Daily Tech News 10 December 2023

• EU member states - led by Bookburner General Thierry Breton - have agreed to landmark AI regulations that fine foreign companies 7% of annual revenues. (Ars Technica)
  
  So nothing has changed in the EU.
  
  

• The story of how Qantas flight 32 from London to Sydney did not end in a fiery crash and the deaths of all 469 passengers and crew. (Medium)
  
  Though it came uncomfortably close to that. What started with an oil leak escalated in the course of a single minute to an engine exploding with such violence that a piece of the turbine demolished a brick wall on the ground 7000 feet below.
  
  I deal with failure cascades like this at my day job, but the worst I have to worry about is angry customers, not dead ones.
  
  
  
• A Harvard "disinformation researcher", one of the lead "journalists" covering the "Facebook Papers" "leaked" by "whistleblower" Frances Haugen has accused the university of buckling to Facebook's half a billion dollar donation and canning her ugly, worthless, XXXXL arse. (Columbia Journalism Review)
  
  To unpack that a little:
  
  Disinformation researchers are book burners.
  Journalists are increasingly also book burners.
  The Facebook Papers were a political hit job.
  Frances Haugen was a paid assassin who wasn't very good at her work.
  
  So all in all it's a feel good story except for the bit where Harvard got to keep the money.
  
  
  
• The number of "significant" air traffic control incidents in the US fiscal 2023 increased by 65% over the same period on 2022. (New York Times) (archive site)
  
  That's probably not good.

posted by Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM

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