• A survey has found that 72% of game developers say Steam is effectively a monopoly in the PC gaming market.  (TechSpot)
  
  No it hasn't.

  In a survey of over 300 executives from large US and UK game companies, 72% either slightly or strongly agreed that Steam constitutes a monopoly over PC games.

  So by "developers" you mean...  Not developers.

  Many customers are so adamant about only purchasing games through Steam that the industry's largest publishers, including EA, Ubisoft, and even Microsoft, have tried - and failed - to withhold their titles from the service.

  Because Steam works.  The competitors less so.
  
  The one standout is GOG, which gets in your way even less than Steam.

• AMD reported its quarterly results and the news is all good.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  "Client" product sales - that is, the CPUs normal humans buy - were up 46% to $2.8 billion.  Gaming revenue soared by 181% to $1.3 billion, though the market is still dominated by Nvidia and AMD's gains are a result of moving from "adequate" to "pretty good" rather than stealing the market lead.
  
  Total revenue was $9.2 billion for the quarter, up 36% from last year, and profits were up 61% to $1.2 billion. 
  
  
  
• The password for the Louvre's video surveillance system was "Louvre".  (PC Gamer)
  
  Oh.
  
  
  
• SK Hynix - Hyundai's memory chip division - has shown off its roadmap for the next few years.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  You can't afford to look at it.
  
  Pricing problems aside, DDR5 is going to be with us for a while.  DDR6 is not expected until 2029 or 2030.  Updates like MRDIMM Gen2 are set to double the speed of DDR5 by the simple trick of using two banks of chips at once, so we'll probably be fine.
  
  
  
• Unicode footguns in Python.  (Python Koans)
  
  (A footgun is a gun designed explicitly for shooting yourself in the foot.)
  
  I've said before that Unicode is a semantic Superfund site, and Python has been around longer than Unicode - though not by much - so it's not surprising that some things are painful.
  
  I do wonder though if there are any programming languages where Unicode is not painful.  Unicode attempts to create a single character set merging every human language in history despite the fact that the rules resolving said characters are often mutually contradictory.
  
  It's a mess.
  
  
  
• Speaking of messes the October Windows 11 update is triggering BitLocker recovery on some systems.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  This is where you boot your PC up and are met by a demand for your BitLocker password, usually despite you never having heard of BitLocker in your life and certainly not having consciously set it up with a password.  
  
  Meaning - if you don't have another PC handy to research the workaround this time - your data is being held ransom by your own computer.
  
  Microsoft had a similar bug back in May.  And July last year.  And August of 2022.
  
  Windows 10's lack of updates looks better every day.
  
  
  
• Figured out the Imagine 1400 and 1500.
  
  These are imaginary computers based strictly on technology available in the 1980s and early 90s, so I've spent a few hours diving into databooks on Bitsavers and working through timing diagrams.
  
  The 1300, nominally appearing in 1989, took things as far as I could go with chips available at the time (and imaginary but plausible CPU and graphics chips).  It used dual-ported VRAM for the first time in the series, and kept the fast timing of the DRAM site of the bus from the earlier models, which was just achievable according to the Micron 1988 databook.
  
  Did it end there?
  
  I hypothesized a model 1400 with essentially two complete graphics subsystems from the 1300 with their output merged, which would mean eight independent memory buses - two sets each of shared and dedicated video RAM, all four of them with both parallel and serial busses because they're all dual ported.
  
  Which might have been fun to play with in 1991 but would be insanely complicated given that there was no compatible upgrade path.
  
  Unless...
  
  What if the next stage of evolution replaced the 10 bit bus not with a 20 bit one, but with 40 bits.
  
  And what if this hypothetical new graphics chip had a 40 bit data bus and a 40 bit address bus.  (And a 40 bit VRAM bus as well.)
  
  And what if it had an extra mode where it split the 40 bit un-multiplexed address bus into four 10-bit multiplexed busses that directly connected to the VRAM.
  
  That would give it the exact same graphics capabilities (in a single chip) that I used five chips and four banks of memory for in the model 1400.
  
  And double the VRAM bus bandwidth because speeds increased just enough by 1993 to do that.
  
  So the 1400 has a reason to exist because our imaginary engineers were cobbling together a solution while they were waiting for a delayed high-end design to reach production.
  
  

Not At All Tech News

• My house has artificial turf at one side and the rear (between the house and a retaining wall) which the builders told me they put in because keeping a lawn alive in those areas would be too much work.
  
  I tried to talk them down a bit on the price because I knew I wanted to replace it with something less plastic, but they weren't having it, and it was a sellers market right then with a big chunk of NSW under water.
  
  Anyway, I had a sudden thought today that the surface under the fake grass was rather hard underfoot, and if for some reason they had concreted it that would drastically limit my options.  (I'm thinking of a mix of pavers and pebbles, maybe a couple of strategic shrubs, but shrubs don't grow well in concrete unless you really don't want them to).
  
  Peeled back a segment.
  
  Nope.  Just packed earth.  All good.

Posted by: normal at Friday, November 07 2025 05:47 AM (e0fX0)

Posted by: cxt217 at Friday, November 07 2025 11:19 AM (ZLF73)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, November 07 2025 03:44 PM (PiXy!)

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