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This week the Trump Administration issued an executive order that imposes a 10 percent tariff on Chinese products shipped to the United States. The order also basically scraps the “de minimis” exemption that allowed Chinese products valued …
This week the Trump Administration issued an executive order that imposes a 10 percent tariff on Chinese products shipped to the United States. The order also basically scraps the “de minimis” exemption that allowed Chinese products valued at less than $800 to be shipped to the US duty-free and with minimal inspections. That exemption is a […]
The post Lilbits: Amazon’s Alexa AI event, Windows 11 MIDI improvements, and Goodbye cheap, fast Chinese delivery? appeared first on Liliputing.
As far as DOJ knows, Elon Musk doesn’t have access to Treasury Dept. data.
On Wednesday, a US district judge, Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, recommended a compromise in a lawsuit seeking a temporary restraining order to stop Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) from accessing Americans' sensitive Treasury Department data.
If both parties agree, the compromise would allow two "special government employees" hired by the Treasury to continue accessing payments data to further DOGE's mission of eliminating government waste. But until the lawsuit is settled, DOGE and anyone outside the Treasury Department would be prohibited from reviewing that data directly, ensuring that nobody's government financial data is shared with any third parties without consent or proper notice.
Kollar-Kotelly was assigned to this case yesterday, but due to the sensitivity of the complaint, she appears motivated to move quickly to ensure that no Americans' private data is illegally shared with anyone outside of the Treasury Department. To that end, she grilled US Department of Justice lawyer Bradley Humphreys to find out exactly who has access to Treasury data and how they are connected to DOGE.
“Twitch is one of the many digital platforms we use to reach new audiences.”
The US space agency said Wednesday it will host a live Twitch stream from the International Space Station on February 12.
NASA, which has 1.3 million followers on the live-streaming video service, has previously broadcast events on its Twitch channel. However, this will be the first time the agency has created an event specifically for Twitch.
During the live event, beginning at 11:45 am ET (16:45 UTC), viewers will hear from NASA astronaut Don Pettit, who is currently on board the space station, as well as Matt Dominick, who recently returned to Earth after the agency’s Crew-8 mission. Viewers will have the opportunity to ask questions about living in space.
“Twitch is one of the many digital platforms we use to reach new audiences.”
The US space agency said Wednesday it will host a live Twitch stream from the International Space Station on February 12.
NASA, which has 1.3 million followers on the live-streaming video service, has previously broadcast events on its Twitch channel. However, this will be the first time the agency has created an event specifically for Twitch.
During the live event, beginning at 11:45 am ET (16:45 UTC), viewers will hear from NASA astronaut Don Pettit, who is currently on board the space station, as well as Matt Dominick, who recently returned to Earth after the agency’s Crew-8 mission. Viewers will have the opportunity to ask questions about living in space.
9070-series Radeon GPUs were announced at CES, with plans to launch in March.
AMD announced its fourth-quarter earnings yesterday, and the numbers were mostly rosy: $7.7 billion in revenue and a 51 percent profit margin, compared to $6.2 billion and 47 percent a year ago. The biggest winner was the data center division, which made $3.9 billion thanks to Epyc server processors and Instinct AI accelerators, and Ryzen CPUs are also selling well, helping the company's client segment earn $2.3 billion.
But if you were looking for a dark spot, you'd find it in the company's gaming division, which earned a relatively small $563 million, down 59 percent from a year ago. AMD's Lisa Su blamed this on both dedicated graphics card sales and sales from the company's "semi-custom" chips (that is, the ones created specifically for game consoles like the Xbox and PlayStation).
Other data sources suggest that the response from GPU buyers to AMD's Radeon RX 7000 series, launched between late 2022 and early 2024, has been lackluster. The Steam Hardware Survey, a noisy but broadly useful barometer for GPU market share, shows no RX 7000-series models in the top 50; only two of the GPUs (the 7900 XTX and 7700 XT) are used in enough gaming PCs to be mentioned on the list at all, with the others all getting lumped into the "other" category. Jon Peddie Research recently estimated that AMD was selling roughly one dedicated GPU for every seven or eight sold by Nvidia.
9070-series Radeon GPUs were announced at CES, with plans to launch in March.
AMD announced its fourth-quarter earnings yesterday, and the numbers were mostly rosy: $7.7 billion in revenue and a 51 percent profit margin, compared to $6.2 billion and 47 percent a year ago. The biggest winner was the data center division, which made $3.9 billion thanks to Epyc server processors and Instinct AI accelerators, and Ryzen CPUs are also selling well, helping the company's client segment earn $2.3 billion.
But if you were looking for a dark spot, you'd find it in the company's gaming division, which earned a relatively small $563 million, down 59 percent from a year ago. AMD's Lisa Su blamed this on both dedicated graphics card sales and sales from the company's "semi-custom" chips (that is, the ones created specifically for game consoles like the Xbox and PlayStation).
