Good news for folks who enjoy AI embarrassing itself with nonsensical answers!
"Well, according to an interview at The Verge with Google CEO Sundar Pichai published earlier this week, just before criticism of the outputs really took off, these "hallucinations" are an "inherent feature" of AI large language models (LLM), which is what drives AI Overviews, and this feature "is still an unsolved problem.""
We want a future of repairable gadgets and less ewaste.
5-7 years of software support doesn't mean anything if we can't keep the hardware running well for 7 years.
Glad to see iFixit didn't go quiet on this one.
I've been trying to highlight Samsung's scummy business practices for a couple years now, but when they can't even make a support contract work with iFixit, it's a REAL bad look.
AI Laptop REACTIONS! https://somegadgetguy.com/b/45Q
Checking out all the announcements today from Dell, HP, Microsoft, Samsung, Acer, Asus, and Lenovo! I did a live recording of my reactions.
Windows on ARM is getting REALLY exciting! Here are some things to look out for while shopping a new "AI" laptop!
"Microsoft Paint is getting new image generation powers with a new tool called Cocreator. [...] Cocreator can generate images based on text prompts as well as your own doodles in the Paint app."
The way tech companies push "AI", I don't know. I was hoping this is just another tech hype that I can wait out, like with Bitcoin and Metaverse, but there just seems no end in sight this time.
CONTROVERSY! It's a little concerning. My phone keeps trying to connect to a mystery network, listed as an ISP WiFi that (to my knowledge) doesn't do business here in California. Has anyone else seen something like this? What's going on?
"This whole AI cycle was fueled by fantasies, and when people stop falling for them the bubble starts to deflate. In The Guardian, John Naughton recently laid out the five stages of financial bubbles, noting AI is between stages three and four: euphoria and profit-taking."
Wireless charging sucks!
(Sucks more power that is.)
My buddy Ricky and I did a one-off experiment comparing wireless charging to FAST cabled charging. You can watch part one here https://somegadgetguy.com/b/442
I was pleasantly surprised that Qi charging had improved and kept case temperatures better in check, but we still saw elevated temperatures for roughly two hours on a full charge.
Now, iFixit delivers even more data on wireless charging, and it's not great. You're trading a lot of waste and heat for some mediocre "convenience"...
I am totally floored by the bold, drunk on LLM idea that Slack by Saleforce has right now: They want to compromise the privacy of customer data to train their implementation of an LLM.
This is beyond cursed because Salesforce has the audacity to make this scheme an opt-out instead of op-in to maximize the data accumulation.
I hope the uproar this will generate makes Slack step the hell back!
After dealing with pre-installed malware on this mini-PC, I'm FINALLY done reviewing the hardware! https://somegadgetguy.com/b/459
"Besides the malware" does an Intel Core i9 make sense in a system like this?
Google showed off new business AI solutions while promoting their water cooled data centers. Now we find out Microsoft is not only failing to meet their carbon emissions goal, their emissions are actually UP 30%.
I just don't see how this era of cloud AI is going to be a sustainable business model...
Google I/O wrapped up, and I have a LOT of thoughts. Shot a quick reaction video on the keynote here https://somegadgetguy.com/b/455
Some really interesting AI tools are coming, but will Gemini search continue hurting website traffic?
Watching #GoogleIO and there are some cool demonstrations of data center cloud computing, but there's also this fog of dystopia surrounding these demos.
The announcements for search are horrifying. Google is full mask off.
Phrases like "search for something, and we'll collect all this data for you" basically equates to:
"We sucked up ALL the data from people who really did the work, and we're going to give you the results of their hard work, but we wont take you to the site that generated the data. You can stay on the search page, and the site's traffic will plummet."
Why cybersecurity staff burn out, and what to do about it
Based on Computing's research and interviews with two experts, we look at the causes of burnout among cybersecurity professionals and how more attention paid to this issue at board level could help shore up defences.
(Free reg)
REPLAY CREW! Today's show was AWESOME even though I had almost no voice! Major thanks to the folks who turned out in the chat! https://somegadgetguy.com/b/44u #Apple is on an advertising apology tour. #Google is gearing up for #GoogleIO. #Microsoft is making a mobile app store?