technology

They always give you a scare since it looks like Windows is booting into a recovery environment. Just had one, and the only options I had were "Remind me in 3 days" and "Continue".

It's always about Microsoft wanting you to set Edge as your default browser as well as trying to get you to log in on a Microsoft account and you have to individually decline every suggestion since you can't just skip the fucking thing.

Piss off, Microsoft

In effect, the researchers discovered an invisible ecosystem where genes can cooperate or can be in conflict with one another.

"These interactions between genes make aspects of evolution somewhat predictable and furthermore, we now have a tool that allows us to make those predictions," adds Dr. Domingo-Sananes.

https://www.axios.com/2024/01/05/pre-internet-pay-phones-digital-online-cellphones-vintage-nostalgia

Research paper https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.11760

To be poor and have to use VOIP on my phone so they can't send the fuck you code to me. Even thought they LITERALLY emailed me a code just moments before, no it's gotta be on your phone. So now I'm locked out. Like I said, all I wanted to do was get some fucking coffee with the credit I had. This is why I use grubhub, it's not like having to give a dna sample just to order something.

ENSHITIFICATION

I've tried clearing all browsing data and it keeps giving me an error. It works fine on Firefox and the mobile version of Chrome.

I'm thinking maybe I'll switch in a year or two. I know about Libre Office and VLC.

https://www.iflscience.com/largest-known-lithium-reserve-discovered-beneath-ancient-volcano-in-the-us-72213

The planet’s largest-known lithium deposit may have been found hiding beneath an ancient supervolcano along the Nevada–Oregon border in the US. Given the skyrocketing demand for lithium, this deposit could be a treasure trove – although obtaining it could come with a bunch of challenges and dangers.

However, many are concerned about the risk of lithium exploration in the Mcdermitt Caldera. An arm of the Lithium Americas Corporation wants to build an open-pit lithium mine here with a projected area of 17,933 acres. This plan has been heavily contested by some environmentalists and local Indigenous people, who argue the project will turn their beloved land into an industrialized mining district.

“The Caldera holds many first foods, medicines, and hunting grounds for tribal people both past and present. The global search for lithium has become a form of ‘green’ colonialism. The people most connected to the land suffer while those severed from it benefit,” People of Red Mountain, an Indigenous-led organization, said in a statement.

22 December 2023 Amazon may no longer sell its own wifi routers in Germany, as they infringe a Wifi 6 patent from Huawei. This was decided by Munich Regional Court last week following the oral hearing. The ruling does not affect the sale of third-party wifi routers via the Amazon platform.

Two European subsidiaries of Amazon and Eero – a manufacturer of wifi routers also owned by Amazon – have infringed European patent EP 3334112 and may now no longer sell Wifi-6-capable products in Germany. The Regional Court Munich handed down this ruling on December 15, on the same day as the hearing.

Huawei had sued for injunctive relief, information and accounting, destruction, recall and damages (case ID: 7 O 10988/22).

However, the ruling only affects wifi routers that Amazon and Eero manufacture themselves, such as the Amazon Fire TV Stick 4k. Other manufacturers may continue to sell their products via the Amazon platform.

Potential damages Huawei can enforce the judgment against a security deposit totaling €4.5 million. Amazon may appeal against the judgment, and this is considered likely. However, the court has not justified its surprisingly quick decision in writing yet. According to JUVE Patent information Amazon has not yet filed an appeal.

If the ruling stands, Amazon would have to compensate Huawei for the damages it has suffered since 19 March 2020. According to JUVE Patent information, Amazon has not thus far filed a nullity action against EP 112, but has concentrated on the FRAND defence.

Four claims against Amazon The judgment is part of a larger dispute over Wifi 6 patents. Huawei has also sued Amazon over another Wifi 6 patent in Munich (case ID: 7 O 10987/22). The court will hear this case in March 2024. In Düsseldorf and Munich, Huawei sued Amazon over a Wifi 5 patent, but the courts have not yet set a date for the oral hearing.

Huawei is also taking action against Fritzbox manufacturer AVM with two infringement suits at the Regional Court Munich. In November, according to press reports the court ordered AVM to cease and desist. The court was of the opinion that Wifi-6-capable AVM products infringed Huawei’s EP 3 337 077. AVM has since appealed against the ruling.

In addition, Huawei sued other companies such as Netgear and automotive group Stellantis. The Chinese company sued the former at Düsseldorf Regional Court. Huawei sued Stellantis back in 2022 over mobile phone patents that play a role in car connectivity. The Netherlands-based company manufactures about six million cars a year under the Fiat, Opel, Peugeot and Citroën brands.

