• How Pepsi saved the Roomba, and how Lina Khan murdered it.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  I hadn't heard the Pepsi story before:

  The press drove this huge initial demand - 70,000 robots.  So next year we’re going to do four times that.  We made 300,000 robots.  We even made a television commercial, but we were a bunch of geek engineers, so it totally failed.  After Cyber Monday we were sitting with 250,000 robots in our warehouse like, "Oh my God, the world’s going to end."
  
  Then something good happened. The guy running our website said, "Why did sales quadruple yesterday?"  We hadn’t done anything.  What had happened was Pepsi had started running a TV ad with Dave Chappelle.  He walks into this beautiful home, picks up a potato chip, and a Roomba comes out.  He’s like, "A vacuum cleaner!"  He throws down the potato chip, the vacuum eats it, then chases him.  His pants are ripped off.  He stands up in boxers.  A beautiful woman appears, and he says, "Your vacuum cleaner ate my pants."  We sold 250,000 robots in two weeks and realized we knew nothing about marketing.

  And now for Lina Khan's FTC, the AntiPepsi:

  The amount of money and time spent was indescribable.  I would not be surprised if over 100,000 documents were created and delivered. iRobot invested a significant part of our discretionary earnings against fulfilling the requirements that went along with doing the transaction.  Amazon was forced to invest many, many, many times that.  There was a whole team, both internal and external employees and lawyers and economists working to try to, in as many different ways as possible - because it seemed like our message was falling on deaf ears - demonstrate that this acquisition was not going to create a monopolistic situation.

  It was never going to create a monopoly.  The FTC didn't care.  It wanted scalps.

  There was daily activity for 18 months associated with this.  Perhaps most telling, when I was testifying as part of being deposed, I had a chance to walk the halls of the FTC.  The examiners on their office doors had printouts of deals blocked, like trophies.

• Apple's always extortionate memory prices are about to escalate to excruciating when their memory purchase agreements start to expire - some of them as soon as January.  (WCCFTech)
  
  If Apple had any wits about them they'd write Nanya a blank cheque and tell them to go for it.  Or just buy them outright.
  
  
  
• IDC expects average PC prices to jump by up to 8% in 2026.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  If prices jump by 8% it will only be because specs have been sharply reduced.
  
  
  
• Speaking of specs being sharply reduced, is 8GB of VRAM enough going into 2024?  (WCCFTech)
  
  Probably.  If you have the 8GB 9600 XT, turn off ray tracing and you'll be good at 1080p and likely even at 1440p.
  
  
  

Roomba Interlude

Musical Interlude

Posted by: Frank at Monday, December 22 2025 10:58 PM (amxkj)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

• In other wonderful AI news Larian, developer of Baldur's Gate III, says the memory drought is already affecting software development.  (Notebook Check)
  
  Specifically they need to start optimisation before they even ship an early-access version, because they can no longer just recommend 32GB of RAM when customers can't buy 32GB of RAM.
  
  While Larian themselves have not been guilty of this, I'm not sure being forced to optimise games from the start is a bad thing given the number of titles that have launched recently in a state that left the unplayable on even the fastest available hardware.
  
  
  
• PearOS, a long-expired Linux version designed to look like MacOS, has been revived and updated with the latest kernel and KDE desktop.  (The Register)
  
  It's incomplete, but interesting.
  
  
  
• Privacy is marketing.  Anonymity is architecture.  (Servury)
  
  The value of your service provider not being able to recover your password is that they can't do anything else to your account either because they don't know who you are.
  
  
  
• A newly discovered UEFI flaw allows hackers to break into your system the moment it boots.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  If they can plug directly into your PCIe bus.
  
  Which they can do without opening your system if you have Thunderbolt or OCuLink ports.
  
  The Minisforum AI X1-255, for example, has both.
  
  
  
• The best selling console is not what you think.  (The Verge)  (archive site)
  
  It's an underpowered overpriced gimmick called the Nex Playground aimed squarely at children.  It uses motion tracking to let them interact directly with games without needing a controller, or any particular level of hand-eye co-ordination.
  
