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12:20 TSMC Details 3nm Evolution: N3E On Schedule, N3P and N3X To Deliver 5% Performance Gains
Alongside some new announcements for their 2nm process node plans, TSMC has also released a progress and roadmap update for their N3 family process technologies at today's 2023 North American Technology Symposium. TSMC's final generation of FinFET-based process nodes, the N3 family is expected to remain around in some shape or form for many years to come as the densest node available for customers who don't need a more cutting-edge GAAFET-based process.
TSMC's big roadmap updates on the N3 front were with N3P and its high performance variant, N3X. As revealed today by TSMC, N3P will be an optical shrink of N3E, offering enhanced performance, reduced power consumption, and increased transistor density compared to N3E, all while maintaining compatibility with N3E's design rules. Meanwhile, N3X will wed extreme performance with 3nm-class densities, offering higher clockspeeds for high performance CPUs and other processors.
As a quick refresher, TSMC's N3 (3nm-class) family of process technologies is comprised of several variants, including baseline N3 (aka N3B), relaxed N3E with reduced costs, N3P with enhanced performance and chip density, and N3X with higher voltage tolerances. Last year the company also talked about N3S with maximized transistor density, but this year the company remains tight lipped about this node and it is not mentioned anywhere in its slides.
TSMC's vanilla N3 node features up to 25 EUV layers, with TSMC using EUV double-patterning on some of them to make for higher logic and SRAM transistor density than N5. EUV steps are expensive in general, and EUV double patterning drives those costs up further, which is why this fabrication process is only expected to be used by a handful of customers who are not as concerned about the high outlay required.
| Advertised PPA Improvements of New Process Technologies Data announced during conference calls, events, press briefings and press releases |
|||
| TSMC | |||
| N3 vs N5 |
N3E vs N5 |
||
| Power | -25-30% | -32% | |
| Performance | +10-15% | +18% | |
| Logic Area Reduction* % Logic Density* |
0.58x -42% 1.7x |
0.625x -37.5% 1.6x |
|
| SRAM Cell Size | 0.0199µm² (-5% vs N5) | 0.021µm² (same as N5) | |
| Volume Manufacturing |
Late 2022 | H2 2023 | |
The majority of TSMC's clients interested in a 3nm-class process are expected to use the relaxed N3E node, which according to TSMC is on schedule and achieving their performance targets. N3E uses up to 19 EUV layers and does not rely on EUV double patterning at all, reducing its complexity and costs. The trade-off is that N3E offers lower logic density than N3, and it has the same SRAM cell size as TSMC's N5 node, making it somewhat less attractive to those customers who are driving for density/area gains. Overall, N3E promises a wider process window and better yields, which are two crucial metrics in chip fabrication.
"N3E will be better than N3 in terms of yield, process complexity, which directly translating into [wider] process window," said Kevin Zhang, Vice President of Business Development at TSMC.
Following N3E, TSMC will continue to optimize the N3 family's transistor density with N3P, which will build on N3E by offering improved transistor characteristics. The refined process node will allow chip designers to either increase performance by 5% at the same leakage or reduce power by 5% ~ 10% at the same clocks. The new node will also increase transistor density by 4% for a 'mixed' chip design, which TSMC defines as a chip consisting of 50% logic, 30% SRAM, and 20% analog circuits.
As part of their discussion on N3P, TSMC stressed that the density improvement was achieved by adjusting the optical performance of its scanners. So it is likely that TSMC will be able to shrink all types of chip structures here, which will make N3P an attractive node for SRAM-intensive designs.
"N3P is a performance boost, it has a 5% higher performance, at least a 5% higher than N3E," explained Zhang. It also has the 2% optical shrink, which bring transistor density to 1.04x."
| Advertised PPA Improvements of New Process Technologies Data announced during conference calls, events, press briefings and press releases |
|||||
| TSMC | |||||
| N3 vs N5 |
N3E vs N5 |
N3P vs N3E |
N3X vs N3P |
||
| Power | -25-30% | -32% | -5% ~ 10% | higher | |
| Performance | +10-15% | +18% | +5% | +5% Fmax @ 1.2V |
|
| Chip Density | ? | ? | 1.04x | same | |
| SRAM Cell Size | 0.0199µm² (-5% vs N5) | 0.021µm² (same as N5) | ? | ? | |
| Volume Manufacturing |
Late 2022 | H2 2023 | H2 2024 | 2025 | |
Since N3P is an optical shrink of N3E, it will preserve N3E's design rules, enabling chip designers to quickly reuse N3E IP on the new node. Consequently, N3P is also projected to be one of TSMC's most popular N3 nodes, so expect IP design houses like Cadence and Synopsys to offer a variety of IP for this process technology, reaping the benefits of forward compatibility with existing N3E in the process. TSMC says that N3P will be production ready in the second half of 2024.
Finally, for developers of high-performance computing applications like CPUs and GPUs, TSMC has for the past few generations been offering its X family of high voltage, performance-focused nodes. As disclosed at last year's event, the N3 family will be getting its own X variant with the aptly named N3X node.
Compared to N3E, N3X is projected to offer at least 5% higher clockspeeds compared to N3P. This is being accomplished by making the node more tolerant of higher voltages, allowing chip designers to crank up the clockspeeds in exchange for higher overall leakage.
TSMC claims that N3X will support voltages of (at least) 1.2v, which is a fairly extreme voltage for a 3nm-class fabrication process. The leakage cost, in turn, is significant, with TSMC projecting a whopping 250% increase in power leakage over the more balanced N3P node. This underscores why N3X is really only usable for HPC-class processors, and that chip designers will need to take extra care to keep their most powerful (and power-hungry) chips in check.
As for transistor density, N3X will offer the same density as N3P. TSMC has not commented on whether it will also maintain design rule compatibility with N3P and N3E, so it will be interesting to see what ends up happening there.
The final N3 family node in TSMC's current roadmap, the company says that that N3X will be production ready in 2025.
12:20 AMD Issues Second Statement on Ryzen 7000 Burnout Issues: Caps SoC Voltages
Yesterday, AMD issued a statement surrounding the issues some users have been experiencing with their Ryzen 7000X3D processors. The problem reported widely across Reddit subforums, includes some Ryzen 7000X3D CPUs burning the CPU socket on AM5 motherboards and damaging the chips, rendering them dead. AMD has released a second statement regarding the issue, including what it is doing to rectify the problem and subdue any panic users and owners of the Ryzen 7000 series processors.
The official statement from AMD is as follows:
We expect all of our ODM partners to release new BIOS for their AM5 boards over the next few days. We recommend all users to check their motherboard manufacturers website and update their BIOS to ensure their system has the most up to date software for their processor.
Anyone whose CPU may have been impacted by this issue should contact AMD customer support. Our customer service team is aware of the situation and prioritizing these cases.
To counteract the problem, AMD has seemingly identified an issue with specific voltages going too high and is potentially happening when users enable AMD's EXPO memory profiles. The cap on SoC voltages looks to be the primary change in the AGESA firmware rollout, although AMD has identified possible voltage rails within the CPU that is causing the burnouts. Although it hasn't specified the problematic voltage rails, it has placed a cap on SoC voltages. AMD has also put a limit within the latest AGESA firmware that prevents the Ryzen 7000 CPUs from going beyond specification.
What this means needs further clarification, as AMD hasn't specified what it means by preventing the CPU from exceeding its specification limits. Technically speaking, enabling EXPO memory profiles is operating the processor outside of specifications, as AMD's Ryzen 7000 officially supports DDR5-5200 memory; we test at these settings as per our Ryzen 7000 reviews, including both Ryzen 7000 and Ryzen 7000X3D.
One interesting point about AMD's statement is that it eludes to whether or not the issue is just on its Ryzen 7000X3D processors or whether it affects all of its Ryzen 7000 processors entirely. Regardless of the Zen 4 chip that users may have, AMD is ambiguous in its language, and it seems to be that AMD is recommended that ALL users with a Ryzen 7000 series processor should update to the latest firmware.
Enabling EXPO memory profiles on compatible DRAM does look to push SoC voltages beyond AMD's safe spot on the Ryzen 7000 processors, which AMD believes is part of the root cause of the burning issue. AMD does, however, state that the changes it has made to their AGESA firmware, once flashed, shouldn't affect the user's ability to apply EXPO memory profiles on compatible kits of DDR5 memory.
AMD is actively working with its motherboard partners to release a new AGESA firmware, which they say has already been distributed, limits the SoC voltage to 1.30 V. AMD claims that all AM5 motherboard vendors and models should have a new BIOS version available to them within the next few days, and is recommending all users to update their BIOS at their earliest convenience.
Image source: Speedrookie/Reddit
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11:17 Apple Discloses App Store Metrics in Europe
Apple has revealed App Store metrics in Europe in response to the European Digital Services Act. From the legal compliance post: iOS App Store: 101 million
iPadOS App Store: 23 million
macOS App Store: 6 million
tvOS App Store: 1 million
watchOS App Store: under 1 million
Apple Books: under 1 million
Podcasts paid subscriptions: under 1 million
11:17 As Sea Levels Rise, the East Coast is Also Sinking
Climate scientists already know that the East Coast of the United States could see around a foot of sea-level rise by 2050, which will be catastrophic on its own. But they are just beginning to thoroughly measure a "hidden vulnerability" that will make matters far worse: The coastline is also sinking. From a report: It's a phenomenon known as subsidence, and it's poised to make the rising ocean all the more dangerous, both for people and coastal ecosystems. New research published in the journal Nature Communications finds that the Atlantic coast -- home to more than a third of the US population -- is dropping by several millimeters per year. In Charleston, South Carolina, and the Chesapeake Bay, it's up to 5 millimeters (a fifth of an inch). In some areas of Delaware, it's as much as twice that. Five millimeters of annual sea-level rise along a stretch of coastline, plus 5 millimeters of subsidence there, is effectively 10 millimeters of relative sea-level rise.
Atlantic coastal cities are already suffering from persistent flooding, and the deluge will only get worse as they sink while seas rise. Yet high-resolution subsidence data like this isn't yet taken into account for coastal hazard assessments. "What we want to do here is to really bring awareness about this missing component, that based on our analysis actually makes the near-future vulnerability a lot worse than what you would expect from sea-level rise alone," says Manoochehr Shirzaei, an environmental security expert at Virginia Tech and coauthor of the new paper.
10:56 Apple Watch buying guide: Which wearable is best for you?
The Apple Watch Ultra's launch shook things up, but you probably don't need it.
10:56 As sea levels rise, the East Coast is also sinking
Coastal lands are subsiding and losing elevation, making rising seas all the worse.
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08:28 Report from the German Parliament's âSustainable by Designâ Conference
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08:28 Humanity is the reimagined 3D Lemmings we didn't know we needed
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08:28 German researchers figure out how lager first developed in Bavaria
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08:28 How Facebook and Instagram became marketplaces for child sex trafficking
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08:28 The Goddess Complex
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08:28 OneSignal (YC S11) Is Hiring an Engineering Manager
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08:28 The unintentional dystopian beauty of oil rigs
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08:28 Learn WebGPU
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06:47 Generative AI Systems Boost Productivity and Retention, Says Study
dcblogs shares a report from TechTarget: A National Bureau of Economic Research study found that generative AI boosts productivity by 14%, reduces stress, and increases employee retention in customer support roles. The workers who gained the most from this automation were newer and less experienced. Customer support is a stressful job. "A key part of agents' jobs is to absorb customer frustrations while restraining one's own emotional reaction," the paper noted. But generative AI can act as an aide, using the customer's chats as input and providing suggestions for empathetic responses and problem-solving in real-time.
The study found that generative AI reduced the likelihood of customers wanting to escalate issues to a supervisor. But it's just one study, caution analyst. David Creelman, CEO of Creelman Research in Toronto, cautioned against putting too much weight on one study. "It's too soon to start making conclusions about where this will have an impact and how big that impact will be," he said.
04:28 How Microsoft names threat actors
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04:28 Choosing the optimal index with limited information
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04:28 Numeral Systems of the World's Languages (2021)
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04:28 Massive geothermal apartment complex is going up in Brooklyn, first of its kind
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04:28 Samsung Profits Plunge 95%
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04:28 In Praise of the Long Movie
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04:28 California Court of Appeal finds geofence warrant unconstitutional
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04:28 Steven Spielberg: âNo film should be revised' based on modern sensitivity
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04:28 On the unexpected joys of Denglisch, Berlinglish and global Englisch
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04:28 Aubrey Plaza Is the Unfortunate New Face of the Milk Wars - Bon Appétit
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04:24 A user's guide for the people API
04:24 The shrinking role of semaphores
Cheers,
Wol
04:24 GCC 13.1 released
04:24 GCC 13.1 released
04:24 A user's guide for the people API
I see this more as a way to obtain more information about the actual problem the person is trying to solve and avoiding the XY trap than trying to say off the bat that X shouldn't be used (or worse that the OP is an idiot for wanting to use X).
Often people only give partial information (usually not deliberately and maybe even trying to be helpful) and replying (correctly) to their actual question will result in subobtimal or even plain wrong answers. It's frequent that you have to dig to uncover the real problem. Of course you can and should be nice about doing that certainly and shouldn't say "what? only idiots use X!" but nicely asking why a person wants to use X in order to better understand their problem and help them seems reasonable to me.
04:24 Security quote of the week
Politicians are experts in understanding what the stakeholders want. In democracies the stakeholders should be the citizens, but corporate interests and special interest groups have become very good at directly (through lobbyists) or indirectly (by influencing the opinion of the citizens) exerting disproportionate influence on the politicians. I expect that the same will happen if ever A.I. systems play the role that Schneier et al. envision: These interests can pay for attacks on the A.I. systems just like they now pay for attacks on the democratic process.
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03:47 'Game Changer' Method Lets Scientists Peer Into -- and Fly Through -- Mouse Bodies
sciencehabit shares a report from Science Magazine: A research team has turned the bodies of dead mice into vivid 3D maps of anatomy, with tissues, nerves, and vessels highlighted in color. The technique, which renders the corpses transparent and then exposes them to fluorescent antibodies that label distinct cell types, could help everything from drug development to understanding the spread of cancer, its creators and other scientists say. The developers, at the Helmholtz Munich research institute, call their technique wildDISCO -- wild because it can work on any "wild type," or normal, mice, and DISCO for 3D imaging of solvent-cleared organs. Building on their previous success at making mouse bodies transparent, the new technique removes cholesterol from the bodies so that a vast array of existing antibodies can penetrate deep into the animals.
"wildDISCO is a game changer -- it allows us to see the hidden highways and byways in the body," says Muzlifah Haniffa, a dermatologist and immunologist at the Wellcome Sanger Institute and Newcastle University's Biosciences Institute who was not involved in the research. The method should let scientists map a mouse at the cellular level and explore previously hidden links between tissues, like neural connections between organs, says neuroscientist Ali Erturk, director of Helmholtz Munich, who led the work, posted recently as a preprint. His group in Germany has already posted eye-catching videos of "flying" through the 3D anatomy of a mouse with different tissues labeled.
