Issue 2163 - Thursday 29th August, 2024

In Today's Issue

The News

Official charges for Pavel Durov made public, released on bail, can't leave France

France charged Telegram CEO Pavel Durov with "web-mastering an online platform in order to enable an illegal transaction in organized group", "refusal to communicate, at the request of competent authorities, information or documents necessary for carrying out and operating interceptions allowed by law" and a bunch of cryptography related crimes like without declaring the use of cryptography or something? I'm no expert on French law, but that sounds a bit weird. That said, I get the feeling France isn't necessarily pissed off about E2EE, but more the fact Telegram doesn't lift a finger to help them crack down on the blatant illegal shit on their platform. Pavel's posted a 5 million euro bail so is free to leave custody, but is not allowed to leave France and has to check in with the police twice a week.

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California passes Safe and Secure Innovation for Frontier Artificial Intelligence Models Act

California has passed the Safe and Secure Innovation for Frontier Artificial Intelligence Models Act. According to Reuters, the bill requires "safety testing for many of the most advanced AI models that cost more than $100 million to develop or those that require a defined amount of computing power", "developers of AI software operating in the state also need to outline methods for turning off the AI models if they go awry" and "hire third-party auditors to assess their safety practices and provide additional protections to whistleblowers speaking out against AI abuses". This article on Lawfare has more detail on the bill if you're keen.

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A dump of Elon Musk related news

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Something I Saw On The Internet

Sony's A95L OLEDs are the best looking TVs on the market

TVs are a pain in the arse to buy if you aren't an informed shopper. Dozens of brands, they all do more or less the same thing, prices all over the place. Which one do ya choose? If image quality is your main concern, a TV shop in the USA got a bunuch of current model 65" units, had them professionally calibrated and invited a group of TV nerds to pixel peep them. The overall winner, once again, is the Sony A95L OLED - which if you remember HDTVTest's same style test but in the UK instead of the USA - had the same result last year. Too bad if you're in Australia though, as Sony seems to have stopped selling the A95L here without any direct replacement! The Samsung S95D OLED was a bee's dick behind the Sony and easily available (QA65S95DAWXXY is the 65"), so get one of those instead for a lazy $5,000.

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Bargains

Image Of The Day

IBM's OS/2 shaped the history of the PC in extremely important ways. For a product that was only mildly commercially successful (it succeeded in very specific market niches), its impact is felt by anyone using an IBM compatible PC to this very day. I happened upon a sealed copy of OS/2 2.0 and I simply couldn't pass it up. After well over a year, it’s time to open it. Unlike previous unboxings, this one will be more thorough as I imagine that not many people will have ever seen OS/2 in box. (Abort Retry Fail)

The End

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