• You might not be interested in Langford's basilisk, but Langford's basilisk is interested in you.  (Nerds.xyz)
  
  Langford's basilisk is a science fiction concept where images can be crafted specifically to rewire the brain.
  
  This doesn't work well on humans - and a good thing too, because in the original story it was instantly fatal.  But guess what can also see and in some sense understand images and has no separation of instructions and data?

• Scientists have deciphered a 2000 year old lump of charcoal.  (Smithsonian)
  
  The charcoal was originally a scroll from Herculaneum, destroyed along with the rest of the city in the eruption of Vesuvius in the year 79.  And much of it was destroyed again in 19th and 20th century attempts to decipher the carbonised chunk.
  
  If you think I'm exaggerating the scroll's condition, the article has pictures.
  
  
  
• Speaking of carbonised scrolls, why were two scientific papers by Max Planck retracted?  (Science)
  
  Because computers are dumb.
  
  
  
• A tiny coffee table the size of a scorpion is forcing scientists to rethink carpentry.  (Scitech Daily)
  
  Because headline writers are also dumb.
  
  
  
• With DDR3 and even DDR2 RAM prices on the increase, how about DDR1?  Is that still safe?  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Maybe.  And you can run Windows 11 on it if you can find the rest of the parts in working order.  IoT Edition, anyway, which doesn't have the pointless restrictions of the desktop version.
  
  
  
• Analysts expect memory prices to double by the end of the year and increase by another 40% next year, before easing slightly in 2028 maybe.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Yay.
  
  
  
• Reservations for Valve's Steam Machine are being resold on eBay for $2700.  (WCCFTech)
  
  That's for an entry level computer that is already wildly overpriced at $1349 thanks to the DRAM Apocalypse.  Not clear if that includes the cost of the Gabe Cube or if it's just the reservation.
  
  
  
• The PlayStation 6 is expected to cost at least $1000.  (Notebook Check)
  
  Sony is not planning to delay its release because things are only going to get worse.
  
  
  
• Speaking of getting worse, Sony will be removing 551 films from the libraries of PlayStation Network customers in the UK and Europe.  (Notebook Check)
  
  And no, they won't be getting refunds.
  
  
  
• Casio has reintroduced three models of its classic digital watches in the US, priced at $55.  (Notebook Check)
  
  Wait.  That's actually not terrible.  What's going on here?
  
  
  

Not At All Tech News

Musical Interlude

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, June 29 2026 01:24 AM (1zWbY)

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, June 29 2026 01:25 AM (1zWbY)

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• OpenAI has restricted ChatGPT 5.6 to a select list of customers, saying such regulations shouldn't be the norm.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  After spending years pushing for regulatory capture.
  
  The captor, captioned.

• Apple's upcoming M7 processor is expected to bring nearly 60% more memory bandwidth than the M5, and AI performance gains with a similar or greater margin.  (WCCFTech)
  
  If I can't reuse the RAM that I'm paying $25 per gigabyte for, I want the best CPU performance I can possibly get.  If that means an M7 Max, so be it.
  
  The M7 is expected in the first half of next year, after a lame-duck rollout of the M6 later this year.  There won't be an M6 Pro or Max version.
  
  
  
• Apple is seeking access to RAM from China's CXMT, previously blacklisted over dumping allegations.  (WCCFTech)
  
  The allegations were that CXMT was dumping DDR4 chips on the market not only below manufacturing cost for the Big Three, but below the price of second-hand modules.
  
  The allegations were true, but that hardly matters at this point.
  
  
  
• Apple is also planning to upgrade the iPhone 20 from the current 8GB to...  9GB.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Thanks, tech industry.
  
  
  
• Which way DDR4 owner?  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  AMD's 5800X3D matches Intel's 14700K in gaming performance when both are paired with DDR4 memory, but the 20 core Intel chip mops the floor with the 8 core AMD model for multi-threaded productivity workloads.
  
  On the other hand, the 5800X3D used a maximum of 120W in testing; the 14700K drew over 300W.
  
  
  
• Also, you can't get a 5800X3D.  (Notebook Check)
  
  It sold out.
  
  
  
• Intel's upcoming Nova Lake chips, built on the latest 2nm class processes, will deliver relief from these power budgets, right?  Right?  (WCCFTech)
  
  The high-end Nova Lake models will have a peak power consumption of 474W and require three EPS 8-pin additional power connectors on the motherboard.
  
