Daily Tech News 3 December 2024

• Pat Gelsinger, CEO of Intel and the guiding light through the company's attempts at a recovery over the last three years, will be stepping down from the role at the end of November. (Serve the Home)
  
  And that's not a typo. He was gone as of December 1, but the departure was so sudden that Intel didn't get an announcement out until the following day.
  
  There's no word as to the reason. Short notice like this is often for health reasons, but Gelsinger was doing customer visits and photo ops just last week.

• AMD's fastest CPU, the recently announced 192 core Epyc 9965, just received a 33% price cut. (MSN)
  
  It still costs $10,000, but that's not a bad price for that powerful a chip.
  
  No scores on CPUBenchmark for this chip just yet; the fastest chip they have listed is the 96 core Epyc 9655P.
  
  
  
• We don't need to fear Skynet. Just mention Jonathan Turley and the whole system will reboot. (Tech Crunch)

  Users of the conversational AI platform ChatGPT discovered an interesting phenomenon over the weekend: the popular chatbot refuses to answer questions if asked about a "David Mayer." Asking it to do so causes it to freeze up instantly. Conspiracy theories have ensued - but a more ordinary reason may be at the heart of this strange behavior.

  This was circulating on Twitter, but Tech Crunch actually did a bit of digging:

  Which brings us back to David Mayer. There is no lawyer, journalist, mayor, or otherwise obviously notable person by that name that anyone could find (with apologies to the many respectable David Mayers out there).

  There was, however, a Professor David Mayer, who taught drama and history, specializing in connections between the late Victorian era and early cinema. Mayer died in the summer of 2023, at the age of 94. For years before that, however, the British American academic faced a legal and online issue of having his name associated with a wanted criminal who used it as a pseudonym, to the point where he was unable to travel.

  So that's why there are restrictions on ChatGPT disseminating information about these individuals; they're victims of various types of identity fraud. But why does it crash?
  
  Because AI is itself a fraud:

  The whole drama is a useful reminder that not only are these AI models not magic, but they are also extra-fancy auto-complete, actively monitored, and interfered with by the companies that make them. Next time you think about getting facts from a chatbot, think about whether it might be better to go straight to the source instead.

  ChatGPT behaves like nightmare hodgepodge of nonsense held together by duct tape and an inflated share price, because that's precisely what it is.
  
  

• AMD's upcoming Radeon 8800XT might be dramatically more powerful than the current 7800XT. (WCCFTech)
  
  Claimed numbers put it 45% faster on ray tracing. But 45% faster than the 7900XTX, a much more expensive card.
  
  And it's also claimed to compete on non ray traced gaming with the RTX 4080, another much more expensive card.
  
  But the question of how much the 8800XT itself will cost is open. If it is also a much more expensive card, none of that means anything.
  
  
  

posted by Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM

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