• AMD has explained that when they said that drivers for their RX 5000 and RX 6000 graphics cards (and integrated graphics with the RDNA 1 and 2 architectures respectively) were entering maintenance mode with only bug fixes to be released and not optimisations for individual games, they didn't mean maintenance mode, they meant maintenance mode.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Everyone clear on that?
  
  Good.
  
  Long stupid story short, they will still be updating the drivers for related boards and APUs, just not promising to address the quirks of every game that comes along.
  
  Also, the release note saying they were dropping support for the USB-C port on RX 7900 series boards was bullshit.  Yes, it's in the official release notes; yes, it's officially bullshit.
  
  The previous generation - the RX 400 and RX 500 series, which were the same thing with different numbers - is still kind of dead but we already knew that.  You can still find new-in-box RX 580s but they're starting to dry up now.  The XFX models I grabbed early this year are completely gone.
  
  Update: Turns out my supplier found another four of them hiding somewhere. Priced around $100 including sales tax.
  

• Some crazy person has created a version of Windows 7 that fits in just 69MB of disk space.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Considering that a decent SSD costs about 5c per GB, that's about 0.4c of space.
  
  Also, it isn't actually useful for anything.  It runs, but it doesn't run most software without you manually installing a bunch more system files.
  
  
  
• Those videos explaining how to bypass Windows 11's online account requirement during installation that YouTube has been merrily deleting?  Blame AI.  (The Register)
  
  YouTube hasn't said anything, but when a video is taken down instantly, and an appeal is also rejected instantly, that's AI.
  
  
  
• YouTube was probably too busy to comment on the situation because the people at the top are occupied with laying off the people at the bottom to focus more heavily on the AI that is already destroying the site.  (CNBC)  (archive site)
  
  Oh, good.
  
  
  
• Testing Highpoint's RocketAIC 7608AW.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  This is a PCIe 5.0 card with a PCIe 5.0 switch chip on board and eight PCIe 5.0 M.2 slots.  So it's fast, but it's also very expensive with the bare card priced at $1999.
  
  The fault there seems to be mainly the PCIe 5.0 switch chip.  There don't seem to be any products out there at a reasonable price.
  
  The QNAP 4-port M.2 card that I have costs less than $200 on Amazon, but that's PCIe 3.0.  Anything more recent will cost you an arm and a leg and a kidney and maybe a cornea.
  
  
  
• Israel demanded Amazon and Google use a secret "wink" code to sidestep legal orders.  (The Guardian)
  
  Warrant canaries.  What these subliterate fascists are talking about are warrant canaries.
  
  A warrant canary is a thing that appears to be normal until and unless the company receives a warrant with a gag order attached, the reasoning being that while gag orders are still legal, they can't compel you to keep your pet canary singing.
  
  Particularly if they don't know you have a pet canary.
  
  No fault attaches to Israel in this.  All the blame attaches to the totalitarian regimes that necessitate this sort of warning mechanism.
  
  And their pet media mouthpieces.
  
  
  
• When Canva bought Affinity in March last year, everyone wondered how long it would take them to fuck up a good and affordable multi-platform product range.  It turns out the answer was 19 months.  (Ars Technica)
  
  Good news first: The whole Affinity product range is now free, bundled into a single application simply called Affinity.
  
  Not really a problem news: To get the full functionality you need to pay $120 per year for a Canva subscription, but the only function gated behind the paywall right now is AI slop.  The free version does everything the three Affinity apps could do before, except...
  
  Problem news: Affinity v3 and read but not write Affinity v2 files.  If you use the new app there's no going back, unless you re-export to a third-party format and lose internal history.
  
  It could have been much worse, but they could also not have done this at all.
  
  
  
• A new mathematical proof debunks the idea that the universe is a simulation except it does nothing of the fucking sort.  (Phys.org)

  "It has been suggested that the universe could be simulated.  If such a simulation were possible, the simulated universe could itself give rise to life, which in turn might create its own simulation.  This recursive possibility makes it seem highly unlikely that our universe is the original one, rather than a simulation nested within another simulation," says Dr. Faizal.  "This idea was once thought to lie beyond the reach of scientific inquiry.  However, our recent research has demonstrated that it can, in fact, be scientifically addressed."

  No it hasn't.

  The team demonstrated that even this information-based foundation cannot fully describe reality using computation alone.  They used powerful mathematical theorems - including Gödel's incompleteness theorem-to prove that a complete and consistent description of everything requires what they call "non-algorithmic understanding."

  Yes, that's cute.  But we already have Gödel's incompleteness theorems (there's two of them) and this doesn't seem to tell us anything new at all - just a limit in the ability to determine the truth of certain mathematical statements.
  
  The second problem, though, is that no-one has ever shown that "non-algorithmic understanding" exists, could possibly exist, or has any kind of clear definition.

  The team's conclusion is clear and marks an important scientific achievement, says Dr. Faizal.
  
  "Any simulation is inherently algorithmic - it must follow programmed rules," he says.

  There's just one small problem here: This is completely false.
  
  
  
• Speaking of every game that comes along Escape from Duckov, a combat game involving ducks written by a five-person team in China, has sold two million copies in two weeks, while western titles with budgets in the tens of millions of dollars continue to flounder.
  
  Just a month ago, Megabonk, written by a one-man team, sold a million copies in two weeks...  While western titles with budgets in the tens of millions of dollars continued to flounder.
  
  And before that it was Silksong, written by three guys in Australia, selling 6 million copies, and before that it was Schedule 1, written by just one guy in Australia, selling 5 million copies.
  
  It starts to feel like the established video game companies are doing something wrong.
  
  
  

• Meanwhile Nintendo's patent on capturing monsters and putting them in your pocket, which the company planned to use as a legal bludgeon against Palworld, a game where you capture monsters and put them in your pocket, has been rejected by the Japanese patent office for being "boring and stupid".  (MSN)
  
  Actually they just said the patent lacked originality, which of course it fucking does because Nintendo waited thirty years before trying to patent it.
   
  
  

Musical Interlude

Posted by: PatBuckman at Saturday, November 01 2025 11:42 PM (rcPLc)

Posted by: Joe Redfield at Sunday, November 02 2025 02:32 AM (KOtXO)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, November 02 2025 07:10 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Sunday, November 02 2025 01:22 PM (rcPLc)

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