  Only problem is it kind of sucks.
  
  
  
• My Minecraft modpack is public now.  (Cursforge)
  
  My image captions haven't appeared on the site though they show in the management page.  Not sure what's up with that; the changes to the description went straight through.
  
  Update: The captions are now live.
  
  
  

Musical Interlude

Posted by: cxt217 at Monday, December 22 2025 12:34 PM (ZLF73)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

• 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)

Posted by: Rick C at Sunday, December 21 2025 03:30 AM (1zWbY)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, December 21 2025 06:37 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Rick C at Sunday, December 21 2025 12:45 PM (1zWbY)

Posted by: Mauser at Sunday, December 21 2025 03:43 PM (XWgGM)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, December 21 2025 05:58 PM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, December 21 2025 06:00 PM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, December 22 2025 07:01 AM (1zWbY)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, December 22 2025 08:52 AM (PiXy!)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

Posted by: PatBuckman at Sunday, December 21 2025 04:28 AM (rcPLc)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

• The unfortunately named Paris Buttfield-Addison bought a $500 Apple gift card at a major Australian brick-and-mortar outlet.
  
  Turns out the card had already been redeemed, and when he tried to redeem it, it was rejected.
  
  The outlet agreed to provide a replacement gift card, so all was well.
  
  Then Apple terminated his account and bricked all of his devices.  (Hey.Paris)

  My Apple ID, which I have held for around 25 years (it was originally a username, before they had to be email addresses; it’s from the iTools era), has been permanently disabled.  This isn't just an email address; it is my core digital identity.  It holds terabytes of family photos, my entire message history, and is the key to syncing my work across the ecosystem.
  
  I effectively have over $30,000 worth of previously-active "bricked" hardware.  My iPhone, iPad, Watch, and Macs cannot sync, update, or function properly.  I have lost access to thousands of dollars in purchased software and media.

  You might be thinking at this point that this guy is an idiot for giving a single company complete control over his personal and work life in this way.
  
  You would be correct.

• Apple is not a computer company.  (Thurrott)
  
  It's a protection racket.
  
  
  
• Microsoft's Copilot AI assistant doesn't work even in the company's own ads where the responses are fake.  (The Verge)  (archive site)
  
  That would be embarrassing if Microsoft still had the capacity to feel embarrassment.
  
  
  
• Intel looks set to release a big Battlemage.  (WCCFTech)
  
  This will be about 60% faster than the current B580, which is a fairly decent value at $250 since it offers 12GB of RAM.  The new card will have 16GB of RAM.
  
  Price and release dates are left to be generated by some random LLM somewhere.
  
  
  
• TikTok has agreed to be sold to a US-led investment consortium.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  The parent company, ByteDance, will retain a 20% stake in the new join venture.
  
  From the details given, 35% of the shares are unaccounted for.
  
  
  

Musical Interlude

Posted by: PatBuckman at Saturday, December 20 2025 02:10 AM (rcPLc)

Posted by: wheels at Saturday, December 20 2025 02:59 AM (H9lUx)

Posted by: normal at Saturday, December 20 2025 08:43 AM (e0fX0)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Saturday, December 20 2025 09:15 AM (PiXy!)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

• Micron says the memory shortage will get worse before it gets better, and also that it won't get better if they have anything to say about it.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Micron has two factories under construction in Idaho due to come on line in 2027, and another planned in New York to be operational in 2030.
  
  Even with those three new factories churning out chips they only expect to meet half to two thirds of demand.
  
  In the meantime, though, the company posted a revenue increase of 57% over last year, so they don't really care about you and your money, as indicated by them shutting down their Crucial consumer brand after nearly 30 years.
  
  
  
• And the second of my two new mini-PCs arrived today.  I set up the first one last night - just plugged it in, turned it on, lied and told Windows I didn't have internet, and it works.  It's pretty fast too, with none of the lag I get with my laptop.
  
