technology

It's a tube amplifier. The post title is the photo caption.

McIntosh Laboratory

McIntosh Laboratory is an American manufacturer of handcrafted high-end audio equipment headquartered in Binghamton, New York. It is a subsidiary of McIntosh Group which is under the ownership umbrella of Highlander Partners, a Dallas-based private equity firm.

The company was co-founded in 1949 by Frank H. McIntosh & Gordon Gow. McIntosh Labs designs and produces audio amplifiers, stereo tuners, loudspeakers, turntables, music streamers, processors, and various other audio products. Although solid state components are a large segment of the McIntosh line, audio enthusiasts most revere the warm sound of the company's tube amplifiers. Some of their tube amplifiers rank among the finest ever created for home audio and theater use.

The nuclear research hub Idaho National Laboratory (INL) confirmed that it fell victim to a data breach on Tuesday. SiegedSec, a group of self-proclaimed "gay furry hackers," took responsibility for the attack and claimed they accessed sensitive employee data like social security numbers, home addresses and more.

"We're willing to make a deal with INL. If they research creating irl catgirls we will take down this post," SiegedSec wrote in a post announcing the leak on Monday.

The hacktivist group SiegedSec conducted a high profile attack on NATO last month, leaking internal documents as a retaliation against those countries for their attacks on human rights. The group commonly attacks government and affiliated organizations for political reasons, like targeting state governments for passing anti-trans legislation earlier this year.

A spokesperson confirmed the breach to Engadget on Wednesday. "On Monday, Nov. 20, Idaho National Laboratory determined that it was the target of a cybersecurity data breach in a federally approved vendor system outside the lab that supports INL cloud Human Resources services. INL has taken immediate action to protect employee data," an INL spokesperson said. The lab said it has reached out to authorities for help on how to proceed as it determines how to handle the breach.

INL works as a Department of Energy affiliate researching nuclear reactors, among other projects like sustainable energy. It employs more than 5,000 people.

Lol.

It looks like Microsoft's ambitions to completely cannibalize OpenAI is coming to pass. Apparently, Microsoft already has a perpetual license to all of OpenAI's IP (link), and owned all the physical hardware running the OpenAI GPTs. So now that they're about to acquire basically OpenAI's entire staff OpenAI literally has nothing.

I think the interesting angle is the anti-trust angle. The board's ouster of Altman has essentially allowed Microsoft to strip OpenAI for parts without having to compensate the other investors or receive anti-trust scrutiny. It is a massive win for MS.

I feel like the answer is yes, but thought I'd come here and ask first. It stops a ton of connections and warns me that it's worried about trojans, riskware and ransomware. I don't really know how any of this works and was concerned that maybe I ought to just let malwarebytes do its thing, but my download speeds are pretty slow (like....sometimes just a few kilobytes in speed).

On Friday afternoon, not long after news of CEO Sam Altman's abrupt and surprising departure from OpenAI began spreading online, the company held an all-hands meeting at its headquarters in San Francisco, reports The Information. During the meeting, interim CEO Mira Murati attempted to reassure the shocked employees that the search for a new CEO is underway.

Hours later, OpenAI co-founder and president Greg Brockman posted a statement on X, saying that after he learned today's news he sent a message to the OpenAI team: "based on todays news, i quit." Brockman, a key technical figure involved in many of the company's successes, was relieved of his OpenAI board membership on Friday, but the company initially announced he would be staying on.

Earlier on Friday, OpenAI released a blog post titled "OpenAI announces leadership transition" where it announced that Atlman "was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities." In a response post on X, Altman wrote, "I loved my time at openai," and hinted at future plans without revealing any details.

My guess is that this is the beginning of Microsoft consuming OpenAI in its entirety. As for the firing reason, it's sudden enough that it's probably personal misconduct (i.e. fraud or sex crimes.)

I've not been burned by 16TB HDD (DOA) and 8TB SSD (seems to be crapping out after being filled ~halfway). I'm very frustrated by this.

The SSD is an older Samsung model that uses SATA, since I'm mostly using this as a data archive. Seem SATA options are becoming rare for SSDs.

Whenever I try to copy ~1GB of data to it, it will revert to a ReadOnly mode in the middle of the copy process. This is on linux. I'll probably try some more troubleshooting of it, but I'm not too confident about it being my 'data archive' drive anymore.

From some searching, it seems that the RO mode switch is a sign of the disk going into a protected-failure state. Anyone have any experience with this? Recommendations for data archive drives of this size that are not ridiculously expensive?

My current PC is a month from being a decade old at this point, and I feel it's time for an upgrade: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/VKWLQ7

I want to build a smaller PC. I'm way over the tower form factor, and I want to build a smaller form factor. Ideally, it should be able to fit inside this box: https://store.usps.com/store/product/shipping-supplies/priority-mail-medium-flat-rate-box-1-P_O_FRB1

Here's a sketch of what I have planned so far:

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600G
• Motherboard: ?????
• Memory: 16GB
• Storage 250GB SATA SSD
• Video Card: Basically reusing my ancient GPU
• Case: ?????
• Power Supply: ?????
• Wireless Network Adapter: Some random USB wireless adapter that I'm using now since the wireless adapter I originally had no longer works

I'm hitting a few roadblocks:

I don't really know what type of mobo to look for other than its form factor (mini-ITX) and that it should have a video port. And it should be able to accept 2.5'' SSDs since some of them apparently don't?

The case is a massive headache for me. It seems like for smaller form factor builds, you have to build your PC completely around the case. The open cases like these two are pretty cool:

• https://www.newegg.com/p/2AM-05K1-00003

• https://xworks.store/products/x32-small-form-factor-open-air-case

They're also fucking $150+. The tower case I'm using now was 40 bucks in 2013 money, so around $50 in today's money. Those cases also require smaller PSUs, so I can't reuse my current PSU. And I don't think those cases or most smaller form factor cases like HDDs, which isn't a deal breaker for me, but it's more things to plan out and buy if I can't just reuse a 1TB HDD.

I'm honestly thinking about just buying paper stationaries like these:

• https://www.walmart.com/ip/Stackable-Paper-Tray-Desk-Organizer-4-Tier-Metal-Mesh-Letter-Organizers-Business-Home-School-Stores-More-Organize-Files-Folders-Letters-Paper-Binders/230405212

• https://www.walmart.com/ip/Honey-Can-Do-3-Tier-Steel-Mesh-Desk-Organizer-Silver/41981373

and just stacking the parts on top. I would also need to get a riser cable, but the AMD Ryzen 5 5600G has integrated graphics, so I wouldn't even need to bother with the ancient graphics card or the riser cable? Plus, they're not going to fit inside the USPS box.

If I have to get a smaller PSU, I have no idea about wattage requirements. Honestly, I just winged it a decade ago, and everything seemed to have worked out. I guess I could always fall back on "whatever the wattage of the current PSU is."

I think that should do it. I just have a whole bunch of questions and what-ifs because I don't have a complete picture of what the PC should look like.

recently there has been this problem that has been getting more frequent, my computer just randomly freezes up/blackscreens and then fails to post when i do a hard restart. this doesn't resolve itself until after i open it up and play musical chairs with the ram for a bit.

shit that i have tried:

1. swapped the ram around to different slots. sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't
2. cleaned out the case
3. wd40'd the ram pins (helped with the posting but seems to have increased crash frequency, not enough data to tell for sure)

no idea where to begin with this one, can't tell if it's a motherboard or a ram issue or something else entirely. the sticks are of differing sizes and manufacture so that may also be an issue. would give specs but the thing just died on me in the middle of posting this and i can't boot in just yet. motherboard is a supermicro x9 something server board.