  
  
• Polish memory module maker Goodram has reintroduced 4GB DDR4 modules.  (WCCFTech)
  
  The same stuff that was being ripped out of corporate PCs as they were trashed just a couple of years ago.
  
  Make friends with your IT guy.  He probably has a treasure trove of old parts like these.
  
  
  

Musical Interlude

Posted by: PatBuckman at Sunday, June 28 2026 12:03 AM (s6adZ)

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• As we saw yesterday, Micron has locked in contracts delivering the company 90% margins.  (The Register)
  
  For the next five years.
  
  
  
• Apple has raised prices on everything except its phones by between 20% and 30%.  (Notebook Check)
  
  Apple's memory prices were starting to look almost reasonable given the chaos going on in the PC market.
  
  No longer.
  
  Also, all the high-end models like the 512GB Mac Studio are simply gone.
  
  The MacBook Neo now starts at $699 rather than $599.
  

• The most expensive Mac now costs $14,399 - and it only has 96GB of RAM.  (WCCFTech)
  
  I bought 96GB of RAM six months ago for $300.  Yes, it was older, slower DDR4, but that was already months into the Rampocalypse and Apple now charges that much for 12GB.
  
  
  
• Apple will not be releasing M6 Pro or Max versions.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Those will wait for the M7 range.
  
  Meanwhile we're still waiting for the M5 Ultra - there was no M4 Ultra - but not making any plans to buy it given the pricing of the M3 Ultra models I just mentioned.
  
  
  
• The Chuwi UniBook, featuring Intel's low-end Wildcat Lake processor, is now available in the US for $449.  (Liliputing)
  
  It has a lower resolution screen than the MacBook Neo, but has ten I/O ports including wired Ethernet compared with just three on the Neo.  Weight is almost identical as well.
  
  And it's now significantly cheaper rather than just barely.
  
  
  
• Re-reviewing AMD's Ryzen 5800X3D.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  It's back and it's exactly the same as it was before but $100 cheaper.
  
  If you mostly want to play games and you have a good graphics card and already have a bunch of DDR4 memory, it might make sense.  But at $350 the eight core 5800X3D costs more than the sixteen core 5900XT, and unless you only play games it might not be the best choice.
  
  I think I might go for the 5900XT.  I checked the Passmark subscores and it actually performs well except on a couple of specific tests where it is limited by the DDR4 bandwidth.   For the stuff I tend to do it will be twice as fast as the 5800X3D.
  
  
  
• If you're looking for a cheap DDR5 CPU, AMD's 9600X and 7600X are discounted right now.  (WCCFTech)
  
  To $180 and $150 respectively.
  
  
  
• Xbox prices are going up again, and the 2TB model is going away.  (WCCFTech)
  
  I have an Xbox Series X.  In my closet.  In the original packaging.  Which it has never left.
  
  
  
• On the plus side, Microsoft has extended free Windows 10 updates to October 2027.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  So there's that.
  
  
  
• Anthropic says that Chinese competitor Alibaba must be punished for infringing on their copyright on Claude.  (Ars Technica)
  
  Stop laughing, this is serious.
  
  
  
• IBM has demonstrated its first chip made on a 0.7nm process.  (IBM)
  
  This isn't expected to reach production for another five years, but in the photos you can see the true scale of the advance because you can count the individual silicon atoms.  They use a transmission electron microscope to scan the chip, and it can actually resolve that level of detail.
  
  
  
• Qualcomm is preparing new server CPUs for launch in 2028.  (WCCFTech)
  
  The Dragonfly C1000 will feature 256 cores running at 5GHz and will support PCIe 7.0.
  
  
  
• At the other end of the server scale is the Rmatamini P99M.  (Liliputing)
  
  It's a compact 8"x8"x6" box with a sixteen core Intel CPU, 16GB of RAM, 512GB of SSD, and an Nvidia graphics card, and starts at just $239.
  
  There's a catch or two: The CPU is an Intel Xeon E5-2698v3 from 2014, the memory is DDR4 (which might be good or bad depending), and the Nvidia GPU starts with the GTS 450 from 2010.  For $369 you get upgraded to the much more capable GTX 1650.

