Ambient Irony

Friday, March 28

Daily News Stuff 28 March 2025

Tea And Cake Or Death Edition

Top Story

Facing the failure of its latest fantastically expensive AAAAA title, Assassin's Creed XIV: The Assassining, floundering French slopmaker Ubisoft has spun off what few series it hasn't completely murdered into a new subsidiary and taken 1.16 billion euros from Tencent for a 25% stake. (WCCFTech)

What does this deal leave for the parent company?

Basically, nothing.

Tech News

Asking good questions is harder than giving great answers. (Dan Cohen)

Well, not quite. He's talking about assessing the intelligence of AI, and the point is that asking questions that actually assess that intelligence, rather than creating a thousand page general-knowledge quiz where everything is easily looked up, is harder than answering that poorly designed quiz assuming you are allowed to look things up.
AMD's new 9600 non-X is about as fast as the 9600X while using the exact same amount of power. (Hot Hardware)

Okay. Not entirely sure what the point is, though it may come bundled with a cooler (and AMD's stock coolers are not complete rubbish).
Amazon has shipped my 128GB memory kit. It's on sale for $260 if anyone else wants one.

You can see on that page that the equivalent 96GB kit is $230, so bumping it up to the next tier is well worth it.

As I mentioned, I don't need 128GB of RAM, but the point of this build is to go a bit beyond so I can play around with things. My work laptop has 40GB of RAM and I can hit that mark without trying.

The other factor is that DDR5 runs much slower if you fill up all four slots. These are pretty standard 5600MHz models, but if you fill all four slots, the memory speed drops to 3600MHz. The real world effect isn't quite that dramatic ranging from insignificant to quite noticeable, but best to avoid that fuss unless you really need more than a single dual-channel kit can provide.
Developers are fighting a war with AI web crawlers. (Tech Crunch)

AI web crawlers are asshoe.

Even more so than regular web crawlers, and I've blocked plenty of those.

Musical Interlude

Musical Interlude List

For those keeping track.

29/3 Jenny Morris - Saved Me

28/3 Penguin Cafe Orchestra - Air a Danser

27/3 OK Go - Needing/Getting

26/3 Animals - House of the Rising Sun

25/3 Girls Generation - Dancing Queen

24/3 Led Zeppelin - Immigrant Song

23/3 Dodie Stevens - Pink Shoelaces

22/3 Rose - APT

21/3 Rolling Stones - Paint it Black

20/3 Cheap Trick - Dream Police

19/3 Doors - Light My Fire

18/3 Gangajang - Sounds of Then

17/3 Supertramp - Logical Song

16/3 Split Enz - Dirty Creature

15/3 The Kinks - Lola

14/3 Julian Lennon - Now You're In Heaven

13/3 Gerry Rafferty - Baker Street

12/3 Skyhooks - Horror Movie

11/3 White Stripes - Seven Nation Army

10/3 Orff - O Fortuna (Wrong Lyrics)

9/3 Dragon - April Sun in Cuba

8/3 Psychedelic Furs - Love My Way

7/3 Bryan Ferry - Let's Stick Together

6/3 Petula Clark - Downtown

5/3 David Bowie - Ashes to Ashes

4/3 Deborah Conway - Alive and Brilliant

3/3 Wendy Matthews - Token Angels

2/3 Elias Naslin - Stick Together (AMV)

1/3 Flowers - We Can Get Together

28/2 Choirboys - Run to Paradise

27/2 Diana Ross - Chain Reaction

26/2 Talking Heads - Road to Nowhere

25/2 Garbage - Cherry Lips

24/2 Mariya Takeuchi - Plastic Love

23/2 Mental as Anything - The Nips Are Getting Bigger

22/2 Royal Republic - Getting Along (AMV)

21/2 Kate Bush - Cloudbusting

20/2 One Republic - I Lived (AMV)

19/2 Hoodoo Gurus - Wipeout

18/2 Shocking Blue - Venus

17/2 Altered Images - I Could Be Happy

16/2 Norwegian Recycling - Six Songs Collide

15/2 Chumbawumba - Tubthumping

14/2 Joan Jett - I Love Rock N' Roll

13/2 Suzi Quatro - Devils Gate Drive

12/2 One Republic - Counting Stars (AMV)

