Daily Tech News 5 April 2025

• In a pre-emptive response to the latest reciprocal tariffs, China has banned the sale of terbium, erbium, thulium, and thallium to the United States, so-called "rare earth" elements critical to the production of advanced technology such as Nixie tubes and bubble memory. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  There are a few things to note here:
  
  First, of course, it makes little sense to make a totalitarian fascist dystopia your sole supplier of anything.
  
  Second, rare earth elements are not rare. What they are is messy and annoying to extract and refine, a fact that China used to take over the market. Australia, Brazil, Canada, and, yes, the United States all have significant mineral reserves available. And studies suggest that a square mile of seafloor mud is enough to provide the entire world with these metals for a year.
  
  Third, China of course does this kind of thing all the time, and has restricted or outright banned sales of rare earth elements to other countries before.
  
  Fourth, and perhaps most interesting, China now only produces 10% of its own rare earth resources. The same problem with them being messy and annoying to extract led it to move production to illegal mining camps operating in Burma, bypassing what passes for the government and working with local militias.
  
  
  

• I bought three more of those Wavlink laptop docks.
  
  They're a very minimal laptop dock, offering three USB ports, HDMI, and 2.5Gb Ethernet. I wanted them mostly for the 2.5Gbit internet, though the HDMI port is also handy. And they cost me about $16 each a couple of months ago, so it's hard to go wrong when many docks at ten times the price still only provide gigabit Ethernet.
  
  So why did I buy three more? Three reasons: They support Linux. They work with the USB-C port on my Beelink SER5s, which only have gigabit Ethernet.
  
  And not only have they come down in price 25% even from the previous discount, if I bought three I got another 20% off that.
  
  Which makes them about $10 each. Which is absurd.
  
  
  
• Building a computer that runs Linux with just three 8-pin chips. (Dmitry.gr)
  
  An Arm Cortex M0+, 8MB of serial RAM, and a USB-to-serial adaptor, which also acts as the voltage regulator for the entire system. It supports a microSD card for storage; the chips are so small that it looks like a full-size SD card in the photo.
  
  It can boot Debian Linux. Specifically it boots Debian Linux for MIPS using an emulator, but that's a software issue.
  
  
  
• If that's too fancy for you you could build an 8-bit computer using a handful of 74LS chips. (Ben Eater)
  
  With 16 whole bytes of RAM!
  
  You can even buy a complete kit for $300. Admittedly half of that cost is the breadboards, since the whole thing is built without a drop of solder.
  
  
  
• AI could affect 40% of jobs and have a market value equivalent to Germany's GDP, a completely meaningless comparison but in any case they mean $4.8 trillion, by 2033, according to the UN. (CNBC)
  
  I'm not sure whether CNBC added that nonsense comparing annual productivity to market valuations or if it was in the original report, so I blame both of them.
  
  Anyway, if you look up the combined market cap of publicly-traded companies pursuing AI software or hardware right now it comes to over $12 trillion so the UN may be a little late to the game.
  
  Yes, that includes giants like Apple, Microsoft, and Google, who are very heavily invested in AI but not dedicated to it, as well as Nvidia, which makes most of its revenue from AI hardware but has a much smaller involvement with AI software or services. But on the other hand it doesn't include OpenAI, xAI, or Anthropic, because none of those are publicly traded.
  
  
  
• An abruptly former Microsoft employee disrupted the company's 50th anniversary and accused the CTO of being a "war profiteer". (The Verge)

  "Shame on you," said Microsoft employee Ibtihal Aboussad, speaking directly to Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman. "You are a war profiteer. Stop using AI for genocide. Stop using AI for genocide in our region. You have blood on your hands. All of Microsoft has blood on its hands. How dare you all celebrate when Microsoft is killing children. Shame on you all."

  If you don't uninstall Windows today you are complicit in genocide.
  
  Apparently.
  
  
  
• Speaking of which, with just six months before support for Windows 10 ends how is Microsoft going with its plan to force everyone onto Windows 11? Badly. (The Register)
  
  54% of Windows users are still on Windows 10, compared to a little under 43% running Windows 11. So the good news is that they've finally moved on from Windows 8, which has been unsupported for seven years.
  
  
  
• The EU plans to protect security and privacy by, you guessed it, completely destroying security and privacy. (The Register)

  Of course, we want to protect the privacy and cyber security at the same time; and that's why we have said here that now we have to prepare a technical roadmap to watch for that, but it's something that we can't tolerate, that we can't take care of the security because we don't have tools to work in this digital world.

  The only reason that's not doublespeak is that it doesn't mean anything at all.
  
  
  
• AMD could be preparing a 9070 GRE which is exactly what the 9060 should will have been once it was.* (Hot Hardware)
  
  The rumoured specs would give it 48 GPU cores (compared to 64 on the 9070 XT) and 12GB of VRAM on a 192-bit bus (compared to 16GB on a 256-bit bus).
  
  If it's three quarters of the hardware at three quarters of the price - $450 MSRP - it should sell. Nvidia's 5070, which also has 12GB of VRAM, starts at $550.
  
  * Future-past perfect singular subjunctive. Time travel weirds language.
  
  
  
• OpenAI's models memorised copyrighted content, a new study suggests, except that it suggests nothing of the sort. (Tech Crunch)
  
  What the study shows is that the training operation made note of memorable word choices, exactly as a human would.
  
  If it runs across the line Double, rubble, foil-wrapped Hubble it is more likely to remember that specific word sequence because that's not something it's ever likely to encounter.
  
  What the study showed was that if you ask it what the next word after Double, rubble, foil-wrapped is, it gets it right, because it's seen that once before. And if it couldn't do that, it wouldn't work.
  
  
  
• President Trump has extended the deadline for TikTok's exsanguination by another 75 days. (CNBC)
  
  Just hold a public auction already.
  
  
  
• I make a living on YouTube playing an anime character. I'm very shy, and it's helped me get out of my comfort zone. (Business Insider) (archive site)
  
  Okay, which third-rate vtuber did Business Insider drag into oh my god Minki!
  
  Mint Fantôme a.k.a Maid Mint a.k.a Minto a.k.a Minki, formerly Pomura Inpuff, formerly Mint Fantôme a.k.a well you know that bit is one of my favourite vtubers. She is quiet and unassuming and very entertaining, with an infectious energy and a delight in all things but mostly Metal Gear Solid. And also Hamtaro.
  
  (Via Foxu News. You can see the chat exclaiming "Minto!" when they realise who the article is about. She's very much loved by the vtuber community.)

posted by Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM

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