Daily Tech News 8 July 2023

• "We have this brilliant new product: Television without the pictures. We save an enormous amount of money - we don't need good-looking actors, or visual effects, or sets, or even cameras. We call it Television't."
  
  "So it's radio?"
  
  "What?"
  
  Instagram's Threads isn't for news or politics. (The Verge)
  
  Adam Mosseri, head of Threads:

  Politics and hard news are important, I don't want to imply otherwise. But my take is, from a platform's perspective, any incremental engagement or revenue they might drive is not at all worth the scrutiny, negativity (let's be honest), or integrity risks that come along with them.

  Oh no, the scrutiny, negativity, or "integrity risks" of people posting... News.*
  
  Random user luckytran gets it right:

  If you are avoiding news and politics, and focusing just on consumption-oriented communities, you aren't building a global town square, you are building a giant billboard.

  That is precisely what Meta wants to build here:

  There are more than enough amazing communities – sports, music, fashion, beauty, entertainment, etc – to make a vibrant platform without needing to get into politics or hard news.

  The common thread to all of these is that somebody else creates the content and you consume it. The interactivity is nil.
  
  That's Instagram, distributing glossy photos from the inane to the inept. Utterly devoid of lasting merit but safe for advertisers.
  
  Threads is Instagram... Without the photos.
  
  Even noted Twitter idiot Nina Turner takes a break from demanding reparations to shoot back:

  I'd say this is a mistake, but it's a deliberate decision to keep people less informed about the world around them, and I assume that's your intent.

  Consume, be silent, die. Your only remaining freedom is to choose the order in which you fulfil those tasks.
  
  * Of course there's an element of legal self-interest here too, since Meta is currently at war with Canada over demands to pay the state media for the rights to link to propaganda. We can only hope that they both lose.
  
  
  
• Your only remaining freedom: Threads is a privacy nightmare, and has no plans for an EU launch because it breaks at least three hundred different laws there. (Tech Crunch)

  Information provided about the app's privacy via mandatory disclosures required on iOS shows the app may collect highly sensitive information about users in order to profile their digital activity — including health and financial data, precise location, browsing history, contacts, search history and other sensitive information.

  That's gonna be a no from me, Zuckerdawg.

• I got my 40oz bag of smokehouse almonds. Not sure when Blue Diamond stopped being available down under - it used to be a commonplace brand. But now we have Amazon Prime and free international shipping so it doesn't matter.
  
  Damn, that's a lot of almonds.
  
  
  
• Imagine a Twinkie, an inch square and a quarter inch thick: Is the ChargerLAB KM003C a Google Twinkie alternative? (AnandTech)
  
  This is USB-C charging meter that not only shows voltage, current, and power on a little display but can also forward that information every 100ms over the USB port that it is plugged in to.
  
  At around $100 it's a lot more than smart cables that just show the wattage currently being used, but it's also a lot smarter. You can send it commands to set up specific fast charging modes.
  
  More for the electronics hobbyist or independent repair shop than the average user at that price, but a cool little device.
  
  
  
• The Seagate Firecuda 540 is three times the speed of typical PCIe 3 SSDs at three times the price. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  It also appears disinclined to set your entire computer on fire, which has been an issue with the first PCIe 5 SSDs.
  
  
  
• The latest AMD BIOS includes support for the unannounced Ryzen 7000G family. (WCCFTech)
  
  This will be the desktop version of the laptop 7840HS, with 8 Zen 4 cores and 12 RDNA3 graphics cores.
  
  The existing desktop chips have up to 16 Zen 4 cores, but only 2 graphics cores. The 7000G will be a great all-round chip for productivity tasks and anything up to moderate gaming. If it's priced appropriately. We'll see.
  
  
  
• Are bugs and slow delivery okay? (Optivem)
  
  Most of the time... Yes.
  
  Or at least, companies seldom go broke because of software bugs or delayed releases. Even software companies.
  
  Doesn't mean we have to like it.
  
  
  
• Blame Canada. (NPR)
  
  Or if you're French president Emmanuel Macron, video games.
  
  Because the problem couldn't lie anywhere else. It must be Sonic the Hedgehog and his insatiable lust for golden rings.
  
  
  

posted by Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM

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