11/2 Kate Ceberano - Brave

10/2 Big Pig - Breakaway

9/2 Traveling Wilburys - End Of The Line

8/2 First 12 Minutes of MTV

7/2 Harold Faltemeyer - Axel F (Amiga)

6/2 Creedence Clearwater Revival - Proud Mary

5/2 Art of Noise - Paranoimia

4/2 Stranglers - Golden Brown

3/2 Eddie Rabbitt - I Love a Rainy Night

2/2 Queen - Crazy Little Thing Called Love

1/2 AC/DC - Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap

31/1 Van Morrison - Brown Eyed Girl

30/1 Sara Nagare ft. Jinn - Am I Ever Gonna See Your Face Again (Cover)

29/1 Dire Straits - Sultans of Swing

28/1 Arcade Fire - Everything Now (AMV)

27/1 Goanna - Solid Rock

26/1 Carpenter Brut - Hairspray Hurricane (AMV)

25/1 Saint Motel - Van Horn

24/1 Good Lovelies - Crabbukkit (AMV) (Cover)

23/1 Weird Al - Tacky

22/1 TISM - Everyone Else Has Had More Sex Than Me

21/1 Gary Numan - Cars

20/1 Puretone - Addicted to Bass

19/1 Elvis Presley - A Little More Conversation

18/1 Crowded House - Weather With You

17/1 Bangles - Walk Like An Egyptian

16/1 Chris Rea - Let's Dance

15/1 Blondie - Atomic

14/1 Lucky Starr - I've Been Everywhere

13/1 Swingers - Counting the Beat

12/1 Beatles - Here Comes The Sun

11/1 Babymetal - Gimme Chocolate!!

10/1 Promises - Baby It's You

9/1 American Authors - Best Day Of My Life (AMV)

8/1 Scatman John - Scatman

7/1 TV on the Radio - Lazerray (AMV)

6/1 Wintergatan - Marble Machine

5/1 Cardigans - Lovefool

4/1 The Grid - Swamp Thing

4/1 Midas - Touch Tone Telephone (Cover)

3/1 Chantoozies - Wanna Be Up

31/12 Belle Stars - Iko Iko

31/12 Madonna - Material Girl

31/12 B-52's - Love Shack

Disclaimer: Nothing is everything.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:41 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 961 words, total size 8 kb.

1 I was trying to recall why that Penguin Cafe Orchester[sic] stuff seemed so hauntingly familiar, and I let it play to the last bit: "Music For a Found Harmonium". Now, I'm not sure where I first came across that piece, but it's one of those bits of music that instantly takes me back to one particular time, one particular group of people, where I was living, the smells, the companionship. Heavens!

Thank you, Pixy!

Posted by: normal at Saturday, March 29 2025 12:01 PM (bg2DR)

2 You're welcome. I didn't really discover the rest of Penguin Cafe Orchestra's ouvre until later, but Music For a Found Harmonium was my entry point as well.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Saturday, March 29 2025 12:22 PM (PiXy!)

3 Not that it matters, but the 128 package is "unavailable"
It sold out in 1 day (maybe 2)
Here is a memory related question:

How much do 4 sticks of memory suck over 2 sticks with the same capacity? (4 X 16 versus 2 X 64 - not that this is the only instance)?

Need a new PC, and my nearest/cheapest supplier always has great deals on CPU/motherboard/memory bundles. Should I ditch the 2 X 32 and buy 2 x 64 or take the 2 x 32 in the bundle and add 2 X 32 extra?

Posted by: Zendo Deb at Sunday, March 30 2025 06:57 AM (Ux1Y0)

4 64GB is enough for most systems. I do crazy stuff which is why I went up to 128GB.
As for how much it sucks to have four DIMMs - for most things it's only around 5% slower in real-world performance. Decompressing files is one of the few cases where you notice - it's 15-20% slower - but it's also not something people spend most of their time doing. If you don't have a graphics card but just use integrated graphics, that can get a lot slower.
If you have 64GB and it turns out you need more for a particular application, just add more and don't worry too much.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, March 30 2025 04:22 PM (PiXy!)

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