Daily Tech News 26 August 2023

• The EU's Digital Services Act goes into effect today. Here's what that means. (The Verge)
  
  It means, "Europe who?"
  
  
  
• How big tech really feels about the EU's crackdown. (The Verge)
  
  Europe who?

• AMD announced its new Radeon 7700 XT and 7800 XT graphics cars, shipping September 6. (AnandTech)
  
  I predicted pricing of $449 and $549 respectively, $50 too much in each case to be truly competitive, and I was half right.
  
  The 7700 XT with 12GB of RAM and 54 CUs (cluster units - graphics cores) is $449, slotting in precisely between the 8GB and 16GB models of Nvidia's 4060 Ti while generally outperforming both.
  
  The 7800XT with 16GB of RAM and 60 CUs, on the other hand, is $499, the same price as the 16GB 4060 Ti, which it demolishes, and $100 cheaper than the 4070, which it competes against fairly evenly.
  
  The 7700 XT might receive a small price adjustment before it hits retail (like the 7600), but it's a decent card. It's just outshone by its big brother. For an extra $50, just go for the 7800.
  
  
  
• Reviewing the Fanxiang (who?) S770 2TB SSD. (Serve the Home)
  
  It's a perfectly adequate middle-of-the road PCIe 4 SSD, with a couple of bugs.
  
  Like the fact that the temperature sensor always returns the same reading.
  
  I wouldn't buy one, but it appears to be basically functional.
  
  
  
• The College Board, which administers the SAT and Advance Placement exams, also helpfully shares your data with Facebook and TikTok if you access their website. (Gizmodo)

  "We do not share SAT scores or GPAs with Facebook or TikTok, and any other third parties using pixel or cookies," said a College Board spokesperson. "In fact, we do not send any personally identifiable information (PII) through our pixels on the site. In addition, we do not use SAT scores or GPAs for any targeting."

  Well, that's good to hear.

  After receiving this comment, Gizmodo shared a screenshot of the College Board sending GPAs and SAT scores to TikTok using a pixel. The spokesperson then acknowledged that the College Board's website actually does share this data.

  Oh, that TikTok.

  "Pixels are simply a means to measure the effectiveness of College Board advertising," the spokesperson said. "If a student uses the college search tool on CB.org, the student can add a GPA and SAT score range to the search filters. Those values are passed in the pixel, not because we configured the pixel that way but because that's how the pixel works."

  We don't share user data with Facebook or TikTok, except when we do, in which case that's just how things work.
  
  Props to Gizmodo here for slapping the College Board in the face with the cold, wet Trout of Fact.
  
  
  
• Why Meta is the only AI company that matters. (Phind)
  
  Meta's CodeLlama-34B scored 48.8% on the HumanEval test when it was first released.
  
  Phind's fine-tuned version scores 67.6% on the same test.
  
  CodeLlama was released yesterday.
  
  
  
• Everyone involved in web scraping is a hypocrite. (Eric Goldman)
  
  Many of the most litigious actors against web scraping don't actually own the content they are protecting.

posted by Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM

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