  Partly because the CPU is nearly twice as fast as the one in my laptop, partly because it's a clean install of Windows and doesn't have about 200 different applications installed yet.  I'll fix that.
  
  It really does have 64GB of RAM.  64GB of Crucial RAM, apparently, which is now a collectors item.
  
  It's available for sale now on Minisforum's US store, but the price is about 70% higher than in Australia even after a 20% discount, so it's no bargain.
  
  Update: Unnamed computer #2 is plugged in and working.

Tech News

• The Corsair MP700 Pro XT is the new fastest consumer SSD.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  15GB per second and 3.3 million IOPS, the equivalent to a RAID array of 25,000 hard drives.
  
  And it's not much more expensive than PCIe 4.0 models.  Not because it's cheap, but because the price increases in flash memory have overwhelmed the price increment for the faster PCIe 5.0 controller.
  
  
  
• GitHub is not charging you $0.002 per minute for using your own hardware.  (The Register)
  
  They were planning to.  Users were not impressed.
  
  
  
• Jared Isaacman has been confirmed by the Senate as the new administrator of NASA, where he will do...  Stuff.  (Politico)
  
  Or more accurately, hand money to SpaceX for them to do stuff.
  
  
  
• AI-generated code contains 70% more bugs than human-generated, and is twice as likely to introduce security vulnerabilities.  (The Register)
  
  In my experience, if you can precisely specify the requirements, and the AI can crib from public code in another programming language, and you can run the code in a sandbox where break-ins can't happen, and you're willing to do the testing, and the job is the sort of annoying boilerplate work of plugging two things together that don't really want to be plugged together, AI is useful.
  
  In other words, the stuff that you would dump on a junior team member so that one day they would be a senior team member.
  
  But this kind of work wasn't much fun back when we didn't have AI, so I'm not sure we've made things worse.

• Coupang - South Korea's equivalent to Amazon - got hacked.  (WSJ)  (archive site)
  
  Initial disclosure indicated that 4500 customers were affected.
  
  This number has since been updated to 34 million.
  
  
  
• Speaking of which, Midjourney is alemwjsl.  (Aadill Pickle)
  
  Me: That's someone typing the local name for Midjourney on a CJKV keyboard with the language accidentally set to English.
  
  Article: Uh...  Yes.  Korean.

• Is the Commodore 64 Ultimate any good?  Yes.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  It's an FPGA emulator rather than just software, so it's more precise, and it supports existing hardware like ROM cartridges and disk drives if you still have one in working order.
  
  And it includes not a mere 64K of RAM but 128MB.  (Of which you can attach 16MB as an expansion cartridge.)
  
  And you can dial the speed up from 1MHz to 64MHz.
  
  And it has modern niceties like HDMI, USB, Ethernet, and wifi.
  
  And it has a high-quality mechanical keyboard.
  
  $299, or $349 for the translucent Starlight edition, but that's about what a second-hand C64 will set you back these days once you get it working.
  
  
  
• The US government has signed a deal with Korea Zinc to build a rare earth processing facility in Tennessee.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  The company will be building a $6.6 billion facility to produce 540,000 tons of material per year, including gallium, germanium, and indium, none of which are rare earth elements.
  
  Also, 540,000 tons of these metals would be a lot.  Hundreds of times more than current global output.  So someone is leaving something out somewhere.
  
  
  
• Canada's postmaster-general or whatever he is Mark Carney has been criticised over his choice of British spellings in official documents as opposed to American ones.  (The Guardian)
  
  Canada is not a real country.
  
  
  
• Texas has sued a bevy of TV makers including Sony, LG, Samsung, TCL, and Hisense for taking screenshots of what you are watching without your consent.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  Good.
  
  
  
• Set up Frieren something, the first of my two Minisforum AI X1-255 systems.  Second unit looks likely to arrive tomorrow, and will be named Tanya something else.
  
  Works.  Fast.  Quiet, though not silent.  Plan to reinstall Windows, but so far, works, fast.
  
  It's in stock on Minisforum's US store right now...  For $1126, discounted from $1406.
  
