2024 11:22 AM (ZLF73)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, December 01 2024 05:01 PM (PiXy!)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

• The price of tea beans is set to hit record highs after it (checks note) rained in Brazil.  (Semafor)
  
  This apparently is an unusual event that nobody was prepared for.
  
  

• Need a faster network connection on your Thunderbolt / USB4 equipped laptop or mini-PC?  The RaidenDigit LightONE might be what you need.  (Serve the Home)
  
  It is a general-purpose dock, with four USB-C ports (plus a fifth one purely for power), four USB-A ports, full-size and micro SD card slots, and a DisplayPort port.  Where it stands out is that it also offers two 25Gbit Ethernet ports.
  
  Yes, they're SFP, but while 25Gbase-T is a recognised standard using Cat-8 cables, there are approximately zero devices supporting it, so I can't really fault the designers there.
  
  Only problem is that if you don't already have one of these you apparently can't get one.  There was a Kickstarter, they delivered, the product worked, and then they disappeared.
  
  
  
• Microsoft is not using your Word and Excel data to train AI.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Okay.
  
  
  
• Australia has passed a law to ban children from social media.  (The Register)
  
  The government was repeatedly asked how this was supposed to work, and it had no idea.  The legislation nonetheless passed with bipartisan support, because our nominal opposition party is as useless as our nominal government.
  
  
  

Posted by: PatBuckman at Friday, November 29 2024 11:53 PM (rcPLc)

Posted by: Joe Redfield at Saturday, November 30 2024 04:28 AM (KOtXO)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Saturday, November 30 2024 04:49 PM (PiXy!)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Monday, December 02 2024 09:07 AM (rcPLc)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

• Do not squeeze the lime.  (Ars Technica)
  
  A man who did squoze the lime developed a nasty case of phytophotocitrolimeodimeodermatititis.

  Specifically, the toxic chemicals are furocoumarins, which are found in some weeds and also a range of plants used in food. Those include celery, carrot, parsley, fennel, parsnip, lime, bitter orange, lemon, grapefruit, and sweet orange. Furocoumarins include chemicals with linear structures, psoralens, and angular structures, called angelicins, though not all of them are toxic.

  Avoid all of these things.  Stick to safe inorganic ingredients, like arsenic.

• A combination of PFAS and microplastics is more toxic than either one by itself - to fleas.  (The Guardian)
  
  A warning that it is important to keep in mind if you happen to be a flea.
  
  
  
• The Fifth Circuit has thrown out the Treasury Department's sanctions on Tornado Cash, an online program that lets anyone anonymise blockchain transactions.  (CoinDesk)
  
  The Treasury Department claimed that "anyone" included people that the department didn't like.  The Fifth Circuit told the department to go squeeze a lime:

  "Tornado Cash’s immutable smart contracts (the lines of privacy-enabling software code) are not the 'property' of a foreign national or entity," according to a U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuitruling, so they can't be blocked under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, and the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control "overstepped its congressionally defined authority" when it did so.

  
  
  
• Data broker SL Data Services left background checks on 600,000 people behind in a taxi.  (The Register)
  
  Well, a taxi called Amazon S3.  Which means that anyone on the world could read all the files, not just the next person to catch that particular cab.
  
  When informed of this oversight, the company said the documents were in an opaque folder and nobody could read them without opening it.
  
  
  
• Baldur's Gate 3 is getting another free update.  (WCCFTech)
  
  There will be no sequel or DLC because developer Larian so despised working with Dungeons and Dragons owner Hasbro that they would rather forego the hundreds of millions of dollars in profit just so they never have to talk to them again.
  
  But they continue to update the game for free.
  
  
  

Posted by: Rick C at Friday, November 29 2024 02:55 AM (NEIix)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

• Intel has received a $7.9 billion grant from the US government under the CHIPS Act.  (Notebook Check)
  
  This is not a different grant to the previous $8.5 billion grant though.  That one had not been completed, and has been reduced by $600 million due to the $3 billion contract Intel has received to produce secure chips for the Pentagon.
  