• Walmart has signed a deal to buy 176 megawatts of nuclear power for 15 years.  (MSN)
  
  Enough, says the article, to power 150,000 homes, assuming those homes have gas heating and no gaming PCs.
  
  
  
• The Trump administration has announced $17.5 billion in loans for 10 new nuclear reactors.  (AP News)
  
  Coming soon to a Walmart near you.  Well, soon is about ten years from now.  Soonish.

• Grand Theft Auto VI will come in an empty box and cost $80.  (The Verge)
  
  They promised a physical edition.  Technically they didn't promise to put anything in it.
  
  
  
• Disney Wanted to buy Twitter and the James Bond franchise and to merge with Apple.  (The Verge)
  
  None of this came to pass, and considering the train wrecks they made of everything they did acquire during Bob Iger's tenure, we can be glad of that.
  
  
  
• Slate Auto's new electric truck is here, starting at $24,950.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Any colour so long as it's gray.
  
  
  
• Robot from the future Mike Pall is working on LuaJIT 3.0.  (GitHub)
  
  LuaJIT is a compiled version of the Lua programming language, that is tiny, bug-free, and impossibly fast.  That's why its creator got termed "a robot from the future".
  
  
  
• Microsoft's Majorana is poop, says a quantum computing researcher.  (The Register)
  
  Microsoft recently announced Majorana 2, a major breakthrough in quantum computing.  A new paper in Nature says not so fast, and maybe not at all.
  
  
  
• The memory crunch is paying off for this US company.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Spoiler: It's Micron, the only major US player in the memory space.  I was hoping for some story about a plucky startup recycling e-waste into working components or, well, literally anything else.  I am disappoint.
  
  
  
• My new tablet arrived.  They said it would, but deliveries to country towns in Australia can often take years.  It has 12GB of RAM.
  
  
  
• Apple was infamous for years for slapping a 1000% markup on memory in their phones and computers.  Now the memory companies are doing exactly the same thing to Apple.  (WCCFTech)
  
  If Apple wants to keep its old margins you could end up paying $200 per GB.
  
  
  
• The RedMagic Gaming Tablet 5 Pro is a new small Android tablet.  (Notebook Check)
  
  I'm a big fan of small Android tablets, but I just got one today - on top of the one I already have, and the other one I have that sucks so I never use it - so I don't need to care for five years of so.

Posted by: J Greely at Thursday, June 25 2026 11:07 PM (oJgNG)

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• It was Prime Day again.  Here are the deals you missed.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  There was a reasonable price for the 4TB Samsung 9100 Pro SSD, but not on Amazon and the deal is over and they're out of stock.
  
  
  
• For me, the deal of the day was on the Lenovo Legion Tab Gen 3, cut from A$1000 to A$500.  Also not on Amazon, but I scooped one up from local electronics chain JB Hifi.*
  
  They also had the new Gen 5 model (the Gen 4 was a China exclusive), listed at A$1500.  It's about 20% faster than the Gen 3 and has a 20% higher resolution screen, which is not enough to convince me to spend 200% more.  Particularly since neither of those are issues with the Gen 3 anyway.
  
  * Long time readers may recall that I bought one of these on sale last year.  Yes.  And now I will have two.

• The coming loop.  (Pocoo)
  
  This is a reaction to yesterday's article on AI becoming loopy, and points out that just because something may be inevitable doesn't necessarily make it a good idea.
  
  
  
• F3 is a file format for the future.  (GitHub)
  
  For the future of what?
  
  Shut up.
  
  
  
• Anthropic's Mythos AI tool has discovered a memory leak in Squid.  (The Register)
  
  First, who still uses Squid?  Second, who still uses Mythos?  Anthropic blocked all access to it.
  
  
  
• Elon Musk's nefarious plan to deliver fast, affordable internet access to literally the entire planet.  (The Verge)
  
  The Verge seems to be Big Mad that Starlink is delivering on its promises rather than stealing tens of billions in taxpayer funds.
  
  
  
• Not FSD but CDH.  (Notebook Check)
  
  The latest Tesla crash claimed to be an issue with automated self-driving mode again turns out to be driver error - FSD was disengaged and the accelerator was at 100% when the vehicle left the road and crashed into a house at 73 mph.
  