Other data sources suggest that the response from GPU buyers to AMD's Radeon RX 7000 series, launched between late 2022 and early 2024, has been lackluster. The Steam Hardware Survey, a noisy but broadly useful barometer for GPU market share, shows no RX 7000-series models in the top 50; only two of the GPUs (the 7900 XTX and 7700 XT) are used in enough gaming PCs to be mentioned on the list at all, with the others all getting lumped into the "other" category. Jon Peddie Research recently estimated that AMD was selling roughly one dedicated GPU for every seven or eight sold by Nvidia.
Unlike Google search, AI writing assistant doesn’t even cite its sources.
When Google launched its AI Overviews features last year, we noted plenty of examples of false, misleading, and even dangerous information that can be contained in the official-looking answers generated by Google's Gemini model. Now, Google has quietly scrubbed one such falsehood from a demo of its AI writing assistant that featured prominently in an ad planned for Sunday's Super Bowl.
The ad in question is part of Google's "50 stories from 50 states" promotion, which will run Gemini ads tailored for different local markets during the Super Bowl on Sunday. The Wisconsin-focused ad, as it was posted on YouTube last week, featured the owner of Wisconsin Cheese Mart asking Google's writing assistant for "a description of Smoked Gouda that would appeal to cheese lovers."
The AI-authored response that was shown in that video—and still appears verbatim on the Wisconsin Cheese Mart website—notes that Gouda is "one of the most popular cheeses in the world, accounting for 50 to 60 percent of the world's cheese consumption." That is almost surely an exaggeration; a 2007 Cheese Market News editorial, for instance, mentions Gouda as only the third-most-popular cheese in the world, after cheddar and mozzarella. A Global Cheese Market analyst report also only includes Gouda in the "Other Cheese" category, while mozzarella, Parmesan, and cheddar each get their own categories.
Unlike Google search, AI writing assistant doesn’t even cite its sources.
When Google launched its AI Overviews features last year, we noted plenty of examples of false, misleading, and even dangerous information that can be contained in the official-looking answers generated by Google's Gemini model. Now, Google has quietly scrubbed one such falsehood from a demo of its AI writing assistant that featured prominently in an ad planned for Sunday's Super Bowl.
The ad in question is part of Google's "50 stories from 50 states" promotion, which will run Gemini ads tailored for different local markets during the Super Bowl on Sunday. The Wisconsin-focused ad, as it was posted on YouTube last week, featured the owner of Wisconsin Cheese Mart asking Google's writing assistant for "a description of Smoked Gouda that would appeal to cheese lovers."
The AI-authored response that was shown in that video—and still appears verbatim on the Wisconsin Cheese Mart website—notes that Gouda is "one of the most popular cheeses in the world, accounting for 50 to 60 percent of the world's cheese consumption." That is almost surely an exaggeration; a 2007 Cheese Market News editorial, for instance, mentions Gouda as only the third-most-popular cheese in the world, after cheddar and mozzarella. A Global Cheese Market analyst report also only includes Gouda in the "Other Cheese" category, while mozzarella, Parmesan, and cheddar each get their own categories.
Vulnerability stripped MotW tag Windows uses to flag Internet-downloaded files.
Researchers said they recently discovered a zero-day vulnerability in the 7-Zip archiving utility that was actively exploited as part of Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine.
The vulnerability allowed a Russian cybercrime group to override a Windows protection designed to limit the execution of files downloaded from the Internet. The defense is commonly known as MotW, short for Mark of the Web. It works by placing a “Zone.Identifier” tag on all files downloaded from the Internet or from a networked share. This tag, a type of NTFS Alternate Data Stream and in the form of a ZoneID=3, subjects the file to additional scrutiny from Windows Defender SmartScreen and restrictions on how or when it can be executed.
The 7-Zip vulnerability allowed the Russian cybercrime group to bypass those protections. Exploits worked by embedding an executable file within an archive and then embedding the archive into another archive. While the outer archive carried the MotW tag, the inner one did not. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2025-0411, was fixed with the release of version 24.09 in late November.
Vulnerability stripped MotW tag Windows uses to flag Internet-downloaded files.
Researchers said they recently discovered a zero-day vulnerability in the 7-Zip archiving utility that was actively exploited as part of Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine.
The vulnerability allowed a Russian cybercrime group to override a Windows protection designed to limit the execution of files downloaded from the Internet. The defense is commonly known as MotW, short for Mark of the Web. It works by placing a “Zone.Identifier” tag on all files downloaded from the Internet or from a networked share. This tag, a type of NTFS Alternate Data Stream and in the form of a ZoneID=3, subjects the file to additional scrutiny from Windows Defender SmartScreen and restrictions on how or when it can be executed.
The 7-Zip vulnerability allowed the Russian cybercrime group to bypass those protections. Exploits worked by embedding an executable file within an archive and then embedding the archive into another archive. While the outer archive carried the MotW tag, the inner one did not. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2025-0411, was fixed with the release of version 24.09 in late November.