Daily Tech News 18 May 2024

• Slack is taking customer data and using it for AI training. (Security Week)
  
  "You can opt out", said Slack, which didn't actually bother to tell anyone it was doing this in the first place. "You just have to call customer support."
  
  "The data is not shared with third parties and never leaves Slack's trust boundary" added a Slack representative, missing the point that Slack's trust boundary is now zero.
  
  
  

• Reddit has signed a deal with OpenAI to train ChatGPT on its users' content. (The Verge)
  
  This deal and a similarly lucrative one with Google put Reddit's financial future on a solid foundation.
  
  Reddit's moral foundation is more like a house of cards in a hurricane.
  
  
  
• How DeviantArt died. (Slate)
  
  AI and greed. Greed and AI. A story as old as time, or 2022, whichever came first.
  
  
  
• Three years after acquiring Biritish open access science publisher Hindawi, American publishing group Wiley is shutting it down and writing it off. (The Register)
  
  What happened in between was Wiley retracting over eleven thousand scientific papers published in Hindawi journals because they were AI-generated garbage.
  
  
  
• The Mac vs. PC war is back on, says some idiot. (The Verge)
  
  Macs aren't even an afterthought in the global PC market at this point. Even Apple doesn't want to sell them.
  
  
  
• CSC ServiceWorks operates a million washers and dryers in hotels and apartment builds that charge residents and guests automatically on use - a nationwide digital laundromat. So far so good.
  
  Not so good: You can use the machines without paying. (Tech Crunch)
  
  Even less good: CSC has been aware of this for some time.
  
  I mean, bad for CSC. Great for everyone else.
  
  
  
• Adobe has sent a legal threat to game emulator Delta claiming that the software steals Adobe's logo. (Tech Crunch)
  
  Does anyone remember what Adobe's logo looks like? Anyone?
  
  
  
• France has banned TikTok in New Caledonia following widespread riots which in turn follow changes to voting laws that will allow non-citizen residents to vote after ten years. (Politico)
  
  Critics - which is to say TikTok - warned that this set a dangerous precedent.
  
  
  
• Staff leaving OpenAI are subject to a life-long non-disclosure and non-disparagement agreement. (Twitter)
  
  If they don't sign within sixty days, they permanently lose any ability to sell their already-vested stock, which would have been a larger part of their compensation package than their salary.
  
  This sounds like a field day for whichever law firm lands the class action suit.
  
  
  
• When an 8-core 11900K beats a 24-core 14900KS. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  This despite the 11900K running its DDR4 memory at 3.9GHz and the 14900KS running DDR5 at 9.3GHz. Sometimes it's the small numbers that matter (latency settings) more than the big ones (bandwidth).
  
  
  
• All my computers are running DDR4.
  
  
  
• Intel's new Falcon Shores processor uses 1500W. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  That used to be a lot.
  
  
  
• Asus has vowed to "improve clarity" over its blatantly illegal handling of warranty claims. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Oh. That's alright then.

posted by Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM

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