Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Submission + - Arm China Goes Rogue, Ex-CEO Blocking the Business (bloomberg.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Arm Ltd., the chip designer owned by SoftBank Group Corp., accused the ousted head of its China joint venture of hurting its business there, escalating a dispute that’s becoming a test of Beijing’s willingness to protect foreign investment in the world’s second-largest economy.

The U.K. chip giant in June announced it was firing Allen Wu, the head of its Chinese unit, over undisclosed breaches of conduct, but the executive has refused to step down and remains in control of the strategically important operation. Rather than the peaceful, rapid resolution that both sides have said they want, the situation has deteriorated.

Wu has hired his own security and won’t let representatives of Arm Ltd. or his board on the premises, said a person familiar with the situation. He’s refused to hold a planned event to connect Chinese chipmakers with Arm Ltd. and avoided negotiations despite public statements to the contrary, said the person, who asked not to be named.

Submission + - Google removes all Danish music from YouTube (google.com)

An anonymous reader writes: All the while the negotiations on a new joint Nordic agreement are in full swing, Google has chosen to put a thick line under their total dominance in the market. On Thursday evening, Google announced to Koda (the Danish rights owner organization) that they will on Saturday remove all Danish music content on YouTube.

And for a bit of irony, here is a Google translate of the press release from Koda: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Ftranslate.google.com%2Ft...

Submission + - China Is What Orwell Feared: Using AI to enhance government totalitarian control (theatlantic.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Xi Jinping is exporting this technology to regimes around the globe.

Xi’s pronouncements on AI have a sinister edge. Artificial intelligence has applications in nearly every human domain, from the instant translation of spoken language to early viral-outbreak detection. But Xi also wants to use AI’s awesome analytical powers to push China to the cutting edge of surveillance. He wants to build an all-seeing digital system of social control, patrolled by precog algorithms that identify potential dissenters in real time.

China’s government has a history of using major historical events to introduce and embed surveillance measures. In the run-up to the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, Chinese security services achieved a new level of control over the country’s internet. During China’s coronavirus outbreak, Xi’s government leaned hard on private companies in possession of sensitive personal data. Any emergency data-sharing arrangements made behind closed doors during the pandemic could become permanent.

Xi Jinping endorsed this explanation for the Soviet collapse in a 2013 address to party cadres. “Why did the Soviet Union disintegrate?” he asked his audience. “An important reason is that in the ideological domain, competition is fierce!” The party leadership is determined to avoid the Soviet mistake. A leaked internal party directive from 2013 describes “the very real threat of Western anti-China forces and their attempt at carrying out westernization” within China. The directive describes the party as being in the midst of an “intense, ideological struggle” for survival. According to the directive, the ideas that threaten China with “major disorder” include concepts such as “separation of powers,” “independent judiciaries,” “universal human rights,” “Western freedom,” “civil society,” “economic liberalism,” “total privatization,” “freedom of the press,” and “free flow of information on the internet.” To allow the Chinese people to contemplate these concepts would “dismantle [our] party’s social foundation” and jeopardize the party’s aim to build a modern, socialist future.

Related: China’s Plans to Win Control of the Global Order.

Submission + - All Dreamwidth links blocked on Facebook; silent deletion of existing links (dreamwidth.org)

JoshuaZ writes: Andrew Drucker has reported https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fandrewducker.dreamwidth.org%2F3861716.html that Facebook has apparently blocked all links to Dreamwidth, a semi-popular blogging/journaling platform with tens of thousands of users. Facebook is not only preventing anyone from posting it, they've also silently deleted all statuses, posts, and replies which have included even a single Dreamwidth links. As of right now, the reason for this is unknown. This may be an overzealous spam filter at work.

Comment Re:100 mhz per core (Score 0) 44

A 100mhz might not seem like much until you give that to 12 cores and 24 threads.

Well you're not, at 12 cores loaded you're thermally limited and tests show no difference to speak of at all. You get a slight boost to single threaded performance but overall this is the dullest upgrade in ages and creating a whole new XT line for it is silly. Should have just called it 3910X, 3810X and 3610X, at least then they'd get points for honesty.

Comment Re:free speech (Score 3, Insightful) 140

Oddly enough I care less that China knows about my personal life than the United States. as China has no jurisdiction over me and what I say or feel. America while I am suppose to be protected by the first amendment, doesn't mean there are people with power who can actually make my life difficult.

Jurisdiction is not the only kind of power. China has repeatedly shown that they don't care if you're an American speaking out in America, if you're badmouthing China they will do what they can to make your life miserable. Of course they'll wrap their demands in weasel words and so will the corporate chain and your business partners but the real message is "STFU or we'll lose our business with China". Like any negotiations will be mysteriously stuck in a quagmire that'll equally mysteriously resolve itself once you're relieved of your position or the partnership is terminated.