00:47 The First IVF Babies Conceived By a Robot Have Been Born
An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT Technology Review: Last spring, engineers in Barcelona packed up the sperm-injecting robot they'd designed and sent it by DHL to New York City. They followed it to a clinic there, called New Hope Fertility Center, where they put the instrument back together, assembling a microscope, a mechanized needle, a tiny petri dish, and a laptop. Then one of the engineers, with no real experience in fertility medicine, used a Sony PlayStation 5 controller to position a robotic needle. Eyeing a human egg through a camera, it then moved forward on its own, penetrating the egg and dropping off a single sperm cell. Altogether, the robot was used to fertilize more than a dozen eggs. The result of the procedures, say the researchers, were healthy embryos-and now two baby girls, who they claim are the first people born after fertilization by a "robot."
The startup company that developed the robot, Overture Life, says its device is an initial step toward automating in vitro fertilization, or IVF, and potentially making the procedure less expensive and far more common than it is today. Right now, IVF labs are multimillion-dollar affairs staffed by trained embryologists who earn upwards of $125,000 a year to delicately handle sperm and eggs using ultra-thin hollow needles under a microscope. But some startups say the entire process could be carried out automatically, or nearly so. Overture, for instance, has filed a patent application describing a "biochip" for an IVF lab in miniature, complete with hidden reservoirs containing growth fluids, and tiny channels for sperm to wiggle through.
"Think of a box where sperm and eggs go in, and an embryo comes out five days later," says Santiago Munne, the prize-winning geneticist who is chief innovation officer at the Spanish company. He believes that if IVF could be carried out inside a desktop instrument, patients might never need to visit a specialized clinic, where a single attempt at getting pregnant can cost $20,000 in the US. Instead, he says, a patient's eggs might be fed directly into an automated fertility system at a gynecologist's office. "It has to be cheaper. And if any doctor could do it, it would be," says Munne.
00:28 The KRC-2 regenerative receiver kit: a review
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00:28 Tell HN: iOS converts units for highlighted text
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00:28 Permutation Group Visualizer
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00:28 Google contractors vote to unionize in historic landslide election
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00:28 Why Gravity Is Not Like the Other Forces
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00:28 The Next Generation in Graphics, Part 1: Three Dimensions in Software
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00:28 Forbes 30 Under 30 Mocked: Incredible Track Record of Fraud
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00:28 Emerging Rust GUI libraries in a WASM world
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00:28 Brazil judge orders temporary suspension of Telegram
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00:28 Lithuanian university locks out students again for not using proprietary 2FA
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00:20 iPhone 15 Pro renders suggest âAction button' is real, replacing mute switch
The volume buttons, meanwhile, appear to be unchanged this year, despite earlier rumors.
00:20 Using iMessage with Windows 11 is coming in mid-May thanks to Phone Link
Of course, this will likely come with many of the same limitations Phone Link presents with RCS messaging on Android.
00:20 Deal: New $40 price drop on the Fitbit Luxe
Save 31% on the sleek Fitbit wearable with advanced fitness features.
00:20 The Motorola Razr's massive cover screen is on full display in new leak
Motorola claims it is the largest cover display in the current flip foldable market.
00:20 Android 14 beta 1.1 is here to fix some bugs seen with the original beta
If your phone crashed when trying to change your wallpaper, this update is for you.
00:20 Google Authenticator's new feature is not encrypted (Update: Google explains)
The new Authenticator feature just rolled out earlier this week.
00:20 Qualcomm's new upscaling tech will boost Android games to 4K 60FPS
The upscaling tech should launch later this year.
00:20 Deal: Upgrade to Windows 11 Pro for just $39.99
Enhance your business systems with this massive discount on the pro version of Windows 11.
00:20 All Amazon Halo devices will stop working later this year, refunds to come
Amazon plans to delete all Halo data after August 1.
00:20 Apple AirPods Pro (2nd generation) review: The best earbuds for iPhone
The AirPods Pro feature modest improvements over their predecessors, but Android users should still avoid them.
00:20 The best Xiaomi Mi Band 8 alternatives
Xiaomi isn't the only name in the game.
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23:17 Nate Silver To Leave FiveThirtyEight
Thelasko writes: Renowned data journalist, Nate Silver, announced he will be leaving the company as soon as his contract expires. Although Disney owns the FiveThirtyEight brand, it is believed that Silver retains ownership of the site's algorithms. "ABC News remains dedicated to data journalism with a core focus on politics, the economy and enterprise reporting -- this streamlined structure will allow us to be more closely aligned with our priorities for the 2024 election and beyond," an ABC News spokesperson said in a statement. "We are grateful for the invaluable contributions of the team members who will be departing the organization and know they will continue to make an important impact on the future of journalism."
21:47 Motorola Unveils Co-Branded Lenovo 'ThinkPhone'
The Lenovo ThinkPhone by Motorola is being launched today in the U.S. for $699. It's the first co-branded phone from Motorola that arrives nine years after Lenovo purchased the Motorola brand for $2.91 billion. According to The Verge, the smartphone offers "a suite of productivity features designed to work with ThinkPad laptops." From the report: The ThinkPhone has a lot of the same stuff as a mainstream flagship phone, even though it's priced just below the likes of the $799 Samsung Galaxy S23. It comes with a big 6.6-inch 1080p OLED with up to 144Hz refresh rate. Build quality is quite sturdy with an aluminum frame, Gorilla Glass on the front panel, and Lenovo's signature textured aramid fiber back panel for a softer touch. The whole device is IP68 rated for strong dust and water resistance, and it's also MIL-STD-810H compliant to protect against falls and more extreme conditions.
In addition to the ThinkPad-like look and feel, there's a red key on the side of the phone in a nod to Lenovo's classic keyboard nub. You can customize it to a degree: a double-press can be assigned one of the phone's ThinkPad integration features, while a single-press can act as an app shortcut. Some apps will even let you launch certain features -- mapping it to the "Pay" screen of the Starbucks app could save you a lot of embarrassing fumbling at the register, for example. The ThinkPhone is available first to enterprise customers, with general availability on April 28th via Motorola.com.
21:47 Cruise Robotaxis Now Run All Day In San Francisco
According to a recent Twitter post from Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt, the robotaxi service is now operating all day in San Francisco. The post says we will soon see Cruise "open up full operations in other cities," which may soon include Dallas, Texas, according to a recent job listing. From the report: According to a recent LinkedIn post from Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt, the robotaxi network is now running 24/7 rides across San Francisco, beginning with employees. As The Kilowatts points out on Twitter, nonemployees in the San Francisco area are still limited to about one-third of the city between f 10:00 p.m. and 5:30 a.m. In his post, Vogt said that in accordance with safety policies, around-the-clock public rides will roll out "very soon."
Cruise is a robotaxi startup founded in the San Francisco Bay area in 2013. In the last decade, the company (along with plenty of support from GM) has made tremendous progress in its home state of California, where it continues to try and expand. Services that began in San Francisco have since grown to Phoenix, Arizona, and, most recently, Austin, Texas. In February, the Cruise president, CEO, and cofounder, Kyle Vogt, shared that the company had surpassed one million miles driven without anyone behind the wheel. In many ways, the city by the bay has become a proving ground for Cruise's electric robotaxis, and its hilly, congested terrain will act as a testing site for yet another major milestone -- around-the-clock robotaxi operations.
20:28 My alpha Pico-based CH32V003 debug tool is ready for a few testers
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20:28 Show HN: CheekyKeys - A Face-Controlled Keyboard
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20:28 Compound (YC S19) is hiring to build a modern wealth manager
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20:28 Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens
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20:28 DeepDoctection: Document extraction and analysis using deep learning models
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20:28 Dick Morrell: Amazon Users Advised to Reset Passwords Amid Echo Privacy Concerns
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20:28 In PostgreSQL, powerful Full Text Search is available out of the box
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20:26 The Lenovo ThinkPhone hits shelves April 28 for $699
Four months after it was announced, the ThinkPhone is finally shipping.
20:26 An octopus's stripes can act as a unique ID
Finding may help us track animals in the wild, perform genetic studies.
20:26 Webb telescope probes the chemistry in a hot gas giant's atmosphere
Near a star, there's chemistry that doesn't occur in our Solar System's gas giants.
20:26 TikTok ban stalls as Montana governor suggests covering all foreign foes
Critics say Montana's TikTok ban still isn't technically or legally feasible.
20:26 Elizabeth Holmes gets bail extension one day before prison term start
Holmes' last-ditch appeal triggered an automatic freeze on her previous bail denial.
20:26 Star Wars Jedi: Survivor review: An immense sequel that aims high and hits
A confident, deeper sequel that embraces Star Wars' spirit of adventure.
20:26 Amazon will brick all Halo health trackers on August 1
The Halo Rise sleep tracker only came out 5 months ago.
20:26 Windows 11's limited iMessage integration has publicly launched
The limitations are harsh, but it works.
20:26 Man peddling vitamins as cancer therapy faces 5 felony counts
With allegedly fake title, Gevorkian sold unproven treatments for serious conditions.
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20:17 Amazon Shuts Down Halo Division, Discontinues All Devices
According to The Verge, Amazon is shuttering its health-focused Halo division. All three Halo products will be discontinued and portions of the Halo team will be laid off. From the report: "We have made the difficult decision to wind down the Halo program, which will result in role reductions," Melissa Cha, Amazon's VP of smart home and health, told staffers in an email obtained by The Verge. "More recently, Halo has faced significant headwinds, including an increasingly crowded segment and an uncertain economic environment. Although our customers love many aspects of Halo, we must prioritize resources and maximize benefits to customers and the long-term health of the business."
"We continually evaluate the progress and potential of our products to deliver customer value, and we regularly make adjustments based on those assessments," Amazon spokesperson Kristy Schmidt told The Verge in an email. "We recently made the difficult decision to stop supporting Amazon Halo effective July 31, 2023. We are incredibly proud of the invention and hard work that went into building Halo on behalf of our customers, and our priorities are taking care of our customers and supporting our employees." The company says it will refund customers who bought a Halo devices or accessory band in the last 12 months. "All unused prepaid Halo subscription fees will be refunded, and users will no longer be charged," adds The Verge. Early adopters, like myself, are out of luck.
In related news, Amazon kicked off another round of layoffs today, impacting its cloud computing and human resources divisions.
20:17 Nvidia Releases a Toolkit To Make Text-Generating AI 'Safer'
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: In pursuit of "safer" text-generating models, Nvidia today released NeMo Guardrails, an open source toolkit aimed at making AI-powered apps more "accurate, appropriate, on topic and secure." Jonathan Cohen, the VP of applied research at Nvidia, says the company has been working on Guardrails' underlying system for "many years" but just about a year ago realized it was a good fit for models along the lines of GPT-4 and ChatGPT. "We've been developing toward this release of NeMo Guardrails ever since," Cohen told TechCrunch via email. "AI model safety tools are critical to deploying models for enterprise use cases."
Guardrails includes code, examples and documentation to "add safety" to AI apps that generate text as well as speech. Nvidia claims that the toolkit is designed to work with most generative language models, allowing developers to create rules using a few lines of code. Specifically, Guardrails can be used to prevent -- or at least attempt to prevent -- models from veering off topic, responding with inaccurate information or toxic language and making connections to "unsafe" external sources. Think keeping a customer service assistant from answering questions about the weather, for instance, or a search engine chatbot from linking to disreputable academic journals. "Ultimately, developers control what is out of bounds for their application with Guardrails," Cohen said. "They may develop guardrails that are too broad or, conversely, too narrow for their use case."
While companies like Zapier are using Guardrails to add a layer of safety to their generative models, Nvidia acknowledges that the toolkit isn't imperfect; it won't catch everything, in other words. Cohen also notes that Guardrails works best with models that are "sufficiently good at instruction-following," a la ChatGPT, and that use the popular LangChain framework for building AI-powered apps. That disqualifies some of the open source options out there. And -- effectiveness of the tech aside -- it must be emphasized that Nvidia isn't necessarily releasing Guardrails out of the goodness of its heart. It's a part of the company's NeMo framework, which is available through Nvidia's enterprise AI software suite and its NeMo fully managed cloud service. Any company can implement the open source release of Guardrails, but Nvidia would surely prefer that they pay for the hosted version instead.
18:47 Inmates Are Using VR To Learn Real-World Skills
Corrections systems are using simulators to provide incarcerated individuals with more lifelike instruction. But is it working? From a report: Atorrus Rainer, 41, is standing in the center of a stuffy room wearing a virtual-reality headset. Every so often, he extends his arm, using the VR controller to pick up garbage bags, a toothbrush, and toilet paper during a simulated trip to the supermarket. The self-checkout station overwhelms him: those didn't exist in 2001, when Rainer, then a teenager, was sentenced to more than 100 years in prison. His first experience with one is this virtual interaction taking place inside Fremont Correctional Facility, a medium-security prison about two hours south of Denver. Rainer is practicing in the hopes of stepping into a real store in the near future through an initiative launched in Colorado in 2017 in response to US Supreme Court rulings that deemed juvenile life without parole sentences unconstitutional. People who meet certain requirements -- for example, if they were under 21 when they committed felony crimes and have been incarcerated for a minimum of 20 to 30 years -- can apply to work through the three-year Juveniles and Young Adults Convicted as Adults Program (JYACAP) in an effort to earn early parole.
The premise of JYACAP is that learning the basic skills they missed the chance to acquire while incarcerated will provide these juvenile lifers with their best chances for success upon release. That's a formidable challenge. Because of safety concerns, they have had limited access to the internet. Though they're now adults, many have never used, or even seen, a smartphone or a laptop. Or had a credit card. "We had to figure out a way of giving them these opportunities in a restricted environment," says Melissa Smith, interim director of prisons for the Colorado Department of Corrections. Though its use is not yet widespread, a handful of state corrections departments, from Ohio to New Mexico, have turned to virtual reality as an answer. The goals vary from helping reduce aggressive behavior to facilitating empathy with victims to, as in Colorado's case, reducing recidivism. Though the state's prison budget sits close to $1 billion, Colorado has one of the worst return-to-prison rates in the country, at around 50%. Nationally, as many as two-thirds of the 600,000 people released from state and federal prisons each year will be rearrested within three years.
18:47 Yuan Overtakes Dollar To Become Most-Used Currency In China's Cross-Border Transactions
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The yuan became the most widely-used currency for cross-border transactions in China in March, overtaking the dollar for the first time, official data showed, reflecting efforts by Beijing to internationalize use of the yuan. Cross-border payments and receipts in yuan rose to a record $549.9 billion in March from $434.5 billion a month earlier, according to Reuters calculation based on data from the State Administration of Foreign Exchange. The yuan was used in 48.4% of all cross-border transactions, Reuters calculated, while the dollar's share declined to 46.7% from 48.6% a month earlier. The volume of cross-border transactions covers both the current and capital accounts. According to data from SWIFT, the yuan's share of global currency transactions for trade finance rose to 4.5% in March, while the dollar accounted for 83.71%.
18:47 Meta Records Almost $4 Billion Loss On Metaverse In First Quarter
In its first-quarter earnings report today, Meta said its virtual reality and augmented reality unit, Reality Labs, recorded a $3.99 billion operating loss. The unit generated just $339 million in revenue. CNBC reports: The numbers show a slowdown from last quarter, when Reality Labs lost $4.28 billion on $727 million of revenue. For all of last year, Reality Labs recorded an operating loss of $13.72 billion on $2.16 billion in sales, underscoring how VR and AR technologies have yet to reach the mainstream. Despite Reality Labs' operating loss, Meta posted first-quarter net earnings of $5.71 billion, or $2.20 a share, with revenue up less than 3% to $28.65 billion from $27.91 billion a year ago. This sent its stock soaring more than 10% in extended trading Wednesday.
