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Businesses

Challenging UPS and FedEx, Amazon Opens Its Shipping Network to All Businesses (geekwire.com) 81

This week Amazon opened up its parcel shipping, fulfillment, and distribution "to businesses of all types and sizes." Any business can now ship, store, and deliver "using the same supply chain that supports Amazon," according to Monday's announcement of "Amazon Supply Chain Services."

The move sent shares of UPS and FedEx "tumbling" Monday writes GeekWire. And though both stocks bounced back as the week went on, GeekWire sees this as the latest example of Amazon "turning its internal capabilities into products and services for sale..."

"Amazon had already surpassed both carriers to become the nation's largest parcel shipper by volume, according to parcel-analytics firm ShipMatrix." Initial customers include Procter & Gamble, which is using Amazon's freight network to transport raw materials; 3M, which is using it to move products to distribution centers; Lands' End, which is fulfilling orders across sales channels from Amazon's warehouses; and American Eagle Outfitters, which is using Amazon's parcel service for last-mile delivery. The service can fulfill orders placed through platforms that compete with Amazon's own marketplace, including Walmart, Shopify, TikTok, and others... Peter Larsen, vice president of Amazon Supply Chain Services, compared the launch to the origins of Amazon's cloud business...

In addition to putting Amazon in competition with existing players in the logistics industry, the move also raises questions about data privacy. Amazon has faced accusations of using nonpublic seller data to compete against merchants on its marketplace, which it has denied. Larsen told the Wall Street Journal that the company prohibits using supply chain customer data for its own marketplace decisions, noting that hundreds of thousands of Amazon sellers already trust the company to fulfill orders placed on rival platforms.

The article notes that in his annual shareholder letter Amazon's CEO "said the company is also exploring selling its custom AI chips and robotics to outside customers."

Comment Re:Not just data centers (Score 3, Interesting) 74

A former head of AT&T back when it was The Phone Company made a comment along the lines that the long distance network had to be built to cope with with mother's day and everything else was free. It was used as an example of how guesses about CapEx vs OpEx can go very wrong. It might have been Fred Kappel who said that.

Comment I thought the idea of glasses frames was to hide (Score 1) 56

I want thin frames and a color that sort of just disappears. I don't see putting a camera and battery into that form. Of course I don't see that form much any more and not in the proper colors. It may not help that there seems to be one company in the wold left that makes frames another that makes lenses and one is a subsidiary of the other.

AI

Claude Code Leak Reveals a 'Stealth' Mode for GenAI Code Contributions - and a 'Frustration Words' Regex (pcworld.com) 38

That leak of Claude Code's source code "revealed all kinds of juicy details," writes PC World.

The more than 500,000 lines of code included:

- An 'undercover mode' for Claude that allows it to make 'stealth' contributions to public code bases
- An 'always-on' agent for Claude Code
- A Tamagotchi-style 'Buddy' for Claude

"But one of the stranger bits discovered in the leak is that Claude Code is actively watching our chat messages for words and phrases — including f-bombs and other curses — that serve as signs of user frustration." Specifically, Claude Code includes a file called "userPromptKeywords.ts" with a simple pattern-matching tool called regex, which sweeps each and every message submitted to Claude for certain text matches. In this particular case, the regex pattern is watching for "wtf," "wth," "omfg," "dumbass," "horrible," "awful," "piece of — -" (insert your favorite four-letter word for that one), "f — you," "screw this," "this sucks," and several other colorful metaphors... While the Claude Code leak revealed the existence of the "frustration words" regex, it doesn't give any indication of why Claude Code is scouring messages for these words or what it's doing with them.

Comment It is going to happen so propose a useful solution (Score 1) 193

The laws in several countries are going to require it. My preferred way is for the OS to offer a flag of "This user is of legal age in this region based on information provided to the administrator of this computer." I'll leave it up to the people with compilers to comply or not with their local laws.

