Daily Tech News 7 August 2023

• Yes, we can regulate online toxicity. (PC Magazine)
  
  Now I'll grant you that this article mostly focuses on the platforms' recommendation algorithms and not the users' content, so it's far less a Journalists for Censorship piece than most.
  
  But attempting to regulate complex software systems that are poorly understood even by their own developers and are only fourth-order-tangentially related to any of the ascribed harm is likely just to make things worse.
  
  Instead mandate transparency. Got a magical new recommendation algorithm that gives you an edge over your competitors? Too bad, so sad, you have to publish that code.
  
  Or just stop using recommendation algorithms and hand control back to the users themselves.

• It's a real tech news wasteland today.
  
  
  
• SpaceX launched yet another 22 satellites and landed the rocket flawlessly on the recovery ship. (Space)
  
  Ho hum.
  
  
  
• The company also carried out a static test fire of Booster 9, a new Super Heavy booster for Starship, made up of 33 Falcon 2 rockets. (Space)
  
  It didn't explode. So dull.
  
  
  
• The ninth Dedekind Number has been discovered. (Quanta)
  
  It was in Madagascar, hiding under a log.

  Another way of thinking of the Dedekind number is in set-theoretic terms. Think of a set with n elements, say the numbers {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, …n}. That set has 2n different subsets, which form a mathematical structure called a lattice. Now collect those subsets according to the following rule: No subset in your collection can be a part of another subset in the collection. Such a collection is called an anti-chain, because it combines points on the lattice in a way that doesn't form a chain. (For example, {{1}, {2, 3}, {3, 4, 5}} forms an anti-chain.) The number of anti-chains for a given n is, again, the Dedekind number.

  I'm not sure exactly why I would want that, but I at least understood it.
  
  
  
• Don't buy Chromebooks. (Ars Technica)
  
  Chromebooks generally have fixed lifespans after which they stop receiving updates, because Google is a garbage company in a garbage industry.
  
  Amazon and Walmart are selling Chromebooks that have already expired, at full price, because garbage companies in garbage industries.
  
  And they do not make any note of the fact that they are selling the digital equivalent of rancid meat, anywhere.
  
  Unsurprisingly, none of the companies involved have responded to questions.

posted by Pixy Misa at 04:30 AM

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