  I paid A$989 including 10% sales tax, so just under US$600 before tax.  I don't know if that's tariffs or Minisforum AU just hasn't kept up with the pricing - it's still available here at very close to that price - but either way I got a steal.
  
  Update: Oh, yeah, I already have a Frieren and a Tanya.
  
  Update Too: Second unit arrived.

Posted by: PatBuckman at Thursday, December 18 2025 03:24 AM (rcPLc)

Posted by: K Duncan at Thursday, December 18 2025 05:14 AM (6zKZf)

Posted by: normal at Thursday, December 18 2025 05:17 AM (LADmw)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Thursday, December 18 2025 09:08 AM (PiXy!)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

• Merriam Webster names "slop" the word of the year.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Good work, dictionary.  Have a cookie.

• LG has force-installed Microsoft Copilot on its smart TVs.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  And you can't remove it.
  
  Planning to buy Samsung instead?  Same deal with their TVs and Google Gemini.
  
  
  
• The KTC H27P3 is a 5k monitor.  (The Verge)
  
  It covers 99% of the DCI-P3 colour space and offers 500 nits of brightness and a 2000:1 contrast ratio.  Only 60Hz at full resolution, but if you drop it down to 2560x1440 it can handle 120Hz.  HDMI, DisplayPort, and USB-C are on offer for inputs.  It nominally offers 10-bit colour but that's through PWM - it's really just a regular 8-bit panel.
  
  All of that stuff is commonplace in semi-professional monitors, so why mention it?
  
  According to the article (I couldn't verify this myself) it's currently discounted to $355 on Amazon.
  
  
  
• How the CIA lost a radioisotope thermoelectric generator.  (New York Times)
  
  The article refers to it as a "nuclear device" every single time, trying to play up the danger, citing concerns that it might break down and pollute the pristine waters of...  The Ganges.
  
  Anyway, they know exactly where it is.  At the top of a mountain.  Probably.
  
  
  
• Hard drive prices soared in the most recent quarter along with everything else.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  By 4%.
  
  
  
• Searching UTF-8 text at 5GB/s using AVX-512.  (Ash Vardanian)
  
  It's an impressive trick, but mostly because Unicode (and UTF-8 in particular) is utterly insane.
  
  
  
• That mini-PC I just bought now costs only $40 more than the RAM it contains.  The exact model and speed of RAM - 2x32GB Crucial DDR5-5600 SO-DIMMs.
  
  Since it also contains a 1TB M.2 SSD - a pretty basic Kingston model but at least it's PCIe 4.0 - the price of the computer itself is around -$130.
  
  It's back on sale for the same price.  Well, $3 more.  Close enough.
  
  Yes, I bought another one.

Posted by: PatBuckman at Wednesday, December 17 2025 12:39 AM (rcPLc)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Wednesday, December 17 2025 12:41 AM (rcPLc)

Posted by: wheels at Wednesday, December 17 2025 03:30 AM (H9lUx)

Posted by: normal at Wednesday, December 17 2025 03:47 AM (Sbqr6)

Posted by: Rick C at Wednesday, December 17 2025 04:47 AM (1zWbY)

Posted by: Rick C at Wednesday, December 17 2025 04:52 AM (1zWbY)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

• After Amazon was blocked from buying Roomba maker iRobot last year by US and European regulators, the company has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and will be sold off to Shenzhen PICEA Robotics Co. (Bloomberg / MSN)
  
  Guess they'll have to... Suck it up.
  
  Oh, and good fucking work on the regulations there. You really protected competition, huh?

• After 53 years, HP-IB, also known as GPIB and IEEE-488, has a stable Linux driver. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Thanks. Though I hear some people have moved on to Firewire now.
  
  
  
• The Motorola Edge 70 prides itself on being thin and lightweight, unlike all the other phones on the market, which are so heavy the average person can barely lift them let alone carry them about. (Notebook Check)
  
  Performance is kind of meh for the price. If you must have an edge, older models are available for much cheaper.
  