My proposal is stuff the flags in a sysctl user.$UID.age var. and then let the browser send info off to other sites just like it does with language selection. That way a pam module (or systemd) can set an over/under age of majority for the region and then let the browser send a "yes/no" flag. The pam module or sysd can calulate that based on a birthday or a +18 flag so you may have to log in to reset it but the birthdate is never sent to the browser let alone to the end web sites.

This gives schools a way to control content. It allows parents to control content. It allows home router vendors to claim to control content. It allows web sites to stop annoying users about being above 16,18 or 21 depending on what they are pushing. The politicians will look at it and say the industry is working with them while patting themselves on the back.

The other solution is let the politician's owners come up with a solution and that will be an expensive id solution that tracks everyone through the web with no way to opt out.

Comment Re: YUP! (Score 1) 118

I'm in favor of fixing this properly before the politicians mandate something stupid.
My proposal is a sysctl value set by a pam module (or systemd on systems infected with that). The browser then does something like language verification much like the HTTP Language headers. Those can be intercepted, checked or forced in environments that have to provide web access to kids like schools. A web site should be able to ask for something like Australia's under 16 and can return a AGE_AU_VIC_Under_16=True if and only if configured to do so. This allows things like online news papers to allow under 16 access to news but not the discussion forums. The proposal still needs work, but it allows for parents to set things as they wish and keep the politicians out of it while letting them claim they fixed it. In the past local ISPs were required to give out software to lock down kids computers and the take up was smaller than the number of people who supported the law.

Portables (Apple)

Apple MacBook Neo Beats Every Single x86 PC CPU For Single-Core Performance (notebookcheck.net) 329

Early benchmarks show the A18 Pro-powered MacBook Neo beating every current x86 CPU in single-core Cinebench performance, including chips from Intel and AMD. Notebookcheck reports: We have performed a couple of benchmarks and were particularly impressed by the single-core performance. Not in the short Geekbench test, but in Cinebench 2024, where a single-core test takes about 10 minutes. The A18 Pro consumes between 3.5-4 Watts in this scenario and scores 147 points. This means it is faster than every other x86 processor in our database, including the two desktop processors Intel Core Ultra 9 285K & AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D. This also means the MacBook Neo beats every modern mobile processor from AMD, Intel and also Qualcomm, even though the upcoming Snapdragon X2 chips should be a bit faster. The A18 Pro is also slightly faster than Apple's own M3 generation in this scenario. Further reading: ASUS Executive Says MacBook Neo is 'Shock' to PC Industry
Oracle

OpenAI Is Walking Away From Expanding Its Stargate Data Center With Oracle (cnbc.com) 41

OpenAI is reportedly backing away from expanding its AI data center partnership with Oracle because newer generations of Nvidia GPUs may arrive before the facility is even operational. CNBC reports: Artificial intelligence chips are getting upgraded more quickly than data centers can be built, a market reality that exposes a key risk to the AI trade and Oracle's debt-fueled expansion. OpenAI is no longer planning to expand its partnership with Oracle in Abilene, Texas, home to the Stargate data center, because it wants clusters with newer generations of Nvidia graphics processing units, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The current Abilene site is expected to use Nvidia's Blackwell processors, and the power isn't projected to come online for a year. By then, OpenAI is hoping to have expanded access to Nvidia's next-generation chips in bigger clusters elsewhere, said the person, who asked not to be named due to confidentiality.
In a post on X, Oracle called the reports "false and incorrect." However, it only said existing projects are on track and didn't address expansion plans.

CNBC notes: "Oracle secured the site, ordered the hardware, and spent billions of dollars on construction and staff, with the expectation of going bigger."

Comment Re:Lest anyone think the problem is just AI slop (Score 3, Informative) 47

The business side of music has been trying to control how much new music is released ever since reproduction because easy in the early days of printed sheet music.

About 25 years ago a radio station in Melbourne had a contest where bands had to send in an album that was less than a year old and had at least 3 songs that weren't covers. Their listening area was about 3 million people and they got 3,000 entries. To me that implies that there is a band for every thousand people who is producing an album worth of music every year. That would imply there should be about 8 million new albums every year globally.

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