"Facebook had 2.04 billion daily active users, up 5% from a year ago, and the 'family' of Meta apps -- which includes Instagram -- reported daily active users of 3.02 billion, up 4%," adds MarketWatch.
18:24 The Python Software Foundation on European cybersecurity
18:24 The Python Software Foundation on European cybersecurity
18:24 The Python Software Foundation on European cybersecurity
Wait, isn't that just another case of DISCLAIMING ALL WARRANTIES? I thought that's one of the things the CRA is supposed to be precluding?
(Or will "general purpose computing" become effectively illegal under this new regime?)
18:24 Wise words
That said, I think it's a vanishingly small number of people who have such beliefs about anyone. I know such arguments exist though, on both sides of political spectra on a couple of issues. And I think there's a large degree of mis-attribution of the position of the other side, straw-manning, etc., in all such cases. And I think that's due to the increased silo-ing in modern, online societies, and the resultant tendencies to pigeon-hole the "other" side and dismiss all they say (ascribing of hyper-extreme, non-representative positions to /all/ of the "other side" being one way to easily dismiss).
But... we can't really explore this here. ;)
18:24 Repercussions for potential future C flags?
18:24 Wise words
Perhaps, but when a much much larger number of people endorse and publicly support folks that proclaim such beliefs, it's not unreasonable to assume those beliefs are shared by that larger group.
18:24 Repercussions for potential future C flags?
If what the transpiler takes as input is a proper subset of C, then a full C compiler can be used too, and the transpiler to Rust would serve as additional sanity checks (like other static analysis tools: Coverity Scan, etc).
18:24 Old version
You have to start somewhere; Rust is a moving target and if they try to keep up with it from the beginning they will never get to anything useful. The developers have said that they have more current Rust versions in mind, but they have a milestone to get to first.
18:24 Repercussions for potential future C flags?
And gradually "oxidizing" a C codebase to such safe subset of C.
18:24 Repercussions for potential future C flags?
However, even if we did get enough support for something like that, please note that if it is really just a subset of current C, then there is little you would be able to do inside it.
For instance, most C functions that take a pointer would be unsafe (in Rust terms). Similarly, a lot of expressions would not be allowed unless you remove the UB from them somehow, which in turn may make them surprising, even if only in terms of expected codegen.
18:24 Repercussions for potential future C flags?
18:24 Old version
18:24 The Python Software Foundation on European cybersecurity
The solution with aftermarket radios is standard interfaces, and an obligation to meet those interfaces whenever you sell a component - if a car uses a non-standard wiring setup, then it's on the car maker to document how you go from the non-standard version to the standard versions.
We could go for that solution with computing, where all APIs and ABIs must be standardised, and you must specify how to convert your internal stuff to the standard stuff, but that's got its own costs that we'd prefer not to pay; the only reason it works for in-car entertainment is that the interface was well-understood for a good 20 years before we insisted it be standardised, whereas if you look at ABIs from 20 years ago, we've changed all sorts of things.
And in the library example, it's also two suppliers - one payment to DodgySoft Limited to buy the core library that makes everything else work, with the software you need coming from DodgySoft Research for free. Two different sources, legally speaking, and DodgySoft Limited is only on the hook for the core library, not the bits you got from DodgySoft Research - even though the bits you want are from DodgySoft Research, and you're only buying the tiny core from DodgySoft Limited because without it, you can't use the bits from DodgySoft Research.
Fundamentally, we have two conflicting goals to reconcile:
The conflict is that we don't want to make people gifting code as Open Source liable, but we do want all commercial users of that code to have liability that they have to deal with somehow - whether through support contracts, insurance, or just being good at avoiding security issues. In turn, this means that we need to be careful to avoid loopholes that let you disguise commercial supply of code as an Open Source gift.
18:24 The Python Software Foundation on European cybersecurity
Red Hat can't do that, under the CRA - they have to refuse to supply me RHEL under commercial terms in order to not be my supplier.
Which leads to fun if we start thinking about Ubuntu, which is available from Canonical as both Open Source, and a commercial supported product; if I have Ubuntu, which variant do I have? Is Canonical my supplier (because I obtained Ubuntu from them under commercial terms), or not (because I picked it up as an Open Source gift)? Can I convert Canonical into a supplier when I realise I fouled up taking Ubuntu as Open Source? Can Canonical avoid supplying me somehow, while still getting revenue from me?
18:24 Wise words
> That said, I think it's a vanishingly small number of people who have such beliefs about anyone.
You mean people like Sadiq Khan (Mayor of London)? About people who object to the ULEZ expansion?
It is NORMAL for one side (or probably both sides) in Politics to refuse to listen to reason. That's probably 90% of the problem right there ...
Cheers,
Wol
18:24 Repercussions for potential future C flags?
Where we can afford to give up general applicability I would prefer the trade WUFFS takes, where we get to be arguably even safer than Rust and go real, real fast (because we proved so much about the code at compile time, our optimisations can be extremely aggressive with no risk of nasty surprises) in exchange for just writing off general purpose software development entirely as a goal.
I think we do too much general purpose software development and so we lose sight of the fact that many of our problems are only daunting (or outright insurmountable) in the context of general purpose software, if we're OK with saying no, I only want to (for example) turn blobs of data into RGB pixels, or (another example) turn PCM audio into different PCM audio, many of the trickiest problems we have are quite tractable. Not everybody needs to write the Linux kernel, the Linux kernel already exists, many of us could write something less... comprehensive ? amorphous ?
18:24 Read-only memory at the application level
18:24 Old version
Funny how many developers have high expectations for their pet language. We've heard similar things for so many languages in the past. It's equally possible that in 30 years someone will say "what's this metal box?" and someone will respond "oh it's and old device that was called a computer, don't touch it it's full of rust" and then the language will wear its name marvelously :-)
On the opposite I predict that in the next decades, the most accessible languages will be swallowed by AI generators, not for the language but because they're addressing simple problems, and that over time it will be figured that generating code for high-level languages and fast moving targets is a pain, and that languages that impose lots of constraints do not bring any benefit anymore once you remove the human from the equation. You'll still keep a small percentage of human developers (basically the same that continue to use asm and low-level C for very specific stuff) and code generators will produce code for extremely permissive languages, possibly even C.
18:24 Old version
And how many times have we heard that :-) Was it the 1980s? Was it called "The Last One"? And given what we're hearing about AI, that it's biased, that it makes mistakes, that - basically - it's just as crap as humans are at actually getting things right, why do you think history is going to turn out different THIS time round, as opposed to all the previous times?
Assembly code replaced machine code. 3GLs replaced assembly. 4GLs tried to replace 3GLs and failed. AI is trying to replace 3GLs ... I fully expect it to fail ...
There's 3GLs and there's 3GLs. There's the "plenty of rope to hang yourself" ones - C, C++, Pick, ... There's the formally mathematical ones, Fortran, APL, SQL, ...
And at the end of the day, I think the biggest fly in the ointment is the Cretan Paradox, Godel's incompleteness theorem. The fact that logic is not logical is going to kill any attempt to write "The Last One".
Cheers,
Wol
18:24 The shrinking role of semaphores
I'd love to see a book that would perform an "archeology" research into the kernel mailing list and uncovers historical Linux development stories, how some features got introduced, and how the decision process came to be.
Maybe Jonathan has some surprise coming, either this or a new 4th edition on his book :D
18:24 The shrinking role of semaphores
Who needs a book when there's 25 years of LWN history just sitting there? :)
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17:17 'Indiana Jones 5' Will Feature a De-Aged Harrison Ford for the First 25 Minutes
An anonymous reader shares a report: A young Harrison Ford will grace cinema screens for 25 minutes this summer -- aided by some new Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) software. The news that LucasFilm's Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny would feature a de-aged Ford came at the end of last year, but an interview with director James Mangold in Total Film just revealed it will be for almost a fifth of the film's running time.
The fifth Indiana Jones iteration starts with an opening scene from 1944 -- about eight years after Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark took place. "My hope is that, although it will be talked about in terms of technology, you just watch it and go, 'Oh my God, they just found footage. This was a thing they shot 40 years ago," Kathleen Kennedy, president of Lucasfilm and a producer, told Empire. The rest of the movie shoots forward to 1969, with Indy on a mission to prevent a comeback of Nazism.
17:17 Brazil Court Suspends Telegram
Brazilian court has ordered the nationwide suspension of the Telegram messaging app due to its parent company's failure to provide data on neo-Nazis operating on the platform, imposing a daily fine of approximately $198,000 until compliance is met. The action was taken as part of an investigation into neo-Nazi activity on social networks.
Agence France-Presse first reported the news.
17:17 'High Risk of Biological Hazard' In Sudan After Fighters Seize Biolab, WHO Says
The World Health Organization (WHO) said there's a "high risk of biological hazard" in Khartoum, the capitol of Sudan, after a biolab containing deadly pathogens was seized by fighters. From a report: There's a war in Sudan right now as two rival generals struggle for power. After a week of fighting, one of the factions has seized the National Public Health Laboratory which contains samples of measles, cholera, polio, and other diseases. Now, lab workers are unable to return to the facility and secure the hazardous materials. "This is the main concern: no accessibility to the lab technicians to go to the lab and safely contain the biological material and substances available," Nima Saeed Abid, the WHO's representative in Sudan, told reporters on Tuesday.
According to the lab's website, it contains "reference laboratories related to the control of some diseases such as polio, measles, tuberculosis, malaria and AIDS." The lab is engaged in various aspects of studying and controlling diseases, including identifying pathogens, testing for them, and sending samples to international labs. The work is aimed at preventing and identifying possible epidemics, and the lab works with the WHO. The fighting in Sudan has already killed 459 people and injured 4,072, and the release of a deadly pathogen would lead to more suffering. The fighting is between generals Abdel Fattah Burhan and Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo. Burhan is the head of the country's military and Dagalo is the leader of a paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces. The RSF got its start as a Janjaweed militia, an Arab fighting group that operated in Darfur.
16:28 Bringing Memory Safety to sudo and su
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16:28 TSMC's 3-Nm Push Faces Tool Struggles
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16:28 Moving away from algorithmic curation
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16:28 CISC-y RISC-ness
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16:28 Thinking about our passive exposure to IPv6 issues
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16:28 Creating AI assistant with GPT and Ruby and Redis using embeddings
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16:28 Building the Pocket CO2 Project
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16:28 The part of Postgres we hate the most: Multi-version concurrency control
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16:28 SpaceX, Rogers to connect mobiles phones to satellites in remote Canadian areas
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16:28 Redump Milestone - 100k Discs
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16:28 Activeloop (YC S18) is hiring engineers for a multi-modal vector database for AI
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16:28 Why is OAuth still hard in 2023?
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16:28 Update millions of records in Rails
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16:28 DeepFloyd IF: open-source text-to-image model
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16:28 AMD Ryzen 7000 Burning Out: Impacts all 7000 processors
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16:28 HDR-NeRF: High Dynamic Range Neural Radiance Fields
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16:28 Meta Q1 2023 Earning Results
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15:47 Amazon Starts Layoffs in HR and Cloud Units
Amazon on Wednesday began laying off some employees in its cloud computing and human resources divisions. From a report: Amazon Web Services CEO Adam Selipsky and human resources head Beth Galetti sent notes to staffers in the U.S., Canada and Costa Rica informing them of the job cuts. "It is a tough day across our organization," Selipsky wrote in the memo. The layoffs are part of the previously announced job cuts that are expected to affect 9,000 employees. Last week, Amazon laid off some employees in its advertising unit, and it has let go of staffers in its video games and Twitch livestreaming units in recent weeks. Amazon wrapped up a separate round of cuts earlier this year that affected approximately 18,000 employees. Combined with the cuts this month, it marks the largest layoffs in Amazon's 29-year history. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has been aggressively slashing costs across the company as the e-retailer reckons with an economic downturn and slowing growth in its core retail business. Amazon froze hiring in its corporate workforce, axed some experimental projects and slowed warehouse expansion.
15:47 SpaceX, Rogers Strike Deal for Satellite Phone Service in Canada
SpaceX and Rogers Communications struck a deal for satellite phone service in Canada -- a bid to bring emergency service to remote areas of the vast country that can't be reached through conventional wireless networks. From a report: The companies will use SpaceX's Starlink low-earth orbit satellites and begin with text service before adding voice and data coverage later, Rogers said in a statement. It didn't give a launch date for the new service. "In the future, these investments will deliver wireless connectivity, including access to 911, to even the most remote areas," Rogers Chief Executive Officer Tony Staffieri said in a statement. Staffieri was due to speak about the arrangement during his speech at the company's annual meeting on Wednesday.
15:36 The most important part of the new Lamborghini Revuelto? Character.
Instead of a small turbo V6, it's sticking with a big, naturally aspirated V12.
15:36 Like viewing in FM vs. AM: New black hole image reveals âfluffierâ ring
New GMVA data complements the 2017 M87 image captured by Event Horizon Telescope.
15:36 As smartphone upgrades plummeted, used iPhones sold like hotcakes
High prices, device lifetime concerns are increasingly pushing people to refurbs.
15:36 Tetris' creators reveal the game's greatest unsolved mysteries
From random number generators to the origin of "the Tetris song."
15:36 Hands-on with Tears of the Kingdom's Zelda-meets-Minecraft construction set
Get ready to build your own unique solutions to Link's many challenges.
15:36 On-by-default Edge feature seems to be sending all the URLs you visit to Bing
It seems to be a bug introduced in Edge version 112, released earlier in April.
15:36 After nearly two years, Virgin Galactic's space plane returns to the sky
The spacecraft takes a step toward commercial spaceflight.
15:36 Intense new trailer for The Flash wows the crowd at CinemaCon
"These scars we have make us who we are. We're not meant to go back and fix them."
15:36 Desta is a turn-based dodgeball strategy game with heart and style, now on PC
Dreams, friendships, anxiety, and absolutely nailing a double-bounce headshot.
15:36 Colorado governor signs tractor right-to-repair law opposed by John Deere
Manufacturers must provide repair parts, embedded software, and documentation.
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14:17 5G Not Enough? Telecom Companies Look to 5.5G
5G technology has brought faster connections, better gadgets -- and a measure of disappointment from people with expectations of something closer to world-changing technology. But just wait, mobile companies are saying: The next upgrade will gin up enthusiasm for advances still to come. From a report: This next iteration of 5G, which the mobile companies are calling "5G Advanced" or "5.5G," is expected to be rolled out by around 2025. For consumers, the upgrades may bring faster connection speeds -- something that many parts of the world need. But everyday users may not see many more applications than that, say experts and industry officials. The real advance is that the technology will finally help facilitate more of the far-fetched business applications that 5G initially promised, like self-driving cars, autonomous drones and self-operating factories.
The forthcoming upgrades underscore a reality for many 5G users so far: Beyond faster connection speeds, it hasn't made a huge difference in their day-to-day lives. 5.5G may not either. With 5.5G, "for you or me using their phone, you won't necessarily notice a huge difference," says Patrick Filkins, a research manager at International Data Corp. who tracks the internet-of-things and telecommunications-infrastructure markets.
