Daily Tech News 6 September 2024

• The US, UK, and EU have signed a "legally binding" AI treaty. (Reuters) (archive site)
  
  Has it been ratified by the Senate? Yeah, that's what I thought.
  
  The treaty itself is relatively short at just twelve pages. (PDF)
  
  Unfortunately it is utter garbage since the definition of "artificial intelligence" it provides applies to every computer ever built, back to the Hollerith tabulating machines used in the 1890 US census.
  
  On the plus side, it has deeply upset the communists by focusing almost entirely on government use of AI rather than corporate or individual use.

• The Windows 11 23H2 Ryzen patch is here. Does it deliver performance as promised by the preview? Yes. Maybe. Sometimes. (YouTube)
  
  Interestingly this video tests Windows 10 alongside Windows 11 2023 and 2024 versions with and without the patch, and Windows 10 often runs faster than unpatched Windows 11.
  
  The problem is that there is a 10% variance in performance between two installs of the same patch version of Windows 11 on the same computer.
  
  That's the kind of thing that leads to bald hardware reviewers.
  
  
  
• There's a live action Minecraft movie coming. (YouTube)
  
  If you know of the fuss about the original design of Sonic for the Sonic the Hedgehog movie, this looks worse.
  
  If you don't know of that fuss, simply put, this movie is going to bomb. Hard. With 350 million crazed Minecraft fans in the world, there is no way this is going to break even.
  
  There's already a gold standard in this kind of thing, in the form of the Lego Movie.
  
  Everything the Lego Movie did right (which is a lot), this does wrong.
  
  
  Update: Somebody already fixed it.
  
  The internet taketh away, but sometimes the internet also giveth.
  
  
  
• China's 7nm chips are close in performance and size to Taiwan's 5nm chips. (Nikkei Asia)
  
  Only problem is that Taiwan is now ramping up 2nm production. And it will take China a decade to get there.
  
  China's 7nm chips are produced using 14nm equipment with multi-patterning, carefully writing over the chip repeatedly using optical effects to produce a smaller feature size than can be achieved directly.
  
  The problem is that this is rather like saving on painting a car by buying half-price paint... That requires twelve coats to provide an acceptable finish.
  
  
  
• Meanwhile Russia has been dodging sanctions and buying up spare parts for its own chipmaking facilities. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Which operate on the 90nm node. Some of them. Others are all the way back at 200nm, which is the same process used for Stonehenge.
  
  
  
• My most downvoted StackOverflow answer. (GitHub)
  
  If you're not interested in the fine details of C vs. C++ arrays, at least scroll down to the quoted Reddit post at the end. It is a thing of beauty.
  
  
  
• It is truly an exciting time to be buying a new PC. (WCCFTech)
  
  Intel's upcoming desktop Core 7 265K is 2% faster than the current 14700K.
  
  But at least it probably won't commit suicide.

posted by Pixy Misa at 04:11 AM

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