• Two new Xbox models have just gone up on pre-order, sort of: The portable Ally X for $999 and the cheaper Ally Nothing for $599.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Can these portable devices from Asus really be described as Xboxes?  They have AMD Ryzen CPUs - but then, so do the current Microsoft Xboxes.  But they have AMD Radeon graphics - which the current Microsoft Xboxes also have.
  
  So I guess the answer is yes.
  
  The Ally X has a Ryzen Z2 AI Extreme, with 8 Zen 5 CPU cores and 16 RDNA3.5 graphics cores, and 24GB and a 1TB SSD.
  
  The Ally Nothing has a Ryzen Z2 A, which doesn't sound like a huge downgrade but definitely is: Just 4 Zen 2 CPU cores and 8 RDNA2 graphics cores, plus 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD.
  
  It has the same screen and controllers as the more expensive model, but offers less than half the CPU performance.  Comparing the desktop equivalents, a four-core Zen 2 would be one third the speed, but in a mobile device the faster chip is likely the be thermally constrained anyway.
  
  
  
• And it's sold out, for rather dubious values of "sold out".  (WCCFTech)
  
  It's a pre-order, so this restriction is limited to the units from the first production batch that were allocated to the Microsoft Store.  There are plenty more out there.
  
  

• Meta, parent company of Facebook, has announced its new app: Vibes, an infinitely scrolling stream of AI slop.  (Facebook)
  
  Thanks, Mark.
  
  
  
• Is the HP Z2 Mini G1a the small form-factor Strix Halo workstation you were waiting for?  $5021 as tested.  (Hot Hardware)
  
  I'm siding with no.
  
  
  
• Well, how about the Minisforum MS-S1 MAX?  (YouTube)
  
  Maybe.  Currently selling at $2399 for the sole available model, so it's by no means cheap.  But it has two USB4 ports offering 40Gbps, two USB4V2 ports offering 80Gbps, two 10Gb Ethernet ports, two M.2 slots, and a PCIe expansion slot.
  
  Plus of course a Ryzen 395 with 16 Zen 5 CPU cores and 40 RDNA3.5 graphics cores, and 128GB of LPDDR5-8000 memory.
  
  You can configure a Mac Studio with equivalent specs (the 16 core M4 Max also has 40 graphics cores and supports 128GB of RAM) but it's slower and significantly more expensive.
  
  
  
• Electronic Arts is seeking to go private under a $50 billion leverage buyout.  (Notebook Check)
  
  Is it suddenly the 80s again?
  
  

Artistic Interlude

Musical Interlude

Posted by: furball321 at Saturday, September 27 2025 08:46 PM (As8gg)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Saturday, September 27 2025 10:31 PM (PiXy!)

Posted by: normal at Sunday, September 28 2025 05:34 AM (LADmw)

Posted by: Mauser at Sunday, September 28 2025 10:10 AM (XWgGM)

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• Raspberry Pi has announced the Raspberry Pi 500+, which is what everyone had hoped the Raspberry Pi 500 would be, but.  (Raspberry Pi)
  
  Specifically, it includes an M.2 slot - and comes with a 256GB M.2 SSD - so storage is many times faster than using microSD cards.
  
  It also includes 16GB of RAM instead of 8GB on the Pi 500, and 4GB on the Pi 400.
  
  It also has a mechanical keyboard.  Including the Four Essential Keys, which the 400 and 500 are both missing.
  
  Unfortunately, all this comes at a price: Compared with the $66 Pi 400 and $90 Pi 500, it costs $200.  Not unreasonable given the capabilities and quality, but something that is not quite as easy an impulse buy.

• Meanwhile over at Beelink's online store, the Me Mini is selling at one third off MSRP - cut from $329 to just $209.  (Beelink)
  
  Since I was already considering one when supply reached Australia, and that comes with free shipping and a choice of power cords, I bought one.  The blue model, in memory of the classic Cobalt Qube.
  
  $209 for a six-drive M.2 NAS is a steal, and this seems to have fewer issues than some of the four-drive models.  It's not a high-end solution with its Intel N150 CPU and 12GB of soldered RAM, but it's $200.
  
  
  
• TikTok is being sold, with 45% of the US company going to a consortium headed by Oracle, Silverlake, and MBX.  (The Verge)
  
  35% will be held by investors in parent company ByteDance, and the remaining 20% will simply evaporate or something.
  
  
  
• Zen 6 and apparently also Zen 7 are headed to current AMD motherboards.  (YouTube)
  
  According to latest leaks, not only next year's Zen 6, with up to 24 cores, but 2028's Zen 7 with up to 32 cores will be continuing on with current AM5 motherboards and chipsets, and DDR5 RAM.
  