Comment Re:Apple just doing what they are being told to do (Score 2) 72

Indeed but Taiwan is not exactly completely independent either. China can turn those screws if it needs to.

To be honest Taiwan's problem is that the had delusions of grandeur, in 1971 when they lost their seat on the UN Security Council they themselves strongly refused any division of China and the creation of an independent Taiwan. Instead they forced it into a vote of who was the "legitimate" owner of China's seat and long story short they lost. If they wanted independence back then, they probably would have gotten it. Their problem now is that China has flipped the script on them, because they were pouting over the loss of the mainland China they never cut their losses and got their independence so now China wants them to answer to Beijing.

They don't realistically have much political or public support in Taiwan though. China is pressuring every other nation to recognize China's claim to Taiwan if they want to have relations with China, but that only makes it a hostile territory they could occupy at great cost - and probably not without an actual shooting war with an army supplied by the US military. My guess is they're eyeing the situation in Hong Kong waiting for the right moment to say status quo is no longer an option, it's either independence or submission and we choose independence. They must see that there's no future in trying to appease China.

Comment Re: Time != Money? (Score 3, Informative) 44

Write no, compile yes. He's pulling code from all the subsystem maintainers (lieutenants) to create the master branch. And they again are mostly pulling other people's patches. They're supposed to make sure it's clean and tested before it reaches Linus but that's not always what happens. If it breaks or he finds bad code it goes back down the chain of command again so they can fix their code again and resubmit.

Comment Re:Going forward (Score 4, Interesting) 33

In rocket science I'd say 10+ launches is well into established already. The Falcon Heavy got their military certification after just three launches. The SLS is still planning to launch crew on their second flight. I suspect your sig is very relevant here:

If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...

My guess is one faulty part or installation brought the mission down. This was not a violent failure, the rocket just lost engine power and stopped. Which means it's probably the QA department and not the design department that needs to get to work.

Comment Re:That's an interesting coincidence (Score 1) 93

I think the most important thing I learned, though, isn't related to either of those fields, and isn't nearly as complicated as either. I've done plenty of dumb things. Most, probably nearly all, of my fuck-ups have been based on short-term thinking, doing what I feel like doing in the moment. (...) I hope to continue to teach my daughter (and myself) the value of delayed gratification, of doing things that are going to make you happy NEXT week, next year, or five years from now, as opposed to what we feel like doing right this moment.

Funny, I wish I had more of the first bit. Not my fuck-ups but the best times are those where I've been living in the moment and let go of all the rational, dull downers like that this junk food isn't good for me or that partying this hard will give me a hangover tomorrow or that this vacation is burning a hole in my wallet. Like I know that I'm overall fairly rational and got my shit in order, can't I get a break when I have a few excesses without that nagging party pooper in the back of my head. It's okay to have a plan for where you want to be five years from now but it's also important to accumulate happy memories on the way.

Comment Re:Bad Managers (Score 1) 79

Bad employees also tend to think they're irreplaceable and they're as common as bad managers. The difference is that bad employees are the manager's problem, a bad manager is your problem. Unless you become the manager, then you see the other side of that equation. I don't mind taking on a tech lead position but if I went into middle management I'd probably end up strangling someone. I have the feeling I'd be one of those technically bright but horribly micromanaging bosses who'd rather be doing my underlings job than doing mine. Which would be mostly herding cats, running interference and communicating upwards, downwards and sideways in the hierarchy.

Comment Re:Much respect for Linus Torvalds (Score 1) 63

Just because something is widely used it does not mean it is actually good. Prominent examples are x86 CPU's or Windows 3.1.

Intel drank that kool-aid and decided to make a CPU architecture where practically everything was exposed to the compiler, it's called IA-64 aka Itanium. They soon found out that a design grounded in reality beats ivory tower theory. ARM is also CISC with micro-ops these days, some instruction complexity is best left hidden. Forcing the compiler to deliver micro-instructions only hurts performance.

Comment Re:That's nice (Score 1) 285

The reason I use whitelist and blacklist is that they're not the same as what's allowed/denied. If you implement say a spam filter and somebody wonders why something does or doesn't get through then "it's whitelisted" or "it's blacklisted" are complete explanations that someone has overridden the regular spam filter that'll also allow and deny emails. If the rules are exhaustive there's no reason not to be more direct. I have no strong opinion about master and slave, I tend to use manager/worker anyway since that's been the most relevant structure for me. But as long as people don't go crazy on the euphemisms we'll be fine. Rudolph/reindeer anyone?

Slashdot Top Deals

Remember Darwin; building a better mousetrap merely results in smarter mice.

Working...