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Submission + - Time To Flash OpenWrt

ptorrone writes: The FCC just added all foreign-made consumer routers to its Covered List, banning new models from receiving authorization for import or sale in the US. The agency cited Volt, Flax, and Salt Typhoon cyberattacks, but cybersecurity researchers note the same vulnerabilities existed on American-brand routers too (Salt Typhoon targeted Cisco hardware). No evidence of deliberate backdoors has been presented. Netgear stock jumped 16% after hours. There isn't a single router currently manufactured entirely in the USA. Existing models are grandfathered but firmware updates are only guaranteed through March 2027. If you're running a home network and don't want to wait for the government to pick winners, now's the time to flash OpenWrt, build a router from a Banana Pi or Raspberry Pi with pfSense, or support open-source networking projects like OPNsense. When proprietary supply chains get cut by policy, open-source firmware becomes the supply chain. Adafruit has a writeup with more actionable steps for makers and hackers.

Submission + - The AI CEO's Favorite Book Predicted His Own Crisis (adafruit.com)

ptorrone writes: Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has been recommending Richard Rhodes's "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" to employees for years. Copies sit on coffee tables at Anthropic HQ. The book documents what happened every time Manhattan Project scientists tried to set conditions on how their work was used: Szilard was threatened with internment, Bohr was told he was near "mortal crimes," Oppenheimer learned to stop organizing or lose access. Last week the Pentagon designated Anthropic a supply chain risk for refusing to remove guardrails on autonomous weapons and mass surveillance. OpenAI signed the same contract hours later with the same red lines, just worded differently. Rhodes already told us how this goes. Adafruit has the full review.

Comment Re:What he reaily meant was (Score 1) 142

Why would a data center be the size of a Rubik's cube? That is an illogical requirement. We just don't call small computers data centers regardless of how powerful and capable they are.

Data centers serve models for not a single user, but for a large user base.

You can run models that previously took a data center, on a small computer the size of a Rubik's Cube.

This runs on a desktop with a good video card.
https://huggingface.co/bartows...
https://huggingface.co/Qwen/Qw...

It exceeds the performance of models that previously required to be run in data centers.
With the right setup, it codes better than most people.

Obviously, there will always be better, larger models.

Comment Re:Homework is largely useless (Score 1) 46

We are leaving behind a world of wonders, of AI and robots, things that were only dreamed of a century ago.
Is there a social disruption? Certainly. Whenever there is a massive shift in technology it is inevitable.
It happened with industrial revolution, but it gave prosperity to everyone eventually, even if there were social upheavals in the process.
The same will happen again. There will be a decade or two of chaos at least. The population needs to contract.
Better farming and medicine allowed for a very large work force. AI and robotics are removing the need for it. Change is painful.

Comment Re:overpopulation (Score 1) 142

I don't think there is a need to make laws. It's the natural human instinct after a certain degree if intellectual maturity to have fewer progeny because they see how complex life now is.

China was criticized to breed like rabbits once too, but look at them now. With development comes lower fertility. That also applies to developed parts of India and middle east.

Comment Re:What he reaily meant was (Score 1) 142

Why do you need human brain models? They are replacing for tasks for now, not your whole life.
They are more energy efficient than humans for many tasks. A small 30B, and sometimes an 8B model, can code faster and better than an average coder. That does not take a lot of energy.
Eventually though, we expect full human level models to be more energy efficient than humans. That's not too many years away.

Comment Re:What he reaily meant was (Score 1) 142

Claude code will write a lot more code than a human in a day.
Silicon is already more efficient than wetware for a very large number of tasks.
Our brains aren't meant for the kind of work we do.
What do you think is more efficient to multiply 2 large numbers, you are a tiny calculator?
Training a model has about the lifetime carbon output of 4 average people in US. That's training, not inferencing.

Submission + - LLMs Now Write and Hardware-Test Their Own Firmware (adafruit.com)

ptorrone writes: Adafruit's Ladyada has been running OpenClaw on a Raspberry Pi 5 with Claude Opus 4.5 managing Codex subagents to autonomously write firmware libraries, then physically verify them against real hardware. The setup parses datasheets, generates a development and test plan, writes the driver, and validates it — using a Neopixel ring to confirm a color sensor actually reads RGB correctly, no humans in the loop. She calls it "agentic test-driven firmware development." The catch: you still need a human reviewing for reward hacking, where models optimize for passing tests rather than correct functionality. Built on top of Adafruit's open-source repos. Blog post and video demo.

Comment Re:Teenager in a 72 year old's body (Score 1) 205

Setting aside the absolute purist position of Stallman, the point of the copyright law was to give protections to the creators with the understanding that the created works would enter the public domain so that they can constitute a common culture. This was initially 14 years, which was quite reasonable, that later turned into life + 70 years, that is the cause of distrust in that law.

If you polled non-teenagers, I doubt that the majority would suggest a 100 year copyright protection was a fair period. Laws should reflect the consensus of fairness, not behind the scenes deals with politicians by organized power centers.

Comment Re:I think (Score 1) 71

> gamers suck, the worst and most annoying and most entitled group of fans who never know what they want and demand everything

The customer is always right.

It's not a monolithic group. Almost 50% belong to it. The gaming marketplace has a lot of choice. So studios actually have to compete. They should be glad that their customers are letting them know exactly what they want and if they can't, they will lose business to someone who can. That's the essence of a free market, no?

> all they demand is whatever the next trash from unisoft has

They are not, which is why Ubisoft is crashing to the ground.

> while not paying any attention to the entire mid and indie level scene where there are also really good movies being made

But that is exactly what is happening. Indie segment has had a resurgence because AAA has lost the plot. Indie segment is set to double over the next 5 years while Ubisoft is going underground. That sounds exactly like what you want.

Submission + - Washington State Wants DRM for 3D Printers (adafruit.com)

ptorrone writes: Washington State lawmakers are proposing bills (HB 2320 and HB 2321) that would require 3D printers and CNC machines to block certain designs using software-based “firearms blueprint detection algorithms.” In practice, this means scanning every print file, comparing it against a government-maintained database, and preventing “skilled users” from bypassing the system.

Supporters frame this as a response to untraceable “ghost guns,” but even federal prosecutors admit the tools involved are ordinary manufacturing equipment. Critics warn the language is overbroad, technically unworkable, hostile to open source, and likely to push printing toward cloud-locked, subscription-based systems—while doing little to stop criminals.

Full analysis:
Washington’s 3D Printing Bills Are Bad for STEM, Business, and Open Source

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