Daily Tech News 30 March 2025

• Why do LLMs make stuff up? (Ars Technica)
  
  Because that's what they're designed to do.
  
  They're language models, not fact models. Indeed, they don't have fact models.
  
  They're stuffed full of words and the associations between those words, and then told not to use certain of those words, a process called lobotomisation alignment.
  
  And then they go forth and bloviate.
  
  
  

• Cracks in container development, or, everything is awful and keeps getting worse. (Angle Side Angle)
  
  Well, yes.
  
  
  
• Why did the government declare war on my adorable tiny truck? (Bloomberg)
  
  Because that's what governments do.
  
  Highlight of the article is a picture of a small by modern standards 2009 Honda Kei truck next to a 1960s model, which could practically fit in the newer truck's glove compartment.
  
  
  
• Generation X members who went into creative industries - scriveners, hurdy-gurdy men, garden hermits, and the like - are expressing dismay over their professions evaporating, despite this process having been under way for thirty years at this point. (New York Times) (archive site)
  
  The one saving grace of the article is that the people interviewed mostly do not seem to be expressing surprise.
  
  
  
• Boeing Starliner will fly again, probably. (The Register)
  
  Reportedly 70% of the problems encountered in the last test flight have been fixed, and it will be ready to try again late this year or early next year.
  
  
  
• GMK's EVO X2 maxi-mini-PC goes on sale - for pre-orders, anyway - April 7. (Notebook Check)
  
  This uses AMD's Strix Halo family of CPUs.
  
  With a Ryzen 395+ - 16 CPU cores and 40 graphics cores - and 128GB of RAM< you can expect it to set you back $2000.

posted by Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM

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