  Lots of discussion also on next-generation RDNA5 graphics - including low-end models that will use LPDDR5X or LPDDR6 memory instead of GDDR6/7, and interchangeable GPU chiplets.

• Qualcomm has announced the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme and Elite Not Quite So Extreme As All That, successors to the Snapdragon X Elite family.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  The 12 core X Elite performed pretty well among laptop chips, just slightly behind AMD's own 12 core chip, the Ryzen 370.  So long as the software you were running was compatible, which wasn't always the case.
  
  It was doomed to irrelevance by a combination of high prices and being promoted with Microsoft's even more doomed Recall software which absolutely nobody wants or trusts.
  
  The X2 Elite Extreme updates the cores in unspecified ways, bumps the clock speed from 4.3GHz to 5GHz, increases the core count from 12 (8 fast plus 4 efficiency) to 18 (12 fast plus 6 efficiency), and also increases the memory width from 128 bits to 192 bits.
  
  Qualcomm claims this will increase multi-threaded performance by 75%, and given that it has 50% more cores that seems plausible.
  
  Laptops with the new chips will ship in the first half of next year.

• Also announced was the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, which delivers just 8 cores (2 fast plus 6 efficiency) but cuts power and clock speed for pocket-sized devices.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Look for it in phones and tablets and overpriced washing machines.
  
  
  
• Australia's "eSafety Commissioner" is asking if GitHub is a social network that puts children at risk.  (The Register)
  
  Python leads to Java.  Java leads to COBOL.  Cobol leads to job security.
  
  
  
• Experimental gene therapy appears to significantly slow the progress of Huntington's disease.  (BBC)
  
  A particularly nasty hereditary degenerative disease, Huntington's typically first shows up in early middle age, when people likely already have children, and slowly eats away at the nervous system over twenty years or so.
  
  The new treatment doesn't cure it, but seems to slow progress by a factor of four.  If treatment is started early, patients are likely to die of something else before the disease can progress that far.
  

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, September 25 2025 10:27 PM (1zWbY)

Posted by: Frank at Friday, September 26 2025 04:19 AM (+i6Xr)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Friday, September 26 2025 08:42 AM (rcPLc)

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• The pace of AI companies' spending on new datacenters is expected to require annual revenues of $2 trillion by 2030.  Even the most optimistic (read: horseshit) estimates put the industry 40% short of that number.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Is it still a bubble when even the people in the bubble know it's a bubble?

• Do DRAMless QLC SSDs no longer suck for the average user?  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Apparently, yes.  Tested today is the Sandisk WD Blue SN5100, and it works pretty well.
  
  
  
• There's apparently a Legend of Zelda Lego set coming next year, but that's not the interesting bit.  (NotebookCheck)
  
  No, the interesting thing is that just days ago Lego released a Willy Wonka themed set.
  
  And it's the good version with Gene Wilder.
  
  
  
• Disney Plus is getting another price increase.  (The Verge)
  
  Cancel now and put the savings toward a Willy Wonka Lego set.
  
  
  

Musical Interlude

Posted by: normal at Thursday, September 25 2025 12:27 AM (LADmw)

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• Nvidia is planning to invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  So that OpenAI can spend the money on 10 gigawatts worth of Nvidia hardware.
  
  It's not a bubble.
  
  It's a Ponzi scheme with extra steps.*

• A Twitch streamer (I know) who was raising money for his cancer treatments with blockchain donations (I know) lost everything he had raised in minutes after installing a Steam game called BlockBlasters recommended to him in a chat message (I know).  (Decrypt.co)
  
  Most of this is legitimate.  Streamer "RastalandTV" does have stage 4 cancer, has been raising funds through blockchain donations, and BlockBlasters was compromised at the end of August and has stolen at least $150,000 in crypto funds from victims.  It has since been pulled from Steam.
  
  Happy ending time: Crypto bro Alex Becker - I hope he'll forgive me for calling him that - not only stepped in to cover the loss, but stepped in twice because the first donation he made was also lost.
  
  Not so happy ending time: Blockchains.
  
  
  
• Mathematicians who have spent 150 years working on a simple way to categorise the complexity of knots have come to a stunning conclusion: We have no idea.  (Quanta)
  
  None whatsoever:

  But from another perspective, that only makes the unknotting number more intriguing. "There's just much more complexity and unknowns about knot theory than we knew there were a few months ago," Livingston said.

