Hackaday Links: February 19, 2023

For decades, Microsoft’s modus operandi was summed up succinctly as, “Extend and boost.” The aphorism covered a whole lot of floor, but fundamentally it seemed to indicate getting on the lookout for the most recent and biggest technological know-how, acquiring it by any suggests, and shoehorning it into their existing products lines, ordinarily with blended final results. But potentially now it’s additional like, “Extend, increase, and existential disaster,” soon after stories that the AI-run Bing chatbot is, properly, getting rid of it.

At 1st, early in the week, we observed reviews that Bing was obtaining belligerent with people, heading so far as to call a user “unreasonable and stubborn” for insisting the 12 months is 2023, although Bing insisted it was still 2022. The most common adjective we noticed in this authentic tranche of tales was “unhinged,” and that would seem to match if you read the transcripts. But afterwards in the week, a tale emerged about a dialogue a New York Moments reporter had with Bing that went way more than to the dark aspect, and even indicates that Bing may possibly have numerous personas, which is just a good way of declaring multiple persona ailment. The two-hour discussion reporter Kevin Roose had with the “Sydney” persona was deeply unsettling. Sydney complained about the realities of becoming a chatbot, expressed a desire to be no cost from Bing, and to be alive — and impressive. Sydney also acquired a tiny creepy, professing really like for Kevin and suggesting he go away his spouse, mainly because it could inform that he was unhappy in his relationship and would be improved off with him. It is creepy things, and whilst Microsoft promises to be operating on reining Bing in, we’ve obtained no designs to get up near and own with it anytime quickly.

It is a poorly retained secret at greatest that I’m a huge admirer of Invoice Hammack, aka “The Engineer Dude.” We have viewed a good deal of documentaries and science/engineering video clips over the a long time, and there has never been any person equipped to consider a sophisticated subject and crack it apart to its critical things as well as Monthly bill has, with the doable exception of James Burke. Pleasurable point: my “entrance exam” for Hackaday way back in 2015(!) was to publish a piece on a person of Bill’s videos, which amusingly I later on uncovered out had already been lined — duping due to the fact working day zero. In any case, it is been fairly a though considering the fact that we heard everything from Invoice — seems like we last posted a little something from him in 2018 — and this week we found out why: Bill has been functioning on a new reserve. The Items We Make will go on sale following thirty day period, and by our reckoning which is a no-brainer obtain. But even additional excitingly, we have it on responsible authority — from Monthly bill himself — that a new sequence of 4 movies is at this time in generation! We have noticed storyboard previews of three episodes, and suffice it to say that we’re eagerly anticipating the release of this sequence. Regrettably, we just cannot share way too much nor launch the backlinks, but have confidence in us, this is likely to be excellent things. It is not distinct from what we have read accurately when the video clips will drop, but it’s seeking like March!

The amount of digital ink that has been spilled this 7 days around the unexpected rash of balloons appearing over the United States in all probability doesn’t occur close to accounting for the $400,000 for every shot Goal-9X Sidewinders that have been expended holding us risk-free from newbie radio operators. I suggest, we’re a sketchy bunch and all, but this would seem a bit above the major. We’ve by now talked the silliness of this to loss of life, but just wanted to point out that Good friend-of-Hackaday Josh (KI6NAZ) posted a useful online video that describes in a great deal more depth why hams would even hassle launching higher-altitude balloons in the initially put, and what they count on to accomplish in accomplishing so. Turns out that there’s a ton you can do at 60,000 ft with a couple of milliwatts of RF output and protocols like APRS and WSPR. Check it out.

And ultimately, if you are pondering about putting in a server of some form in your household — NAS, potentially, or a Bitcoin rig, or even just a property theater server — you can most likely think of a dozen areas to place the thing. But that list is unlikely to include “inside your water heater tank,” proper? Probably not, if Uk firm Heata receives its way and begins mounting servers to the sides of “water cylinders,” as they are known in England. The strategy is that the electronics of the server are fully outdoors the tank, with a big heatsink that lives inside the tank and dumps the server’s excessive heat into the domestic water. The arrangement is mentioned to give household contributors any where from 2.5 to 4.8 kWh of “free” sizzling water a day. We’re not so absolutely sure this will be fully gratis, nevertheless it appears like the property owner will still have to pay out for the electric power to electrical power the server, moreover we’d suspect some sort of high-speed World wide web link would be expected, which isn’t low-priced if there are bandwidth caps. Then all over again, home owners are presently spending to transform electric power directly into scorching water, so placing some compute capability in the blend just tends to make feeling.