Huawei turns to UPC While Huawei only sued Amazon and AVM in German patent courts, the Chinese company escalated its dispute with Netgear to the Unified Patent Court in July. Previously, Huawei had not had much success at Düsseldorf Regional Court. The court had dismissed one of Huawei’s lawsuits and suspended the second.

Huawei’s lawsuit at the Munich local division was one of the first SEP proceedings at the new court (case ID: ACT_459771/2023). According to the website www.upc.beetz.nl Netgear recently has filed a counter claim of revocation with the UPC.

Where are the "but but ze seeseepee only steals our technology!111!!" responses now lol.

A number of suits have been filed regarding the use of copyrighted material during training of AI systems. But the Times' suit goes well beyond that to show how the material ingested during training can come back out during use. "Defendants’ GenAI tools can generate output that recites Times content verbatim, closely summarizes it, and mimics its expressive style, as demonstrated by scores of examples," the suit alleges.

The suit alleges—and we were able to verify—that it's comically easy to get GPT-powered systems to offer up content that is normally protected by the Times' paywall. The suit shows a number of examples of GPT-4 reproducing large sections of articles nearly verbatim.

The suit includes screenshots of ChatGPT being given the title of a piece at The New York Times and asked for the first paragraph, which it delivers. Getting the ensuing text is apparently as simple as repeatedly asking for the next paragraph.

The suit is dismissive of attempts to justify this as a form of fair use. "Publicly, Defendants insist that their conduct is protected as 'fair use' because their unlicensed use of copyrighted content to train GenAI models serves a new 'transformative' purpose," the suit notes. "But there is nothing 'transformative' about using The Times’s content without payment to create products that substitute for The Times and steal audiences away from it."

The suit seeks nothing less than the erasure of both any GPT instances that the parties have trained using material from the Times, as well as the destruction of the datasets that were used for the training. It also asks for a permanent injunction to prevent similar conduct in the future. The Times also wants money, lots and lots of money: "statutory damages, compensatory damages, restitution, disgorgement, and any other relief that may be permitted by law or equity."

The American tech giant already employs 11,700 people in Israel and has invested more than $50 billion in the country over the last 50 years.

Intel now wants to expand its existing chipmaking factory at Kiryat Gat — about 16 miles northeast of Gaza — undeterred by the October 7 attacks and the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas. Reuters earlier reported the news.

I cannot wait for the day I get my hands on a RISC-V computer and can forget the dumpster fire that is x86_64. It goes without saying, avoid buying a intel machine if you can. AMD CPUs are a good enough substitute.

https://twitter.com/engineers_feed/status/1739580050364616933

https://japan-forward.com/editorial-delisting-toshiba-is-necessary-must-lead-to-drastic-reforms/

In addition to nuclear power plants, Toshiba possesses other important sensitive technologies related to national security. For example, those related to quantum cryptographic communications.

Those things are too rich for my blood, but it seems to me like the concept is a great idea, and it would be nice if something like that became cheaper and standardized across brands.

I've always been really annoyed by the fact that laptops with socketed CPUs disappeared a decade ago. And these days a ton of laptop manufacturers are very eager to solder the SSD and RAM as well. This occasionally goes as far as laptops with permanent, soldered single channel RAM, and that's horrifying. These things are destined to be e-waste, ending up in landfills far sooner than typical for equivalent desktop components.

When you upgrade a desktop you have so many more options that will save you money over buying a totally new system. GPUs are essentially plug 'n play. You can often upgrade the CPU just as easily, though every once in a while you'll need to replace the motherboard. Same goes for RAM. Everything else can almost always be reused: the case, the fans, the CPU cooler, the storage, the monitor, the mouse, and the keyboard. Even the PSU if you're not getting a significantly more power hungry CPU or GPU. All of that can add up to a ton of money.

Socketed CPUs in laptops are probably never coming back due to how much space they tend to take up. And laptop GPUs will probably never be socketed in the first place for the same reason. But if you could buy a standardized chassis and simply swap out entire motherboards that come in a standardized laptop form factor, upgrading would be so much more cost efficient, as would laptop repair. Also, lets bring back easily removable and swappable laptop batteries while we're at it.

Unfortunately, this all flies in the face of the inherent capitalist enshittification going on with consumer electronics, and I'm skeptical Framework will ever be anything more than a very expensive niche for enthusiasts who like to tinker with their devices. But I don't see any technical reasons why something like this wouldn't be possible and practical.