  
  
• The Minisforum N5 Pro NAS turns out not to be all that expensive. (NASCompares)
  
  I mean, it costs close to $1000 for the bare unit (with 128GB of storage - basically an OS boot disk) for a device with five 3.5" bays and three M.2 slots. But it has 10Gb and 5Gb Ethernet ports, two USB4 ports, Oculink, and a PCIe x16 slot for expansion.
  
  And a twelve-core Ryzen 370, so this is not merely a NAS but a very capable PC with a lot more storage and networking options that you typically find in small pre-built systems.
  
  I'm not about to buy one, though, because I have plenty of mini-PCs and plenty of multi-bay external storage units. And that little Beelink NAS too.
  
  
  
• This $1500 robot cooks dinner while I work. (The Verge) (archive site)
  
  So does my $20 Kmart slow-cooker.
  
  
  
• While I'm often harshly critical of AI, this image is almost too perfectly what I was after in this case:
  
  
  
  Why I was after this is another question, but it is what I was after.
  
  
  
  

Posted by: PatBuckman at Monday, December 15 2025 11:36 PM (rcPLc)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, December 16 2025 02:26 AM (PiXy!)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

• Why AI makes bad systems more convincing.  (Chaincoder)
  
  Because AI is not just a stochastic bullshit generator.  It's a stochastic plausibility generator.
  
  AI images?  They're not art, they don't have meaning; they're just close enough to make you think they have meaning.
  
  AI stories and essays?  The same except that it's a lot worse at holding to a thread.
  
  AI software testing?  Actually useful.  It might miss some test cases you would have tried, but it will also create test cases you wouldn't have thought of, and it will do it quickly.
  
  AI software?  It will be produced quickly and for any non-trivial task it won't work.  But it may look like it does.

  The deeper issue is psychological. The more polished the output looks, the less likely someone is to question it.  Verification feels redundant when something sounds authoritative.
  
  That is not a tooling problem. It is a human one.

  Entirely correct.
  
  
  
• AI superintelligence - or even intelligence - is not a looming reality but a fantasy.  (The Register)
  
  Partly because we have run out of easy wins.  The industry wouldn't be spending a trillion dollars on this if it could be done for a billion.
  
  And partly because almost nobody is working towards intelligence, just bigger and shinier automated confidence tricksters.

• HP's OmniBook 7 Aero 13 lacks the Four Essential Keys.  (Notebook Check)
  
  Get out of here, HP.  It had those keys when it was a Pavilion model.  Put them back.
  
  
  
• Gnome's new rules forbid AI-written extensions.  (Phoronix)
  
  I side with Gnome here.  The rules are actually pretty sensible.  Both things I am surprised to find myself saying given the nonsense Gnome has gotten up to at times.
  
  
  
• Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic will launch before 2030.  (WCCFTech)
  
  This is a sequel to a game (Knights of the Old Republic) that came out in 2003.
  
  I would wonder whether the audience still exists but apparently the original game was released for the Nintendo Switch as recently as 2021, so apparently they still do.
  
  We still do.  KotOR was pretty good.
  
  
  
• Is vibe coding the new gateway to technical debt?  (InfoWorld)
  
  Yes.  And other kinds of debt too.
  
  
  
• Why Twilio moved back from microservices to a monolithic system.  (Twilio)
  
  Think of it this way: Having three cars instead of one bus gives you a lot more flexibility.  But having 140 cars means you spend all your time managing the logistics of the cars themselves rather than driving people where they need to go.
  
  
  
• Seven bags of bark chips deployed.  Neighbour came over while I was working and complimented me on how good it looked.  Which I think is only partly a comment on how bad it looked before - I live next to an overgrown vacant lot which looks even worse - because even I think the results were worth the effort.

Posted by: normal at Monday, December 15 2025 04:48 AM (Sbqr6)

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, December 15 2025 09:09 AM (1zWbY)

Posted by: normal at Monday, December 15 2025 10:06 AM (Sbqr6)

Hide Comments | Add Comment