  
  
• Meta has launched a line of ugly clunky smart glasses that are $80 cheaper and don't carry the Ray-Ban log.  (The Verge)
  
  Okay.  Honestly I think these are pretty useful, even if jerks are determined to spoil everything for the rest of us.
  
  
  

Musical Interlude

Posted by: Rick C at Wednesday, June 24 2026 10:15 PM (1zWbY)

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• Valve's Steam machine is here, starting at $499 $599 $699 $1049.  (Notebook Check)
  
  Or almost almost here.  You can enter a lottery right now, which will offer winners the chance to buy the Cube from June 29.  Delivery will take place sometime after that.
  
  
  
• You can get more powerful PCs for similar amounts of money.  (Notebook Check)
  
  But the Cube is compact and almost silent.
  
  
  
• And overall, it doesn't suck.  (Notebook Check)
  
  Valve got steamrolled by the DRAM Apocalypse just like the rest of us, but it does deliver what they promised.  Mostly.  4k was always a stretch.

• Lenovo's Legion Tab Gen 5 is here - and you can actually buy one.  (Notebook Check)
  
  It launched in China a little while ago, but is now available internationally.  MSRP is a hefty $850 but it's discounted to a still pretty hefty $650 for now.
  
  Also, the older Lenovo Legion Tab Gen 3 is now on clearance, discounted as much as 50%.
  
  At that price it is - adjusted for inflation - actually cheaper than the iconic 2013 Nexus 7, while offering a higher resolution screen, larger battery, six times the memory, eight times the storage, ten times the CPU performance, and literally a hundred times the graphics performance.  To be fair, the Nexus 7 was kind of bad at 3d gaming.
  
  No wireless charging, but it has dual USB-C ports rather than one failure-prone micro-USB socket.
  
  
  
• Fuck you Microsoft GameInput.
  
  But at least I know that it wasn't a hardware problem.
  
  
  
• Canada is planning a nuclear renaissance with ten new reactors to be built by 2040 at a cost of $100 billion.  (CBC)
  
  They achieved this using one simple trick: They targeted an operational date of 2010 on a budget of $5 billion.
  
  
  
• DDR3 and DDR2 are the next victims of the Apocalypse.  (The Register)
  
  I have 96GB of DDR3.  Much less DDR2 - maybe 32GB across four old systems.
  
  
  
• The AI world is getting loopy.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Do tell.
  
  (Reads article.)
  
  No.  Don't tell.
  
  
  
• Anthropic says Claude may want to see your license, registration, and insurance.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Not just no, but fuck no.

Special Bonus Apocalyptic Musical Interlude

• A tech-worked backed PAC is spending $5 million to fight a multi-trillion dollar industry.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Or blatantly stealing the money while serving the goals of communists foreign and domestic.  One of those.
  
  
  
• Speaking of which did my old job only exist because of fraud?  (It's not about code)
  
  Always awkward to realise this is a possibility.  Something of a comfort to realise that the answer is...  Probably not.

• Sony's Xperia 1 VIII is a pretty good phone.  (The Verge)
  
  One would hope so for $1850.
  
  It does have a headphone jack and a microSD slot, but so does my Motorola phone which cost a tenth of that.
  
  
  
• Viewsonic has a 24" 4k monitor.  (Notebook Check)
  
  With a 160Hz refresh rate and coverage of 95% of DCI-P3, but the main selling point is its size.  24" 4k models are rarer than you might think.
  
  
  
• TikTok shows three times more AI slop than YouTube.  (Search Engine Journal)
  
  Yay.
  
  
  
• Polymarket ads are ads.  (MSN)
  
  In that nothing they present is real.
  
  This has got to break at least a dozen laws.

Posted by: normal at Tuesday, June 23 2026 09:17 AM (LDKo5)

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, June 23 2026 09:25 AM (1zWbY)

Posted by: normal at Tuesday, June 23 2026 10:16 AM (LDKo5)

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• AMD and Intel have unveiled their new ACE instruction set, which extends AVX vector instructions into matrix calculations.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  A single ACE instruction can result in up to 1024 multiplications, which is convenient but not exactly adhering to the RISC philosophy.
  
  We'll probably be waiting a couple of years to see this.  AMD previously announced a new matrix engine for Zen 7 - which is not expected until 2028.
  