  Which when compared to the nonsense the government so often gets up to - this grant goes to pay Americans working at American companies in America - seems almost quaint.
  
  
  
• I am reminded as I am every couple of years that Perth exists.
  
  That USB storage device I bought was in stock and shipped just hours after I placed my order with Amazon...  From the far edge of the asteroid belt.
  
  
  

Tech News

• ISPs told an FCC inquiry that the reason their customers don't simply leave is down to the excellence of their customer service.  (Ars Technica)
  
  Still funnier than Saturday Night Live.
  
  
  
• Is Redis going full WordPress?  (GitHub)
  
  After abandoning open source itself, Redis is going after open-source libraries supporting Redis and suggesting they sell out to Redis or else.
  
  
  
• The US Senate is proposing a minimum security standards law for healthcare providers.  (The Register)
  
  On the one hand, security standards of US healthcare providers are shit.
  
  On the other hand, this is the Senate.  They are idiots who take advice from idiots to draft legislation for idiots.  And this is bipartisan, which means there are twice as many idiots involved.
  
  
  
• Huawei's Mate 70 phones will run the new Android-free HaronyOS.  (The Verge)
  
  Which is Android.
  
  
  
• Apple offered Indonesia a $100 million bribe to un-ban the iPhone 16.  (The Register)
  
  Indonesia is holding out for more money.
  
  
  
• Britain meanwhile is trying to shake down Google for $8.8 billion.  (The Register)
  
  And you get a tariff, and you get a tariff...
  
  
  
• The Pilet 5 and Pilet 7 are hand-held computers from an alternate universe 1990s that went in a very interesting direction.  (Liliputing)
  
  Resolutely function-over-form, these devices are big and clunky and have not just physical buttons but trackballs and trackpads and joysticks and dials and rollers and actual physical I/O ports.
  
  They're based on the Raspberry Pi 5 so they're quite capable as well.

Posted by: normal at Thursday, November 28 2024 03:49 PM (bg2DR)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

• Do Not Stab: Google has released an update to the Google App for iOS that...  Inserts Google Search links into third-party web sites.  (9to5Google)
  
  There isn't even a Do Not Stab header for this one:

  The feature, Google says, will offer an opt-out for website owners through a form. It’s pointed out by SERoundTable that opting out can take up to 30 days, while the feature is live now.

  Thanks Google.
  
  
  
• Both sides of the Google antitrust case blathered incoherently in closing arguments.  (New York Times)  (archive site)
  
  Can't they both lose?

• I bought myself a Terramaster D8 which is a small, cheap, and fairly dumb hybrid storage box.
  
  It holds 4 x 3.5" drives and 4 x M.2 NVMe SSDs, attached over 10Gb USB.   So it's much faster than my old Synology boxes, but it only does RAID-0 and RAID-1 and even that only on the first two drives.  You want to configure that on the system it's attached to.
  
  But it is cheap; I paid about $250 including tax and shipping, and you are not getting an 8-bay 10Gb Synology solution for that.
  
  
  
• On the other hand, QNAP.  (The Register)
  
  They issued a timely software update.
  
  It bricked users' devices.
  
  
  
• Amazon's new Kindle Colorsoft is kind of good except kind of not.  (The Verge)
  
  It's a 7" colour e-ink device with a resolution of 300 dpi, which is pretty good, and 4096 colours, which is tragic for an LCD but again pretty good for e-ink.
  
  But in colour mode the resolution is cut in half taking it from pretty good territory to pretty bad.
  
  And while Amazon claims a battery life of 8 weeks on a charge, that assumes that you barely use the device; the reviewer estimated it will last for 20 hours of actual reading.  Which again, is not bad, but is a lot less than 8 weeks.
  
  Also it doesn't seem to be available in Australia.
  
  
  
• Teamgroup has announced a 16TB external SSD.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  It's basically the size of a 2.5" external hard drive, probably because it's a 2.5" SSD in a metal box, only it stores more, runs ten times faster, is a lot more robust, and costs an estimated $2000.
  
  
  

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, November 26 2024 11:04 PM (NEIix)

Hide Comments | Add Comment