  You might even say it's a knotty problem.
  
  What's more, we don't know why we don't know what we don't know.  We just know we don't know it:

  "I'm still stymied by this most basic question" about the unknotting number, Moore said.  "That just lights the fire under you."

  Have you checked the answers at the end of the book?
  
  
  
• Have you already scratched your hugely expensive iPhone 17 Pro Max.  Yes.  Yes you have.  (The Verge)
  
  Meanwhile my $120 Moto G14 is in pristine condition.

Posted by: Mauser at Wednesday, September 24 2025 03:52 AM (XWgGM)

Posted by: normal at Wednesday, September 24 2025 05:44 AM (e0fX0)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Wednesday, September 24 2025 09:45 AM (rcPLc)

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Posted by: normal at Tuesday, September 23 2025 06:38 AM (e0fX0)

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• 40,000 year old symbols found in caves worldwide may be the earliest written language, according to a bunch of idiots.  (Open Culture)

  And what’s more, it may be possible, suggests paleoanthropologist Genevieve von Petzinger, that those prehistoric forms of writing, which include the earliest known hashtag marks, consisted of symbols nearly as universal as emoji.

  #coughbullshitcough
  
  Yes, they're directly conflating art with actual writing.  They're obviously directly conflating art with actual writing, and it's all being reported seriously.
  
  Welcome to my TED Talk.  Check under your seats as you leave the venue.

• An online store listed the 24GB Intel Arc B60 Pro for $600.  (WCCFTech)
  
  This is basically a B580 with twice the RAM.  The B580 costs $249 - nominally - so in theory you could buy two of those and a have something nice for dinner.
  
  
  
• Microsoft put me on a list.  (Slugcat)
  
  If you are porting a game to a new version of Windows and you're getting bizarre results, check to see if Microsoft has enabled optimisations specific to the name of your executable.
  
  Because in this case, they had.
  
  
  
• The best time to fix software security was fifty years ago.  The second best time was May 26, 2009 before Node.js launched.  (CACM)
  
  After that there was no hope.
  
  
  
• That's no moon.  (CNN)
  
  Astronomers have found another quasi-moon.  Of Earth.  We have several.
  
  This one is about 60 feet wide and technically orbits the Sun but in such a way that it sticks close to us.

• There isn't an AI bubble.  There are three separate and distinct AI bubbles all happening at the same time.  (Fast Company)
  
  As the article explains, there's an asset bubble, an infrastructure bubble, and a hype bubble, and while they all interact and reinforce each other, you need to examine them separately to try to figure out what is really going on.
  
  Yes, generative AI CEOs are all lying to you, but how much does that matter if you're not an investor?
  
  As to how much value will remain when the bubbles burst, I don't know.  If I knew that I'd still be rich from the last bubble.
  
  
  

Tech News

• AMD has relaunched its $40 Ryzen 3000G.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  This is an AM4 motherboard, a platform that is still readily available new.  It's the slowest AM4 CPU ever made with just two cores and four threads, but then it is $40.
  
  Be careful if you buy it because it's not compatible with every AM4 motherboard.  There are so many different AM4 CPU models that many motherboards ran out of BIOS space and had to drop support for some of those CPUs, and the 3000G has been a prime target for saving space.
  
  
  
• Vibe coding creates brain dead programmers.  (NMN)
  
  Written by a programmer who gave vibe coding a try and felt brain dead afterwards.
  
  
  
• I see you are doing your homework.  Would you like to cheat on that?  (MSN)
  
  Clippy would never.  Google, on the other hand, had to take down the helpful cheat-on-my-homework link in Chrome after teachers complained.
  
  
  
• Interlune has an order for 10,000 liters of Helium-3 per year starting in 2028.  (MSN)
  
  That it plans to collect from the Moon.
  
  
  
• All the packages that were compromised in the latest NPM supply chain attack.  (Koi)
  
  It's a disaster.
  
  Again.
  
  
  

Musical Interlude

Posted by: Dan from Pennsylvania at Sunday, September 21 2025 10:38 PM (79m0J)

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, September 22 2025 02:33 AM (1zWbY)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Monday, September 22 2025 01:46 PM (rcPLc)

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• AMD silently launched the Radeon 7700 non-XT - a missing model in the previous generation of graphics cards.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  The earlier 6700 non-XT slotted in neatly between the 8GB 128-bit 6600 XT and the 12GB 192-bit 6700 XT, with 10GB of RAM and a 160-bit bus.  Since it was price to match, that was just fine.
  
  We don't have a price on the 7700 yet, but we do have specs, and they're...  Odd.
  