14:17 Netflix Loses 1 Million Spanish Users Over Password Policing
Netflix lost more than one million users in Spain in the first three months of 2023 according to market research group Kantar, a sign that the streaming giant's crackdown on password-sharing could backfire. From a report: In early February, Spain became one of Netflix's first markets to introduce a monthly fee for users who shared their log-in details with another household and technical measures to detect such sharing. The move was linked to a fall in users of more than a million, two thirds of whom were using someone else's password, according to Kantar's research, which is based on surveys of household streaming habits.
"It's clear this steep drop is due to the crackdown," said Dominic Sunnebo, global insight director at Kantar's Worldpanel Division, adding that the loss of a million users, even if most weren't paid subscribers, would be a blow to Netflix in terms of word of mouth recommendation for its shows and service. Subscription cancellations in the first quarter tripled compared to the previous period, according to Kantar's research. Of all remaining Netflix subscribers in Spain, one-tenth said they planned to unsubscribe in the second quarter. Spanish subscribers are charged $6.57 a month to add members outside their household. A similar fee was introduced in Portugal, Canada and New Zealand after a roll-out in several Latin American countries.
14:17 Company Seeks First-Time Restart of Shuttered Nuclear Plant
A company that tears down closed nuclear power plants wants to do in Michigan what has never been done in the U.S.: restore a dead one to life. From a report: Holtec Decommissioning International bought the Palisades Nuclear Generating Station last June for the stated purpose of dismantling it, weeks after previous owner Entergy shut it down. Fuel was removed from the reactor core. Federal regulators were notified of "permanent cessation of power operations." But with support from Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and leaders in the Lake Michigan community where Palisades was an economic driver for 50 years, Holtec soon kicked off a campaign to bring the plant back. The 800 megawatt facility had generated roughly 5% of the state's electricity.
"Keeping Palisades open is critical for Michigan's competitiveness and future economic development opportunities," Whitmer said in a letter to Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, herself a former Michigan governor, requesting federal funding for the restart. Activists who long criticized Palisades as poorly maintained and dangerous don't want it resurrected. They note its years of mechanical problems, including what the Nuclear Regulatory Commission described as among the nation's worst cases of nuclear fuel container weakening. A degrading seal on a device controlling the atomic reaction led Entergy to close the plant nearly two weeks earlier than planned in May 2022.
12:47 Bosch To Buy Chipmaker TSI, Invest $1.5 Billion in US Plant
Robert Bosch is acquiring US chipmaker TSI Semiconductors and plans to invest more than $1.5 billion in its California foundry, expanding the German company's global bet on chips. From a report: The world's biggest auto-parts supplier plans to retool and modernize TSI's Roseville site with a target to start producing silicon carbide chips there from 2026, Bosch said Wednesday. The company expects 30% annual demand growth for this type of chip, commonly used in power management that's beneficial to electric cars. "We step into a market which is developing very fast," Chief Executive Officer Stefan Hartung said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. "The new platforms of electric vehicles -- it doesn't matter where they are produced in the world -- are mostly betting on silicon carbide technology." Financial terms for the deal weren't disclosed beyond the planned investment at the foundry, which is also subject to regulatory approval. Bosch said the full scope of future spending will "heavily depend" on federal funding opportunities.
12:47 Commerce Dept. Outlines Plans To Fund Cutting-Edge Chip Research
The Biden administration outlined plans on Tuesday to propel research on the type of cutting-edge microchips needed to power computers, cars and other devices, saying it would establish a new national organization with locations in various parts of the United States. From a report: The Commerce Department, which is in charge of the administration's efforts to revitalize the American chip industry, said its new National Semiconductor Technology Center would bring together companies, universities and others to collaborate on next-generation chip technology. The organization would include a string of research centers, the locations of which have yet to be chosen, and aim to be operational by the end of this year.
The organization would help "regain America's leadership in research and development and technologies of the future and, importantly, make sure we stay there for decades to come," Gina Raimondo, the commerce secretary, said in a briefing Monday. "It's a place where industry and academia and start-ups and investors can come together to solve the biggest, grandest challenges and set priorities," she added. The plans are part of the Biden administration's effort to reinvigorate semiconductor manufacturing and ensure that the United States has a steady supply of chips necessary to feed its factories and support its national defense. The Commerce Department has been charged with doling out $50 billion to revitalize the industry, including $11 billion devoted to research and development.
12:28 What I learned unsubscribing from 22 newspapers
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12:28 A Survey of Worldwide Censorship Techniques
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12:28 DJI Mavic 3 Pro
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12:28 Sweden launches research rocket, accidentally hits Norway
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12:28 Netflix to invest $2.5B in South Korea to make TV shows, movies
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12:28 The Role of Diet on the Gut Microbiome, Mood and Happiness
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12:28 A guide to prompting AI, for what it is worth
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12:28 Mastodon is doomed?
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12:28 Microsoft Edge Is Leaking the Sites You Visit to Bing
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12:28 Colosseum - the worlds most powerful RF emulator
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12:28 Colorado becomes first to pass âright to repair' for farmers
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12:28 Mastodon Has Already Won
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12:28 Payments 101 for a Developer
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12:28 Tuql: Automatically create a GraphQL server from a SQLite database
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12:28 Last Highway Landing in USA
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12:28 Ruby's Switch Statement Is More Flexible Than You Thought
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12:28 Show HN: Learn German with Short Stories
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12:28 Long before trees overtook the land, Earth was covered by giant mushrooms (2013)
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12:22 Google's search business is feeling the heat
Google's search revenues inched upward in the first quarter of 2023 after years of rapid growth, suggesting the tech giant might be facing some difficulties with its golden goose. In an earnings release today, Google reported its âsearch & otherâ revenues were up 1.87 percent year over year (jumping from about $39.6B to $40.4B), which is much smaller growth than the 24.28 percent jump the company saw in Q1 2022 and the 30.11 percent bump in Q1 2021.
Right now, search is seeing significant competition from all sides. Microsoft is trying to steal users away from Google with its AI-powered Bing chatbot, which became more widely available last month. And many people are turning to other tools like OpenAI's ChatGPT to search for and learn...
12:22 Google ups Chromebook privacy with new camera and mic switch
Google is adding new systemwide camera and microphone access toggles in ChromeOS settings that can instantly block all apps and sites from being able to use them.
The new systemwide privacy controls cut off the rest of the computer's access to the hardware, which, for all intents and purposes, is a software replacement to the physical camera and mic kill switch one can find on various PC laptops.
But instead of adding hardware switches that cut power to the camera, like on Framework's Chromebook or even a simple plastic sliding gate that obscures the lens, Chromebook manufacturers can simplify the laptop design and use the built-in ChromeOS solution instead. Of course, there's nothing more secure than a full-on severance of power to the...
12:22 Google is making it much easier to search for tools in Docs, Sheets, and Slides
Google is adding a new feature to some of its Workspace apps that will help users quickly locate commonly used tools without needing to sift through various menus and toolbars. The âenhanced tool finderâ is starting to roll out across Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides today, appearing as a search bar â identified by a magnifying glass icon and a âMenusâ label â at the top-left of the app's usual toolbar.
The search bar features a pill-shaped design that's in keeping with the recent Material Design 3 overhaul. It'll automatically offer up commonly used suggestions that vary depending on which Google Workspace app you're using, such as âPage setupâ in Docs, âInsert rows/columnsâ in Sheets, and âEdit themeâ in Slides. Alternatively, users can...
12:22 Git 2.40.1 (and several others) released
There is a new
stable Git release containing fixes for three separate security
vulnerabilities. The fixes have also been backported to the older v2.39.3,
v2.38.5, v2.37.7, v2.36.6, v2.35.8, v2.34.8, v2.33.8, v2.32.7, v2.31.8, and
v2.30.9 releases. Sites using Git in untrusted environments â or with
untrusted input â should probably upgrade soon.
12:22 [$] Nikola: static-site generation in Python
Static-site generators are tools that generate
HTML pages from source
files, often written in Markdown or
another markup language. They have built-in templates and themes, which allows
developers to create lightweight and secure web sites that can be easily
maintained using version control. One of these tools is Nikola, written in Python.
12:22 Security updates for Wednesday
Security updates have been issued by Fedora (chromium, lilypond, and lilypond-doc), Oracle (java-1.8.0-openjdk), Red Hat (emacs, java-1.8.0-openjdk, java-11-openjdk, java-17-openjdk, kernel, kernel-rt, pesign, and virt:rhel, virt-devel:rhel), Scientific Linux (java-1.8.0-openjdk and java-11-openjdk), Slackware (git), SUSE (fwupd, git, helm, and runc), and Ubuntu (firefox, golang-1.18, linux-hwe-5.15, and openssl, openssl1.0).
12:22 GCC 13.1 released
Version
13.1 of the GCC compiler suite has been released.
This release integrates a frontend for the Modula-2 language which was previously available separately and lays foundation for a frontend for the Rust language which will be available in a future release.
Other changes include the removal of support for the STABS debugging-information format, addition of a number of C++23 features, a number of static-analyzer improvements, support for a number of recent CPU features, and more. See this page for details.
12:22 Seven stable kernels
The
6.2.13,
6.1.26,
5.15.109,
5.10.179,
5.4.242,
4.19.282, and
4.14.314
stable kernels have all been released; each contains another set of
important fixes and updates.
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12:21 Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold 5 could be far thinner while folded
Ice Universe, an anonymous Twitter account with a habit of accurately leaking details about unannounced smartphones, has tweeted what they claim will be the physical dimensions of Samsung's upcoming foldable, the Galaxy Z Fold 5.
Perhaps the most interesting figure is its thickness while folded, which will reportedly sit at 13.4mm. That's notable, because the thickness of the current Z Fold 4 ranges from 14.2mm to 15.8mm, because of the hinge gap and the angle of the screens while folded. That could make the Fold 5 both thinner and flatter than its predecessor, potentially as a result of the improved âdropletâ-style hinge Samsung is rumored to be using.
ExclusiveïŒSize contrast
Fold5 Fold4 gap
éż 154.9mm ...
12:21 Motorola's first co-branded Lenovo phone is here, and it's nice as heck
Nine years after Lenovo purchased the Motorola brand, the first co-branded phone is hitting store shelves. The Lenovo ThinkPhone by Motorola is available in the US starting today for $699, offering a suite of productivity features designed to work with ThinkPad laptops. But don't expect to waltz into your wireless carrier's retail location and find it on a shelf â it's available first to enterprise customers and then, on April 28th, becomes available unlocked via Motorola.com. That puts it out of consideration for a lot of people, and that's too bad â in my experience, it's shaping up to be a really nice phone.
The ThinkPhone has a lot of the same stuff as a mainstream flagship phone, even though it's priced just below the likes of the...
12:21 Apple's Weather chaos is restarting the weather app market
Forecast Advisor might be the best-kept secret in the weather business. It's a website, run by a company called Intellovations, that compares the accuracy of a dozen of the largest weather forecasters. You put in your ZIP code (it only works in the US), and it spits back a ranking of the services based on how correctly they predicted the weather over the last month and the last year. You might be shocked at how different the various sources are and how bad some of them are at predicting the weather.
Depending on which weather app you use, this is extremely actionable information. Many third-party weather apps allow you to switch between data sources, so you can pick the one that's most accurate near you â AccuWeather, in my case â and...
12:21 Verizon plans to speed up rural 5G service later this year
Rural customers subscribed to Verizon's 5G network could see a jump in their speeds later this year. The telecommunications giant revealed plans during its quarterly earnings call this week to extend its C-band 5G network â which uses a radio spectrum that enables faster speeds on a wide scale â to more rural and suburban areas by December 2023.
We don't know specifically which areas the expansion will cover. During the earnings call, Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg mentioned that the company's C-band 5G coverage has so far been deployed to 70 out of the 406 available markets, mostly in urban and suburban areas. âIt's 330 markets left, we will get the C-band,â said Vestberg. He didn't clarify how many of these markets would be covered by the...
12:21 Microsoft's Phone Link app is now available for iOS so you can use iMessage from a PC
Microsoft is now rolling out a new update to its Phone Link app that includes iOS support for the first time. The Phone Link app now allows iPhone owners to connect to a Windows 11 PC and send and receive messages via iMessage, make and receive calls, and see their notifications on a PC or laptop.
Microsoft started previewing this update earlier this year, and it's now rolling out in 39 languages across 85 countries. Microsoft says all Windows 11 will get access to the iPhone support in Phone Link by mid-May.
Phone Link works by sending messages over Bluetooth to contacts. Apple's iOS then intercepts these messages and forces them to be sent over iMessage, much like how Apple's operating system detects when you're sending a message to an...
12:20 It looks like Apple copied a feature from Nothing for upcoming earbuds
The Beats Studio Buds Plus leaked through an Amazon listing with a transparent design.
12:20 Latest Pixel 7a press renders leave little to the imagination
We also get a good look at official Pixel 7a cases.
12:20 Samsung Galaxy S24 cameras tipped to bring major photography boost
The Galaxy S24 series will apparently bring upgraded cameras, albeit via software rather than hardware.
12:20 The BLUETTI AC60 portable power station is the ideal outdoor companion
Cover all your power needs on the go.
12:20 Wallpaper Wednesday: More great phone wallpapers for all to share (Apr. 26)
Here is a weekly selection of Android wallpapers created by our readers and members of the Android Authority team!
12:20 The Lenovo ThinkPhone is much, much cheaper than expected, which is good news
The Lenovo ThinkPhone by Motorola (it's full official name) is business-focused, but everyone should at least have a look.
12:20 UK blocks the Xbox/Activision Blizzard deal (Update: Microsoft statement)
Interestingly, the watchdog said it had no issue with the deal when it comes to the console gaming market.
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12:20 AMD Issues Official Statement on Reported Ryzen 7000 Burnout Issues
Yesterday we reported that MSI announced a wave of firmware updates designed to address and alleviate potential issues with users on AM5 using AMD's Ryzen 7000X3D processors with 3D V-Cache. One of the main changes with MSI's latest UEFI firmware for AM5 included voltage restrictions when using Ryzen 7000X3D series CPUs. Further to recent reports of users with AMD Ryzen 7000X3D processors experiencing damage to their chip and motherboard socket, we reached out to AMD this morning to seek clarification. AMD has just responded with an official statement concerning the current problem.
The statement directly from AMD is as follows:
As the statement clarifies, AMD themselves are investigating the issue that users have been experiencing, which has been reported on through various channels such as social media and Reddit. This is further to MSI, which launched new firmware yesterday, and ASUS announced new firmware today for users with AMD Ryzen 7000X3D processors, such as the Ryzen 9 7950X3D and the Ryzen 7 7800X3D. The new firmware specifically limits the SoC voltages applied so that these critical limits aren't breached when users enable AMD EXPO memory profiles on supported DRAM.
While AMD hasn't officially confirmed the problem regarding the burnt pads on the Ryzen 7000X3D series processors and the burnt pins within the motherboard socket, AMD is actively looking to resolve this issue. One theory thus far is that the issue is being triggered when users are enabling AMD EXPO memory profiles - which, much like Intel's XMP counterpart, is technically a form of overclocking and officially voids the product warranty. Given the rollout of new firmware, which targets SoC voltages and restricts them, all things point towards voltages and overclocking said processors, which are, by default, multiplier and CPU VCore locked.
AMD is actively working with motherboard vendors such as MSI, ASUS, GIGABYTE, and ASRock to roll out the new firmware. AMD also specifies that if users have a Ryzen 7000X3D processor affected by this problem, to contact AMD customer support directly.
