That there is no perfect defense. There is no protection. Being alive means being exposed; it’s the nature of life to be hazardous—it’s the stuff of living.

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Cake day: June 9th, 2024

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  • Looking at the company’s North American webshop, visitors noticed a freshly adjusted price for the ROG Astral GeForce RTX 5090 32 GB OC Edition—going from a previous level of $3079.99 up to $3359.99. Curiously, the asking price of a liquid-cooled sibling was not adjusted—remaining at a “first wave” point of $3409.99. The “cheapest” model—TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 5090 (non-OC)—experienced a $460 (representing 20%) price hike, bringing total cost of ownership up to $2759.99.

    I am not happy about the prices, but this understandable on some level considering the nature of the 3090.

    In addition, VideoCardz and other PC hardware media outlets noted price hikes affecting the manufacturer’s stable of recently launched AMD Radeon RX 9070 Series TUF Gaming and PRIME models. In the absence of AMD-built (MBA) reference card designs, board partners were tasked with the providing of baseline “MSRP” conformant custom cards. The ASUS PRIME Radeon RX 9070 XT OC and RX 9070 OC Editions were readied as $599 and $549 options (respectively). Weekend sleuthing work put the spotlight on newly adjusted price points of $719.99 and $659.99 (respectively)—representing further cases of plain 20% elevations over baseline.

    The 9070 and 9070 XT are for more annoying in terms of market competition.


  • The pressure on Lee is mounting, but he has reportedly been constrained by legal troubles for nearly a decade. He was acquitted earlier this year of stock-rigging and accounting fraud charges related to a controversial 2015 merger. However, prosecutors have since appealed the ruling to the Supreme Court, prolonging his legal battles.

    Maybe find a leader who is not a criminal?

    From the relevant Wikipedia article:

    Lee was charged with “offering US$38 million in bribes to four entities controlled by a friend of then-President Park Geun-hye, including a company in Germany set up to support equestrian training for the daughter of one of Park’s friends, Choi Soon-sil” and “Prosecutors alleged the bribes were offered in exchange for government help with a merger that strengthened Lee’s control over Samsung at a crucial time for organizing a smooth leadership transition after his father fell ill.”

    Lee was found guilty on each charge by a three-judge panel of Seoul Central District Court in August 2017 and was sentenced to five years in prison (prosecutors had sought a 12-year sentence).

    In mid-2021, the United States Chamber of Commerce, a lobbying group of American companies, joined Korean business groups to urge the president to pardon Lee, arguing that the billionaire executive can help strengthen U.S. President Joe Biden’s efforts to end American dependence on computer chips produced overseas amid the 2020–2023 global chip shortage.[31][32] Lee was released on parole from the Seoul Detention Center in Uiwang on August 13, 2021; the South Korean government argued that the release was in the national interest.


  • I agree with the high level socio-political commentary around sectoral bargaining and the discussion around the technical and social limitations of copyright law.

    I still disagree with the notion that developing AIBlog 2000 SEO-optimized slop generator falls under fair use (in terms of principles, not necessarily legal doctrine).

    Academics programmatically going through the blog contents to analyze something about how perceptions of the niche topics changed. That sounds reasonable.

    Someone creating a commercial review aggregation service that scraped the blog to find reviews and even includes review snippets (with links to the source) and metadata. Sure.

    Spambot 3000, where the only goal is to leverage your work to shit out tech-enabled copies for monetization does not seem like fair use or even beneficial for broader society.

    Perhaps the first two examples are not possible without the third one and we have to tolerate Spambot 3000 on that basis, but that’s not the argument that was provided in this thread.







  • Let’s say someone spends a decade plus on a small niche blog. The blog has decent readership and even modicum of commercial engagement in its niche.

    Should I be allowed to openly use all the data on the blog to develop an AI powered AIBlog 2000 service that enables people to quickly and easily make SEO-optimized spam blogs (it wouldn’t be marketed that way, but that’s what it is) on a variety of topics; including the topic of the niche blog mentioned above?

    Am I not giving the EFF enough benefit of the doubt? Is this more of a unique scenario that ignores the benefits of EFF’s approach?

    What am I missing here?










  • Can’t speak for the relative merits of the bill. To be honest it doesn’t really matter, since it’s a bad idea to use any American services, be it from big tech or from startups.

    However, I do have issues with the characterization of small startups leveraging “AI” in the article. Vast majority of startups add “AI powered” both as consumer marketing and a fundraising method. Even if they do actually use ML powered features, it is likely these features would simply be part of their package and marketed something along the lines of “automated recommendation for configuring [X]”. Many such features cannot even leverage public works since startups tend to focus on more niche use use cases of ML tech since it’s difficult to competing around something like LLMs.

    Something about their framing of startups just sounds off.



  • Semiconductor industry expert Dylan Patel said a big problem under former Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, who left the company in December, was that he was “too nice.” “He did not want to fire a bunch of middle management in the way they needed to,” he said.

    There were multiple significant cuts under Gelsinger.

    It will also restart plans to produce chips that power AI servers and look to areas beyond servers in several areas such as software, robotics and AI foundation models.

    Intel was much more diversified 5-7 years ago. A lot of stuff was spun off or sold to enable the company to focus on its core competencies.

    Sounds like China will be able to poach a lot of experienced and pissed off Intel employees.







  • One thing to consider is the availability of batteries (and their cost) when buying a second hand laptop. If you want to use the laptop for a while, if is probably worth investing in a battery replacement. Laptops with DVD drive will be 7-8 years old, so the batteries are almost certainly likely to busted.

    As other have mentioned, you want an SSD with at least 256 GB of space.

    I would also say 8GB RAM is minimum these days.

    You also want a screen with at least 1920 x 1080 resolution.

    You should be able to get something like that for €200-€250 euro, but the battery replacement might end up being another €75 on top, maybe more.