  The 7800 XT (which I have) had 60 GPU cores and 16GB of VRAM on a 256-bit bus.  The 7700 XT cut the cores by only 10% to 54, but the memory down to 12GB on a 192-bit bus.
  
  The new, non-XT 7700 model cuts the cores all the way down to 40, but leaves the memory size at 16GB on a 256-bit bus.  A lot of memory and a lot of memory bandwidth for a relatively modest GPU configuration.
  
  AMD hasn't issued a press release yet so right now all of this is supported by just one link and one web page.  Admittedly those are both on AMD's own site, but an actual product launch would be welcome confirmation.
  
  
  
• ASRock has launched the Radeon RX 7700 Challenger.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Compared with the 32 core 7600 XT from the same range, it is clocked 20% lower, so compute performance is almost identical, but it has twice the memory and memory bandwidth.
  
  Might be interesting to see the benchmarks on this - it would highlight which games and applications really need that bandwidth.

• How obsidian reduces the risk of supply-chain attacks.  (Obsidian)
  
  It doesn't.  The plugin API has no security model at all.
  
  
  
• The US government is set to increase the cost of H-1B visas - used for foreign workers in specialty applications, mostly in the tech industry - by $100,000.  (MSN)
  
  Since the visas currently cost $4500, that can be regarded as a significant increase.
  
  
  
• Speaking of which console prices are moving in the wrong direction again.  (The Verge)
  
  Microsoft's Xbox Series X 1TB model moved from $500 to $600 earlier this year, and is now increasing to $650.
  
  The 2TB model increased from $600 at the last year to $730 in May to $800 now.
  
  
  
• The Lenovo Yoga Tab, a smaller, cheaper version of the Lenovo Yoga Tab Plus, is now available at $549.  (Liliputing)
  
  The Yoga Tab Plus is on sale right now for $539.
  
  
  
• I regret building this $3000 Raspberry Pi AI cluster.  (Jeff Geerling)
  
  I'm just reading the blog article and I regret it too.
  
  Even with ten small models running independently, the Pi cluster is slower than a single Framework Desktop costing around $2000.
  
  And if you run a single large model across the whole cluster, things actually get worse; now the $2000 system is at least 5x faster than the $3000 cluster.
  
  Lesson: Don't do this.
  
  
  
• Why is the Gigabyte TRX50 AI Top the most returned Threadripper motherboard?  (YouTube)
  
  Because Threadripper and Threadripper Pro fit in the same socket even though Threadripper Pro has twice the memory channels and PCIe lanes.
  
  You can fit a Threadripper Pro into a regular Threadripper motherboard like this one and it will work fine - just reduced from eight memory channels to four, and with half the PCIe lanes no longer wired up to anything.
  
  Unless the board is exactly this one in which case all eight memory channels are still available and wired to eight slots.
  
  Which means that if you're a regular user with a regular non-Pro Threadripper, there are four memory slots on the motherboard that you simply can't use.
  
  Also, the fourth M.2 slot only works if you have a Threadripper Pro CPU.
  
  RTFM.
  
  
  

Musical Interlude

Posted by: Rick C at Sunday, September 21 2025 02:01 AM (1zWbY)

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• Intel and Nvidia announced that they are working together on Intel CPUs with embedded (ish) Nvidia graphics.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  And also on custom Intel CPUs to work with Nvidia products in the datacenter.
  
  And also that Nvidia is investing $5 billion in Intel.
  
  Intel shares jumped to $30.50 on the news, meaning that the federal government made a 50% profit on its stake in the space of a week - on money that was originally allocated as a direct grant to Intel.

• Valve is dropping support for 32-bit operating systems in Steam.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Steam will still download and launch 32-bit games just fine, but you will need to run it on 64-bit hardware.
  
  
  
• The Amiga meanwhile is still 32-bit, so I guess you can't run Steam.  (Hot Hardware)
  
  The latest model Apollo A6000, with an FPGA-driven "68080" CPU and 2GB of RAM, is now on sale oh it's sold out.
  
  The next batch will be on sale on October 17, costing around $1100.
  
  
  
• How Cloudflare DDOSed itself.  (The Register)
  
  It failed to protect its sites using Cloudflare.

Posted by: normal at Saturday, September 20 2025 03:59 AM (zx18t)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Saturday, September 20 2025 01:21 PM (PiXy!)

Posted by: Frank at Monday, September 22 2025 07:39 PM (+i6Xr)

Posted by: normal at Tuesday, September 23 2025 06:41 AM (e0fX0)

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