Image source: Speedrookie/Reddit
12:20 ASUS Issues Statement on Ryzen 7000X3D Processor Issues, Possible Voltage Issues with AMD EXPO
Yesterday we reported that MSI announced a wave of firmware updates designed to address and alleviate potential issues with users on AM5 using AMD's Ryzen 7000X3D processors with 3D V-Cache. One of the main changes with MSI's latest UEFI firmware for AM5 included voltage restrictions when using Ryzen 7000X3D series CPUs so that these chips couldn't be overvolted as the V-Cache packaging is somewhat sensitive to additional power.
Further to MSI's announcement, ASUS has released a statement to experienced engineer and extreme overclocker Roman 'Der8auer' Hartung, which addresses the potential issue with using AMD's EXPO memory profiles in conjunction with the Ryzen 7000X3D series chips. One of the key elements that seemingly surrounds the problem is the use of AMD's EXPO memory overclocking profiles.
ASUS's Director of Global Product Marketing and Technical Marketing, Rajinder Gill, said in a statement to Der8auer, "The EFI updates posted on Friday contain some dedicated thermal monitoring mechanisms we've implemented to help protect the boards and CPUs. We removed older BIOSes for that reason and also because manual Vcore control was available on previous builds." Rajinder also said, "We're also working with AMD on defining new rules for AMD Expo and SoC voltage. We'll issue new updates for that ASAP. Please bear with us."
ASUS ROG Crosshair X670E Hero AM5 Motherboard for AMD Ryzen 7000 Series CPUs
Looking at the narrative of the statement provided to Der8uaer from Rajinder, we can confirm that ASUS has indeed removed older iterations of its firmware for its AM5 motherboards. Looking at the EMEA side of things, at the time of writing, the latest firmware update to be posted on the ASUS product pages is dated 04/21/2023, which indicates ASUS recently updated the firmware, but the update isn't the latest one in question.
Roman 'Der8auer' Hartung's Ryzen 9 7900X also has a bulge.
The one thing these issues have in common is that AMD's EXPO memory profiles have been applied, claims Roman 'Der8auer' Hartung, and even highlighted that his Ryzen 9 7900X processor also fell foul the the 'bulging issue.' This is particularly interesting as this isn't an X3D series chip with 3D V-Cache, although we're not aware of any other reports of non-X3D Ryzen 7000 chips being affected at this time.
Enabling EXPO memory profiles on Ryzen 7000 processors does several things to the processor that pushes it beyond the technical specification of the chip. Chief among these is raising the SoC voltage and some other primary voltages, such as VDDIO, which are used to feed the IOD. Like any ASIC, there are limits to how high voltages can be safely pushed, and this is one theory behind the cause of the recent run of damaged Ryzen reports. Though how this might be connected to the issue being centered around Ryzen X3D chips - where the voltage-sensitive V-Cache is on the CCDs and their separate voltage plane - is unclear at this time.
In any case, this does underscore why AMD's EXPO memory overclocking profiles void the warranty on these chips, as there's more to EXPO than just ramping up memory frequencies and applying more voltage to the DRAM itself.
Further to Rajinder's statement given to Der8auer, ASUS's Senior Technical Marketing Manager, Juan Jose Guerrero, posted the following statement on Twitter Tuesday afternoon:
"Several AMD Ryzen 7000X3D owners have reported CPU and motherboard failures. We acknowledge the incidents/issues and have been communicating with AMD to analyze the possible causes. We have also contacted affected users to provide support and collect additional information.
Ryzen 7000X3D processors do not allow for CPU ratio or CPU core voltage tuning (CPU overclocking) but do allow for performance tuning and DRAM overclocking via PBO2 and EXPO memory. To support EXPO and/or memory overclocking at DDR5-6000 and beyond, SoC voltage has to be sufficiently increased to ensure compatibility and stability. The amount of voltage required varies between CPU samples. Some processors are more sensitive to overvoltage than others, and some are capable at running higher memory frequencies without needing as much voltage.
As confirmed with AMD, any intentional manipulation of these settings can damage the processor, socket, and motherboard. To mitigate this, we have been working with AMD to define new rules for EXPO memory and SoC voltage. To help protect the CPU and motherboard, we are issuing new EFI updates to limit the maximum available SoC voltage to 1.3V.
We recommend updating your motherboard UEFI BIOS to the latest release. Please also ensure the CPU is cooled adequately. Our recommendation is to use at least a 240mm AIO liquid cooler or high-performance air cooler. If you have been affected, please do not hesitate to contact ASUS support for your region.
As we mentioned in our article yesterday about MSI addressing CPU voltage on their own AM5 motherboards, vendors are looking to address any more potential issues, following a small-but-concerning number of reports circulating on Reddit that their Ryzen 7000X3D processors are burning out and killing the motherboard in the process. ASUS's statement and the summary of the firmware on the official product page indicate that ASUS is worried about SoC voltage, and as such, the new firmware locks it down to 1.30 V. Which ASUS states is to 'protect the CPU and motherboard.'
Screenshot of the ROG Crosshair X670E Extreme BIOS/Support page on the official product page (China).
On the Chinese product page for the ROG Crosshair X670E Extreme, the firmware has been updated as of today (at the time of writing) to 04/25/2023, and the firmware version in question (1302) does seemingly address the SoC voltage.
Further to ASUS's and MSI's statements, AMD has officially responded with a statement of their own:
It reads, "We are aware of a limited number of reports online claiming that excess voltage while overclocking may have damaged the motherboard socket and pin pads. We are actively investigating the situation and are working with our ODM partners to ensure voltages applied to Ryzen 7000X3D CPUs via motherboard BIOS settings are within product specifications. Anyone whose CPU may have been impacted by this issue should contact AMD customer support."
Of course, these issues of Ryzen 7000X3D series processors burning out aren't just limited to those using MSI and ASUS motherboards. Since the initial reports, users have reported additional issues on various models and brands across threads on Reddit. The potential for damage is one of the primary reasons AMD locked down the X3D series processors so that users couldn't manually overclock them. Even the first iteration, the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, was also locked down.
One thing remains clear: AMD and its motherboard partners are now officially investigating the matter, and users with affected Ryzen 7000 CPUs are advised to contact AMD customer support directly.
12:20 AMD Releases Ryzen Z1 Series: Zen 4 & RDNA 3 Come To Handheld Game Consoles
AMD has announced the Ryzen Z1 series of high-performance processors for handheld PC gaming consoles. The latest Ryzen Z1 chips wield Zen 4 cores and RDNA 3 graphics, a familiar combination that AMD uses for its current mobile Ryzen 7040HS series (Phoenix) processors. And while the chipmaker hasn't officially announced any lower power Phoenix chips yet (e.g. Ryzen 7040U series), given the similarities in the feature set of the Ryzen Z1 family and the Phoenix silicon, the Ryzen Z1 series appears to be a custom-tailored Phoenix SKU that prioritizes energy efficiency for handheld gaming devices. The lead customer for the Ryzen Z1 will be Asus, who will be using it in their upcoming ROG Alloy.
The Ryzen Z1 series is being introduced with two SKUs. The top-tier Ryzen Z1 Extreme has eight Zen 4 CPU cores - the maximum found on Phoenix - while the vanilla Ryzen Z1 cuts that down to six CPU cores. Meanwhile, on the graphics side of matters, the Ryzen Z1 Extreme flaunts 12 RDNA 3 architecture compute units, again aligning with the max number found on Phoenix silicon. Its vanilla Z1 counterpart, on the other hand, will ship with just 4 CUs enabled, one-third as many as on the flagship part.
Both chips benefit from a 16 MB L3 cache, while the Ryzen Z1 Extreme has 2 MB more L2 cache due to its additional CPU cores. In any event, the Ryzen 1 and Ryzen Z1 Extreme possess strong computing performance thanks to the high CPU core count and the usage of AMD's latest Zen 4 cores. A hexa-core processor should suffice for handheld gaming, and either Ryzen Z1 processor will certainly outperform AMD's older custom quad-core Zen 2 SoC (Aerith) that powers Valve's Steam Deck.
| AMD Ryzen Z1 Specifications | ||||||||
| AnandTech | Cores Threads |
Base Freq |
Turbo Freq |
L2 Cache |
L3 Cache |
GPU | TDP | |
| Ryzen Z1 Extreme | 8/16 | ? | ? | 8 MB | 16 MB | 12 RDNA 3 CUs | 15 - 30 W | |
| Ryzen Z1 | 6/12 | ? | ? | 6 MB | 16 MB | 4 RDNA 3 CUs | 15 - 30 W | |
Hardware unit counts aside, AMD isn't revealing the clock speeds for the two 4nm processors. Curiously, an embargoed report published by The Verge has quoted "up to" 8.6 TFLOPS and 2.6 TFLOPS graphics performance, respectively, based on AMD's engineering projections. But these figures have been removed from the deck AMD has since been sending around to the rest of the press. If these figures do turn out to be reasonably close to what the final shipping silicon can hit, then that would mean we'd be looking at peak GPU clock speeds of around 2.8 GHz and 2.6 GHz, respectively, which is just a bit lower than what the Ryzen 7040HS chips run at.
The Ryzen Z1 series chips will support a maximum TDP of 30 Watts, which happens to be the same top power target as AMD's mobile Ryzen U-series chips. Meanwhile, although this wasn't in AMD's press deck or press release, AMD's Ryzen Z1 product page lists a minimum TDP of 15 Watts. Though it's worth noting that, unlike TDP maximums, TDP minimums are not a hard floor or ceiling for mobile processors. Chips can be configured to run even less when it's called for, depending on what the customer desires.
Just to offer a comparison here, Aerith's TDP is between 4 Watts and 15 Watts, meaning the Z1 series certainly offers a good deal larger power range for customers to play with. At its top TDP, such a configuration would quickly blow through the battery in any handheld device, but for docked devices, it's very feasible. As for handheld mode, it's far more likely that we'll see Z1 chips clocked relatively low to conserve precious power.
Being that this is an AMD product designed for PC-like devices, it has access to all AMD graphics technologies, including Radeon Chill, which helps improve battery life by adjusting frame rates based on the movements in the game. This also means that FSR will be on the table on a game-by-game basis, and RSR as a less optimal universal solution.
AMD provided some benchmarks for the Ryzen Z1 series utilizing the Asus ROG Ally. As usual, throw a pinch of salt over vendor-provided benchmarks. The device used here also had 16 GB of LPDDR5 memory and a Micron 500 MB SSD. It's important to highlight that AMD put the Asus ROG Alloy in turbo mode for its benchmarks, which means that the Ryzen Z1 series processors were operating at power levels of up to 30 Watts.
AMD's results show the Ryzen Z1 Extreme delivers average frame rates above 60 FPS in most titles. However, the chipmaker tested with the lowest settings at a mix of 1080p and 720p upscaled with RSR to hit those figures. The Ryzen Z1's performance wasn't bad, but the two chips' delta was perceptible. The difference spans between 6% and 73%. Zen 4-based processors took a significant performance hit at native 1080p resolution on the lowest settings. As expected, the Ryzen Z1 struggled in multiple titles and didn't hit the 60 FPS mark.
Asus has first dibs on the Ryzen Z1 series; however, more competitors powered by the 4nm Ryzen Z1 chips should arrive down the road. Asus' ROG Ally will be the first handheld gaming console to feature AMD's Ryzen Z1 Extreme processor, with the company set to share more information on the handheld (including pricing) on May 11.
12:20 Corsair Launches MP600 Mini: M.2 2230 SSD Brings Big Performance
Corsair has introduced its first ever SSD in an M.2-2230 form-factor that is aimed at ultra-compact systems like Valve's Steam Deck as well as Microsoft's Surface Pro 8 and 9. The MP600 Mini drive delivers 1 TB of storage space and strong performance in a miniature package.
Corsair's MP600 Mini is based around Phison's E21T controller mated with 3D TLC NAND memory (according to Tom's Hardware) and is rated with an up to 4,800 MB/s sequential read/write speed as well as an up to 850K/1.1M random read/write IOPS. The SSD consumes about 4.3W on average and comes with a simplistic graphene heatspreader, which makes it compatible with the vast majority of systems out there.
Since Corsair's MP600 Mini uses a PCIe 4.0 x4 interface, it will shine in the vast majority of modern laptops and hybrid PCs. Though as far as Valve's Steam Deck is concerned, keep in mind that it uses a PCIe 3.0 x4 interface, so the MP600 Mini won't get to fully stretch its legs there in terms of throughpt.
| Corsair MP600 Mini Specifications | ||
| Capacity | 1 TB | |
| Form Factor | M.2 2230 | |
| Interface | PCIe Gen4 x4, NVMe 1.4 | |
| Controller | Phison PS5021-E21T | |
| NAND Flash | 3D TLC | |
| Sequential Read | 4800 MB/s | |
| Sequential Write | 4800 MB/s | |
| Random Read | 850k IOPS | |
| Random Write | 1100k IOPS | |
| Endurance | 600TBW | |
| Warranty | 5 Years | |
| Power | Active | 4.3 W |
| Idle | 5 mW | |
The market for retail M2.2230 SSDs has traditionally been a small one, owing to the limited use of the drives in user-upgradable machines. However the recent launch of the Steam Deck in particular has kicked up significant demand for these SSDs - especially high-performance drives befitting a game console. So Corsair's MP600 Mini is a welcome addition to the space.
Corsair currently sells its MP600 Mini directly for $110, which might seem expensive for a 1 TB drive, but keeping in mind that we are dealing with a pretty fast model that comes in an M.2-2230 form-factor (a rare combination), the price is consistent with similar drives.
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11:17 Meta's Clegg Invokes Anti-China Rhetoric Against TikTok
Meta's head of global affairs, Nick Clegg, called into question the values of TikTok by invoking the anti-China rhetoric that's become a trademark of lawmakers that want to expel his company's rival from the US. From a report: "TikTok, a hugely successful, highly dynamic and innovative Chinese company, is able to operate in the United States, but companies like Meta are not able to operate our social media services in China," Clegg said in an interview Tuesday with Bloomberg TV. "So there is this issue of a kind of lack of a level playing field. And in the end, there's always an underlying issue of values: What values are the underpinning of new technologies?" TikTok, owned by Chinese tech giant ByteDance, has said it's not a Chinese company and is walling off sensitive US operations to house all data and employees in America. The app also isn't available in China. Still, it hasn't been able to shake concerns about its ownership and whether that opens up the app for influence or data collection by the Chinese government.
Clegg's comments echo the hawkish sentiments that have swirled around China and TikTok's connection to the country. In the US, where the social media platform has amassed 150 million users every month, the company is facing a national security review and legislation that could limit its availability in the country. There are "pretty profound differences in values" in how China views technology and individual privacy, Clegg said, including the country's willingness to seal off most of its internet from access by foreign companies. This has also expanded to discussions about new artificial intelligence technologies where, he said, "Chinese authorities are already rushing to insert their values and the way in which those AI systems are developed."
10:46 UK government blocks Microsoft's proposed Activision purchase
Gov. group says deal would "substantially lessen competition" in cloud gaming.
10:46 Ars Technica System Guide: Four PC builds for spring 2023
New CPUs and GPUs and low RAM and SSD prices change many of our recommendations.
10:46 Mysteries of the poisonous amphibians
How do frogs and other amphibians survive their own noxious weapons?
10:46 This go-kart demos an electric alternative to gas ATVs and generators
Honda wants to replace small gasoline engines with electric motors and batteries.
