• The dumbest things that happened in tech all year, apart from tech journalism.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Not entirely a bad list.
  
  I mean, the list is good.  The things that happened were stupid, which makes it a good list of stupid things.
  
  
  

Tech News

• Asus has announced price increases across its product range, blaming AI, which seems fair for once.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  The degree of price increase for individual products depends on...  Things.
  
  
  
• xAI has purchased a third building for its "Colossus" datacenter in Memphis, planning to increase its AI training capacity to 2GW.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  About five million desktop PCs.  If you were wondering where all the RAM went, that's where.
  
  
  
• I recently lamented the lack of affordable PCIe switches for versions faster than 3.0.  But there are affordable PCIe 4.0 switches readily available because there is one on every current motherboard.
  
  Here's an open-source design using the AMD B650 chipset to provide two extra M.2 slots, four SATA ports, and a 20Gbps USB header.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  It's not commercially available but reportedly costs about $40 to make.
  
  
  
• Lawyers for Charlie Javice, on trial for defrauding JPMorgan of $175 million, have reportedly defrauded JP Morgan of tens of millions more.  (Bloomberg)  (archive site)
  
  Since Javice became a JPMorgan executive after the bank bought her student finance company, Frank, before finding that she had created millions of nonexistent user accounts to inflate the company's value, JPMorgan is contractually obliged to pay for her defence.
  
  Javice has taken that to what seem to be her usual levels, hiring two additional legal firms that billed a combined $360,000 per day during her six week trial.
  
  Javice was convicted and sentenced to seven years in jail for fraud, but is currently out of jail pending appeal, which JPMorgan is also required to pay for.
  
  
  
• Next looming shortage: Diodes.  (CNBC)  (archive site)
  
  The Netherlands seized commodity semiconductor maker Nexperia, which produces low-end chips and discrete components for the embedded market, and which had been bought by China, after the US raised the very obvious security concerns.
  
  These parts are widely used in, well, everything.  Home appliances, cars, and, yes, computers.  They were manufactured in Europe and then shipped to China in bulk for packaging before being re-exported, and now China is just not re-exporting anything.
  
  It's a mess.
  
  
  
• The Canon EOS R6 Mark III is a camera.  (The Verge)  (archive site)
  
  A pretty expensive camera, but a good one.  $2799 for the camera alone, but offered alongside is a $470 45mm f/1.2 lens, which is a remarkable price for such a fast lens.
  
  
  
• If you want to turn your Raspberry Pi 5 into a router, Waveshare has just what you need.  (Liliputing)
  
  $40 for a board that adds four gigabit Ethernet ports; $50 for four 2.5Gb ports.
  
  The Pi can't run four 2.5Gb ports at once at full speed, but that's rarely an issue for a router, more for a switch.