  
  

Tech News

• UK supermarket Tesco is suing Broadcom over their VMWare villainy.  (The Register)
  
  Tesco purchased perpetual licenses to VMWare and signed matching support contracts before the company was bought by Broadcom.  Broadcom is now - according to the suit - refusing to provide support services unless customer repurchase the licenses at new, vastly inflated prices.
  
  
  
• Cloudflare has announced temporary accounts for AI agents that can be deployed for an hour without human intervention.  (Cloudflare)
  
  There are nine and sixty ways I can think of off the top of my head that this could go horribly wrong.  I suspect that Cloudflare can think of even more, and have already put in place countermeasures for half of them.
  
  
  
• A $200 ChatGPT subscription used to the full could be costing OpenAI $14,000.  (TechSpot)
  
  And a $200 Claude subscription could cost Anthropic $8000.
  
  Be right back, upgrading some subscriptions...
  
  
  
• A suicide booth for fish?  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Marketed as humane but actually designed to preserve the flavour.
  
  Hmm.
  
  
  
• The Atlantic did something useful?  (The Verge)
  
  They published a searchable database for music used in training AI song generators.
  
  Most of it copyrighted, much of it by extremely litigious labels.
  
  And here's me all out of popcorn.
  
  
  
• Lenovo's Thinkpad X11 is an 11" tablet.  (Notebook Check)
  
  Not the fastest and certainly not the lightest, but it has something few tablets can match: A removable battery.

Posted by: normal at Monday, June 22 2026 02:36 AM (lzyeE)

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, June 22 2026 03:32 AM (1zWbY)

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• Amazon has dropped - the bad kind of dropped - its planned Sam Altman biopic, Artificial.  (The Independent)
  
  The film, which depicted the credibly accused but I would never say so myself compulsive liar and total sociopath in an unflattering light may just possibly have conflicted with Amazon's $50 billion investment in OpenAI and OpenAI's $38 billion in contracts with Amazon.
  
  But I would never say so myself.
  
  
  
• I will take the consummate serpent grease entrepreneur's side any day of the week over communist senator Bernie Sanders' plan to simply steal the entire AI industry.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Sanders' insane plan offers a dividend of $1000 to every adult American drawn from the profits of an industry that is losing massive amounts of money.

• South Korea's Hyundai has taken full ownership of creepy robot dog company Boston Dynamics.  (Startup Fortune)
  
  They bought out Japanese investment firm SoftBank's 10% holding for $325 quadrillion.*
  
  * Delete zeroes until it makes sense.
  
  
  
• AMD's TSME will return to Ryzen 9000 CPUs via a BIOS update.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  This is AMD's memory encryption system that prevents any potential leakage of data between mutually untrusted virtual machines on shared hardware.  Necessary on servers running cloud systems at Amazon and Google, but also useful for homelabs and developers who want to try it out on affordable hardware.
  
  
  
• There's an unpatchable security bug in the iPhone 11.  (9to5Mac)
  
  If you let someone plug it into a malicious USB cable, at which point they could also just smash it with a hammer.
  
  
  
• AMD is planning a 10-15% price hike on its Radeon graphics cards.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Could be a lot worse.  AMD cards are available for just a little over MSRP in America (and a little below MSRP in Australia).

Posted by: PatBuckman at Sunday, June 21 2026 01:22 AM (s6adZ)

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• Apple CEO Tim Cook says prices are going to increase so that the company can maintain its 1000% markup on commodity components.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Apple is, right now, only achieving a 500% markup on memory.
  
  
  

Tech News

• Microsoft's latest version of Outlook takes just 10 seconds to take you from a notification to reading the corresponding email.  (Windows Latest)
  
  One small problem: It used to be instantaneous.
  
  
  
• Valve's new Steam Controller is a runaway success.  (The Verge)
  
  This being The Verge, that's not how they frame the story.
  
  
  
• Amazon employees are facing extermination for fighting against datacenter construction.  (The Verge)
  
  If I were a doctor and fighting to abolish medicine, I wouldn't expect to retain my board certification for long.
  
  
  
• Nope, too stupid.  (WCCFTech)
  
  
  

Musical Interlude

Posted by: normal at Saturday, June 20 2026 01:28 AM (lzyeE)

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