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09:47 Linux Kernel 6.3 Released
An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet, written by Steven Vaughan-Nichols: The latest Linux kernel is out with a slew of new features -- and, for once, this release has been nice and easy. [...] Speaking of Rust, everyone's favorite memory-safe language, the new kernel comes with user-mode Linux support for Rust code. Miguel Ojeda, the Linux kernel developer, who's led the efforts to bring Rust to Linux, said the additions mean we're, "getting closer to a point where the first Rust modules can be upstreamed."
Other features in the Linux 6.3 kernel include support and enablement for upcoming and yet-to-be-released Intel and AMD CPUs and graphics hardware. While these updates will primarily benefit future hardware, several changes in this release directly impact today's users' day-to-day experience. The kernel now supports AMD's automatic Indirect Branch Restricted Speculation (IBRS) feature for Spectre mitigation, providing a less performance-intensive alternative to the retpoline speculative execution.
Linux 6.3 also includes new power management drivers for ARM and RISC-V architectures. RISC-V has gained support for accelerated string functions via the Zbb bit manipulation extension, while ARM received support for scalable matrix extension 2 instructions. For filesystems, Linux 6.3 brings AES-SHA2-based encryption support for NFS, optimizations for EXT4 direct I/O performance, low-latency decompression for EROFS, and a faster Brtfs file-system driver. Bottom line: many file operations will be a bit more secure and faster.
For gamers, the new kernel provides a native Steam Deck controller interface in HID. It also includes compatibility for the Logitech G923 Xbox edition racing wheel and improvements to the 8BitDo Pro 2 wired game controllers. Who says you can't game on Linux? Single-board computers, such as BannaPi R3, BPI-M2 Pro, and Orange Pi R1 Plus, also benefit from updated drivers in this release. There's also support for more Wi-Fi adapters and chipsets. These include: Realtek RTL8188EU Wi-Fi adapter support; Qualcomm Wi-Fi 7 wireless chipset support; and Ethernet support for NVIDIA BlueField 3 DPU. For users dealing with complex networks that have both old-school and modern networks, the new kernel can also handle multi-path TCP handling mixed flows with IPv4 and IPv6. Linux 6.3 is available from kernel.org. You can learn how to compile the Linux kernel yourself here.
08:28 Vegan Leather Made of Dormant Fungi Can Repair Itself
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08:28 Painting Goethe's Faust (2018)
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08:28 Possible toxicity of chronic CO2 exposure associated with face mask use
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08:28 Tech jobs remain a good bet despite mass layoffs in Silicon Valley
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08:28 Microsoft / Activision deal prevented to protect innovation and choice in gaming
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08:28 Chaos Bewitched: Moby-Dick and AI
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08:28 AI used photographer's photos for training, then slapped him with an invoice
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08:28 Kalshi (YC W19) Is Hiring
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08:28 Neutralinojs - Build lightweight cross-platform desktop apps with JavaScript
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08:28 We need female mice in neuroscience research
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08:28 Google cloud Europe is out
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08:28 Show HN: An interactive map showing live wind farm generation in Great Britain
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08:24 Repercussions for potential future C flags?
Unfortunately, C's design makes it very hard to take certain assumptions and even produce good warnings (producing errors would clearly break compiling against the standard).
C++ already does introduce a lot more restrictions, and compiling C code with the C++ compiler is commonly done for that reason.
If you want to build on top of C, probably an approach with a transpiler would be what you want, like Kotlin did with Java.
There is https://ziglang.org/ which is a good attempt in the right direction.
08:24 Static site generators for building web sites
08:24 An update on the GCC frontend for Rust
08:24 The Python Software Foundation on European cybersecurity
I mean, I could send pizza money but I'm hoping that's not where the difficulties lie.
08:24 Repercussions for potential future C flags?
Aliasing is the most obvious example of something forbidden in Rust but normal in C. Merely creating a mutable alias (e.g. int foo = 1; int *bar = &foo; in C) is forbidden in Rust. Even if you promise never to actually mutate it - even if the compiler can easily see that you don't - the construction of this Wrong Thing puts you on the far side of the rules.
08:24 An update on the GCC frontend for Rust
Is it your understanding that the idea of this frontend is to freeze forever at Rust 1.49? Because that doesn't seem to be what its maintainers are saying, nor anybody else. Necessarily to get from A to B we must pass through intermediate points. "No Rust" to "Rust 1.49" seems like a lot of progress to me, taking a great many years for the Rust project so it's not a surprise that this team can't repeat it in a few weeks.
08:24 The Python Software Foundation on European cybersecurity
Designing legal exemptions a lot of crooks won't transform instanteanously into massive loopholes is hard.
08:24 Wise words
Keep an open mind, stick to empathy and evidence, minimise judging things by association and bias.
08:24 Repercussions for potential future C flags?
Fortunately, the borrow checker will prevent creating aliases to mutable references, even when you are using unsafe rust. In unsafe rust you will usually deal with raw pointers. And it is perfectly valid to have aliasing raw pointers as long as you take care of data races. Thus you basically have to uphold the same invariants as in unsafe C. [*]
Of course, at the boundary to safe code you have to ensure that you only create one mutable reference from your raw pointer, but that should be easy to comply with. And you are not allowed to mutate the state through your raw pointer while there exist any references (mutable or shared). So, it should not be that hard after all to create correct unsafe rust code. And -- as you said -- you will rarely need it at all and you can therefore be extra cautious at the places where you really need this.
[*] There is no such thing as safe C ;)
08:24 Wise words
08:24 The Python Software Foundation on European cybersecurity
Worse than that, if you define it in terms of transactions, I can just sell you the licence library, and "give away" the rest of my software pile. So I'm liable for bugs in the licence system, but not for bugs in the rest of the software I offer, because the only thing I've actually sold is the licence system. The fact that the rest of the software is useless without the licence library is beside the point - it's not part of a transaction, you can download it freely.
Underlying this is that the per-transaction cost of distributing digital assets is near-zero; you might be asked to pay as much as $0.20 per gigabyte for data transfer if you choose an expensive option, but it's possible to drive that down below $0.01 per gigabyte if you're transferring enough data. For a size context, the Debian archive (all of Debian) is 125 GB for sources, plus 612 GB for the largest architecture, while a complete Android system image for a Google Pixel 7 Pro is under 3 GB.
Given this pricing, it's reasonable for someone distributing software to give most of it away "for free", without including it in a transaction; the goal of the CRA, however, is to ensure that software is covered by the same sorts of rules on quality and liability for faults as physical goods are. Which leads to tension, because software's a place where the low incremental cost of another unit means that it's easier to disguise a software transaction as a gift (and gifts have lower standards for quality in physical goods).
08:24 Repercussions for potential future C flags?
Not for the full C specification, just a very small subset of C at the beginning. Like starting with a blank page, but keeping the familiar syntax of C.
08:24 The Python Software Foundation on European cybersecurity
If you have to buy the licence library to use the software, then they're one "good". They're not "fit for purpose" without each other. Yes writing stuff that people can't try to find loopholes in is hard to impossible. But "Did you pay (cash, consideration, whatever) for the right/ability to use the software? Oh - you had to pay for the licence library, right? It's ONE transaction!" is hard to dodge.
Cheers,
Wol
08:24 Repercussions for potential future C flags?
Something along the lines of C2Rust? Transpiles C to Unsafe Rust that's supposed to be semantically the same, and then you are able to gradually refactor the Rust from a very literal interpretation of your C into good-quality Rust (possibly while maintaining the C interface - depends on what you're doing).
08:24 Wise words
I'm sorry, there's only so much direct abuse I can tolerate before choosing to walk away from those who are constantly angry and espouse general hatred for anything different than themselves. I take an especially dim view of folks that claim that
08:24 The Python Software Foundation on European cybersecurity
That implies that everyone who sells software that runs on an OS has combined the OS and the software into a single good, and is on the hook not just for their software package, but also the whole OS. After all, you can't run the software without the OS, so you must buy the OS to use the software, which means it's one "good", not two, even though you buy the OS separately from another company.
08:24 Repercussions for potential future C flags?
08:24 Wise words
It's interesting, all these news stories looking back at King Charles' earlier life, how much he was seen as a misfit, dreamer and "out of touch". But so much of what concerned him back then is now mainstream ...
Cheers,
Wol
08:24 Repercussions for potential future C flags?
(1) should be a simple case of "hardware defined". Maybe a switch to force counter-intuitive behaviour if required. If you rely on ones-complement and enable that flag on a twos-complement piece of hardware, you deserve what you get ...
(2) this might be a case of (1) or it might not. I can imagine - SCADA in particular - where you don't know what the hardware is going to do. Maybe you shouldn't be using C :-)
(3) make this a case of "if you don't ask you don't get". Compilers must implement at least one defined behaviour, and have a compiler flag to enforce it. Asking for an unimplemented behaviour is a compile time error, not asking is you get what you asked for :-)
Option (3) in particular is likely to result in a marked increase in the quality of C programs, I would have thought ... and a marked DEcrease in the number of programs that stop working when the compiler is upgraded :-)
Cheers,
Wol
08:24 The Python Software Foundation on European cybersecurity
But they've presumably solved that with things like car radios, Ford aren't liable for aftermarket replacement radios. Even though those radios are clearly designed only to work in cars.
(In that case, it's two separate transactions, with consideration going in two directions. In the library example, it's the same supplier and you have to buy the licence to activate the software. One payment, one supplier.)
Cheers,
Wol
08:17 Microsoft's $69 Billion Activision Deal Blocked by UK Watchdog
Microsoft's $69 billion takeover of Activision Blizzard, suffered a hammer blow after Britain's antitrust watchdog vetoed the gaming industry's biggest ever deal, saying it would harm competition on the cloud. From a report: The Competition and Markets Authority said its concerns couldn't be solved by remedies such as the sale of blockbuster title Call of Duty or so-called behavioral remedies involving promises to permit rivals to offer the game on their platforms, according to a statement Wednesday. Pressure had been mounting on Microsoft as it lobbies at home and in Europe to convince watchdogs to clear the deal -- one of the 30 biggest acquisitions of all time. Crucially, the CMA's conclusions comes before decisions from the European Union and the US Federal Trade Commission, which is awaiting a hearing in the summer after formally suing to veto the transaction.
06:47 Microsoft Suggests Businesses Buy Fewer PCs
In early April with the start of previews for "Windows Frontline" -- a service that provides a single license for frontline employees to use up to three Cloud PCs, Microsoft floated the idea that businesses should buy fewer PCs. The Register reports: The "Frontline" name hints at its purpose: Microsoft thinks this license will benefit organizations that employ shift workers in roles like customer support or healthcare. Microsoft imagines shift workers will log on for eight hours, then the next worker on duty will do likewise, and advances this as a fairer way to charge than assuming cloud PCs are used 24x7. To burnish that argument, Microsoft's launch material for Windows Frontline included research (PDF) by tech sustainability consultancy Px3 that tries to answer the question "Can modern work applications and endpoints abate end user computing greenhouse gas emissions and drive climate action?" The answer is "Yes," when one considers cloudy PCs to be "modern endpoints."
The research reaches that conclusion with analysis of the energy consumption of desktop computers, laptops, tablets, and thin clients, compared to the impact of running a Cloud PC. The research also considers bring your own PC plans that see business fund the acquisition of PCs that their staff use for personal and employment purposes, meaning fewer devices need to be summoned into existence and fewer resources are consumed because users operate one machine instead of two. Px3 instead imagines that end users and their sole device to access a Windows365 Cloud PC when they're on the clock. Doing so would mean corporate PC replacement cycles could stretch to eight years!
Readers will not be surprised that the research found the combination of Windows365 and a bring your own PC plan has significantly lower environmental impact and is therefore a jolly good idea. The research's concluding paragraph states "it is reasonable to state that modern work applications and endpoint computers not only abate GHG emissions, they are perhaps critical to securing a sustainable future." That's perhaps a little overblown but the point is made: slowing consumption is a good idea and it's now possible to turn down the speed of the PC upgrade treadmill.
04:28 AudioGPT: Understanding and Generating Speech, Music, Sound, and Talking Head
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04:28 A Lesson in Cartography in Potato Land (2012)
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04:28 Reflections on Migrating My SaaS to SvelteKit
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04:28 Thumb-Key: a privacy-conscious smart keyboard, made specifically for your thumbs
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04:28 Welcome to a new, humbler private-equity industry
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04:28 Show HN: Jellylade - Turn your screenshots into posts
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04:28 Ask HN: Is "Code Complete" by Steve McConnell still a recommended read?
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04:28 The transition from logins to cryptographic passkeys is getting messy
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04:28 Netflix Loses 1M Users in Spain over Password Policing
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04:28 How to use Podman inside of a container (2021)
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03:47 AT&T Helps Complete the First 'Space-Based Voice Call' Using a Standard Smartphone
Satellite manufacturer AST SpaceMobile partnered with AT&T to make the first two-way audio call using satellites with a standard smartphone. "The initial call was placed using AT&T's networks in Midland, Texas, to mobile carrier Ratuken in Japan on an unmodified Samsung Galaxy S22 smartphone using AST SpaceMobile's BlueWalker 3 satellite," reports Engadget. AST SpaceMobile claims to be building "the first and only space-based cellular broadband network." From the report: AT&T aims to use satellites to provide global cellular broadband from 2G to 5G. "Achieving what many once considered impossible, we have reached the most significant milestone to date in our quest to deliver global cellular broadband from space," Abel Avellan, CEO and chairman of AST SpaceMobile, said in a release. "While we take a moment to celebrate this tremendous accomplishment, we remain focused on the path ahead and pivotal next steps that get us closer to our goal of transforming the way the world connects."
It's unclear whether satellite access would come at an extra cost. In AT&T's original AST SpaceMobile partnership announcement, the company couldn't say whether existing plans would include satellite coverage. [...] While satellite offerings aren't available for consumers yet, this successful test brings widespread access one step closer to becoming a reality.
01:06 Remember the EV Honda is building with GM? It goes on sale in 2024
Two Ultium-based EVs arrive next year, an in-house EV follows in 2025.
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00:47 Meet the People Who Use 'Notion' To Plan Their Whole Lives
An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT Technology Review: Joshua Bergen is a very productive person. His secret is the workspace app Notion. Bergen, a product manager living in Vancouver, uses it to plan trips abroad in meticulous detail, with notes and timelines. He uses it to curate lists of the movies and TV shows he's watched, and records what he thought of them. It's also a handy way to keep tabs on his 3D-printing projects, map snowboarding runs, and quickly update his cute list of the funny things his kid has said. It might sound strange, but Bergen is one of a growing number of people using Notion, software intended for work, to organize their personal lives. They're using it in a myriad of different ways, from tracking their meditation habits and weekly schedules to logging their water intake and sharing grocery lists.
So why has a platform built to accommodate "better, faster work" struck such a chord when there are countless other planning apps out there? Part of the reason Notion has such a devoted fan base is its flexibility. At its heart, Notion is designed to combine the various programs a business might use for functions like HR, sales, and product planning in a single hub. It uses simple templates that let users add or remove features, and remote workers can easily collaborate on notes, databases, calendars, and project boards. This high level of customizability sets Notion apart from other work apps. It's also what's made it so popular among people looking to map out their free time. It started to gain traction around 2018 in YouTube's thriving productivity subculture, where videos of fans swapping time management tips and guides to organizing their lives regularly rack up millions of views.
