• A couple of weeks ago I found a mini-PC that was priced - in Australia at least - at just 20% more than the cost of the RAM it includes. It uses regular laptop DIMMs so even if the PC doesn't turn out ideal it's a decent price and lets me upgrade any laptop I buy during the memory drought.
  
  Right after I bought it the price went up and I thought I'd ordered just in time, but then the price came back down.
  
  And a week ago memory prices had climbed to match the price of the whole computer, so I bought another one. I have them both set up and they seem to work well.
  
  And now as memory prices continue to climb, the memory alone is 20% more than the cost of the entire computer, so, yeah, you know it. I think I'm set for computers for a while.
  
  I tried out Ethernet-over-Thunderbolt networking today. Plugged in the cable between the two PCs and got instant 20Gb Ethernet. Magic.
  
  It's not a perfect system - the Ryzen 7 255 lacks an NPU, and it only has one rear USB-A port and that port is USB 2.0 - and it's not one I can recommend to most readers because it costs 60% more in the US than in Australia. But it's pretty good for my needs given the destruction that AI buildouts are wreaking on affordability right now.
  
  
  
• Elon Musk's $56 billion Tesla pay package, previously set aside by the corrupt Chancery Court in Delaware in an action that led to the company shifting its registration to Texas, has been restored by the Delaware Supreme Court. (Tech Crunch)
  
  Though given the increase in Tesla's share price over the intervening years, it is now a $140 billion pay package.
  
  So nice going, guys.

• LG is allowing customers to delete the Microsoft Copilot app it forced onto their televisions. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Or will do at some point.
  
  
  
• How a botched firewall update at Australia phone company Optus blocked emergency calls for 14 hours and contributed to the deaths of two people. (The Register)
  
  Layer upon layer of incompetence.
  
  
  
• Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman says it will cost hundreds of billions of dollars to compete - poorly - with other AI companies over the next five to ten years. (Business Insider)
  
  Or you could not do that.
  
  
  
• Yann Lecun, until recently the chief AI scientist at Meta, has founded a startup to work on AI systems that aren't hot garbage and is looking to raise funds at a $5 billion valuation. (Tech Crunch)
  
  Key to the new system is building an AI that knows things, rather than just going by statistical language patterns. That is, it has a world model as well as a language model, and the world model is definitive.
  
  This is one of the four steps absolutely required to build a generally useful AI.
  
  ChatGPT scores zero out of four.
  
  
  
• Airbus is migrating its apps and data from US-run cloud services to European ones that don't exist. (The Register)
  
  Brilliant.
  
  
  
• Finalised the changes to my Minecraft modpack, uploaded it for approval, and went back to playtesting.
  
  And it immediately crashed.
  
  Not sure why, but I needed to repair the Forge installation itself.  No major bugs in the modpack so far.
  
  I'll clean up the page a bit and then switch it to public.

Posted by: Frank at Saturday, December 20 2025 05:21 PM (amxkj)

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