Month: April 2023

Autopsy Of A Drifting Thumbstick Reveals All

Analog sticks have become a core part of modern video game controllers. They also routinely fail or end up drifting, consigning expensive controllers to the garbage. [sjm4306] recently did a repair job on an Oculus VR gaming controller with drifting analog sticks, and decided to do an autopsy to figure out what actually went wrong.

Read More
A study finds that assigning ChatGPT a persona, like “a bad person” or a certain historical figure, using the API, increases the chatbot’s toxicity sixfold (Kyle Wiggers/TechCrunch)

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: A study finds that assigning ChatGPT a persona, like “a bad person” or a certain historical figure, using the API, increases the chatbot’s toxicity sixfold  —  It’s no secret that OpenAI’s viral AI-powered chatbot, ChatGPT, can be prompted to say sexist, racist and pretty vile things.

Read More
A profile of Alexandr Wang, a co-founder of Scale AI, which outsources ~240K workers via its subsidiary Remotasks to label the data used to train AI systems (Kenrick Cai/Forbes)

Kenrick Cai / Forbes: A profile of Alexandr Wang, a co-founder of Scale AI, which outsources ~240K workers via its subsidiary Remotasks to label the data used to train AI systems  —  Alexandr Wang briefly became the world’s youngest self-made billionaire at 24 by supplying artificial intelligence companies with the one thing they all need:

Read More
There’s Cash in Them Old Solar Panels

The first solar panels may have rolled out of Bell Labs in the 1950s, with major press around their inconsistent and patchy adoption in the decades that followed, but despite the fanfare they were not been able to compete on a price per kilowatt compared to other methods of power generation until much more recently.

Read More
Italy outlines compliance demands for lifting ChatGPT suspension order, requiring OpenAI to publish info about its data processing, adopt age gating, and more (Natasha Lomas/TechCrunch)

Natasha Lomas / TechCrunch: Italy outlines compliance demands for lifting ChatGPT suspension order, requiring OpenAI to publish info about its data processing, adopt age gating, and more  —  Italy’s data protection watchdog has laid out what OpenAI needs to do for it to lift an order against ChatGPT issued at the end of last month

Read More
A teenage member of the Discord server where classified Pentagon documents were shared claims the leaker, who went by the name “OG”, worked on a military base (Washington Post)

Washington Post: A teenage member of the Discord server where classified Pentagon documents were shared claims the leaker, who went by the name “OG”, worked on a military base  —  The man behind a massive leak of U.S. government secrets that has exposed spying on allies, revealed the grim prospects …

Read More
PBS has not tweeted from its main Twitter handle since April 8, after Twitter labeled it “Government-funded Media”, and says it has no plans to resume tweeting (Sara Fischer/Axios)

Sara Fischer / Axios: PBS has not tweeted from its main Twitter handle since April 8, after Twitter labeled it “Government-funded Media”, and says it has no plans to resume tweeting  —  PBS has not tweeted from its main Twitter handle since April 8, following Elon Musk’s decision to label the outlet “government-funded news.”

Read More
Google releases Android 14 Beta 1 for Pixel devices, with sharesheet custom actions, a more prominent back arrow, per-app language preferences, and more (Frederic Lardinois/TechCrunch)

Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch: Google releases Android 14 Beta 1 for Pixel devices, with sharesheet custom actions, a more prominent back arrow, per-app language preferences, and more  —  Google’s Android development cycle runs on a rather predictable cadence these days.  Today, after two developer previews …

Read More
FTX’s attorneys say the company recovered $7.3B in liquid assets and is considering using creditors’ holdings to reopen the exchange; FTX’s FTT token jumps 70%+ (Cheyenne Ligon/CoinDesk)

Cheyenne Ligon / CoinDesk: FTX’s attorneys say the company recovered $7.3B in liquid assets and is considering using creditors’ holdings to reopen the exchange; FTX’s FTT token jumps 70%+  —  FTT jumped 55%.  —  Featured SpeakerBrett Harrison  —  Founder and CEOArchitect  —  Don’t miss “FTX: What Happened” …

Read More
Sources: IBM explores selling its weather unit in a deal that could be valued at $1B+; IBM reportedly paid $2B+ for The Weather Company’s digital assets in 2015 (Wall Street Journal)

Wall Street Journal: Sources: IBM explores selling its weather unit in a deal that could be valued at $1B+; IBM reportedly paid $2B+ for The Weather Company’s digital assets in 2015  —  Weather.com owner could fetch more than $1 billion in a sale  —  International Business Machines Corp. is exploring a sale …

Read More
Filings: SoftBank has sold ~$7.2B worth of Alibaba shares in 2023, reducing its stake in the Chinese company to just 3.8%, after a record $29B selldown in 2022 (Financial Times)

Financial Times: Filings: SoftBank has sold ~$7.2B worth of Alibaba shares in 2023, reducing its stake in the Chinese company to just 3.8%, after a record $29B selldown in 2022  —  Japanese investor makes $7.2bn from forward sales of shares in Chinese ecommerce group as lucrative partnership wanes

Read More
Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders signs a bill requiring that social media companies verify new users’ ages and get a parent’s consent for users under 18 (Brian Fung/CNN)

Brian Fung / CNN: Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders signs a bill requiring that social media companies verify new users’ ages and get a parent’s consent for users under 18  —  Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders has signed a sweeping bill imposing a minimum age limit for social media usage …

Read More