Since then, its following has snowballed. More than 275,000 people have joined a dedicated subreddit, tens of thousands of users share free page templates in private Facebook groups, and TikTok videos advising viewers on how to make their Notion pages look pretty have been watched hundreds of millions of times. "You don't have to change your habits to how rigid software is. The software will change how your mind works," says Akshay Kothari, Notion's cofounder and chief operating officer. "I think that's actually been a big reason why you see so much love in the community: because people feel like the things they build are theirs." While platforms like Notion are great for people who enjoy feeling organized, spending too much time optimizing and organizing our lives can be counterproductive when we prioritize creating to-do lists over completing the actual tasks on them, says Gabriele Oettingen, a psychology professor at New York University. It's a phenomenon known as the planning fallacy.
Using Notion to track whether you're drinking enough water or going jogging, or using it to plan assignments, doesn't necessarily mean you're actually getting those things done. "In a way, Notion might help me to get structure, but it might not work to get me going," she says.
00:28 Open Sourcing Erlfuzz
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00:28 My Life with the Penguins
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00:28 Gradle Still Sucks
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00:28 Your First LTE
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00:28 GPS, UTC and TAI Clocks (2001)
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00:28 You could have invented futexes
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00:28 Show HN: ChatGPT on 2-Dimensional Map
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00:28 Show HN: Neat - Minimalist CSS Framework
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00:28 Why do prime numbers make these spirals? (2019)
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00:28 Google Authenticator cloud sync/backup is not E2E encrypted
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00:20 Deal: Save $400 on an unlocked Galaxy S22 Ultra
At just $799.99 in this deal, it's 33% cheaper than it's successor and still has a huge amount to offer.
00:20 Use WhatsApp on up to five smartphones at once, if that's what you want
Those of you out there who use two smartphones regularly will love this news.
00:20 We have conflicting reports on the size and weight of the Galaxy Z Fold 5
Could the Galaxy Z Fold 5 be smaller and lighter than its predecessor?
00:20 The best PSP emulators for Mac
Really, it's just PPSSPP and then a couple of all-in-one PSP emulators that use PPSSPP.
00:20 The ASUS ROG Ally is sounding like a Steam Deck on steroids
Depending on what RYZEN Z1 chip it gets, it could have a GPU performance that's not far off of the PS5.
00:20 This Microsoft Edge feature is leaking the sites you visit to Bing
Microsoft states that it is investigating the issue.
00:20 The best SNES emulators for PC and Mac
Snes9x and OpenEmu are our picks for the best SNES emulators on PC and Mac, respectively.
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23:17 GM Is Killing Off the Chevy Bolt and Bolt EUV
General Motors will stop producing its two top-selling EVs, the Chevy Bolt and Bolt EUV, by the end of 2023. TechCrunch reports: [General Motors Chair and CEO Mary Barra] told investors during the company's earnings call that its Orion Michigan factory, which currently assembles the Bolt, will be retooled for electric truck production. The decision comes as GM launches a new slate of EVs such as the GMC Hummer and Cadillac Lyriq that are outfitted with the company's Ultium architecture that includes a new battery cell design. However, it also puts an end to GM's highest volume EVs and takes one of the few affordable electric vehicle models off the market. It also means the end of the Chevy Bolt AV, the autonomous vehicle version that GM's self-driving unit Cruise uses for its robotaxis. GM unveiled the Chevy Bolt in early 2015 and brought it to market in 2016, "at the time presenting one of the few EV options to buyers and directly competing with Tesla," adds TechCrunch. "Bolt never had the same cachet as Tesla. And while consumers did buy the vehicle, its sales lagged behind the Tesla Model 3."
22:24 The Python Software Foundation on European cybersecurity
22:24 The Python Software Foundation on European cybersecurity
(I suppose it wouldn't really make sense for France or Germany to blame the EU, because to a first approximation, they are the EU. But there are a bunch of other EU member states that could do it.)
22:24 The Python Software Foundation on European cybersecurity
Not a lawyer, so you'll need legal advice if this really matters to you (just as you would with any law), but my understanding is as follows, based on the text of the directive:
It's case (3) that has the big gotchas lurking in the current draft; if you supply premium cakes for office parties as well as supporting your open source software, then as the CRA is currently drafted, it's not clear whether being a supplier of cake to X implies that you are liable to X if your software has a hole in it. Hence the PSF and ISC worries; they supply conferences (PSF) and support contracts (ISC), and do not want a situation where, because you bought a conference ticket or support for one product, they're on the hook to you for all the software they make available.
This is a challenging one to draft well, since you don't want a loophole that lets a company avoid being the supplier of software if they include it in a bundle pack - for example, if I sell you a PC with pre-installed Ubuntu, and you use that PC with the pre-installed OS as part of a digital signage system, the intent of the CRA is that I am your supplier for Ubuntu, and it's up to me to manage that risk; but if the regulation is drafted badly, I could get away with only supplying (for CRA liability purposes) the PC and its firmware, but not Ubuntu).
22:24 The Python Software Foundation on European cybersecurity
Worse yet, once you're considered a "manufacturer" (via the conference/support contract/etc "commercial activity" backdoor) if your digital elements are "made available" in the EU (eg via a public web site) then you're now potentially on the hook to *everyone* who obtains those digital elements, not just the folks who actually paid you money.
22:24 The Python Software Foundation on European cybersecurity
They have, and do use the EU as a scapegoat, when it's convenient.
But generally speaking those countries don't have a tradition of "noble isolationism" afforded by being surrounded entirely by water instead of neighbours one needs to play nice with.
22:24 The Python Software Foundation on European cybersecurity
One thing I feel is missing is more comprehensive media coverage of the decision making at the European level. Newspapers and TV shows often talk about politics at the national and regional level; opinion makers write about the issues of the moment; politicians are interviewed and debate each other. None of that is perfect, but at least it exposes some of the decision making.
Almost none of that exists for issues on the European level. Reporters will cover European Summits and other big events, but there is almost no coverage of the day-to-day decision making. Sometimes politicians do sometimes get interviewed about European issues, almost always only local politicians; politicians from other countries (other than the obvious ones like Macron, Von Der Leyen etc.) almost never come in the picture. There is practically no debate in the public space with different viewpoints about the issues at the European level.
In my opinion, the mass media falls short in its function as fourth power in matters of European politics. At the same time it's very well possible people wouldn't like more coverage; it could very well be pretty dull.
22:24 Mercurial Changeset Evolution
Well put, thank you again!
[The rest is answering HEAD~2]
> > Secret commits: if I don't want people to see them I can just not push them. But then again, none of my code is particularly special so if I accidentally pushed it somewhere it wouldn't matter anyway. They'd just become draft instead of secret.
Maybe "private" would be a better name. "Secret" sounds like helping with security but "security secrets" need to be shared within a team more often than not and this is clearly not the intention of that sort of "secret".
> > Public commits: are those merged with one of the branches destined for release. These are also effectively immutable.
"Public" looks again like a poor name because linux-next style branches are public and they're not immutable. I find "Final" better.
> > The thing is that at its core, git really is a stupid content tracker. So it focusses on mechanism rather than policy. I can understand the distinctions that "hg evolve" is drawing, but I'm not really understanding why I need the tool to track this for me. (Nice summary by the way).
It's very likely that "hg evolve" goes much further than core git will ever go for that reason. There is often a fine line between holding the users' hand too much and making sure they have all the rope they need to hang themselves with and yes we know on which side of that line git always prefers to err :-)
That's all fine and good however the mere _concepts_ that "hg evolve" deals with (private/public/draft/volatile/final, etc.) are not just "policy". They became universal since we moved away from centralized version control yet they are missing from even git's documentation, which is a bit ironic when you think about it. The evidence is that you can easily find famous lectures about "don't rebase public branches"... where the term "public" does not make sense because linux-next is public. There are also regularly articles on these topics in some weekly Linux gazette.
Don't just "blame the users"; if they need to be repeatedly "educated" then there's probably something wrong or missing with the tool instead. Well at least don't blame most users most of the time, if you do that then it's clear evidence that there is a gap of some kind. Maybe not a big feature gap as big as "hg evolve" (although we just got "git range-diff", so there was clearly at least that gap) but at the very least a big _conceptual_ gap. I critized "hg evolve"'s terminology but it's at least unambiguous because it's defined by its implementation. Git's counterpart to "hg evolve" is emptiness, not even basic conceptual documentation and IMHO articles like this one keep trying to fill that void.
Another demonstration of this conceptual gap is when people discover how most Github projects use git in a totally different way yet they struggle to describe the difference in less than a few hundred words: https://github.com/zephyrproject-rtos/zephyr/issues/53566
Hey maybe _I_ should stop complaining and "send patches" to git man pages offering some standard terminology, I bet it could be already useful in some existing man pages. This shouldn't require any development knowledge and would be a start
https://public-inbox.org/git/70ccb8fc-30f2-5b23-a832-9e470787a945@intel.com/
22:24 The Python Software Foundation on European cybersecurity
Other EU countries do blame the EU for any and all unpopular countries. The distinction is that in (at least) Spain, France, Germany, Ireland and Italy, people react to that by asking what the alternatives are, and whether the alternative choices are any better in practice, whereas the UK tends to assume that we can do our own thing and the rest of the world will fall into line.
22:24 The Python Software Foundation on European cybersecurity
There is a possibly apocryphal headline:
FOG IN CHANNEL - CONTINENT CUT OFF
that perfectly exemplifies the underlying English* mindset responsible for Britain taking it so much further than mainland European countries do.
* Yes, I specifically mean English, rather than British.
22:24 The SCO lawsuit, 20 years later
> You can see this : https://www.nature.com/articles/s42949-021-00020-2
The graphs in the article are dishonest because they all use different (logarithmic!) scaling, obscuring the difference between transportation modes.
Figure 3 shows that European cities cluster around 200000 jobs accessible by transit:
https://media.springernature.com/lw685/springer-static/im...
Figure 4 shows that the US cities cluster around ~800000 jobs accessible by car:
https://media.springernature.com/lw685/springer-static/im...
So yep, well-ran car-oriented cities are plain better.
22:24 The Python Software Foundation on European cybersecurity
That, at least, is not supported by the current text - to be on the hook to someone, you have to be their supplier of the digital elements.
The only sense in which you're on the hook to "everyone" is that the CRA allows you to pass liability backwards along supply chains; if I supply you with a product including a paid copy of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and you're affected by an RHEL flaw, then you can follow the supply chain backwards and pursue Red Hat, instead of pursing me, and if you do pursue me, I can pursue Red Hat.
But, without the supply chain to follow backwards, I can't pass liability to you, even if you are a "manufacturer". You have to be my supplier (either directly, or transitively) before I can pursue you. So, if you fall through the "commercial activity" loophole and become someone's supplier, you're not at risk from me unless they are my supplier (or my supplier's supplier ad-infinitum) of those digital elements.
This is still a huge problem for something foundational like Python, since there's a very high chance that any given use of Python in an end-product involves someone in the supply chain who's supplied by the PSF in this sense, but it's not as bad as you're suggesting. In particular, if you become my supplier, but I don't supply anyone else, your liability risk stops there.
22:24 The Python Software Foundation on European cybersecurity
Given the huge number of conglomerates where different parts of a business do different things (one just has to look at Sony's schizophrenia about whether they are a film company, a music company, or a games console company), you simply have to define it based on individual transactions.
If you "offer for sale" a product, and somebody buys it, then you are the supplier. If your bundle pack says it includes Ubuntu, then you are the supplier of Ubuntu. If the offer makes no mention of Ubuntu, and it just happens to be in the bundle as supplied (NOT as advertised), then you're not the supplier. But the customer may well get upset that the package is "not as advertised". Where this COULD get muddy is (as with my laptop) the situation where the supplier says "with or without Ubuntu" and it makes no difference to the price. I think there it is quite clearly a freebie thrown in, and the laptop supplier should not be considered the software supplier.
In other words, to be a supplier, imho you should have "offered for sale" the product, and taken some consideration in return for it. That clearly EXcludes "take it or leave it" freebies. And by basing the definition of "supplier" on the *product*, you avoid any argument as to whether someone is a supplier when there is a complex relationship between customer and supplier.
Cheers,
Wol
22:24 Repercussions for potential future C flags?
To basically treat some parts of the C language as if it was Rust code, but with the C syntax.
The C syntax lacks a lot of Rust concepts of course, but nothing prevents from adding annotations to the code, in special comments that would be understood by the added CFLAGS. Also, the C language is not completely dead, the standard evolves.
Because it would be easier to refactor C code to such a subset-of-C-and-Rust-like language, rather than working in parallel with two main programming languages (C and Rust) in the same project.
21:47 Google Play Has Created a No-Win Situation For the Creators of Icon Packs
Jules Wang from Android Police reports on the cases of two icon pack artists who had their products taken down from the Play Store for supposedly violating the platform's Repetitive Content policy. Despite both creators' products being reinstated, they revealed that Google's opaque application of its rules has caused frustration and hopelessness among developers. From the report: All this heartache stems from Google Play's Repetitive Content policy. While on its face a well-meaning effort to reduce spammy apps and keep quality up, there's a core problem with compliance when creators find themselves forced to use apps to distribute content: "If these apps are each small in content volume, developers should consider creating a single app that aggregates all the content."
If you've browsed on the Play Store, you'll immediately know this guidance isn't universally followed: many artists like JustNewDesigns will have multiple designs in their portfolio and each of those designs will come in multiple colorways or shapeways -- whether they're changing out an accent in a line design or are implementing some sort of adaptive element.
Not only are there so many apps, but they also look so much alike -- artists, many of whom might not consider coding their strong suit, tend to use open-source templates to create the actual app. You'll likely see them credited to Sarsa Murmu, who runs a GitHub project called CandyBar, or Jahir Fiquitiva, the maintainer of the Blueprint repository. These resources take care of the "packaging" for the assets. They include integration compatibility with various popular launchers, a license scheme to prevent those who sideloaded the app for free from having the icons applied, and all sorts of other functionality. In addition to the icon assets, the apps may also house wallpapers and links to other apps. [...] What is Google's role and what should it be? Wang writes: Artists would have much to gain from a new or revised API. Adding and adapting new icon designs to existing products would be much easier. New designs may be able to take advantage of changes to the Adaptive Icons API as Google lays them out. There would be unease as to how the business model could shift -- should publishers charge by the app, through in-app purchases, or both? But as it stands, the biggest benefit with such a change is that it would presumably get Play's "RoboCops" off their back. Of course, we can't be sure of that with how Google's enforcement apparatus operates, but the notion of unfairness lends credibility to those supporting the status quo unless the company is willing to come to the bargaining table.
At the end of the day, Google is certainly within its right to build regulations around apps to respond to emergent scammers and distressing content. Automation is meant to render manageable the sheer volume of content the Play platform sees published on a daily basis. But so long as icon artists sit under threat from a rulebook that can be arbitrarily thrown at them at any time, if nothing changes, we may be on a road leading to the degradation of a core Android tenet that even the most casual tech consumer associates with the platform -- user customizability.
21:47 Bulgaria Approves Draft Law That Turns Pirate Site Operators Into Criminals
A draft law that aims to criminalize and prosecute those who "create conditions for online piracy" has been approved by Bulgaria's Council of Ministers. The proposed amendments are Bulgaria's response to heavy criticism from the United States, most publicly via the USTR's Special 301 Reports. It's hoped that prison sentences of up to six years will send a deterrent message. TorrentFreak reports: Last week the Council of Ministers approved draft amendments to the Criminal Code that aim to protect authors, rightsholders, and state revenue. "Crimes against intellectual property should be perceived as acts with a high degree of public danger, not only considering the rights and interests of the individual author, which they affect, but also considering the financial losses for the holders of these rights, which also affects the revenues in the state budget," the explanatory notes read.
The stated aim of the bill is to solve identified weaknesses by upgrading substantive law to counter computer-related crimes against intellectual property. The text references those who "build or maintain" an information system or provide a service to the information society for the purpose of committing crimes. The notes offer further clarification. "The bill aims to prosecute those who create conditions for online piracy -- for example, by building and maintaining torrent tracker sites, web platforms, chat groups in online communication applications for the online exchange of pirated content, and any other activities that may fall within the definition of 'information society service' within the meaning of the Electronic Commerce Act (pdf) and which are carried out with the specified criminal purpose."
The Bulgarian government notes that the amendments are part of its response to criticism in the USTR's Special 301 Report. [When countries are placed on the USTR's 'Watch List' for failing to combat piracy, most can expect years of pressure punctuated by annual Special 301 Reports declaring more needs to be done. Bulgaria was on the Watch List in 2015 when the USTR reported "incremental progress" in the country's ability to tackle intellectual property infringement, albeit nowhere near enough to counter unsatisfactory prosecution rates. In 2018 the United States softened its position toward Bulgaria, removing it from the Watch List on the basis that the government would probably deliver.] The fact that Bulgaria has been absent from the 'Watch List' for the last five years is down to "specific commitments" made by the authorities, with progress being monitored closely by the United States in respect of Bulgaria's future status. The draft approved by the Council of Ministers last week envisions sentences of up to six years imprisonment and a fine of up to $5,600. According to the draft, there is no intent to prosecute individual users who simply consume pirated content.
20:28 It doesn't take much to make machine-learning algorithms go awry
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20:28 IKEA Redesigns Its Bestsellers
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20:28 Introduction to HTTP Multipart
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20:28 Transistor Made of Wood
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20:28 Materials for 17th-century Work, a la Follansbee
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20:28 Mrs Whitcher and the Renegade Numbers (2017)
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20:28 Compressing Hegel (2020)
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20:28 Tighter bounds on the expressivity of transformer encoders
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20:28 Show HN: Preview environments for projects that do not use K8s/Docker
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20:28 Fun with Kermit and ZMODEM over SSH
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20:28 Aptible (YC S14) is hiring a security engineer and a head of product
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20:28 Show HN: Ordently - Consciously plan your day and your life
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20:28 NitroKey disappoints me
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20:28 A Cookbook of Self-Supervised Learning
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20:28 Use Gröbner bases to solve polynomial equations
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20:28 A thief who stole 106 rare clocks
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20:28 Commercial lunar lander presumed lost after moon landing attempt
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20:28 What Rosalind Franklin contributed to the discovery of DNA's structure
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20:28 Show HN: I built a multiplayer voxel browser game engine
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20:28 We glued together content moderation to stop soccer pirates and saved $750k
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20:28 LTESniffer: An open-source LTE downlink/uplink eavesdropper [pdf]
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20:28 Debugging a Mixed Python and C Language Stack
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20:17 FSF Calls On the IRS To Provide Libre Tax-Filing Software
In a blog post today, the Free Software Foundation is calling on the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to provide free/libre tax-filing software for Americans to file their taxes, citing upcoming legislation that allocates funds for the agency to explore a government-operated gratis tax return system. "Many feel they have no other option than to use nonfree software or a Service as a Software Substitute (SaaSS), giving up their freedom as well as their most private financial information to a third-party company, in order to file taxes," writes the FSF.
$15 million of the $80 billion that was approved for the IRS by the Inflation Reduction Act includes the promise to further explore an "electronic service to prepare and file tax returns directly with the IRS." To do so, the IRS intends to "study taxpayer preferences for products. The results of the study will inform if and how the IRS should design such a service." The FSF writes: Let's call on the IRS to make a website for filing your tax return which respects your freedom. This is your chance. Write to the new IRS commissioner Daniel Werfel with your message. [...] Look up the address of your state's tax filing institution and send your letter to this address. Post your letter on social media to inspire others to do the same.
20:17 An AI Scraping Tool Is Overwhelming Websites With Traffic
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: The creator of a tool that scrapes the internet for images in order to power artificial intelligence image generators like Stable Diffusion is telling website owners who want him to stop that they have to actively opt out, and that it's "sad" that they are fighting the inevitable rise of AI. "It is sad that several of you are not understanding the potential of AI and open AI and as a consequence have decided to fight it," Romain Beaumont, the creator of the image scraping tool img2dataset, said on its GitHub page. "You will have many opportunities in the years to come to benefit from AI. I hope you see that sooner rather than later. As creators you have even more opportunities to benefit from it."
Img2dataset is a free tool Beaumont shared on GitHub which allows users to automatically download, and resize a list of URLs. The result is an image dataset, the kind that trains image-generating AI models like Open AI's DALL-E, the open source Stable Diffusion model, and Google's Imagen. Beaumont is also an open source contributor to LAION-5B, one of the largest image datasets in the world that contains more than 5 billion images and is used by Imagen and Stable Diffusion. Img2dataset will attempt to scrape images from any site unless site owners add https headers like "X-Robots-Tag: noai," and "X-Robots-Tag: noindex." That means that the onus is on site owners, many of whom probably don't even know img2dataset exists, to opt out of img2dataset rather than opt in.
Beaumont defended img2dataset by comparing it to the way Google indexes all websites online in order to power its search engine, which benefits anyone who wants to search the internet.
"I directly benefit from search engines as they drive useful traffic to me," Eden told Motherboard. "But, more importantly, Google's bot is respectful and doesn't hammer my site. And most bots respect the robots.txt directive. Romain's tool doesn't. It seems to be deliberately set up to ignore the directives website owners have in place. And, frankly, it doesn't bring any direct benefit to me."
Motherboard notes: "A 'robots.txt' file tells search engine crawlers like Google which part of a site the crawler can access in order to prevent it from overloading the site with requests."
20:16 EU names 19 large tech platforms that must follow Europe's new Internet rules
Rules apply to five Google sites, Facebook, Apple, Bing, Twitter, TikTok, etc.
20:16 Link between herpesviruses and giant viruses no longer missing
Don't be alarmed: They only infect plankton.
20:16 GOP releases AI-generated ad to fearmonger over Biden's reelection bid
RNC calls Biden "out of touch" for asking voters to let him "finish the job!"
20:16 ChatGPT now allows disabling chat history, declining training, and exporting data
Unsaved chats will be retained 30 days for "abuse monitoring" before permanent deletion.
20:16 Melatonin in sleep-aid gummies can be off by up to 350%, study finds
JAMA study highlights quality control issues common in dietary supplements.
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18:47 EU Names 19 Large Tech Platforms That Must Follow Europe's New Internet Rules
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The European Commission will require 19 large online platforms and search engines to comply with new online content regulations starting on August 25, European officials said. The EC specified which companies must comply with the rules for the first time, announcing today that it "adopted the first designation decisions under the Digital Services Act." Five of the 19 platforms are run by Google, specifically YouTube, Google Search, the Google Play app and digital media store, Google Maps, and Google Shopping. Meta-owned Facebook and Instagram are on the list, as are Amazon's online store, Apple's App Store, Microsoft's Bing search engine, TikTok, Twitter, and Wikipedia. These platforms were designated because they each reported having over 45 million active users in the EU as of February 17. The other listed platforms are Alibaba AliExpress, Booking.com, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Snapchat, and German online retailer Zalando.
Companies have four months to comply with the full set of new obligations and could face fines of up to 6 percent of a provider's annual revenue. One new rule is a ban on advertisements that target users based on sensitive data such as ethnic origin, political opinions, or sexual orientation. There are new content moderation requirements, transparency rules, and protections for minors. For example, "targeted advertising based on profiling towards children is no longer permitted," the EC said. Companies will have to provide their first annual risk assessment on August 25, and their risk mitigation plans will be subject to independent audits and oversight by the European Commission. "Platforms will have to identify, analyze and mitigate a wide array of systemic risks ranging from how illegal content and disinformation can be amplified on their services, to the impact on the freedom of expression and media freedom," the EC said. "Similarly, specific risks around gender-based violence online and the protection of minors online and their mental health must be assessed and mitigated." The new requirements for the 19 platforms include:
- Users will get clear information on why they are recommended certain information and will have the right to opt-out from recommendation systems based on profiling;
- Users will be able to report illegal content easily and platforms have to process such reports diligently;
- Platforms need to label all ads and inform users on who is promoting them;
- Platforms need to provide an easily understandable, plain-language summary of their terms and conditions, in the languages of the Member States where they operate.
Platforms will be required to "analyze their specific risks, and put in place mitigation measures -- for instance, to address the spread of disinformation and inauthentic use of their service," the EC said. They will also "have to redesign their systems to ensure a high level of privacy, security, and safety to minors."
18:47 Google's Cloud Business Turns Profitable For the First Time
Google's cloud business has turned profitable for the first time in the three years it's been reporting operating metrics. CNBC reports: The segment generated $191 million in operating income on $7.45 billion in revenue in the first quarter, according to Alphabet's earnings statement. In the year-ago quarter, the unit reported a $706 million loss on $5.82 billion in revenue. The cloud business includes the Google Cloud Platform, which rents out cloud infrastructure and services that companies can use to build and run their own applications, as well as Google Workspace productivity software subscriptions. Cloud customers include Deutsche Bank, Major League Baseball, PayPal and UPS.
18:47 VC Firms Create $60 Billion-plus Climate Tech Alliance With Backing From the UN
A group of venture capital firms including Tiger Global and Union Square Ventures on Tuesday set up an alliance aimed at making private tech investing more climate-friendly. From a report: Called the Venture Climate Alliance (VCA), the coalition of more than 20 climate tech and generalist funds seeks to get the VC industry to increase its commitments to climate tech, a branch of technology devoted to finding solutions to the climate crisis. The alliance lays out guidance that its VC members and their portfolio companies must follow to ensure they meet the requirements to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.
According to a statement, the VCA's stated aim is to "ensure that methodology and metrics are at the heart of how we determine what is a good climate investment, and what investment will have the greatest positive effect on the mission to build tech for a regenerative world." Portfolio companies are given guidance on how they should decarbonize their operations, such as using emission-free data centers, deploying less energy-intensive software in their tech stack, or rebuilding supply chains around low-carbon alternatives, the statement said. Other funds signed up to the VCA include climate VCs World Fund, 2150, and Prelude Venture. Collectively, the investment firms involved manage a combined $62.3 billion in assets, according to Crunchbase figures. [...] The U.N. approved the VCA as part of its Race to Zero campaign aimed at mobilizing climate action. The alliance will fall under the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), a group formed during the COP26 climate conference.
17:17 Ban All Gambling Adverts, Say More Than Half of Britons
More than half the public would like to see a ban on gambling advertising, according to a new poll taken as ministers prepare to unveil an overhaul of the industry. In the survey, carried out for the charity Gambling with Lives, 52% of respondents said they supported a ban on all gambling advertising, promotion and sponsorship, and nearly two-thirds wanted new limits on online stakes. From a report: Ministers are expected to reject a blanket ban on gambling advertising in a white paper that could be published this week. The Premier League recently announced that its clubs would end shirt sponsorship by gambling firms by the end of the 2025/26 season.
Will Prochaska of Gambling with Lives, which supports families bereaved by gambling-related suicide, said: "This poll displays the strength of public sentiment on gambling advertising. The Premier League's decision to remove ads from shirts but leave them all over stadiums and across broadcasts, is a cynical attempt to avoid regulation. This data shows the public won't be tricked into thinking it's enough. If gambling reforms fail to significantly restrict gambling advertising, they'll be woefully out of step with a public that expects action." The Survation poll of 1,009 adults found that 68% of respondents thought under-18s should not be exposed to gambling advertising, 64% supported affordability checks for those wanting to bet more than $124 a month, and 60% saw gambling as a danger to family life.
17:17 Microsoft Edge is Leaking the Sites You Visit To Bing
Microsoft's Edge browser appears to be sending URLs you visit to its Bing API website. Reddit users first spotted the privacy issues with Edge last week, noticing that the latest version of Microsoft Edge sends a request to bingapis.com with the full URL of nearly every page you navigate to. Microsoft tells The Verge it's investigating the reports. From a report: "Searching for references to this URL give very few results, no documentation on this feature at all," said hackermchackface, the Reddit user who first discovered the issue. While Reddit users weren't able to uncover why Microsoft Edge is sending the URLs you visit to its Bing API site, we asked Rafael Rivera, a software engineer and one of the developers behind EarTrumpet, to investigate, and he discovered it's part of a poorly implemented new feature in Edge. "Microsoft Edge now has a creator follow feature that is enabled by default," says Rivera in a conversation with The Verge. "It appears the intent was to notify Bing when you're on certain pages, such as YouTube, The Verge, and Reddit. But it doesn't appear to be working correctly, instead sending nearly every domain you visit to Bing."
15:47 Japan's Ispace Assumes Failure in Bid To Make First Commercial Moon Landing
Japanese startup ispace assumed failure in its attempt to make the first private moon landing on Tuesday as engineers struggled to regain contact with the company's Hakuto-R Mission 1 (M1) lander long after it was due for a lunar touchdown. From a report: "We lost the communication, so we have to assume that we could not complete the landing on the lunar surface," ispace CEO Takeshi Hakamada said on a company live stream, as mission control engineers in Tokyo continued to try regaining contact with the lander. The M1 lander appeared set to touch down around 12:40 p.m. Eastern time (1640 GMT Tuesday) after coming as close as 295 feet from the lunar surface, a live animation of the lander's telemtry showed.
15:47 US Policing AI at Companies To Make Sure It Doesn't Violate Civil Rights
U.S. officials on Tuesday warned financial firms and others that use of artificial intelligence (AI) can heighten the risk of bias and civil rights violations, and signaled they are policing marketplaces for such discrimination. From a report: Increased reliance on automated systems in sectors including lending, employment and housing threatens to exacerbate discrimination based on race, disabilities and other factors, the heads of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Justice Department's civil rights unit, Federal Trade Commission and others said. The growing popularity of AI tools, including Microsoft-backed Open AI's ChatGPT, has spurred U.S. and European regulators to heighten scrutiny of their use and prompted calls for new laws to rein in the technology.
"Claims of innovation must not be cover for lawbreaking," Lina Khan, chair of the Federal Trade Commission, told reporters. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is trying to reach tech sector whistleblowers to determine where new technologies run afoul of civil rights laws, said Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Rohit Chopra.
15:26 AMD's Ryzen Z1 chips could power a new wave of handheld Steam Deck clones
The Z1-series is already coming to at least one handheld PC, the Asus ROG Ally.
15:26 Zero trust for Zoom calls: ChromeOS getting universal microphone/camera toggles
No more guessing which web meeting apps auto-start your audio or video.
15:26 Has the âTully monsterâ mystery finally been solved after 75 years?
"Based on multiple lines of evidence, the vertebrate hypothesis of the Tully monster is untenable."
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